Son of Wind, Son of Fire

2: Kyara

Kyara would never get used to the smell of smoke, fish, and slightly stagnant water Ketterdam always held. She pulled her coat tighter around herself, glancing around, knowing her Fjerdan blonde hair would stand out in the sea of browns and blacks, only a few heads of Kaelish red hair breaking the monotony.

She sighed, and walked off, holding onto her bag, feeling the familiar weight of her flute, a welcome comfort. She did not like this town, with it's cramped alleys and tight canals, so much different from the sprawling fields and beaches of the Ravkan coast.

She couldn't imagine how anyone felt safe in this town, not without the protection she had. She could see a few people spare her a passing glance, one of which she knew was a Dime Lion, who just turned and hurried away.

When you had the protection of the Barrel's worst criminal, people kept their distance, and their own business.

Kyara sighed softly. She was here to see that very person, the letter from her mother cluthced in her hand. Nina had been insistent that Kyara deliver the message to Kaz, and that she spent some time in Ketterdam after that. She said she had already arranged for Kyara to stay at her uncle's house, which made her a bit nervous.

Matthias would be there.

She frowned slightly at the thought of her cousin, who had plagued her mind since the last time she had seen him. He was so handsome now, tall, broad, with the same mischievous glint in his eyes that her Uncle Jesper had. Something about it made her unable to stop thinking about it.

She shook her head, glancing around. She might have Kaz's protection, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be any idiots who might try something. You had to keep your wits about you in the Barrel.

She kept walking, her hair blowing in a soft, muggy breeze. She especially hated Ketterdam in the summer and spring. There was no cooling ocean breeze to blow through here, just the muggy, blanket-like heat of the city, the smell of smoke making it even worse.

Kyara almost wished she had Tailored herself before coming into the city. She felt like she had a giant target on her back, and felt uneasy, the unease of a prey animal knowing it was being watched by a predator, but not seeing the danger where it lurked. This wasn't the unease of Inej watching her steps, this was something worse.

She just kept walking, but focused her hearing behind her, trying to tune out any unneeded sounds, until she found it. The sound of two men walking, one of their strides uneven, the others heavy.

Honestly, did these people know nothing of stealth?

Sure, she was no Inej Ghafa, but she had had enough lessons from her aunt to know how to walk silently, so that no one would be able to detect your footfalls, not even the brush of fabric against your legs as you stepped, no matter how loose-fitting your garments were.

Kyara ducked into an alley way that she knew led through onto another street, taking the seconds of time she had to drag her hair through her fingers, brown spreading like ink through her loose waves, as she kept walking, disappearing into the crowd of Kerch, slipping like a fish into the school, hiding from the sharks that prowled.

As she glanced back briefly, she saw her followers looking baffled, looking around for the young Fjerdan, not the young Kerch she looked like.

She grinned, and turned and kept walking, quite proud of herself. Once she was out of sight, she did the same thing again, changing her hair back to it's usual blonde.

She had been told many times she was a rare specimen, that the other Grisha deduced her powers were from her mother's battle with jurda parem, the drug that had taken so many other Grisha lives, that no Grisha but Nina Zenik had survived.

She sighed softly. She had heard her mother's stories of her struggle with the after-effects of parem, how she wouldn't have gotten through it without Kyara's father.

Her father. He was the other reason she hated Ketterdam. It had been in this maze of streets and canals that her father had lost his life, during the elaborate plan made to acquire their money from Jan Van Eck, the mercher who had swindled the six of them, her uncles and aunt, her mother and father. Matthias Helvar. The man her cousin Matty had been named after, the man that had given her her middle name. She cursed these stones for having taken her father away, for having never allowed her to get to know him, to having to subside on stories of him. She loved the stories, but it didn't fix the fact that she had never had a father to curl up against when she was scared, to tell her it was alright, that he wouldn't let anything hurt her.

"Miss? Miss?", a voice behind her called, causing her to turn.

A young boy stood there, a wallet in his hand. Her wallet.

"You dropped this, miss."

She smiled, taking it from him with a nod of thanks, before she started checking through it, and found a new slip of paper.

Van Eck boathouse. Twelve bells.

Kyara knew immediately who it was, the neat but scratchy handwriting familiar to her. If Kaz was sending her a note, it meant he wasn't at the Slat, which meant she was walking the wrong way.

She sighed softly, and turned, heading back up the street, the young boy who had given her her wallet nowhere in sight. She thought nothing of it; Kaz had obviously just paid him to deliver the message, not stick around her.

She headed back towards the Financial district, a frown on her face. All of that walking for nothing? She had a feeling her uncle was just testing her, or maybe he had a different reason. Perhaps she would have been jumped if she had headed straight towards the Van Eck mansion. She knew it was only just past seven bells, so she had several hours, but if she was going to be staying with her uncles, she might as well head over there now. She set her feet towards the mansion, glancing around as she did.

Maybe she could get used to this place.