Chapter 9 #3
The second time, Emery leans a hip against the edge of Hask's table on his way between sets and says, "Do you ever get bored sitting in corners watching other people work?"
"Depends on how entertaining the work is."
Emery huffs and moves on.
The third time, Emery catches Hask's eye across the room after extracting himself from a patron who smells of sour wine and whose grip has left red marks on his forearm.
Hask raises one eyebrow above the mask in a way that manages to communicate both are you alright and do you want me to break his hands at the same time.
Emery gives him a look that says I'm fine and means something closer to I'm tired and moves on to the next table.
Hask is quiet and stoic, but the stoicism thins as the night wears on, worn down in increments that feel deliberate rather than accidental, chosen, each degree of access granted with intention.
Emery recognizes the pattern because it is his own.
You do not survive the Underground by giving people access to you all at once.
You give it in pieces, and you watch what they do with each piece, and if they handle it with care you consider giving them another.
It is a strange kind of comfort, having someone at his back who is not also trying to get into his trousers.
Emery has spent the better part of his adult life operating alone, no backup, no safety net, no one watching the door while he sleeps, and the novelty of Hask's presence, steady and unobtrusive and lethal, settles into the space between his shoulders and stays there.
He would not admit it. He would file it alongside the books on his bedside table and the warmth of Bastian's hands and the growing list of things that people in this compound keep doing for him without being asked, and he would not examine it, because examining it would mean acknowledging that he is accumulating debts he has no means to repay and attachments he has no framework for carrying.
Near the end of the night, when the crowd has thinned and the dancers are winding down and the four-armed bartender is wiping glasses with a boredom that suggests she has been doing this for longer than Emery has been alive, Emery crosses the room one final time and drops into the chair at Hask's table.
He reaches across, takes the drink that Hask has been nursing for the better part of four hours, lifts it to his lips, and drains it.
It is terrible. Bitter and warm and carrying the faint chemical burn of something distilled in a basement by someone with more ambition than skill. He sets the glass down and grimaces.
Hask raises an eyebrow at him, which, above the mask, is the only part of his expression visible and which conveys a great deal: disapproval, amusement, and a grudging acknowledgment that the move took a certain amount of nerve, all packed into one slight upward motion. He does not interject.
"That was awful," Emery says.
"That was mine."
"You weren't drinking it."
"I was savoring it."
"You were ignoring it."
Hask regards the empty glass, then regards Emery, and seems to decide that the effort of arguing is not worth the energy expenditure.
He settles back in his chair and folds his arms, and the silence that follows is not the heavy, suffocating kind between two people who have nothing to say, but the quieter kind, the kind that two people who are both accustomed to keeping their own company can share without feeling the need to fill it.
Emery is mildly surprised by how comfortable it is.
He has not been comfortable around anyone new in a very long time, and the fact that Hask is new, and strange, and capable of ripping the shadows off the walls and using them to disassemble a man, should probably factor into his assessment more than it does.
"Is he going to kill me?" Emery asks. He keeps his voice casual, conversational. "Once Sander is dealt with and I've outlived my usefulness. Is that how this ends?"
Hask's eyes move to him with an expression that, on anyone else, Emery would call amused. On Hask it reads closer to bemused, as though Emery has asked a question so far from the actual concern that he is having trouble deciding where to begin correcting him.
"What makes you think he wants you dead?"
"I'm a liability."
Hask tilts his head. The gesture is slight, nearly imperceptible, and somehow conveys more than a paragraph of spoken response would. "You are definitely a liability," he agrees.
Emery waits for the rest. The distinction.
The qualifier. The explanation of why being a liability in Bastian's world does not mean what Emery thinks it means.
Hask does not provide one. He says nothing further, and the silence has the shape of something being deliberately withheld, held in place by someone comfortable with the withholding.
"That's it?" Emery says. "I'm a liability and you're just going to leave it there?"
"I didn't realize I was obligated to write you an essay."
Emery opens his mouth to push further, but the front curtain shifts and his hand moves toward his thigh before he registers that the person stepping through is not one of Sander's men.
It is Avery.
He is armed, and that is the first thing Emery notices.
Properly armed, not a dancer's concealed blade but a short sword at his hip and a dagger on his belt, wearing dark, fitted clothes that make him look older and harder than his fine features suggest. His dark hair is tied back in its usual knot, the bangs that fall across his face moving as he scans the room. He is carrying a sealed envelope.
Avery crosses the room to their table. Hask does not look up.
Avery holds out the envelope and Hask takes it with one gloved hand and sets it on the table beside the empty glass, and the entire interaction happens without Hask once meeting Avery's eyes.
He barely seems to acknowledge him at all, treating the sealed correspondence and the person who carried it through the Underground to deliver it as though they materialized from the air and warranted no further attention.