Chapter 17
The carriage stops.
Emery feels the change before the wheels cease turning, a shift in the ambient sound, the echo of the hooves and the rattle of the frame altering as the tunnel opens into a larger space, the acoustics widening when the corridor gives way to a cavern.
The driver pulls the horses to a halt with a grunt and the carriage rocks once, twice, and settles.
Footsteps outside. Brennan's voice, muffled through the wall, calling something to someone Emery cannot see. A second voice responds, not Royce, someone new, and then a third, and the number of voices tells Emery what the curtained windows could not: the safehouse is staffed.
The door opens. Royce stands in the frame, his lean face lit by lamplight from beyond, and the light catches the edge of his smile and the glint of the knife at his belt.
"Ladies first," he says, and the joke is not funny and was not intended to be. It is a reminder, a small, deliberate assertion of the dynamic he believes exists between them, the men with the power and the pretty things they have brought to entertain.
Emery steps out of the carriage. His bare feet find stone, smooth, cold, recently swept.
The safehouse is larger than expected.
They are in what appears to be a receiving area, a broad, low-ceilinged space carved from the stone of the upper Underground, lit by iron lanterns hung from brackets along the walls.
The ceiling is reinforced with timber beams, and the stone is rough-hewn but clean, the walls whitewashed in the way that spaces are whitewashed when someone wants them to look maintained rather than abandoned.
There are two corridors leading off from the main space, one to the left, one directly ahead, and a heavy wooden door set into the wall on the right that is closed and, from the iron bolt visible across its face, locked.
Guards are positioned at the entrance to each corridor: two at the left, one at the far end, and two more flanking the door they just came through.
Five visible, which means there are more that are not visible, which means the intel that suggested Sander traveled with a light security detail was wrong.
Emery catalogues all of this in the time it takes to step from the carriage to the floor, three seconds, four at most, and files it in the part of his mind that runs threat assessment the way other people's minds run arithmetic: continuously, automatically, beneath the surface of whatever his face and mouth are doing.
Avery steps out behind him. Emery does not look at him, but he feels the subtle shift in Avery's posture, the almost imperceptible stiffening that means Avery has made the same assessment and arrived at the same conclusion: this is more than they planned for.
Brennan is already leading them toward the left corridor.
He is talking, something about the boss being in good spirits tonight, something about a drink first, something about making themselves comfortable, and Emery nods and smiles and lets the words wash over him while his eyes track the guards and the corridors and the locked door and the carriage behind them, which the driver is already turning around.
The corridor is narrow and windowless and lit at intervals by the same iron lanterns.
Doors line both sides, some open, revealing rooms that are sparsely furnished and unoccupied, some closed, their contents unknown.
The stone floor is covered in places by threadbare rugs that muffle their footsteps, and the air is warmer here, heated by braziers stationed at the corridor's turns.
Emery counts the doors. He counts the turns.
He builds a map in his head the way he has built maps of every building he has ever been sent to kill someone in, because the map is the difference between an exit and a dead end, and dead ends are where assassins die.
They reach a junction where the corridor splits. Brennan stops, turns, and his expression shifts into something that is trying very hard to look casual and is not succeeding.
"Change of plans," he says. "Boss wants to see your friend first."
The words land in the junction, sharp and heavy.
Emery keeps his expression neutral. His heart rate, which has been running at the steady, measured pace of operational calm, ticks up by a fraction. Beside him, he feels Avery go very still, not the stillness of surprise but the stillness of recalculating the odds and finding them wanting.
This was not the plan. The plan was for both of them to be presented to Sander together, two dancers, a matched pair, the kind of gift that a man with specific tastes would want to unwrap himself.
Together they could control the room, manage Sander's attention, position themselves for the kill.
Separated, they are two individuals in an unfamiliar stronghold with limited weapons and no line of sight to each other, which is the opposite of every tactical principle Bastian laid out in the study.
"He's shy," Emery says, putting his arm around Avery and pulling him closer, the gesture possessive and protective and designed to resist the separation without appearing to resist it. "He'll be more comfortable with me there."
Royce shakes his head. He has materialized behind them with the quiet efficiency of walking at their back for the entire corridor, and the positioning, Brennan ahead, Royce behind, the corridor narrow and windowless, is not accidental. They are boxed.
"Boss's orders," Royce says, and his voice carries the flat finality of delivering a directive he has no authority to modify. "Your friend goes to the boss. You come with us."
Emery and Avery exchange a look.
The look is brief and contained and says everything it needs to in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Emery's eyes ask: can you handle this? Avery's eyes answer: I'll manage.
There is fear in Avery's expression, a thin, bright thread of it running beneath the composure, but the fear is not the loudest thing in his face.
The loudest thing is determination, the hard, set-jaw refusal of proving he is not a liability, not tonight, not when the stakes are this high and the person standing beside him has trusted him enough to walk into this.
Emery squeezes his arm. Once, briefly, the pressure communicating what words cannot: I will come for you. Hold on.
Avery straightens. He arranges his face into the soft, nervous, convincingly helpless expression he wore at the toll bridge, the dancer's mask settling over the operative beneath, and he lets Brennan lead him down the right fork of the corridor without protest.
Emery watches him go. The blades concealed on Avery's body are invisible beneath the drape of his dancer's clothes, and the invisibility is both a comfort and a concern, because invisible weapons are useless if you cannot reach them fast enough, and Avery is walking toward a man whose capacity for cruelty is well-documented and whose expectations for the evening do not include being stabbed.
Royce touches his elbow. "This way."
Emery turns and follows him down the left fork.
The room Royce leads him to is furnished for exactly the kind of evening that was promised.
A wide bed against the far wall, dressed in dark fabric.
A low table with a bottle of wine and three glasses.
Two upholstered chairs. A brazier in the corner throwing heat and warm light.
The walls are hung with tapestries that look expensive and are probably stolen and serve the dual purpose of decoration and insulation, softening the stone and trapping the warmth.
It is, by the standards of a safehouse in the Underground, almost comfortable.
Brennan is already there.
He must have doubled back through a parallel corridor while Royce walked Emery here, a simple maneuvering trick, the kind that separates a target from their companion and delivers both to separate locations without either realizing the route has been manipulated until they are already where they need to be.
Emery would be impressed if he were not furious.
Brennan is on the bed. Not in it, on it, sitting on the edge with his boots still on and his thick legs spread and his back against the headboard, and the posture is the posture of having been looking forward to this and having no intention of being subtle about it.
His jacket is off. His shirt is loosened at the throat.
His eyes find Emery as he enters and the hunger in them is open and unashamed and makes Emery's skin tighten.
Royce moves to the table and pours wine. Three glasses. He fills them with the unhurried ease of a host who considers the evening already decided and the formalities merely a kindness he is extending to the entertainment before the main event.
"Relax," Royce says, and holds out a glass. "It's going to be a good night."
Emery takes the glass. He does not drink from it.
He holds it and arranges his expression into something warm and compliant and slightly nervous, the face a new dancer would wear when presented with two men and a closed door and the understanding that whatever happens next is not negotiable, and inside, behind the face, the assassin is running calculations.
The original plan, keep Sander talking, wait for the signal, hold until Bastian's crew breaches, is no longer viable because Emery is not in the room with Sander.
Avery is. And Avery is good, Bastian said he was one of his best, but Avery is also alone with a man who has an unknown amount of guards with him and Avery is going to need backup.
"Come here," Brennan says from the bed.
Emery does not move. He is lost in the calculation, exit routes, guard positions, the distance between this room and wherever Sander is, the time it will take to neutralize two men and reach the corridor without raising an alarm, and the calculation is demanding his full attention, which means Brennan's instruction registers as noise rather than stimulus.