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chapter two: BLOODY KNUCKLES
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LEV HAD ONCE heard a heartrender who'd visited Ketterdam during a relief mission describe the city as a person: the narrow canals that snaked between buildings and streets pumped blood and breathed life into the skin of the Financial District, East Stave, the veins keeping the city up and moving; the University, the heart, fed by every ebb and flow of the tide against the grimy stone edges; the harbor, the head, holding everything together.
The heartrender — whose name Lev had long since forgotten — had explained that there was sickness, too; black and bitter, rotted organs and unhealed wounds seeping from the Barrel and its surrounding land. At the time, Lev had not understood, because you could only nod along and mutter affirmations for so long when someone told you about a place you thought you would never visit. Lev wasn't going to leave the palace — guards never left the royal family's side. And this royal family had barricaded themselves off from the rest of the world, leaving political matters to their general. So, Lev was barricaded too.
Perhaps that was why the city still surprised her with its capacity to survive, to flourish even when the sickness spread to the heart and head. Fifth Harbor, claimed territory for the Dregs, was no more respectable than Ketterdam University or the Financial District, where merches like Dreesen conducted their business. The Crow Club dealt cards to the same people that frequented dinners with Zemeni ambassadors.
Lev had never been to the rest of Kerch or seen what more the country had to offer. Kaz, she'd heard from the few Dregs who'd been there to witness his rise to power, had come from the city, born and bred with veins of vitriol that sang for violence the way Lev's did when she called on her flames.
Jesper had told her he was born in Novyi Zem and moved to Kerch a few years ago, but she'd never asked anything beyond that; he didn't seem inclined to tell her, even if she had. Inej, with her knives and belief in the saints and good heart, came from Ravka, from the deserts and the caravans and the true Suli silks that had always been more beautiful than Tante Heleen's fakes.
