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chapter ii:
THEY SAY WHEN THE DEVIL COMES KNOCKING, pray the Saints hold you close.
But when the Devil delivers you a handwritten note by some battered barrel rat telling you to meet him in a dark alley on East Stave when the church bells rang four? Well, they don't tend to say much.
Ana Lei took the note between her teeth, tasting the familiar zest of depravity and grime soaked into the parchment. A look to the clock propped atop a bloodied dresser. Ten to four. The adversarily feathered crest bled red onto her tongue. Brekker liked to cut it close.
With the words still pinned between her sanguine lips, Ana rose from her solitary table in the darkened corners of her club. The White Fangs had long since moved towards the more respectable business, dainty tea rooms and established casinos that housed the wealthy and the willing, but this towering structure on the corner of Fourth Harbour was worth the pretty penny she'd scrounged for it. Whilst the rest of her operations gave her access to the flowing veins of the Ketterdam wealth, the uses of a more nefarious establishment were...convenient, to say the least.
You're not a dog, Victoire had reminded her, as she shrugged a swathe of dark cotton over her shoulders, you don't answer to sullen little boys.
And she was right, of course. Ana had paid far too much, given far too much, to ever have to dip her head and listen. But when a silent storm was brewing on the shores of Ketterdam, so powerful it corroded the air with some quiet vendetta, Ana could pretend, at least for a moment, that following orders didn't simmer an ancient rage.
As she stepped out onto the cobbled stones, Ketterdam was alive. Even now, when the night sky was the colour of charred bone and the horizon burnt like the fire that scalded it, the violent undercurrent in the heart of the city flowed. The air sang as Ana walked, the breeze parted at her fingertips, a wisp in tailored suits and a coat that kissed the ground on which she stood.
East Stave was abandoned. Dark. Desolate, sans the cowering bundles of flesh and torn cotton that fumbled empty bottles and clutched at Ana's skirts as she passed. She borne them no pity. After all, how many men had she subjected to the same fate? She had no sympathy for those who wove their own jails. She could have no sympathy for anyone.
In the distance, the heavy bells chimed.
"You're late."
Ana walked on into a thinly illuminated strip of moonlight that broke through the staggering silhouettes of houses. Kaz Brekker had his back to the world, the falling moonlight carving his features into something menacing, something worthy of Dirtyhands, something to hide the boy he truly was.
She laughed into the humming night air, a trail of white vapour spilling from her crimson lips. Ana's eyes grazed Kaz from head to toe, noting the fit of his waistcoat, the unmistakeable outline of a pistol missing from it's usual holster across his chest.
