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Chapter 3: Kaz
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Six of Crows, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed
Friendship and Difference
Trauma, the Past, and Moving Forward
Identity, Values, and Growing Up
Summary
Analysis
Everyone at the Slat, including Inej, knows when Kaz enters the house. It’s a cramped house, but unlike similar houses, it’s dry: Kaz spent his own money insulating it. Now, it’s buzzing with talk of the events at the Exchange, Big Bolliger, and Rojakke’s firing. Inej fired him earlier, and it didn’t go well: he angrily tried to grab for Inej, so Inej hit him in the face with her brass knuckles. She never lets any sexual harassment slide, even if it comes from a friend like Rojakke.
Kaz’s kindness, or, at least, his desire to win others over with nice gestures, appears here in the Slat’s insulation: the gang members who serve Kaz are, perhaps, more likely to loyally serve him because they’re warm and dry.
Themes
Now, Inej leaves her room and watches the crowd in the foyer congratulate Kaz. Knowing he’ll speak to Per Haskell first, Inej enters a cleaning closet and slides a bucket off the grate in the floor, which offers her a great view to spy on Per Haskell’s office. Haskell scolds Kaz for dealing with Bolliger on his own, but both men know that Kaz is functionally in charge of the gang now. Then, Kaz says he has a lucrative job coming up, and he’s going to put Pim in his place while he’s gone. This stings Inej. She wants to pay her debts and leave Ketterdam and the Dregs, but she’s also jealous and knows that Kaz trusts her more than he does Pim.
Inej’s feelings for Kaz are complicated, but it’s clear here that she wants to please and impress him—and that she’s almost constantly hurt by his choices, such as his choice here to put someone else in charge while he takes on this “lucrative job.” This job is almost certainly the heist on the Ice Court.
Themes
A few minutes later, Inej meets Kaz as he climbs up to his attic rooms. He confirms that Rojakke is fired and then offers Inej a four-million-kruge job. She insists that much money is a curse and tells herself that Kaz isn’t a dreamy boy—he always has an angle. But she can’t help but blush as he strips his gloves and shirt off and washes himself. He explains they’ll be gone a month, and then he asks her to get Jesper, Muzzen, and Wylan to come to the Crow Club tomorrow. Then, he says this is a job for Inej to take or not; it’s not an order. This is unusual. Kaz tosses a ruby pin at Inej and says it belonged to someone who jumped him. Then, he tells her to move the DeKappel they took from Van Eck into the vault and order Kaz a new hat. He says please only when she asks.
In all ways, Kaz’s behavior around Inej is confusing: he refuses to give her the positive affirmation she craves, and yet he takes off his gloves and bathes in front of her, something that’s extremely vulnerable and intimate. This keeps them from forming a closer connection, as Inej isn’t getting what she needs from Kaz. The way Inej talks about this job, meanwhile, suggests she’s not greedy like Kaz: indeed, she insists such a sum is a “curse.” It is, perhaps, too much money to be believed—a possibility the novel will return to later.
Themes
