By the time the group arrives at Fifth Harbor, other Dregs waiting nearby, three Bulls are pouring kerosene across the rain-slick wooden docks. The streets are empty, most of Ketterdam unwilling to tempt the storm and the leftovers looking the other way. The Council of Tides is the only thing keeping the roiling waves from flooding the city.
All three Bulls look up as one at the sound of Kaz’s cane, loud enough from the weight it bears and fast enough from Kaz’s jog to be heard even through the pounding rain. Two of them, a Shu person with short, dripping black hair and a Kerch man in a tan hat, both catch sight of Kaz stopping a ways away and resting his hands on his cane. They blanch as one.
“Dirtyhands,” says the one who appears to be their leader, shaved head and green coat drenched in rainwater, the latter nearly brushing the wood of the dock they stand at the start of. They’re the only Gray Bull who doesn’t already look scared, but Kaz plans to rectify that soon enough. “Did one of your little birdies tell on us?” They look toward the warship anchored at the end of the dock, tall and beautiful even in the gray rain, then lift their container of kerosene with a gleaming grin. Kaz almost sees red.
You may wish my Crows were here by the end of this, he thinks, but even Inej might not spare you if you burn her ship.
“I don’t need Crows to know when idiots are dirtying up my docks,” he says instead, gritting his teeth against the shake in his leg from the goddamn run to Fifth Harbor, and hopes the effect is more menacing than pitious.
“These docks would look prettier in red, though, don’t you think?”
None of the Dregs to Kaz’s left and right miss how they refused to call it the Dregs’ harbor. Next to Kaz, Jooske crosses her arms over her chest, club held loose in one hand, and silently flexes. Even with a heavy coat the movement is impressive, the brawler taller than Kaz, stronger than him, and skilled in hauling around or simply breaking her enemies. Black Hair’s wide eyes latch onto the motion and don’t look away.
“You don’t want to make enemies here,” Jooske rumbles, dark and dangerous.
“Our boss doesn’t care,” says Green Coat. But they’re glancing between Jooske, Dhamiria, Floris, and Kaz as they speak, looking nervous. Dhamiria shifts on her feet, rifle slung over her shoulders and her long protective locs tucked away from the rain under a deep hood. Jooske grips the handle of her club a little tighter. Floris thumbs at the handle of his revolver, glancing at Kaz. He’s their leader, always, and they look to him for the signal. They’ll follow him, and the look in three sets of eyes tells Kaz that they’re already itching for the same anticipated fight that’s slowly warming Kaz’s blood.
Wait, Kaz signs with a careful flick of his glove. Not yet.
Aloud, he says, “She should.” Kaz raises his hand, slow and purposeful, and Green Coat takes a step back. Kaz can see the whites of the eyes of the other two, even from thirty feet away. The leader is doing well at hiding their fear, but even they can’t hide it forever. Kaz can nearly smell it in the dirty, wet air, from Green Coat and their lackeys both.
“Any time now, boss,” Floris murmurs to Kaz.
“Quiet,” Floris closes his mouth at the command and settles his pale hand more firmly on his revolver. Kaz raises his voice for the Bulls. “You three think burning a harbor in the middle of a storm is smart? I expected better, even from the Gray Bulls.”
“The fire won’t go out,” Green Coat says.
“No, but how do you know you won’t catch and burn too?”
That really makes the group nervous. The Shu person shifts their feet, and Kaz could laugh at the obvious difference between them and Kuwei. Then again, fire is easy to be frightened of when it’s not something you can control. Kaz stays steady and still, one black glove raised, rain hitting it to roll down the water-proofed leather in rivulets.
Distant sirens sound behind him, screaming from the direction of West Stave. Everyone on the empty street—save Kaz in the center of it all—stills and looks in the direction of the noise.
“That’ll be the Stadwatch,” Kaz says, calm and soft. Green Coat flinches, their gaze darting right back to Kaz.
“That’s just a coincidence,” they say, but the growing tremble in their voice tells Kaz all he needs to know. “You didn’t call them.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” Kaz agrees. “But do you really want to be here to find out? You have a choice, now. Do you want to be caught by them… or us.”
Kaz lowers his hand in a slashing motion and Jooske pushes off to barrel toward the three Bulls. They scatter, all three rushing toward the main street with three loud crashing sounds as their metal kerosene containers spill across the cobblestone street.
Kaz, Dhamiria, and Floris give chase, dashing away from Fifth Harbor and into the streets of Ketterdam. The storm has driven even some of the more hardened Kerch inside, the streets half as full as they would be on a normal day, but even so the people that are out on the streets make Floris and Dhamiria using their guns a truly terrible idea.
The Bulls skid around a sharp street corner, Black Hair looking back with fear and a promise in their black eyes, and Kaz’s stomach drops a second before he can tell his Dregs to just let them run.
Jooske yells in alarm as Kaz careens around the corner after her, pain racing up his leg, and comes face to face with Tan Hat and a knife Kaz hadn’t realized he had in the first place.
Shit, Kaz thinks, dodging a swipe and throwing himself at the man’s legs because he would rather get soaked in dirty water from nearly-flooded streets than stay on his leg.
The man goes down hard in a flurry of tan hat and pale skin, Kaz landing on top of him, yelling a fervent curse as Kaz pulls his own knife and slashes at his dominant hand. Kaz’s knife makes contact, unlike Tan Hat’s, whos knife clatters to the cobblestones as he cries out, clutching at the bleeding cut on the back of his hand.
Kaz makes the mistake of thinking it’s over, a mistake he hasn’t made in months or maybe years brought on by a wish deep in his gut, and his vision tilts for a second as white-hot pain fills his awareness, cold rain seeping under his coat arm along with hot blood as his head whips to the side to see Blck Hair aiming to stab him again.
And then Floris tackles them.
Kaz refocuses, forcing himself back into the moment, and slams the butt of his knife against Tan Hat’s forehead, his eyes lolling back as he goes limp and his breathing slows.
“Stadwatch!” Dhamiria yells from a dozen feet away, Green Coat struggling in Jooske’s iron grip as Dhamiria slips to a halt in the middle of her rush to aid Floris, and just like that six heads raise as one, the fight stalled in favor of scanning for the well known Ketterdam law enforcement.
Sure enough, Kaz spots at least three Stadwatch down the long street, hazy from the downpour and distance, all running their way. One shouts something, unintelligible in the storm, and Black Hair and Floris both flinch as one.
“Shit,” Floris says, scrambling to his feet.
“RUN!” Jooske bellows, releasing Green Coat from her arms and bending to grab her club before turning tail to flee down the quickly emptying side street, Dhamiria right on her tail. Black Hair stumbles to their feet, bleeding from a cut under one eye and holding one shoulder, but follows quickly enough.
Kaz struggles to get back his own feet, not due to any injury—although the cut on his bicep stings as it seeps blood, making his shirt sleeve stick to his arm—but due to the phantom claws digging into his leg. It’s in this moment that Kaz realizes, soaked to the bone even with a hat and coat, bleeding from his arm as Stadwatch guards run towards him, that he was an idiot for not going to the Hendriks’ mansion when he had the chance.
“Brekker, we need to go!”
But it’s too late to think about that now. Kaz jerks himself out of his thoughts barely a second after he lost himself in them, blinking up to see Floris reaching a hand out for him to take, expression hard and scared and determined.
Kaz takes his hand and pulls himself to his feet, Floris helping him up and helping him stay up. Floris ducks down to grab Kaz’s cane, thrusting it into his hands, and then they’re running. They fly down the side street and take a sharp corner onto a smaller side street, then another corner the other way, zig-zagging as they run away from Dhamiria and Jooske in the vague hopes that the Stadwatch won’t be able to chase them all if they split up.
Kaz nearly thinks they’ve lost the Stadwatch, unwilling to risk looking behind him and tripping over feet that feel numb and clumsy from the rain and the pain, before a shout of “Dregs!” from behind them causes Kaz to stumble and Floris’ eyes to widen as he catches Kaz just in time.
“”You can’t outrun them,” Floris says, and no matter how much Kaz hates the simple truth of the words he knows that’s exactly what they are, an undeniable fact.
Even Kaz Brekker doesn’t ignore the facts.
“I can’t,” Kaz grits out in reluctant agreement. “Too slow.”
Floris nods sharply and they skid around another corner, Kaz’s thick wool coat the only thing keeping him from flinching violently when Floris grabs his upper arm to keep him upright, right under his knife wound.
“This way,” Floris says as he turns into a narrow two-way alley between two slanted buildings on the north edge of the Financial District. Kaz follows along as Floris guides him to the center of the alley, pushes him towards a lone wooden crate, and glances at both openings to double check that no one has already caught up to them.
“If I can outrun the Stadwatch,” Floris says, hurried and hissed and breathless, “I’ll send a runner to find one of your Crows. Stay put, boss, or one of them will probably murder me in cold blood.”
Kaz nearly opens his mouth to argue against him, that they wouldn’t murder him or that he shouldn’t send a runner—
But Floris is already gone, dashing back out of the alleyway and shouting at the Stadwatch following them to draw their attention. Kaz shifts on his rickety wooden seat and presses his gloved hand over his bleeding bicep, cringing when gutter water spills down the back of his shirt under his coat, trickling down his spine as Kaz presses his back to the bricks a second later to keep it from happening again.
Kaz doesn’t admit something like this often, but he’s miserable. It’s not an unfamiliar experience, but it’s always unpleasant and a feeling he wishes would go bother some other unfortunate Barrel rat.
Kaz flattens further against the cold bricks as two Stadwatch run past, so intent on their golden-haired prey that they don’t notice the Crow hidden in the alleyway. This is good for him, and presumably everyone else as well, but he also nearly wishes they had seen him just so he could run or fight, anything to put the stinging pain on his bicep and the biting, aching, fiery shudder down his leg out of his mind.
But they didn’t see him, and he knows they won’t double back, and so Kaz is stuck in an alleyway in the cold rain with a bleeding arm and a shaking, unsteady leg. Now, shivering, soaked, and bleeding, Kaz can only hope that Floris gets away and sends a competent runner.
Kaz doesn’t do faith, but if a prayer to a saint would get him out of this damned rain he might just lie through his teeth to one of them and hope it works.