Chapter 16: Teeth And Silence

Chapter 16: Teeth And Silence Apollo hesitated, then reached for the crossbow. Its wood was still slick with the sweat of the dead man, the bowstring caked with splinters and, he realized, bits of skin. He held it awkwardly, aiming low, the way city guards did when they really meant to kill. Cassian’s smile barely shifted. "Now," he said, "let’s be—" Lyra twisted sharply, a fast, convulsive motion that snapped her shoulder out of the henchman’s grip. She slammed her heel into his instep, then spun and drove a glass beaker, Gods only knew from where, straight into the side of the man’s neck. It didn’t shatter, just punched in and hung there, a blue glass tumor pulsing with arterial spray. The man clapped a hand to the wound and dropped, knees hitting the brick with an audible crack. Lyra didn’t pause, she shot towards Cassian, her hands wide and flat, fingers curled for the eyes. Cassian’s arm was still across Nik’s windpipe. For a split second, his attention flickered: Would he let go and deal with Lyra, or hold his leverage and risk her teeth or nails? The indecision cost him, Lyra’s left hand clawed at his face, raking three red tracks across his cheekbone. She followed with the heel of her palm, aiming for his nose, but Cassian jerked his head back, twisted Nik between them as a shield. Apollo saw the opening, just the barest sliver, but enough. He lifted the crossbow, let the sights settle on the tangle of bodies, and fired. The bolt was heavier than he’d judged; it dipped, punched clean through the meat of Cassian’s thigh, and buried itself in the far wall with a thunk. Cassian reeled, bellowing a string of words in a language Apollo didn’t know but understood perfectly. He lost his grip on Nik, who crumpled over and retched, and for a brief, hallucinatory moment all the violence in the room seemed to invert: Lyra was on top of Cassian, Thorin had pinned the other two Blackhearts beneath the shards of a fallen glass rack, and even the dog was up, worrying at the boot of the last man standing. Lyra’s hands closed on Cassian’s throat. She squeezed with a force Apollo would not have thought possible for so narrow a frame. Cassian’s face flushed, then went white, but he did not thrash or plead, he just stared at Lyra, dead calm, until the pressure made his eyes bulge and his tongue begin to blacken around the edges. Nik, hunched on the floor, gasped in air like a man climbing out of a grave. He looked up, eyes watering, and managed a hoarse, "Don’t kill him." Lyra didn’t relax. "Why not?" Nik coughed, spat something pink, and wiped his mouth. "He’s worth more alive. And he’ll talk, if we trade him right." Cassian’s hands fluttered, one knee buckling. Lyra let go, and he crashed to the floorboards, where he lay, fingers scrabbling weakly for the wound in his leg. The rest of the Blackhearts barely moved, one moaning, the other slumped and twitching under the glass rack. Lyra gave a last, contemptuous look and wiped her hands on her shirt, the smeared blood bright against the blue dye of her cuffs. Thorin leaned against the wall, his breathing gone shallow and irregular. The quarrel had left a ragged hole through the meat of his upper arm, and Apollo saw the blood soaking through the linen, arterial red and spreading fast. The dwarf’s posture was rigid, as if he could out-stubborn the agony, but his eyes had narrowed to thin gray slits, and his teeth ground together in a rhythm that matched the slow drum of his pulse. Nik was already rolling Cassian onto his back and searching his pockets, talking in a low, abusive mutter. "You really thought you’d cart us out in a sack, you bastard?" he said, slapping Cassian’s face to keep him from lapsing into blissful shock. "Don’t drift. Look at me. You’re staying, you son of a whore." A crash from the rear, Lyra, shoving the bodies into a more defensible heap. "They might have more coming," she said, voice still steady but now edged with something that tasted like adrenaline. She retrieved the crossbow from the floor, wiped it clean with a rag, and tossed it to Apollo. "Check the bolts. If they’re poisoned, we burn the wound out." Apollo nodded, but his hands were already on Thorin, dragging him by the collar to the nearest patch of clean floor. The dwarf’s arm hung slack, blood pattering in a sick metronome. Apollo pressed his palm to the entry wound, feeling the heat and the slip of torn muscle. The exit wound was worse, shredded, puckered, and leaking. Thorin glared up at him, his pupils blown wide. "If you use magic, I’ll piss in your tea." Apollo gritted his teeth. "Then I’ll use fire and prayer. Bite down." He ripped a strip from his own undershirt, balled it, and jammed it into Thorin’s mouth. The dwarf bit down so hard Apollo heard enamel snap. He braced Thorin’s shoulder, poured half a bottle of the clear spirits over the wound, and then, moving quickly, before doubt could stall him, pressed the heated blade of a glass knife into the gash. The flesh sizzled, white at the edges, stench of burnt hair and blood. Thorin’s body arched, a spasm of pure, electric protest, but the eyes never left Apollo’s face. He worked fast, the way he had known: cut the necrotic tissue, burn the margin, then pack the wound with cloth and pressure. The blood slowed, then stopped, the last of it welling bright and angry before clotting over. Apollo wrapped the arm tight, then reached for the dwarf’s wrist. The pulse was slow, but regular, alive. He waited, feeling Thorin’s breathing steady, the trembling tapering off. When Thorin regained enough sense to spit the bloody rag past Apollo’s ear. "Hurts less sober," he rasped, then went limp, sweat pooling in the grooves of his brow. Apollo blinked, half-expecting a collapse, but the dwarf’s breathing hitched and then found a regular, if brittle, beat. Lyra and Nik had Cassian braced against the sideboard, wrists tied front and back, ankles hobbled with a length of electrical cord scavenged from the lamp. Cassian’s head lolled, the ruined thigh leaking onto the floor, but even with his mouthful of blood, the bastard still managed a leering grin. Nik knelt in front of him, face gone flat and empty. "Who’s your buyer?" he asked. Cassian’s lips parted, showing teeth and a film of red. "Does it matter, Niko? You’d sell your own balls for a week’s rations. Why posture now?" Nik’s hand moved faster than Apollo could track, a slap that snapped Cassian’s jaw sideways. "We’re all dead if you don’t talk." "Good," Cassian said, and smiled wider. Lyra cut in, her voice low. "He’s stalling. Look at his eyes." Nik reached for the knife, but Apollo, still crouched by Thorin, saw it first: the sudden, deliberate tension in Cassian’s jaw. For an instant, Apollo’s mind fumbled for the connection, then Cassian’s lips peeled back and the man bit down, hard, tongue protruding between teeth. There was a wet crunch, a snap, and then a gout of arterial blood. Cassian flailed, hands scrabbling but never quite reaching his own throat. Nik tried to clamp Cassian’s mouth shut, but it was too late. The blood came in pulses, painting Nik’s hands, Lyra’s shirt, and the warped floorboards. Cassian’s eyes rolled, the blue washed out and empty. He gurgled, coughed, and then, impossibly, laughed, a bubbling, sibilant noise that curdled even the dog, which slunk to the far corner and whined until it found a forgotten onion to gnaw. Apollo shoved Nik out of the way and forced the man’s head back, pinching the tongue remnant and trying to stem the blood. But Cassian’s body convulsed, then relaxed, and the last exhale was a reek of cheap liquor and triumph. They stared at the corpse, all of them, as if it might get up again, but Cassian was gone, the tongue a shredded pink flag between his teeth. Nik wiped his face, knuckles white on the knife handle. "Gods," he muttered. "They told suicide jobs on the Blackhearts, but I never believed it." Lyra grabbed a rag and pressed it into Apollo’s palm. "Clean up. We can’t stay here." She jerked her chin at the window. "People will have heard."