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When Kaz Rietveld pulled himself out of the empty void and into Ketterdam’s Fifth Spaceport, he didn’t have a plan. How terribly naive of him. Looking back on that moment, that last shining moment, he cringes. Some small part of him lives in fear of that little boy, so sure of himself and so terribly open for plucking.
Dirtyhands’ fingers are covered in blood. They say he can’t touch a single thing without staining it.
There’s nothing underneath those gloves. I’ve seen it myself.
They say he’s got claws under there, and they only come out when he’s right on top of his prey.
There is always some truth to rumour. Kaz has mostly forgotten how to tell the truth, but just this once:
He takes his gloves off only in the privacy of his bedroom on the Ferolind, and only in the company of himself. There is, of course, an exception to that rule, as there always is, but we’ll come back to that.
He takes his gloves off only in the privacy of his bedroom on the Ferolind, and when he does, his slender lockpick’s fingers shine unnaturally bright. His fingernails, once made of keratin, are now stronger than metal. He used to keep an oyster-shucking knife in his sleeve. Now, he finds he has no need for it.
It’s not unusual, on Kerch, to see people with mechanical attributes. It’s almost more unusual to see a perfectly human person – internal organs and everything. Kerch children are given surgery at a very young age, to make their bones stronger, their lungs less likely to produce a cough. They say Ghezen was the first to adapt, in order to work harder, work longer, make more kruge. Any good patron would do the same. The Kerch do so love their commerce.
Kaz, though, is different.
Of course he is.
He’s a Crow.
He and Jordie had come to Ketterdam on a small ship, travelling one of the canals connecting it to the greater Kerch ship. It had been packed with people, and Kaz remembers the smell of unwashed bodies permeated with haphazardly posted incense burners.
They’d sold their father’s farm after he’d gotten caught on the wrong end of a plough. The kruge they’d gotten from the sale was nestled beneath Jordie’s foot, collecting sweat and probably stinking of thirteen-year-old boy, but it was safe.
They’d spent some money on a nice room for a week and spent hours watching the cars go by, seeing all the people walking down the tunnels headed for the famed Barrel. In the evenings, they went for walks and marvelled at the mechanical flashes at every corner. Back in Lij, their father had been the only person they’d known to have had the surgery as a baby. If he turned just right, the metal in his skin caught the artificial sunlight and shimmered.
During the day, Jordie caught a space bus to the Exchange, a great ship that could move all over the solar system, visiting Ravka and Shu Han and even Fjerda. He told Kaz he was looking for a job as an errand boy. They’d be rich just like that, he promised. But the thing about late-stage capitalism that no one tells you is, the only way to be rich is to be born rich. And who would expect two farm boys to know anything about that?
No one wanted to hire a real boy, Jordie had said, exhausted after a long day and throwing himself on the bed he and Kaz shared. “Anyone who is anyone on this damn starship is mechanical.”
Kaz walked up to where his brother had strewn himself, like dirty laundry, across the bedsheets. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. People come here to get lucky, right? We’re more likely to get it, ‘cos we want it more.”
Whether or not he had really believed it at the time didn’t matter, because his brother cracked an eye and smiled at Kaz. “Yeah.”
It was this naivete, this moment of foolish hope, that Kaz curses himself for. It had started, as it always does, with a mechanism. A little dog. Kaz stopped to watch all of them climbing over themselves in a box, their tongues so lifelike and their barks so joyful. He wanted to take them all home and feed them scraps from the dinner table.
Jordie, ever the tradesmen, even at thirteen, had stopped to speak to the boy selling the dogs. His skin had a particular shine to it that they’d come to know indicated a recent surgery. When they questioned he told them he knew a man who would put them under the knife for a very cheap price, cheaper than you’d get in most places, and once it was done, they’d be able to get a job anywhere.
Jordie insisted the boy, who was named Filip, take them to this man at once. They were led through crowded streets and out to where the more upstanding Kerch lived – merchants. Filip knocked on the door of a tall brown building, smelling of clean metal and lye.
It was opened by a large man with a wide smile, who introduced himself as Jakob Hertzoon.
Kaz doesn’t remember the finer details after that. It all gets blurry, different flashes. A shiny red ribbon, a great big mechanical dog.
He remembers Jordie insisting he have the operation first, to make sure it was safe enough for Kaz.
He remembers Jordie handing over all of the money from the sale of the farm, remembers Jakob Hertzoon telling Jordie to come back in a week, since that was how long it would take to heal, and then they could make a decision about whether it was safe for Kaz.
He remembers the empty warehouse, the fearful clutching of his brother’s hand. He remembers their landlord kicking them out of the flat after they missed a payment.
He remembers his brother paying a shady-looking man to turn Kaz’s fingernails to metal, something small, something to get him started. He remembers the painkillers were shit.
He remembers the harsh shrill of the virus sirens.
For a planet almost entirely peopled by citizens with mechanical enhancements, viruses are perhaps the most terrifying prospects. Firecode was common enough, spread by touch and seeking out the gaps in programming. It affected almost every planet badly, except perhaps Fjerda, but they heard little from Fjerda anyway.
There was a particular strain of firecode that year that hit the Ketterdam ship the hardest. They called it the Queen’s Lady Bug, named for the port ship that had been carrying the hacker who must have brought it in.
He and Jordie had ended up on one of the ships carrying bodies to the factories. On Kerch, you served Ghezen until you died, and when you went to join Him in the afterlife, your body was stripped of all material and whatever was found was added to Kerch’s hull.
He remembers passing out amidst a pile of bodies, next to his cold brother, remembers the rush of relief in the knowledge that he would wake up somewhere warm, where his father was still alive and where the only metal was in the small robots that did the housework and hidden beneath his father’s skin.
He remembers waking up.
He remembers kicking, saving breath. They didn’t pay to properly oxygenate the canal between Ketterdam and the factories, so the cold void of space cut into his bones.
He remembers being too weak to do anything but sink, and remembers Jordie’s body had seemed ever so light.
When Kaz Rietveld pulled himself out of the empty void and into Ketterdam’s Fifth Spaceport, he didn’t have a plan. How terribly naive of him. Looking back on that moment, that last shining moment, he cringes. Some small part of him lives in fear of that little boy, so sure of himself and so terribly open for plucking.
He runs jobs for Per Haskell, the old man himself, the one who had taken his fingers and replaced them with adamantium claws, the one who had taken his mortality and replaced it with something less like eternal life and more like slowed decomposition. Either way, he could heal from any wound.
Except the ones which had been inflicted before the mechanization, he thinks, somewhat sourly, as he grips his cane and opens the door to the hall outside his room. He limps down the hall to the common area at the center of the ship, where he suspects he will find the rest of his crew.
Technically, they aren’t his crew. The Crows belong to the Dregs, who belong to Per Haskell. But the old man is never on the ship, and moreover, the Crows are more his than anyone else’s. They’re the best crew this side of Shu Han, and they’re one of a kind. Last he’d seen Per Haskell, he’d been about an hour away from falling out the airlock. Not that he’d known anything about that.
When he shoves open the door to the common room, his eyes find Inej first, lying on a support beam near the ceiling, her mechanical wings hanging down toward the floor. She could be asleep or she could be praying. He watches her for a moment, taking her in. It always feels like a blessing to see her, so akin to the Saints of her faith.
Nina and Matthias are curled together on a couch, his hand passing through her hair and her eyes slipping closed. Nina tends to get colder than the others, given the mercury blood. And, of course, Matthias runs warm, everything but his heart made of gold.
Jesper and Wylan are playing cards on the floor. It’s a complicated combination of Ketterdam Street Poker and Rat Catcher, one that involves betting smaller extremities – finger bones, for instance – and sometimes clothes, a fact which Kaz knows thanks to a wrong door opened a few years back.
He pauses in the shadows for a moment, glancing away from Inej and turning his gaze on each of his Crows individually. He steps forward and taps his cane on the floor, letting out a ringing sound.
“Crows,” he says. “We’ve got a job.”