[Closed] Cadenza [M]

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

It won’t be easier next time. Tom couldn’t argue with that.

The quiet, the musty draft, the candlelight licking strange shapes over the walls, over the soft set of Ava’s face, hard to read – the worn spiral, down and down and down into the deepening dark. The silent stirring of their breaths; the way the candle bowed, delicate and precarious, in every stiff breeze. Tom didn’t linger long in that space, though a handful of seconds there could’ve been a hundred maw. And when he started down, careful-like and wincing, Ava just as careful behind him, he had a feeling like an anchor settling on his heart. Like, unbeknownst to them, they were restless souls passing into the Otherworld.

It was a funny thought. It was a struggle, all the way down, fingertips scrabbling at the clammy stone. He wasn’t sure how far it’d been, but the sight of the bottom was like a godsdamn rescue; he – or Anatole’s aching hip, maybe – could’ve got married to the stones.

But he knew they’d only begun. The meager light from the candle barely brushed the stonework overhead, and in every direction, the empty dark yawned. They’d got this far: pick a direction, he reckoned, thoughts working fast, then blanking; wasn’t much point in thinking –

When he heard Ava’s soft voice, he turned. A strange, bitter smile played out on his lips, watching her leave a dark line of lip color on the stone with her fingertip. It was subtle; the candlelight caught it, glinting like a snail’s track. He met her eye and bobbed his head once. More than anything, he reckoned, it heartened him that she thought they’d make it back here.

There wasn’t much use in thinking about that, either, one way or another. Restless souls, he thought again, as they moved off down a tunnel.

Once, he heard a soft rushing, through the gap of a half-open doors, in the blackness underneath grating, beyond the reach of their little bobbing candleflame. Now and then, he caught the whisper of a breeze against his face, stirring his hair – carrying on its back the smell of stale water, bitter sulfur, the rotten tang of refuse. The smell of a river, too, or what a river’d left behind.

The silence was loud, and it made everything else loud: every drip or trickle, every nameless shuffling thing. And the deep dark etched every brief flash of clarity – every ghastly flicker of light over every half-glimpsed room – vivid against the dark in his head. He was grateful for the shape that moved beside him, quick-like and silent, in the shifting sheen of sap-red silk.

Tom’d never been here; he never would’ve known this place was underneath the Pendulum, and he reached and scrambled to cobble the implications together. All the same, he’d been in places like this. He’d worked with tools like these. He knew the empty loops of chains, the smeared tables, the rusty implements. His heart got heavier and heavier, weighing him down like a stone, but it beat sluggish in his chest. It was his stomach that turned and boiled. Once, just before they passed the tiny room, the wavering light caught on a patch of glistening black. Fresh.

Ava must’ve heard something, then, ’cause she pressed herself up against the stone. He saw the glitter of her eyes in the dark, followed them toward a solitary door; he froze, too, fighting the urge to snuff out the candle. The light’d already crept up to the door, crept through the crack, cast a sliver of itself into the room beyond.

“Who’s there?” rasped a man’s voice, high and soft and slurry. This time, Tom heard it, too. There was a scrape, a shuffle, then: “Where are ye?”

Tom swallowed thickly, fingertips hovering over the burning wick. His hand shook, flickered away. He shut his eyes for a space, then opened them, meeting Ava’s. He set his mouth in a thin line, grit his teeth hard, then moved for the door.

It was heavy, and this time, the hinges creaked something laoso. Tom winced at the sound; it wasn’t loud, but it tore through the thick silence like a scream. Inside, the light picked out a long, narrow aisle, the stark shapes of thin, close-spaced metal bars on either side. They cast grids of light and shadow on the floors beyond, lengthening and warping as Tom took his first shaky steps into the room.

A gasp. More shuffling. “Havakda, havakda,” the voice strangled out.

Cells. Tom could feel a thin film of cold sweat on his brow; he wiped it away roughly with his sleeve and grit his teeth even harder. The first one on the left, empty. The second and third cells were empty, too, but as he got halfway down the aisle, he saw movement behind the bars. He caught a glimpse of half a thin face, a ratty tangle of a beard, the glistening of eyes underneath a brow knotted with pain. Then the figure scrambled back into the shadows, out of the light, and all Tom could see was a tall, thin shape.

He hissed under his breath, taking a step closer, forgetting himself.

“Ent nothin’s changed,” came another rasp from the dark. Tom thought he caught another flash of eyes. “Ent tellin’ ye nothin’, ye chen? Havakda!” His voice rose, but then broke, and he coughed wetly and groaned.

“Hush,” Tom whispered, squinting through the dark for the wick again. “Boemo, boemo. We ain’t here to hurt you.” He cast a desperate look toward the door, still half-open, his eyes wide.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Beneath the Pendulum House, Uptown

T
oo late, Ava thought, absurdly, her heart beating in her chest, at the sound of another voice in the hallway. And then it registered - high, frailty of it, the way it wove faint and thin through that little gap. Something else beat through her, then, something that tensed, because there was nothing in that voice that sounded threatening. It cracked, and it demanded, but it came from fear, not anger; it was not surprised, she thought, to hear soft footsteps on the stone outside, but she thought it was afraid.

And Ava thought of the rooms, of those gleaming instruments with their faint dark patches, and she felt something turn over in her stomach, and she shuddered against the wall.

Tom was looking at her, and Ava nodded, slowly; she didn’t know if he could see her, with his hand curled around the candle. He stepped forward and eased the door open, with a scrape that made Ava catch her breath; her eyes flickered up and down the darkness left behind as Tom slipped through the open door. She couldn’t see anything moving, but –

Ava followed Tom through the little opening, and held, there, still a long moment. She caught the glint of candlelight against a thin face taut with pain and fear, which vanished back into the safety of the darkness. Ava held just inside the door for a moment, thinking fast. Tom – Tom, in Anatole’s small, slight body, with that red hair streaked with gray, the well-tailored cut of his (expensive) jacket. And her – Ava did not need to look down at the dress to know what she looked like.

“Give him some space,” Ava said, stepping forward unhesitatingly. There was a little force to her voice – sharp, just on the edge of commanding, and she met Tom’s eyes firmly over the candlelight, hoping he would understand; hoping, as he had so often before, that he would follow her lead.

Ava brushed past Tom – she did not touch him, not even with the hem of her dress, and stepped close to the bars. Close, closer; close enough. Close enough that he would be able to feel the lack of her field; close enough she could feel the edges of his, the thinner sort of woobly that told her he was a wick. Close enough, too, that if he had a weapon, something small and sharp –

Ava held, there, and one hand curled gently around the bars, the cold iron flaking rusty against her palm, the black lacquer on her nails flashing briefly in the light. “No questions,” she said, low and soothing, the candlelight flickering up half of her face; it was not enough to see into the depths of the cell, and she did not try, holding there, her eyes just barely able to find the half-hidden shape in that darkness. “Epaemo for startling you,” she did not try to force a true Tek accent, not here – not in the red dress that skimmed the floor with an even hem, that crawled high up her neck and covered the skin there, but the word flowed easy and natural. “You startled us too.”

He would have to realize, Ava thought; to say it aloud, to say I’m human, you can trust me, would be to push things too far. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her fingers tightened against the bars, ever so slightly. She didn’t look at Tom; she didn’t dare. Even the faintest snatch of a glance might give the impression he was giving the orders, that he was in charge; he couldn’t risk it. No questions, Ava thought, not until he was ready – if he ever would be. No questions, not even the ones that felt as if they beat alongside her pulse: Who was he? Why was he here? What was here?

And one, most important of all, the one that made her pulse pound in her neck, beneath all that heavy silk, beneath the heaviness of being Silk: was he one of them?

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

Ava stepped into the candlelight, and Tom met her eyes over the flame. He heard the edge of command in her tone, and it didn’t take him long to catch on; he blinked, dipped his head in a quick nod, and then took a few silent steps back from the bars. The figure in the corner of the cell slipped into even deeper shadow, and Tom couldn’t make out even the faintest outline of a shape. He didn’t try. He looked down and away, knowing full well the poor kov didn’t need two pair of eyes scrutinizing him in his sorry state.

At first, the wick didn’t move or speak. When his field passed out of range of the glamour, he thought he heard a soft shudder of a sigh, like somebody who’d had a knife pressed up to his throat. Tom swallowed dryly, wondering – trying not to wonder.

How the hell long had he been down here?

He couldn’t help but look up again as Ava moved past him, stepping up to the bars, the hem of that golly dress brushing silent on the laoso floor. Tom watched her, limned in soft light. One pale hand appeared, fingers curling round a bar, nails glistening. His breath grew tight in his chest.

She talked Tek, but she wasn’t putting on an accent. He felt a pina mung for what’d slipped out of his own mouth; he’d forgot, loping through the dark passageways with Ava beside him, but now he remembered. He swallowed another lump, feeling the movement against the silk at his throat. His skin prickled, and his stomach turned over again, full up with fluttering moths. He wondered if Ava, too, felt like her collar was too tight, like it might strangle her. At least she had the empty air around her – he hoped that’d be enough.

It was a damn tense few seconds, even still. The candlestick was warm under his fingers, and his hand felt clammy. It was like a tomb after Ava stopped speaking; all Tom could hear was some distant drip, the skittering of little feet.

Then, another shuffle, and a hoarse cough. “Yer a nattle, ent ye?” Tom had to strain to listen; the wick’s voice was scratched raw. A little motion in the dark, then, but still not enough to make out a shape. Underneath all the other sounds, underneath the muffle of all that heavy stone, Tom thought he could hear uneven breath. “Ent seen neither o’ ye before.”

The voice’d softened just a little, Tom thought, but it wasn’t enough for him to feel any relief. Wasn’t enough that he didn’t tense when the soft light licked a shape out of the shadows, too close to the bars – too close to Ava – for comfort. It was vague to him, at first, like those first dobs of color a painter’d plop down on a dark canvas when he was doing some toffin’s portrait: the dull orange of a quarter of a face, set out in funny, wobbly shapes, the muddy blob of what could’ve been a beard.

The wick came a little closer, and those features sharpened. He had strong, proud bones, the kind that made folks say a wick must’ve had blood from Anhau. His face had shrunk around those bones, though, and his beard was patchy and tangled. He was draped in the loose shape of a torn, filthied shirt, and it didn’t do much to hide the prominent lines of his sternum, or the sharp shapes of his ribcage underneath.

The glitter of his eyes kept flicking toward Tom. He tried to meet them evenly, but he didn’t think there was anything he could say.

“Did –” The wick’s frail voice froze in the air. He reached up and wound one skinny hand round the same bar as Ava, a few inches underneath, as if challenging her to step away. He stared at her face, now. His eyes were hard, but there was something feverish in them. “Did he send ye?”

His breath shuddered in his chest, but he didn’t cough, and he didn’t look away.

“I ent dob,” he growled, in an even lower voice. “Ent said a damn thing.”

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Beneath the Pendulum House, Uptown

Silence, a long silence. Ava held in it, and waited, and she never wavered; she stood tall and straight against the bars, as if she had nothing to hide – as if they had all the time in the world, the three of them. There was no smile on her face, but there was a softness to it, a gentleness, that she cultivated in the softness of her mouth; it wasn’t hard to summon up, worry just shy of pity. A hint of fear, too, in the slightest flaring of her nostrils, the way her eyes held just a little wide – none of it fake, but all of it let out through the soft smoothness of her face, half-visible in the flickering candlelight.

And then – the soft roughness of a voice, and Ava was sorry they could not offer him water. For a moment she thought to ask if Tom had a flask, but – thinking of how he had poured the Twemlaugh out, thinking of the pale shakiness of him, the way he had buried himself in those hands – she thought she should not bring it up.

Ava kept her eyes on the wick as he came closer, and she didn’t draw back; she didn’t flinch, but held the bar, gently, still, a connection between them – her fingers, just the edges of them, reaching into the cell. “Yes,” she confirmed, softly; the question of whether she was human didn’t need an answer, not with him so close, but she gave it to him anyway, and then held again, patient and waiting, letting him take his time.

Ava could smell it on him, the reek of misery and ill-use; the stench of his captivity was ground into his ragged shirt, into the sagging skin beneath, and it mixed with the stale, foul air, the edge of Anatole’s too-sweet perfume the scent which did not belong. Still, Ava did not look at Tom, even when the wick’s gaze edged towards him; she held the focus of her attention on him, as if he was the only one that mattered here.

Ava did not pull back when the wick reached for the bar beneath her hand; they were close together, close enough that she could see the firelight glinting off the bloodshot whites of his eyes. Did he send you, the wick asked, and Ava could not be sure – was it the same he she had in mind? And if so, even if so – what did a yes mean? That anger in his voice, that promise that he hadn’t dobbed; did he think she and Tom were here to silence him, at best?

“We didn’t know you were here,” Ava said. She didn’t lower her hand towards his; she didn’t reach for him, or let her voice or eyes soften with pity. She met his pain with honesty, because she didn’t think she had it in her to lie to him, to offer him false comforts when she knew so little – when he had so little. And was it we she meant, or we? She could not know how he would take it, not really.

“All we know now is what we see, and that’s enough.” No questions, Ava had promised, and she meant to hold to that. She let a little of that firmness enter her voice again, her eyes never wavering from the wick’s face. “I won’t leave you - not if I can help it.”

Did it matter, in the end, who the wick’s he was? If he was Hawke’s and not Serro’s – would she leave him here? No, Ava thought; no. That wasn’t what hope was about; that wasn’t the future she was fighting for. There would come a time when she needed to know; there would come a time when it mattered, when it would make a difference to what resources she could bring to bear. But that time was a long ways off; Ava knew well that they might not even reach that time. If and when it came, she would have the luxury then to worry about it.

Now, and only now, Ava turned to Tom. She glanced down at the lock holding the cell door shut, and lifted her eyes back to the galdor’s body before her. “Is there anything you can do?” Ava asked, and she did not hesitate. She knew what it was she might be asking, and that too she accepted. They had few enough options, down here in the dark; she would not turn her nose up at any of them.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

The wick let out a scrape of a gasp, his hand slipping off the bar. It was like she’d taken some burden from off his shoulders; it was like the strings that’d held up his wiry, sinewy limbs had been cut, and he had to remember to keep his feet. He swayed and licked his chapped lips and looked away, at nothing in particular. “Oes,” he rasped. “Oes.” He shot a furtive glance back up at Ava, Tom, Ava again, his eyes glittering, feverish. “Ent dob,” he repeated. “Ent said nothin’, ent…”

He choked on the word, gargling with coughs, his eyes welling up with tears. This time, he couldn’t push it down or talk through it; Tom watched him turn away to hack and hack, his shoulders shaking, his skinny legs wobbling.

It’d been a damn delicate operation. Ava’d handled it – wasn’t a doubt she would’ve; she handled it better than he’d’ve, he thought – and somehow it took his mind back to the first time he'd ever been in Woven Delights, the way she'd parried all his questions, turned them back on him. But there was still a weight of dread in Tom’s heart, and he’d wondered, hearing that he, if it was worth it, whatever this kov knew. Whatever he’d be able to give them –

Ne, ne, he thought. Ne.

Ava turned, now, and looked at the cell door, and looked at him. There was a funny weight to that question, and he knew it for what it was. One hand was clamped round the candlestick; the other was cold as ice by his side, and he reckoned that was the only two reasons they weren’t both trembling like leaves in a galestorm.

After a pause, he nodded, frowning a little. “I’ll do my best,” he replied, deferent-like; he reckoned the uncertainty wouldn’t hurt the dynamic she’d set up, but he didn’t want to make a promise he couldn’t keep, either.

The wick’d stopped coughing. Now, he was looking at Tom, and Tom looked back at him. “Sorry,” he said softly. “I have to come closer, hey?” He could’ve said something reassuring, we’ll get you out in no time, kov, could’ve smiled, but he reckoned it’d’ve been a strained kind of smile, and he didn’t think it’d do any good. The wick just stared at him.

So he just dipped his head again and moved up to the bars, past Ava. Soon as his field came into range, the wick flinched; he sucked his glamour in, pulled it close to his grimy skin, and then he was back, back, the candlelight washing over him as he pressed himself into the corner. From afar, it’d been pungent, but up close, it was overpowering. Tom tried not to let on, but it was the kind of laoso he hadn’t smelled in awhile – shit and blood and sweat, and that cold, sour tang of fear, somehow more than the sum of its parts, solid enough that you could feel it against your skin like a spell being cast.

Tom sucked at a tooth, sucked in a foul breath, breathed it out sharp through his nose. Patted down his jacket, felt around inside, just out of habit – then cursed and turned to Ava. The candlelight flickered over the pile of dark curls on her head; he glanced over it, lifting an eyebrow. “Spare a couple of hairpins?” he asked, holding out a hand, forcing it to be still in the air.

When she gave them to him, he crouched by the cell door with an effort, holding onto the bars as he lowered himself down on crackly knees. He did his best not to get the hems of his trousers in the dirt, thinking how she’d picked up her skirts before she’d crouched on the floor of Binder’s office. Setting the candlestick on the ground nearby, he squinted up at the keyhole.

He took one of the pins and started biting it into a lever. “’S’jus’ a deadbolt,” he muttered through it, “but it’s a rusty old clocker –” With the lever still in his mouth, he took the other and started twisting one end, trying not to feel the eyes on his shaky, fumbling hands. He used the keyhole to bend the other end into a pick, then stuck the lever in the barrell, then prayed to Alioe he wouldn’t break every hairpin on Ava Weaver’s person.

Roll

SidekickBOT | Today at 6:38 PM
@Graf: 1d6 = (6) = 6

It took him a long time. He crouched, cramped, his head bowed, his ears straining over the ragged in-out, in-out, hitch, in-out of the wick’s breath. Once, a skittering rat – a clatter – made the hand holding the lever jump; he’d got three of the tumblers, and when he felt them slide back, he swore on just about every bit and bob it was possible for Hulali to have.

When the lever finally turned, he’d been holding his breath, and all his muscles were so tight that he halfway didn’t know how to relax them. The cell door came open just a pina manna with a nasty little screech, but Tom couldn’t bring himself to care. His hands flinched away from the pins and the locks, trembling something awful. He took out the lever, handing it back up to Ava, but he broke the pick trying to get it out.

Grabbing onto the bars, he pulled himself to his feet, sighing deeply. He didn’t say anything; he just smiled at Ava, a tired sort of smile – but one with a little edge of giddiness, one that warmed his eyes. He took the candlestick back from off the floor, then teetered dutifully back away from the cell, the shadows seeping back over the wick.

But he didn’t come out of the darkness. He didn’t do anything. He held still, and the light just barely picked out the glisten of eyes in the dark; that ragged breathing went on, in-out, in-out, hitch, in, in, out, hitch, in-out…

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Beneath the Pendulum House, Uptown

I
f he hadn’t broken yet, Ava thought, then he knew it was a matter of time, and not very much left to him. She didn’t ask; she wouldn’t. She knew something about the sort of things pain could make you say and do. If he’d already broken, if he’d spilled whatever secrets he’d kept along with his blood – it didn’t matter, Ava decided. If they thought they’d gotten everything he had to hold, he wouldn’t be alive in this cell. Whatever he’d said or done so far, he didn’t deserve this. No one, human or wick, did.

And if he was one of them, and if he had broken? The only way to find out what he’d told was to get him out.

Tom agreed, and though Ava’s face didn’t change, she felt a cold weight of fear settling around inside her. She would, she told herself, need to keep still and silent; she didn’t know much about it, not how it worked, really, but she knew – she knew it was best not to interrupt. She worried, too, that if Tom thought it hurt her to see him – to see him –

Ava held still against the bars when he approached; she hadn’t flinched away from the wick, and she didn’t flinch from Tom either, for all that she felt the scrape of his field raw against her. He asked her for a hairpin, and Ava raised an eyebrow back at him, unsure – she felt something like a smile on her face; she didn’t understand, but she gave it to him anyway, the smile and the hairpins both.

Ava adjusted her hair, carefully, and she could not quite hold – she took a step back, giving Tom his space. She watched the wick instead, and she waited, and it was some time before she realized that there was no spell coming, no feeling of tension in the air, no steady chanting of monite – only Tom, crouched on the floor with her hairpin between his teeth, fumbling at the lock with the other. He cursed and he swore and he fumbled and Ava felt her heart rise in her chest.

And then – the lock clicked open, and the cell door came open too, and Ava let loose a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She took the hairpin back from him with a smile, one that reached her eyes, and tucked it away – not back into the heavy coils of her hair, though. She thought that was rather asking too much.

Tom backed away, and still the wick held, breathing shakily in the dark. Ava watched him, and she held too, just a moment, and took a gamble. Subtle, she thought; best to be subtle. If he understood, she would know, then; if he did not, there would be nothing lost – if she were careful enough. For a moment, she was desperately grateful not to have to keep this from Tom.

“It’s your choice,” Ava said, gently. “The How is up to you. If you want our help, we’re here.”

Ava stepped back – this time, she went in from the door, shifting slowly away from it, leaving a path between the wick and the door. If Tom didn’t follow, she would beckon to him, gently, just a small gesture with one hand, to get out of the way – to let the man make his choice. He was free, Ava thought; she wouldn’t stand in the way of that. There were questions she had, so many questions, but she had promised not to ask them, and she still would not.

They had to be better than the galdori, Ava thought. Torturing a man was torturing a man, whether done with tools or by dangling his freedom over his head. He had to know he was free to choose, for the choice to have any meaning at all. Even if he stayed; she did not think it right to ask anything of him, not unless he opened the door. And if they set him free, if he was truly safe – only then, Ava thought, only then. She couldn’t deny her curiosity, and she couldn’t help but know how important it might be. But neither would she leverage a man’s freedom to sate it, not of her own choice.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

Hell, if the poor sod wouldn’t come out –

Tom was trying to keep himself at bay; all the effort at keeping his hands from shaking, all that tension he’d carried in his shoulders, every little noise sent a ripple of prickles down his back. He felt like time was slipping away, right along with the laoso water that must’ve been rushing somewhere below the stones at their feet. Ava spoke, and Tom swallowed tightly, watching her in the candlelight. He didn’t let the confusion he felt reach his face, but he kept on looking at her, frowning slightly.

And when she stepped back, he didn’t understand, either; but she gestured, and he followed. The candlelight lengthened and warped the shadows of bars against the dirty floor, letting the shadows fill up the little cell and seethe. Tom’s eyes lingered on the cell door, then flicked away to the half-open door to the passageway. A cat, he thought ridiculously, a cat wouldn’t come near, if you looked at it. A cat needed space.

Movement, then, in the corner of his eye. A frail shape split from the shadows, shivering up behind the bars. He heard another metallic whine, and he saw the cell door open up a little more – just enough to admit a tall, skinny body. Was it what Ava’d said? He couldn’t think how. Was it the space they’d left him? Would he leave, try his luck down the laoso labyrinth of those corridors, only to be caught and strung up again? Only to break? Maybe it’d be better, some part of him that was still Hawke’s man thought – if he was Serro’s, maybe they ought to –

“Mujo ma,” came a rasp, and Tom looked at him as he emerged into the light.

Smell wasn’t any better; every draught carried it stronger, fetid. The candlelight glistened in the greasy mess of his thin, tangled brown hair, already shot through with grey. It played in the baggy folds of his shirt, cast deep shadows where his proud bones stuck out. Tom couldn’t read his expression for anything but fear, but the light caught, for just a half-second, on bright gold irises, dancing out from under his heavy brow. Even cowed, with his shoulders drawn up, he was looking down at both of them.

Only for a second. He managed well enough when his hand left the bars, but one more step, and he was shaking, and then another, and a scuffle against the stones –

“Hey, hey,” Tom murmured, forgetting himself and moving closer. The wick’s hand came down hard on his shoulder, fumbling, fingers curling in deep enough to sting; a spasm went through his back as he took the kov’s weight. He might’ve dropped the candlestick, but then the wick gasped and pushed away from him, catching himself back on the bars. Tom hung, shaky, then stepped back again.

The wick shook against the bars, heaving with panicked breaths. He wiped the spittle and phlegm from his mouth, then turned to Ava. For awhile, his hand still lingered on the bars, but – slowly – he pushed himself away, finding his feet this time with a little more success. Godsdamn, Tom thought, raising his brows, but the kov was tall. He came a pina closer, flinching as his glamour tangled with Tom’s porven, but he didn’t back away this time.

He took a deep breath, chest swelling painful-like, and seemed to muster up the words from deep inside himself. He looked at Ava with his hollow eyes, but some kind of fire'd come into them. Jabbing his chest with a dirty thumbnail, he wheezed, “Ingo,” with a flash of crooked teeth. “Wouldn’t’ve known ye f’ one o’ his in them toffin clothes.” There was an edge of cold, hard anger in his voice.

Tom snuck a glance at Ava, and he couldn't keep all the surprise off his face. He kept going over what she'd said, how she'd said it, and he couldn't make sense of how the wick'd known.

Another suppressed cough. “Can’t make it out o’ here alone,” the wick mumbled, shaking his head, but his voice was thick with reluctance. The look he shot at Ava wasn't quite trusting.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Beneath the Pendulum House, Uptown

Ava held, and she waited. She felt as if she couldn’t even dare think. The calm, smooth expression of her face never wavered, but she felt the strain of it, deep inside, the tension stretching taut. And if he made his choice, and it was the wrong one? If he hadn’t broken - if - Ava thought it but a matter of time. To get close to escaping and to be recaptured - to feel the illusion of freedom -

A risk, Ava thought. A risk. But if he were Serro’s, he would know her; trust wasn’t so easy, not with all they had at stake.

And then the long shaky figure of him eased into the light. Fear and pain were written across every inch of him, and Ava looked without flinching, without drawing back from the sight and smell of what they had done to him. There was no pity still, not even the faintest trace of it in the edges of her eyes. Pity had never made a man or woman feel strong.

He stumbled, and Tom reached for him. In that moment, Ava felt as if she had always known it was coming, as if he couldn’t have done anything else. And there they were - That red hair glinted in the light, that short, slight frame dwarfed by the wick’s tallness, as lean as he was - the silken elegance of his clothes a sharp contrast to the frayed, befouled rags the prisoner wore. Even if they had been clean, Ava knew, that contrast -

She didn’t let the ache of it show on her face, and if she wondered what she had done, now wasn’t the time for it. She didn’t flinch either, not at the sight; it would be to betray him. She held, as if nothing about it was strange, as if neither of their actions ached deep in her heart.

The wick hung back against the bars a little longer, gathering himself. Slowly, then, slowly, he eased forward, drew himself up. Ava could have wept at the anger in his voice; relief flooded through her, even as her head tilted, gently to the side. She hadn’t seen it in his face, and the lack had frightened her; perhaps, she thought, he really hadn’t broken. Perhaps.

Ava met Ingo’s accusation with a soft, knowing smile, lips closed, and a gently raised eyebrow, the light flickering over her face in the close dark. Nothing else - not a whisper of shame, not the faintest flinching, not even a hint of reluctance.

And then -

There wasn’t time to think; there wasn’t time to feel sorry for it, to regret or to ask permission. She thought Tom would understand, once she had done it; she thought he would forgive her. She had brought him here; she would do what she could to keep him safe.

And when she thought of him? It wasn’t Anatole she thought of, in them toffin clothes, the edge of a sneer in his voice as he glanced towards the harpist. It was the Rose - the glimmer of tears in his eyes when she wept - the way he glanced down at those hands - the fondness in his voice when he spoke of his scars - Ishma, Ava thought. Ishma and his beautiful hands, playing the oud for Tom and the cats on a warm summer evening.

“I’m Silk,” Ava said. “This is Risha.”

And now? Ava thought, and hard. Wander the tunnels, counting on Anatole to bluff them out of trouble when they found it? They didn’t know half enough for that to be anything but suicide. Did these catacombs connect to the How? Could they find their way out through, and up to the Dives above? And how long would that walk be, with Ingo heads above them and hardly able to walk - and what would happen to Tom then? And even if Ava managed to thread that needle - what would happen to the carriage and the covers they had left back at Pendulum?

“There’s no way out that isn’t worse before it’s better,” Ava looked at Ingo again, and she refused to lie. “I can’t promise it’ll work, but I can promise we’ll try. Can you accept that?” Ava stepped forward, then, and extended her hand into the air between them, slow and even - and stopped, halfway, and held, looking up to meet Ingo’s golden eyes, and waiting for him to come to her, just a little further now.

[Tom Cooke]

Beneath Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

Silk.

Tom was careful of his face. He didn’t let any surprise flutter across it, didn’t even let himself give Ava a sideways glance. Give Silk a sideways glance, he thought, rolling it round in his head, thinking about it. Silk and Binder. Ingo, Silk, Binder. He found himself wondering what Adam Spencer’s’d been, and he couldn’t conjure anything up. He liked Silk. He might’ve known, given her trade, but it wasn’t just that. The way it came rolling off your tongue, like silk through your fingers – soft and strong.

It made sense. The Brothers hadn’t needed funny secret names, ’course, seeing as there was nothing secret about the whole operation. If Tom Cooke came to break your bones, you damn well knew it was Tom flooding Cooke, didn’t you? Seventen weren’t going to do anything. On the other hand, Tom reckoned it was a risk even to know something like the human resistance existed; he reckoned it was a risk if they even knew each other’s names.

Then, out of flooding nowhere, the word risha slipped off her tongue. It curled out into the dank air and then settled on Tom, like it’d chosen him.

Ye call it a risha, Ishma had said, passing him the pick.

Hama’s fingers threaded through his hair, his breath in his ear – ur’utu, finger-work, and Tom repeated it, ur’utu, struggling with the soft consonants in his brogue – running his calloused fingertips over the strings on the neck, holding the risha in his too-big hand. Tom’d called it a guitar-pick, but that wasn’t what they called it in Manatse, where hama was born, or along the Turga, where his fami’d traveled. It wasn’t picking, what hama did.

This is Risha, Ava said, with a capital R. Still, he didn’t look at her; he knew better. His lip twitched, and so did his left eye, and he reached with his free hand to scratch his jaw. He felt a swell of something inside him, right underneath his heart, fair painful. He couldn’t afford to think about what it meant – couldn’t think about Ava, or about the cat she’d never named.

He was already in; he was used to hearing it, he told himself.

Ingo stood, half in the dark, staring down at Ava. Still hollow-eyed, Tom thought, but his gold eyes danced. She raised a brow at his challenge, and he raised his back, his lips twisting in the nest of his beard. She stepped up, extended an arm all slow-like, and Tom thought it looked funny, her in that long golly dress, coaxing him closer. He couldn't think about that, either, so he didn't.

“Boemo, Silk,” he replied, a rough whisper. He didn't look at, or address, Tom. “’S’always worse before it’s better, ent it?” He let out a parched, scraping laugh, then took firm hold of her arm. His long, dirty fingers curled round the red silk. One pained breath, then two, through his nose; Tom saw him shut his eyes, as if marshalling himself.

When he took a shaky step, he was using Ava to balance himself, but he was taking as much of his own weight as he could. The candlelight flickered, shifting over the bars, as Tom started toward the door. In the corner of his eyes, in one of the cells, he thought he saw a shape – a bundle, almost, still against the far wall – then gone, swallowed by the shadows; he couldn’t afford to think about it. He pushed the door open, slow enough it didn’t protest, and leaned to poke his head out into the hall. Empty, quiet.

Worse before it’s better, Tom thought, frowning and turning back. Ingo’s eyes were on him, hard and cold, but it was Ava’s he met. “Back, then, Silk?” he asked, with as much deference as he’d had before. “Through Pendulum?”

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Beneath the Pendulum House, Uptown

Ava couldn’t look - she couldn’t know. She trusted Tom not to have let surprise (shock? pain?) skitter across the delicate features of Anatole’s face, not even here in the half dark of the candlelight. But she wished she could have seen his face; she wished she could have looked him in the eyes as she said it, and could have tried to soften it. He understood, she told herself, and she had no choice but to believe it.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been sympathetic before; it wasn’t that she didn’t think it hadn’t been hard for him, pouring himself into Anatole and letting the mask speak on their behalf. She had understood; they had been together in it, and she had understood.

He understood now, Ava promised herself, and did not dare look to check. She wouldn’t make light of what she had done by undermining it.

Ava held all of her attention on Ingo, and she was glad for that little twist of his lips, the raising of his brows. She was grateful that he’d had the strength to challenge her at all. It boded well.

His fingers clutched the dark red silk tight, creasing the arm of the dress, and Ava shifted closer to him, just a little. Her face didn’t, and there was still no pity in her, but she made it as easy as she could for him to use her for balance; she didn’t begrudge him it in the least. It was hard, easing with across the floor of the cell block, but Ava held herself up as well as she could, and tried to lend him what strength she had to offer.

Tom called her Silk in Anatole’s voice, and Ava felt it ripple through her. It hurt, more and less than she had expected. The candlelight drew out the tired, aching shadows on his face, hooded his flat, gray eyes, carved the wrinkles of his frown even deeper.

“Yes,” Ava said, meeting his eyes in the darkness. She did not call him Risha again. She wanted to ask what he thought; she wished she could, but she had set up a dynamic that she thought would keep Ingo comfortable, and she knew better than to think she had already won his trust. And she didn’t need to ask, not really. He had understood her; if he had another idea, a better one, he would have suggested it instead.

The slow, aching shuffle through the tunnels was worse than it had been before. Ava strained to hear anything over Ingo’s soft, pained breathing, over the faint shuffling drag of his feet. Once they nearly slipped, in the dark; Ava couldn’t have said who it was whose balance had been lost, but she felt her slippers catch something in the ground - felt Ingo’s hand tighten against her arm, and caught a shriek in her throat, swallowing it down. She lurched, but she didn’t fall. Ingo caught himself against the wall, and she could feel the shudders rippling through him.

And then, slowly, Ingo pushed himself upright again, and they kept going.

The candlelight caught against the faint dark trail of lip color against the door and Ava felt a flood of relief that made her knees as weak as the fear had. She took a deep breath, turning to the stairs, and fetched a handkerchief from another secret place. She rubbed it firmly against the wall, leaving a smear of dark color against the delicate fabric, then folded it. It vanished once more, and Ava lifted her gaze up to Ingo’s.

Even in the fluttering yellow light she could see how pale and worn he was, the way exhaustion sagged his paper thin skin. Even in the fluttering yellow light, there was no mistaking the crease of pain on his forehead and around the edges of his pressed tight lips.

There was no railing - nothing, Ava thought, but the slick stone steps and the cold walls.

“Worse before it gets better,” Ava said, in that low voice that wasn’t even a whisper, her tone too firm to broke any objection. She settled her other hand over his, squeezed once, and then she took Ingo up the stairs.

She had thought the corridor hard, but the stairs! They fumbled and they ached and they strained, and more than once they held so long that Ava nearly thought - she did not let Ingo stop. She pulled him onwards through the pain, and she knew he could bear it, because he had no choice.

And then the steps were coming to an end - Tom stood above them washing the stone in candlelight. Ava half-imagined she could see the ache of being apart writ through him, and she was terribly sorry for it, and far too tired not to let it show - just a moment, a little smile that softened her eyes, and only when she was sure that Ingo, straining next to her, wouldn’t see it.

And then Tom was opening the door, and Ava held, just there, her head aching, all the muscles of her arms and shoulders groaning with the strain, and waited for his signal.