Nik laced the conversation with jokes, some subtle, most not, but there was nothing subtle about the tension.
They ate like survivors, bowls clutched, eyes flicking to the blacked-out windows at every snap from the croft outside.
Even the dog, belly distended and head low, watched the door with a readiness that was all nerves and no training.
Nik wiped a thumb through his beard and gestured to the window behind Lyra. "Did you close the west shutter?"
Lyra shot him a look. "Twice. Why?"
He dipped two fingers into the air, as if plucking a thread. "I hear something. Cart, maybe. Or shoes. Not Watch, they don’t walk like that. Too heavy. Too... staged."
Thorin rolled his eyes but stood from the table, every motion done with the minimum required effort.
He reached under the bench, retrieved a length of pipe fortified with a soldered lead shot, and gripped it so casually it looked like an extension of his forearm.
Nik and Lyra set down their bowls in tandem.
Apollo, a half-chewed root chunk caught at the back of his tongue, rose and followed them toward the stairwell.
He felt the dog tense, then drift to his side, ears canted forward.
The first knock came as a series of polite, deliberate raps at the main door, each separated by the exact interval needed to telegraph intent.
Not Watch, as Nik had said. Not even the Blackhearts’ normal flavor of idiot. This was someone who knew the house, and wanted its occupants to know him in return.
Lyra moved to the side of the door, pressed her back to the wall, and mouthed the word "Buyer" at Nik.
Nik grinned, wiped his palms on his thighs, and called out: "Shop’s closed, friend. Come back after the market."
A pause. Then a voice, smooth and deep as honey in winter. "That’s a disappointment, Nik. I hate to waste time, even for old acquaintances."
Apollo felt the old crawl of nerves, the animal certainty of being sized up by a predator that had more appetite than patience.
Thorin slotted in behind the door, pipe raised. "If Blackhearts are up, we’re not worth a knuckle sandwich. Unless you’re in the mood for charity work."
Lyra counted down with her fingers. Three. Two.
The voice at the door: "Be nice, Lyra. It’s your best feature." Then the chain curtain parted with a slither and a man ducked through.
He was tall, built like the kind of statue you’d see in the old imperial parks, long bones, deliberate grace, shoulders that would have seemed ludicrous on anyone but him.
His hair was a fall of pale gold, straight as a plumb line, and his eyes, impossible, arctic blue, set deep under brows sharp as the rest of his face, burned with a cold, offhand delight.
He wore a jacket of black doeskin, open to the waist, and beneath it a shirt so clean and white it seemed a declaration of war on the glassworks’ grime.
He moved with the certainty of a man who had already mapped every possible outcome.
Nik bared his teeth in a smile that might have been hunger if it wasn’t so openly hostile.
"Didn’t think you’d risk your pretty boots for us, Cassian. Word in the quarter is you’re too busy collecting debts to bother with the old crew."
Cassian, if that was his name, flashed a smile so even and white it seemed almost a trick of the light.
"I’m here on business, Nik. Arrangements need to be made."
He glanced around, eyes flicking over Thorin’s pipe, Lyra’s braced stance, and Apollo’s hands, still raw from stitching.
"And you’ve made it easier than I expected, all of you lined up so neat. Even the healer. Remarkable."
He advanced, each step measured, his boots soundless on the dust-and-cinder floor.
There was an intimacy to his approach, a confidence that had nothing to do with raw strength.
"We can do this gently," Cassian said, hands open and empty, no visible weapon, but every muscle in his body seemed to know what one would do if needed.
"Or you can play at loyalty and watch Marrowgate’s bounty double again by nightfall. I prefer the first option."
"Why?" Apollo asked. The question spilled out, dry in his mouth.
Cassian’s gaze flickered over Apollo, calculating, as if weighing product at a market.
"Because you’re valuable. To the right people, in the right hands." He smiled again, but the curve of his mouth was more a subtraction than an addition.
"And because, if you walk out of Marrowgate, I don’t get my commission."
Nik snorted, spreading his arms wide, sleeves rolling up to show the bruises and the old prison marks. "So you work for Petronia now? Didn’t peg you for the type to take orders."
Cassian shrugged, as if the question bored him. "She pays on time. And unlike you, she knows how to motivate a workforce. Now, are we talking, or are we bleeding?"
Thorin tensed, Apollo saw the dwarf’s left hand ghost to the pipe’s loaded end, but Lyra shot him a warning glance: not yet.
Apollo braced for violence, but Cassian only circled, light on his feet, an apex predator with too much food in his belly for a chase.
Apollo watched the man, aware of every inch of glass, every chemical stink, the web of tripwires and deadfalls that made the glassworks a fortress only if one already knew its map.
He measured the angles. He knew, in the way prey always knew, the moment when running became hopeless.
Cassian stopped two paces away. "Easy way?" he offered.
"You come with me. No fuss, no fingers broken, nobody else gets hurt. You’ll be handed off, clean, nice, straight to the buyer. Who, for the record, doesn’t seem to care if the healer is in one piece, but I like to exceed standards."
Apollo didn’t answer, counting the heartbeats until Nik made his move.
Cassian’s eyes met his, cold and droll, and he wondered if the man was reading every uncertainty off him like a ledger.
He was about to reply, anything, something, when Nik hurled the glass bottle at Cassian’s head and lunged.
Cassian’s head snapped to the side as the bottle burst against his cheekbone, spraying him and the wall in a fan of hot spirits.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink at the glass shards embedded in his face, he just smiled wider, as if this was the opening move he’d been craving.
Apollo saw the next part in slices: Cassian’s hand flicking upward to catch Nik’s wrist mid-lunge; the sound of bone popping; Nik’s breath forced out in a sharp, ugly bark.
Cassian’s other hand, still empty, flicked behind his back and came up with a little black tube no longer than a thumb, which he jammed into Nik’s gut.
There was a hiss, Apollo’s mind supplied ’acid? gas?’, but Nik only grunted, staggered, and swung again, landing two quick jabs to Cassian’s ribs.
Lyra and Thorin moved as a unit, years of some old drill manifesting in her darting to the left, the dwarf to the right, both angling for the door. Cassian’s gaze never left Nik, but his voice came sharp and clear: "Now, please."
The glassworks’ rear wall exploded inward in a blur of movement, and three more men, these in mismatched leathers and with the unmistakable aura of professional violence, poured through, blades out.
One caught Lyra by the braid before she could even finish her turn; another leveled a short, ugly crossbow at Thorin and loosed. The bolt passed through the dwarf’s shoulder with a noise like a rotten fruit hitting stone.
Apollo saw the world slow: Lyra slamming her elbow into her captor’s throat and twisting free; Thorin, blood streaming down his arm, hurling the length of iron pipe at the crossbowman’s head.
The pipe collided with a wet, catastrophic sound. The man toppled, but the weapon clattered across the bricks, came to rest by the dog, who was barking itself hoarse.
Cassian spun Nik around, using him as a shield, and advanced on Apollo in three precise steps, Nik’s neck in the crook of his elbow.
Nik clawed at the arm but couldn’t break the hold, and his face had gone nearly purple.
"Don’t bother," Cassian said, voice effortless, not even winded. "The instinct for rescue is noble. But it’s not in your blood, is it."
Apollo’s mind flickered through all the stories he’d ever heard of men like Cassian: the ones who looked for the break, the moment when pain became a lever instead of a warning.
He wanted to believe he was immune; he wanted to believe he could be the version of himself who did not freeze, did not bargain, did not betray.
He looked at Nik, then at Lyra, her mouth working silently around a curse, arms pinned by the man behind her. "Let him go," Apollo said. The tremor in his voice was less fear than rage, but it was rage with nowhere to go.
Cassian dragged Nik in a lazy half-circle, using his body to nudge the crossbow closer to Apollo’s feet. "Pick it up," he ordered.