The smell of seawater in the air, the wind whipping against her face and pinkining her cheeks, the wood of the ship underneath her fingers, this was what Inej had dreamed of all of those nights she’d spent either staring out the window or tailing a mark. Freedom. Not just for her, but for the hopefully hundreds or thousands or however many people who were captured and ‘offered indentured servitude’ which was nothing more than pure slavery. Inej had big dreams, and they all started with the sleek little warship named after her.
Of course, she had to learn to sail first. Soon, she would take to the seas with her crew and intercept boats just like the one Inej had been a prisoner of, but for now that meant sailing around the islands of Kerch and learning absolutely everything she could about the care, keeping, and piloting of her ship. The Wraith on The Wraith, her parents as safe as could anyone could be in Kerch, her future brighter than it had ever been, Inej felt as though she could finally breathe for a moment without looking over her shoulder for one of Van Eck’s goons, or Rollins’s thugs.
And then she wasn’t looking at the water anymore, she was looking at the ground, looking at trees, looking at an area that didn’t look at all familiar to her. But she didn’t feel drugged, or like she’d been hit over the head, Inej felt just as alert as she’d been a minute before. A quick inventory of herself showed she still had her knives, thank the Saints. She was armed. She felt physically well and she was The Wraith. Everything else was secondary.
Here one minute and gone the next, Inej went up a tree as easy as anything to scope out her surroundings.
Nina was not nearly as smooth in this transition as Inej.
The forest she fell asleep in was not this forest. The cart she had above her head as a makeshift tent was no longer there. Her return to Ravka was interrupted, and when Nina came to, she sat up so fast—sobered into consciousness—that she felt dizzy. She was making an awful lot of noise for someone who likely needed to be quiet and assess her surroundings.
Nina backed up against a tree, pressing her palm hard against the bark to steady herself. Breathe, Nina, she scolded herself. You have been in worse situations than this. She had just come off a worse situation. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
While Inej was the Wraith, invisible, undetectable, Nina was still a Heartrender. The world was alive around her, but the steady, uncomplicated heartbeat of her friend was a familiar comfort and her giveaway. It had been a long time since she felt Inej near, and in the moment of confusion and fear, it calmed her. Nina quickly looked up—she did not see Inej, but she knew she was there. At least she wasn't looking like 'Mila Jandersdat' anymore. That would have been difficult to explain.
"I'm not getting up there," Nina said, as her attention shifted from up in the tree to the forest before her. Much like Inej's heartbeat though, Nina could feel others—human and animalistic. Staying in plain sight was a mistake. If she were going to protect her and her friend, then she just needed a clear view of whatever was coming. She made a frustrated noise, swore, then turned to climb the tree. Even though she hadn't witnessed Inej getting up there, she knew the whole way up that Inej probably shadow stepped up there.
Breathless, but settled on a solid branch, Nina finally took a moment to smile, reaching out to squeeze Inej's arm in greeting, but it was short-lived. The weepy reunion would have to wait. "How long have you been up here?" Nina whispered.
Only the silence greeted Nina when she insisted she was not climbing the tree, but an expectant, even humored silence somehow. Nina knew Inej well enough that she probably could have pictured the look on her face. The one that said ‘come up or I will come to get you’. Inej waited, perched on a branch so delicately she didn’t snap so much as a twig, but if she had to she was willing to hang by her arms, wrap her legs around Nina, and pull her up that way.
It didn’t come to that, of course, Nina’s practicality outweighed her dramatics and was rewarded for her efforts by Inej placing her hands on Nina’s cheeks and resting their foreheads together in greeting. The movement once again failed to cause the leaves to even rub against each other. Inej waited for a stiff breeze to rustle the tree branches before she whispered back, so the sound was nearly lost entirely. “A few minutes. How were we taken and placed together at the same time?” The Saints knew Kaz had made his share of enemies, they all had, but surely no one was that desperate or foolish to kidnap Nina and Inej. And leave both of them armed and conscious? If there were kidnappers, they were the worst.
“If someone has my ship, I will not be pleased,” Inej murmured, the thought of strangers on the deck causing her lip to curl in disgust. “You had made it to Fjerda?”
There was a frantic buzzing of something is wrong, and Nina never ignored her gut instincts no matter the situation. But her head pressed briefly to Inej seemed to focus them into something more digestible. She frowned, purposely trying not to look down. She had climbed too high, too fast, and vertigo seemed inevitable. Nina kept her eyes trained on Inej, in the shadows of the canopy they were tucked under.
"This is not something I encountered before," Nina said, struggling to come up with a Grisha who would teleport others to different places. She couldn't even recognize the vegetation here to place where they might have been sent. Nina had made enemies, lost them, then gained them again. Someone could have done this, but the last she had seen of Inej? The seas were a place to escape, where rules and law didn't govern her. Nina wondered how quickly they had messed things up for themselves in the short time they were apart. It seemed unheard of when Kaz Brekker wasn't around to have his hand in things.
"I thought by splitting up, we were away from things, we didn't have to deal with—" Nina made a wild hand gesture that nearly threw her off balance. She promptly dropped her hands to the branch to steady herself. That was when she caught Inej's other question.
"I did," Nina said, her voice as quiet as a whisper. There was so much that Inej did not know, but Nina knew that those untold events were not what she was asking about. "He is where I promised he would be."
Inej reached out a hand to steady Nina, calm and easy as anything. This obviously wasn’t a sustainable position, but up and in the shadows where she could observe their surroundings and prepare for potential attackers was ideal for Inej. Just because she had a love of sailing the open sea didn’t mean she’d turned her back on her first love of sailing through the air. It was her turn to squeeze Nina’s shoulder saying only, “I prayed for both of you,” but that wasn’t the last of that particular conversation. Later, when they had their bearings, Inej would hug her and ask questions about the journey, wipe away tears, and sit in silence when needed. Matthias’s death had been a terrible blow to all of them, even though he started out as the most reluctant member of their party. Inej wasn’t all that familiar with the Fjerdan religion, but she believed that Djel had welcomed Matthias to an afterlife of peace with his wolves.
Propped on the balls of her feet as if she was about to take flight, she cupped her hands around her mouth and blew out the bird call the Dregs used as a signal. There was no return call, which of course there wouldn’t be if their friends were unable to respond either because of injury or being captured. Or if they weren’t here. Wherever ‘here’ was. Inej wanted to wait, but this wasn’t Ketterdam the city she could map out half-blind while being chased by an assassin. This wasn’t Kerch, the island nation Inej knew well. It wasn’t even Ravka, where Inej had spent most of her formative years. It was somewhere new entirely, and although Inej could find entrances and exits where there were none to be had, reacting too quickly could mean making a mistake that put their lives at risk.
Inej took a breath and used that time to send up a prayer to the Saints for guidance and protection. “I’ll scout ahead and see if I can get a sense of where we are. Ten minutes, at most.” She took Sankta Lizabeta off of her belt and handed it to Nina, handle first. Nina with her Grisha powers may not have needed it, but it made Inej feel better to know she was armed. “Do the call and I’ll come back immediately.”
The lump that had formed in Nina's throat was suffocating. She thought that putting Matthias to rest would be enough to help her move on—and it was, it had been—but there would never be a time where thoughts of him wouldn't cause a visceral reaction. She still mourned his loss like a limb, and it was not that long since she placed him in the cold, hard ground. But Inej's words were a balm against her barely recovered grief.
Nina took a moment to scrub hastily at her face. It was stupid, to believe how often they had told one another no mourners, no funerals, and how readily she was to believe it. But Matthias was different. Any of them deserved to be remembered, their losses felt painfully and acutely. It was tempting to fall into her sorrow, but they were not home. This was not a safe place.
The call unanswered was both worrying and unsettling.
She took the knife, but her other hand grabbed for Inej. "Wait—" Not because she didn't want to be alone, but because she felt something else. More heartbeats, more company approaching. "Wait," Nina said, softer, quieter, though maybe aggressive because she knew Inej was perfectly capable of disappearing. And quite frankly, Nina was too. The knife was unnecessary, but she gripped it close anyway. "People are coming. Our kidnappers?" Nina's face hardened, her eyes dancing over the branches past their little hideaway. "I can make them all pass out. See how they like it."
Inej froze in position, perfectly still, and even though her knee still brushed Nina’s she appeared to fade into the shadows provided by the tree branches just a little bit. She waited. You had to trust members of your team--that Jesper would make the shot, that Wylan’s science was accurate, that Inej would find a way in, that Nina would talk her way out, that Matthias’s fortitude would last, and that Kaz’s impossible plan would work out. Together you succeeded, but only if everyone played their role.
She chanced a glance over at Nina, relieved to hear a bit of her old spark in her voice. Inej understood Nina’s intentions in bringing Matthias’s body back to Fjerda, and she thought it was a noble, loving final act. What she could never understand, however, was the emotional toil it must have taken on Nina to do that, and the strength she would have needed. Looking at Nina now, Inej noted the slight differences in her, the way she seemed ‘less’ physically, as if someone had tried to flatten her a bit. It was cause for concern, but one Inej planned to tackle with waffles, toffee, and tea.
That would all happen, later, of course. “They will be very sorry,” Inej said, with a mournful shake of her head. “But we have never been the wait to be rescued type.”