Kaz used up all her bullets on the flying freaks. She lunges at the woman, cane raised-

She'll have to force her way through a storm like nothing she's ever felt, the wind coming like a solid blow to her entire front. The woman spreads her arms and lifts easily into the sky, her strangely fastened cloak billowing around her like wings. 

"Bring Bo Yul-Bayur to the rendezvous within a week. If you do not, we'll dock your pay by a million for each further day you're late - and we'll start giving our insurance back one piece at a time." Her light voice has gone cold, merciless, and she gazes down at Kaz with all the haughty arrogance wealth and power can muster. 

"Go - hhf - fuck yourself," she wheezes. "Cheating mercher bastard."

"We'll start with the less valuable pieces - perhaps an earlobe. But, if you delay long enough... How valuable will your little spider be without fingers? Without eyes?" She sneers - and then with another powerful gust of air, she's lifted away, along with Inej and the attackers she brought with her. 

The wind dies down enough Kaz can hear the pained groans of the injured Dime Lions behind her. 

She is going to burn Van Eck and all his holdings to ground. As soon as she gets her breath back.

...Should Trassel be ripping out throats here, or are they letting this meat go to waste?

She lowers her hand from where it'd been stretched out uselessly, her power failing with a sickening lurch to rise to her command, to save Inej and slaughter the bastards that took her - 

But she doesn't need witchcraft to turn back to the downed thugs, open hatred in her eyes. "Don't rip out their throats yet, Trassel," she says out loud, for the benefit of those who can't understand her partner with the same ease she does. "They might have information. Though, if they don't..."

"Gutter trash like this? They don't know shit."

"Then no need for them to keep breathing?"

"Not unless any of them care to speak up and prove me wrong."

Is she serious - what - casual murder is well beyond the norms of ordinary dealings in the Barrel, even when torture and kidnapping threats are in the air - 

The gutter trash seem a bit slow on the uptake. 

She leans over the so-called leader with an expression as cold as the unforgiving ice. "Van Eck has declared war on us, and your pissant little boss has thrown his hat in with our enemy. I don't know how scum do war here, and I don't fucking care - it isn't war until the canals choke with the bodies of the dead."

Some of them do, in fact, have information. On Van Eck (rare, only the enforcer, who knows where Pekka Rollins was meeting him), on Rollins (more common, some of it only scraps), on any little backroom deal or scandal -

Not all of them, and some of them even want to be cute about not talking. 

Then they'll be the first to water the streets with their blood. 

Feilan signals Trassel to kill any who refuse to talk - any who are too slow - any who try to run - any whose information doesn't meet Kaz's judgment of worthwhile. 

To the survivors, as few as they are: "Van Eck will die. The only choice your boss has in this is whether we tear out his throat first."

"Think more carefully about what jobs you want to take next time. And for who."

They should really get moving though. This is not a scene they want to get caught at right now.

She'll follow where Kaz leads. 

Let's see if they can get all the way back to the Rookery this time.

Is she sure going to a known haunting ground is a good idea right now? 

Not to stay. But Kaz needs to pull some emergency measures together. Send a message to Jesper's group.

The wolf should stay out of sight.

That'll be hard in this city. Not undoable in the emptier streets like this, but - it'll get worse as foot traffic picks up. 

One of the old abandoned cemetery islands, then.

...Neither Feilan nor Trassel know where those are. Unless Kaz can give directions - ?

They can find a gondola on the way and buy the gondolier's silence.

Alright. 

"Do you want me with you, or should I stay with Trassel?"

"Stay with the wolf. I'll come get you when there's someone new to kill."