Drowning (Kaz Brekker)

iv - Scars

WHERE WAS SHE? Kaz didn't know why he cared. He didn't, so much as he was curious. Every night she would slip into his office and they'd down the night in coffee, silent apart from when they'd interrogate each other. They never answered each other, never learnt anything. He didn't, anyway.

Asra Behandelar was an enigma. She was insufferable. A subtle kind of insufferable that had wormed under his skin and settled happily, sending him sly smiles when she thought he wasn't looking. She was odd. Too confident, too good, too cagey and, the moment it was required or even just when he looked at her hashly, too quick to shut her mouth and straighten her spine.

He'd done as much research as he could, sent Inej or some other spider down every lead he found. Dead ends, all of them. There were no records, no family members, no recollections. For all it seemed, Asra Behandelar had simply popped into existence the moment she set foot in his club.

It was a fake name, of course it was. But that opened more questions than answered. Why change it? Who had she been before Ketterdam, before the Crows? Who was after her? He couldn't get a straight answer. Kaz suspected he could wring her neck and she'd still dance around her answers with that smirk plastered across her face.

Which smirk? he wondered. He thought he was coming to understand Asra, at least be able to predict her. Then she'd pulled todays stunt.

He'd watched Asra melt away, leaving a stranger in her place. She wore the same face, same clothes, nothing had technically changed. But everything had. Her posture, usually so relaxed in the way of someone drowning in their own pride. She believed herself immortal, and held herself as such. Not this stranger. She stood tall, she moved in fluid, almost inhuman motions. Her smirk was usually knowing and amused, this stranger's was pure sadism. Kaz had watched her changed, and he'd been dumbfounded as this woman negotiated and threatened and smiled all the while.

And now where is she? He hadn't seen her since. He'd interrogated her, of course he had, and as always she'd told him nothing. Then she'd left him, and Kaz was yet to lay eyes on the woman who may have been Asra Behandelar.

He had to wonder. Who was the truth to her? Was Asra the mask? Or was the woman she'd become today? She became both so easily. It was impossible to tell.

Then there were her answers. Kaz knew he couldn't judge for secrecy. He was made of myths and stories and not-quite truths. But there was a sliver of honestly beneath it all. He was exactly what they said, exactly the monster they made him out to be. He was as much Dirtyhands as he was Kaz Brekker. Moreso, sometimes.

Then there was Asra. Two months she'd been in Ketterdam, two jobs he'd taken her on, and nothing had come of it. Kaz didn't know what to expect, but even among her fellow Dregs Asra was a stranger. A quiet haze of muted red slinking around the edges, unremarkable and uninvolved despite everyone's best attempts. Even Jesper could barely get a few words out of her.

Nothing that concerns you. Who was she kidding? In what mad world did that not concern him? What mad world was she from? A world where girls of sixteen couldn't remember the faces of those they'd killed, every one blended together by time. Kaz was the same, of course, but that was besides the point. Asra had enemies, she'd said as much, but he hadn't known they were so close.

I didn't remember him. He couldn't blame her. The man was unremarkable as anything, his only interest the money Kaz planned to take from him. Who else didn't she remember? Who else was waiting?

I'm sorry. Those were the words that rattled him. In the two months he'd known her, Kaz hadn't once heard Asra mutter an apology. She didn't say sorry. She broke wrists that got to bold, shoved clumy drunks into canals, laughed in the face of gunfire and grinned when someone pulled a knife. She didn't apologise. She was chaos incarnate. Chaos didn't get to be sorry.