Shadows: A Six of Crows Fan fic

Chapter Twenty-Five: Jesper

Murder. Murder. Murder. Murderer.

Jesper watched with his mouth agape as the head of the sailor rolled to Inej's feet.

It had been a moment. A singular moment when his anger and pain had overtaken him. A single, small push. And now two people were dead.

Jesper had killed before. One didn't run with a gang in the barrel as the best sharpshooter without leaving a few bodies. He had never fully gotten used to the idea that he had ended lives, only buried it deep inside— but he really didn't feel that bad about pushing Dawa's man overboard, couldn't after what he'd done to Wylan.

But this? In the moment, as the storm raged and the man had been boasting about how good it'd felt to slip his knife into Wylan, it had been a simple choice. But he hadn't thought about what it would mean for the future, for Inej, for the rest of the Wraith's crew. Not until he'd been slumped against the railing with Kaz, the spot next to him empty.

"Jakson!" The scream cut through the air as a woman tried to shove herself into the front of the crowd. Before she could throw herself on the body of the sailor, Specht and Kaz each caught an arm, holding her back. Her face was wild and tears streamed down from mixed-colored eyes. Both her blue and brown eyes were clouded with sadness and rage, strands of black hair splitting them like fractured glass.

Her strangled cries seemed to snap Inej out of her own daze focused on the decapitated head and she turned to the woman.

Jesper's stomach churned as he got a better view of the head, the head of the man his actions had killed. He couldn't look at Inej as she both hugged and restrained the woman from her crew. She clearly knew and loved this man, Jakson, and Jesper had taken him from her, even if it wasn't by his own hand.

"Get your crew under control, Miss Ghafa," Dawa said, wiping blood from his blade with a cloth. "We have work to do." He turned on his heel and started down the winding path behind him, the rest of his acolytes following giving a wide breath to the crying woman and the bleeding corpse.

A boiling rage started to fill Jesper the longer he stared at the assassins walking away. Each one of them had to be as familiar with death as he, if not more so, they all deserved to die in his mind.

"He won't go unpunished, Thalia," Inej was saying to the woman. "I can promise you that. Just not yet."

Jesper looked over at them then and he watched the woman, Thalia, drop her arms from around Inej and stand a bit straighter. She wiped her tears and nodded to her captain, defiance settling on her shoulders. Dawa was dangerous, but his crucial mistake was in making each and every one of them his enemy.

Turning back to the crowd disappearing into the woods surrounding the port, Jesper imagined pulling out his guns and dropping a few of them. A quick, practiced movement in retribution for Thalia's loss, an atonement for his own mistakes, but before he could go through with it another assassin appeared beside them. Unnoticeable and quiet, the first assassin he'd seen of yet who might actually be effective in his opinion.

"The High Sage apologizes for the mess," she said to them, nodding at the body still bleeding into the boards of the dock. "But wishes you to know that, so long as no other incidents occur, all necessary luxuries and arrangements will be afforded to you should you ask for them."

Their small crowd glared at the assassin speaking, even Kaz showed his most deadly, but the assassin didn't blink.

"Is more blood and death your form of luxury?" Inej stated, barely restrained anger burning in her eyes.