TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xi. six feet deep...

CHAPTER ELEVEN

KAZ TRIED NOT TO think about where he came from.

Lij was small, quiet settlement full of small, quiet people and he grew up watching his father rear cattle from halfway up the tree that grew in the middle of his family's farm. The world seemed small back then, reaching no further than beyond the fields and full of girls with distinctly less vibrant hair. There was no hunger for revenge, no insatiable itch for more. There was just the tree. The farm. His family.

One day, his father had made the mistake of leaving the gate to the fields open, where the cattle roamed. He'd watched them walk for hours afterwards and pace the shape of the fence and throw their strange, animalistic eyes towards the open expanse of the hills but never even try to escape to greener pastures. He'd lain awake for days wondering why.

The cage is unlocked. He'd thought. Why don't they leave?

He'd gone back every day and watched them and could never understand how they were content in their cage when greater lay just beyond.

Finally, his father had given him an answer. Just because the gate is unlocked does not mean the animal is free. He hadn't understood it then but he understood it now. Like his father's cattle, Kaz Brekker had grown up in a cage. Sure, his had been a little more expansive and a little less literal but Ketterdam was an enclosure that fed him well, nurtured him, raised him and how could he leave when its' kruge-lined bars were all he'd ever known? He was cattle in a well-tailored suit and he'd grown rather fond of his prison.

What did it matter what lay beyond. He didn't know beyond. He knew Ketterdam.

It was an undeniable fact that he could never be like the little people of Lij, content with the quiet simplicity of just living. Kaz Brekker clung to enormity with bloodied fingernails because the alternative was stepping outside the gate and trying to pry more from life than what he could get from the underhand. It wasn't an option.

It's why Pekka Rollins would pay. It's also why Kaz started a plague.

Each blow was heavier than the last. Kaz couldn't tell if it was his own weariness or Pekka's growing appetite for blood but his body screamed louder and louder with each connection of boot and fist and darkness danced in the corner of his vision and made the world very, very dark. It fed the creature inside him that yearned for the pain. He deserved this, it whispered, this was his repentance.

Kaz knew she was there. He always heard her before he saw her. He heard her sharp breaths and her stubborn words and how she'd managed to draw Pekka's attention away from him long enough for Kaz to shake off the memory of the ghosts as they tore at his flesh with invisible claws. He'd nearly fainted, his vision was flashes of white and Pekka's hand was cold on his head they were unrelenting. Rollins gripped his hair and Kaz could do little but sit there and drown.

She'd saved him. It wouldn't be the first time.

For now, he tasted blood on his tongue. Kaz fought the rising sickness in his gut and pulled himself upright as the plague sirens rang through the air and the next punch failed to fall. His arms were shaking and his ears were ringing and that was explained by either catastrophic head trauma or a side effect of the deafening sirens and only one of them boded well for him. For now, Kaz crossed his fingers and hoped for the latter.