Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day”

Leonard Cohen

~*~ * ~*~

In Fifth Harbour, berth twenty-two sits empty.

~*~ * ~*~

It’s not what she thought it would be, at first. She’s not naive enough to have thought it would be easy, but she hadn’t thought it would be like this.

The crew are suspicious of her. Inej knows what they see. A young girl, still learning the ropes - literally, Specht spends hours every day drilling her on the rigging, more complex than she could possibly have imagined. The crew watch the captain of their ship, a slip of a girl who doesn’t know a halyard from a brace, and wonder who she is to command them. For all her projected confidence, orders are foreign in her mouth, far more used to taking them than giving them. She sees the crew look to Specht, ex-Navy man, experienced sailor, and wonder why he isn’t the one giving the orders.

Specht, for his part, is meticulous in his respect. Though Inej has known him as long as she’s been with the Dregs, he never uses her name, never addresses her as anything but ‘Captain’. He always looks to her opinion, asks for a course of action when he’s within his rights as first mate to make the decision himself, defers to her wishes publicly and often.

It’s not enough.

She hears the talk. It’s impossible not to. From the captain’s cabin she hears them one deck beneath her, where they sleep in hammocks strung between the cannons. It’s only a layer of wood that separates them, and their voices float up through the boards to her as she lies in her bunk. They wait until Specht is standing watch, after the blistering reprimand he’d delivered the first time they’d spoken about her in his hearing, one Inej herself had been shocked he’d been capable of. They talk low amongst themselves when he’s not there, now, but she hears them anyway. They wonder about the relationship between their captain and first mate. Why would he take orders from her at all? Is she his illegitimate daughter or his whore? Evidently there are also some who find her attractive. They want to know what she looks like under her clothes.

Let them try, she thinks. Let the first man try, and they’ll find out exactly who she is. If there’s one thing Inej can do, it’s claw respect from the dirtiest thug. Specht learned long ago, with the rest of the Dregs, that she is not someone to be disrespected or trifled with. This crew will learn it too, in time. She can wait.

As luck would have it (or not, Inej supposes, depending on your point of view) The Wraith is set upon by pirates when she is barely three weeks out of Ketterdam. It happens in the night, and the crew standing watch barely have time to raise the alarm before they are being boarded. Inej sleeps with her knives strapped to her, and she moves like liquid in the darkness. One by one, the invaders fall to the deck, choking on their own blood. She cuts through them, effortless and deadly. These are not trained fighters, they’re not even on the level of Barrel rats. They’re just pirates, lazy on conquest, attacking in the dark and relying on the element of surprise to carry them to victory with no idea that something so deadly awaits them on the other side. Inej may have left the name in Ketterdam, but in her bones she is still the Wraith. This ship is named for her.

When she has finished with the boarding party, without waiting she hurls herself onto a rope, swings across to the other ship and begins carving through those that remain. She is a creature of pure instinct, the only sound in her ears the singing of her knives as they slice through flesh and meet bone underneath. She is vaguely aware that some of her crew have followed, that they are fighting beside her. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t need their help and she doesn’t wait for them. Let them see how little she needs them in this. Let them know that she is the most dangerous among them.

It’s a short, brutal fight and it ends as swiftly as it begins. Her ship is unharmed. Her crew suffers no losses, and only minor injuries. Inej herself emerges without a scratch. She swings back over to her ship and lands silently on the deck. The crew are standing among the corpses she felled mostly without their help, staring openly at her with mixed expressions of awe and fear. Good.

The respect will come, with time. Until then, fear can be a powerful motivator.

With her blood up, she finds the authority in her voice.

“Tie off, salvage anything valuable from the other ship,” she says, as she stalks through her silent crew. “Throw the dead overboard.”

They spring to action behind her as she starts up the steps to the quarterdeck.

“Oh,” she says, barely raising her voice, and there is sudden silence again. “The next man to make a crack about what’s under my clothes will be joining them.”

Inej doesn’t bother to look back but she feels the short, heavy pause before activity resumes. She takes up a position by the helm where she can ostensibly observe the crew while they work, but she doesn’t glance up at them, merely sets about cleaning the blood from her knives with a rag. Slow and methodical, she wipes the blades down and recites their names in her head, as she always has.

Sankt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Anastasia. Forgive me for what I have done. Forgive me for what I will do.

She does not know if the men who attacked them were bad men, didn’t wait to find out. What she knows is this: she will give no quarter. No one may set upon her ship and live to tell of it. The life and safety of her crew is sacrosanct, and the punishment for violating that will be delivered by her own hand.

She doesn’t glance up as footsteps approach.

“Pretty hefty haul of gold over there,” says Specht, pausing at the top of the steps. “They’re bringing it over now.”

Inej nods. “Divide it equally between the crew. Allot my portion to yourself.”

Bless the dead. Have mercy on their souls.

A short pause. “And the other ship?”

“Cut her loose,” says Inej, sheathing one knife at her waist clean and pulling another out bloody. “Burn her.”

Have mercy on mine.

Another pause, longer this time. Inej keeps her eyes on her blade, still cleaning in slow, deliberate strokes, prayers following the rhythm.

Mercy.

“That will be all Specht.”

Mercy.

He turns away from her then, footsteps retreating, but she hears the smile in his voice when he says, “Aye, Captain.”

Mercy.

~*~ * ~*~

The captain’s cabin doesn’t quite feel like hers. Inej has always pictured the quarters of a pirate captain to be cluttered, overcrowded with maps and charts, trinkets and weapons, maybe a treasure chest or two.

The captain’s cabin on The Wraith is spare, cold. A small desk with a hard wooden chair, a narrow bed. It’s best feature is the window from which Inej can look out onto the open sea, watch the sunrise or the stars in private if she doesn’t feel like doing it from the deck.

The second best feature is the heavy bolt on the door.

It’s not that Inej is necessarily concerned about having her throat slit in the night - no more than any other place she’s slept in the past few years, in any case - but one thing she has come to value more than anything in the world is a space of her own that none may enter without her permission.

So perhaps the cabin is a little impersonal. Inej thinks she could be happy anywhere as long as she has a room with a door that locks, and the choice to unlock that door if she wishes.

Still, it’s very tempting to hide in there, sometimes. From the crew, and their eyes on her in constant judgement. Inej is more comfortable in the shadows, but here she has to be a thing of solid flesh and bone. Endlessly visible, endlessly available.

She will not cower in her room like a frightened child.

In those first desperate weeks after the Menagerie, when Kaz had run her mercilessly every day in fighting drills and then had her on the rooftops every night, she barely saw her room at the Slat. She hardly slept, and when she did it was a few snatched hours.

He taught her to fight himself. She'd been covered in bruises for weeks, aching deep in her body, her bones jarred every time that cane swept her legs out from under her and she went down, down, down, laying on the damp floor of an abandoned warehouse with tears of frustration on her face.

And every single time, his voice: get up.

They'd go round and round, her dancing around him as he barely moved, but he was swift and savage with that cane, and she wouldn't be able to see it coming. It swept under her ankles and she went down. Get up. The crows head hooked behind her knee and she was on her back. Get up. The cane held between both of his hands, hooked under her chin as she grappled with it, and her feet were off the floor and the wind was knocked out of her as she hit the deck again.

Get up.

But eventually, quicker than it had seemed to her when she was getting the stuffing kicked out of her every night, she had started to anticipate his movement, block his attacks. It still thrills her to remember the first time he'd gone down, his own cane held against his throat. The first time she'd felt like she truly could be what he said she was. Dangerous.

In all the years since, it's that moment she thinks of when she feels hopeless.

She can hear his voice in her ear now, clear as if he is sitting beside her. Get up, Inej.

It's a problem. In Ketterdam she relied on him. Relied on his reputation to keep her safe, relied on his scheming to carry her through. Relied on him to come for her when she was in trouble, except for when she wasn't sure she could.

I didn't know if you would come.

Those two things blur together in her head now.

If she goes back to Ketterdam now, she's not sure she'll ever leave. She could roll into the Slat tomorrow and have her old room back and be the Wraith again, and he'd have her, she's sure of it. He'd have her, but not in the way she wants. The way she wants him to want.

And she'd be just that same girl, doing what she had to in order to survive. That's not who she wants to be.

Inej knows she has to tough it out. She has to make this work. She has to become the person she wants to be, and she has to make the life she wants to live with her own two hands. And the only person she wants to rely on is Inej Ghafa.

Get up.

She is Inej Ghafa. She can make it.

~*~ * ~*~

They offload some of the crew in Ravka. Some of them don’t want to sail under her, and some of them she doesn’t want sailing under her. Some of them she thought would work out, but they leave anyway. She feels a little like a failure, like she hasn’t been able to inspire loyalty, but Specht shrugs and tells her it’s normal to have a high turnover on a non-military crew. People have homes and families to go back to, they pick up jobs as they want them, they don’t want to stay on the ocean forever.

They are still in port, standing shoulder to shoulder on the quarterdeck studying a sea chart, when she turns to him. “Do you want to leave?”

“No,” he says, not looking up from where his finger is tracing along the chart.

“Why?”

“You need someone to teach you,” he shrugs. “I’m teaching you.”

Inej frowns, opens her mouth to respond but Specht stabs his finger into the chart emphatically, “look,” so she does, and they plot a course together, and don’t speak of his leaving again.

.

He does teach her.

Specht is an able sailor. Under his patient tutelage she learns the lines and rigging, learns the sea and how to read the waves. Learns how to smell a squall on the horizon. Learns how to read a sea chart and how to navigate by the stars.

She learns an endless amount of bewildering terminology, and it’s like teaching her how to walk all over again to make the words come to her lips before those she’s been accustomed to using all her life. It’s like learning another language, just so she can make her orders understood, just so she can not sound like an idiot.

But she learns. After a while, the words come naturally and she doesn’t say floor when she means deck, doesn’t say left when she means port, doesn’t say back when she means aft. After a while, she doesn’t get the lines and the rigging mixed up. After a while, she doesn’t stumble over her orders. She starts to think like a sailor.

.

Another day, another port.

She’s sailed them straight across the True Sea to Novyi Zem, her first real ocean crossing. It’s more than two weeks at sea, and Inej is thrilled right down to her bones. About three days after she last sees land, she feels the weight just lift off her. There is nothing but the sea and the sky, and her ship where the crew are settling into a routine, things running as they should.

She spends her days under blistering sun, barefoot with her sleeves rolled up. There are countless tasks to keep a ship running day-to-day and Inej is drilled in all of them, from swabbing the deck to setting the sails. She learns to clean and load the cannon. She takes bearings from the stars at dusk and dawn. She even takes a few turns in the galley peeling vegetables, chatting to the cook.

And, of course, no one climbs the rigging quite like her. She goes up and down the ratlines with almost superhuman speed, sometimes forgoes them altogether and shimmies right up the mast. She’s taken to walking along the yards in a way she knows gives some of the crew palpitations to watch, as at ease as if she were strolling down the street. From her perch high above the deck, she can see in a wide circle all around, water stretching to every horizon and the endless blue sky rolling down to meet it, and she is free.

The crossing, she knows, is her breaking-in as a sailor. From here, the real work begins.

They remain docked in Shriftport for a few days taking on supplies. They take on some crew as well, including a Kaelish healer that Inej thinks will serve them well in the battles to come. As they had in Ravka, they let a few crew go, and she doesn’t feel as bad about it this time around.

Novyi Zem in summer is a land of bright blue sky and intense, dry heat. Inej thinks of Jesper as she stands in his homeland, his native sun warming her face. She misses him, then, and feels a pang of homesickness for - she’s not sure what, really, not Ketterdam but something - but the successful crossing and the thrill of being on a new continent keep her heart feeling full.

~*~ * ~*~

She feels the moment the palms of her hands split open like overripe tomatoes.

The storm is, as they say, a real belter. Four days out of Shriftport, it appears dark and malevolent in the distance, moving on them too quickly to sail around. Faster than she can believe, the wind picks up to a howling gale and the sea rises to meet it, heaving gigantic waves, taller than the ship, waves that could break them apart and swallow them whole, and she understands at long last what sailors talk about when they talk about the awesome majesty of the sea.

Inej clings to the wheel with all her might, every muscle screaming at the effort to wrestle the ship in the direction she needs her to go. Specht is at her shoulder, braced against the rigging, screaming instructions over the roar of wind and waves, but otherwise letting her do the work. This is the real test, she knows, of her ship, her crew, of Inej herself. If she can bring them through this alive, she’ll be ready.

So when her hands begin to bleed, Inej grinds her teeth and grips the wheel tighter. She thought her whole body had gone numb hours ago, but the pain cuts through her, sharp and bright, as she fights to keep the bow of The Wraith pointed into the waves. If she drifts off course, if even one wave catches the side of the ship, they are lost. Inej is barefoot again, for purchase on the deck, and she can feel every shudder and groan of her ship underneath her, the sharp angle of the deck as they crest each wave, the sickening fall and crash as the bow dives back down. With every dive, a wall of icy seawater crashes across the deck and Inej has to brace herself against the helm to avoid being swept away, holding her breath under the deluge, shaking her head to clear the saltwater from her nose and mouth, eyes burning. Her entire world has narrowed to cold and pain and an iron focus on keeping the ship on course with all the strength in her body and her mind. At any moment, she thinks, her muscles are just going to give out and Specht will have to grab onto the wheel to keep her failure from killing them all.

But that doesn’t happen. Inej holds them true all through the night as the storm howls and rages and eventually blows itself out, as the rose glow of dawn begins to creep over the horizon.

When the sun is shining weakly through broken cloud and the sea has settled enough for her to allow another helmsman to relieve her, Inej walks the deck. A headcount reveals a full crew complement, none have gone overboard. The ship has sustained some damage, but nothing catastrophic, and the carpenter is already working. Inej feels weak with exhaustion and crushing relief.

But also from...exhilaration. The most terrifying thing she’s ever experienced, the pitiless force of the ocean, and it couldn’t blow her away. What are slavers compared to the storm?

The crew are looking at her differently this morning, too, and it might just be respect in their eyes.

Inej thinks Specht is joking when he tells her to rinse her hands with vinegar, so she is mildly horrified when the healer does exactly that. She bites her tongue hard enough to taste blood as the wounds on her palms burn with renewed pain. Derron is typical Kaelish, all red hair and freckles, and he laughs at her knowingly as he begins to wrap her hands with bandages.

“It’s the water that does it,” he says. When she frowns at him, he elaborates. “If your hands are always wet, it softens the skin. Happens to all new sailors, doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

Looking down, Inej flexes her hand awkwardly in the stiff bandages, pain receding to a dull throb. “Does it ever stop happening?”

“Aye, Captain,” he flashes her a grin. “Let ‘em get bloody again a few times and heal over, you’ll have hands tough as old boot leather, same as the rest of us.”

~*~ * ~*~

Her hands do get bloody, but not in the same way.

The first raid is a success or a complete disaster, depending how you look at it. The ship is named Primrose - such a pretty name for a vessel with such vile purpose - and Inej will remember it for the rest of her life.

Slavers fight harder for their haul than lazy pirates. It shouldn’t be a surprise that those who lack enough conscience to traffick in human beings fight as savage and dirty as possible, but Inej’s crew are untested in a fight where the stakes truly matter and two of them go down in a haze of blood and screaming.

Their deaths do not go unpunished.

She kills the Captain last, after he’s watched his hold full of stolen girls ferried onto The Wraith along with all the gold stashed in his coffers.

The girls...it’s the smell floating up from the Primrose’s hold that gets to Inej. The smell of blood and vomit and fear - the memory of being in chains hits her so hard her vision tunnels in and she has to stalk away from the hatch, face into the wind, to gulp down breaths of fresh air. Back on her ship, she orders buckets of seawater pulled up for the girls to wash. Makes a mental note to stock up on soap when they make port.

When she has taken everything she wants and needs from the Primrose, Inej sets her alight and watches her burn up, black smoke rising high into the air.

The crew are restless the rest of the voyage, unsettled by the brute violence they encountered, disturbed by the sight of frightened girls - some of them barely into adolescence - and the knowledge of what would have happened to them if The Wraith hadn’t got there first.

Inej makes it known to her crew, in passing conversations, in seemingly idle comments, that this is what life aboard her ship will be. This is what they are here to do. That she will think no less of them if they decide they don’t have the stomach for it.

This time when they make port, though, none of them leave.

.

Two more raids. Two more burning ships sinking to the bottom of the ocean with their slaughtered crew.

.

“You might consider leaving some of them alive.”

Inej looks up from her charts. Specht is leaning in the open doorway of her cabin, hands in pockets, peering over to where she’s hunched over her desk. Her lip curls in distaste. “Why?”

“It would be an easier fight,” Specht shrugs. “If they know you’ll let them live, they’ll be more likely to surrender. We can just take the girls and go.”

“And what about the next lot of girls? And the ones after that?” Anger flares hot and sudden in the pit of her belly, and she spins in her chair to face him fully. “I’m not interested in an easy fight.”

“What are you interested in?”

“Exterminating them,” she says, voice low. “Killing every man who would agree to crew under a slaver. Making sure there’s no ship left that some other can use to snatch women and children. Making the whole enterprise too expensive and too dangerous to be worth bothering with. That’s what I'm interested in, Specht. That’s what I want.” There is rage simmering in her blood, she feels hot under her skin as she holds her first mate’s gaze steadily. “I want them to know that the second they make that choice, they’ve signed their own death warrant.”

Specht nods slowly. “Alright then. As long as I know what game you’re at.”

“Well, now you do,” her voice is sharp. It’s the first time she’s been annoyed with him. “Close the door on your way out.”

He does. Inej turns back to her desk and stares unseeing at her charts, taking deep breath after deep breath to calm herself down. It’s an uncomfortable truth, that she begs mercy from her Saints yet grants none herself.

But she minds the lessons she learned from Kaz, whether he’d intended to teach them or not, fragments of a thousand half-remembered conversations.

Mercy is an expensive commodity, Wraith, he'd said. Give a single inch and they'll take a mile. Fall back and you'll never stop falling.

~*~ * ~*~

The first member of her crew to lay hands on one of the rescued women pays with his life.

A dark evening, a quiet corner in the shadow of the forecastle and a frozen girl too terrified to make a sound make for an opportunity that a certain kind of man will take advantage of, and think he won’t be caught. But Inej sees. Inej sees everything.

One knife in the back of the leg brings Derron to his knees. A second at his throat and he falls to the deck, fingers clutching his neck, his life spilling out between them.

The silence around her is absolute. Inej feels almost outside of her own body, her fury is so complete.

The girl is gaping at her with wide, terrified eyes. Inej meets her gaze.

"You have my deepest apologies," she grinds out through clenched teeth.

Everyone is watching. What does she do now? She hadn't considered anything, had only seen red and acted.

Specht, as always, at her shoulder. "Should we toss him overboard, Captain?"

Inej draws a deep breath through her nose. Lets it go.

"No," she spits. "String him up. Let him serve as a reminder of what is expected on this ship, and what happens when those expectations are not met."

.

Specht finds her again later, in the hour after dawn when the blood has been washed from the deck and the crew have returned to their work. Inej stands at the helm, one hand guiding the ship, the other still clenched around Sankta Lizabeta at her belt.

"Go on," she says. "Tell me I've made a mistake."

Specht frowns at her. "Why would I do that?"

"What crew will follow a commander who butchers them?"

"You're the captain of this ship, your word is law." Specht folds his arms and comes to stand beside her, surveying the crew on the main deck below. He jerks his head to Derron's body, swinging from the foremast. "He broke the law, he suffered the consequences."

She follows his gaze. In truth she's been half-waiting for one of the crew to try something like it, but if she'd had to pick the one who would, it would not have been Derron. A man of quick wit and competence, steady of hand and of manner. The crew had liked him. Inej had liked him.

Specht speaks again over her brooding. "It would have been worse for him to suffer no punishment, from a people management perspective."

People management, Saints preserve her. Inej barks a laugh. "And a moral perspective?"

"That too."

Inej lets out a huff, seething in disgust. "A healer."

She’d liked him.

Specht sighs as well, rolls one shoulder like he's trying to work out an injury. "I don't reckon profession is any mark of character. Plenty of bad healers in the world." He slides his eyes sideways to her and winks. "And a few good pirates."

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth and she twists her lips in an effort to keep it off her face. Turns her eyes back to their heading instead. The sea is restless today, wind bringing a gentle swell, but nothing alarming. Enough to keep her focus on guiding the ship and not the memory of her crewman's blood spilling over her hands. "How long to Os Kervo?"

"Two days, if the wind holds.” Specht casts his eyes skyward. “Better hope no one breaks a leg before then."

Inej hums slightly, but makes no other answer.

.

Nobody breaks a leg but somebody does break an arm. Inej is cursing silently, wondering if this is some twisted punishment of fate for not waiting until they'd reached port to slit the throat of their healer, when one of the liberated women steps forward.

She's pale and thin, with dirty blonde hair, and her face is twisted in an expression of intense distaste the entire time she spends setting and bandaging the arm with surprising competence. "This will suffice for the time being," she says in Ravkan. "He should seek out a Corporalnik when we reach port, or the recovery will be very long indeed."

Inej nods, and two other crew hoist their injured colleague to help him below.

"Thank you..." she trails off, letting the unspoken question hang in the air.

"Marika," says the woman, and turns away from her.

.

Inej is noting the day's injury in the ship's log when the knock comes at her cabin door.

"It’s unlocked," she calls, not bothering to look up from her desk. She expects Specht, the only person who ever disturbs her here, but it is not her first mate's heavy step that enters the room, and the back of her neck prickles as she looks over her shoulder and sees Marika shutting the door behind her.

Inej turns more fully in her chair, raises her eyebrows, but says nothing. Merely waits for the other woman to speak. It's enough to knock some of that scowling confidence off Marika’s face and she looks down, hands clenching convulsively in front of her.

"The man you killed, he was your healer," says Marika. It's not a question, and Inej offers no answer, just continues to watch her. The blonde woman fidgets again. "You have an opening."

Ah. Inej leans back to consider her more fully. "You have experience?"

"Yes," says Marika, and when Inej continues to stare at her she squirms a little before surrendering further information. "I was trained as a healer in the First Army of Ravka."

Inej frowns. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"You're not in the army any longer?"

"No." This time she does not offer anything further, and the stubborn jut of her jaw tells Inej she’s not going to.

Inej sighs, stands up, gestures toward the chair she has just vacated. "Sit."

After a brief hesitation, Marika obliges. Inej crosses the cabin to lean against the opposite wall, arms folded, crossing one ankle over the other. She considers the blonde woman for a long moment. "You don't wish to return to your family?"

"I have no family."

"Why do you want to crew on board a pirate ship?"

Marika meets her eyes in challenge. "Why did you kill a member of your own crew?"

"I don't tolerate that sort of behaviour on board this ship."

Marika shrugs. "That's why."

Inej chews her lip for a moment. "The men on my crew won't touch you, but I don't have room for someone who is afraid of them. You'll have a hammock on the gun deck with the rest of them, there's no other space for you."

"I understand."

"That aside, I can’t make any other guarantee for your safety. This is dangerous work."

"I'm not afraid to die."

"Are you afraid to kill?"

That question brings the other woman up short, as her eyes widen slightly. "I'm a healer."

Inej shrugs her shoulders. "You may find yourself in situations where you have no choice. If you can't do it, I have no use for you."

A short pause, and a flash of determination. "I can do it."

Inej makes one last effort to deter her. "This is a hard life, Marika. You'll be cold, or sunburnt, sometimes both at the same time. You'll be hungry. You'll never be one hundred percent dry ever again. You'll spend a lot of time up to your elbows in blood—” she breaks off suddenly, pursing her lips. “You'll see things you wish you hadn't."

Marika snorts. "There are no places worse than the hold of that slaver ship."

"I can assure you there are," says Inej, smiling without humour. "Not many, I’ll grant."

"What would you know about it," hisses Marika.

Inej's voice is full of darkness. "I know."

They hold each other's gaze and Inej sees the moment that comprehension dawns in Marika’s eyes. The blonde woman opens her mouth to say something, but Inej speaks over her.

"You can sail with us on our next voyage, as a trial," says Inej, pushing off from the wall and walking over to the door. "We'll stay in Os Kervo for a day or two to re-supply. See Specht in the morning, he'll see about getting you clothes and any medical supplies you'll need."

She holds the cabin door open, making it clear the conversation is over. Marika rises slowly, walks to the door with her body angled slightly toward Inej in the same manner you would skirt around a dangerous animal you didn't want to take your eyes off. As she steps over the threshold, she opens her mouth again to speak, and Inej shuts the door firmly in her face.

~*~ * ~*~

In Leflin, Inej sees a dark haired woman in red moving through the crowd and her heart leaps into her mouth. But then the woman turns her head, and she’s a stranger.

She looks for Nina everywhere she goes, she can’t help it. Listens to gossip in the markets and the taverns, for any whisper of her strange and unique power. She wishes she knew where Nina was, knew how she was. She sends letters to the Little Palace for her, but all go unanswered so eventually she gives up.

She keeps looking for her, though. She thinks she always will.

~*~ * ~*~

Inej had thought she would be better, with the girls she rescues. Thought she would find it...if not easy, then at least not so damn impossible to speak to them. She doesn’t want to look at them and see in their faces what she knows must once have been in hers, the fear, the helplessness. She’ll fight with everything she has to free them, but she finds she can’t really bring herself to go near them.

She decides they don't need comfort, the way she hadn't needed it. They need help.

She hadn't needed pretty words and empty promises, at The Menagerie, she'd needed help. Real help. She'd needed someone to get her out.

Someone had got her out.

She can do the same for these girls. Pretty words will not serve them. The one real way she can help is to free them.

It's easier for her, after she decides this.

“Where?” she asks.

So it goes, the same question over and over.

"Where?"

Every time a new group of girls sits huddled together on her deck, Inej looks at them and feels her lungs burn, feels her blood boil. Looks at them and feels the ghost of shackles on her wrists and ankles, of silk on her skin, the phantom weight of men pinning her down to take whatever they want.

Inej wants to go to them, comfort them, take their faces in her hands and tell them that it's over now and they can go home, they can be whole and free, that it will be like this nightmare never ripped their lives to shreds.

The words are ashes in her mouth. She has no comfort to give.

Better terrible truths than kind lies.

Terrible truths have their time, but it is not now. Inej knows (remembers, can imagine) that being pulled from the stinking hold of a slaver ship into the sunlight, grasping salvation only to be told that the nightmare isn't over, the real work begins now, when the fear doesn't leave and the long nights of crying and no sleep merge into one...Inej knows all too well that it could be the final straw for some of them. They will find out for themselves soon enough, as she had. It's a long, hard road ahead of them, one nobody can walk for them, one they may never reach the end of. That they will do so in the arms of their families, not bathed in blood and violence, is the only thing she has to offer. Terrible truths have their place, but it is not here, and any capacity Inej may ever have had for kind lies died in the belly of a slaver's ship years ago.

The only thing she can do for them now is take them home.

She sends Specht instead. Coward that she is. For his part, Specht also doesn’t approach them directly. He’s not a smooth operator by any stretch, but he’s not an idiot. It would not occur to Inej to be afraid of Specht but he’s a big man, and rough besides. Marika speaks to the girls, and Specht speaks to Marika.

So, each time she turns to him and asks the question, "Where?"

He always has the answers. Ravka. The Wandering Isle. Novyi Zem.

Her response is almost arbitrary. Put in for Os Kervo. Leflin. Shriftport.

Wherever they need to go is where they will go. No questions, no deviations.

They've never yet picked up any who belong in Kerch. Inej isn't sure what she'll do the day that happens.

~*~ * ~*~

At some point, her reputation begins to precede her.

Though Inej leaves no slavers alive, the story slips out from those she rescues as they return home and tell of the one who saved them.

One day, like any other day after a successful raid, there is a group of girls on her deck. Only these ones do not cower from her crew.

Inej, as usual, does not approach them but one girl surprises Inej by approaching her.

"Captain?" Inej hears the hesitant voice behind her, and she turns from where she has been watching the burning slave ship recede on the horizon. The girl looks among the oldest of the group that they rescued but she is so, so young. Maybe thirteen or fourteen. It hurts Inej to look at her.

"You're her, aren't you?" says the girl, and she looks like she's gathering up all her courage just to speak. "The seeker of lost women. The Sankta of the Sea."

Sankta of the Sea. Saints above. That's one Inej hasn't heard before, and she says so.

The girl is adamant. "You're the one they tell stories about. You rescue girls, return the ones who’ve been stolen."

Inej purses her lips, unsure what to say. "We do what we can."

"We prayed for you," says the girl, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears. She's looking at Inej with a kind of fervor usually reserved for religious worship. "In the ship, we prayed every day and every night that you would come for us, and you did. You really came."

The girl glances once over her shoulder and for the first time Inej notices the rest of the girls, still huddled together, looking at her with the same adoration.

"Saints bless you and keep you, Captain," the girl stumbles over her words. "Sankta. You have delivered us."

"The Saints have delivered you," says Inej, more sharply than she intends. "I am just an instrument."

The girl takes half a step back at the rebuke but doesn’t lose the reverent look in her eyes. Inej has no idea what to say to end the conversation. It is Specht who comes to her rescue.

"The Captain thanks you for your blessing, Miss, but she has business to attend to."

.

Long after that girl has left the ship, her words haunt Inej. They keep her from sleep. Those girls prayed for her to save them.

She wonders about the others. The ones she never makes it to. Do they pray as well? Do they pray for her, and she doesn’t come? Which is worse? Having no hope at all, or knowing there is hope and having it slip through your fingers.

To sailors, she becomes a ghost story. They speak of her in hushed whispers, in ports and taverns across Shu Han, Ravka, Novyi Zem. She is a vengeful spirit, a siren, the shadow of death itself.

In Ketterdam, they know better.

~*~ * ~*~

They are not always in time.

Some of the girls have already been hurt, used. Inej can’t speak for the rest of the world, but she recalls virgins commanding a high price on West Stave. It’s bad business for slavers to damage a girl's value, but men are men and...well.

Inej remembers huddling in a group with the other girls she’d been captured alongside, remembers the slavers coming to get a new girl some nights. Remembers praying that she wouldn't be chosen and the terrible guilt of knowing that by default she was praying for someone else to go in her place. One night, while they all slept, one girl had used her clothing to fashion a rope. The next morning, the rest of them were stripped naked so that no more could choose that method of escape. Inej has seen plenty more girls like that, ones who could not face the road ahead. She has no judgement for them, only a deep, aching sadness. Sometimes sickness sweeps through the slave ships. Sometimes girls are injured, beaten, starved.

Making it to The Wraith is no guarantee of salvation.

One girl in the latest group has a wound that is already festering when she is brought on board. The situation is desperate, but they are in the open ocean, five days from the coast of Novyi Zem. Marika can only do what she can do.

In the blackest hour of the night, Inej is roused from her bed. The girl is asking for her.

The night is clear and still. They have laid her on the main deck. The other girls who had been her fellow captives sit around her, and they make space as Inej approaches.

"She wanted to see the stars," one offers by way of explanation.

Inej kneels beside the girl's head and looks to Marika, kneeling on the other side of her. The healer shakes her head. "Not long now," she says softly. "There’s nothing more I can do for her."

The girl opens her eyes, then, and they are bright and unseeing before she focuses on Inej's face, and breaks into a smile. It breaks Inej's heart.

"Sankta," the girl whispers, tears leaking slowly from the corners of her eyes. "Sankta, forgive me..."

Inej places her hand on the girl's forehead, damp and burning with fever against Inej's cool skin. "I am no Sankta..." she whispers, and hates the way her voice cracks. "I cannot..."

But the girl cannot or will not hear her. "Forgive me," she says again, more urgently, breath a ragged gasp. "Forgive me, Sankta."

Forgive you for what, thinks Inej. How could one so young need forgiveness, what sin could she have committed? But, she knows, all who have faith want forgiveness at the hour of death, to wash away the pain and the sadness, to deliver them to something better.

It is blasphemy to impersonate a Saint. It is a sin to lie (and to steal, and to kill). Inej has done all this and more, and repents with every waking breath. But what sin could there be in comforting a dying girl. Her Saints would know and understand.

Carefully, so carefully, Inej leans down and slides an arm under the girl's neck, lifts her so that she is cradled against her chest. The girl's eyes find Inej's eyes, unnaturally focussed, rapturous.

“What is your name?” says Inej.

The girl does not speak, only looks at Inej with that strange light in her eyes, lips slightly parted. Another of the girls sitting nearby supplies, “Aya.”

“Aya.” Inej raises a trembling hand and presses it to the girl's face again, stroking a thumb over her cheek. "It is not in my gift to offer absolution," she whispers. "But that which is in my power to forgive, I do."

That heartbreaking smile again, and Aya closes her eyes.

Inej leans down and kisses the girl's forehead. "Go with peace, sister," she whispers.

They sit there for what could be minutes or hours, and she is aware of nothing and everything. The sound of the sea and the wind. The quiet sobs of the girls huddled around her on the deck. The deafening quiet of the crew looking on, grown men with tears on their cheeks. Inej is still holding Aya when she draws her last breath, feels the life slip gently out of her, until Aya is gone and there is only the broken body left behind.

"She is with the Saints," Inej says, and gently lowers her body to the deck. A ripple moves through the girls, a low keening moan that could belong to one or all of them, unlike anything Inej has ever heard before or wishes to hear again.

Inej steps back, and the girls reach hands forward to brush her fingertips, her clothing, as she moves through them. Leaving the group behind her, she notices the unnatural stillness of her crew, watching. The terrible expressions on some of their faces. Hard men all, grizzled by a life of hardship and many years at sea, undone by the death of a girl who they’d never seen until mere hours ago.

Marika is standing with the quartermaster, toward the aft cabin, watching quietly. Her face is solemn but her eyes are dry. A healer is well accustomed to death. They both stand a little straighter as their captain approaches.

"Take her below, let them grieve for a few hours," says Inej, and her voice sounds strangely far away in her own ears. "At sunrise, we will give her to the sea."

They nod and move immediately to do as commanded. Inej feels sick. That Aya will never return home is a knife in her belly. But they are five days from the coast, and have no means to preserve the body.

The body. Inej repeats it to herself. Just a body left behind. Aya has gone, as Inej herself did so many times. Where Aya is now, there is no pain, no struggle. Only peace, and love, and safety. Inej believes it with all her heart. It doesn’t make it any easier.

As she ascends the steps to the quarterdeck, Inej becomes aware that she is barefoot, still dressed in thin linen trousers and a loose white undershirt, hair unbound over her shoulders. She had not bothered to dress when she was summoned from sleep.

She nods once to Specht, standing with one hand on the helm and solemn eyes, before turning to observe the deck below. Several of the crew are lifting Aya's body with a care and gentleness that makes her proud, and makes her want to scream.

Specht remains silent as Inej closes her eyes and begins to pray. "Sankta Marya, full of grace..."

~*~ * ~*~

It’s not the last time she holds a girl while the life slips out of them, whispers words of prayer and forgiveness, whispers their names back to them.

As Captain, it falls to her to speak the words as she commits their bodies to the deep. Saints receive our sister Aya (Keira, Agnes, Hanne, Priya, their names start to blur together after a while, but she remembers each one of their faces). The ones who are sick, exhausted, either in their bodies or in their souls.

Inej finds her kindness again in their eyes, in their tears, in her own. She gives them what they need and then lets them go, and does not carry them with her.

In this she minds another lesson, well learned when she still belonged to the rooftops and not to the sea.

You cannot heal them, she tells herself, do not waste your life trying.

Do not allow them to weigh you down. Just take them home, take them home, take them home.

And leave them behind.

~*~ * ~*~

As time goes by, she finds it easier to talk to them. Does not avoid them so completely, although she is still uncomfortable with their unfettered adoration. That never changes and never will.

~*~ * ~*~

She’s been more than a year at sea when she’s pulled up short standing on the deck of a slaver ship. More than a year, she muses, standing in a swill of blood and seawater as crying girls are lowered off one by one into the waiting longboat, and the thing that snatches her breath is the sight of his name on a shipping label.

Rosita is sailing as a cargo vessel, that cargo being human beings although the manifest lists it as linen bound for the Wandering Isle. Why then, she wonders, is half the hold stuffed with barrels of Zemeni wine meant, according to the label in her hands, for The Crow Club, Ketterdam in the name of one Mr. K. Brekker.

She can almost forget, sometimes, that Ketterdam is a real place. It's been so long since she saw it for herself, that sprawling city of decadence and decay. She can almost believe she dreamed it, along with the people she left there.

K. Brekker. She reads and re-reads the label, and her eyes snag on the scribble of his name like a sleeve on a rusty nail. K. Brekker.

“How many barrels?” she asks her purser, and doesn’t raise her eyes.

“Forty.”

“That sounds expensive.”

“Just over forty-three thousand Zemeni doma, by the look of it.”

“What’s that in kruge?”

The purser shrugs. “Thirty thousand, give or take.”

Inej hisses through her teeth. She looks up at him then, and he is frowning slightly at her, confused. Her fingers twitch around the torn off label in her hands. The purser is Zemeni, has never heard the name Kaz Brekker, has no idea what he’s just handed her.

Inej folds the label and slips it into her pocket, turns away. “Offload the wine,” she says over her shoulder, the words out of her mouth before her brain has entirely caught up with her. “And don’t let me catch the crew ‘sampling’ any of it.”

.

Four days later, Inej is striding down the quay in Os Kervo, taking stock of the ships moored there. She walks confidently, head up, relaxed, exchanges nods or small pleasantries with people she knows. There are a lot of them. Os Kervo is The Wraith’s true home port, though she’s registered to Ketterdam and flies the three silver fish of Kerch. Inej comes back here more often than anywhere else, if only to see her family. She’s got a lot of acquaintances here. Merchants and traders, smugglers she’s run across in her time at sea, the odd sailor who’s spent time on her crew, and more than a few who would like to.

She can tell those who are new to the trade by the way they stare openly at her. She must cut a strange figure, she’s aware. A woman - improbably young to those who don’t know her, dressed all in black with her black hair in a shining braid down her back and Sankta Lizabeta at her waist as usual - moving through a crowd of seasoned sailors like she’s never belonged anywhere else.

She can tell those who likely run with the slavers by the way their eyes slide off her. As if by pretending they don’t see her, she won’t see them. She does though. She sees them all for what they are.

No matter, though. Today she has other business. She’d thought long and hard about what to do with the wine they liberated from the Rosita. She rejected the idea of giving the crew the best party they’d ever had or pouring the wine into the sea, which left her with the option of either selling it or returning it to its rightful owner. Inej had amused herself with imagining what Kaz would do if he ever discovered that she’d intercepted goods which had been stolen from him and then sold them for a profit, whether he’d be amused or furious. Both were equally plausible. After debating the whole time it took them to reach Ravka, she’d decided to return it.

Inej had dismissed the idea of sailing it to Ketterdam herself almost as soon as it had entered her head. She has good intel on a new slave ship operating along the Fjerdan coast and wants to hit it before the weather turns and the winter storms blowing down from the North send them into hibernation. Kerch is in the wrong direction, it’s a waste of time.

(Coward, her heart whispers).

She spots what she’s been looking for, a Kerch merchant vessel, the Prosperity. No one stops her when she strides up the gangplank and steps onto the deck of the ship, although a few cast her wary looks. She pays them no mind, instead making a beeline to the captain, Bram de Vries, who is standing over several crates of provisions checking items off a list.

He glances up as she approaches, and gives her a curt nod before returning his attention to his list. “Ghafa.”

“De Vries,” she returns the greeting.

“What business?”

His tone implies he’d rather do anything else than hear her response. Inej has to smile. There’s no love lost between them. He’s Ketterdam born and bred, he knows full well who she is, and the Dregs had once lifted a shipment of expensive silk from his hold. That had been before Inej’s time, but he holds it against her all the same. He’s an honest sort, though, and that suits her purposes.

She gets right to the point. “I have cargo I need transported to Ketterdam.”

“I’ve no interest in ferrying a bunch of weeping girls.”

Inej gives him her most innocent expression. “I’ve no idea what you could mean, Bram, I run a merchant vessel, same as yourself.”

He snorts but doesn’t look at her, so her bad acting is for nothing. “Forty barrels of wine,” she tells him. “You’ll be well compensated for your trouble.”

“How well?”

“Very well.”

“And if I say no?”

She’s obviously caught him in a stubborn mood. She takes a calculated risk. “Then I'll have to let Kaz Brekker know that you declined to be of assistance.”

There. That tightening of the expression, that small frisson of fear, is what she’s looking for. The tell that lets her know the Bastard of the Barrel still holds the city in his closed fist.

De Vries looks at her now. “I don’t want any trouble with Brekker.”

“None of us do.” Inej spreads her hands. “Look, this is an honest job. Just delivering some goods that went astray.”

He tries once more, halfheartedly, to put her off. “I normally put in at Second Harbour, that’s a long way from the Barrel.”

“Take her into Fifth Harbour. Tell them I sent you, you won’t have any trouble.”

Inej is gambling a great deal on the fact her name still means anything at all to Kaz. It’s been so long. He might just as easily hate her, or he might have forgotten all about her. She doesn’t think so, though. Whether it’s the part of her that thinks she knows his heart, or just a fool's hope, she doesn’t want to examine too closely. Maybe she is a fool, or maybe she’s a coward, and maybe this is an empty gesture but it’s all she’s got, for the moment.

De Vries looks positively queasy, chewing the inside of his cheek. “This is just a delivery run? Nothing more?”

“On my honour,” says Inej. That, at least, is worth something here in Os Kervo.

It seems to settle him a little, and after a long moment he holds his hand out to her. “The deal is the deal.”

Her heart clenches, the words she’s not heard in so long bring a hundred memories to the surface. She grips his hand in her own.

“The deal is the deal.”

~*~ * ~*~

It’s some months later, the next time Inej steps onto the docks at Os Kervo. She sees the girls safely off the ship, either to their families or into safe lodgings, before wandering toward the market with the vague intention of obtaining some food and a new coat.

It’s evening by the time she returns. The lamps have been lit along the quay and a chill fog has rolled in from the sea, making her very glad of the new coat she’s wearing. Inej vaguely registers a young boy sitting on a stack of crates along the quayside and she doesn’t pay him much mind until he steps into her path and holds something out to her. On closer inspection, it’s an envelope.

“What’s this?” she asks in Ravkan. When the boy gives no reaction, she tries again in Kerch. Still nothing.

They stare each other down for a moment, before Inej rolls her eyes and takes the envelope from him. He darts away as soon as it’s in her hand, running back up the quay toward the town. Inej looks down at the envelope, flipping it over in her hands, and freezes. It’s completely unmarked, unremarkable. Its only distinguishing feature is her name, written in one corner in unmistakable chicken-scratch handwriting that she would recognise anywhere. A shiver runs down her spine and she glances around her, as if he’ll step out of the mist himself, cane in hand. But there’s no sign of him, just the usual sort going about their business.

She waits until she’s safely locked in her cabin to open the envelope with shaking hands. There’s no letter inside, and she tries to swallow her disappointment (what did you think Inej, a nasty corner of her mind sneers, did you think he would write you a love letter?). She’s confused for a moment - why an empty envelope? - but then a gleam catches her eye, something wedged down in the corner.

She tips the envelope, and into the palm of her hand falls a small gold medallion. It feels expensive, running her thumb over it she can tell it’s real gold, and into one side there is an engraved likeness.

Sankt Nikolai. Patron saint of sailors.

Inej closes her eyes and tries to steady her breathing as something loosens inside of her. There’s no letter, no explanation, but she reads the gesture just as easily. It’s a thank you, a reassurance, a shout across the void.

He’s still thinking of her.

And the engraving...from anyone else, it might be a sentimental but essentially meaningless gesture. But everything Kaz does is calculated. It’s a message, one intended for only her to understand. The smallest concession to her faith. Although he doesn’t believe in saints, Inej does. And Kaz believes in her.

Even though she slips through his fingers like water, like mist. He might have all of Ketterdam in his iron grip, but he’ll never try to hold her that way. He’ll never try to keep her, never hold her down, fingers digging into her flesh, into her soul.

He holds her with an open hand.

For this, and a hundred other reasons, she holds him in her heart. Even now.

~*~ * ~*~

A small fact.

Sankt Nikolai is also the patron saint of repentant thieves.

~*~ * ~*~

She burns a ship of drüskelle carrying a few young grisha slaves, stands on the deck of The Wraith and watches the ship splinter and sink beneath the dark water, where the drüskelle will rot in the ocean, where they will never be buried to rejoin their god.

Marika spits over the railing and calls it justice. Inej smiles tightly and doesn’t disagree. Only Specht doesn’t cheer.

That night she tries to pray to her saints but there is only one thing in her head, ringing like a bell.

Matthias, Matthias, Matthias.

~*~ * ~*~

In a dark corner of a tavern in Os Kervo, she contemplates her glass, swirling the remnants of a particular Kerch whiskey she doesn’t come across much in her travels. With the familiar burn of it on her tongue, just for a moment, with her eyes closed, the noise and darkness could belong to another establishment, in another port city, in the company of friends and comrades.

She opens her eyes. Not that place, not that city. But Specht sits across the table from her, drink in one hand and chin propped in the other, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. A friend and a comrade, perhaps the only real one she has these days. She laughs a little at the thought.

Specht's eyes shift to her from wherever they’ve been resting, unfocussed, one eyebrow raising slightly in question. Inej just shakes her head and knocks back the rest of her drink, raising the empty glass to signal the barmaid for another.

"Not like you to have more than one," he says, swirling his own drink around the glass.

Inej shrugs.

Specht just raises his eyebrows again, letting a long breath out through his nose. She doesn't have to explain herself to him. Because she's his captain, but also because he knows her.

It had been an ugly thing, their last raid. Of a group of fourteen prisoners, only three had come out alive, the rest slaughtered by their captors as Inej and her crew came aboard. A final act of defiance when they realised who she was, that there was no hope of escaping her. Their captain had died laughing as Inej cut his throat, so harsh in her rage that her death-sharp blade had almost severed his head.

She'd taken the manifest before she'd burned the ship, with half a mind to track down the families of every crew member who'd been on board. Let it be a message to whoever came next. Die quietly or doom everyone you ever loved.

"It's not who you are," Specht had said when she'd voiced the plan to him.

Inej had been startled. "Of course it is."

What did he know? Her ship was The Wraith but so was she. Let those two be combined. She knew the stories, that she was not a human being but death itself on the high seas, no escape when she came. In Ketterdam they’d whispered that she could walk through walls, a ghost made of smoke and darkness, a blade in the night. Let those two reputations converge. Let no one be safe from her, let them fear her everywhere.

But Specht had only said, "No."

The crew, normally jubilant after a raid, had been subdued all the way back to Ravka and had slipped away quietly when she'd allowed them to disembark. Inej is not normally one for on-shore revelry but she’d felt a deep, personal need to drink, and Specht had trailed her quietly to the nearest tavern without invitation.

"Are you here to make sure I don't go on a murder spree across the continent?" she asks him now.

"You won't do that anyway."

Inej rolls her eyes, huffing irritably. "You keep saying that. You seem very sure."

"You won't. You're out here to kill slavers, not innocent people."

A heavy silence stretches between them. She doesn't tell him that she'd tossed the manifest overboard before they'd reached port. Doesn't tell him she hadn't trusted herself to keep it. She's not here to kill innocent people, he's right about that, but just for a moment she'd wanted to. Saints have mercy on her, she'd wanted to.

"I came here tonight," Specht speaks again, gently, "because I didn't want you to be alone."

If she'd been a different person, Inej might have burst into tears. As it is, she settles further into her chair and sighs deeply. "What about the next time some slaver scum decides to take the only revenge they can?"

"We'll be quicker," shrugs Specht. "We’ll hit them faster, harder."

It’s not enough. It’s all there is.

"Hmm," Inej tips her head back, miserable.

The barmaid appears with fresh drinks for both of them, and sets a full bottle of whiskey on the table alongside. Inej frowns up at her.

"We didn't order this."

The barmaid shrugs. "Courtesy of that lot over there," she gestures with her head over Inej's shoulder.

Turning her head, Inej realises with a start that most of her crew are crowded around a load of tables that have been pulled together on the opposite side of the busy tavern. Seeing her looking, they raise their glasses to her. If she'd been a different person, Inej definitely would have burst into tears, but she's not so she nods at them and quickly turns back to face Specht again. If he notices the brightness in her eyes he has the good grace not to mention it.

"I didn't know they were here," she says, clearing her throat. "I thought they'd be—" she cuts herself off abruptly.

Specht's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. "Causing mayhem?" he says archly. "A brothel, maybe?"

Inej doesn't respond to that. It's an uncomfortable thought but one she's had before, in truth. They're her crew, yes, but sailors will do as they do and, well...Inej learned long ago not to ask questions that she doesn't want to know the answer to.

"We've got pretty low turnover on The Wraith these days, for a crew of mercenaries," says Specht, voice casual. She frowns at him and he levels her with a pointed look. "Come on, Inej. They're here because they believe in the mission. That last one hurt them as much as you."

Inej blinks at him. The vanishingly rare use of her name has its intended effect as the full weight of his words settles over her.

"Besides," he shifts uncomfortably. "Some of us prefer to come by our company honestly." As he speaks, his eyes slide back to the bar, and when Inej follows his gaze she sees the pretty barmaid give him a quick smile.

She can't stop the grin that spreads over her face. "Specht, you old romantic."

If his cheeks colour slightly as he knocks back his drink, she has the good grace not to mention it.

She takes a large gulp of her own drink, and feels a little lighter. Curling her fingers around the bottle that sits between them on the table, she stands up, meeting his eyes when he looks at her in confusion.

"Come on, Specht," she says, already turning away. "We'd better go share this with the crew."

~*~ * ~*~

With The Wraith dry-docked in Os Kervo for a fortnight for graving, Inej gives the crew some time off and heads to meet her family. She tries to see her parents as often as possible, but they still travel from place to place and if they’re not within a few days of Os Kervo when she puts in, well, she’s reluctant to leave her ship for so long.

It used to be hard for her to visit them. To be surrounded by the life she might have had if she’d never been taken, the camp full of bright colours and the sound of children laughing. It’s true, she thinks, that you can never really go home again. She knows it stung her parents, too, when she refused to remain with them, told them of her plans to sail. To them, it was like losing her all over again just when they thought they had finally got her back. But Inej never could have stayed. Even though her old life is still here, her family, the friends she grew up with, the Inej Ghafa they knew is gone. As much as any of them might wish it otherwise, she’ll never come back. Not really.

It’s easier for Inej to visit once her family has made peace with that. Once she herself has made peace with it.

There is no reliable way to get word to them of her movements. Even if they remained in one place, The Wraith is the fastest thing on the water and it would be a rare thing indeed for any letters sent to arrive before Inej herself did. But every time they move, her parents send word to Os Kervo, and the letters are held at the port office for Inej to collect whenever she sails in.

She finds the camp in the foothills near Caryeva. Word of her arrival ripples ahead of her, unmistakable dressed all in black in a sea of colourful silks, and her mother comes running to meet her.

It’s a nice week, Inej has to admit. Perhaps she can never stay, but it’s no small luxury to allow herself to be folded into the welcoming embrace of her people. To allow herself to be taken care of. She spends long days and nights chatting with her parents, hearing of their travels and telling them a heavily sanitised version of her own. Her mother pushes more food on her than can reasonably be eaten, tuts over the fresh scar on the back of her knuckles. Her father takes her on long walks through the meadows, through the forest, their arms linked together and Inej’s head resting on his shoulder.

On her last evening, Inej is sitting between her mother’s knees having her hair brushed. Combined with the warmth of the campfire on her face, she’s half-drunk on sensation as her mother works in long, steady strokes, following the brush with the smoothing palm of her free hand. Nobody touches Inej this way. Aside from the occasional handshake or clap on the shoulder, nobody touches Inej at all. It’s how she prefers it, in truth, but...

“You seem tired, my darling,” her mother’s voice cuts gently through her reverie.

“It’s late.”

“No,” says her mother, placing her hand on Inej’s shoulder now. “You seem tired.”

A long silence settles over them, interrupted only by the sound of the crickets and the crackling fire. Inej measures her words carefully. “It can be a hard life, at sea,” she admits, speaking slowly. “But it’s worth it. To rescue those girls.”

“And who rescues Inej?”

“I don’t need to be rescued,” Inej picks up the hand resting on her shoulder, presses a kiss to it. “Not any more.”

Inej thinks her mother is going to push the issue, but after a moment she just squeezes her shoulder tightly and kisses the back of her head, before resuming her slow strokes with the brush. “You know best, meja.”

~*~ * ~*~

She happens to be looking in the right direction the moment that Specht drops like a sack of flour, and the world goes oddly silent around her. He’s on the quarterdeck of The Wraith, his customary position at the helm where he can steer the ship and bark orders to the crew remaining on board. Inej is on the deck of the terribly-named Salvation, in the thick of the fighting, and even across the short span of water between them she can tell he’s been hit by a stray bullet. Several things happen as if in slow motion. The Wraith lurching dangerously toward them as the wheel spins free, arresting as another crew member leaps from the rigging to grab hold of it. Marika racing aft from her position at the forecastle, shouting something, though Inej can’t hear what. The brief pause as the crew realises their commander is down. He’s down, and she doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead.

On a prickle of instinct, Inej jumps back suddenly, a blade whistling so close to her nose she can smell the tang of blood and steel. Spinning, she’s got one knife lodged to the hilt in the man’s kidney and another in the back of his neck before he can recover from his missed blow. She barely feels the spray of blood, warm on her cheek when she pulls her blades free, as she scans the chaos around her.

“Ivanov!” she screams over the fighting, and sees the quartermaster’s attention turn to her. “Get back to The Wraith, take command!” She doesn’t wait for him to acknowledge the order as she turns to defend another attack.

She forces herself to focus on the fighting, and when the fighting is done, she forces herself to focus as they bring the women up from the hold and begin ferrying them over to The Wraith. Forces herself to remain calm as she completes her final sweep of the ship, cuts the lines, kicks over a barrel of oil and drops a match before sliding down to the waiting longboat, the last person off as always. She forces herself not to balk as she steps onto the deck of her ship and gets an obstructed view of Marika up to her elbows in blood, as Inej had once promised her she would be. Marika doesn’t look up, absorbed entirely in her work. Good, thinks Inej. That means he’s not dead. Not yet.

With Specht down and her healer otherwise occupied, she gets the rescued girls situated herself, enlists the female members of her crew to assist her. Thankfully none of the girls have more than cuts and bruises, and every member of her crew is well equipped to clean a wound and apply a basic field dressing. She questions them gently and gets the usual range of reactions, from near-catatonic shock to sobbing hysteria. All are normal, and expected. So too are the ones who reach out to touch her clothes, her hair, the ones who whisper Sankta on reverent lips. Inej has never managed to become comfortable with it, but she is accustomed to it. Sankta of the Sea is a name that has stuck fast and refused to budge, and she needs no introduction. There is no other who comes for lost women, armed with blades and death, and even those who are not from Ravka and worship other gods call her by the name. She’s been responsible for more than a few religious awakenings.

She manages to ascertain that these girls are mostly Kaelish, although a few are from Fjerda, and she makes a mental note that she’ll need to arrange separate passage home for them from Leflin. Even now, she doesn’t dare bring her ship into Djerholm. She’s quite sure she would never make it out again.

Through all of it, panic ringing in her ears, entirely dissonant with her gentle words and calm demeanor, that old familiar refrain:

Mercy, mercy, mercy.

As she is settling the last of the girls below deck with blankets and fresh clothing, Marika appears at her elbow, bloody and grim-faced, and Inej’s heart drops into her boots.

“Specht?” Inej hates the way her voice cracks.

“Alive,” says Marika, typically frank. “Through and through, didn’t have to go digging. Damn lucky bastard.”

Marika has always had an economic way with words, but Inej senses there is something she isn’t saying. “...but?”

The healer shrugs, brows drawing tightly together. “We’re a long way out, and that bullet did some damage. With the risk of infection, he needs more help than we’re equipped to give, and…” her eyes slide to the group of Kaelish girls huddled together, “where we’re going, I'm not sure they’re equipped to give it either.”

Inej understands the implication. Specht needs a Corporalnik, and the Wandering Isle is no haven for grisha.

Inej chews her lower lip, mind racing through her options. At their current position they are roughly halfway between the Wandering Isle and Ravka, and perhaps a little closer to the northern coast of Novyi Zem than either of those. They could reach Weddle a day or two earlier than anywhere else, but she doesn’t know it well and isn’t convinced of their options for medical help there.

She looks over the girls. In every instance, without fail, her priority has been to get the rescued girls home as soon as possible. She knows the agony of being stolen from your home, and has always wished for it to be as short an ordeal as possible. They get the girls home, without delay or deviation. She’d be taking them days in the wrong direction, with no telling how long it would be before she could return. But...

For the first time in her pirate career she tells the rescued women they’ll have to wait, orders her ship to make for Ravka under full sail, and prays for a fair wind and a following sea.

.

She has them set Specht up in the captain’s cabin, the only real bed on the ship, and she alternates standing watch at the helm and watching over her first mate so Marika can steal a few hours sleep. She ignores the healer’s pointed comments about when Inej herself finds time to sleep. The mood of the ship is tense, and deadly. The cheerful shouting and banter, the singing, the rowdy mealtimes give way to a sullen hush. Daily tasks are performed in near silence, the crew seemingly unwilling to disturb whatever careful balance exists while their first officer hangs on the brink of death, and they give their captain a wide berth as she becomes increasingly haggard with exhaustion.

At one point as Inej is replacing the cool cloth on her first mate’s burning forehead, she leans over him and whispers, “Edvaard, you do not have my permission to die.” She imagines that his eyes might spring open, that he might give her a cheery ‘aye, Captain’ and get up and be about his business. Of course, he does not.

When they reach port, Marika is off the ship before they’ve even finished tying off, running into the town to find a grisha healer. She returns a short while later with a belligerent man who complains loudly about being interrupted at his work as they come up the gangplank, but seems to shrink slightly as he realises exactly what ship he is being led aboard.

The work of healing is slow but thorough, and when the grisha emerges from the cabin he tells Inej that Specht will be fine after a few days' rest. It feels as though the ship itself lets out a breath of relief. The news spreads outward like a ripple from crew members who are loitering nearby pretending not to eavesdrop, and Marika grumbles that her watery eyes are a result of exhaustion. Inej drops a bag of gold into the grisha healer’s hands, probably double what she should pay him, and he gives her a wide-eyed look and tells her to call on him any time.

After releasing the crew, and telling her passengers they are free to go into the town or remain on board at their leisure, Inej heads into her cabin and sinks down heavily in the chair by the bed. Specht is still out cold, but the wound on his chest is healed over with shiny pink skin, and he has some colour back in his cheeks. She is wondering, not for the first time, if she should really try and bring a Corporalnik on board as part of the crew, when she drifts off to sleep without being aware of doing so.

She jerks awake an unknown amount of time later, but out of the cabin window she can see the day has turned from bright midday sun to the golden light of early evening. The window sits open to let in the fresh air and the breeze disturbs the clutter in the room - ruffles a stack of unsigned missives pinned to her desk with the blade of a knife, the charts and maps tacked to every surface, a clutch of bright feathers hanging from the ceiling - and she can hear the sounds of the port drifting in. Rubbing a hand over her face, she sits up a little and looks at her first mate, and is surprised to find him squinting at her in confusion.

“Where are we?” he says, voice rough.

“Os Kervo,” says Inej. “You took a bullet, Corporalnik patched you up.” Direct and to the point, it’s all the information he needs right now.

He’s still squinting at her, though. “The raid?”

“Successful.”

“The crew?”

“No casualties,” her lips twist in what she supposes is more of a grimace than a smile. “Aside from you, that is.”

Specht grunts and lets his head drop back onto the pillow. He brings a hand to his chest to rub over where the bullet had gone in, surely still sore despite grisha healing, and frowns when his fingers find metal.

He pulls at the medallion, leather cord coming free from where she’d placed it loosely around his neck days before. Specht holds it up in front of his eyes, glinting gold in the evening light.

“Sankt Nikolai,” Inej says quietly. “Protector of sailors.”

“A very fine bit of gold,” says Specht, watching as the medallion twirls slowly on its cord, and the side engraved with the image of the Saint turns away to reveal the smooth back where Inej has scratched in the letters KB. “Gift, was it?”

“It was,” says Inej, and there is a long silence.

Whether it’s the near-death experience, or the odd, sleepy atmosphere in the stuffy cabin that makes him so bold, she cannot say, but he cuts his eyes back to her.

“Is that why we haven’t been back to Kerch since we set sail?”

Inej bites the inside of her cheek. Considers telling him the truth, but settles instead for the easy way out.

“It’s more that I'm afraid he might want you back, and then we’ll have to have a falling out about it.” She does grin at him then. “I shudder to think what the collateral damage would be.”

He lets her take the escape, makes a joke of it with her. “Are you suggesting that you’d get into a fight with old Dirtyhands himself just to keep me on as first mate?”

Inej looks at him, and feels a surge of affection. He’s been with her this whole way. They’d never had much to say to each other when they were both running with the Dregs, and to this day she’s not sure whether he’d had any choice in coming aboard The Wraith, or if Kaz had simply ordered him to do so. But he’d done it without complaint. He’d taught her the lines and rigging, taught her to read the weather and the mood of the sea, taught her to navigate by the stars. He’d helped her build her crew, and taught them by example that she was to be respected before she had earned that respect with her actions.

Specht, who has seen ship after ship of frightened girls huddled together on The Wraith. Who does not know all of her history but who’d been in the Slat the day she trailed in after Kaz Brekker - a girl with dead eyes, fresh out of the Menagerie - and drawn his own conclusions. And he’d followed her for almost three years because, as he’d told her, he believed in the mission. He believed in her. He’s been her mentor, her second in command, and, after some time, her friend.

“Yes,” she says simply.

~*~ * ~*~

The ship is groaning under her as Inej tries to see through the smoke, frantically scanning the deck for anyone remaining on board. Fool fool fool she chants in her head, in time with the pounding of her heart, as she moves quickly toward the bow.

The ship had put up a spirited defense, her crew had fought savagely and died quickly, the way most of them do when The Wraith slides up alongside them.

The Wraith's opening salvo of cannon fire had blown chunks out of the hull of the Elena-Marya, and as Inej had swung over on a rope, somewhere below deck - whether from a stray spark or a knocked over lantern - the fire had started. Now as the Elena-Marya shudders underneath her, Inej wonders what will claim her first, the flames or the sea.

The smoke is so thick that from her position amidships Inej cannot see The Wraith, though she trusts that her ship will be nearby. Specht would have manoeuvred her away from the foundering Elena-Marya, now truly burning, but he will not readily abandon his captain.

After seeing the last of the girls they’d pulled from the hold safely over the side into the waiting longboat below, Inej had urged her remaining crew off and gone back for one final sweep. The fire had spread more quickly than she could have dreamed. Returning to the spot the longboat had been tied off, she finds the rope cut, swinging over the side of the hull, grappling hook still embedded in the bulwark. Good, she thinks grimly. She expects loyalty from her people, but not so much that they remain tethered to a burning ship when they have rescued slaves to ferry to safety.

A terrible splintering rends the air, as the main mast gives way to fire and begins to fall - almost slow motion, it seems to Inej - over the starboard side, and she prays The Wraith is far enough away to be out of danger.

Her lungs and eyes are burning, and flaming chunks of sail and rigging are raining down about her. Inej has to get off the Elena-Marya now, or go down with her.

She begins a dead sprint for the bow of the ship, dodging and leaping bodies and burning debris. The deck lurches under her feet as the Elena-Marya begins to list sharply, and Inej only knows she must put as much distance between herself and the ship as she can, or risk being pulled down with the wreckage.

As she comes to the bow she measures her steps, vaults, and her feet land with the unerring grace which has never yet failed her. With an acrobat's balance she sprints up the bowsprit, protruding far out over the water, measures her strides again, counting down to the end.

Three, she keeps her eyes on the horizon

Two, a final stride

One, she takes a deep breath and holds it, foot pistoning her off the end as her arms come over her head and she arcs over in a neat dive, the ocean rushing up to meet her.

The cold is shocking after the heat of the fire, and Inej fights every instinct to go still and huddle her limbs inward. Kicking her legs out she swims forward in strong strokes, remaining just under the surface of the waves until her lungs burn and her vision begins to white out, before finally breaking the surface and praying she is not coming up to a lungful of smoke.

The first thing she thinks is thank the saints for fresh air, as she heaves desperate gulps. As she looks frantically around her, she realises she is not quite as free of the burning Elena-Marya as she would like to be, and begins a front crawl toward nothing but away. It would not do to have performed so daring an escape only to be crushed by another falling mast.

As she swims, she becomes conscious of the cries going up over the sound of the waves and the burning ship. Captain! and Captain ho! and Toss the lines!

A shadow falls over Inej as The Wraith emerges from the haze of smoke. She sees a line tossed into the air, uncoiling to land in the water below, and swims toward it. Gripping the slick rope, she allows herself to rest a moment as the crew works the other end of the line, pulling her towards the ship. When she is close enough that she can no longer see her assembled crew looking down at her, only the looming black hull, Inej heaves once on the rope, kicking her legs forward, and braces her feet against the hull to avoid being inadvertently keel-hauled. Although her legs are stiff with cold she forces them to move, half climbing and half being pulled up the side of her ship until hands reach out and catch under her arms, hauling her the rest of the way until she is safely on deck.

She kneels for half a breath, feeling the sun-warm wood of The Wraith under her hand, before staggering to her feet. The crew are jubilant, loud and excited at a successful boarding, and a daring escape.

Reaching behind her, Inej unhooks a leather pouch from her belt and tosses it to the deck at her feet, where the contents spill out. Assorted gold and gemstones glitter in the sun. A last moment grab from the captain's cabin of the Elena-Marya. The old man had been interrupted counting his hoard. He'd barely had time to stand before Inej put a knife through his eye.

"For your trouble, gentlemen!" says Inej, and a huge cheer goes up among the crew.

On the quarterdeck, Specht makes a good show of pretending that she hasn’t just scared him out of his wits. “A little close for comfort, don’t you think?”

Inej just grins at him, wringing out her hair, and asks the customary question. “Where?”

The pause before he speaks is more telling than anything he could ever say.

“Kerch.”

There it is. The thing she’s been avoiding. The reason she’s been looking for. She chews it over a moment.

She draws in a deep breath, filling her lungs. It’s time. “Put in for Ketterdam.”

If there’s a hint of a smile in his voice as he says ‘Aye, Captain’ she ignores it as she walks to lean her elbows on the bulwark, where she can watch the last burning vestiges of the Elena-Marya finally slip beneath the waves.

~*~ * ~*~

In Fifth Harbour berth twenty-two is empty, until it isn’t.

The Wraith glides in under cover of night. In the morning, foreign sailors docked nearby will clutch their talismans as they pass the ship, her shadow like the shadow of death, and Barrel rats will glance upward as if expecting to glimpse her captain high above them. For now, the crew work silently to settle the ship into her mooring. Inej finds there are no questions from the harbour master on duty, no paperwork to fill out, no levy to pay, and her shoulders loosen a little. Kaz Brekker’s iron grip is still felt here.

The crew disperse, as they worked, in silence. Melting into the night for well earned shore leave. The Wraith has docked in darkness to give her crew their anonymity. Ketterdam is a dangerous place, even for a dangerous crew, and Inej has more enemies here than most places.

Specht is the last to disembark aside from Inej herself, just as the sky begins to lighten.

“Will you be joining the rest of the crew in losing all their money in some gambling den?” says Inej, leaning casually on the bulwark beside the gangplank. Her mostly Ravkan crew have been chomping at the bit to finally visit the sprawling city and its many fabled diversions. She’d thought about instructing them to stick to Dregs territory, but it’s been so long that she no longer knows where the boundaries of that territory lie, and they’re just as likely to be fleeced in The Crow Club as anywhere else.

Specht snorts, and she’d guess his thoughts are running along similar lines. “I’m heading down to Belendt to see my sister. It’s been a while.”

Of course, Inej thinks. “Sorry to have kept you away for so long.”

“I’ve had plenty of opportunities to leave,” says Specht. He winks at her. “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

She just gives him a lazy grin, watching as he walks down the gangplank and disappears into the grey dawn.

Inej is back among the rooftops of Ketterdam before daylight proper touches the harbour.

.

She finds his attic rooms empty. His makeshift desk is still there, but there are no papers, no ink, little evidence that it is used regularly anymore. She feels strangely bereft but then, what had she expected. That time would stand still here while she was on the ocean?

It is...alarmingly easy to move through the Slat undetected. At this time of day its inhabitants are either out or asleep, dependent on their function. Inej remembers every creaking floorboard, silent as death as she descends from the top levels.

The large office on the ground floor that had once belonged to Per Haskell is dark, locked up tight. Inej runs her hands lightly over the complicated series of locks. Of course. A master thief would have every defence in place. Inej can pick a lock as well as any common street criminal, but she has nothing on Kaz Brekker. She would not be getting through this door without taking an axe to it.

No matter, she is The Wraith still. She has her own ways.

She climbs smoothly to the rafters, so thick with cobwebs she is sure it's been years since anyone was last up here. Probably herself, the night she watched him beaten half to death. She grinds her teeth at the memory, edging lightly along the beams, careful not to disturb the dust and send it scattering to the floorboards below.

From her days exploring every nook and cranny of the Slat, she remembers the void in the walls, a crawlspace so tight that wood and brick press in on both her back and stomach as she shimmies through inch by inch, before working her way into a crevice equally as tight between the ceiling of the office and the floorboards of the rooms above. It’s a tighter fit than when she'd last crawled in here, her body filled out with age, and she expels all the air from her lungs to try and free up a little room, breathing in quick shallow gasps as she inches her way along with her fingertips. What an ignominious way to go it would be, she muses, to meet her end, after everything, wedged tight in a crawlspace. She’s never been much inclined to claustrophobia, but she feels a little crawl of unease along her spine, and spreads her hands out, focussing on the grain of the wood under her fingers.

She feels it, then, the notch that she'd carved into the ceiling panel years ago after spending an evening studiously working it loose with her knife, slow going in the confined space. Kaz had never known she'd done it. She’d taken it upon herself one night when she couldn't sleep, no real intention behind it other than the idea it might one day be useful to have a way into the windowless office that wasn’t through the door.

How right she'd been.

Unstrapping Sankta Alina from her forearm, she jams the edge of the blade into the corner of the panel, hissing through her teeth in satisfaction as it lifts. She peers through the gap - all quiet below, no one about - before sliding the panel fully to the side. Shimmying forward on her belly again, she slides through the hole headfirst, bracing first with her knees and then her ankles against the sides of the opening, before curling back up and catching the edge with her fingers and pulling her legs free, dropping silently onto the desk below.

After sliding the panel back into place above her, Inej looks around the gloomy office, letting her eyes adjust. A hundred times more organised than in Haskell's day. The desk is new, and the chair. The model ships are gone, the shelves lining the back wall neatly filed with numbered ledger books. A black coat - what she recognises as his winter coat - hangs from a hook by the door and she resists the sudden, insane urge to bury her face in it.

She takes it in. She's heard nothing at all to suggest that the Bastard of the Barrel has been dislodged in any way, but she realises she's been afraid, all this time, of returning and finding he is not here waiting for her. But here is his office, unmistakeable, orderly, as fastidiously clean as Kaz himself is. What must be his current ledger is sitting on the desk and she flips it open to where the pages turn blank. The numbers in his scratchy handwriting are current up to yesterday's date, and she imagines him sitting at this desk only hours before, studiously working through his books, hands touching the page that she now brushes her fingertips over, as if the ghost of his touch could be found in the very paper.

He's here. He'll be here.

She is overwhelmed, suddenly, and turns to a filing cabinet against the wall where a decanter and two glasses sit on top. Pours herself a generous three fingers of what she knows without checking will be the southern Kerch single malt he favours, and returns to sit in the leather chair, lifting her feet onto the desk.

Leaning back, the smell of the leather envelops her and she closes her eyes. She thinks of his gloves, wonders if he wears them still. With her eyes shut, here in his chair, she can smell the faintest hint of the soap he washes with, mingled with the polish he uses on the silver head of his cane. She takes a generous gulp of the whiskey, feels the heat spread through her as it slides down, and that reminds her of him too.

She sits in the gloom, nursing her drink against her chest, and listens to the sounds as the Slat comes alive on the other side of the door. Footsteps up and down stairs, doors slamming, people talking and shouting to each other - some voices she recognises, others she does not. None of them with any idea she's in amongst them, a fox in the henhouse.

Fools. She allows herself the thought it would never have happened in her day.

She sits there for what could well be hours, before her ears pick up the sound of the heavy front door creaking on its hinges, and the steady step step tap, step step tap she's been waiting for. Tracks the sound across the floor, the voices that rise in greetings that are not returned, the jangle of keys and - finally - the clicking of half a dozen impossible locks.

To his credit, he does not react to the sight of her lounging at his desk. Only the slight twitch of his right eye and a momentary hitch in his step betrays him - as he sees someone and registers that someone is her in the space of a single second - as he steps fully into the room and shuts the door smoothly behind him. If Inej had not been looking directly at him, she would never have seen it. Nobody outside will be any the wiser.

Without speaking, he lights the lamp beside the door, and a dim glow fills the room. For a brief, heavy moment they simply stare at each other. Kaz looks entirely nonplussed, and she can practically hear the gears in his head turning, trying to work out how she got into the room. She feels a smirk tug at the corner of her mouth, and doesn't fight it.

"I have some feedback about the current security arrangements in this building," says Inej, lifting the whiskey to her lips and taking a slow sip, never breaking eye contact.

He arches one eyebrow but says nothing, just removes his hat and coat, hanging them next to the winter coat. He runs one hand through his hair and she knows then with dark satisfaction that she’s got him on the back foot, whatever cool exterior he may try to project. He says nothing as he crosses the room, pausing to lean his cane against the edge of the desk, before stepping over to his decanter.

She’s not quite as cool as she’s playing it either, unsure what to do with his total lack of reaction. The silence is making her itchy, she speaks only to break it rather than to add any value to the moment.

"I got in last night," she says, and hears the swill of liquid as he pours himself a glass of whiskey.

"I know."

Bastard, she thinks. Of course he knows. Probably knew minutes after her ship was sighted from the harbour, before they’d even made it to the dock. She tries to ignore the way her treacherous heart squeezes at the sound of his voice. Does her voice, her presence here, have any effect on him at all? Has he missed her? Did he go to the docks to meet her? Has he been out looking for her while she's been sitting here in his office? Is ‘I know’ really all he has to say to her after almost three years? Bastard.

But she hears him gulp as he knocks the whiskey back in one go, and the chink of glass on glass as he pours again. She can't seem to take her eyes off the gleaming silver crows head of his cane, close enough for her to reach out and touch if she wished. What would he do if she did? What would he do if she reached out and touched him?

She can't tell where his head is, can't tell what he's thinking.

While she is preoccupied with her thoughts, he comes around the desk again and pulls out the chair on the other side, easing down into it, slowly stretching out his bad leg. Takes one deep breath in, and slowly lets it out through his nose. She sees his eyes tick downward, to where a gold medallion sits on a leather cord around her neck, visible through the open collar of her shirt.

Then he reaches his glass forward, across the desk, and she reaches out her own to clink them together.

His hands are bare.

As they both take a sip in silent toast, he meets her gaze over the rim of his glass, and she knows the look in his eyes is what she's come all the way back here to see.

~*~ * ~*~