(no subject)

[everymonstrousthing]

There is shit going on in the city, but the Crow Club stays open. Kaz is of the opinion that there is nothing more valuable in a storm than the perception of a safe harbour. It's quiet, but that doesn't mean it's not worth being open. With his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his gloves still firmly in place, Kaz cleans. He empties the back bar and he cleans. Yes, he could pay someone to do this but, honestly, there's never a job done as well as he would do it himself.

Unless Inej does it. And he won't ask her to clean for him.

Comments

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"It is," he said. "Hard for me to get away with that ruse. Too big, too monstrous. No one seemed willing to assume I'd be slowed down by a bum leg or missing eye."

Enough had figured out that he didn't catch things on the left fast enough, though. Some managed to take advantage.

[everymonstrousthing]

"I can see why that would be a challenge," says Kaz, pouring himself a drink, going back on something that he'd said earlier. "Not a problem I ever had." Kaz is tall, yes, and relatively broad, but the tailoring hides that, rather than announcing it, and the cane? The cane just underlines everything.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"No, I don't think it was." Bull grinned and adjusted his weight again, briefly leaning it on his left leg before easing it back onto the right.

"Why crows?" he asked.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Because I'm Dregs," says Kaz. "Through and through." Not as true as it would have once been, not with his girl's initials and a flood of flowers where, once, his Dregs tattoo would have been. Crows because they were clever, because they remembered human faces. Crows because they knew who hurt them, and who helped. Crows because they mourned and plotted. And understood.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull nodded, taking that in, rolling it around as he thought of the crow as a symbol. Kaz wouldn't be the first person he met that claimed it. "I'd rather deal with Crows than the Nightingale."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Why do I feel like there's a story there?" asks Kaz, sipping the drink that he's poured for himself.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Because there is," he laughed. "You wanna go one for one? I'll tell you a story, you tell me one." Bull wasn't in the habit of hemorrhaging information, unless it was information he could afford to share. He had plenty of that, but he was also curious.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz weighs that up for a moment. There was a time when he would have guarded every single sliver of information, kept it in his chest like a second heart. But Darrow isn't Ketterdam, is it? A lot of things are different here.

"Alright."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"The Nightingale is a spymaster, for the Inquisition, which hired me. I'm a spy, my people wanted me in the Inquisition to get and share information. But having two spies work together is like... expecting to alley cats to get along. Lots of circling and hissing."

[everymonstrousthing]

"I can imagine," says Kaz, raising his eyebrow as he takes a sip of his drink. "I never had much time for networks."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"But you did have them," he guessed, looking over at Kaz. "I don't know anyone that works in the underworld that doesn't." Sure, people could go it alone, but that would only get them so far.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Of course I had them," says Kaz, nodding. "Thought they were all Dregs. I didn't trust anyone else. I barely trusted those bastards."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Not trusting is part of the business. You don't get to be as old as I am in this business if you trust too much." He had a narrow few, a number he could count on one hand. Two of them were in Darrow.

"I promised the Nightingale reports from my people, our spy network, and I delivered them. But she had a choice - she could either let me translate them, and trust that I was giving her what she needed, or she had to translate them herself, which would have been difficult if the letters were written in straight-forward Qunlat. Never mind in code."

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz is eighteen, but he knows that to be true. Here, he'd still be in high school. In Ketterdam, he'd been surviving on his wits for years.

"Clever," he says. "You become indispensable."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"It's one way to get things done." Bull shrugged. "Qunlat is a difficult language on its own. Never mind when it's coded by the Ben Hassrath."

He finished his drink, slid the glass across the bar to silently solicit another.

"What about you? Tell me something interesting."

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz turns that over in his head.

"The last time I did prison time, I was fourteen. Law haven't laid a hand on me since."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"What were you taken in for at fourteen?" he asked, wondering. He could think of a few things a kid that age could get picked up for.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Theft," says Kaz. He reflexively looks down at his injured knee. It's a tell, but a deliberate one, one that he lets Bull see. "I fell. Didn't get up fast enough."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull noticed the deliberateness of Kaz's look down. "Good reason to never get caught again." If a man couldn't run anymore, he found ways to never need to again. A man like Kaz Brekker made sure he could stroll as many places as possible.

"Mine's a side effect of losing the eye."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Is that an interesting story?" asks Kaz, raising his eyebrows again and sipping his drink. His knee twinges, just to make sure that he's paying attention to it.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull shrugged one shoulder. "Was on the border of Tevinter and I walked into a tavern; something bad was about to happen to a young man. He was a deserter, caught by a Tribune and his men. Didn't know that at the time, just saw they had him pinned down and I hate Vints. So I decided to make the fight more fair. Got a flail to the face, lost the eye. That young man became my lieutenant."

[everymonstrousthing]

"That," says Kaz, gesturing with his glass, "Is what you get for involving yourself in someone else's trouble." Recently, Kaz knows more than he'd like about that kind of trouble.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull shrugged one shoulder. "Still have an eye left. The trouble got me a lieutenant I could trust from a country that's been at war with mine for generations." He finished his drink, pretty sure he might be starting to feel the edges of something.

"And I got to kill a bunch of Vints. Worth it."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Krem," says Kaz. "I know him." He nods. He can understand the value of a Lieutenant you can trust. "I didn't have to fight for Inej. In the end."

He had, though, hadn't he? In every way possible."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull took note that he knew Krem. He knew the stitching in Kaz's tailored waistcoat looked familiar.

"Something has to be worth fighting for. If you haven't found it yet, I'm sure you will." He wondered if Kaz was the sort of person to just abandon ship. He didn't seem like it. Maybe it just depended on the motivation.