Feilan, meanwhile, paces Black Veil like a caged animal - like a soldier memorizing the lay of the land - starting from when the gondel drops her off (with a few breaks to eat or drink or lay down and shake or try to sleep, mostly if Trassel nudges her into it) and all the way until she hears the next quiet splash of a boat in the fog. 

That boat is a small, nondescript boat - not a gondel, but a simple thing for hauling cargo or passengers short distances. It's steered by a Dreg, Minke - one fewer risk of leaks.

"Helvar? What happened - ?" Jana asks as soon as they disembark, looking at Feilan with her brow furrowed. 

"Van Eck took Inej. And - Nina - " She chokes up, then takes a deep breath. "Some winged bastards grabbed her. I've never seen anything like it - their skin was like something made by a Fabrikator, but wrong - " She shakes her head, sharply, then to Kuwei: "Do you know anything about that?!"

(The easiest way to imagine a Tailor - a true Tailor, someone straddling the boundary of Corporalnik and Materialnik, not a self taught Healer like her - twisting a person that much is with jurda parem, and only one nation has had the drug long enough to properly experiment with making use of it.)

"I know that those in power in Shu Han were willing to experiment with parem. That is why we fled, my father and I. And there were stores we left behind."

"They've been giving it to Fabrikators, Tailors, maybe Healers. Those things - those can't possibly be the only ones produced."

They're being more coordinated,  less stupid about it than Fjerda, and worlds better than the Kerch, who seem to think that grisha dosed with parem are to be used as particularly scary bruisers and thugs.

Feilan hates a competent enemy. 

"That is unfortunate. I do not wish to see them with that power."

"We'll rescue Nina first - then we can see about taking it from them." 

"Nina's not the only problem. Van Eck took Inej."

"...I know."

Shaky breath. "Do you have a lead on either?"

"Working on it. Jes, you remember Val, from the Os Alta job? By some insane coincidence, she was at the Ice Court too, tracking Kuwei for Ravka. Saw me and figured we'd have her by the time the dust settled so she came to Ketterdam. Working with Sturmhund for some fucking reason, but they're both gathering information for us."

" - The current Sturmhund's Ravkan, at minimum a privateer, though some of our - Fjerda's - sources indicated she might be more directly employed than that."

"Half a mystery solved, then."

"And, yeah, I remember Val. If she tracked Morozova's Stag..." He runs a hand through his hair. "Those weren't my bedtime stories, but - I feel better with her on the trail."

"Yeah. So," she turns to Jana. "Anything you've been saving on Van Eck, now's the time."

"...He's shut me out of his business for a decade. I really don't know much about that. He hasn't publicly disowned me yet, though, so - I asked around for gossip. His wife, Alys, is pregnant, he's been acting antsy lately..." There's a few other details on recent movements and rumors. 

They can find a way to use all that.

" - It isn't Alys's fault her parents married her to my father. Just - don't hurt her? Too much?"

"I'll be proportionate."

...Best she can ask for, especially with Inej taken. 

Down to planning.

Inej fights when they take her. She can't not. She gets a solid blow on one of the Squallers, sends her opponent - and herself - tumbling out of the sky. 

Then the second Squaller catches her. 

Then pain.

Then - 

Nothing. 

She wakes up tightly bound, hands behind her back with a rigid bar between them so she can't even get her hands together, ankles hobbled, blindfold around her eyes. 

She gets the blindfold off by rubbing her face on the cold, smooth floor. It doesn't help much - the small room is lightless, though she can make out the crack below the door as a faint contrast of black on black. (When they come, they tie the blindfold tighter. She avoids disabusing them of the notion that that'll work.) But she can't do much about her ordinary bindings, a mixture of rope and metal, not with the awkward position and the limited time before her captors check on her. 

A Suli boy a few years older than her - an indenture, a music teacher for Van Eck's wife - is the main face of her captivity at first. He asks her questions lightly, chides her for being stubborn - 

He tries to spoon feed her. She nearly takes his fingers off. 

He doesn't get in biting range of her again. Van Eck decides to let hunger do its job, if kindness won't work. 

A Shu woman comes next. She speaks familiarly - probibingly - about Kuwei.

Inej ignores her questions. She says: "The Merchant Council doesn't look kindly on interfering with indentures," as testingly as the woman speaks of Kuwei. She's forced to kneel by the way her ankles are tied. (She tells herself: The next time she stands, she will take the eyes of any who saw her kneel. It seems only fair.)

The woman laughs. "Two fifty thousand. That's what you're worth - or what Brekker bought you for at least. She could maybe argue in court that you're worth more, if a court would even let her bring it. The highest damages your boss could demand would be four times your worth, if we return you to her in thirty pieces. That seems an appropriate price for insurance on a deal this large, don't you think? And, besides - who will listen to a whore like you, and the Barrel scum that owns her?)

(She will cut out this one's tongue, too. Perhaps after thanking her for the secrets she inadvertently let slip to Inej's careful ears.)

It's difficult to measure time in this place, especially as hunger starts to cloud the edges of her thoughts. The questions grow more pointed, the threats more overt - 

They stop asking about Yul-Bayur and his daughter. They start asking about safehouses Kaz might use. 

Inej has made a game (a calling) of ferreting out every secret in this city, especially those of her own allies.

She opens her mouth only to bite any hands placed incautiously near her face. 

(It hasn't been seven days yet. Van Eck must be getting desperate. What's going on out there - ?)