Mavka was a Corporalnik like no other, a theif like no other, and a little sparrow among a murder of crows.
Her safe haven was with the boy with the cane and the pretty eyes, despite the two seeming like opposite ends of a live wire, and now they h...
Not many people in Ketterdam knew of Mavka Alexeyeva and that was exactly how she liked it to be.
Only whispers of a Shadow that was never seen but always on the prowl, gathering information and sticking to the darkest corners to get dirt on the worst of people the city had to offer.
And yet when they saw her, a small, meek looking girl, standing behind Kaz Brekker and his gang they might not have thought twice of it, because who would ever look twice at someone like her?
She was the smallest, with wavy chestnut hair that stopped just below her jaw. Her eyes were dark yet fawn like, the lines of her face softened - no scars, no wounds, no marks to give off the impression of some kind of danger; all of those remained beneath her clothes, a reminder of worse times for only her eyes.
If the people she surrounded herself with were Crows, then she was a Sparrow.
Sparrows were delicate creatures; fiercely intelligent for their size. Adapted to chirp dialects unique to each region they inhabited.
Most would believe she didn't fit the group of vicious criminals and spys so feared in the city; but that was what made her so vital to their group.
Underestimation was her greatest advantage.
And it was better to be a Sparrow, living or dead, than have no birdsong at all.
After all, Sparrows dared to jump before they knew how to fly, even with their tiny wings, and they learned how to fly only because they had the heart jumped in the first place.
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Kaz and some of the Dregs had come back from a meet up in the town square with a rival gang of theirs - they emerged a man down yet victorious, thanks to Brekker himself, while the other gang had been extorted, outsmarted and out-threatened by the seventeen year old with the cane and the wise eyes.
Mavka had observed from her seat on the stairs leading to the back offices - Kaz had passed her to talk to Per Haskell and nodded at her as he went, to which her lips twitched upwards.
Half of the information Kaz had needed to obtain the upper hand that night was retrieved from her, after all, and this was the closest to a thank you or appraisal she'd get from the typically stoic boy.
Mavka had two years to get used to it, and if it bothered her she certainly wouldn't have said it aloud.
Two things anyone who knew her could say about the girl was that she always kept her head down and her mouth shut.
Anything else was up to a toss of the dice.
She wore an old red shirt tucked into black trousers, with a thin and tattered black cloth jacket a few sizes too big for her frame.
