“Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason. Those were the words whispered on the streets of Ketterdam, in the taverns and coffeehouses, in the dark and bleeding alleys of the pleasure district known as the Barrel. The boy they called Dirtyhands didn’t need a reason any more than he needed permission—to break a leg, sever an alliance, or change a man’s fortunes with the turn of a card.

Of course they were wrong, Inej considered as she crossed the bridge over the black waters of the Beurskanal to the deserted main square that fronted the Exchange. Every act of violence was deliberate, and every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show. Kaz always had his reasons. Inej could just never be sure they were good ones. Especially tonight.”

This quote introduces both the novel’s central character, 17-year-old gang leader Kaz Brenner, and Kaz’s deliberately constructed identity: Dirtyhands. With his ruthless willingness to destroy others, Dirtyhands seems almost inhuman, a mysterious figure skilled at tricking his enemies, and lacking any morals to restrict his actions. The quote also introduces the violent, merciless world the novel’s characters inhabit, one that forces a teenager like Kaz to become a hardened criminal. 

“Most gang members in the Barrel loved flash: gaudy waistcoats, watch fobs studded with false gems, trousers in every print and pattern imaginable. Kaz was the exception—the picture of restraint, his dark vests and trousers simply cut and tailored along severe lines. At first, she’d thought it was a matter of taste, but she’d come to understand that it was a joke he played on the upstanding merchers. He enjoyed looking like one of them.

‘I’m a businessman,’ he’d told her. ‘No more, no less.’

‘You’re a thief, Kaz.’

‘Isn’t that what I just said?’” 

This quotation continues to establish Kaz’s careful creation of his own identity, as he controls his physical appearance to impress his colleagues and enemies. Unlike his competitors’, Kaz’s clothing says he doesn’t need “flash” to proclaim his might. Moreover, Kaz’s sartorial choices emphasize the novel’s ambiguous morality: In the world Bardugo has created, respectable merchants and criminals are equally motivated by greed and self-interest. Kaz’s comparison of merchers and thieves even foreshadows the novel’s final twist, in which a prominent businessman is willing to betray his word and take lives for his own personal gain.

“Geels looked at Kaz as if he was finally seeing him for the first time. The boy he’d been talking to had been cocky, reckless, easily amused, but not frightening—not really. Now the monster was here, dead-eyed and unafraid. Kaz Brenner was gone, and Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.” 

The author introduces the novel’s theme of “monsters,” contrasting the human character of Kaz with the “monster” Dirtyhands, a constructed, inhuman persona who lacks empathy and fear. Kaz has just told his opponent Geels that he’s prepared to murder Geels’s sweetheart if Geels doesn’t give in to his demands.