Chapter 16
Sundown comes the way sundown comes in the Underground, not as a change of light, because there is no natural light to change, but as a shift in rhythm.
The lamps in the upper tunnels are adjusted by lamplighters who make their rounds at intervals so consistent they function as the city's clock, dimming the main corridors to their evening register while the side passages and market stalls flare brighter to compensate, drawing the foot traffic inward, a living system pulling blood toward its core when the temperature drops.
The vendors change over. The day merchants fold their stalls and the night merchants unfold theirs, and the goods on offer shift from practical to indulgent, food gives way to drink, tools give way to entertainment, and the hum of the upper Underground transitions from the industrious frequency of commerce to the lower, looser frequency of people spending what they have earned.
Emery registers none of this. He is standing in the room Bastian gave him at the compound, looking at himself in the small mirror above the basin, and he is dressed to kill.
The outfit is dancer's attire, the low-slung trousers, the bare chest, the bangles on his wrists, but he has modified it for the evening's actual purpose with the meticulous attention of understanding that the difference between a costume and a tool kit is intent.
The hair comb is in place, its four-inch blade disguised beneath the decorative metalwork, positioned where he can reach it with either hand in under a second.
The dagger is strapped to his inner thigh, higher than usual, concealed by the drape of the loose fabric.
A third blade, thin as a needle and half the length of his forearm, is sewn into the waistband of his trousers where it lies flat against his hip and will not be detected by a cursory pat-down.
Three weapons, fewer than he would like and more than most people would expect from a man who looks dressed for a brothel, which is precisely the point.
He adjusts the fall of his long hair. The blond strands frame his face and cover the bruise on his throat, which has darkened from purple to the mottled green-yellow of healing but is still visible if someone looks too closely.
He touches the bruise with his fingertips, lightly, and feels the tenderness of it and thinks about Fredan's hand and then stops thinking about Fredan because that is a problem that has been solved.
He thinks instead about what is coming. About Sander, and the safehouse, and the carriage that will carry him into the dark.
About the two men who will be waiting at the toll bridge with their eager hands and their loose tongues, expecting a dancer and a pretty friend and the kind of evening that ends with their boss satisfied and their own appetites rewarded.
They are expecting entertainment. They are going to receive something else entirely, and the something else is standing in front of a mirror adjusting his earrings with steady hands and a heart that beats the way it always beats before a kill: slow, even, focused.
The assassin's pulse. The rhythm his body defaults to when the performance is not seduction but violence, and the violence is not a contingency but the plan.
He is ready.
A knock at his door. He opens it and Avery is on the other side, and the sight of him nearly makes Emery smile, which is not a reaction he was expecting.
Avery has been transformed. The fitted dark clothes and the short sword are gone, replaced by an outfit that mirrors Emery's in its essentials, loose trousers, bare skin, bangles, but that has been adjusted to Avery's advantages with the kind of strategy that tells Emery someone helped him dress and that someone understood exactly what they were doing.
The trousers sit low on his narrow hips.
His dark hair is down, freed from its usual knot, and falls around his face and shoulders in a way that softens his features and makes him look younger, more vulnerable, more the kind of person that men such as Brennan and Royce would salivate over.
His dark eyes are lined with something, kohl, maybe, or one of the cosmetic tinctures the dancers at the Hollow use, and the effect sharpens his gaze while softening the rest of his face, a contradiction that should not work and does.
He does not look as though he is one of Bastian's operatives. He looks like a dancer, a very pretty, very convincingly helpless dancer, and the convincingness of it is a weapon in its own right.
"Well?" Avery says, and raises his arms and turns a slow circle, and the lightness of the word is almost successful in disguising the tension beneath it.
"You'll do," Emery says.
"High praise."
Emery studies him more carefully. Avery is armed.
He can see the faint intention of a blade at his thigh, mirror to Emery's own, and there is something in the fall of his hair that suggests another weapon concealed at the nape of his neck.
He is also nervous. Not obviously, Avery is too well-trained and too proud to be obviously anything, but in the small details: the way his fingers keep touching the bangles on his wrist, adjusting them, the way his weight shifts from foot to foot, the set of his jaw that says he is clenching his teeth and willing himself to stop.
"You've done work that requires this before," Emery says. It is not a question.
Avery meets his eyes. "Not exactly this. But close enough."
Emery nods. He understands what close enough means.
It means Avery has used his face and his body to get into rooms he needed to be in and out of situations he needed to be out of, and the using has cost him things he does not talk about.
Emery has the same scars. They are invisible and permanent and they ache in the way that old wounds ache when the weather changes or when someone touches you wrong or when you are about to walk into a room and perform the same survival that left the scars in the first place.
"Stay close to me until we're inside," Emery says. "Once we're separated, work fast. The moment Sander sees my face, the game is up."
Avery nods. His expression has settled, the nervousness still present beneath the surface but contained now, channeled into focused alertness, trained for this and trusting the training even when his body is telling him to run.
They leave the compound together.
***
The upper Underground is alive with the evening turnover, the corridors crowded enough that two barefoot dancers moving through the press of bodies attract no attention.
Emery navigates by memory and instinct, the route from the Depths to the toll bridge district etched into his awareness from the walks with Hask.
Avery keeps pace beside him, his bare feet silent on the stone, his dark hair swinging against his shoulders, and to anyone watching they are exactly what they appear to be: two pretty young men heading to work, unremarkable, unimportant, not worth a second glance.
The toll bridge district is one of the busier junctions in the upper Underground, a convergence point where three major corridors meet beneath a high, vaulted ceiling reinforced with iron beams. The bridge itself spans a narrow chasm that drops into darkness, one of the countless fractures in the gorge floor where the Grith's ancient waterways carved through the stone and left behind gaps that no one has bothered to fill.
The bridge is stone, old and solid, with iron rails and a toll booth manned by a dwarven woman who has been collecting passage fees at this crossing for longer than anyone can remember and who regards every person who passes with the flat, professional suspicion of having seen everything and been impressed by none of it.
Brennan and Royce are waiting on the far side of the bridge.
Emery spots them before they spot him, an advantage of being trained to scan a crowd for threats before the crowd scans him, and he takes a moment to assess.
They are dressed better than usual, which means they are taking this seriously.
Brennan has traded his usual rough clothes for something that almost qualifies as presentable, though the effect is undermined by the fact that his neck is wider than his head and his hands still hang at his sides, built for breaking things and looking it.
Royce is sharper, as always, fitted clothes, a knife visible at his belt that he is not bothering to conceal, his lean face arranged in the expression of anticipating something pleasant and having already decided he deserves it.
They brighten when they see Emery. Brennan's face opens into a grin that shows too many teeth, and Royce's eyes move from Emery to Avery and stay there, sharpening with interest.
"There you are," Brennan says. "And you brought your friend."
Emery puts an arm around Avery's shoulders. The gesture is casual, protective, the body language of presenting someone he is fond of and slightly possessive over, and the possessiveness is calculated to make them want Avery more. People want what appears to be guarded. He has learned this.
"This is Finch," Emery says, and the name rolls off his tongue with the practiced ease of a lie that has been prepared and polished. "He's new to this. Be gentle with him."
Avery leans into Emery's side. The movement is subtle and perfectly performed, a tilt of his shoulders, a ducking of his chin, the body language that says shy and nervous and please don't hurt me and which Emery recognizes as acting so precise it could be taught in a guild.
Beneath the performance, Emery can feel the tension in Avery's frame, the coiled readiness of a body prepared for violence and disguising it as softness.
Brennan practically salivates. Royce's eyes narrow with pleasure.
"Boss is looking forward to meeting you," Royce says.