✨ Half my soul ✨ Kaz✖️OC.

The flavour of greed

(Geldstraat)

Kaz thought a ghost appeared before him, but instead it was a Grisha and some of Councilman Jan Van Eck men. They took him to Hoede's mansion, Aeolian works for Hoede. There'd been some kind of incident at Hoede's mansion on the Geldstraat three nights ago. The Geldstraat was the richest locality in Ketterdam, it's where all the Councilmen and the richest families in Ketterdam reside. Hoede's place had been cordoned off and crawling with stadwatch. Kaz had heard rumours of a firepox outbreak, but Aeolian hadn't talked about it. He wanted no part of a plague, but the Van Eck and his guards didn't seem remotely concerned about it.

Jan Van Eck mentioned a Shu scientist by the name Bo Yul-Bayur who had sent a sample of jurda parem, they fed it to three Grisha, one from each Order. The first two were a Fabrikator and a Healer indentured to Councilman Hoede. Mikka was a Tidemaker, he was Van Eck's. Kaz had seen what the drug could do through Mikka.

Grisha manipulate matter at its most fundamental levels, they call it the Small Science. Under the influence of parem, those manipulations become faster and far more precise. In theory, jurda parem is just a stimulant like jurda but it seems to sharpen and hone a Grisha's senses. They can make connections with extraordinary speed. Things become possible that simply shouldn't be.

Van Eck handed Kaz a chunk of yellow gold implying that the Fabrikator turned lead into gold. It has the same melting point as gold, the same weight and malleability. If it's not identical to gold in every way, the difference has eluded, them as well. But Kaz saw Mikka's sickly face the drug came with a price.

With the usage of the drug, men could walk through walls, no vault or fortress will ever be safe again. People who can make gold from lead, or anything else for that matter, who can alter the very material of the world-financial markets would be thrown into chaos. The world economy would collapse.

For ten million kruge he was to break into the Ice Court of the Fjerdan and bring back Bo Yul-Bayur. What kind of job would this be? Kaz didn't know anything about espionage or government squabbles, but why should stealing Bo Yul-Bayur from the Ice Court be any different from liberating valuables from a mercher's safe? The most well-protected safe in the world, he reminded himself. He'd need a very specialised team, a desperate team that wouldn't balk at the real possibility that they'd never come back from this job. And he wouldn't be able to just pull from the Dregs. He didn't have the talent he'd need in their ranks. That meant he'd have to watch his back more than usual.

But if they managed it, even after Per Haskell got his cut, Kaz's share of the scrub would be enough to change everything, to finally put into motion the dream he'd had since he'd first crawled out of a cold harbour with revenge burning a hole in his heart. His debt to Jordie would be paid at last. There would be other benefits, too. The Kerch Council would owe him, to say nothing of what this particular heist would do for his reputation. To infiltrate the impenetrable Ice Court and snatch a prize from the bastion of Fjerdan nobility and military might? With a job like this under his belt and that kind of scrub at his fingertips, he wouldn't need Per Haskell any more. He could start his own operation.