Inej Ghafa

Please be aware that the follow includes spoilers of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
Traversing the streets of Ketterdam is an apparition other than people’s greed and wrongdoings. Inej Ghafa, also known as the Wraith. The readership loves her for her resilience, compassion even when faced with conflicting choices of the man who considers her his most trusted confidant. Inej was born to Suli parents and grew up in the convoys, travelling Ravka. After being kidnapped at the age of 14, she was sold to the owner of the Menagerie, where she faced abuse at the hands of both Tante Heleen and the visitors of the brothel. At one point, she encounters Kaz Brekker, in search of information on one of the clients, and claims she can help him while passing him by. The next day, Brekker returns with the money to buy off her indenture contract, and makes Inej one of the Dregs, teaching her various skills so she may be self-sufficient but also more useful to the rest of the team, and gifts her knives.

Six of Crows

Inej follows Kaz, prepared to lend a helping hand if needed; he is noted to somehow always sense when she is around or waiting for him to speak up. She obtains information for him and the Dregs, making most of their heists and blackmails possible as she is a steady climber getting to places none of the others can, and as silent as a ghost even when the threat is around. As such, she is the key player in Kaz’s heist plan at the Ice Court, told she would climb the incinerator first in order to help get the rest of the team up on the rooftop of the prison, where they would make their escape successfully. However, right before they are to take off, Inej is badly injured by a member of a rival gang at the harbor. Nina acts as her nurse on the Ferolind for three days before she wakes up, and Jesper is also shown in great distress over her health. Once at the prison, the Crows realize the incinerator runs at a different time of day than their source had claimed. Inej still ends up choosing to climb it, as the rest of the team depends on her greatly. At one point, as the heat is melting the rubber on her slippers, she contemplates giving up, but then rain comes down and cools both her and the tight space, and Inej finds the strength to continue, even inspiring herself to open a new page once back in Ketterdam. She would become a slave trader hunter on the open seas, bringing freedom to countless people, and especially girls who would inevitably end up in places like the Menagerie. Back in Ketterdam, she rows with others to Vellgeluk to exchange their prisoner (actually Wylan disguised as Kuwei) for the money they were promised. However, the exchange does not go as planned, and Inej is captured when Van Eck figures out Kaz Brekker has someone he cares for.

Crooked Kingdom

As Van Eck’s prisoner, Inej refuses to eat, thinking if she became small enough, she could fit through a vent she notices in the room where she is bound. When she does eventually get to try to escape, she ends up right in Van Eck’s arms in a Eil Komedie theatre, where she is interrogated and threatened with torture unless she gives up the location of the Crows’ safehouses. When it seems like he is about to break her legs, she says that Kaz would not trade her if she is unable to do her part as his spider. She is placed back in the room she came from. Eventually, Inej is brought to the Goedmedbridge by Van Eck, and quickly released by Kaz. The commotion on the square caused by the khergud explosions allows them to safely make it to the hideout at the Black Veil Bridge.

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”

― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

Inej is told about her part in the ploy to destroy Van Eck’s sugar silos at Sweet Reef: she would have to climb a silo and plant Wylan’s chemical weevil in it. Then, she is to walk a high wire (reminiscent of her days at the convoys) and get to another silo. She encounters Dunyasha Lazareva, a trained assassin, who nearly manages to kill her by cutting the high wire, but Inej is saved by Nina’s army of corpses. When the team regroups at the Geldrenner Hotel, she tells them about Dunyasha. When they’re alone in the bathroom, he reveals that her indenture has been paid off, and tries to help with her bandages, but suffers another panic attack as his hands come into contact with her skin. Inej grounds him with her voice, but Kaz doesn’t get past kissing her neck before the panic attack gets worse. Inej would get to meet Dunyasha again, on top of the Church of Barter, where they have another fight. She listens to Kaz’s advice and finds Dunyasha’s tell, injuring her badly. However, when the other girl attacks more aggresively, she manages to figure out which tiles of the rooftop are loose and pretends to back off in defense until she steps on one of them, falling to her own death.

Inej almost felt sorry for her. Dunyasha really believed she was the Lantsov heir, and maybe she was. But wasn’t that what every girl dreamed? That she’d wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny? Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.

― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

When Kaz manages to threaten Pekka Rollins, saying he buried his son alive, Inej is terrified, believing this is something even Kaz cannot be redeemed from. However, it is revealed immediately after that Kaz was bluffing based on an educated guess on Rollins having a son at all. After Nina’s departure for Fjerda, she lives with Wylan and Jesper at the Van Eck house to research warships and slave traders. When she is about to leave, Kaz reveals a warship he bought her at the harbor, but also a ship coming in from Ravka, carrying her parents among passengers.

“Wait,” he said. The burn of his voice was rougher than usual. “Is my tie straight?”
Inej laughed, her hood falling back from her hair.
“That’s the laugh,” he murmured, but she was already setting off down the quay, her feet barely touching the ground.”

― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

Relationships

Throughout the books, she is seen observing Kaz’s behavior, rarely to harshly judge it, but instead overlooking and trying to figure out what exactly makes him the way he is. Her relationships with other Crows are recognized as those filled with empathy and kindness, from a sibling-like bond with Jesper and definition of girlhood with Nina, to deeper conversations on the meaning of “home” with Matthias. When it comes to Kaz, Inej is at one point certain that she carries deeper affection for him, but on the way back to Ketterdam, as it becomes apparent the affection is mutual, she confesses that she would not have him while he’s still keeping his front up and not making any efforts to heal from his past trauma, which would inevitably affect their relationship.

“I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.”

― Inej Ghafa, Six of Crows

She is the one person who believes Kaz is a caring and kind person deep down, and makes observations about his actions which were not rooted in personal interest or care for profit.