ACT ONE SHATTER LIKE GLASS
CHAPTER TWO ONE STONE
KAZ BREKKER WAS FEAR IN A FINE SUIT. It was fear in the way he walked, the heavy chime of his cane against the floors. It was fear in the way he looked, an unnerving ferocity in his eye; impossible to know what his thoughts could be. It was fear in the way he talked, his voice never raised nor lowered even an octave, each word was final and one would do well to hang onto every last one.
As not advised, Kryia only barely hung onto his words, in fact they had blurred together all at once. She was far too disconcerted by the shine of blood on her hand, and a crow cane wedged after it. This blood was fresh, unlike the stained wood floor or the murky shine on the bar glasses. She hoped it belonged to Pekka. She hoped Kaz had driven the cane through his skull, just so she wouldn't have to. After all, she was a Grisha that had killed too much in Sinika's name but more than that, she was a killer that did not enjoy playing a butcher.
"I prefer not to spend dirty money on my luxuries." She replied at last. Her gaze remained on the cane and not the man behind her. He hadn't yet seen her face.
He huffed mockingly, "A shame." The cane drifted to beneath her chin, the silver nestled on her maskless face.
"People tend not to notice the filth when they become blind to it all." She tried to adjust her head upward by instinct, but the beak of the cane hooked and now dug into the soft flesh of her cheek. It was sharp, akin to Grisha steel – this was made by a Fabrikator, she concluded, but that was the least of her worries.
"People like you?" She taunted.
"Yes, Sokolov." Kaz breathed, and slowly the cane turned her head until they were eye to eye. "People like me." He clicked his tongue. Her teeth sank into her cheek,, her fingers digging into the wood in the quietest rage. She could see it in his quirked brow and ghostly smirk; he was marvelling at her face, a secret now unlocked and added to his arsenal.
He knows my name. Her mouth went dry, all the anger in her veins was forgotten. It became only unease. "Be careful with your words." She muttered, a pathetic comment of all bark and no bite.
Kaz shook his head with a scoff, "You first."
And with that, he shifted the cane swiftly from its place on her cheek and to the ground. Only then did she remember that the room was filled with gamblers and convicts like herself; the kind of people that wouldn't bat an eye to the scene that had just occurred. Kaz turned his back to her and instinctively her hand moved to cup her bruising cheek. He lives up to the title.
His head peered back to her and his eyes narrowed in amusement at the sour look on her face. "Follow me." He said. Kryia swallowed her distress bitterly but followed after him nonetheless. She always followed.
The Crow Club was deeper than she once imagined. In spaces where it looked as if it ended, had broad archways that led to more gambling tables with less people, cleaner people too. Although, she noticed the light fade dimmer and darker each step she took but for every time her foot met the floor, there was the echo of another close behind. Wherever Brekker was taking her was not made for the public eye.
Kryia noticed how close he kept the cane to the outside of his foot. Whether it was for strategy or it supported his walk better that way, it was still a thorn in her side. Every inch that cane was to his foot meant the more exerted pressure his hand held at its apex, making it harder for her to knock it out from beneath him. Everything was tactics and weakness to him, it didn't take an observation of his walk to understand that.
She hadn't noticed he stopped walking until he spoke, "Sit." His head nodded toward a secluded booth with a dying candle in the centre; the flame looped and swirled around itself whilst gently weaning closer and closer to its scorned middle and as the crow sat before her, his cane pelting against the floor; the flame collapsed on itself with nothing but a trail of white smoak in the air. This must be the foreshadowing of my sudden death, Kryia sighed to herself.
There was an awkward silence for a moment and the pair eyed each other warily as if one movement could set the other off. Until wordlessly, Kaz reached into his pocket and tugged free a black handkerchief. He raised his brows and with his gloved hands, slid it across the booth. "For your face." He deadpanned.
Her eyes widened momentarily as she recalled; the cane had left a smear of blood across her cheek and beneath her chin. A pleasant introduction as all ones should be, she scoffed under her breath. She took the cloth and gently ran it over her face, the blood wiping away seamlessly. The cloth itself was coarse and bristly against her skin, but when it sat on her hand it was softer than sunlight. Kryia frowned. Although if there was anyone who would have such an odd handkerchief, it would be him.
"There's still a little bit there."
The Durast scowled, "Oh fuck off." She lazily threw the cloth at his face.
His eyes widened before his hand caught it and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Fine. Next time, when it's your blood instead of someone else's, I won't bother telling you." The moment of surprise came as soon as it went. His left hand steady on the hilt of his cane and the other aimlessly tapping against the hard wood of the table.
"Next time?" Kryia quoted mockingly. "Now, don't go making me excited Brekker." She folded her arms and sat back in her seat of the booth, the ivory coloured fabric cushioning her nicely.
By the deadly look on his face, and the tightening grip on his cane; it seemed he had enough of their idle bickering. He sat straighter in his seat and that calculated look in his eyes was back. Not to say it had ever left him, but it was simply more present. "What are you doing here?" The question was easy, too easy for her liking.
"Drinking, gambling... and definitely not cheating." She shrugged passively. If he was going to give her vague, she'd give it to him right back.
"No," He tutted. "Not what are you doing here. The question is, what is Kryia Sokolov doing here?" His index finger pointed at her accusedly for a moment.
She bit down on her tongue. Whatever traces of alcohol that was in her bloodstream had since been squandered. Her eyes no longer were hooded, but alert and staring right for him. And the lax grin that played on her lip was reaped for good measure. Now, Fjerda's little Saint had come to say her prayers to the Crow Club.
Finally, Kaz thought almost eagerly to himself.
"If you know my name, then you know who I work for. Whatever I came here for, Pekka already beat me to it. Well, he beat you too, didn't he?" Her eyes skimmed over the bloomed bruises beneath his skin and the gentle piece of unkempt hair that hung above his face. Even how he seemed to lean more on his cane as if any lighter pressure would have him collapse.
She noted his silence, his pursed lips and how his chest rose and fell to his slow breaths. "It made me wonder why Pekka would have you sought out. No doubt it was your little trip to the Emerald Palace but what were you doing there if not for the interest in one million kruge?" Kryia echoed his words back to him, her finger pointed mockingly just how he did.
"You think I'm in on Dreesen's job?" He asked, with a sarcasm that made her fist clench.
She doesn't address her answer to the question, "Oriel told me you wouldn't have the money for it. But that wasn't going to stop you, I knew that. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here talking to me right now trying to find out what I know and what I don't." Her brows knitted together. She was going to figure him out, and Kaz did not like that one bit.
She fiddled with her hands beneath the table, "There's something else tying you down." There was a sudden noise above their heads, like the gentlest step of someone's foot had fumbled on the metal ceiling, that moment was the first and maybe only time Kryia saw Kaz Brekker's face become alarmed, like he had been caught in the act. Everything connected easy for her then. She remembered the echoed footsteps behind her as they walked and the feeling of being watched. His Wraith was among them.
He's paying off an indenture, Kryia exhaled in realisation, and with her mark distract and his grip loose, her foot kicked out the cane from the bottom. The metal crow clanged against the hard floor and before Kaz could reach for it, Kryia had already used a summon sign to snap it to her grasp.
She could nearly smell his irritation as her fingers ran over the intricate design of the silver crow—admiring it as her hand firmly clasped the metal, Kaz noticed that when her hand loosened its grip, all sight of old and fresh blood was removed; it looked as pure as the day he first had it made. She eyed him with amusement before passing it back over. "It's beautiful. Fabrikator made; hard for me to break too." Her brows rose.
"Cute," He rolled his eyes. "Although, I wouldn't recommend playing these games when your Inferni friend is killing time with Bolliger and a few others outside." And just like that the cards were again in the palm of his hands.
Kryia tilted her head. Did threats always come this early? She wondered. Sinika was the negotiator, she wasn't supposed to even be in the Crow Club in the first place. "Bullshit. He has the sharpest eyes in Ketterdam." She leaned forward, her arms folded as she desperately tried to read his stone face, read for the sign of a lie.
"Even Grisha get sloppy when they're drunk." He said.
She drew out a long sigh and turned her head away. Her tongue ran over her teeth, assessing the situation and her dwindling odds. Brekker was a hard man to read, maybe even impossible. "You wouldn't." She shook her head, narrowing her eyes.
Kaz was close to laughing as his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "But wouldn't I?"
There was a pause. A brief moment where Kaz knew the winds now blew in his favour. She should've known that the card tables weren't the only game of risk and reward – whispering, gazing even breathing was a play to win scenario with a pretty thief and she happened to be the new fool to fall for it.
"We have Grisha healers." She spoke.
"Healers can't bring back the dead."
"So you plan on killing him? Is that it?"
His eyes became hardened, and more serious than she'd ever seen in someone's eyes. "I just might."
She swore then and there that his words would cut her worse than the cane's sharp edge ever could. This was no bluff. Kryia clenched and unclenched her fist before she sighed and stood up harshly from her seat in the booth. His words could very well be a complete lie, but risking the livelihood of one of her few friends wasn't a risk she was willing to take. Maybe her mentor, but not her.
"Kryia," She stopped before the archway, turning her head back to him. "Tell Sinika that—" His words stayed in his throat for the Durast had summoned with her hands and tore the top off the table; it pressed into his middle, pinning him between it and the back of the booth.
Her left hand tugged her mask up below her eyes, her identity only left to his prying gaze. "Keep your threats for someone who wants to hear them."
As he watched her leave, his eyes found one of his men already looking at him; looking for approval to tail her. "No," He half-smirked. "Let her go."
Kryia had never felt as bitter as she had leaving the Crow Club. She wasn't the type to express her anger, but people like him, like Kaz, made her want to tear down the club's roof and bury every criminal inside it. Her anger wasn't alive, it was festering and it spread through her chest like a rotting illness designed for her undoing.
"Oriel?" She called out aimlessly, her eyes peered down the sides of dark alleys. Her gut dug lower and lower for each step. It was the fear that in the next alley she ventured down would have his body shattered and bruised on the wet ground.
But as she scanned down the final alley, she caught sight of him. His figure was slumped against a wall, his head draped on his own shoulder with the light of the moon barely illuminating the blackness of his unruly hair. Kryia's shoes fumbled on the cobblestone as she sprinted toward him, her knees barreling into the earth.
"Oriel," She whispered softly, her hand tilted his chin up to the moon's shine. There was no blood on his face, not even a lick of it. Her hand ran over his frame in desperate search for an injury or wound but again, nothing. "It was a bluff." She rested her forehead against his and sighed, both in relief and annoyance that she had so easily fallen for the trick.
"Kryia?" He mumbled lazily, his eyes opened but every gentle blink became more drooped.
"Yes?" His friend hummed.
"My stomach hurts." A weighted laugh left her lips as she shook her head, hooking his arm over her shoulder before she brought him to stand.
The salty winds of Ketterdam embraced them as her hand tightened around Oriel's left side. It had been that way since the winter evening they found each other; the Inferni chained down by the weight of his indenture until the flint of his palm met the steel of his skin. Kryia had found him just like she had moments ago, sore and asleep on cold floor and in the ashes of his owner's home—curled up and mauled with soot, resting like a young phoenix in Ravka's old stories. And the day she would find herself broken, she knew his callous hands and smoke coloured hair would be waiting for her with the same stupid grin.
Kryia took one last glance at the Crow Club only to see him already looking down at her from the second story window. He gave her a short nod and in the briefest moment she blinked, he had already disappeared from the window and out of her sight. She sighed with a shake of her head and turned her attention back to holding Oriel's weight. Doesn't he know all false deeds are repaid on Ravkan soil? Well, if he didn't know already, he was going to receive a swift reminder.
That night, her box room in East Stave was colder than usual. In fact, everything felt cold from the moment she set foot in the Bezprizorniki safe house. She remembered stumbling past Sinika's room and the open crack that the door couldn't cover. He was holding Morozova's mask in his hands, his fingers running over the smooth metal. She wasn't sure if he had caught her staring, but his hand had twisted sharply and the door slammed shut before she could see anything more.
Her thumb ran over the amplifier clasped around her finger, that was the only thing that felt warm. Her amplifier was a comfort to her, silver and blue with the teeth of an adult Wolverine. Sinika found it for her when she was 15, and she would never forget how her palm rested on the dying animal's ribs. It's rapid breaths slowed until it wheezed. It's eyes were wild and green like hers, but it's heart was fiery and brave where hers was sullen and obedient. And when she slipped the ring onto her finger when it was freshly forged, she took the creature's courage home with her.
But Kryia didn't feel so brave when she slept. Every other day, the nightly hours were for her to work but as she sat on the creaky springs of her bed, she succumbed to the cold and the drowsiness. She knew then that something was wrong.
"Kryia," Sinika spoke, looking down at her resting body as the early hours of the morning creeped in. He frowned, she was always awake before him.
He sighed and used his hand to pull her red mask down from her face. His brows furrowed, on the side of her cheek and the underneath of her chin was a deep rash, raw and scattered. "Kryia," He spoke again harsher, gripping her bicep and giving her body a rough shake. Sinika saw it in her eyes when they gently fluttered open, the corners were similar to the rash—a deep and discoloured red that made his lips part in realisation. Alkemi poison, he cursed under his breath.
He watched as she cried out at the sudden brightness of dawn and her palms came to paw at her face to keep any more light from getting in. The man sighed before his hands wrapped around her wrists. "The more you cover your eyes, the worse the pain will be when you open them. Now, I need you to think who could've done this to you."
She sniffled harshly as she adjusted to the sharpness, the searing light that felt as if her eyes were on fire and at any moment would ravage her sight away, just how the ice of Fjerda had done over a decade ago. "I'm sorry, it just stings." She rubbed over her eyes one more time before she was able to see Sinika sitting beside her.
Her fingers ran over the agitated skin of her face. She thought of her mask but if it were, why was it only those two spots? Kryia shook her head before it struck her, "That prick." She cursed. The handkerchief. "It was Kaz Brekker."
Sinika almost leaned back in confusion, "What were you doing with him?"
She didn't bother looking up at him, "Why does it matter?" She wanted to tear her own hair out, how many more tricks does he have up his sleeve? Or rather a better question, was she going to keep falling for them? Kryia ran over the night in her head, she should have caught onto him; his surprised face when she passed the cloth to him and how coarse it felt on her skin.
"What did you and Oriel find out on the terrace?" Sinika leaned forward.
"Pekka knows."
"Just Pekka?"
"Yeah," She nodded. "Only him."
𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄
HMMM WHY IS MISS KRYIA LYING TO SINIKA??
very inch resting indeed mhm also can i hype myself up and say i think i did okay in conveying book kaz to the best of my ability HAHAHAHHA, well i mean i think i did a good job at it. ALSO, THANK YOU FOR 2K WTF, insanity luv. anyway i hope y'all liked chapter two, am tryin my best to get two chapters up a week so hopefully i keep up the speed tbh. also leave a lil vote if you enjoyed it bc ghost readers makes lee a sad bih tbfh
ps , appreciate that chapter one is called three crows and this chap is called one stone xx