✨ Half my soul ✨ Kaz✖️OC.

Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done

Pekka Rollins survey the raggedy crew Doughty had brought to his office. Rollins lived above the Emerald Palace in a grand suite of rooms.

The kids standing before him wore the costumes of the Komedie Brute, but the masks had come off. He recognised some of them. The Heartrender Nina Zenik, but she looked different now as if she might not last out the month. She leaned against a giant Fjerdan. He was huge, probably former military.

The boy next to them was Shu, but he looked far too young to be the scientist they'd all been so desperate to get their hands on. And then, Rollins knew Jesper Fahey. The sharpshooter had run up an astonishing amount of debt at nearly every gambling den.

His loose talk had put Rollins to the knowledge that Brekker was sending a team to Fjerda. A little digging and a lot of bribes had yielded the where and when of their departure—intelligence that had proved faulty. Brekker had been one step ahead of him and the Dime Lions. The little canal rat had managed to make it to the Ice Court after all.

It was a good thing, too. If not for Kaz Brekker, Rollins would still be sitting in a cell in that damned Fjerdan prison or maybe looking down from a pike atop the ringwall.

When Brekker had picked the lock on his prison cell door, Rollins hadn't known if he was about to be rescued or assassinated.

"Hello, Brekker," Rollins had said. "Come to gloat?"

"Not exactly." He replied.

The look that passed over the boy's face then had taken Rollins aback. It was hatred—pure, black, long simmering.

The boy had stood there, something bleak and mad in his gaze. "I want to do you a favour. I'm going to leave this door unlocked. Wait for your moment and get out."

"Why the hell would you help me?" Rollins asked.

"You weren't meant to die here." He said. Somehow it sounded like a curse.

"I owe you, Brekker," Rollins had said as the boy exited his cell.

Brekker had glanced back at him. "Don't worry, Rollins. You'll pay."

And apparently the boy had come to collect. Rollins wasn't surprised to see him. Word had it that the exchange between Brekker and Jan Van Eck had gone sour and that Van Eck had eyes on the Slat and the rest of Kaz Brekker's haunts.

When Brekker finished explaining the bare bones of the situation, Rollins shrugged and said, "give Kuwei to Van Eck and be done with it. The merchers like the taxes we pay. They let the occasional bank heist or housebreak slide, but they expect us to stay here in the Barrel and leave them to their business. You go to war with Van Eck, and all that changes."

"Van Eck's gone rogue. If the Merchant Council knew_" Kaz said.

"And who's going to tell them? A canal rat from the worst slum in the Barrel? Don't kid yourself, Brekker." Rollins explained. "No one will ally with you. Not against a merch. You'll have the stadwatch, the Kerch army and its navy arrayed against you."

"I don't expect you to fight beside me," Kaz looked at him. "I need to get a message to the Ravkan capital. Fast."

Rollins shrugged. "Easy enough."