Chapter 102 What Cassian Knew

Cassian had been afraid exactly four times in his life, and he could name all of them.

The first was a stairwell, fifteen years ago, when something with too many arms had followed him up from a basement and he’d realized, halfway to the third floor, that he was running toward his own funeral. The second was the night a boy named Owen had walked into his camp with a knife and a dead brother’s coat and asked to be taught. The third was a house at the end of a quiet street.

The fourth was now.

He sat on the roof of Dana’s shop with a cigarette he hadn’t lit and watched the street fill with a pale, fading dusk. Behind him, in the shop below, six people argued about whether to walk into a trap.

"You’re missing it," said a voice.

Darian had come up the ladder without making a sound. That was new. Three months ago he couldn’t cross a room without knocking over a chair.

"I’m not missing anything."

"They’re shouting about you."

"They’re shouting about the invitation."

"You’re in it." Darian sat down on the tar paper beside him, knees up. "Dana thinks you should go with Kael. Nadia thinks you should stay with the shop. Owen thinks you should do what you want and *not tell him,* which is the most Owen thing I’ve ever heard."

"What do you think?"

"I think you’ve been staring at that cigarette for twenty minutes."

Cassian looked down at it. It was bent in the middle.

"Huh," he said.

"Are you going to light it?"

"I haven’t decided."

"You’ve said that about everything since the house." Darian’s voice was gentle. "You said it about the church. You said it about the Archive. You don’t *decide* things anymore, Cass. You just do them and pretend it was a plan."

"That’s called leadership."

"It’s called being tired."

Cassian laughed, short, dry.

"Kid," he said. "Let me tell you something about fifteen years of this. You don’t get to be tired. Tired is a thing you do at home, in a bed, after. If you let it out early it takes the room."

"You’re allowed to be afraid."

"I’m *not.*"

"Of what?"

He didn’t answer for a long moment.

Below them, a light came on in a window across the street, then another. Somebody had opened the grocery again. Somebody was probably still printing the notes.

"I never had a system," Cassian said finally. "You know that. No skills, no screen, no stats. I’m a man with a crowbar and a bad knee. For fifteen years I was the strongest thing in any room I walked into, because everything else in the room was a *monster.* I knew what monsters did." He turned the cigarette over. "I don’t know what the Seven do. I don’t know what a *Correction* is. I looked at that sky this morning and thought, for the first time in my life, *I’m out of my depth.*"

"You’ve been out of your depth since the house."

"Since before. I just didn’t have a word for it."

Darian said nothing. He didn’t reach out, didn’t touch his shoulder, didn’t do any of the kind, awkward things Cassian had learned to tolerate in other people. He just sat next to him, which was more than anyone had done in a long time.

"I’m afraid of being a liability," Cassian said at last. The words came out thin. "Not now. In *three weeks.* When whatever’s coming comes, and you’re all doing things I can’t, and I’m standing there with a crowbar, and one of you looks over and has to *decide* whether to cover me."

"That’s not going to happen."

"Isn’t it?"

"No." Darian’s voice was calm. "Because I’ll already be covering you. Because that’s what we do. You’ve done it for me about fifty times. I’ve lost count."

"That’s different. You were learning."

"And you’re *not?*"

Cassian opened his mouth. Closed it.

"You taught me the first thing I know," Darian said. "Don’t stand where the monster wants you to stand. That’s it. That’s the whole lesson. Everything else came after. Kael can tear a seam out of a god’s authority. Ethan can read a room until it begs for mercy. And I can *absorb,* apparently, which is the closest thing to a superpower I’ve ever heard of that’s basically *standing still.*" He grinned, tired and crooked. "But none of us has ever walked into a room and *not been afraid.* That’s yours. Nobody else has it."

"That’s not courage. That’s stubbornness."

"Same thing, from a distance."

Cassian looked at him for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he struck a match and lit the cigarette.

"Don’t tell Owen," he said.

"I’ll deny everything."

---

They decided at midnight.

Not with a vote. Nadia refused to hold one. "I don’t believe in democratic suicide," she said. Instead, she laid the card on the workbench in the middle of the room and made each of them say, in turn, what they thought it was.

"A trap," said Dana.

"An audition," said Ethan.

"A *hostage situation,*" said Owen, "with catering."

"A message," said Mira. "It’s addressed to him, but it’s really for everyone else. It says: *we see you. We see all of you.*"

"A *negotiation,*" said Cole slowly. "Watchers don’t invite. They *acquire.* If they’re asking for an audience, it means they can’t take what they want by force."

"Or that they’d rather not," said Nadia.

"Same thing."

"It isn’t." She picked up the card, turned it over, and studied the second line, the small, hurried scrawl. "Who wrote this?"

"A friend," Kael said.

"I can see that." She held it to the lamp. "But look at the pen pressure. See how it digs into the card on the downstroke? That’s not a hasty hand. That’s someone writing in the dark, from memory, *without a pen.* Probably a stylus on stone." She frowned. "And the *g.*"

"What about it?"

"It’s got a left loop. I’ve seen it before." Her eyes went to the corner of the room, where the old paper map Thomas Hale had pressed into Eli’s hands lay unfolded on a crate. She crossed to it and ran a finger along a faded margin note. "Eli."

"Yes?"

"Is this your father’s handwriting?"

Eli came over. "No. That’s... that was the old man’s. He used to leave notes for us. For my mother. In the margins of things." He swallowed. "Why?"

Nadia held the card beside the map.

The *g* matched.

Nobody spoke.

"That’s impossible," Kael said. "He’s dead."

"He wrote it before." Nadia’s voice was quiet. "A long time before. He left that line, on purpose, somewhere the Watchers would find it. He knew they’d send an invitation. He knew you’d be tempted."

"He wrote *don’t go.*"

"Yes."

"Then why would he..."

"Because he knew you’d go anyway," Mira said.

Kael looked at her.

"Because it’s you," she said, and there was something almost like fondness in the tired set of her mouth. "He couldn’t stop you. He could only leave a note, so that when you did it, you’d know someone had tried."

The room was very quiet.

Kael picked up the card.

"I’m going," he said.

"Kael—" Darian began.

"I have to. If I don’t, they’ll come to me." He turned the card over in his fingers. "And I’d rather walk in on my own feet than be carried."

"Then we’re coming."

"No."

"*Yes.*" Darian rose. "Ethan and I. All three of us. If it’s a negotiation, they’ve been negotiating with one Instance for weeks. Let’s show them a *quorum.*"

"I second that," Ethan said.

"You can’t *second* something that hasn’t been formally moved," Nadia said.

"Then I move it."

"Seconded," said Mira.

"Carried," said Dana. "Because I’m getting a headache."

"I haven’t been consulted," said Owen, mildly.

"Nobody’s going to ask you to be reasonable, Owen."

"Good. I’m not going to be." He folded his arms. "I’m staying here. Somebody has to keep the shop. And somebody has to watch the sky." He glanced at Cassian. "Both of us."

Cassian looked up sharply.

"I’m going with Kael," he said.

"No," Kael said.

"I wasn’t asking."

"Cass. Please."

"What?"

"If this goes badly, I need someone here who knows what to do." Kael set the card down. "Someone who’s seen what happens when the guards go through the door. Someone who can keep the rest of them alive if we don’t come back."

"That’s an insult."

"It’s a *compliment.*"

"It’s a *demotion.*"

"It’s the only job I trust you with."

The silence stretched. Cassian’s jaw worked. For a moment, a very short moment, something in his eyes went terrible and small.

Then it passed. He picked up his crowbar, turned it once, and set it carefully against the wall.

"Fine," he said. "But I’m going to be *very* annoyed."

"That’s allowed."

"I’m going to be annoyed for the entire time you’re gone."

"I expect nothing less."

"And if you die..."

"I won’t."

"*If you die,*" Cassian said, "I’m going to find whoever killed you and put them through a transmission."

"That’s Dana’s line."

"I’m borrowing it."

Dana raised a wrench in solemn salute.

---

Later, much later, Cassian stood alone on the roof, watching the numbers tick down across the gray sky.

*29 days, 2 hours, 17 minutes.*

He didn’t light a second cigarette. The first had burned to a stub between his fingers, forgotten. Below him, in the quiet shop, six people were finally asleep. Kael was in the back room, a hand on the card. Darian and Ethan had fallen against each other on the couch like tired dogs.

Cassian lifted the crowbar.

He weighed it in his palm. Old iron, worn smooth, a little crooked at the neck. Fifteen years of use, and not one of them had been wasted.

"You’d tell me to be braver," he said, to nobody, or maybe to an old man in a red-brick house. "You’d tell me it was all right."

The sky said nothing.

"It isn’t," Cassian said. "But I’ll do it anyway."

He stayed on the roof until dawn.