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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 12 hours

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Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Content warnings for this chapter: weapons, implied ptsd references, gambling addiction

@justalunaticfangirl

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55445686/chapters/140819224

Chapter 4 - Jesper

By the time Jesper woke up, he was supposed to already be in the library. Shit. Shit shit shit. He fumbled his way into his coat and hurried out of his dorm, arriving just in time to see his new Business and Markets partner walking back out of the building. Shit shit shit.

“Excuse me,” he’d said, hurrying to catch up with the boy yesterday.

He’d turned to face him slowly.

“Hi. Are you…” Jesper surveyed the piece of paper in his hand, as if he didn’t know exactly what it said and exactly who he was talking to, “Wylan Van Eck?”

Wylan raised an eyebrow, tapping his slender cane pointedly against the floorboards. Up close Jesper could see that the kid’s eyes were slightly clouded over, softening the edges of what otherwise would have been a startling blue, but there was no sign of whatever accident might have caused him to lose his sight - except maybe a small, slender scar above his right cheekbone. But unless a good deal of it had faded since he was a child, the scar didn’t cross either of his eyes.

As soon as the note had shown up at his dorm this morning, stating his new partner for Business and Markets was none other than the merchling he’d seen leaving the office yesterday, the reason the dean had put them together was glaringly obvious: Jesper would have to take responsibility for writing the project, so he would be forced to do the work himself instead of letting Helena Dentte gift-wrap him a decent grade. Not that a single decent grade would’ve let him escape from the approaching surety that he was going to flunk out and end up wandering aimlessly around the Barrel until - until what? Until he ended up dead in a ditch somewhere?

“You already know that,” said Wylan, folding his arms.

“Alright, yeah, I already know that. I’m Jesper Fahey, I’m in your class; Economic Principles for-”

“For Business and Markets, right,” he nodded, “We’re being reassigned as partners?”

“Yeah,”

There was a pause.

“Do you, erm, want to meet some time to get started, or…?”

Jesper wasn’t really sure where that ‘or’ was going.

“I have to get home pretty quickly after class,” Wylan swallowed, “My father worries. But I could meet you in the library tomorrow morning?”

Jesper nodded, then caught himself and said:

“Yeah, that sounds good. Say ten bells?”

“Ten bells,”

To be entirely honest, he hadn’t been thrilled to see Wylan Van Eck’s name on the note he was currently distractedly crumpling between his fingers. The chances of him being more likely to pay for a grade than work for it were too high, and if Jesper was going to be stuck doing all the work alone then this plan of the dean’s was going to crash and burn about twenty times faster than it was already likely to. But at least he seemed prepared to start the project - Jesper couldn’t actually remember what the project was, so he’d have to hunt through the piles of abandoned papers in his room later to try and find the original assignment. But he’d had things to attend to first, and judging by this morning he’d apparently let them get out of hand. At least he woke up on campus though.

“Wylan!” he called, rushing up to the boy as he reached the base of the stone stairs, one hand on the railing and the other using his cane to find the edge of each step, “Hey, sorry, it’s Jesper. I’m so sorry-”

“Oh, so you decided to grace me with your presence?” Wylan snapped, turning to face him.

Jesper was taken slightly by surprise.

“Really,” he said, “I’m sorry, I just-”

“Showed up horrendously late,”

“Hey, look kid,” Jesper snapped, because it only took about three seconds for him to get defensive, “I’m trying to apologise to you here-”

“Don’t call me kid,” said Wylan, turning away, “If you want to try showing up tomorrow, I’ll be here from eight,”

Jesper was too taken aback to reply, and for a moment he just stood at the base of the stairs, watching Wylan walk away. He sighed - what time was it? He pulled the timepiece from his pocket and discovered he was over two hours late. Okay, maybe Wylan was right to be a little annoyed. More than a little annoyed.

Twelve bells. He could go to the library alone, to study for a while. He could go and find that assignment, so he knew what he was actually doing when he met Wylan tomorrow. There were a thousand things he could have done.

He walked back to the Barrel, wondering vaguely what Wylan Van Eck was doing at the library from eight in the morning. It was a rare thing for Jepser to see eight in the morning. Jesper didn't want to cross paths with Wylan again until tomorrow; it was impossible to avoid the Geldcanal on the way back to the Staves but Wylan had gone North so Jesper moved South and crossed into East Stave not far from the Slat.

When he’d arrived last night it had been about eight bells, leaving Jesper just enough time to change out of his ugly brown coat before he got to the Crow Club, and he’d found Nina on the doorstep of the Slat. It had taken him by surprise - she didn’t come this way much. Kaz had branded her a snob for it, but they all knew Nina was only here to find a means to an end. Jesper didn’t know the full story, but her beau was stuck in Hellgate on some false charges - at least she was claiming they were false, anyway - and she was making very slow progress through the living nightmare that was Kerch’s legal system in an attempt to win his freedom. But she wasn’t here tonight, and as Jesper wandered past and up towards the Crow Club he wondered what she’d been up to last night. He hadn’t seen Kaz, in the end, except very briefly when he crossed through the Club and gave Jesper nothing more than a sidewards glance, but he had seen Inej.

When Kaz walked through, Jesper was briefly overcome with the need to go and apologise to him. But that was the stupid in him; the part of him that imagined Kaz would forgive him and move on as though this weren’t the fifteen hundredth time he’d brought trouble to his door. He had to wonder why he kept him around, but the answer came pretty easily: he was a good shot, and they both knew he would stay no matter what Kaz said because he had nowhere else to go. So he didn’t make eye contact with Kaz, and instead turned his attention back to his hand of cards and the group of pigeons ready to pour their hard-earned cash into the Dregs’ coffers. It had been a couple of hours later when Inej appeared from nowhere and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Saints -” Jesper jumped, “you have got to stop doing that,”

“Not likely,” she said, “I might need you, I’m going to West Stave,”

Jesper frowned.

“You are?”

“Nina needs me for something, didn’t say what in the message. I just - well, I don’t know what she wants. She said she’d meet me at Goedmed bridge,”

“Okay,” Jesper paused, “What do you need me for? I’m supposed to be here all night,”

“Kaz knows,”

Jesper fidgeted with one of his rings for a moment, then nodded. He kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked to West Stave, because he knew Inej would find it easier than the quiet.

“And you’re joining me at university this week then?” he asked, when he was finally starting to run out of topics.

“In three days, if all goes to plan. I don’t really know what the plan is, but…”

“Let’s face it,” Jesper sighed, “even when he tells us, we never actually know the plan. I’ll never know how he does it,”

“I think it’s called running on up to sixty percent dumb luck,” said Inej, as Goedmed bridge and the silhouette of Nina Zenik came into view ahead of them.

As they approached Jesper realised the strange thing: Nina was wearing her kefta. Of course he knew she wore one at the White Rose, he’d been enough times when jobs went wrong and either he or a compatriot needed Healing, but he also knew she never wore it outside of the building. It just wasn’t safe to wander the streets so brazenly proclaiming you were Grisha like that. He fidgeted, finally falling quiet, and he felt Inej’s eyes flicking over him. Did she know? Had Kaz told her?

“Sorry,” said Nina, looking at Inej as they met on the bridge, “I know the note was vague, I wasn’t sure how much I could really say,”

“What’s going on?”

She played with the sleeve of her kefta.

“I’ve got a job, I don’t… I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like, and I don’t like going out in this thing. I was just going to ask if you could tail me?”

Inej nodded, slowly.

“Where’s the job?”

“The Geldstraat,”

Jesper raised an eyebrow.

“What are you doing on the Geldstraat?”

“I have absolutely no idea. Something a Merchant Council member didn’t want to touch the White Rose for,”

“So literally anything?” offered Jesper.

Nina made a face that said ‘yeah, pretty much’. Inej rested her fingers on the knife handle in her belt - the one with the roses on, Jesper couldn’t remember which Saint she’d named after. He was distracted, because he’d noticed that she laid her hands on it or any of her other knives the same way he did his guns. She was on edge.

Now, as Jesper reached the Crow Club and the sun remained obstinately hidden behind a cloud, the building was about as quiet as he had seen it all month. He fought a yawn as he wandered in, surveying the several empty tables, but before he had a chance to take a seat at one of them games that was actually in progress Kaz had appeared ahead of him.

“I need you at Fifth Harbour,”

“Well, good morning to you too,”

Kaz didn’t look amused.

“Fifth Harbour. We’re quiet,”

“It’s always quiet at this time,”

“It’s too quiet. Go,”

Jesper went. And as much as he might have wanted - needed - to do otherwise, he took himself back to the University District that evening and he went to the library the next morning. He didn’t go at eight, because that was just ridiculous, but he managed to make it for nina bells half chime and he didn’t think that was bad at all. He found Wylan sitting alone at one of the tables, apparently not doing anything.

“Hey, kid, it’s me - Jesper,”

“I’m not a kid,” Wylan snapped, turning towards Jesper’s voice.

“Sure,” Jesper sat down opposite him, “You’re an elder statesman,”

Wylan ignored him. They started work, evidently both half-heartedly, and at some point Wylan muttered:

“I hate economics,”

Jesper snorted.

“Same. What a perfect partnership,” he plunked his fountain pen onto his desk, “Why do you even have to take this class then? Don’t you inherit Daddy’s business either way, merchling?”

Wylan grimaced.

“That’s even worse than kid. And no, I don’t,”

“What do you mean you don’t?”

“How am I supposed to run a business, Jepser?” he shook his head, “My stepmother’s kid’ll take it,”

There was no spite or jealousy in his tone, and yet there seemed something profoundly melancholic about every word he spoke. Jesper wasn’t sure why being blind meant you couldn’t run a business, so he said so, and Wylan just scoffed.

“I’m just saying,” said Jesper, “if they think there’s any hope of teaching me how to run a business they must know how to teach you to run one. And anyway, if you hate economics and you’re not even gonna run the business, what are you doing in this class?”

Wylan shrugged.

“It was the only thing that would make my father agree to let me come to the University,” he said, “One business class. Just in case,”

“Just in case of what?”

Wylan either didn’t hear that question or just ignored him, but Jesper was pretty sure it was the latter based on the blush that gathered in his cheeks.

“Why are you here, if you hate it so much?”

“To find my entrepreneurial spirit, of course,”

Wylan raised his eyebrows, his scar shimmering ever so slightly in the sunlight coming through the window.

“And what’s your grand business idea, then?”

Jesper grinned.

“I’m thinking of providing a service for rich kids who want to make their parents mad,”

“I’d roll my eyes, but that would probably be quite fruitful,”

Jesper barked a laugh.

“And that’s without even knowing how cute I am,” he teased, “Trust me, if you knew what I looked like you’d know I’m gonna charge a pretty steep fee,”

“Is that so?”

“Sure is. What do you think merchling? You could be my first client,”

Wylan did roll his eyes then, and Jesper watched the blue move beneath the slightly cloudy film.

“I think you need to stop calling me merchling,”

“I’m afraid that would come with a price tag attached,”

“Are you flirting, or just broke?”

Jepser laughed again.

“Oh, it’s almost definitely both,”

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 13 hours

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 14 hours

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This post by @dwyntwo has been in my head

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 15 hours

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Hurricane Drunk; the Lungs album

Choreomania; the Dance Fever Album

Someone has probably done this already but I haven’t seen it yet and I think it’s a pretty beautiful thing. I’m a few months late on this but I’ll say it anyway: congrats on 10 years sober to the wonderful Florence Welch

All photos of Florence are from Pinterest, for some reason it isn’t letting me put the links on here right now but if I get to work I’ll come back and add them

#florence + the machine #florence and the machine #florence welch #Florence #dance fever #lungs #choreomania #lungs album #hurricane drunk #dance fever album

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 16 hours

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Grishaverse text posts I made based on things my friends and I have actually said. In real life

I wanna say part 27…?

Jesper: I learned to floss!

*does the floss*

Inej: We’re all very proud of you

Wylan: *softly applauds*

Nina: What am I supposed to eat this hummus with?

Matthias, eating carrot sticks and hummus: I dunno honey what do you want to eat the hummus with?

Nina: Like… a spoon?

Wylan: I’ve been crocheting so roughly and so much that I have callouses

Jesper: You like it nice and rough

Everyone else also present, screaming: THAT WAS SO UNNECESSARY

Wylan: Wait, what?

Wylan: As I said on Tuesday, the only crime I will ever commit is arson. Accidentally or intentionally; arson

Wylan: Or treason, I think I could get behind treason

Wylan: What is treason?

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 16 hours

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Not me saying I’d take this one slower and then posting three chapters in three days

Oops

Genuinely though might take this one slower we’ll see how it goes, but I have a lot of ideas to explains it into a bigger plot beyond just focuses on the relationships

Not me saying I was going to take a break and then immediately writing the first chapter of the wesper ketterdam univerity au

Oops

#starting to see a trend here #there may even be a chapter 4 coming tonight but I wouldn’t rely on that #we’ll have to see #wylan van eck #wylan hendriks #jesper fahey #wylan x jesper #wesper #wesper fic #wesper fanfiction

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 17 hours

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how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant)

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog!

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks.

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims)

#tumblr works it's just a closely guarded secret

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 18 hours

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Hunger Games AU

I’m rewatching the Hunger Games, which means you all have to see as I throw yet another HG AU into the world. No, there are not enough already.

Kaz Brekker won his games at 13 years old. He’d volunteered for his brother, Jordie. Jordie had been 17, just about to age out of Reaping age. And yet, his name had been called when those papers were drawn from that stupid glass bowl. Kaz’s name had been in there 53 times, Jordie’s only 10. Despite being the runt of the litter, even in the Barrel District, Kaz had volunteered. And he’d won. He fought like a wild dog, with his nails and teeth. When they pulled him out and crowned him Victor, he’d thought at very least that he’d be going home to his brother. That all of it would have been worth it. He arrived back home to an empty house and an unmarked grave. He’d torn the house to pieces, leaving hardly more than its four walls intact. It had been home for a Victor, and Kaz hadn’t felt like he’d won much of anything. He became a mentor after that, and a good one too. But the Capitol never did quite trust him.

Inej Ghafa won her Games the following year. She was Kaz’s first tribute; although she had not technically been born in his District, her name had been reaped all the same. She had refused to fight, those first few days in the training center. Kaz hadn’t forced her. But he showed her what would happen to her if she chose not to fight. Recordings of the Games were kept for tributes to study, and he had not spared her any detail, had not allowed her to look away from the screen. She agreed to learn how to use a knife after that. She spent most of her Games hiding. Well, maybe that wasn’t the right word. She was not hiding, not out of fear, she was stalking. Tributes would fall with silver knives sticking from their throats, knives that had seemingly come from nowhere. She’d suffered at the hands of the Capitol after being crowned Victor. No one could deny the Capitol their darling.

Jesper Fahey was Kaz’s second tribute. A farm boy with a knack for shooting. There were no guns in the Games, that’d make it too easy, but he could shoot an arrow well enough. Kaz trained him hard, even harder than he’d trained Inej. Because while Inej could rely on her ability to disappear, Jesper was difficult to hide. The Capitol enjoyed his charismatic jokes, which helped Kaz get him enough sponsorships to win him the Games. The life of a Victor didn’t suit him and his father, but the gambling halls kept his mind off the memories.

Nina Zenik was the District One tribute during the following year, which happened to be a Quarter Quell. She was trained to kill since she was a child. They’d supressed her powers before letting her loose in the arena. It would be unfair to put a Grisha against Otkazat'sya. Not that she’d needed luck. A begrudging alliance formed between the careers, just like every other year. But this year was different. This year, the last two standing, regardless of district, would go home Victors. She’d taken a liking to Matthias Helvar, despite the fact that he seemed very keen on betraying her, and was determined to win with him by her side.

Matthias Helvar was the District Two tribute during the Quarter Quell. He’d been trained to leave no survivors, regardless of District. The Quarter Quell would allow two Victors, and he was determined to go home with the second District Two tribute. He didn’t know her, but she was Fjerdan, he didn’t need to know her. Allowing Nina to watch his back, he’d planned to betray her once the numbers had dwindled. He hadn’t calculated falling for the District One tribute. They were both crowned Victor, and became mentors in their respective Districts. Matthias avoided Nina as much as he could, the guilt of losing his district partner to save the life of a Grisha weighing heavily on his shoulders.

Wylan Van Eck was Capitol-born through and through. He had grown up oblivious to the struggles of the Districts. But when he had been deemed a disappointment by his father, he was forced into becoming a stylist for the Games. He worked with the tributes from the Barrel District. As a stylist, he was forced to watch the Games, watch the violence and brutality. He’d watch alongside Kaz as the tributes fell. If the Bastard of the Barrel was feeling particularly charitable, he’d tell Wylan when to close his eyes and avoid the worst of it. He wanted the Games gone, but with a Gamemaker as a father, he didn’t have much of a choice but to do what he was told, unless he wanted to end up in the arena too.

#not me on the verge of tears over here #definitely not #six of crows #hunger games au

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 18 hours

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Do you ever think about the like ... intimacy implications(?) of Inej wearing Kaz's gloves to climb the incinerator? Like she gets inside of a part of him, a part no one else has seen. She understands him better because of it, sees just how the gloves are made. She can't touch him but touches the thing that's closest and most intimate to him. She finds what keeps him sane and returns it to him. It's nearly erotic without being sexual, don't you think?

Hello and welcome to episode 4 of DK Finally Gets It Together And Answers Her Asks Because It's About Damn Time (the title's growing on me)

Ep One - Ep Two - Ep Three

As always sorry for how long it had taken me to get to this ask but thank you very much for sending it, let's talk!

YES

Y E S

I in fact think about this an awful lot. For me, there are two specific details about Inej putting Kaz's gloves on that feel very intimate and the first is her own hesitance to do so. She talks about how she knows that Kaz would tell her to just get on with it but that she feels as though she's violating his privacy by taking them - I don't have my book on me but I'm pretty sure she says it feels like going into his rooms and rifling through his belongings without permission. The second thing that feels incredibly intimate to me when I read this scene is that when Inej notices that the gloves are unlined and have thin slashes in the fingertips she realises that this is so he can maintain contact with cards or coins or so on when pickpocketing and performing slight of hand and she describes it as "touch without touch". TOUCH WITHOUT TOUCH.

INEJ WEARING KAZ'S GLOVES IS TOUCH WITHOUT TOUCH. THEY ARE SO CLOSE AND YET THEY ARE SO FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER and I'm pretty sure that it's after this scene once they're on the roof together that Inej says it's the first time they've touched skin on skin (though please correct me if I'm wrong) so this is the closest they've ever got to touching before!!!!!!!!!!

I may simply melt into a puddle thinking about them

#dk finally gets it together and answers her asks because it's about damn time #kanej #kanej supremacy #six of crows #grishaverse #crooked kingdom #leigh bardugo #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #kaz x inej #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #nina zenik #matthias helvar #kanej my beloved #*cries in kanej*

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 22 hours

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Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

Content warnings for this chapter: implied violence, threats, implied sa references

@justalunaticfangirl

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55445686/chapters/140788939

Chapter 3 - Nina

“So just to be clear,” said Nina, leaning back in her chair and studying Kaz across the desk, “All you want us to do is act like students? What the hell kind of job is this?”

Nina had been in Ketterdam for five months, and she’d considered strangling Kaz Brekker with her bare hands about three times in each of them. And considering that she could just stop his heart if she wanted to, it was a particular statement to just how infuriating he was that she would be willing to put in the effort of strangling him. She’d told him that once, and he took it as a compliment.

“You heard me,” he picked up one of the forged papers Nina and Inej had brought in with them, that were now sitting on his desk, “Use your own names, it’s only more suspicious if you get caught not answering to a fake and no-one there should recognise you anyway,”

“You might have told us that before Specht drew the papers up,” Inej sighed, “Will he be able to change them?”

“Should be,” Kaz tapped the corner of the page in his hand against the desk, and Nina caught her gaze flicking to his black leather gloves, “All you need to do is act like you belong and try to get close to the mark,”

The mark. Nina had thought she spoke Kerch when she landed in this Saintsforsaken city, but talking to Kaz and the rest of the Barrel may as well have been learning a brand new dialect.

“For how long?”

“As long as proves necessary,”

Nina really was going to strangle this boy. She sighed.

“You’ll have to subsidise my income,”

“You’ll get paid when they job’s done,”

“That’s not good enough,” she said smoothly, ignoring the glance Inej shot her, “You can’t put me out of work for an indeterminate amount of time and not expect me to need the money for it,”

Nina was scraping by as it was. Her salary from the White Rose wasn’t bad, though it could be better, but her commission from the Tailoring was appallingly low and any spare cash she managed to strap together quickly drained away in the endeavours she was refusing to believe she’d reached a dead end in. Kaz nodded.

“We’ll discuss it,”

Inej leaned forwards to collect one of the papers, saying something to Kaz. Nina couldn’t help but wonder why the girl had been put on this job - this wasn’t her specialty, far as Nina could tell, and it didn’t seem to make any difference to the job whether there were one or two of them working on it. Mind you, Nina was glad to know she’d have company and Inej was about the best company she could have hoped for.

“It’s listed in your application that you’ll require a tutor for written Kerch,” Kaz was telling her, “But I can pull that if you feel you don’t need it,”

Inej glanced at Nina. She spoke Kerch perfectly well, though Nina knew she’d learnt most of it at the Menagerie and there were occasional gaps in her knowledge even of words she would use every day at home - as well a collection of words she only knew in Kerch, that no classroom ever would have taught her - but she was still learning to read the language. Nina had been trying to help her, but she wasn’t convinced that her calling was as a teacher and sometimes wondered if she was actually hindering her.

“Up to you,” said Nina, in Ravkan, “If you think-”

“Excuse me,” Kaz interrupted in cool Kerch, tapping the table, “Perhaps we can keep this discussion in a language we all understand?”

“Perhaps you could bother to learn another language,” Nina muttered in Ravkan, winking at Inej when she saw her smile.

Making Inej smile felt like winning something; she didn’t seem to have reason to smile nearly often enough. Kaz finished giving them the bare bones of the plan, which was really no more information than they already had or could have guessed at, and Nina and Inej left his office with copies of their enrolment papers in hand.

“Will Feliks really be happy to let you go for an indeterminate time?” asked Inej, as they walked downstairs together.

Not a chance. But he wouldn’t have much of a say in it.

“I don’t think ‘happy’ would be the right word,” she sighed, “but it’s Haskell who has the last word on wherever I go, and Kaz’s word is an extension of his. Feliks is just my employer, he’s not the one I’m in debt to,”

Inej’s shoulders squared, perhaps uncomfortably, and Nina cursed herself for not biting her tongue a sentence sooner. But the moment passed quickly, and they continued walking together in easy comfort. Nina checked the time - eight bells. She’d have to get back. Inej walked her to the door of the Slat, and as they reached the front Nina briefly squeezed her fingers before she made to leave.

“Sleep,” she told her.

Inej smiled.

“I will if you will,”

Nina shivered as she stepped into the evening air; even her jumper was not enough to keep the cold away. Ketterdam she thought dismissively, rubbing a hand up and down one of her arms. She sighed. This job was making her nervous - it sounded suspiciously easy. What was Kaz after? And what was he getting them into this time?

“Hey gorgeous,”

Nina looked up to see Jesper crossing towards her, and gave him a smile.

“Hey. How’s the arm?”

She nodded vaguely at the spot a little above Jepser’s elbow, where she’d fixed a bullet graze for him not too long ago. Seemingly unconsciously, his hand found the point on his sleeve that the freshly closed skin was hiding beneath and his fingers ran along it.

“Good as new,” he smiled.

“Well,” Nina winked, “I am good,”

Jesper smiled. He was wearing a shockingly dull outfit for him - the only splash of colour, the shimmer of the gems in his mismatched gold and silver rings - and he wasn’t wearing his gun belt. It only took a brief glance to realise he was still carrying his prized revolvers, Nina would probably have been concerned for his health if he wasn’t, but they were hidden beneath his jacket and she wondered why.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, before she could get her own questions in.

Nina avoided the Slat and the Crow Club whenever she could; this hellhole was a means to an end and she didn’t need to sink any lower into it than she already had.

“Talking to Kaz about a job. Where’ve you been?”

“Hell,” he said drily, “But as much as I’d love to chat, I have a shift to get to and I want to get changed before it starts,”

“Don’t let me keep you,” she replied, hopping down the last few steps, “I’ll see you soon,”

It wasn’t a particularly short walk back to the White Rose. Nina headed North as she left the Slat, following the canals as she moved from East Stave onto West. Here the world changed. The streets were alive, because they were alive at almost every hour, with tourists and locals alike dressed in every colour under the sun, their faces hidden beneath masks of the Komedie Brute. It was said - and Nina more than believed it - that the normality of the masks gave people confidence like nothing else. They were themselves, once they were hiding. People would come to West Stave looking for oblivion, sometimes even just to watch the crowds more than sample any of the entertainment for themselves. Or at least that’s what plenty of them liked to claim, anyway. Nina was less convinced by that.

She slipped along the edge of a crowd, trying to dodge between patrons clamouring for attention or downing the drink that was finally going to tip them over into too many. Someone dressed as the Scarab Queen dropped an empty bottle and giggled when it shattered at their feet, whilst Nina tried to pick her way through the broken glass and keep moving. On her way back yesterday, she’d found her arm grabbed by a masked stranger and had to panickedly plunge his heartbeat and knock him out before she hurried onwards, but it seemed she would be luckier today as Goedmed bridge came into view ahead and Nina knew she was almost back. She had to catch herself from thinking almost home. It was an easy habit to slip into, when referring to the place you slept every night. But Nina was several long weeks of travelling away from home, and she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to go back.

A street performer was shouting something to a gathering crowd, drawing attention with close-up magic tricks before he made some grand announcement and splayed his hands towards an explosion of glitter. When the purple monstrosity had cleared enough that only a shimmer was left in the air, the crowd gasped and applauded at the apparently magical appearance of an acrobat dangling over the canal. A Suli girl, younger than Nina, hanging upside down from a collection of wires with her slender body barely covered by more purple glitter and alarmingly thin scraps of fake silk, her extended arm revealing the swirling tattoo of the Willow Switch. Nina shuddered, and kept walking.

The White Rose almost looked more like one of the grand townhouses than it did a brothel; tall and slender, with its own dock, a pale facade, and a magnificent collection of white-petaled roses growing up the walls. The smell of the flowers was cloying, hanging over everything and refusing to let go. Nina may very well be stuck smelling of them for the rest of her life, even if she did ever get out of this town.

“My house girls are as sweet as my roses,” Feliks had told her when she first moved in, clapping his hand over her shoulder uncomfortably.

It had been clear even then that it was a line he liked to feed, but Nina had also since learnt that the roses he used - according to Kaz, the only ones that were strong enough to survive year-round in the hardy weather of Ketterdam - were naturally scentless. Every flower was perfumed by hand, on constant rotation, by the boys and girls in white uniforms who tended to food and drink or anything else clients might need beyond what they had really come for. Some of them were indentured; Nina didn’t know how many, but considering the number of the house girls who were thus she guessed it was a good number. Then again, if that was the case then why did Feliks just have them perfuming roses? His facade was thin enough for her to feel certain he’d be making proper money off the kids if he could. It was part of Nina’s job to Tailor them, paling their skin and turning their hair and irises a vague white - in Feliks’ own words, so that all the decor matched. She slipped them cash, if she could spare it, whilst they were in with her, same with the occasional house girl who needed Healing. It didn’t happen often, but it happened.

But the White Rose was undeniably safer than most, if not all, of the other houses on the Stave - for Nina, at the very least, and as much as it gnawed anxiously in her gut she had to keep herself alive and safe before she started trying to do the same for anyone else - and she had not borne witness to anything like the stories she’d heard of the buildings opposite her and down the street. The girls here were safer, even if they weren’t safe.

She couldn't go through the front door looking like this - messy and out of costume and so on - so she slipped down the side of the building. She actually wasn’t sure if she was supposed to use the front at all; she never had because she never left or returned to the building in the fake kefta she couldn’t enter the lobby without. She’d only seen girls use the front door when clients who’d paid to take them from the building were whisking them away or returning them again, arms often slipped through arms, the girls’ fake giggles and batting lashes somehow fooling them. Maybe they were just willing to be fooled, ready to ignore anything that would crack their illusion. That was what they came for, wasn’t it? A pretty lie. Oblivion.

As she reached the back of the building, the ugly outline of the Menagerie came into view on the other side of the canal; taller than most of the buildings surrounding it, structured like a tiered birdcage. It was the largest and most expensive house on the Stave, shimmering even as darkness began to close its heavy blanket over the city like a forest fire reflected by a mirrorball. How long since Inej left that place - six months? Seven? Maybe a little longer; she had already seemed to trust Kaz Brekker - if trust was really the right word - when she appeared through a window at the Emerald Palace five months ago and convinced Nina not to take the deal Pekka Rollins’ was offering her. She probably owed Inej her life, for that. Or maybe Kaz, but that was the far more disappointing option of the two.

Most of it was obscured by other buildings across the canal but where the lower floor of the Menagerie was almost entirely open, held up the columns that became akin to the bars of the birdcage, Nina could see the blurring edge of a girl lying on a sofa. Someone in the red cape of Mr Crimson approached and she slipped her hand into theirs as she sat up slowly, her neckline slipping off her shoulder. The wind picked up and blew goosebumps down Nina’s neck as she turned quickly away to slip through the back door, her mind foolishly concerned that the girl was going to catch a cold in those scant silks.

“Nina,” began Adrian, as soon as she stepped inside.

“I know,” she breathed, quickly hurrying towards the staff staircase, “I’m a little late, but I was with Brekker. I have half an hour, it’ll be fine,”

“No, it’s not that,” he sounded nervous.

Nina turned back to face him. Adrian was about two years younger than Nina, she reckoned, and before she’d started Tailoring him his wide, dark eyes had made him look akin to a doe. Now they were pale and slightly unnerving, but as someone for whom Tailoring did not come as easily as it did others she thought she’d done a decent job. He fidgeted with the sleeve of his white shirt, threatening to mark the cuffs if he wasn’t careful.

“He scheduled you three more clients, this evening,”

Nina resisted the urge to scream. When had she last slept? Apparently it would have to wait. The rich of Ketterdam having their minds relaxed and their emotions altered took precedence over anything else, and definitely her.

“Fine. Who?”

“That might be the concerning part,” Adrian shuffled, “Two folks from the Zelvar District, one who’s been before, one I didn’t recognise,”

Not much of a problem. And if it was a first visit then maybe it would be more of a consultation about what they wanted than it would be actually altering moods. Maybe it would be marginally less tiring. But Adrian still looked nervous, and his voice had trailed away.

“The third?” she prompted.

Adrian bit his lip.

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