DEVILS (1871) BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

Kaz Brekker was grinning like an idiot.

“It was a long time ago, boy.” “You duped us out of everything. We ended up on the streets and then we died. Both of us in our own way. But only one of us was reborn.” “Is that what this has been about all this time? Why you look at me with murder in those shark’s eyes of yours?” Pekka shook his head.

“It isn’t easy for me either.” Her voice, low and steady, the voice that had once led him back from hell. “Even now, a boy will smile at me on the street, orJesper will put his arm around my waist, and I feel like I’m going to vanish.”

They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by her name. The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true. She clung to the wall, but it was purpose she grasped at long last, and that carried her upwards. She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.

When Nina looked at Kaz, she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. “Saints, Kaz, you actually look happy.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. But there was no mistaking it. 

 Kaz Brekker was grinning like an idiot.

“What about that?” Jesper asked, gesturing to Kaz’s walking stick. Kaz’s laugh was low and humourless. “Who’d deny a poor cripple his cane?” “If the cripple is you, then any man with sense.”