The floorboards sagged under the weight of too many boots and too much spilled ale. Smoke from cheap candles curled toward a ceiling stained brown by time and neglect. At the back, near a fire that struggled to remember what warmth felt like, two men sat across from each other over a forest of empty bottles.
In the corner, a projection flickered to life. Light and image suspended in air, powered by technology from the Astral faction. The kind of device that cost more than most sailors earned in a year. Pilt glanced at it with lazy curiosity.
'How neat. They can afford that?'
The smaller of the two men wore a blue vest over a white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow. A brown satchel rested against his hip, worn soft by years of use. His face held the kind of expression that made people trust him instantly or suspect him immediately, depending on how closely they were paying attention. Curls of yellow hair escaped from under a cap pushed back on his head. His eyes, the color of old gold, watched his opponent with amusement that never quite reached friendly.
The opponent was larger. Much larger. A sailor by the look of him, with arms like ship ropes and a face that had stopped bothering with expressions somewhere around adolescence. Empty bottles crowded his side of the table. Full ones waited in patient rows.
"Another?" the yellow-haired man asked. His voice carried the warmth of someone who already knew the answer.
The sailor grunted and reached for a fresh bottle.
They drank.
The projection continued, images shifting. A woman in formal attire stood before what looked like official chambers. Her voice carried through the tavern with artificial clarity.
"We are receiving news that the New Order remains intact. It would be a shame if it fell after the old commission dissolved."
Someone in the tavern muttered something about politics. Most ignored it. Politics were for people with enough coin to care about who ruled what.
Pilt's attention drifted back to his opponent. The sailor was three bottles past coherent. Another two and this would be over.
"This... is..."
The reporter's voice changed to shock and disbelief.
"Hey kid, it is your turn!"
"Drink it!"
Pilt reached for his bottle without looking away from the projection. Something in the reporter's tone had shifted. He knew that tone. The sound of someone receiving information they could not quite believe.
"The tra... Transcendence! Check the documents, is this real?"
The tavern noise dimmed slightly. Not silent. But quieter. That word carried weight even among people who claimed not to care about politics.
"Ladies and gentlemen, after nearly two centuries, the Transcendence is being held! Every leader is finally participating after the interference of the Empress and supposedly the non surrender of merit!"
"This... ridiculous, even Saint Ophila?!"
'You are kidding.'
Pilt set down his bottle slowly. His eyes fixed on the projection like it might disappear if he blinked.
The reporter continued, voice rising with practiced drama. "Multiple incidents have been reported across the scattered realms. The Golden Pathways suffered a catastrophic collision when a train struck a narwhal in the purple void. Several casualties confirmed."
The projection shifted, showing twisted metal and wreckage suspended in purple mist.
"Additionally, a rift incident at an academy resulted in significant loss of student life. Details remain unclear, but rumors suggest involvement of a criminal organization. Accusations of conspiracy and sabotage are being investigated."
"Tension and uprising in the Dao Dynesty."
Pilt's expression did not change. His hand wrapped around the bottle. His eyes stayed fixed on the projection.
'Does not concern me. Focus.'
"Hey! You going to drink or stare at pictures all night?"
The sailor's voice broke through. Slurred. Impatient.
Pilt blinked. Smiled. Raised his bottle.
"Apologies. Got distracted. Where were we?"
The projection continued in the background. Lists of incidents. Names of territories. References to trade disruptions and political tensions.
The tavern watched. Bets had been placed hours ago, when it became clear that the smaller man had no intention of losing. He drank like water was the enemy and ale the only ally worth keeping. Bottle after bottle disappeared into him with mechanical precision. His eyes never blurred. His hands never shook.
The sailor's eighth bottle tipped sideways. He caught it, but the motion was slow, delayed by the weight of everything already inside him.
'Here it comes,' Pilt thought.
He felt it before it happened. The shift in weight. The clench of fist beneath the table. The exact trajectory of knuckles aimed at his jaw. He had known for the last three minutes, the same way he always knew, the way he knew what words would come out of greedy mouths before they spoke them, the way he saw signatures on contracts that had not yet been written.
The fist came.
He was already moving. His stool tipped back. His body spun. The sailor's punch passed through empty air where a head had been, and the man's momentum carried him forward, off balance, crashing face-first into the table. Bottles scattered. Ale spilled. The sailor hit the floor with a sound like meat dropped from height.
The tavern erupted in laughter.
Pilt straightened his vest, adjusted his cap, and looked down at his defeated opponent with something almost like sympathy.
"That will be twenty gold," he said to no one in particular. "Plus the winnings from the bet. Plus the information we discussed."
The sailor groaned from the floor.
Pilt crouched beside him, voice dropping low enough that only the two of them could hear. "The Transcendence shipments. Which docks? Which nights?"
The sailor mumbled something into the sawdust.
"Louder."
"Eastern pier. Third night after full moon. Crates marked with red wax."
Pilt patted the sailor's shoulder. "There is a good fellow. Sleep it off. You will feel terrible in the morning, but you will also be twenty gold poorer, so the feeling will match your circumstances."
He stood, stretched, and walked toward the door with the casual confidence of someone who had never doubted how this evening would end.
Behind him, the projection continued. Something about Crepuscula. Something about votes and councils and the mechanisms of power that moved continents.
He did not look back.
Outside, the night air hit him like a blessing. Cool and salt-tinged, carrying the distant sound of ships creaking against their moorings. He breathed deep, letting the ale fog clear from the edges of his mind. The street was empty at this hour, cobblestones slick with recent rain, lanterns burning low in their iron cages.
He hiccupped.
Then again, louder.
"Not bad," he muttered to himself. "Not bad at all."
A long black coat hung over his shoulder, forgotten until now. He shrugged into it, the weight settling familiar against his frame. Beneath, his clothes had shifted to something more professional. A white shirt tucked into black pants. The blue vest replaced by something that would not draw attention in the wrong parts of town.
"You are an idiot."
The voice came from the shadows to his left. He did not startle. He had known she was there for the last thirty seconds, had felt the familiar weight of her presence before she spoke.
A woman emerged from the darkness. Tall, with black hair pulled back in a practical knot. Her eyes were black, sharp as blades. She looked to be in her late twenties, though with her kind, age was always difficult to pin down.
"Good evening to you too,misses Mira," he said, falling into step beside her.
"Do not good evening me. You just spent four hours drinking in a tavern full of people who would sell you to the nearest bounty hunter for the price of a meal."
"They would have to catch me first."
"They would have to find you first. Which they could have done easily, because you were sitting in the same place for four hours, drinking yourself stupid."
He smiled. It was a different smile than the one he had worn in the tavern. Softer. Almost real.
"I was working."
"You were showing off."
"Same thing, different hat." He hiccupped again. "I got the information we needed. Transcendence shipments. Eastern pier. Three nights after the full moon. Crates with red wax."
Mira fell silent for a moment. Then, grudgingly: "That is useful."
"I know. That is why I did it."
"That is also why you are an idiot. You have a bounty on your head in four territories. You do not sit in public places drinking competitively with sailors."
"Five territories now, actually. I heard House Valerius added their name to the list last week. Something about economic destabilization." He shrugged. "I consider it a compliment."
They walked through streets that grew narrower as they progressed, twisting away from the respectable parts of Port Vexis into the maze of warehouses and tenements that hugged the docks. The smell of fish grew stronger. The sound of water lapping against stone grew closer.
They reached a building that looked like all the others in this district. Weathered wood and salt-stained stone. Windows dark. Door unremarkable. He produced a key from somewhere in his coat and unlocked it.
Inside, the space transformed. The ground floor held crates and barrels, neatly organized, each marked with symbols that meant nothing to anyone who did not know the system. A staircase led upward. A smaller door led downward. He took the stairs.
His office occupied the entire second floor. One wall held windows that looked out over the harbor, though at this hour they showed only darkness and scattered ship lights. The other walls were covered in maps and ledgers and the accumulated debris of years spent navigating the treacherous waters of commerce. A large desk dominated the center of the room, buried under stacks of paper.
He moved to the window and stood there for a long moment, looking out at nothing.
"You should rest," Mira said from the doorway.
"So should you."
"I do not need rest the way you do."
He turned to look at her. In the dim light, her black eyes held something he could not quite name.
"Then stay," he said quietly. "Watch. Keep me company."
She did not answer. But she did not leave either.
He moved to his desk and reached into his coat. His fingers found the small object he carried everywhere, the one thing he never left behind. A photograph, held in a glass frame that had cracked sometime in the last decade. The crack ran diagonally across the image, severing the head from the body. The body remained intact, frozen in a moment that no longer existed.
He looked at it for a long moment. His thumb traced the edge of the frame, avoiding the broken glass.
Then he set it on his desk and pulled the first stack of papers toward him.
Mira watched from the doorway as he worked. His yellow hair fell across his forehead. His golden eyes moved across documents with the speed of someone who had done this a thousand times. His pen scratched against paper in rhythms that had become as familiar to her as breathing.
He signed. He drafted. He calculated.
The stacks grew shorter on one side, taller on the other.
"Why do you do it?"
Her voice came from the doorway, soft enough that anyone else would have missed it. He did not.
He set down his pen and leaned back in his chair.
"Do what?"
"Risk yourself for trivial manner, when we seek somethings less."
He considered the question. It was not the first time she had asked it, but it was the first time she had asked it quite like this.
"Because someone has to."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one I have." He looked at the photograph on his desk. The cracked glass. The severed head. The body that remained. "There was a time when I could not help anyone. When I watched people I loved fall and could do nothing to stop it. I carry that with me. Every day. Every deal. Every stupid risk."
He picked up the photograph and held it where the light could reach it.
"This is all I have left of her. Her will. Her memory. Her belief that I could be something more than what I was." He set it down carefully. "So I prove her right. Every day. Even when it is stupid. Even when it terrifies me. I carry her will."
The words on the page grew messier. His handwriting deteriorated. His head grew heavy.
He looked at the pendant again. Turned it over in his fingers. The crack ran through the center where a photograph used to be.
'I cannot let it happen,' he thought desperately. 'I cannot let them suffer. I cannot watch another place burn because I was not smart enough, not fast enough, not good enough.'
The papers swam before his eyes.
'I need to work harder.'
His head dropped forward. Just for a moment. Just to rest his eyes.
'I need to work better.'
The notebook slipped from his fingers.
'I need to prove her right.'
He dreamed of bakeries that were not destroyed. Of children who slept without fear. Of a future that looked nothing like the past that haunted him.
And in the dream, the pendant around his neck was whole. The photograph uncracked. The smile unfaded.
He held onto that image like a drowning man holds driftwood.
The waves of the harbor outside were unusually soothing to the ear.