[POV: Silas]
Silas woke with the shank in his hand.
He didn't remember grabbing it. The motion was automatic—some reflex from a life he had been living in Thaloria for the past few days. His fingers were wrapped around the rough leather grip of the shipwright's dragger before his eyes were fully open, his knuckles white with tension.
Forty hours. Maybe less.
Grey light seeped through the single, grime-streaked window of the tannery back room. Dust motes hung motionless in the air, suspended like they were waiting for the silence to snap. The air was thick with the stink of the place—ammonia from the curing vats and a sharp chemical bite that burned the back of his throat.
His side throbbed where the stitches pulled tight against his skin. Each breath was a reminder of the officer's blade, a sharp, hot line of pain that refused to fade. The wound hadn't healed. It probably wouldn't for days, and he didn't have days. He had hours.
I need help. Manpower. Something official from the Crown—an execution order, a force of soldiers, anything. I can't take Varis alone. Not after what he did to forty people.
The side door creaked open; the hinges protested in the silence.
Jessa stepped through. She had dirt on her knees and her hands were still damp, dripping water onto the floorboards. She didn't look at Silas. She didn't look at Taren, who was curled in the corner facing the wall. She crossed to the basin in the far corner and plunged her hands into the water, scrubbing them with a violence that suggested the dirt went deeper than skin. The water quickly turned murky brown.
She buried Renya.
The realization hit like a punch. Jessa had done it alone. While he slept. While Taren broke down. She had dragged the body out, dug the hole, and filled it back in.
Silas watched her scrub her palms. He watched the dirt flake off and spiral down the drain. Her hands trembled—a fine, persistent tremor that she couldn't scrub away. It was the only crack in the mask she had welded to her face.
I should have helped.
He didn't say it. He wouldn't say it. Words were weightless things now, useless against the reality of the soil on Jessa's knees. All that mattered was making sure the next burial wasn't theirs.
How long will the Shrike take? It should have returned by now.
A hissing sound cut through his thoughts.
Silas turned. Across the room, one of the curing vats was bubbling—a thick, grey froth spilling over the rim. The acid mixture was reacting to the humidity, or maybe the temperature drop. It hit the floorboards with a wet sizzle.
"Jessa," Silas warned.
She was already moving. She grabbed a bag of lime from the shelf, tearing it open as she crossed the room. She dumped the powder onto the spill, coughing as the white cloud mixed with the fumes.
The air quality in the room plummeted. Silas pulled his tunic over his mouth, his eyes watering. The safehouse was decaying around them. Another day, and the fumes alone would force them out. Two days, and the smell would leak into the street, drawing the City Guard like flies to rot.
Jessa kicked the neutralized sludge into a corner. She didn't look at him. She just went back to the basin, plunged her hands into the water, and started scrubbing again.
The mission timer wasn't just in his head. It was in the air they breathed.
Three sharp raps echoed from the side door.
The sound shattered the morning silence. Jessa moved before Silas could even shift his weight. Her eyes snapped to a gap in the shutters—a familiar silhouette, alone, no drawn weapon. She was in a low stance, knife in her hand, placing herself between the door and the rest of the room. She looked tired—bone-deep tired—but the weapon in her hand didn't waver. She had been ready to kill since the riot. Since she washed the dirt from her hands.
Silas pushed himself upright, gritting his teeth against the scream in his side. He kept the shank hidden against his forearm.
"Crown courier," Jessa called out. Her voice was flat, dangerous. "Give me a reason not to gut you."
There was a pause on the other side. Then a voice Silas recognized—dry, sardonic, and professionally exhausted.
"I left the note about Taren. Check my finger—no signet ring. I'm not here from the Crown or from Calder."
Jessa hesitated. She glanced back at Silas with a silent question in her eyes. Silas studied the silhouette in the gaps of the door frame. The figure was wearing plain wool clothes the color of mud—ill-fitting, anonymous. No armor. No weapons visible. And there it was: her hand raised, fingers splayed. The ring finger was bare. A pale band of skin marked where the signet used to be, a ghost of the loyalty she had shed.
He nodded.
Jessa unlatched the door and stepped back. Kessa entered, bringing a gust of cold morning air that mixed with the chemical reek of the tannery. She didn't flinch at the smell. She didn't look at Taren in the corner nor acknowledged the knife Jessa still held.
She looks like someone who's just realized she has nowhere left to go.
"Kael's body is missing," she said. She didn't offer a greeting. "Blood on the floor, no corpse. Someone cleaned up the scene before the official coroner could start."
His stomach tightened. "Who?"
"Commander Caia Calder. The Steel Warden." Kessa's voice remained flat, reporting facts she couldn't quite believe. "She locked down the scene. Dismissed the guards. By the time the coroner arrived, the body was gone. She covered your mess."
Caia. The woman who had decapitated prisoners in the plaza with a single stroke. The woman who had watched him before his meeting with Voss. She covered for me?
"How do you know all this?" Silas asked.
"Voss's office wasn't secured yet when I went in to file the initial report," Kessa said. She leaned against a workbench, looking out of place among the hides. "I saw paperwork in his desk—a letter addressed to 'Caia Voss.' I didn't have time to read it all, but the name was clear enough." She shrugged. "The palace gossip filled in the rest. Servants talk. Guards talk. Everyone knows the Steel Warden was the one who scrubbed the Pit."
Silas filed the information away, rearranging the map of the board in his head. Caia Voss. Not Calder.
Kessa continued, her eyes fixed on the middle distance. "Her real surname was likely Voss. Minor nobility. Her parents died in a 'purge' fifteen years ago—the same night Varis consolidated his power as Regent. He adopted her the very next day. Raised her in the palace. Molded her into his weapon."
Caia is the key. If she knew the truth about her parents... if someone gave her permission or reason to act against the man who raised her...
"Some say she's loyal," Kessa said, finally meeting Silas's gaze. "Some say she's waiting. I don't know which, but she cleaned up your mess in the Pit. That is not standard procedure for the Regent's daughter."
Why would Varis's own daughter cover for his enemy? Unless she's not his daughter. Unless she's got other thoughts.
"What else?"
"Voss is dead. Found in his office this morning, before I went to visit him. The official cause is 'heart failure.'" Kessa let out a short, humorless laugh. "But the guards who found him are whispering about blood on the carpet. A lot of it."
"Heart failure." That's not a coincidence. That's a cleanup.
"And martial law has been declared," Kessa added. "The city is a prison. No one in or out without papers stamped by the Regent himself. The gates are locked." She tilted her head, studying Silas. "You picked a hell of a week to make enemies of the entire state."
Kessa took off her ring. She's burning bridges. That means she thinks I'll win, or she's desperate enough to bet on a long shot.
"Why help me?" Silas asked.
Nobody answered. Jessa lowered her knife but didn't sheath it. She moved to the side, watching Kessa with the calculating eyes of a predator deciding whether to strike or wait.
Kessa looked down at her hands—rough, unadorned, stripped of the authority she had worn for years. "I'm not helping you for your sake, Mora. Don't mistake this for charity."
"Then what is it?"
"Survival," Kessa said. "I've been watching the way Varis operates. The purge fifteen years ago. The riot yesterday. It's all just math to him. The forty dead were just numbers on a balance sheet. Collateral."
"Don't call them that."
The voice wasn't Silas's. It was Jessa's.
Kessa glanced at her, dismissive. "It's what they are to him. Dead weight. If you get emotional about—"
Jessa moved. It was a blur of motion, fueled by a sleepless night and grief. She slammed Kessa against the workbench, the knife edge pressing into the soft skin under Kessa's jaw. Tools rattled. A jar of tanning fluid tipped over, dripping rhythmically onto the floor.
"Renya wasn't math," Jessa snarled. Her mask was gone. Her face was contorted, raw. "She was eighteen. She liked music. And she died choking on her own blood because of your 'balance sheet'."
Silas lunged. He grabbed Jessa's wrist, wrenching it back. Ungh— His side screamed—a white-hot tear that nearly doubled him over—but he held on.
"Jessa. Stand down."
"She's one of them, Silas! She's—"
"I said stand down!"
Silas shoved them apart, gasping for air. He leaned against the table, clutching his bandages. Fresh blood was already seeping through his tunic.
Kessa touched her neck. A thin line of red welled up where the knife had bitten. She looked at the blood, then at Jessa. She didn't look scared. She looked... impressed.
"You're right," Kessa said, her voice steady. "They weren't math. They were people. And if we don't fix this, there will be a thousand more just like them."
Jessa stood panting, her chest heaving. Slowly, the rage drained out, leaving her hollow again. She lowered the knife.
"Survival," Kessa repeated, softer this time.
She's been testing me. Auditioning me.
A grudging respect settled in his chest. It wasn't trust—trust was a luxury he couldn't afford—but it was understanding. He knew this language. It was the language of leverage and calculated risk.
"I needed to know whose side you were on," Kessa said quietly. "The Crown's? Varis's? Or your own?" She met his gaze, unblinking. "You chose your own. That's the only side that stands a chance."
She's not like Sparkweave. She's not fighting for a cause or an ideal. She just wants to live.
I can work with that. Ideals get you killed. Survival instincts keep you breathing.
"Welcome to the team," Silas said. The words came out dry, hollow. "We're all just trying not to die before this week ends."
Kessa didn't smile. Neither did he.
The light shifted, turning the grey room to bruised purple, then deepened into the heavy blue of approaching night. Silas waited.
He wasn't built for waiting. Every instinct he had screamed at him to move, to act, to force a solution. But there was nothing to force. He was trapped in a box, injured, hunted, with no resources but a stolen shank, Void Coins he couldn't use, and a half-mad plan. He needed the Shrike. He needed the Crown to be the weapon he couldn't be.
Hides swayed on the ceiling hooks, creaking softly in a draft that smelled of coming rain. Somewhere in the front room, Jessa was making stew. The smell drifted through the doorway—onions, salt, the gamey scent of whatever meat she had managed to scrounge.
A sad little play. Playing house while the city burns.
The Crown has to respond. They have to see Varis for what he is.
Taren ate in silence, his spoon scraping against the tin bowl with a rhythmic, grating sound. Jessa ate staring at the floor.
Every hour I wait is another hour Varis has to find me. Another hour for the trail to get cold or for the guards to kick down the door.
Silas's hand rested on the leather-wrapped hilt of his weapon. He released it. Gripped it again. Released it. Gripped it. A nervous tic he hadn't known he possessed until today.
Where is the Shrike? The summary said "express delivery to the Capital." It didn't say "express" meant two full days.
Voices outside—low, rough, and getting closer.
Silas froze. Jessa stopped stirring. Taren stopped chewing.
Heavy boots crunched on the gravel of the alley. The voices resolved into words—Guard patrol.
"...heard the Steel Warden tore the corporal a new one. Said he let the perimeter slip."
"Slip? He was sleeping. Lucky she didn't take his head."
The footsteps stopped right under the window. A match flared—the sharp scent of tobacco smoke drifted through the slats, mixing with the stew and the chemicals.
Silas didn't breathe. He watched the thin line of smoke curl into the room. They were inches away. One curious glance through the cracks, one sneeze from Taren, and it was over.
"Voss is dead too," the first guard said. "Heart failure. Convenient timing."
"Everything's convenient when you're the Regent. Keep your head down, mate. This week's a grinder."
A grunt of agreement sounded. The boots shifted. "Come on. Perimeter check. Before the Warden decides she wants our heads."
The footsteps faded.
Silas exhaled. It came out loud, shaky. Taren was shaking too, his spoon rattling against his bowl, and Jessa reached out to still his hand.
Then came a scratch of talons on wood, a rustle of dry wings at the window.
The Void-Shrike perched on the windowsill, its wings folded tight against its body. The feathers were dark and metallic, clinking softly as it ruffled them. Its eyes were red—not organic red, but the flat crimson glow of something mechanical. It watched Silas with zero warmth, patient and hungry.
Silas approached slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs in a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with the pain in his side.
He extended his finger. The strike was a blur. Pain flared, sharp and hot, the serrated beak grinding down for a fraction of a second before releasing him. Blood welled up from the puncture, bright and warm. The toll was paid, and the bird licked the blood from its beak with a disturbingly long tongue.
A scroll was tied to its leg—official Crown parchment, heavy and stiff, the sealing wax still intact. Silas untied it with trembling fingers, the paper cold against his skin, and unrolled it to find script that was precise, bureaucratic, and utterly indifferent.
"Transmission received. Regent Calder's authority confirmed by Crown Belt. Investigation closed. No action authorized."
Silas read it again. Then a third time. The words didn't change.
Denied. After forty dead. After Sparkweave. After Voss. After everything.
The scroll crumpled in his fist. He squeezed until his knuckles popped, until the parchment groaned under the pressure. He stared at the ruined ball of paper, feeling a cold, hard knot in his chest.
Varis bought the right people. Or the Crown just doesn't care. The system protects its own.
He pressed a hand to his side. Steady. Then he smoothed the scroll out again. He flattened it against his thigh, ironing out the creases with the heel of his hand. He studied the format. The positioning of the seal. The specific phrasing of the rejection.
Thank god I'm not truly loyal to the Crown. If I believed in this system, this would break me.
He smiled. It was a thin, sharp expression. The smile of a man realizing there were no rules left.
But if official channels won't work... I'll make my own.