Chapter Text
It was beneath him, but what else was new? A long, long, life left very little.
Still.
This preoccupation, this behaviour. He should be better. He should not be here, doing his own dirty work, scrounging for better-forgotten details in bloody Kerch.
He considered it, this, him, as the murk of Ketterdam settled into his coat. Part of him wanted to turn back to the Little Palace, to grab the Sun Summoner and to force him to--
Which was where he came to rather a problem. Force him? Kaz Brekker had proven difficult to force.
But that was the point, wasn't it? Why he was so drawn to the boy, and he was a boy, when he had so little experience? So little life lived and yet--
He challenged.
With his hard face and his fast wit, his sharp secrets and his brittle fragility. His manipulations. Kaz Brekker was a fascinating distraction.
The Darkling had played at the games of court and life, had played with people, for so long that they were boring. Pressure points could be found, pressed and the wanted results would come. But Kaz was difficult, different. Not so much a thorn as a knife (he'd love that metaphor), this grim faced, hard bargaining, and somehow anarchic boy who annoyed him and kicked his shins just to see him wince.
He wasn't a fool. He knew that whoever his Sun Summoner had been, he would have wanted them. It was inevitable. A rope from him to them, through space and time.
He was, he admitted to himself, pleased that it was Kaz.
And so, for Kaz, he was willing to indulge. Kaz had secrets, and the Darkling would dig them out. And when he knew them, he’d understand his Sun Summoner.
Kaz wanted to manipulate? The Darkling could speak that language.
He left his guard at the Ketterdam docks, this work was private and personal, after a fashion. His first stop was obvious. Kaz's reputation had come with him to the Little Palace: his self made title of 'Dirtyhands', the bastard of the Barrel, lieutenant of the Dregs, and so the Darkling would talk to those Dregs.
The Darkling walked his way through the dirty streets, stepping across puddles and drunks, and he indulged himself again. He imagined his Sun Summoner passing his youth here.
Building his little empire, making himself feared and hated across this miserable city. Thinking that he was powerful when all he'd really done was become the biggest fish in a small Barrel.
For all that, the Darkling could not entirely dismiss Kaz’s Ketterdam education. It had made him himself, and that was…
Annoying, certainly. But appealing.
The Crow Club was the presentable sort of dive that the Darkling would have had more patience for when he was younger. Now the desperation of the staff, the sad gamblers and the stupid tourists, ground like grit in his shoe. He pictured Kaz here, and yes, it made sense. It also felt pitifully sad; the thought that he could have spent a whole life here, that he might have wasted himself earning pennies for gang lords.
But that wasn’t quite right; it was hollow. The Darkling knew Kaz and the boy wouldn't have been satisfied with that. He'd had something else, some backburning plan. Vengeance. He remembered the way Kaz had reacted when he'd offered that to him, the look of shock he'd caught before Dirtyhands could smooth it away.
Kaz was hungry for it in a way that the Darkling knew intimately.
Vengeance wasn't an answer to the mystery of who he was. But it was a loose thread, and the Darkling would pull it till Kaz was unwound.
He sat at the bar and waited for one of the employees to approach; eventually a girl with a tight bodice and dark eyes wound her way out of the smoke at the back of the room and asked him if he wanted to play cards. He smiled.
"Kaz Brekker," he said to her, and her eyes widened. "No- I'm not here to threaten you. I want information. Do you know him?"
"I did. But I'm working," she said quietly. He sighed, slipping a few notes to her.
"For your time. If you talk to me."
He could tear this place down. Tear her throat out, rip what he wanted to know out of her. The thought had occurred to him that, for all that it might trigger an international incident, if he simply burned everything Kaz had had then he would be forced to accept reality all the sooner. Yes, Kaz would have hated him, but he hated him anyway. And hate turned inevitably to--
But it was better to let him see it die slowly. Naturally, rotting into the murky sea water. Let him realise himself that he only had one equal.
So he asked the girl again, “Tell me about Kaz Brekker?”
She nodded, taking the money and hiding it in a sleeve.
“He’s gone. People are saying-- people are saying all sorts of things, but--”
“I don’t care about what they’re saying now. I want to know what he was like.”
Maybe that was enough to tell her who he was. Not that he felt a need to hide it, not here. It would have been beneath him. Her eyes went wide for a moment, then she looked at her shoes.
“He hired me, a few other girls, from the Sweet Shop. It’s a brothel, Dime Lions. Rough. I don’t know why he did it, but there’s rumours that he’s got--,” she shrugged and looked quickly over her shoulder, “I only know rumours.”
The Darkling smiled, he enjoyed what she hadn't said, “Are you scared of what he’ll do to you if you tell me?”
She nodded.
“He won’t. I promise you Kaz Brekker is beyond this place, now.”
He watched as she wondered if Dirtyhands could really die. It was impressive, he admitted privately to himself, that Kaz commanded this much fear. How many crippled boys had enough spite to crawl their way to that?
“There’s rumours that Kaz had something against the Dime Lions. I’m not saying it. I’m just--”
“Repeating it, yes. Why?”
“He targeted them. It’s only rumours.”
It might be nothing, but the Darkling filed it anyway. He thought that maybe she was done talking, he was about to get up, but then the girl clicked her tongue, stumbled to find the right words.
“Uh, he--,” she looked uncertain, he tilted his head and she let out a low breath, “he’s-- he wasn’t as bad as they said he was. Not to me and the other girls. Doesn’t deal in skin, pays fair.”
That was interesting. It was not surprising, not given how Kaz reacted to Genya, but he wondered if there was something more there. The ‘bastard of the barrel’, maybe the son of a brothel girl? Or perhaps he was looking for too succinct an answer, he reminded himself that he had to be careful about drawing neat lines for Kaz.
“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” the Darkling nodded to her, and the girl almost tripped over her feet in her effort to dash back into the shadows.
Good.
The Darkling had come to Ketterdam to find out about Kaz, and he would. But even without learning anything there was a... satisfaction in stirring through the debris of his life. Touching what should be private, what Kaz thought was private.
He would hate him for it. For a while.