TROUBLE , kaz brekker

ii. the name's sturmhond.

CHAPTER TWO

KAZ BREKKER WAS BEGINNING to understand.

He wasn't like her, he didn't pry knowledge from the calcified spines of books, nor seek it in the words of men long dead. Kaz knew what he knew and he knew it well. That was all.

He knew how desire curled in the stomach's of greedy men. He watched as they clawed at the depths of their wallets until their fingers bled, watched them offer up land, titles, children for just one more roll of his wooden dice. He'd seen them beg and plead and grovel at his feet and all but gut themselves on his crockery just to spill their pillowy insides on his gambling tables in search for something else - anything else - to give. He'd watch them, he'd serve them well and, when the night was over, he'd pocket his kruge and sleep wrapped in silk.

Those men and their longing - he'd built an empire on it. But even then, Kaz never understood what could drive a man to value the short-lived ecstacy of one last game ( it was always just one more ) over his own life.

That was, until he saw Pekka Rollins' name on his home. Pekka Rollins' men at his doors, behind his bar, in his rooms. Kaz Brekker was beginning to understand desperation, his quiet old friend. And he didn't like it one bit.

Then they'd put him in that damn carriage, shook him free of every tool and trick he'd hidden in his sleeves and set the course for Hellgate. Desperation quickly became his neighbour, his travelling companion, his only ally.

But if sudden appearance of a new avenue of pain posed a problem, there was still another, much more terrifying thing that superseded most of what the universe had inflicted on Kaz Brekker before: someone had seen his panic. When his waterlogged ghosts had risen from the harbour and all but swallowed him in their maw, she'd watched him buckle under their weight and disappear into the waves, into the memory, that forgotten quiet hellscape where the waves churned blood and the bloated corpses grabbed back. And she'd seen it.

Then she'd comforted him. The thought made him sick. The way she'd looked at him with those green, green eyes and whispered his name through lips that had a preference for anything but speaking softly. A desire rose in his heart, a longing with no name - or maybe one that Kaz could no longer place and with it...disgust.

He wanted to lean on her, to cling to her like she was the tether back to a life where he wasn't all of this... but how could there ever be anything more. There would always be more money to make, more vengeance to enact. Hope like that was a dangerous thing for monsters like him. It made him reckless, careless - it made him less.

Weakness was seductive when it looked like her. So he didn't look at her at all. And weakness stayed in his peripheral, just a halo of red hair and silken skin that he could never touch. And that was that.

Desperation peered over his shoulder now, as him and Jesper sat bound in Dressen's study, surrounded by bodyguards and enough wealth to make his hands itch. Where was his thief when he needed her? He'd have new walls to decorate by the time he was done with their little problem.

At least his senses were still as sharp as ever. You win some you lose some, Kaz mused. Dressen may have lorded the loss of his money over them, but there was only so much bravado he could cram into a lie. Kaz's gaze fell on the bodyguards and their gemstones, their tailored boots, their remarkably smooth faces. In Ketterdam, a bodyguard with two eyes was a luxury. Dressen had four. The conclusion was easily reachable after that.

"It wasn't your money, Dreesen." Kaz reclined in his uncomfortable wooden chair. "You were brought in as an intermediary. Someone to hire the likes of us. But this operation wasn't yours."