Seventeen-year-old Kaz Brekker, second-in-command of the Dregs gang, is known as Dirtyhands because of the unscrupulous methods he employs. While elderly Per Haskell is the Dregs’ official leader, Kaz has made himself, as one opposing gang member puts it, “the spine of Haskell’s operation” (25). In the five years since he joined the Dregs, Kaz has transformed the gang from a laughingstock to a power player in the Barrel, Ketterdam’s criminal district. He’s established the successful Crow Club gambling hall and made the Barrel’s Fifth Harbor into a thriving spot for the Dregs to pick up marks. Following a lifelong fascination with magic tricks, Kaz has become adept at both physical illusions and mental trickery. He uses “information”—the shameful secrets he learns about his victims—to maintain his upper hand.

Kaz dresses in elegant tailored clothes, seeing no difference between a businessman and a thief. He makes no secret of his lack of morals, claiming to act purely out of greed and content to be known as a monster. Even Kaz’s apparent weakness becomes a part of his invulnerable image: Although Kaz has limped since breaking his leg in a fall at age 14, he carries an elegant cane carved with a crow’s head and makes the cane “part of the myth he built” (401).