The Crow's Witch

Chapter 1

Coins tumbled onto the tables, the clicking sound of their gold rousing the onlookers as women leaned closer to the men at the table. Pressing their bodies against the male's arms whose eyes immediately light up, chests puffed with pride as he pushed his stack of coins into the center.

Cards were shuffled in mid air, thrown from one hand to another. The dealer's hands working in a blink of an eye. Somewhere close a machine let out a victory chime as the women in front of it squeal in delight, crouching as they held the hem of their skirts up like one would a basket. Coins spitting out of its mouth and into the curve of their skirts.

The Crows Club was a black building filled with swirling colors of wild costumes and dream-like masks. Lit dimly by the warm over lights hung in each corner. Only few wore the rags and tattered clothes of the Barrel, walking in with their backs hunched, eyes wide and rolling in desperate hope for a miracle.

Kaz Brekker curled his gloved fingers on the crow's head that gleamed in the small light, resting his cane on the floor as he stayed standing straight in front of his bar. His eyes were trained on a certain dealer in the center of the room. The long haired man still held himself tall, a charming smile on his face to lure in the pigeons. All to hide the two very broken fingers on his hand.

Dimitrix, the man's name was. A dealer who'd thought he could sneak under Kaz's piercing gaze. He'd been caught shuffling in the favor of a disguised merchant, bribed by their wealth and in a span of minutes caught by Kaz as he walked through the door.

"Should've ran him out." A glass of rum clinked onto the counter as Milo leaned forward. He was a blonde man with feminine features but a tall built body. Milo scrunched his face at the dealer. "Sly bastards like that will never learn to be right and honest."

"No." Kaz agreed, picking up the glass as he took a sip. "But they do learn how to fear."

"You are quite scary." Milo nodded to himself, turning his head away sharply when Kaz's gaze flickered down onto his own. "Not-in the sense that you're a thug. But like, the foreboding fear of a dad you really want the approval of. You know? I know you're only like a couple years older than I am and you hardly have the right equipments to be a dad-"

Milo's rambling continued on but Kaz had already walked away. His cane thudding consistently against the floor when the sight of Anika's messy curls caught his attention. Kaz reached his office just as she did, opened the door with his gloved hand and kept it from closing with his cane as he walked in. Anika following close behind.

"Well?" Kaz prompted, rounding the dark wooden desk.

"Black Tips, like you said. They've gotten quiet since Brawler died, so it took a while to find their base but Elliot's been using boys, barely ten to find more fighters-"

"How?"

"Slaves, fresh off ship. Runaway whores, anyone with a bit of muscle and a desperation for escape."

"No. How are they preparing them to fight?" Anika's brow twitched slightly at the question but she refused to frown. Not in front of the man before her. Kaz rapped the beak of his cane against the desk. "Brawler was big, built and trained to fight. You could say he got lucky, that he trained hard enough to have won those fair and square. But these new ones? These boys?"

"Maybe Elliot's got a heartrender on parem."

Silence stretched as Kaz tapped his fingers on the head of his cane, staring out the small window into the blinking lights of the Barrel. He'd seen the effects of a heartrender on parem. Nina Zenik had controlled a whole army to her bidding, he'd been right next to her when she did so. And that was exactly why Elliot could not have had a heartrender on parem stashed somewhere in his pockets.