Chapter 18
Bastian's crew breaches the stronghold seven minutes after the signal.
Emery hears them before he sees them, the percussive thud of the exterior door giving way, the sharp, professional sounds of armed people moving through corridors with purpose and violence.
He is in the blue-doored room with Avery, standing over the two guards Avery killed, and the cloak he draped across Avery's shoulders is doing its job of hiding the blood but not the pallor, and the pallor is getting worse.
"Sit down," Emery says.
Avery does not sit down. He is leaning against the basin with his weight on his right side and his left arm pressed tight against his ribs beneath the cloak, and his jaw is set with the grim determination of standing upright through sheer refusal to do otherwise.
His dark eyes are glassy with pain he is not acknowledging and his breathing has the controlled, shallow quality of managing every inhale to avoid the pull against torn muscle.
"They're coming," Avery says. "I need to be standing when they get here."
Emery understands this. He understands it in the bone-deep, wordless way of sharing the same wound, and the wound is not the one in Avery's side.
The wound is the one that says if they see me down, they will never see me the same way again, and the wound is old and it is permanent and Emery has been dressing it his entire life.
"Then let me stitch you before they arrive."
Avery's eyes cut to him. The sharpness in them is fear, not anger, the fear of the clock running and the door about to open and the possibility of being caught mid-repair, exposed, the cloak pulled aside and the blood visible and the story written on his body for anyone to read.
"There's no time."
"There is if you stop arguing and sit on the floor."
Avery sits on the floor.
Emery works fast. He has done this before, more times than he can count, in worse conditions with worse tools, stitching his own wounds in the back rooms of boarding houses and the alleys behind taverns with whatever needle and thread he could find or steal.
He finds what he needs in the room: a sewing kit in the dead guard's belt pouch, the kind that soldiers carry for mending torn clothes and that Emery has repurposed for torn skin on more occasions than he cares to count.
The needle is curved, which is better than straight.
The thread is coarse, which is worse than fine but will hold.
He cleans the needle in the flame of the brazier, presses Avery's makeshift bandage aside, and examines the wound.
It is ugly. The slash runs four inches along his ribs, deep enough to show the pale gleam of bone at its center, the edges ragged from a dull blade.
The bleeding has slowed but not stopped, dark blood welling in the cut with each of Avery's shallow breaths.
It will scar. It will scar badly, and the scarring will be worse because Emery does not have proper suturing tools and is working with a soldier's needle and cargo thread in the blue-lit room of a dead man's stronghold while the sounds of Bastian's crew clearing corridors echo through the walls.
"This is going to hurt," Emery says.
"I know what stitches feel like."
The statement is flat and carries the weight of history Emery does not ask about. He threads the needle. He pinches the wound's edge between his thumb and forefinger and pushes the needle through.
Avery makes no sound. His jaw clamps tight and his hands curl into fists against his thighs and the cords of his neck stand out in sharp relief, but he makes no sound, and the silence is its own bravery, the refusal to let the pain have a voice because giving it a voice would mean giving it power and he cannot afford to give anything more power over him right now.
Emery stitches. The needle goes in and out in quick, even passes, the thread pulling the ragged edges together, and he works with the focus of years of practice and the urgency of footsteps getting closer.
The stitches are not pretty. They are functional, tight, holding the wound shut with the crude effectiveness of field medicine performed under time pressure.
He ties off each one with the quick, looping knot his guild training taught him, the knot that holds under tension and can be cut clean when it is time for removal.
Seven stitches. Eight. Nine. The wound closes, the raw red line replaced by a ridge of pinched skin threaded through with dark cord, and Avery's breathing comes in short, controlled bursts through his nose, his eyes fixed on a point on the far wall, his entire body vibrating with the effort of stillness.
"Almost done," Emery says.
"Every doctor I've ever met says 'almost done' meaning the exact opposite."
Ten stitches. Eleven. He ties the last knot, cuts the thread with the edge of his dagger, and sits back on his heels.
The wound is closed. The bleeding has stopped.
The stitches are ugly and uneven and they will leave a scar that looks as though it was sewn by someone working in the dark with the wrong tools, which is precisely what happened, and they will hold.
He rebandages with a strip torn from the second dead guard's shirt, wrapping it tight around Avery's torso, and settles the cloak back across his shoulders.
The cloak covers everything. Beneath it, Avery is wounded and stitched and holding himself together with the adhesive of willpower and pride, and above it, he looks cold, tired, rumpled, and otherwise intact.
"Stand up," Emery says.
Avery stands. It costs him. Emery can see the cost in the white lines around his mouth and the careful way he distributes his weight and the fraction of a second where his hand twitches toward his side before he catches it and forces it to his hip instead.
But he is standing. He is upright and his jaw is set and his dark eyes are clear and hard and when the door opens thirty seconds later and Hask walks through it, Avery is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his expression neutral and nothing visible that would suggest he is anything other than a man who has been fighting and is tired of it.
Hask enters the room with his short sword drawn and his pale eyes doing their sweep, the quick, methodical scan that catalogues threats and exits and bodies in the time it takes most people to blink.
His gaze moves across the two dead guards, across Emery's blood-stained chest and the dagger at his thigh, and across Avery.
"Sander?" Hask asks. The question is directed at Emery.
"Dead."
Hask nods. His eyes return to Avery once more, lingering for a fraction longer than duty requires, and then he turns and disappears back into the corridor.
Avery exhales. The exhale is long and shaking and carries the relief of having passed an inspection he was not sure he would pass. He sags against the wall, just barely, just enough that Emery sees it before he catches himself and straightens.
Emery meets his eyes. He does not say anything.
He does not need to. The look between them is the look of two people who share a secret and who understand that the sharing is a bond, and the bond is new and fragile and built on the foundation of a promise made over a wound in a dead man's room, and the foundation is solid because the promise was real.
The walk back to the compound is long and quiet.
Bastian's crew moves through the Underground in formation, efficient and professional, the operation concluded and the aftermath already being managed. Emery walks between Tessa and Corvin, and Avery walks ahead of him, and the cloak hides everything, and no one asks questions.
Bastian is waiting at the compound.
He is standing inside the iron door with his arms crossed and his white hair braided and his expression carrying the composed attention of having been coordinating from a distance and having received the report already.
His dark eyes find Emery the moment the door opens, and the composed attention cracks, just barely, just enough for something warmer and more urgent to show through, before the composure reassembles.
He does not embrace Emery in front of his crew.
He does not cross the room to him or touch him or do any of the things that Emery can see in the tension of his hands and the set of his jaw that he wants to do.
He nods. Emery nods back. The exchange is professional and insufficient and says everything by saying nothing.
The crew disperses. Reports are given. Avery disappears to his room with the cloak still wrapped around him and a nod to Emery that is small and private and carries the weight of gratitude that does not need to be spoken.
Emery goes to Bastian's room.
Bastian draws him a bath.
The water is hot, hotter than the compound's pipes usually deliver, which means Bastian has been heating it himself, carrying kettles from the hearth.
Emery is standing in the doorway in clothes stiff with dried blood, most of it not his, and his bare feet are dark with grime, and he does not have the energy for humor. He barely has the energy for standing.
Bastian crosses the room to him. He does not touch him immediately.
He stands in front of Emery and takes inventory, the blood, the grime, the exhaustion, and the inventory is not clinical.
It is the assessment of cataloguing damage because the damage matters to him personally, and the personal mattering is visible in the way his jaw tightens and his hands curl and uncurl at his sides, restraining himself, waiting for permission.
"Bath," Bastian says.
Emery follows him to the alcove. The tub is large, copper, deep, and the water steams in the lamplight.
There is soap on the ledge, a thick cake of something that smells of cedar, and a cloth folded beside it, and the arrangement has the deliberate quality of having thought about what Emery would need before Emery arrived to need it.