TROUBLE , kaz brekker

xiv. it's hard to keep track of all your strokes of wisdom.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ECHO SPENT THE NEXT three hours running around Ketterdam with a speed and agility that really would have been useful when she was fleeing for her life across the continent.

Find me something, Kaz had demanded, you know enough people in this city. Get me information and do it fast.

Most of the people I know in this city would sell me to my mother. She'd replied.

Do it really fast then.

With a lot of arguing and the threat of a variety of unpleasant forms of revenge, Kaz had eventually allowed her to take Jesper as back-up. Echo had to admit, if she was going to get kidnapped and trafficked across The True Sea, it would be nice to have the Gunslinger there to lighten the mood.

Little Ravka, the self-established community of Ravkans within Ketterdam, had been their first, and quite frankly only, port of call. They bounced from house to house, grisha to grisha, asking anyone who kept the door open long enough to listen what exactly they knew about the Neshyenyer. Most laughed in her face, the general gist of it being that no grisha would willingly step foot in Shu Han.

No sane grisha, Jesper had corrected with a smile.

Another door slammed shut.

The thought of returning to the Crow Club empty handed was enough to make Echo Caddel feel slightly nauseous. Jesper agreed. Kaz had been a little unpredictable of late and the last thing either of them needed was a brooding, pouting, vengeful criminal getting a little too feisty with his cane. Until they came across a Shu Durast who'd only laughed in their faces half as loudly as the rest.

The Neshenyer is a fake. He'd said.

Jesper leant forward. How do you know?

Durasts know.

Echo wrinkled her nose at his ambiguity, looking a little less than convinced. Jesper slid another stack of coins across the table to...loosen the man's tongue. Greed is my servant and my lever, Kaz had once told her. It looks like Greed would have another master before the day was through.

It feels wrong. The Durast twirled a coin between his knuckles. It's materials are too light, too flimsy. If you swung the sword that hangs in Ahmrat Jen, it would break. That is not the work of Sankta Neyar.

They'd bid him thanks, threw another handful of coins on the table for good measure and picked up the pace back to the Crow Club. There was no indication the miserable looking Durast even knew who she was, let alone the price on her head. Yet, paranoia lurked on Echo's shoulder like an unwelcome guest at a dinner party, gnawing away at rational thought, logical sentiment, until every stare was a money-hungry imposition on her safety.

Jesper didn't say a word, not when Echo glanced over her shoulder four times in as many minutes, not when she made him slow then rapidly quicken his footsteps and certainly not when she caught sight of a sheet of fabric the exact same shade of her mother's hair and nearly had to empty her guts into a darkened alley. Jesper kept quiet through all of it - a care that Echo wasn't sure she deserved.

When the pair darkened the Club's doorsteps, Kaz was already waiting, pacing, scowling at the timepiece he kept tucked away in the folds of his jacket. He looked up at their entrance.

"So?"

"It's definitely a fake." Jesper said.

Echo nodded. Her words were breathless and jagged and her cheeks were undoubtedly flushed red but Kaz didn't seem to care about anything but an explanation.