Broken Guns

Before they could go about killing anyone, they had to organize themselves and what they had. They pulled their meager assets together, dragging the satchels back out to one of the long empty worktables in the printing room and spilling out the chambers of their guns, the metal casings clinking and rolling against the whorls of wood. Ezra had a full five bullets—which would have been six, if not for the one fired into the brothel mattress—but Emmerich had only been allotted two when Allister had given him the bulldog. Eight in all between them, hardly anything. Emmerich’s paltry two had caused Ezra to look at him in disbelief, and doubly so when he got his first good look at Emmerich’s pistol.

“What is this?” Ezra said, lifting the empty bulldog by the hammer and examining it as though it were a suspect cut of meat. “This is ancient. Does she shoot?”

“She shoots,” Emmerich said, but thought of the hard buck of recoil and the frequency of misfires and frowned. “You saw her that night.” And had held her, slipping the pistol from Emmerich’s holster as though he did it all the time, as if he had every right to it.

“I wasn’t paying much mind at the time,” Ezra said. “I can’t believe Allister, or anyone, would put you on jobs with this. This is—“ he grimaced, and twisted the pistol around in his hands, peering into the empty chambers, “—quite old. They haven’t made this model for thirty years—and this is an early make.”

“Allister called her the bulldog,” Emmerich said, and Ezra snorted.

“More like kleiner Kläffer,” he said, and slid the empty pistol back at Emmerich. He knew pistols, that was clear enough. Emmerich had never been let near enough of them to even begin to. He hadn’t even known the model of this one he’d been allowed to carry. Once the Order had included guns into the Aggrieves, any makers that had continued their operations illegally began scrubbing any recognizable marks from their wares. They were only identifiable now to someone with a trained eye.

“What’s yours, then?” Emmerich said, nodding with his chin to Ezra’s clearly newer and more cared-for pistol.

“It’s a custom make; it’s called a Lutreole,” Ezra said, sliding his fingers over the dark polished wood of the grip. “There were only fifty or so made like it. Kegg gave it to me.”

“Gave, or lent out?”

Ezra looked up, eyes sharp. “Gave. It belongs to me.”

“Es tut m—I’m sorry. This wasn’t mine,” Emmerich said, pushing at the bulldog’s stout barrel and sending it into a glum spin on the tabletop. “I can barely manage to fire it.”

He wasn’t quite sure how to tell Ezra that his new companion was not trained or efficient in any sort of talents which might be useful in helping to defend themselves against the mutinous acts of their previous accomplices. He knew how to cut a purse and pick a lock and use his body in a less than decent manner, but beyond that he was mostly useless and he knew it well.

“I don’t know if I’d manage to fire it myself,” Ezra said, with something like a laugh. “It ought to be put up in a collection somewhere.”

Emmerich knew he was only teasing, but it still irked him that the only gun Allister had ever entrusted him with was, in Ezra’s view, such a brazen joke. An ancient pistol and only two bullets—the message was fairly clear. He hadn’t yet deserved anything better.

He turned his eye to Ezra’s pistol instead. The wood of its grip was so dark it appeared nearly black, and all of the metal furnishings and fastenings were a bright, hard silver. The length of the barrels had a detailed engraving etched into the surface, a rendition of a long sleek animal that twisted among furling leaves. It was beautiful, elegant, and quite different from any markings Emmerich had ever seen. Not that he had seen that many, but he could understand why there might have only been fifty ever made like it. The pistol was a gorgeous thing, likely worth more than any Emmerich had ever seen or touched.

“What is it?” Emmerich said, brushing his fingers along the graceful details, the lithe shape of the animal.

“A mink.”

“I’ve no idea what that is,” Emmerich said, and Ezra laughed lightly.

“Little animal,” he said. “They make coats from them sometimes.”

“And Kegg...gave this to you,” Emmerich said. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Ezra, only that he had a difficult time imagining such a thing when they both lived in a world where nothing came free and everything had to be fought for.

“Yes. He was...almost like a father to me,” Ezra said, soft suddenly. “I know that must seem odd. But he was. He took me in when I had nowhere to go, helped me when he had no cause to. He was never a kind man, but he did look after me in a way. The pistol was...it was a gift, but I very much had to prove myself for it.”

“That’s why they didn’t tell you about the plan,” Emmerich said. “They knew you wouldn’t go along with killing him.”

“Then why stick me up out of the way in that room, with you?” Ezra said. “They could’ve taken care of me along with Kegg. Just one more bullet, and I’d be out of their business.”

“How well do they know you?”

Ezra sighed and pushed his fingers through his hair. He did that often, and Emmerich was starting to wish he wouldn’t. Every time Ezra touched his hair, Emmerich wanted to know what it felt like—was it rough or soft, silky or coarse, what sorts of noises Ezra would make if it was tugged on. He rubbed a hand across his face and shifted in his chair.

“I don’t know,” Ezra was saying, meanwhile. “Well enough, I suppose. I’ve only ever been with Kegg’s men.”

“Would they count on you to run if you thought Kegg had been betrayed? Could they have known that you would do something like this?”

“I—I don’t know, Emery,” Ezra said, sounding truly unsure for the first time that Emmerich had heard. “I’ve kept to myself mostly, with them. Some knew me better than others, but of course they all knew how Kegg brought me in. And maybe he did favor me, just a little. I suppose there might have been...jealousy.”

Emmerich studied Ezra under the muted light that came in through the brown-papered windows. The boy had folded his hands neatly together on the tabletop, and though his face was calm he was clearly upset beneath that—a tension in his jaw and shoulders, brightness in his eyes. Emmerich tried to place Ezra together with Kegg in his mind, stretched his thoughts around the two of them to understand how Ezra could have come away with a paternal sentiment from their acquaintance.

Kegg had been a thin, sharp-faced blade of a man, crow-black hair receding from a pallid forehead, small like a rat and as shrewd as one as well. Emmerich had never exchanged as much as a word with him, being far beneath the man’s notice, but he had never sensed anything near to fatherly about him. Beside Allister, who had been tall and sturdy, loud-voiced and bearded, Kegg had always seemed like a small oily shadow slipping in and out of downmarket deals, not someone Emmerich would have ever trusted if Allister hadn’t first.

But Ezra had clearly respected Kegg, if not held some strange form of affection, and Emmerich wouldn’t speak his opinions of him. Emmerich hadn’t felt anything for Allister except a sort of dependent reliance for providing him the means to feed and clothe himself, along with a fear that one day the man would simply find him truly inadequate and no longer bother with him, and maybe he simply couldn’t understand. Nothing could ever replace Emmerich’s own family, and he hadn’t ever tried, and wouldn’t have looked to Allister even if he wanted to.

Ezra sighed suddenly and swept a hand back through his dark hair. “Clearly there was jealousy,” he amended. “If they choose me to be the one that they aimed to hunt down across the city like a dog."

“Why don’t you just leave the Kingshore?” Luca suggested suddenly, from where he was leaning against the far end of the work table. Emmerich had nearly forgotten he was there.

“It wouldn’t stop them,” Ezra and Emmerich said together. Ezra’s smile after that was sudden and sharp.

“For how much we took, nothing will stop them. Also, we’re their hanged man to the entire city, everyone downmarket, for what happened to Allister and Kegg. They have to catch us.” He met Emmerich’s eyes across the table. “They’re depending on it.”

Emmerich couldn’t have spoken it better, so he only nodded.

“I’ve a room you can have, then,” Luca said. “It is small, but safe enough.”

“You don’t have to—“

“Ezra, it is the least I can do. I tried to kill you, for no other reason than that I was told I ought to. They won’t look for you here—they came to me because they went to everyone, even the most unlikely of us. If this is true, what they did, I can hide you.”

“It is true,” Ezra said. “But you oughtn’t risk your family, taking us in—”

“There’s no risk. I live here now,” Luca said. When Ezra made a sound in his throat, he continued, “it was simpler this way. After my wife—well. It was too difficult to keep our residence.”

Ezra wilted a bit. “Luca, mi dispiace—“

“Non ti preoccupare, it’s better here,” Luca said with a pass of his hand. “Come then, I’ll show you.”

There was a staircase behind a door besides Luca’s office, which lead directly upstairs to a room above the large workroom below, at the furthest end of the building. It was clearly Luca’s personal quarters, though it was small and somewhat dingy, it was cared for and in some semblance of order. A second door on the opposite wall took them into a narrow back corridor, musty and unlit. There were even more doors here, a quite narrow one on the far end of the hall and another on the same wall that had just come out of.

Luca pushed open the latter of them and revealed a dimly lit room, filled with clutter. What little empty space there was dusty, cobwebby. “It’s not been used for some time,” he said, rather apologetically.

“That’s certainly all right,” Ezra told him. “It’s already far more than I would have asked for.”

“There’s no need for you to go in and out of here through the main room,” Luca said. “This door, here—” he moved to a very narrow door at the end of the corridor, “—leads to back stairs. They come out on Ashpint Street; you can come and go as you please from there, without being seen by the men during the work hours, or disrupting me in my own room.” He looked to Emmerich then. “Or needing to pick my locks.”

Emmerich flushed, and Ezra only laughed and clasped Luca firmly on the shoulder and asked about a place to wash up, as two days trudging through the city had left them both inordinately dirty. There was a small room at the back of the printhouse, which held a solid wooden tub that could be filled from water-butt taps, boiled if wanted. They took turns with it, Emmerich going first. He didn’t bother with any boiling; he stripped down and sat shivering in the tub, scrubbing his skin with a rough rag and scouring the grease and dirt of brothels and rookeries and public houses of out his hair. The water was murky and grey-brown when he was done, and there was still dirt beneath his fingernails that wouldn’t come out, but that had been there for months already, perhaps even years.

A spotty mirror was hung up above the basin, and Emmerich briefly examined his worn and tired face in it, passed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He bared his teeth at the glass—he was lucky to still have all his own, plenty of men he knew did not—and dressed himself, rather loathe to wear his dirty garments but having nothing else available. He wondered if the vast amount of money they now had in their possession would ever go towards new belongings, especially as they had both lost everything but what they had been carrying with them that night, and he couldn’t live off Ezra’s charity for much longer.

When Emmerich returned to Luca’s office, Ezra was sitting on the desk again, one ankle hooked behind the other and his hands on his knees. Luca sat in the chair, leaning back and body relaxed. The two men were speaking easily to each other, Luca’s earlier violence towards Ezra apparently forgotten between them. But Emmerich couldn’t forget, and even though Ezra smiled at him and touched his arm in a reassuring way as he went out of the office towards the bath, he couldn’t shake his discomfort at being left alone with Luca in the small space.

Emmerich supposed he wasn’t welcome to sit on the desk as Ezra had been, so he remained in the doorway when Ezra had gone. The two leather satchels were sitting beside a large trunk in the corner of the office, and he supposed he ought to stay in here and keep an eye on them. Before he could do much of anything, Luca had turned to face him in a considerably less friendly manner than he had had with Ezra.

“He calls you Emery,” he said. “That is your name, then.”

“Emmerich,” Emmerich said, as he realized they never had been quite properly introduced. “It’s Emmerich.”

“And…you are his friend.”

“Yes,” Emmerich said, because he could say nothing else. He had known Ezra for little less than two days but he felt as though they were, at the very least, friends.

“Good,” Luca said, and nothing further. Emmerich had nothing much to say to him either. Though he would ordinarily have liked to ask several things of him—where he was from, how long he had known Ezra, what he knew about the boy and why he was so very different—he had just nearly shot the man not an hour’s half ago, and it was still difficult to feel friendly towards him. He didn’t miss the way that Luca occasionally glanced towards the satchels, either.

When Ezra returned sometime later, Emmerich was sitting on the trunk and playing with a small rushlight holder. He had run out of things to look at in the room, after spending some time admiring the ornate wooden cabinet in the corner and wondering if Luca was a holder of some illegal spirits, and glancing over the hopelessly tiny print of some of the papers scattered about, the iron holder was the next most interesting thing to pay attention to. He had never owned one himself.

Ezra was now wearing a shirt of Luca’s that was as large on him as the ruined one he had been wearing before, hanging down past his knuckles and far too wide about his throat. His hair was tousled and damp and falling over one eye, and he appeared so dreadfully young that Emmerich could hardly believe the things he had already seen Ezra do, or imagine the things he knew he must be capable of.

To Emmerich’s surprise, Ezra joined him in sitting on the trunk. There wasn’t quite enough room for the both of them there, and Ezra’s warm thigh pressed to his and his shoulder rubbed and fought against Emmerich’s. He smelled of sharp soap, of ink and paper that was likely from Luca’s shirt, and Emmerich closed his eyes against the heat that nudged at his belly.

“Your arm,” he said, simply for something to fill the silence. If it needed to be tended to again, he would gladly do it.

“I kept it out of the water,” Ezra said, touching his fingers to his arm. “It’s fine for now.”

“Ich bin froh, das zu hören,” Emmerich said, and Ezra’s smile was gentle and warm. They were already so close together on the trunk, and Emmerich found himself leaning closer, drawn in by the shape of Ezra’s mouth.

“I imagine,” Luca said abruptly, startling them apart, “that you might be hungry.”

“Oh,” said Ezra, glancing away from Emmerich and rubbing at a spot on his cheek. “Yes, I suppose.”

#

They had a supper of bread and oysters, which Emmerich had never particularly like but had learnt to, since coming to this city. They sat together at one of the worktables, though Luca freely admitted he usually ate in his office. Emmerich only asked a single question of Luca during the meal—what was printed here, and the answer was Bibles—and otherwise spoke only to Ezra or stayed quiet. Luca often spoke to Ezra in his own language, which left Emmerich entirely out even if he’d had much else to say. Ezra appeared to be nearly fluent in it at well, which was not as surprising to Emmerich as it might have been.

After some time, he left them alone in the office and went upstairs to the small room he and Ezra were to share. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, then went about shoving the clutter to the furthest corners he could, to clear a space for them to at least be able to fit in to sleep. He found a trunk of scratchy woolen blankets and placed it aside, as well as a small table and few battered chairs. In an old canvas sack he found a small collection of crumbling bricks—most in pieces, but a few still whole. With them he built up a small makeshift hearth, to keep a lamp on or even to have a small fire later that they could heat water with.

In his moving of the furniture, Emmerich had uncovered a single small, round window at the back wall of the room. The thick-paned glass looked out towards the banks of the Lowon, the slipways and frameworks that rose down the river. Emmerich stood there for a time, watching distant masts move beyond the rooftops and the orange ball of the sun sink through oily smoke and yellowish fog. If there were missionary ships in the air, they were hidden above the gloom.

The door opened after a time, and Ezra slipped through into the room. He carried a lamp, and their two satchels were slung off his shoulder. He lowered them to the floor as he glanced about at the work Emmerich had done.

“Oh,” he said, when his eyes found Emmerich at the window. “Did you—?”

“We’ll still need something to sleep on,” Emmerich said. “Although I suppose the floor could suffice for a night or two.”

“I’ll ask Luca about it,” Ezra said. He paused, touching a hand to his hair then rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t blame you for not liking him much. I’m not—”

“It’s all right,” Emmerich said. “We’ve not much of a choice in this, I know.”

Ezra only nodded at that, and then did what he had done in every new room they had ever entered since Emmerich had met him—moved about, touching as much of the walls and the corners as he could reach until satisfied. He found a loose enough board in one wall, and managed to pry out enough it out that they could slide the satchels into the space between the walls and close it back up again. They did it without much discussion—Ezra’s reasoning hadn’t been anything to do with trusting Luca, but simply out of logic and deniability, were they to be caught by anyone who had heard the story of their traitorousness second-hand. Emmerich had simply agreed with him, though his personal reasons were based in not trusting Luca very much at all. He had seen the way the man looked at the satchels when Ezra had been out of the room.

He could hardly blame Luca for doing so; it was a great deal of money after all and Emmerich likely would have looked at it the same way had he been in Luca’s place. But Luca hadn’t much endeared himself to Emmerich after what he had done to Ezra, even if he had been sorry afterwards. He appeared to be a man with a sort of desperation about him, not uncommon in men of the poor working class, but his willingness to attack a boy who thought of him as a friend was unappealing.

Deeper in the contents of the room they found several thin bed pallets, which rid them of the need to even ask Luca about it at all. As they moved about, piling the woolen blankets on each bed, Emmerich couldn’t help but eye the large space between them and wonder about it. Two nights he and Ezra had spent in the same bed, back-to-back and having nothing but each other to depend on. They were less isolated now with Luca’s assistance, but it still very much felt as though Ezra was the only one he could trust, the only one standing in his same place and seeing the same view of the world. And yet, he had never felt less alone since coming to this city.

The light from the lamp Ezra had brought up gave off was reddish-orange and steady, made everything look like burnished copper and fire. They had set it on the small hearth Emmerich had built up from the bricks—Ezra had been both startled and pleased by it, and Emmerich had felt absurdly accomplished—pulled the bedding close to it, and sat themselves down with an easy silence between them.

“I’ve thought of something,” Emmerich said at length.

Ezra drew himself up, locking his arms about his knees. “Oh?”

“Did Kegg ever deal with Marcellin Chambért?”

In the glow of the lamp, Ezra shook his head. “The name’s not familiar.”

“He wasn’t much of anything, not any real sort of downmarketer, but he held wares sometimes. When Allister couldn’t move them right away, or had no prospects for buyers. If we’re looking for more arms, there’s a chance he could be holding some.”

“He’s probably been spoken to, just like Luca.”

“It’s likely. But at least we’ll know, and can prepare for it this time.”

“All right,” Ezra said, with a slow nod. “Tomorrow, then. We’ll go to see him.”

Though it was early and the sun was hardly down, they were both eager to put out the lamp and crawl into their separate beds and reach for sleep. But despite the weight on his eyes and in his body, Emmerich found himself laying quite awake for some time, breathing slowly into the dark and listening to the creak of boards settling against each other. He could not sleep against the solitude that pressed in around him.

“Emery,” came Ezra’s voice across the dark room then, soft and almost unsure.

Emmerich shifted, rolling beneath the blankets. “Yes?”

“Would it be all right—I mean, would it trouble you if I...if we...” Ezra took in a breath then, and held it. “Never mind,” he muttered.

But Emmerich thought he knew what it was Ezra was too guarded to say aloud, and without words he rolled out of his pallet, and shoved it across the creaking floor until it nudged up against Ezra’s own. Ezra watched him, his head on the pillow and his eyes open and still, saying nothing.

“Das ist gut?” Emmerich said, hesitating at the edge before climbing back into the bed. He’d been fairly sure this was what had been meant, but if he was wrong...

“Good,” Ezra said quietly. His fingers curled into the bedclothes, and Emmerich thought he saw a shadow of a smile on his face, in the dark.

Emmerich settled back into his blankets contentedly. He listened for long minutes as Ezra’s breathing slowed and evened out, and the boy was asleep. “Gute Nacht und schlafe gut,” he said softly, and closed his eyes.

#

Some time later, he was woken by the reedy sound of creaking footsteps on the back stairs. His hand was wrapped around the bulldog’s grip, finger on the trigger, in an instant. They were not the heavy steps of a man of Luca’s build, and Ezra was here beside him, still sleeping. There wasn’t time to wake him, either; the sound of the footsteps was nearly upon them. Emmerich rolled out of the bedding and stole quickly across to the door, pistol in hand and bare feet cold on the wooden boards.

He leant out into the corridor in time to see a shadow slip in through the narrow door that lead to the back stairs. It was small and slim and carrying no light. When Emmerich took another cautious step into the hall, it went quite still against the wall. For a moment, neither of them moved. Emmerich was just about to raise his pistol and call a warning when the shadow darted forward, rushing at him with startling speed.

Emmerich jumped aside, barely avoiding a swipe of the shadow’s arm, something small and pointed grasped in the hand. His back hit hard against the wall, and then the shadow was at him again, quick and near-silent on its feet. Blindly, he dodged, and felt the breeze of another nimble swipe aimed low across his belly. He followed the swing of the arm in the shadows, grabbed where he thought it might come to, and his hand closed around a thin wrist under chilled skin. He drew his arm back, dragging the shadow close to his chest, catching it around the waist and twisting it in his arms so it was trapped against him. The shape hissed and spit at him, struggling and fighting to free its arm, scratching at him with its free hand.

The nearest door flung open and Ezra came out with the lamp, bringing flickering golden-bronze light into the small space. When it washed over Emmerich and the thrashing shape in his arms, light gleamed off the edge of the shape in his captive’s hand—a kind of straight blade, small but quite sharp looking.

Ezra hurried closer, raising the light higher. “Emery, let her go!”

The idiocy of the demand startled him. “She’s got a fucking knife!”

“Ah, then—best keep hold of her,” Ezra said, and Emmerich snorted and did so.

“Who are you?” the girl hissed then, panting through her teeth. “Thieves? Murderers? I’ll scream if you touch me!”

“Vena,” Ezra said, which only stalled the girl for a moment before she began to thrash again. Ezra caught her face and turned her, though she struggled and spat at him, fighting in Emmerich’s arms. “Vena, look at me. It’s Ezra. I know you. Do you remember me?”

“Ezra?” the girl said, going still. Emmerich didn’t trust it, and kept his arms firm around her. But the fight had gone out of her for the moment. “Ezra, that’s you?”

“Yes,” Ezra said, favoring her with one of those gentle smiles. He glanced up at Emmerich then. “You can let her go now.”

Reluctantly, Emmerich did so. But the girl only shook herself out of his arms and neither screamed nor thrust her knife into either of them. She had thick dark hair and dark eyes, and couldn’t have been much more than fifteen years of age. Her clothes were plain and rough, and a bruise bloomed across the skin of one cheek. Emmerich was quite sure he hadn’t just put it there—it had the yellow tinge of being old, half-healed.

“All right,” Ezra said, still soothing and gentle. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” the girl replied, and Emmerich quite agreed. He had the scratches and sore spots to prove it, and if he hadn’t caught the girl at the moment he had, he was sure that he would have had a knife in his belly or across his throat.

“Papa gave you the extra room?” she asked then, and Emmerich understood. Clearly Luca had a daughter. They were similar enough in the color of their hair and eyes and skin, though she lacked most of the accent that lilted through Luca’s own speech. Perhaps born here, or come to the ‘shores early enough to learn to speak more as a local.

“Yes,” Ezra was saying to her. “We’re in a bit of trouble, ourselves. We only needed a place to stay for a while.”

“You’re always in trouble, Ezra,” the girl said in reply. “It’s nothing new.”

Emmerich snorted, but both Vena and Ezra ignored him. “What have you been doing, out so late?” Ezra was asking her, with the gently chiding tone of an elder brother.

“Late? It’s hardly past nine,” Vena said. She glanced between them, taking in their ruffled hair and dressed-down state. “I thought men like you would be wide-awake at this hour.”

“Yes, well,” Ezra said. “I thought nice young girls like you would still be indoors at this hour.”

“I work in a scullery in Bridehart,” Vena said, and Ezra’s brow furrowed. “In a great house on Eustower Street, I’ve half of Sundays off but I was out most of it, but I was bringing some things to papa tonight before I go back. That’s why I’m out.”

“Ah,” Ezra said, and that was all. Vena combed her hair back from her face with her fingers and set her shoulders.

“Are you going to let me go, now?” she said. “I’ve to see papa and be back.”

“All right,” Ezra said, as Vena rolled up her little knife into a fold of her dress. She glanced between the two of them one more time, lingering on Emmerich though there was no real reproach in her face. She had struck at him first, after all, and he was the more winded from their encounter. Emmerich was only hopeful that there was no one of this family left for him to tussle with. He generally preferred to make better first impressions.

Vena slipped away through the door that lead to Luca’s quarters, and Ezra and Emmerich retired to their own small space. Once the door had shut behind them, Ezra spoke immediately.

“She doesn’t work in a scullery on Eustower Street,” he said, and Emmerich looked at him. “There are no great houses there. It’s where the parish houses and missionary schools are. Either she doesn’t work there or she’s forgotten where she’s employed.”

“She’d a bruise,” Emmerich said, touching a hand to his own face. “Just here.”

Ezra frowned at the door that lead to Luca’s room. “I suppose it isn’t any of my concern,” he said, eventually.

“You’re worried for her.”

Ezra nodded. “I’ve known Luca and his family for three years. Vena was only a little girl then. I met them soon after...well, they helped me when I needed it. I’ve helped them back since, at times when I can. But I haven’t seen them since his wife...”

He went silent for several long moments, until Emmerich urged him on. “His wife?”

“Dead of fever,” Ezra said. “Last winter. I haven’t seen either Luca or Vena since then.”

“There’s nothing to do for it,” Emmerich said, and laid a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.

“I know,” Ezra said, and it seemed to Emmerich that he even leaned into the touch. When they crawled back into the bedclothes, it was even closer together than they had been before, and the way Ezra’s arm and hand occasionally brushed against his own was not unwelcome.

#

“Right, now,” Ezra said, his voice a rough whisper in the chilled grey air. Close enough to Emmerich that he could feel the curl of warm breath against his skin. “You remember our signal?”

They were standing on the busy corner opposite Marcellin Chambért’s shop in Grand Faire, which was wedged between a milliner and a cordwainer’s. The windows had half-drawn curtains behind them, making it difficult to see into the shop itself. It would be advantageous once they were inside, to avoid being seen by passersby, but at the moment it was more of a hindrance than anything. There was no way of telling if Chambért was even within, or if there were others inside as well. They had been standing on the corner for some minutes already, but no one had gone in or out.

Emmerich gave a single nod. “Are you quite sure about this?”

“Mm.” Ezra glanced around the crowded shopping street, the wind flapping the collar of his coat around his neck.

“Ezra,” Emmerich said sharply, to get his attention. Ezra turned to him with an unexpectedly wide grin.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Don’t fret.”

“I am not fretting,” Emmerich said, and frowned. How could he possibly explain to Ezra that he had never done something like this before, acting on a plan that he had helped to put together, and that a part of him was terrified. There was an ease to Ezra’s countenance and attitude that seemed to mean this was of no real worry to him, that perhaps he had done things of this sort quite often and was depending on his own experience and confidence to carry him through it. Emmerich had no such reliance.

“I think we’ve been standing here long enough,” Ezra said. Emmerich did agree, although it had been such a long time since he had spent any time in this area of the city that he was almost quite enjoying it.

Grand Faire was nothing like the industry district, the rookeries, the area of the city in which Emmerich had lived and mostly worked, or even the district where the Prince and Rose had been. The streets here were bustling with men and women passing through, and lively with shouts from costermongers and street peddlers from their carts, full of the cacophony of organ grinders and the noise of horses and carriages clattering past. Here, the shops catered to those of style and some wealth—not as affluent as the patrons of the west districts—but the buildings were in good upkeep and the streets were solidly paved, though muck from rain and grit and passing horses ran thick and blotted out much of the stones. Ladies crossing in their long skirts paid a half-peg for a street sweeper to cross before them, and gentlemen walked to the outside of the pavement when accompanying them.

Emmerich and Ezra simply took to the street without the aid of a sweeper, as their clothes were already dirtied from days of being worn in the dingier places of the city and they could hardly make them worse. Ezra’s coat sleeve still bore the wide gash from Luca’s knife, though its color was dark enough to mask whatever blood had gotten onto it. They took some care to shake the muck from their boots as they approached the door to Chambért’s shop.

“Seid bereit,” Ezra murmured, before pushing open the door and leading them both inside.

Marcellin Chambért was an old missionary man, long retired, who now made his living selling maps and charts of the ‘best’ aeolian routes to inexperienced missionary crews or needy merchant ship captains at outrageous prices. He also occasionally pawned wares for Allister, which was how Emmerich knew of him. Emmerich doubted the man remembered his face or his name, which was how they wanted it. Despite the fact that they were clearly not missionaries nor merchants themselves, it would do no good to arouse suspicion instantly.

When they entered the shop, Chambért was behind the counter. He had the look of a skeleton; long knobby fingers and a sharp leanness to his face that perhaps had one been handsome in youth. Thinned, greying hair was combed carefully to the sides and he sported a thin mustache on his upper lip. Despite his aged state, his eyes were still bright and shrewd, and they flicked between Ezra and Emmerich as they entered. A bell tinkled above them, rigged to the doorframe. When the door shut behind them, much of the street noise was dimmed.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Chambért said, setting down a brass-rimmed glass lens through which he had been peering. There was no one else inside the shop, and the place smelled strongly of musty paper, ink and oilskin. Maps and charts hung everywhere on the walls, rolled up in wooden stands. Dusty light came through in slants between the curtains and Ezra moved into it, to examine a large detailed map of the Kingshore isles itself hanging on the wall, traced entirely over with blue patterns of dots in wide whorls and arrows. His profile was illuminated in pale grey; the curve of his neck and line of his jaw, the fullness of his mouth. Emmerich glanced away, heat sudden in his belly.

“We’re here to have a look at your wares,” Ezra said then, with an air of near indifference, as though he had no interest for wares at all. Nevertheless, Chambért straightened with a look of intrigue.

“Indeed,” he said. He moved his hand—perhaps to reach for the pair of half-spectacles which sat beside the money box—and in doing so knocked the heavy magnifying glass from the counter. It thudded to the wooden floor, and Chambért uttered a soft grunt of displeasure. With careful slowness, he lowered himself down behind the counter to retrieve it.

When he emerged again he made straight for Ezra, without a glance or even a sense of acknowledging that Emmerich was there at all. Ezra was the one who had spoken, after all, the one who was expressing interest in a purchase, while Emmerich was just standing quietly to the inside of the door. Still, Emmerich watched the man carefully. He hadn’t forgotten that the reward Clavel and Staard were offering was greater when Ezra didn’t survive. They had expected Chambért to know about it, but Emmerich was simply getting worried for his companion’s sake now.

He stretched his elbow out and knocked it against a rolled-up chart leaning against a pile of others in a wooden stand. They fell against each other, toppling over and out of the stand, bouncing hollowly to the floor and rolling. Chambért’s didn’t as much as glance his way, not for a single moment. His gaze stayed firmly fixed to Ezra, without even blinking.

“I’ve some things in the back,” he was saying to Ezra, reaching out to grip the boy’s shoulder with a skeletal hand. “Shall we?”

Emmerich coughed into the collar of his coat, at the same time that Ezra cleared his throat against the back of his hand. Their eyes flicked together and held across the room, and Ezra’s pistol was in his hand a moment later, pressed intimately up against the small of Chambért’s back.

“Yes,” Ezra said to the man, who had clearly felt the pistol and had gone quite still, jaw set. “We shall.”

With a gentle push of his revolver, Ezra guided Chambért towards the door at the back of the shop, both of them disappearing through it. Emmerich slid the bolt across the door at the front and pulled the window curtains fully closed before following Ezra into the back room. No sense in being disturbed if it could be helped.

There was a small storage room here, cluttered with boxes and shelves, with another door that lead to narrow stairs going up. Ezra had Chambért on his knees now, the pistol against the side of his head, and was fishing something from the man’s coat pocket.

“I’ll be having this,” Ezra said, retrieving something and pocketing it himself, too quickly for Emmerich to see the thing clearly. Chambért made a noise of protest, but when Ezra tapped the nose of his pistol against the back of the man’s head, he fell silent. As Ezra was rising to his feet, there came a soft creak of a board that wasn’t from the downstairs—in fact, it seemed to have come from the ceiling above. Another came, and Emmerich glanced up, but Ezra did not appear to have noticed.

Emmerich made a sharp gesture to catch his attention, and held up a finger to his mouth. Ezra’s eyes came to him and Emmerich raised one hand, to point above. The boy’s face hardened immediately and he dropped his chin, tilting his head and raising his eyes, so that his unblinking gaze was leveled at Chambért from just below his dark brows. It had been one fluid motion, that look coming to his face, and Emmerich felt something very inappropriate stir in him.

“Who else is here?” Ezra said to Chambért, quite conversationally.

“No—no one—“

“Who else,” Ezra said, more slowly this time, “is here?” Each word had a dangerous lilt to it, but spoken barely above a pleasant murmur.

Chambért’s lank face paled and twisted. He pointed towards a wooden door, set back behind rows of shelves. “Mon—mon neveu! Que mon neveu! Il travaille pour moi…”

“Only his nephew,” Ezra said to Emmerich, who was not very surprised that Ezra had understood. “He works for him.” He looked back at Chambért. “What’s his name?”

“L-Léonard,” Chambért stammered, and Ezra raised an eyebrow and nuzzled the barrel of the pistol against the man’s sparse hairline.“Vraiment, c'est la vérité!"

“Ah,” Ezra said. “Tu les amènes ici.”

At once, Chambért raised his voice and shouted loudly, “Léonard, viens ici! Maintenant!”

“D’accord, je serai la,” came a reply, distant and muffled from somewhere above. Footsteps creaked along the ceiling, and then came heavy on stairs. Ezra caught Emmerich’s eye, jerked his head towards the doorway. Emmerich moved there, pressing himself up against the wall, out of sight of anyone immediately entering into the room.

And as soon as Chambért’s nephew walked through, Emmerich sent the flat of his boot hard into the back of the man’s knee and dropped him easily to the floor. The man caught himself on his palms, and froze as Emmerich cocked the bulldog and set the barrel gently against the back of his head. From the sharp grin Ezra threw him, Emmerich knew that was what he’d wanted.

He still didn’t know how Ezra planned to continue from here—anything they’d discussed hadn’t included keeping Chambért and his nephew on their knees in a back room at pistol end—but he did know he couldn’t let it appear that he didn’t. This was entirely Ezra’s game now, but to Chambért it had to look like it was both of theirs, together. A crack between them could be exploited; they had to be seamless, one driving force. Zusammen.

“Now,” Ezra said, “I suppose we ought to talk about those wares. What do you have?”

“What reason do I have to tell you?” Chambért sniveled.

“To begin with, we could shoot your nephew,” Ezra said, and turned to look over at Emmerich and the man he had on the floor. “He’s of no import.”

Emmerich found himself going quite still and cold. Was Ezra suggesting that he should shoot this man in the back of the head? Emmerich had never intentionally harmed another man in his life, certainly never put a bullet into one. He wasn’t honestly sure if he could manage it. Chambért’s nephew could hardly be older than himself, and he was shaking beneath the aim of the bulldog, murmuring quiet trembling prayers to himself.

Fortunately, Chambért was frightened enough by even the mention of it that he bowed at once.

“I’ve nothing here!” he cried. “Vraiment, they took what I was holding when they told me to watch out for you. I’ve nothing here, nothing at all! Nothing you would want.”

Ezra and Emmerich looked at each other over the man’s head. With the care that Clavel and Staard had already gone to at making sure they had no easy time of it running, it was hardly unbelievable that they would clear out anything that could help them.

“A pity,” Ezra said then, and got down on one knee beside Chambért. Emmerich kept his own pistol pressed to Léonard’s head, carefully unmoving, as though he had expected this. Ezra had leant close to the man and was speaking softly in the same language he had used before, his low voice twisting like liquid around the words, every sentence sounding as though he were promising nothing but something most exquisite and wonderful things. But Chambért’s eyes were squeezed shut and his narrow face was etched with something that was either fear or anguish.

Emmerich recognized this language they'd been speaking, even if he could neither speak nor understand a word of it himself. One of the First Districts, the official languages set down by the Order welcome to be spoken in any city it controlled and its aughterlands. Unlike certain others which were merely tolerated, or his own, which was entirely out of favor and could even warrant an arrest depending on who you spoke it near. Emmerich had once gone to the Brokens for two nights just for idly singing a children’s rhyme when a constable happened to be within hearing.

Ezra rose to his feet then, looking quite calm and pleasant. For having just learned that their only plan had resulted in nothing, he didn’t appear upset.

“Upstairs, I think, while we leave,” he said, and tapped the end of his pistol against Chambért’s forehead. “Up with you. Léonard, you as well. Oh, you don’t even speak English, do you? Lève-toi, maintenant. Tu vas en haut de l'escalier, s'il vous plait. Emery, get him up, would you?”

#

Minutes later, they were out again in the busy streets of Grand Faire, having left Chambért’s little shop without much fuss. Neither Chambért nor his nephew seemed interested in stopping them, or even having anything further to do with them. Emmerich stepped close to Ezra as they walked, hoping the boy would tell him something more about what had just happened. But Ezra stayed silent at his side, as calm and unexcited as he had been in the small backroom of the shop.

“What were you telling him?” Emmeruch asked finally. “Chambért, I mean.”

Ezra only smiled, somewhat secretively. “Oh, just a few things. Things he won’t like to have happen to him, or his nephew. I’m more interested in why—“ Ezra said, then laughed. “We signaled at the same time. What tipped you?”

“He wasn’t blinking,” Emmerich said, and smiled a bit when Ezra’s brows rose. “He wouldn’t take his eyes off you. Even when I knocked over those maps. He was—“

“—thinking about shooting me,” Ezra finished. “I saw the pistol.”

Emmerich hadn’t. “Where?”

“He had it behind the counter. When he dropped the magnifying glass, it was purposeful. When he bent to pick it up he put the pistol into his coat pocket.”

“I didn’t realize,” Emmerich said, frowning. It seemed something as obvious as that, he should have. “I’d no idea he had a pistol.”

“But you saw something else,” Ezra said, and it seemed to Emmerich that his next step moved him a little bit closer, so that their shoulders bumped and their arms swung together. “If you don’t remember, we signaled at the same time. I noticed the revolver. You noticed the way he behaved. Either way, it meant the same thing.”

“We did get out easily enough,” Emmerich said, and Ezra grinned. “Though it does mean we’re one mark down on getting any extra arms for ourselves. Eight bullets still won’t get us far.”

“Ah, well,” Ezra said. “I’ve no idea how many bullets are in Chambért’s pistol, but we’ve got those now. The revolver as well.” Emmerich was only partly surprised—it must have been the object that Ezra had taken from Chambért’s coat and pocketed. “Still, it isn’t much more of a success.”

“He’ll likely go right to Staard and Clavel,” Emmerich said. “They’ll realize what we’re doing.”

“Let them realize, then,” Ezra said. “Then we won’t be the only ones looking over our shoulders. Though I doubt Chambért will want to deal with anyone downmarket for a while.”

“Ezra, what did you tell him?”

“Just described the bits of him I’d cut off if he were to go right to Staard and Clavel,” Ezra said, with a sudden fierce grin. Emmerich was taken aback for a moment at both the pleasure in Ezra’s tone and the way he seemed so comfortable with the idea. Ezra hadn’t struck him as cruel before, and Emmerich doubted he was, but there was certainly a willingness in him to do dark things if there was a need of it. The way he had spoken to Chambért alone was proof enough of that; the quiet but deadly force that had chilled his voice and hardened his elegant face.

They walked with silence between them along the street for a time. Around them the street was still noisy and clamorous, but Emmerich hardly heard any of it now. They wound past an organ grinder and a boy shouting about matchsticks, and hopped out of the way of a carriage as it splashed through a wide puddle in the street, throwing thick brown runoff onto their boots and trousers.

“I feel as though I ought to tell you,” Ezra said then, “that I’ve run out of ideas for the moment.”

Emmerich clenched his hands within his pockets, closed his eyes as the wind blew his hair into them. “So have I.”

#

The printing house was running, the workroom filled with laborers and noise, the clank of machinery and carrying voices. Ezra and Emmerich went in the back way that Luca had shown them, taking the narrow creaking stairs up to their room from Ashpint Street, and hanging up their coats on pieces of clutter. The noise of the main room came through the wooden walls and floor, rumbled the boards and brought a metallic scent to the air.

Emmerich boiled water for tea on the makeshift hearth and Ezra sat at a small table pulled from the corner and emptied out the chambers of Chambért’s revolver. He found only three bullets there.

“Revolver’s no good, not worth keeping,” he reported, tossing the thing down to the table. “Terrible make, likely couldn’t hit anything with it from more than five paces away. Yours is better, even.”

Emmerich grunted in answer. He knew he shouldn’t take such offense where the bulldog was concerned, but it was one of the very few things he could even call his and he felt somewhat protective of it. He didn’t care that it was an ancient, unwieldy thing with terrible precision—it was his now, even if the transfer of ownership had been unintended.

Ezra seemed to sense that he had said something to insult, as he spoke no further and instead went to put Chambért’s revolver into the wallspace with the satchels. The bullets he pocketed. Then he came to stand beside Emmerich at the stove, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms across his chest. For a few minutes he said nothing, and Emmerich felt the heat of his gaze as a strong prickle at the back of his neck.

“When we met,” Ezra said suddenly. “What happened?”

“More than I like thinking about,” Emmerich said, and got a laugh back in return.

“I meant,” Ezra said, smiling in a way that Emmerich couldn’t look at for long. “What did we each do? The first thing.”

“You—walked around the room. Looked it over,” Emmerich said. Even if he hadn’t remembered, he knew by now it would have been the first thing Ezra would have done.

“And what did you do?”

Emmerich cleared his throat and shifted his body, replanting his boots on floorboards. “I watched you.”

Ezra nodded. “Why?”

“Because I was trying to learn about you.”

“Exactly,” Ezra said, eyes bright. “Yes.”

“What are you getting at?” Emmerich said, but he thought he knew already.

“I was only thinking that—once this is over with, if we survive—we should stay together. We work well together, Emery, I know you can see that.”

He could. But there was more bad in their companionship than good. As much as Ezra was correct about the way their habits and skills fell together, there was a part of Emmerich that would only be harmful to them, would only get worse with time and familiarity and would eventually drive them apart. It was already too strong now, nearly impossible to ignore or put aside, and it only grew with every passing moment.

So he only said, “We’ll see,” and turned back to his tea. He thought he could sense disappointment from the set of Ezra’s shoulders and mouth, but he had to overlook it. It was no fault of Ezra’s that Emmerich was no ideal companion, for more than just one reason.

They passed the rest of the afternoon in silence. Ezra had found a book to read, likely from somewhere in this cluttered room, and had settled up against the wall with it. Emmerich spent most of his time by the window, listening to the churning noise from the printhouse and every rare once in a while spotting the hull of a missionary ship in the dregs of the heavy clouds.

“Did you ever think about going to a parish school?” Emmerich said at length, when the gas lamps were being lit outside the windows and the fog was thick and low over the river. If Ezra had any of the required talents for it he probably would be in the training already, but still Emmerich was curious. Ezra didn’t reply, and after a few moments Emmerich turned around to ask him again.

But Ezra had fallen asleep sitting up against the wall. His dark hair fell over one eye, brushing against the light skin of his cheek. The collar of his shirt was open about his throat, down below the dip of his neck, and his chest rose and fell lightly with his breathing. His lips were pink and parted gently, his face calm and young. Suddenly Emmerich could hardly look at him. His want was nearly overwhelming. If he stayed near the boy for one more moment, he might go mad with it.

Emmerich moved from the window, unsteadily, one hand curled against his stomach where the worst of his madness festered. He took his coat from the wall and his pistol from the table. Then he left the attic room, down the back stairs and out the alley onto Ashpint Street again, and went to find Archie.

#

The gas lamps near the slipways were greenish-yellow through the fog, eerie along the waterfront, heavy mist curling around the posts and planks of the docks. It hadn’t taken long to get here from the printhouse once Emmerich had gotten out of the alleyways around the factories and found a street he was familiar with. Archie had been set to patrol here since the last few months, along with several others of the clergy guard, though Emmerich hadn’t come to find him for some time.

After not too long a time of waiting about, a man dressed in dark colors strode down the side of the waterfront, a caplet hung about his shoulders and his helmet bearing a solid white cross. From his place in the shadowed eaves, Emmerich waited until the man had come close enough to recognize fully through the fog, and even then he allowed him to pass by before speaking.

“Evening, Constable,” Emmerich said, and the man whirled on his heel with a startled curse. When his eyes lit on Emmerich, leaning against the wall, he drew himself up with an attempt at some dignity.

“God’s spit, Mandelbrauss, don’t lurk like that,” he said, reaching up to tip his helmet back. The face beneath was fair and freckled, large eyes and a swath of straw-colored fringe across his forehead. Clergy Constable Archibald Livensy was a few good years Emmerich’s senior but could have been younger than Ezra for the look of him.

Emmerich took a step from the shadows, hands in his pockets and a half-smile on his mouth. There was a way he acted with Archie that he did with no one else, a confidence he showed the man that he was not nearly so foolish as to display near other men of his ilk. They would cut him down for it, but with Archie—he expected this of a poor immigrant boy who survived on the outside of the law. Even Emmerich’s accent deepened when he spoke with the Constable, each w turning hard on his tongue and every j softening.

“Haven’t seen you about,” Archie said as he came closer. Emmerich could see the truncheon and clacker he carried at his belt. No lantern, though the shipyard was lit up well enough along the waterfront to afford the lack of it.

“Lonely, were you?” Emmerich said, with a bit of a grin.

Archie snorted. “Not hardly.”

“How’s your wife, then?”

“Gone in the family way once more,” Archie said, long-suffering in his tone.

Emmerich grinned fully then. “Again? Archie, you do keep busy without me.”

Archie scowled at him. “Did you have something you wanted, or ought I to arrest you on principle?”

“It’s not exactly your wife I want to know about, is it?” Emmerich said, taking the Constable by the shoulder and walking him back towards the wide wood doors that lead inside the slipway.

Not long afterwards they were deep in the wooden framework constructed around the half-finished keel of a ship being built for the river. The metal hull swelled in the space, towering to the ceiling and curving outwards towards the walls, colored black and rust-red. Lights from the gaslamps leaked in around them, staining everything with sickly green and yellow.

“Getting quite...good at this,” Archie breathed, his head tipped back against a broad beam and his hand burrowed deep in Emmerich’s hair. The whisper of his voice echoed as a hollow hiss down the length of the slipway.

Emmerich would have smiled, had his mouth not been otherwise occupied. Archie said the same every time; it was expected now to hear it. Emmerich had first gotten down on his knees for the Constable when he’d arrested Emmerich for pickpocketing in his second week in the city, years and years ago. At the time Emmerich hadn’t known enough of the local language to talk his way out of it, but he’d known enough of how to put his mouth to other uses.

Since then he’d known Archie through the courtship of a young lady who was now his wife, his first, second, third, and now fourth child, and his attempts and failures at promotion to sergeant. Archie in turn had seen Emmerich through several stints in the Brokens, helped him out of one or two of them, and had even once kept Emmerich from being shipped up country to spend several years in a highland prison. While not the most conventional friendship, it had been the one constant in Emmerich’s life in this city. He could rely on Archie to be...well, to be Archie.

And also to always finish quickly. As Emmerich leaned over to spit, Archie adjusted his trousers and straightened his helmet, though the effect was generally lost against his reddened face and dampened skin.

“Heard there’s a bit of a stirring in the downmarket,” Archie said then, and Emmerich lifted himself to sit on a board beside him. “Some deal gone wrong Friday last. ‘course, the details are somewhat dodgy, not exactly my area. Thought you might have heard something of it.”

Emmerich wiped at his mouth and shrugged one shoulder. “What would I know? I’ve told you I don’t fall in with that sort.” But if news had reached the constabulary itself, even Clavel and Staard would have to be careful of their movements about the city. It was good news for himself and Ezra.

Archie sighed and straightened his helmet again. “Right, yes, you only pickpocket on rare occasion, I remember.”

Emmerich sat back on the framework, spreading his legs a bit. “Don’t suppose you’d want to have a sit in my lap, then,” he said, giving himself a few encouraging strokes and trying not to sound too hopeful.

Archie fairly balked at the suggestion, giving Emmerich such a disparaging look that he knew it would be of no use to even tease the man about it.

“Then it’ll be your hand or your mouth,” Emmerich said.

He’d known it before he’d asked; it was just something Archie would frustratingly never do. Emmerich hadn’t had a proper go in ages. It had been years, at least with a man. He and Archie had kept up this convenient if rather chaste arrangement for nearly the entire time since Emmerich had come to the ‘shores, and it was satisfying when he could get it but...never enough. Never near enough.

Archie knelt between his knees and got to work with his hand, clearly too unnerved by Emmerich’s outrageous suggestion of sodomy to use a more intimate part of his body. His hands were rough and square and clumsy, indelicate, but Emmerich was in a bad enough way that he finished with a grunt after not half a minute. With some bitter pleasure, he saw that his release had spattered across the crisp sleeve of Archie’s uniform shirt.

Archie had noticed, as well. He turned away, shaking his arm and cursing.

“You’d have avoided that if you’d used your mouth,” Emmerich said after him, and received only a lewd gesture in return. He chuckled, tucking himself back into his trousers and remembering again why he liked Archie at all.

#

The first thing he got when he returned to the printing house was a blow across the face.

He had only just stepped through into the corridor from the narrow back stairs when the strike came, ringing down across his left cheek and leaving him dazed and reeling. He stumbled back against the door as Ezra moved back a step himself, heaving with breath and looking fierce and frantic.

“Where were you?”

“Ezra—“

“Where did you go?”

“For a wal—“

He was struck again, just as hard, left grimacing and working his jaw while his skin burned. He felt back behind him for the wall, to lean against while his vision cleared, and when Ezra’s hand came down again, Emmerich was ready. He caught the boy’s wrist and spun into the motion, yanking Ezra about and slamming him up against the door and holding him there. Doing so pressed them together, toe to chest, Emmerich’s barely mentionable achievement in height putting his mouth equal with the space just beneath Ezra’s nose. He could feel the boy’s soft panted breaths along his skin.

“Stop doing that,” Emmerich said, giving Ezra’s wrist a hard twist and a squeeze. Ezra made a sound in his throat, baring his teeth and keeping rigid in Emmerich’s grip, until he abruptly slumped back against the door. Startled at the change in countenance, Emmerich leaned back, releasing Ezra’s wrist.

There was silence between them for several moments, until Ezra drew in a soft breath. “I’ll not stop you if you go, just please—have the decency to tell me when you do,” he said quietly, never looking away from Emmerich’s eyes.

Emmerich hesitated, lost for a moment, and then quite suddenly understood. “You thought I wasn’t coming back.”

Ezra said nothing, but the tremble in his mouth said more than he could have. His eyes were still blazing and fierce, but they wavered when Emmerich let go of his wrists and slid his hands up to cup the edges of the boy’s face, pressing his thumbs against Ezra’s cheekbones.

“I would never do that to you,” Emmerich said. “Do you understand me, Ezra? Never.”

A long moment passed, then another. Emmerich kept smoothing his fingers along Ezra’s face, combing through strands of his hair, feeling the warmth of his skin and the trembling in his jaw.

“All right,” Ezra said softly, and reached up to catch at Emmerich’s wrists. “I believe you.”

“Ich bin froh, das zu hören,” Emmerich said, and Ezra only smiled faintly and used his hold on Emmerich to move his hands away. The motion was quite firm, and Emmerich felt an uneasy shame creep over him. What had he been doing? Touching Ezra like that, as familiar as if they were lovers. He had gone to Archie to rid himself of just this problem, to shake it from his body and his mind. But how quickly it was returning, faced with Ezra like this.

Then Ezra leaned even closer, his hair tickling at Emmerich’s cheek as he turned his face down towards Emmerich’s shoulder, and sniffed at the collar of his shirt. Emmerich’s breath halted in his throat, and he eased it back out with only the slightest sound.

“You smell like the docks,” Ezra said, glancing up. His breath smelled sharp and bitter, as though he had been drinking something strong. “It’s terrible. Is that where you went?”

Emmerich nodded. He couldn’t explain what he had been doing, not now, when it had gotten Ezra worked up so. It was such a silly thing and embarrassing, on top of that. That he’d gone out to get his leg over with a man of the CC, who would arrest him on sight in daylight for the things that they did in the cover of night. Not that he would have told Ezra any of those details in the first place.

Ezra made a quiet sound then, and lifted a hand to Emmerich’s face. His skin felt raw there, already tender and swollen, even under Ezra’s gentle touch. They looked at each other for a few moments, paused together in the quiet dark of the printing house, still very close together against the door.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, gruffly, dropping his hand.

“You’ve a hard hit,” Emmerich said with as much levity as he could. “I’ll be having colors there tomorrow.”

“Would you like to hit me back?” Ezra asked, and so earnest about it that Emmerich laughed.

“No,” he said, and only just stopped himself from adding, your face is far too lovely to strike. He instead settled for putting his arm casually about Ezra’s neck and pulling him forward from the wall. “I think I’ll see to that cabinet in Luca’s quarters, instead. I’m sure there must be spirits in there.”

Ezra chuckled, and lost some of the tenseness in his shoulders. “There is,” he said. “Though none of it is much better than cordial.”

“Had a go at it yourself already?”

Ezra’s shoulders lifted and fell once. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said, quietly. Emmerich tightened his arm about Ezra’s shoulders and wished he knew how to apologize deeply enough.

#

Emmerich did have quite a tender area of purple and red along the side of his face the next morning, which he had to work around as he shaved in front of the spotty mirror with a straight-edge razor he’d gotten from Luca. But it was the least he deserved, he thought, for how upset Ezra had been. It would heal soon enough, and so too would the thin breach he had made between them. He hoped.

Ezra was standing with Luca outside his office when Emmerich found them, laughing together and speaking that same enthusiastic language of before. Emmerich hadn’t been altogether surprised when Ezra had proved himself capable at it, but he was beginning to wonder exactly why it was that Ezra was so versed in other tongues, especially those not sanctioned by the Order.

He clearly knew all three of the First Districts, and enough of several Thirds to hold conversations quite capably—as Emmerich had never said anything in Deute that Ezra didn’t appear to understand. Either he simply had a natural talent, or had been quite well educated. Emmerich had had less than a year of schooling himself, not even enough to learn to form his letters properly. He could read, somewhat, but it was always difficult and even more so in a language that was not originally his.

Ezra noticing Emmerich coming out of the washroom, and moved to his side almost right away.

“Think about it, Luca, all right?” he said as he did, and Luca only waved a hand dismissively and went out into the workroom.

“What—” Emmerich began, but Ezra shook his head.

“It’s nothing. Come on.”

They went up together to their small room, as the workers would soon be arriving to the printhouse and they were endeavoring to stay out of their sight. The fewer people who knew of their whereabouts, the better. Until either he or Ezra thought up a new idea for arming themselves, they were stuck passing the day together up here. Ezra looked to be taking up his book again, and Emmerich touched his arm before he could begin.

“How many languages do you know?” he asked.

“A few,” Ezra said, more tense about it than Emmerich had expected. Emmerich only knew the one, other than the one he’d been born speaking, and he had learned it from stumbling along the streets of the Kingshore, listening and desperate to understand before he was killed or arrested simply for opening his mouth.

“Where did you learn? It’s really quite impressive—”

“Just leave it, Emmerich, all right?” Ezra snapped. “It doesn’t matter.”

Emmerich put a hand to Ezra’s shoulder, and the boy flinched slightly beneath the touch. But he didn’t speak, and still wouldn’t look at him.

“I would tell you anything that you asked about me,” Emmerich said. Except, perhaps, about Archie. But that was simply for his own preservation. “I only hope that you do the same.”

Ezra bowed his head and was silent. Then he rose from his chair, and Emmerich thought for a moment that he would simply walk out of the room. But instead he went to the table and picked up the bottle they had brought up the night from Luca’s cabinet. He uncorked it, but did not drink. His back was mostly to Emmerich still, and only the edge of his face was visible.

“I told you that night at the brothel that my name was Lace,” he said at length. He lifted the bottle halfway to his lips, then set it down to the table again. “That was a lie. I don’t have a surname to truly call myself any longer. I’ve been disinherited from the peerage; my family’s name and their standing and wealth.”

It took him a moment, but once Emmerich understood, he quite suddenly understood everything. Every uncommon feature, every blurred piece about the other boy was suddenly brightening, sharpening. It was the difference, the uncrossable distance. “You’re...a lord.”

Ezra shook his head. “But I was intended for it, once,” he said. Emmerich watched as his fingers traced around the lip of the bottle. “A marquis, to be accurate. I never had the title, and I never will, now.”

“What happened?” Emmerich had never wanted to know something with such desperation in his entire life. “How are you...here?”

With a sigh, Ezra turned from the table, gripping the bottle now firmly by the neck. His shoulders were tense, his mouth set in a pressed line, and his eyes focused on the floor in front of him.

“I was engaged,” he said, his voice tight, “to a girl from another wealthy family. On the night of…the night our engagement was to be officially announced, I was....discovered with her elder brother.”

It took a moment to understand. It often did with Ezra’s speech, because he spoke a language naturally that Emmerich had taken years to grasp.

Ezra seemed to think he hadn’t understood at all. “We were fucking,” he said, more plainly and more bitterly, “when I’d never even touched her at all. And of course, the scandal was very public. I was quickly disowned, to avoid further embarrassment. My family seems to have recovered from the indignity. I never have.”

“How long ago?” Emmerich asked, which seemed to surprise Ezra.

“Three years,” he answered. “I was sixteen.”

Ezra was indeed young, then. Even younger than Emmerich had expected—at least six years his junior. And he’d only had three years to become this good at life along the edge of the law, while Emmerich had almost five and was still not natural at it.

And his desires ran the same as Emmerich’s own. It was almost shameful to admit that it sent an expectant thrill through him. This was not an appropriate time for such things, with Ezra clearly wounded and troubled by having to speak of it, watching Emmerich with guarded, fierce eyes. He was still gripping the bottle with both hands, his knuckles gone white and hard against the dark glass.

“Say what you need to say and be done with it,” Ezra said then, tightly. He seemed to realize then, about the bottle in his hands, and he put it back on the table and clenched his fists at his sides instead. “I knew you had to find out sooner or later. I lost my entire life because of it, after all. It’s unpleasant, but I’ll not lie about it.”

“What do you expect to hear?” Emmerich said. “I’ve nothing to say about it.”

He heard Ezra take three measured breaths before he spoke again. “You don’t.”

Emmerich shook his head, holding Ezra’s gaze as he did. He wouldn’t permit himself to look away, in case Ezra saw it as a mark of unspoken disgust.

“We’ve been sleeping in the same bed and you’ve nothing to say,” Ezra said. He came one step nearer to where Emmerich sat on the floor, the sound of his boot distinct on the wood. “Nothing.”

“Not unless you’ve some disease I could’ve caught,” said Emmerich, and winced when Ezra’s face clearly said that he didn’t appreciate the poor humor.

“If you’ve nothing to say, we won’t mention this again,” Ezra said, in the kind of cold, dangerous voice that couldn’t come out of a lord’s mouth, disinherited or otherwise. It was the voice of a man who had fallen hard and gotten up stronger, tougher, and dangerous. It was Kegg’s man talking, not Ezra.

“All right,” Emmerich said. “But I’ll have you know that I’d have still slept in a bed with you if I’d known before. I’ll still do it now, if you’ll have it.”

The hard edge in Ezra’s face slipped, startled. “Why?”

“Because I trust you,” Emmerich said. He also hardly thought Ezra was going to waylay him in the middle of the night. Though if he did, he wouldn’t much mind. Emmerich rose to his feet then, moved across the small room to face Ezra at closer distance. “Because you’re the only man that I do. And because it doesn’t matter.”

Ezra looked quite lost and shaken, having lost the ferocity of his earlier words. “It doesn’t matter that I—“

“Nein, es spielt keine Rolle,” Emmerich interrupted. To prove it, he offered out his hand.

A faint smile broke across Ezra’s face. “Danke,” he said, softly. He fit his palm against Emmerich’s, closing their fingers together. “You’re the only one who’s ever told me that.”

“And I meant it.” To prove it again, he pulled Ezra close. Just a firm embrace, nothing else, but he still felt Ezra go rigid against him. But after a moment he relaxed, his arms creeping around Emmerich’s back and catching in his shirt.

“Danke,” he said again, his voice muffled in Emmerich’s shoulder. He was holding on as if afraid Emmerich would pull away, clutching at him with a painful grip. “Dankeschön, Emmerich.”

“Nichts zu danken,” Emmerich said softly, and stroked one hand over the top of Ezra’s hair. Ezra shuddered and clung tighter, and Emmerich remembered that he was only nineteen, without a family left or anyone else—except for him.

“Lord Lace is a terrible name, anyway,” he said then, and Ezra laughed quietly against his neck.

“I suppose it is,” he said. The words were hot and damp against Emmerich’s skin, and he felt the movement of Ezra’s mouth. “Though it’s better than having none at all. Usually I say I’m called Smith, when I’m asked. I’m not certain of why I told you the other, when we met.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Emmerich. He thought he ought to let go of Ezra soon, but neither one of them was withdrawing from the other. “I’m glad to know it, to know you. It is still you, even taken away.”

Ezra did draw away from him then, but only far enough to be able to look into Emmerich’s eyes. “Would you like to address me as Earl of Dorshire, as well?” he said lightly, teasing. “That title I did have.”

“I wouldn’t,” Emmerich told him firmly. Ezra laughed again, his eyes on Emmerich in a way that felt as though something significant was settling between them—more than the reliance they already had accidentally forged, or the small amounts of trust they had bestowed on each other willingly. Emmerich had no name for it, but it touched a place deep within him that he had not felt since leaving his home all those years ago.