019; YOU CAN HEAR IT IN THE SILENCE
ONYX DIDN'T REMEMBER FINDING HER WAY TO THE SITTING ROOM AGAIN.
All she could see was the rising waves in Kaz's eyes as he sprung away from her, as if she might harm him, as if he might contract something from her by simply being near to her person. All she could feel was the weight of his delicate touch against her neck, the barest of brushes, like a feather, a ghost of something that could've been but perhaps may never be. Onyx felt as though she was stuck in another sort of reality, where the moments post that bathroom were nonexistent and she was something ghost-like and ethereal, witnessing it all from the outside.
It felt as though they'd been running around and around in circles, discussing the logistics of the auction, Inej's new crazed friend, and somehow, some way, further roping Jesper's father into the ornate plan Kaz conjured up. It seemed that was the one facet everyone was really waiting to hear about-- how Kaz would make a profit out of Colm Fahey staying at the Geldrenner, in its most luxurious suite, no less. It wasn't surprising, not really. Not even to Mister Fahey who, in his own words, might as well abet, considering he was already thoroughly aiding them.
"This is insanity," Jesper murmured, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He paced the length of the windows, back and forth, back and forth, a worried line creased between his furrowed eyebrows. "They'll never fall for it."
"We don't ask for too much from any of them," Kaz said. "That's the trick. We set a low floor to enter the fund, say, two million kruge. And then we let them wait. The Shu are here. The Fjerdans. The Ravkans. The Council will start to panic. If I had to bet, I'd say we'll have five million from each Council member by the time we're through."
"There are thirteen Council members," Jesper replied. "That's sixty-five million kruge."
"Maybe more."
"Even with all of the stadwatch at the auction and the presence of the Council of Tides, can we really guarantee Kuwei's safety?" Matthias asked, frowning.
"Unless you have a unicorn for him to ride away on, there is no scenario that guarantees Kuwei's safety."
"I wouldn't count on protection from the Council of Tides either," Nina chimed in, crossing her arms. "Have they ever even appeared in public?"
"Twenty-five years ago," Onyx scoffed. She flipped slender knife between her fingers, toying absentmindedly with it. "They dry-docked those warships, so at least we know they're not dead."
"And you think they're going to show up to protect Kuwei now?" Nina asked Kaz incredulously. "We can't send him into public auction alone."
"Kuwei won't be alone. Matthias, Onyx, and I will be with him."
"Everyone there knows your faces. Even if you had some kind of disguise--"
"No disguise. The Merchant Council are considered his representatives. But Kuwei has the right to choose his own protection for the auction," Kaz responded, half shrugging a shoulder. "We'll be up there on the stage with him."
"The stage?"
"Auctions are held at the Church of Barter, right in front of the altar. What could be more holy? It's perfect-- an enclosed space with multiple points of entry and easy access to the canal."
Nina crossed her arms as she shook her head. "Kaz, as soon as Matthias steps on that stage, half the Fjerdan delegation will recognize him, and you and Onyx are two of the most wanted people in Ketterdam. If you show up at that auction, you'll all be arrested."
Onyx rolled her neck on her shoulders. "That's such a comforting thought."
"They can't touch us until after the auction."
Inej raised her eyebrows. "And then what?"
"There's going to be one hell of a distraction."
"There has to be another way," Jesper said. "What if we tried making a deal with Rollins?"
Wylan folded his napkin over in his hands, pleating it into thin, uniform lines. "We don't have anything to offer."
"No more deals." Kaz shook his head. "I never should have gone to Rollins in the first place."
Jesper's brows rose in astonishment. "Are you actually admitting you made a mistake?"
"We needed capital." Kaz's eyes slid in her direction, lingering briefly, before his gaze swiveled back to Jesper. "And I'm not sorry for it, but it wasn't the right move. The trick to beating Rollins is never sit down at the table with him. He's the house. He has the resources to play until your luck runs out."
Jesper sighed. "All the same. If we're going up against the Kerch government, the gangs of the Barrel, and the Shu--"
"And the Fjerdans," Matthias interjected with a sigh of his own. "And the Zemeni, and the Kaelish, and whoever else shows up when the auction is announced. The embassies are full and we don't know how far the rumors of parem have reached. "
"We're going to need help," Nina added.
"I know," Kaz responded, straightening out his sleeves. There was a small piece of thread hanging off the very end of where she'd sewn the hem back into place, pulled too taught with a knife that needed to be sharpened. "That's why I'm going to the Slat."
Jesper ceased his pacing. Inej shook her head. Onyx stopped fidgeting with her knife. The entire room seemed to have been sucked into a vacuum of silence, of tension, of disbelief because there was no way Kaz was going to risk going to the Slat with the entirety of the Barrel lobbying against him, gunning for his head on a silver platter. It was a death wish.
"What are you talking about?" Nina asked. "There's a price on your head. Everyone in the Barrel knows it."
"You saw Per Haskell and the Dregs down there. You think you can talk the old man into propping you up when the whole city is about to come down on you like a sack of bricks?" Jesper jumped in, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "You know he doesn't have the stones for that."
"I know," Kaz responded nonchalantly. "But we need a bigger crew for this job."
"We won't have a bigger crew for this job if you're dead before you even have a chance to try," Onyx spoke up, once against twisting the knife between her fingers. His gaze snapped to hers again. She tilted her head. Had she never taken this job, there would be stacks and stacks of kruge promised to her name at that very instant, all for the blood of one Kaz Brekker. "It's suicide and you know it."
"Demjin, this is a not a risk worth taking," Matthias said, cutting in before Onyx could continue.
"When this is all over, when Van Eck has been put in his place, when Rollins goes running, and the money is paid, these will still be my streets," Kaz said indignantly. "I can't live in a city where I can't hold up my head. "
"If you have a head to hold up," Jesper commented.
"I've taken knives, bullets, and too many punches to count, all for a little piece of this town. This is the city I bled for. And if Ketterdam has taught me anything, it's that you can always bleed a little more."
Nina pursed her lips, then reached for Matthias' hand. "The Grisha are still stuck at the embassy, Kaz. I know you dont give a damn, but we have to get them out of the city. And Jesper's father. All of us. No matter who wins the auction, Van Eck and Pekka Rollins aren't going to just pack up and go home. Neither will the Shu."
Kaz slowly rose from his chair, leaning on his crows head cane. "But I know one thing this city is more frightened of than the Shu, the Fjerdans, and all the gangs in the Barrel put together. And Nina, you're going to give it to them."
────
Their meeting had broken apart at noon, when their coffee had gone cold and the light streaming in through the windows was almost too bright to bear. Despite the time and the light trickling in through the windows in sharp, golden sheets, they would take what little time they had to rest and recover. He, however, could not rest. His body thrummed with exhaustion, it begged for rest, for recovery, and his leg had gone from a dull, ignorable throbbing to a constant, radiating pain that only intensified with each step he'd taken up to the clock tower. And truthfully, when Kaz made it to the top, when he pushed the door up and open, he wondered why he'd sought her out in the first place.
He knew she'd heard him, even before the trap door sprung open and his head popped through the opening, yet she didn't react to his presence, nor did she show any signs of acknowledging he was near. Kaz pushed the door open farther and stepped up into the clock tower, where the light was the brightest and the air was the coolest. And for a moment, he watched her.
He watched the way her eyes shifted in the transparent reflection cast in the window before her. He watched the way the muscles in her back tensed when she crossed her arms-- bare, save for the patchwork vest and bandages on her arms. Right then, she looked a far cry from the killer that haunted Ketterdam's streets. She looked like a girl who'd gone through a few rough scrapes, but normal all the same. Perhaps it was because right then, she was not Onyx Vissier. She was the girl that was orphaned by murder, and a survivor of the wicked streets she would one day command as her own.
"No rest for the wicked, I suppose." Onyx looked back at him over her shoulder, her hair falling in a messy sheet down her back. "Do you plan on standing there all afternoon or are you going to join me?"
Kaz shifted his grip on his cane, lingering where he stood until her gaze returned to the streets below and he felt he could breathe once more. Each time her gaze was upon his, he could see again the vast, thriving forest of hazel that was hiding among them. When she rolled her neck against her shoulders, Kaz could feel the silvery, scarred skin there, beneath his fingers, the most fleeting of touches. The desire had unfurled the pit of his stomach like a wildfire. But it was there and gone, a punctuating beginning and end as he was yanked back into the harbor, drowning.
"You should let me come with you," Onyx spoke again, once he was beside her. She was standing only inches from the window, gilded and framed by the sun's golden rays like a shining beacon, calling to him, yet always so far out of reach. "I know the route to the Slat, on foot and on the rooftops. I can--"
"I'm going alone."
"You're going as an imbecile."
The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, a habitual response because even for someone as feared as Onyx was, her stubbornness had a way of always finding the last word. Insufferable. Stubborn.
He produced a tourist map of Ketterdam he'd found in the parlor and held it out to her, between his gloved fingers. "They'll be looking for signs of weakness. I have to do this alone." His weakness to Onyx is what landed her in Jan Van Eck's hold in the first place-- the opening act to a despicable play that was finally nearing its conclusion. "You can help me plan a route."
He would've normally sought out Inej for something like this. But Onyx was here and he was seeking her out now because-- because, why? Because he adored the way her guard shifted and her eyes became alight with the inner workings of her mind. Because despite his brokenness, despite his damage, there was not a single piece of him that was broken that hadn't healed back stronger than before. Because Kaz remembered the way she smiled when he brought her to Black Veil, to the tomb, after Goedmedbridge, and how he wanted nothing more than to engrain it in his memory forevermore and keep it for the rainiest and dreariest of days.
Onyx snatched the map from between his fingers and unfolded it. She drew her finger over the streets and the less illustrated alleyways, mapping an invisible route that only she could see. "It'll be quicker on foot," she said quietly, then traced another route. "But it would be smarter to climb. Unless you fancy being nabbed by the stadwatch, or anyone else in the Barrel, for that matter."
"I'd prefer to keep my head on my shoulders and not on Pekka's stoop," he responded. "I'll climb, if that's what needs to happen."
"Personally, I think you're an idiot for trying this," Onyx replied with a shrug. "But this is also coming from the same girl who stabbed a juiced-up Squaller midair and half plummeted to her death. I'd take my advice with a grain of salt."
Kaz remembered that moment with surprising clarity. He'd told himself that Onyx could take care of herself when that Squaller had taken hold of her in the snowy Fjerdan wilderness and tossed her amongst the swelling storm. He'd told himself that she would find a way to save herself. And he'd cursed himself that day for the way his stomach lurched when he saw Onyx begin plummeting back to earth in a spray of blood and sleet, and the relief that flooded his body when he'd watch the winds respond to her call.
"Twice, actually," she added a moment later. "First in Fjerda and then on Vellgeluk."
"Two grains of salt then, perhaps?"
The dimple in her cheek appeared a fraction of a second before an amused smile danced across her lips. That's the smile. "Yeah, I guess," she chuckled softly. "Take my advice with an additional grain of salt."
A thread of silence lengthened between them, as her quiet laugh trailed off with the sound of a bird's song trilling overhead. The end was in sight now, and should all the pieces fall into place, they would emerge on the other side swimming in kruge. Perhaps they lives would return to the same routine, the same silent symbiosis they'd worked in for years-- existing near one another, their paths rarely crossing. Kaz wondered, fleetingly, if anything would change.
"What will you do?" The question passed his lips before he had time to consider if asking was even wise. He'd. posed a similar question when they were on their way back from Fjerda, before the stakes. had changed so drastically. "When this is all said and done?"
Onyx wrapped her arms about herself. Goosebumps raced over her exposed skin. "I haven't made up my mind. Not completely, at least."
"What do you mean?"
"I have plans for Van Eck and Rollins in the future. I want to see what hand is dealt at the end of the day, if the cards are right," she answered. "But I suppose, I may travel. If Nina and Matthias find a way to Ravka, perhaps I'll see them. I've considered the Wandering Isle."
Kaz glanced at her in his periphery. "And what of Ketterdam?"
"What of it?" she asked in returned. "Ketterdam and the Barrel will always stay the same. There will always be people at my doorstep with a name they want dead. That will never change, regardless of how my reputation does."
Onyx had taken care to protect a reputation that slithered along the streets of the Barrel, a predator on the prowl, giving. care to nothing except the money that landed in her pocket at the end of the night. She'd coddled a menacing reputation that sent ripples of fear through a crowd far more effectively than most Barrel bosses could. She was a force to be reckoned with.
Tell her to stay. A voice somewhere within him begged, pleaded with him. Beg her to stay here. By now, he'd thought of a thousand a ways he could bind Onyx to him, but she'd never been bought by the Barrel bosses and she would certainly never be bought by him. He wanted to tell her to remain by his side, because for the first time in so many years, he'd found someone who was really something.
"And what will you do?" Onyx inquired. "Die, buried under the weight of your own gold?"
"Wreck havoc and cause chaos until my luck runs dry," he said. "I'll use the haul we make to build an empire."
"Ambitious. And what of it after that?"
Kaz shrugged a shoulder. "Perhaps I'll burn it all down. Leave nothing behind."
"I'm sure there will be damage," she replied. "There's always something to be left behind."
He dared a look in her direction. She was already watching him. Kaz could never read her, not completely. He only knew what buttons to push to make her squirm, what words to throw out that would make her anger flare. Right then, he wished he knew the words to make the unspoken worry in her eyes vanish.
"If I end up on the gallows, perhaps you can soothe the damage with a new nice words for my soul."
"If I were a gambling woman, and perhaps I am, I would bet that if you're on the gallows, it's likely I'll be there beside you. Or waiting my turn." She tilted her head and a few stray strands of hair fell into her eyes. "I'll read a eulogy from the wings for you."
"How thoughtful."
"It's one of my redeeming qualities."
"Wait until six bells," he said then, before another length of silence could catch his thoughts and his intentions. "If I haven't returned, try and get everyone out of the city if you can." Her lips parted, as if to interject, but he continued. "There's a discolored brick in the wall behind the Crow Club. You'll find twenty thousand kruge behind it. It's not a lot, but it's enough to bribe a few stadwatch grunts. It'll get you far enough."
"I'll do what I have to." There was a sincerity there, in her voice and her gaze, in the set of her slender shoulders. Onyx would do what she needed to see the people she cared for. "But you'll be back."
The trapdoor behind them sprung open then, before Kaz had a chance to get another word in. Nina's head popped through a moment later and surveyed the floor. She smiled when she spotted Onyx. "We need to change your bandages," Nina said, nodding to the loose bandages on Onyx's arms. "And then you should get some rest, Miss Vissier."
"Yes, Mother." Onyx rolled her eyes. "I'll be down in a moment."
"Don't take too long!"
The door slammed shut behind her and once more, they were left to the silence of the city outside the clock tower. Onyx shifted on her feet, mindlessly toying with the bandage wrapped loosely around her forearm, then cleared her throat.
"I'll mark up the map for you, if you leave it in the sitting room," she said. "I know a few other routes you might want to consider."
She turned away on her heels, silent and agile, a girl suspended in time and added for the stairs. Kaz's hand shot out to her wrist. Onyx halted. Her eyes drifted over her shoulder and suddenly he was in the bathroom with her again, blinded by the too bight lights as he stood between her legs, watching her fingers dance over his sleeve with a needle and thread. Stay. That voice pleaded again. Stay.
"Stay in Ketterdam," he said. The words felt quiet, in comparison to how loud it was in the chaotic storm within his mind. But amidst the chaos and strife and damage, he could see one thing above the raging, thundering storm-- her. "Don't allow it go back to the way it all was before."
"Kaz--"
"Stay here," he continued, because if he didn't now, when else might he have the chance? "Stay with me, by my side."
"And how will you have me, by your side? Always at arms length, always there, always present, but never close enough? Gloves on or off? Hiding behind a reputation?" Onyx asked. "Will I have you as the boy who climbed a window to save me? Or the boy who told me he would would come back for me?"
His grip tightened around her wrist and her chin lifted, as if in a challenge. It felt like they were back on the Ferolind again, when he was handing her the knife he'd found on the pier, when he was pondering aloud the repercussions she could face, should anyone know anything of her past. He'd pushed her buttons then, gone farther to see the anger rising in her eyes like a cresting wave. It crashed with a threat. She shook her wrist out of his hand and his arm dropped down to his side once more, limp. The forest of hazel in her eyes was teeming with shadowed, foggy emotion, and her expression was a book that had been turned to its final chapter.
"I will have all of you and your broken pieces and mended parts, or I will not have you at all, Kaz Brekker."
AUTHORS NOTE
hi so, i realize this is kind of poorly edited and kinda short and i'm a shitty author for not updating for over a month but it's been very very busy for me lately, so i hope we can forgive. but regardless, i hope this suffices. i'll be starting the next chapter tomorrow, where we'll start wrapping up ck and thus, wrapping up reaper. as always, let me know what you think, if you enjoyed, and be on the lookout for the next update!