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PREFACE: DEVIL'S WORK
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THEY SAY THE DEVIL works hard but Kaz Brekker works harder. From the ground up. Brick-by-brick. Every single action meticulously planned. Each move on the chess board mapped out before the game ever started. Kaz 'Bastard' Brekker was always one step ahead of friend and foe alike, a careful mask of indifference shrouding what festered underneath.
A rotting.
A darkness.
A sinister evil.
He was a God in his own right, to everyone who didn't know him. Only fools thought to cross him. He was always thinking of the finish line. Of the deeds that needed to be done.
He'd heard of Savni Brennan a week before she knocked on his door. Not only was she a new face -- a pretty one, at that -- but she was Grisha. Ketterdam was like a bloodhound for the outcasted, and Savni checked every one of its boxes. She didn't look like much. Then again, Kaz had learnt firsthand never to trust what was on the outside. When she approached him, he knew she'd be desperate. That any scrap of protection and opportunity in a place she'd terribly underestimated would catch her hook, line and sinker.
He had his back to her when Inej let her into his office. He didn't need to look at her to know she was smiling, her soft features weary but delicately polite. He rolled his eyes. It was a wonder she lasted a day on her own letalone seven of them.
"You're Kaz Brekker?" she asked when the door closed.
"You wouldn't have made it this far if I wasn't," came his reply.
He turned.
Savni wasn't sure what she expected from the fabled God among men. He wore a finely fitted suit minus the blazer. In its place was a thick black coat, a modest disguise for someone who wrought fear with just the mention of his name. His hands were concealed by thick leather gloves, even then, in the comforts of his own home. They moved through paperwork on his desk with ease. His eyes skimmed over her, then looked away just as quickly.
She glanced down at her dress. Made of faded pink linen, she had realised her mistake the second she stepped down onto Fifth Harbour where, it seemed, colour went to die. She stood out, and not in a good way; rather, in a way that drew attention.
So she resorted to listening. She had her mother's observational skills and her father's determined nature. With the target on her back that lead her one of two ways -- a brothel or an early grave -- she quickly learned who was who in the devil's playground.
