She leaves, sometimes. Ketterdam is the center of all commerce and trade and it turns out she doesn't have to go far to find slavers, because most of them are already coming to her. She just has to go far enough out not to clog the harbor with bodies.
Often, she's home before suppertime. Sometimes, The Wraith is away for a few days or a week at a time before it slips back into Berth 22.
It's after one of these absences that she appears in Kaz's room, her chin lifted and tension around her eyes. He marks the changes. Her shoulders back as if she's about to perform. She can't look at the bed, and she stares him right in the eye. Perhaps she thinks he won't notice.
"I'm ready," she says.
His eyes gleam like the thief he is. "Ah."
He catches her hand and tugs her the other way, crossing the room away from the bed. She resists for a step, looking confused, and then she laughs, her shoulders coming down a notch.
"You know the easiest way to steal a man's wallet, Kaz?"
He takes a chair and smooths her right into his lap. "Why don't you tell me, Wraith?"
"Tell him you're going to steal his watch."
He blinks innocently at her. "Sounds like good advice. I suppose that's how you ended up with my wallet."
"Now who's speaking in metaphors and proverbs?" she teases.
He folds back her quilted vest, revealing a his own purse full of coins wrapped in worn black leather. "Not a metaphor. Just cold hard cash."
She inhales in surprise, but only for an instant. Then she smiles and rolls her eyes at him. "You can't flirt me with your magician's flash like I'm some dock girl, Kaz. I know all your tricks."
She does. For instance, she knows the coins he keeps in the bag are always counterfeits, and that he keeps his real money in the boot of his bad leg. It's the real reason his limp is as bad as it is, but it gives him an advantage, because when he takes it out, he can keep up with the others just fine.
He smirks. "If you know them all, are they still tricks?"
"Next, you'll be plucking a flower from behind my ear."
"You think me so cliché?" He flicks his wrist in a flourish and the purse falls open to reveal it's filled to bursting with blossoms. Geraniums.
She catches her breath. "I never told you."
"Just that they were your mother's favorite." He shrugs. "It was your father. When we first met, he asked if I'd found your geraniums."
She searches his eyes. "But he knows. That you were the one who tracked them down, brought them here."
"I think it was a test. To see if you'd told me."
Inej looks away.
"It's all right. I wouldn't have told me, either," Kaz says. "It was easy enough to guess. I told him a smart man doesn't only give a woman what she already knows she wants. He riddles out what she would want, so he can offer her favorable terms on her future."
Inej's eyes come back to him. "My knives. My ship." Her finger caress his scarred knuckles, climbing each one as if it is its own mountain. "I hear another pleasure house went out of business this week. The last one that still used indentures."
He waves his hand, and beneath it, the purse is gone.
"The invisible hand of the free market does what it will."
