Chapter 7 #4
Emery likes him. He is not in the habit of liking people, and the speed with which it happens is slightly alarming, but Avery makes it easy the way the rest of them make it easy, by not asking for anything and by being exactly who he is without apology or performance.
Even if no one asks him directly, it is common knowledge in the compound how Emery arrived.
The outfit he was wearing that first night, the dancer's pants and the bare chest and the bangles and the borrowed cloak over it all, left very little to the imagination.
People have drawn their conclusions. Most of them have the grace, or the disinterest, to keep those conclusions to themselves.
Fredan does not.
Emery meets Fredan on the third day. He is tall and would be handsome if his personality were not so comprehensively repulsive.
Long brown hair pulled back, strong jaw, good bone structure, all of it undermined by the perpetual sneer that he wears as an accessory.
He has decided that Emery is a glorified whore their boss is keeping around for his own amusement, and he has arrived at this conclusion with the immovable certainty of opinions formed on first contact and reinforced thereafter by the systematic rejection of all contradicting evidence.
The first comment happens in the corridor outside the common room. Fredan passes Emery, slows, looks him over with the deliberate thoroughness of browsing a market stall, and asks if the boss is done with him for the night or if he's still on the clock.
Emery smiles at him. It is the smile he reserves for people who are not worth the effort of a real expression. "I'm between clients," he says sweetly. "But you couldn't afford me."
Fredan's sneer deepens. He walks on. The exchange lasts less than ten seconds. It sets the tone for every exchange that follows.
The second comment happens in the kitchen, two days later.
Emery is eating breakfast. Fredan sits down across from him uninvited and asks, with the casual cruelty of treating cruelty as a social skill, whether Emery learned to cook in the brothel or if he's only good on his back.
Emery tells him that his repertoire is extensive and suggests Fredan take detailed notes, since his own skills appear limited to running his mouth and failing to impress anyone with it. Fredan's jaw tightens. He leaves.
The third comment is worse. Fredan catches Emery in a corridor, alone, and steps into his path with the posture of someone accustomed to being bigger than the person he's cornering.
He says maybe he should find out what the fuss is about.
Maybe Emery should give him a demonstration.
Maybe it would be good for team morale. His eyes drop to Emery's mouth when he says it.
Emery's hand goes to the dagger at his hip.
The one that came with the belt that came with the clothes that Bastian provided, because Bastian furnished him with everything a person needs including the means to defend himself, and Emery's fingers close around the hilt and he holds Fredan's gaze and says, quietly and clearly, that if Fredan touches him he will learn the difference between someone who talks about violence and someone who has made a career of it.
Fredan backs off. He backs off because even men as stupid as Fredan can recognize, in the still, flat calm of Emery's voice and the steady grip on the blade, that the threat is not performance. It is a weather report.
Emery does not draw the dagger. He wants to.
He wants to bury it somewhere instructive and watch the lesson sink in.
He doesn't, because he does not yet understand the consequences of stabbing one of Bastian's crew, and acting without understanding the rules of the house you're sleeping in is how people wake up in rooms they can't leave.
He keeps his blade at his hip and his tongue sharp and his anger carefully contained, and adds Fredan to the list of problems he is choosing not to solve today.
It's a long list. It's getting longer.
At night, after the corridors quiet and the compound settles into the low, muffled hum of a place where dangerous people sleep lightly, Emery sits on his bed and reads.
He reads the knight's tale first, because the day was long and confusing and he needs the portal, the open spaces, the adventure that someone else gets to have.
He reads until the lamp gutters and his eyes blur and the words swim on the page, and then he sets the book down and stares at the ceiling, which is smooth and dark and warm and belongs to someone else.
He thinks about the token on the bedside table.
He thinks about the three books, arranged in order, waiting for him on the table when he arrived.
He thinks about Bastian's face in the alley, the opening, the softening, the expression that has no name and no precedent in Emery's experience of being looked at by another person.
He doesn't think about what any of it means.
He is not ready to think about what any of it means.
Meaning implies a future, and Emery has never been in the business of futures.
He is in the business of the next job. The next meal.
The next room with a door that locks. Everything beyond that is speculation, and speculation is for people who can afford to be wrong.
He blows out the lamp. He pulls the blankets up. He lies in the dark and listens to the silence of a compound that is, despite everything, keeping him safe, and he falls asleep with the book against his chest, held close, the way he holds everything he's afraid of losing.