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Kaz had received Inej’s letter a few months ago, and today was her scheduled arrival according to said letter. He was supposed to go greet her, escort her back to the Crow Club. She hadn’t requested it, she didn’t need it, but it was routine. Kaz didn’t like being predictable, but being a gentleman was a precedent, not something to mark up his predictability.
Or so he thought.
Ketterdam was foggy, and a cloud ghosted over Fifth Harbour’s water and onto the docks and further into the city, all the way to the canal. The streets were damp as usual, and they smelled like wet cobblestones and smoke from the factories mingling with and sticking to the humidity in the air. Ketterdam’s climate was odd; Kaz would call it humid, but it wasn’t always hot, in fact it was cold over half the year, but the air was soupy and some days it felt like you had to push your way through an invisible veil to get anywhere.
Ketterdam’s roads, the Barrel’s roads, really, were littered with trash and people on a bad day, and rats and empty wooden shipping crates on a good one. The buildings stuck together like the clouds making up the fog around Kaz, and thus alleyways were a common way to get around and an easy way to get killed if one wasn’t careful or didn’t know what they were doing.
Kaz was both careful and knowledgeable of Ketterdam’s streets and its dangers; so when he got jumped, the last remaining option for how it had happened had to be that he had allowed himself to be predictable.
He didn’t get
distracted
, and certainly not by Inej Ghafa.
One man at the head of the alley had alerted Kaz to a problem but before he had time to check his flank another man around his size had yanked his cane out of his unsuspecting hand and cracked it over his head.
It was weighted for breaking bones, so why Kaz was staring at water on the pavement instead of blood and his brains leaking out of his skull, he didn’t know. He’d consider it his attacker’s mistake. Unless, and what a terrifying thought, they weren’t trying to kill him.
Everyone knew who he was. The last time he had been kidnapped was so Jan Van Eck could give him a job. This was unlikely to be a similar situation unless Jesper had suddenly gotten a very warped sense of humor, and Kaz knew him better than that.
Before he could roll over, Kaz’s hands that had caught his fall on either side of his chest, were shoved up above his head. He grit his teeth. This was not a position that was easy to get out of. His attack sat on his legs, and he heard him address the man at the head of the alley with the simple word of, “Rope.”
“Who do you work for?” Kaz asked, feeling like an idiot but trying to maintain the reputation he’d worked oh so hard for.
“Who says we work for anyone?” The man pinning him down said, and he shoved Kaz’s hands up farther so his arms were strained. Kaz winced, then his stomach rolled as the stretch caused part of his sleeves to reveal his wrists, the sticky air making his exposure painfully obvious. The man’s thumbs, likely on accident, but who knew what they were aware of if they had known where he was going and when, slipped under Kaz’s gloves, and the under half of his hand was on his skin and Kaz was suddenly unable to listen to any taunting he was on the receiving end of at the moment.
He couldn’t decide if he was going to retch or stop breathing first, but one of them would come and they would both be unpleasant.
“Nothing to say, Brekker-”
The retching came first. The man’s grip had tightened when he got impatient with Kaz’s silence, unaware it was caused by painful memories and sheer terror rather than stubbornness or anger. Kaz gagged, and then bile rose from his stomach and to his throat and onto the stones in front of him, and part of it was on his face which only nauseated him further, and he felt the man almost let go of him as he recoiled in confusion, but Kaz was too dizzy to take advantage of the hesitation.
“The hell is wrong with him…”
“... just need to get him to…”
“... Haskell will pay, whether he’s sick or….”
Kaz wasn’t sure if he passed out, was fading in or out of consciousness, or was just unaware and his ears were ringing; dizziness could do that to someone. He felt like it was unfair he would be dizzy while he was on the
ground
. It’s not like he could sit down and fix it.
Kaz was, however, aware enough to feel when the man was roughly removed from over him, and he heard a cry of pain from somewhere in front of him. The scent of blood filled the air. Perhaps it was his.
“Jordie,” he mumbled, and he didn’t know if he was asking or talking to him or what, but if he had been anywhere else he’d know he was delirious. Perhaps he was bleeding. Perhaps he was losing blood and that would explain the sheer
patheticness
of his body’s reaction to whatever was wrong with him at the moment.
“Kaz,” someone said, and he could smell Inej. He couldn’t see her, his vision was dark—or maybe his eyes were closed—but she smelled like the sea and geraniums she kept on the ship and there was the slight tinge of mental to it all. An edge to her gentle nature. “Kaz, can you hear me?”
He managed a grunt, and blinked a few times to clear his vision but he was having difficulty—Was he crying?
“Kaz, I’m here.”
He closed his eyes. This was so stupid, he thought. No one was touching him, but he felt like if he moved he would puke again, and he would shake like those loose shudders on the cleaners’ house across the street. He heard Inej shift closer. “What did they do?” It didn’t feel like she was talking to him, so he didn’t bother trying to respond.
He felt small fingers on his wrist, checking for a pulse point, and he pulled away so violently he fell down again immediately, then threw up again from the sudden movement when he didn’t feel well to begin with. It didn’t help that his almost-kidnappers' bodies were very close to them. He gagged and coughed, and he could tell Inej was keeping her distance, but whatever she was saying he wasn’t retaining. He thought perhaps she was apologizing.
He didn’t want her to see him like this.
Maybe she was telling him how strange he was. How weak. Inej wouldn’t do that, but Kaz wasn’t thinking rationally at the moment. He blinked again, then promptly lowered himself all the way down on the web cobblestones and stared at his own sick.
He felt like he was falling. Maybe he was drowning. “I’m sorry.”
“Kaz?”
And he closed his eyes and he wasn’t sure how Inej relocated him back at the Slat, but his first thought when he woke up an unknown amount of time later was that he was humiliated, and that he had hoped she hadn’t called for help to move him. He closed his eyes and sat up in his bed, feeling his wrists, and staring down at his hands. His skin was bare, his gloves on the bedside table next to him.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he muttered, reaching for his armour. He couldn’t let that happen again.