Kaz literally refused to believe that Jan would hurt his kid.
Like this is the smartest man in Ketterdam, and a miser to boot. This boy would never bet money he wasn't 100% sure he was gonna win.
And EVEN when Wylan told him his Father would never do it, he STILL refused to believe it.
And I'm positive he didn't trust Van Eck.
He just trusted he would be a father.
Kaz doesn't know much about fathers, only his own, and he couldn't think poorly of his own dad, so he had to believe that even if they were horrible people, at least these men were still fathers. So of COURSE they cared about their kid.
Kaz is a lot of things, but he would not believe a father would do that to his son.
wylan telling Kaz “alby rollins can’t help who his father is” and telling him to leave him alone because he’s just a kid 😭 it’s almost like he was the abused child of another powerful man. almost. hm
I think a really underrated quote from chapter 3 of Six of Crows is when Van Eck tells Kaz that he can’t help but wonder what “a boy of your intelligence might have amounted to under different circumstances” and Kaz replies “I’d just be stealing from a better class of sucker” because whilst at face value this is simply a suggestion of this is who he is and circumstance wouldn’t have changed that it’s also yet again an insult of Van Eck and a continuation of Kaz’s direct assault of Van Eck’s performative morality and the philosophical conversation they’ve been having about murder and trade - such as when Kaz states that 1 in 5 if Van Eck’s ships never return to port because they sink or fall prey to pirates so “let’s not speak of violence” or of Kaz openly claiming that they share the same cause for both being murderers: “profit”.
"Zoya eyed an imposing building that Nikolai could have sworn had been called the Emerald … Empire? Palace? It had once been done up in Kaelish green and gold. Now it was outfitted in heaps of fake jewels, and a sign over the door read THE SILVER SIX."
That's an homage to the ice court heist.
To remind everyone that he was able to go in and out of the ice court with only six people.
That he took on Pekka Rollin.
That he threw one of the most upstanding Merch in the country to Hellgate.
Hello Six of Crows fans, in case you were having a bad day today, this is your reminder that to almost everyone in the Church of Barter in Crooked Kingdom, it seemed like an esteemed, wealthy, adult businessman and politician just completely lost his mind at some random high-school age delinquent from the slums and blamed a massive scandal on him. Really just zoom out for a second here. To us as readers, Kaz is, well, Kaz, but to everyone in that story without the context of who he is, he is essentially a random kid with a cane and a questionable haircut. Van Eck in that scene is accusing him of everything from conning him to disguising his son as someone else. This would be like Elon Musk getting on national television after a massive tech disaster and blaming the entire thing on a fairly average high schooler with a light criminal record. It's just so absurdly funny to me, I will never get over it.
We’re always talking about the “what’s the best way to steal a man’s wallet” scene, but I think we, as a fandom, need to talk more about this gem from Crooked Kingdom:
“Do you know what Van Eck’s problem is?”
“No honor?” said Matthias.
“Rotten parenting skills?” said Nina.
“Receding hairline?” offered Jesper.
“No,” said Kaz. “Too much to lose. And he gave us a map to what to steal first.”