Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason. Those were the words whispered on the streets of Ketterdam - but that didn't mean that he never had one.
The Shu Serpent rears her head and slithers from the shadows when a high paying job catches her prying eyes a...
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Zhen Kir-Saran had seen first hand what greed looked like; what it could do to men who ached to dip their fingers into the unforgiving waters of business in the Barrel.
Business in Ketterdam was rarely clean and never fair. Powerful men with hungry hearts emerged from the water with tainted skin marred like ink across every groove and divot, seeping into their very being like a fast acting poison.
Zhen had danced with grief like an old lover, twisting and turning and never destined to be the lead; never in charge of which direction the deadly dance took or able to pry away it's vice-like, tightening grip on her heart.
She and Kaz Brekker had barely survived Ketterdam by the skin of their teeth, now just rotting shells of their naively hopeful childlike vessels.
The streets had taught them how unkind the world could be to people like them, and so they had grown and fought and clawed their way to the top, coming to the conclusion that in order to do so, unkindness would be their crutch to fall on.
To grow up a young girl on those dark, haunting streets, Zhen had fought tooth and nail to stay by his side in order to not get picked off by traffickers, men with ill intentions, or bruises who wanted to drag her back to the Willow. And yet her fighting and efforts had proven to her that no matter what you did, the city would forever drag you down to the depths with heavy chains and no remorse.
To be torn away from the one person who radiated safety and security in her life had been a devastating thing to overcome; for the second time, she had no choice.
At eleven she had been dragged back to the Willow for a high price on her head, caught without the shadow of her friend for once. Together, with the boy to protect her no one would attempt it, but alone on the streets as a young girl, she had had no hope from the start.
The Willow was an even unkinder place; filled with sick adults and tormented souls of the girls who were brought there, branded like an object and sold off to be used as such. Ghosts haunting the halls of the brothel, too young, too innocent, too much to take from girls and boys who had nothing but themselves to give.
The only difference to mostly everyone else that was brought there for servitude was that the Dame hadn't waited for her to reach a certain age: still bitter about the scandal her Saran Kir-Shina's death had brought, along with the escape of her daughter, Zhen had been forced into it at just eleven years old.
Other girls had told the Dame it was too young, too soon, it wasn't right - but what difference did that make in the Barrel? There were always sick men in the world, ones that wouldn't and didn't bat an eye at her childlike appearance, her bony figure, undeveloped frame, fearful doe eyes - those who would pay extra for their twisted desires. Because in the west stave, what went on behind locked doors was nothing but a whisper.
And to the Dame, having the little Shu girl back in her clutches was a lesson to the other girls.
The years had passed and the hollowness in her skeleton grew - he had not come looking for her.
He had not been there like he vowed he would and Zhen was left to fend for herself, something dauntingly familiar but achingly terrifying.
The threads began pulling apart, tethering, and at sixteen she had hatred in her heart that fuelled her.
The reputation of the deadly Serpent was beginning to spread through town like smoke, like the mist that hung heavy in the air.
Like a wise snake shedding her skin, she unravelled and was forced to leave behind the shattered parts of herself for fear of slicing herself bare - never again would she allow herself to be vulnerable to men who had stained their hands in the tainted waters of greed.
Forty thousand Kruge.
That had been the price of freedom to the woman who owned her. To get her away from the Dime Lions creeping claws.
Zhen, with every dirty hand that touched her skin, every filthy word that fell on her ears, every scalding look at her because of how she looked, began to use her silver tongue and unhealthy learned habits to her advantage.
No one had connected the dots when four wealthy merchants and two university goers came to their unfortunate, untimely deaths.
No one except for Kaz Brekker. The only person who had been actually looking.
Bodies turned up across the city, in the university district and the harbour and in the darkest parts of their own safe, guarded homes where they thought they were protected from the sewer rats below.
But suddenly the high paying visitors at The Willow stopped showing up, and her pockets grew deeper and deeper. (Never just regulars, either, but the ones who asked for things off the books, for the horrible things that paid higher than regular experiences.)
The high payers were always the worst of them, the ones who did unsavoury things just because they had power and money and felt that they could. Driven mad by power and authority they thought they had.
It happened to work out that those were the ones that had to go.
The Shu Serpant had been the only girl to have ever paid off her own indenture - how would a girl like her ever come across such funds?
The trick was that it was meant to be impossible, so the girls stayed indebted for as long as they were deemed useful and pretty enough.
But Zhen, a teenage girl with countless of her own tricks up her sleeve, had slithered through the gaps and back onto the cobbles of Ketterdams streets against all odds.
She had gone back to the one she had lost so long ago, the one who hadn't stopped, not once, trying to get her back. Who had been too young and inexperienced before, who now knew how to make money and trick people and had been biding his time so that he could scheme his way into the business world - the world that knew everything about everyone - so he could find a way to get her back.
The reason he had fought to climb that ladder so high in the first place... was because of her.
But then she had done it herself.
Broken free of her chains with her own forged sword.
The Shu Serpant was a whispered name; her reputation became known and her skills reverred across town, and before long everyone knew who she was and for all the bad reasons.
There was such little reward for those who did good in Ketterdam. What use was it when it didn't serve them?
It was a good thing Ketterdam had never shown her a pinch of goodness throughout her entire life, as she felt it apt that she return the favour.
After all, being good was not what she excelled in.
