Cross the Seas

|Chapter 4| - Inej

The brick wall at the end of the road offered a limited view of the Ravkan Embassy, but Inej could hear the heavy footsteps thudding near the silent and spotless building. Kaz, dressed in his usual merch black attire at the other end of the alley, was too silent to be recognized, but she would always know his presence.

Because we are twin soldiers, she thought, as their dark brown eyes met, signaling the other to pay attention.

She didn't know what instinct had made her come to the Bastard of the Barrel, of all people, perhaps the fact that turning up to most of the people in the city would cause her to enter a not-so-alive state. Despite herself, she had thought she could walk confidently to the most cunning and ruthless boy in the Barrel, and seek assistance in a hazardous task. She doubted she knew him, but she felt Kaz Brekker didn't know himself. He might have enraged her into breaking herself but he was also the one holding her when she was broken, gloves or not. But she didn't expect that he would have come for her.

The figure walking on the cobblestone pavement came into view. She saw a large man heavily laden with sweat and grime, wearing multiple layers of black, in the cold, which almost matched his hair. She was about to step further but stopped abruptly when she looked at a similarly greasy man, but almost half the size of the first, stroll and look around, panting unnaturally for someone carrying revolvers on both sides.

Kaz crossed the alley instantly, less than an inch between them, probably to get a better view. Inej angled her head to peer, now that the influx of anxious men had stopped. She slipped out, gesturing for Kaz to do the same, now that the path was clear. 

They had most certainly gone unnoticed, given the blank stares of the men who had been in the same spot just before them, but she couldn't help but sprint soundlessly after them, Kaz following her, now that they had dared to breathe so suspiciously like the one prick she was willing to find in this dark city. They hid, behind another wall as the men veered left.

"Check the ports. Now." was all she whispered to him before she ran off after them.

What astonished her most was the fact that Kaz didn't even try to stop her and say " stay within the cover, as rationally perfect as the plan could be executed", not because he couldn't, but because he had not even tried to stop her.

She had accommodated to those men's speeds and remained silent beyond their detection. Inej wasn't one to risk something of huge impact, just because it struck so close to her own story, so close to how she had been abducted, and exhibited on that ship and how many times more as the pretty plaything men assumed every woman to be, so close to how she had been dead every moment at the Menagerie and especially so close to how she, Inej Ghafa, a being of health and belief and soul, had been reduced to only a Suli lynx. No, she was one to make her first capture as painful as possible for them and to drain life along with that want of slavery, and the Wraith was someone to take much more delight in that with precisely seven blades.

She ducked to a squat behind a discarded closet, knife in one hand and the other holding up the piece of furniture. Lurking in the Government District, she was now in some intersection where the influential families probably had to cover space with multiple constructions. Now, she could undoubtedly make out the two men at the doorstep of a well-decked manor, where they knocked on that huge door, but she had already made her assumptions with Kaz. Of course, these two would be the slavers and now they needed Van Verent's level of access and clearance to cross the city with the final checks. Maybe she could finish the job along with their lives. But she could not disregard another incident with a merch and her impulses getting her in trouble.

Gert Van Verent exited the manor in an expensive suit and a brown hat placed upon his bald head, followed by his cabal of bodyguards that were clad in all black. She could make out that they were talking, but not the words. She moved invisibly closer to the manor; she could hear that muffled conversation a little better nevertheless.