Jasmilia: Family Is Everything

When Jasmilia was ten, she realized she was more vicious that Renar.

They were sitting outside a bakery, and Jasmilia was enjoying her lunch-- a thick hunk of dried ham from the nearby butcher. She was saving her cinnamon roll for last as a treat. The mafia boss who employed their parents had promoted her father, recently, and given him more men, and so their father had given them extra money for lunch that day and said, *Treat yourself today. This is how the Basha family lives now.*

While she and Renar were sitting outside the bakery, an older boy passed by and stole Renar’s cinnamon roll. Jasmilia leapt to her feet, snarling, “Give it back!”

The older boy smirked at her. “Or what? Your big brother is gonna beat me up?”

Renar watched impassively as Jasmilia curled her hand into a tiny fist and then punch the boy in the kidney. He dropped the cinnamon roll on the ground, clutching his side and whimpering, then took off before anyone saw him getting beaten up by a ten-year-old girl.

Jasmilia picked up the cinnamon roll off the ground, picked a leaf off it, and shoved it in her mouth.

She later discovered she could get other people’s cinnamon rolls by punching them in the kidney, and she didn’t even have to spend money on them that way. After that, she started keeping her dad’s money and just stealing the shit she wanted, saving up for clothes she wanted.

“That’s a good idea,” Renar said impassively when she told him.

Renar liked to delegate things. He was good at that, even from a young age. He had a commanding, imperious look, and Jasmilia did not. Jasmilia looked like she’d hit you in the kidney and take your cinnamon roll. Renar said that was a good look to have, too.

So he started delegating things to her. It was good. Jasmilia liked it. She felt-- weirdly proud, somehow, that her older brother expected her to be smart enough to handle shit.

Sometimes her dad’s boss would pay Renar money to deliver things for him: small bags of white powder, or tightly bound green leaves in brown paper packaging, or a cloth sack full of black seeds and white flowers. Renar said he'd give her half the money if she delivered it for him instead. "You're faster," Renar said. "And you're a baby. People don't pay attention to you."

Jasmilia liked doing things for Renar. It felt like a family business.

Kheman was less inclined. He’d rather lay in the sun down by the docks, watching the sea, pleased and impassive as a seal lying on a rock.

When Jasmilia was fifteen, Renar came home with a split lip and a black eye and said, “I don’t want to work for Boss Kattan anymore.”

“What?” Jasmilia said, scooting her chair out from the kitchen table. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to work for Boss Kattan anymore. I don’t think Dad should, either,” Renar said.

“We make good money off Kattan.”

Renar shook his head briefly. “We don’t. He’s had me doing his books, since I’m good with numbers. He takes more than three-quarters of what the cartel earns and pays us next to nothing.”

“But it’s still good money,” Jasmilia protested. Who cared who was in charge or who got the most? They lived well.

“It’s theft,” Renar said coldly. “We do the work, so we should get the money. I could do what he does."

Renar left, after that. He went across the sea. Kheman eagerly went with him-- thought Jasmilia suspected it was not actually because he wanted to work for Renar or help Renar, it was just because Kheman wanted to sail on a ship. He wanted lie on-deck and stare up at the clouds from the crow’s nest. And Jasmilia felt… oddly betrayed, somehow, that Kheman loved the sea more than he loved her.

When Jasmilia was seventeen, she realized Renar was right. Boss Kattan took too much from his workers; he lived in opulence; he smoked hashish and opium all day, and he’d gotten fat and lazy. His children were fucking worthless, too. They were bred filthy fucking rich, and they had no idea how to fight with a knives or defend themselves or do basic shit like run a business because they’d never fucking had to.

She told herself this, repeatedly, angrily, as she marched through the streets home, her shirt soaked in blood from where she’d killed Boss Kattan’s son. He was an asshole and a fool. He spent all his money, then demanded she forfeit her pay for the week so he could buy more fucking opium down at the opium den.

She grabbed her things from home and took the first boat leaving Calimport.

Renar would help her, she figured.

Skyport, she discovered, was a big fucking city, almost as big as Calimport. And it was impossible to fucking find anybody here. She bought a room in an inn down by the slums outside the city, by the edge of the forest, and she took odd jobs collecting bounties.

The forest was nice. It was… good, being out here. Calm. Sweet. Peaceful. There were no big green spaces like this in Calisham. She would often sit out in the woods by herself when she had time.

She met a boy in the woods. He passed by her one day as she sat beneath an oak tree. He seemed startled to see her-- he'd been whistling when he passed, but he stopped abruptly when he realized he wasn't alone, ducking his head as thought embarrassed.

He raised his hand, briefly, in passing, and left.

The next time he passed by, Jasmilia called, "Hey pretty boy. Whistler. You got a fucking name?"

And he blushed, and stammered, and told her, "Luka."

Luka was… sweet.

He was too sweet, in a way that made her heart beat a little too fast, in a way that made her feel a little too good, in a way that felt fucking frightening because it didn’t seem real.

Luka always turned bright red when he passed her by on the street. He offered to show her different ways to braid her hair. He brought her rabbit furs and carved deer antlers, and they were fucking fascinating, and adorable, things she hadn’t seen or owned before. During the local Candynight Festival, she wore a skeleton costume with painted white bones over black cloth, and he found her in the crowd and drew her aside, behind the shadows of a tree, and lifted up her mask to kiss her softly on the mouth and tell her he found her.

And when he asked, hesitantly, how old she was, just to confirm, because… she was beautiful, and she was on her own, but she looked… young, sometimes, in certain lights, Jasmilia said she was twenty, and Luka looked relieved, and said he was a bit young, too, and his family wouldn’t approve of this, and--

Then it didn’t matter, anymore, what anyone else thought, because she took him home, and they were alone together in her dark room.

Nobody knew how to find Renar Basha. Once a week, Jasmilia would go down to the docks, and she’d ask around if anyone knew him-- a Calishimi man, young, not much older than her, with dark hair and a cool expression. She’d ask bartenders and dock workers and captains. She’d ask butchers and flower salesmen and mages. She’d ask children on street corners, in case they were working for him as mules. She’d ask shopkeepers if they were paying Renar Basha protection money.

Renar said he was going to build a criminal empire. Even if that was his goal, though, she supposed it had only been a year or so, and he probably wasn’t done yet. In her estimation Renar was pretty fucking smart, and brutal, and cold like iron. He’d do it. He probably just hadn’t gotten very far, yet. No one knew his name.

And--

As the days passed, Jasmilia went into Skyport less and less, and looked less harder.

Did she really need Renar?

Boss Kattan used to say, *Your cartel is everything.* And later, her father would quietly say to her and Renar and Kheman, *That’s not true. Family is everything.*

 And now--

Jasmilia was beginning to think neither of those things were true.

She didn’t need Renar. She’d been on her own plenty. If she did find Renar, he’d just fucking use her, because she was smart and she was vicious and he’d like her to do things for him in the name of their fucking family; he’d send her to deliver things and take half her earnings and call it better than Boss Kattan, and he’d like that, because he’d be in charge, and he’d have his family under him.

But Jasmilia--

Sometimes, Jasmilia wondered if, maybe, there was nothing frightening about staying here, with Luka, and it was okay. They could be together, and Renar never had to know she came to Skyport after him. He’d assume she was still in Calimport with Boss Kattan and their parents, and their parents would assume she was working with Renar in Skyport, and everyone would still think she was part of the family business without looking at things too closely.

In the end, it wasn’t a conscious decision. She stopped looking for Renar every week; then she only went to look for Renar once a month; and then not at all.

She was pregnant. She thought maybe it happened on Candynight.

Luka was so fucking happy. His face brightened in this excited way every time he saw her-- his eyes wide, his mouth twitching upwards just a tiny bit, like he was too excited to smile-- and he’d tilt her head down at her to kiss her on the nose, resting his hand on her stomach.

Sometimes she thought maybe-- he didn’t want this, not really, because-- it’d been an accident, after all, and-- now he probably just felt obligated to stick around her, because-- the boys around her never wanted her before, not really, nobody wanted a kidney-punching flat-chested tomboy with unruly black hair and a permanent scowl, but-- Luka held her so fucking gently, like she was breakable, like she was precious, and-- it felt like a fucking trick, somehow, somehow, she kept looking for the con, she kept waiting for something bad to happen--

But then, a few days after she told him she was pregnant, he slipped a ring onto her finger while she wasn’t looking.

They were in bed together, and it was dark. And she felt him toy with her hand, sliding something cool and metal up her finger. She rubbed it with her thumb, sleepy and confused, and startled awake when she realized what it was.

She twisted around to look at him in bed.

Luka didn’t say anything. He just looked at her with that same excited look: eyes a little too wide, smile a bit crooked, and rested his hand on her stomach protectively.

But after a moment, he seemed to get… tense, almost apprehensive. And Jasmilia, for the fucking life of her, couldn’t figure out fucking why.

And then she realized.

He was waiting for a response.

As though she might say no, or take the right off. As if anyone would ever not want to marry him, she thought, befuddled. As thought anyone could possibly not love him. As thought Jasmilia could ever, in any reality, not want to marry him. And Jasmilia said, “I mean-- yes, obviously, I would love to-- thank you, thank you--” And kissed him before anything stupid or mean or dismissive could come out of her mouth. And Luka giggled and kissed her.

That moment was perfect. She wished she could stay there.

“I want to take your name,” she whispered to Luka in the dark space between them. “I want to be Mia Voronin.”

She decided, right then, she didn’t want Renar to find her.