Chapter 9 #2
They turn into a corridor Emery recognizes, the approach to the Hollow's district, where the tunnel widens into a low, broad avenue lined with establishments that cater to the appetites of people with coin and limited oversight, a gambling den with a painted door beside a bar with no name and no windows beside a shop selling substances that are definitely illegal in the Upper City and only technically legal down here, if you define legal as no one has killed you for it yet.
The air smells of incense and smoke and something sweeter underneath, something floral and cloying that Emery associates with the Hollow and the memory it carries, and he would rather not have either.
The Velvet Hollow's entrance is ahead, draped fabric and warm light bleeding through the gaps and the muffled pulse of music.
Emery has not been back since the night he ran.
He is aware of this fact in his body before his mind catches up with it, a tightening in his chest, a tension across his shoulders, the alertness of returning to a place that holds both safety and injury in equal measure.
He fled here barefoot and bleeding. He lay in the room upstairs and stared at the ceiling and told himself he was back where he started, which was true, and that he was alone, which was also true, and that this was the natural order of things, which was the lie he has told himself so many times it has worn smooth and comfortable, a stone in his pocket he cannot stop reaching for.
They arrive at the Hollow in the kind of formation that tells anyone watching they are not here for the entertainment.
Bastian walks in first because Bastian always walks in first, and Emery supposes that when you are the most dangerous thing in any room you enter, there is no practical reason to let someone else go ahead of you.
Hask is a step behind him, half-masked and armed to a degree that borders on theatrical, though Emery suspects every blade on his person has seen recent use.
Behind them come Tessa and Corvin, and behind them, still adjusting to the reality of walking through the front entrance of the Velvet Hollow in the company of the most notorious crime lord in the Underground, is Emery.
The Hollow looks the same, which is either comforting or insulting depending on how he chooses to think about it.
The draped ceiling, the lanterns at their varying heights, the low hum of music that sits just beneath perception and makes the skin along his arms prickle.
The four-armed bartender glances up, takes in the group, and goes back to pouring without comment.
A few heads turn and then quickly turn back.
People in the Underground have a finely tuned instinct for knowing when to look away.
Vella is waiting for them near the bar. She does not look surprised, which means she is expecting them, which means Bastian sent word ahead.
She stands with the composed stillness of a woman who has weathered storms far worse than a crime lord and his retinue walking into her establishment uninvited, and her dark, slitted eyes move across each of them with the careful assessment of counting threats and finding the number manageable.
Her gaze finds Emery last, and something in it softens for half a breath before she turns her attention to Bastian.
They speak in low tones near the back of the room, and Emery hangs at the edge of the conversation close enough to hear but far enough to observe.
Vella does not bluster or posture. She lays out what has been happening with the flat precision of a woman who keeps meticulous records of every slight committed against her and her people: two visits from Sander's men, veiled threats, a broken window, a note left under the front door suggesting her cooperation would be rewarded and her refusal would not.
She does not ask for help. She states facts and lets the implications sit where they land.
Bastian listens with patient attentiveness, having all the time in the world and none of the urgency. When Vella finishes, he tells her that she will not be dealing with Sander's men again. He says it the way you say it when the matter is already settled and the words are just a courtesy.
Vella studies him, her forked tongue flicking once across her lower lip, and nods.
She asks what he needs from her. He tells her: a reason for Emery to be here, a pair of eyes behind the bar, and the understanding that if anything comes through her door that does not belong, she tells Hask before she tells anyone else.
She agrees without much persuasion, and Emery can see why. Vella does not deal with extortion, not even from crime lords, and she has a better chance of Sander's people leaving her alone with Bastian's protection than without it.
Bastian turns to Emery and tells him to integrate himself back at the Hollow. Go back to work, be visible, be the bait that draws Sander's men into the open. And Hask will stay as his backup.
Emery blinks. He looks at Hask, who is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and the air of having already accepted this assignment and found it mildly inconvenient. He looks back at Bastian.
"I don't need a bodyguard."
"I didn't say you did."
"You're assigning me one."
"I'm assigning Hask a post," Bastian says, and there is something in his voice, low and unhurried and faintly amused, that tells Emery the distinction matters to him even if it does not matter to Emery.
"The Hollow is the most likely place Sander's men will appear.
Hask will be here regardless. The fact that you will also be here is, as far as I'm concerned, a convenience. "
Emery narrows his eyes. He does not believe this for a moment, but the phrasing is airtight and he cannot dismantle it without sounding petulant, which Bastian almost certainly knows.
He files this away as another entry in the growing catalogue of ways Bastian manages him without appearing to manage him at all.
He also registers, privately and with a weight he does not want to examine, how significant it is that Bastian is lending him his own right hand.
Whatever Hask is, and Emery still has no clear framework for what he is capable of beyond the shadow trick and the heat-draining and the display in Sander's stronghold that he thinks about more often than he would prefer, he is Bastian's most trusted and most dangerous asset.
Leaving him here with Emery is not a tactical decision.
It is a statement, and the statement says more than Bastian's mouth is willing to.
Bastian catches his eye before he leaves. His expression is the one Emery has only ever seen directed at him, the one he still does not have language for, and then he is gone, and Tessa and Corvin with him, and the Hollow settles back into its rhythm as though nothing has changed.
Emery exhales. Hask is watching him from his spot against the wall. Emery can see his eyes above the half-mask, pale and light-swallowing, and they carry the quiet assessment of deciding how much effort this evening is going to require.
"I'm going to change," Emery says.
Hask inclines his head, and that is apparently the extent of the conversation.
The outfit is the same as it ever was. Low-slung trousers, bangles, bare skin, the earrings he has worn through every version of his life.
He catches a glimpse of himself in the basin mirror in the back room and thinks he looks the same, which is a strange thing to notice and a stranger thing to be wrong about.
He is the same and he is not. Something in the set of his jaw is different, something behind his eyes that was not there the last time he stood in this room and pulled his long hair back and prepared to sell a version of himself to strangers.
He wonders if anyone else can see it, or if it is the kind of change that only matters to the person wearing it.
He goes to work.
The first hour is miserable in a way that he is expecting and is still not prepared for.
The patrons are the same breed as always, grasping and self-important and convinced that coin entitles them to whatever their hands can reach.
A merchant with meaty palms tugs him closer by the waistband.
A fae with too many rings runs his fingers along the line of Emery's spine and tells him he is exquisite, appraising him with the detached attention of evaluating a painting or a piece of furniture that happens to breathe.
Emery smiles and moves and tilts his head and performs, and the whole time his skin is crawling with the wrongness of being touched by hands that are not Bastian's, which is a thought he does not look at too directly because looking at it directly would mean admitting how deep the problem goes.
Hask watches from his corner table and says nothing, but Emery can feel the weight of his attention every time he crosses the room.
It is different from the way patrons watch him.
There is no want in it, no appraisal of what his body might be worth.
Hask watches him with the focus of watching a perimeter, and there is something unexpectedly grounding about being observed by someone who is looking for threats instead of entertainment.
The hours pass. Emery dances, endures, performs interest he does not feel. Between sets he passes Hask's table and they exchange words in increments so small they barely qualify as conversation.
The first time, Emery is passing close enough to hear Hask shift in his chair, and without looking up Hask says, "The fae with the rings. Is he going to be a problem?"
Emery pauses mid-stride. "I can handle a man with wandering fingers."
Hask's pale eyes flick to the fae and back and he says nothing, but the nothing has a quality to it that suggests the fae would be wise to keep his wandering within reason.