Sirens stitched the upper tiers together and then forgot to knot. By the time the noise thinned, the city had learned to pretend nothing happened.
In the Nest—steel ribs, low ceiling, maps burned into a tabletop by too many cigarettes—everything hurt.
Limar lay propped on a crate, head wrapped in gauze, one eye purpled shut. He kept touching the bandage like it might climb off without permission. Tev sat on the floor with his back to a locker, one hand pressed to his ribs, breath measured as if it owed him debt. Tara had peeled out of her dress and into a threadbare workshirt; the fabric was dark at the shoulder where blood insisted on being part of the conversation. She held a soldering iron like a knife she'd decided not to use.
The door buzzed twice and groaned. Lig stepped in, rain at his collar. He set his gloves on the table and took the room in with one sweep; his eyes made an inventory, and then made a choice.
"What hit you," he asked, voice flat, "a factory?"
"Detour," Limar said, feigning a grin that couldn't find its legs. "Roadblock that wasn't a road or a block."
Tev lifted two fingers in greeting without lifting anything else. Tara didn't look up; her hands were steady, her jaw not. She set the iron down and met Lig's gaze like she'd been waiting for a fight and decided to show up anyway.
"Where's Breuk?" Lig asked.
Silence arrived, pulled up a chair, crossed its legs.
Tara swallowed. "He fell."
Lig stared, as if the word were a tool used incorrectly. "Fell where."
"Through," Tev said, and the word sounded like a gate.
Limar's grin collapsed. "Zylinder blew. Escort went sideways. He—" His hand lifted and made a shape in the air that was supposed to be a man and looked like a broken spoon. "We were at the rim. The rigging went. He went."
"How far," Lig said.
"Far," Tara said. "Past the Nebelrinne. No echo."
The room shrank without moving. Lig's only tell was a muscle along the jaw, a small animal that woke and lay down again. He reached for a cigarette, remembered he had quit when quitting made someone else hurt, and left the pack where it was.
"Why did you come back," he asked, and the words were unkind because kindness had stepped out.
Tara's nostrils flared. "Because you can't jump after a ghost," she said. "Because I dragged two idiots and a necklace out of an ambush, and the only reason I didn't drag a third is gravity."
Lig stepped closer, lowered his head until their foreheads were almost arguing. "And you didn't go back."
Tara didn't blink. "No. I thought I'd try something new. Like staying alive."
Tev's hand rose a fraction. "He'd have told us to regroup," he said, and they all knew it was true and useless both.
Lig straightened. He looked smaller for a heartbeat, then exactly himself again. He turned for the door.
"Where are you going?" Limar asked, like a boy pretending he didn't want the answer.
"To end a conversation that should have ended years ago," Lig said.
Kane's office was three floors above men who thought elevators were a kind of sin. It was tasteful in the way a knife is tasteful—clean lines, no apology. A single shelf of books that had never asked for a reader. A table with nothing on it except a cup and a blade to open letters the world no longer wrote. The rain on the window made vertical script no one could read.
Kane stood with his back to the room, hands in his pockets, looking at nothing. He turned when the door banged the wall like an accusation.
"Lig," he said, with the patience of someone receiving a weather report he already knew. "You look—"
Lig hit him.
It wasn't a punch meant to land; it was a punch meant to announce. Kane took the step back you take to make a point and not lose teeth. The cup slid, fell, didn't break. Lig caught Kane by the lapels and walked him into the shelf until the books finally had a reason to be there.
"You planned it."
Kane's breath left, returned. "Planned what."
"The roadblock. The blast. The gap," Lig said. His voice didn't rise; he'd left that trick to lesser men. "You put him on a line and cut it."
Kane's hands stayed open. "If I wanted Breuk dead," he said, and there was no heat, "I would do it where it could look like an accident. Not in front of you."
Lig let go to sweep the shelf to the floor with one forearm. The books fell with the soft noises of paper dying. He took the blade from the table and shoved it into the wood until it hummed.
"You fed us the Valeris job. You fed us the necklace. You fed him the myth."
"I fed him a price," Kane said. "He accepted. You were always better at seeing the strings, Lig. You knew this."
Lig laughed once, a sound that ignored humor. He stepped back, picked up the cup, and threw it against the window. The impact left a flower of cracks that the rain admired. "He fell," Lig said. "He's alive or he's not. If he is, it's on you. If he isn't—"
Kane's eyes flicked, then steadied. Something moved behind them, quick and uninvited. If he really lives… the thought came, aligned itself with an older one like teeth clicking into a gear, …then the Angel wasn't a myth.
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't need to. It hung in the room the way steam hangs in a bathhouse—light, damp, undeniable.
Lig saw it anyway. He saw everything people tried not to think where he could see. It put new angles in his face.
"What did you give him," Lig asked, soft as a knife in cloth.
Kane's mouth did the smallest, most dangerous thing a mouth does: it didn't answer. "Go home," he said instead. "Lick your wounds. Bury your dead. Don't dig holes where there are only floors."
Lig turned the table with one hand. It crashed, legs splintering, the blade spinning under the cabinet and dinging there like a guilty bell. He pulled the lights from the wall, let them dangle. He ruined nothing that would matter in the morning and everything that made the night feel safe.
"If he dies," Lig said, "I stop being reasonable."
"Reasonable is your costume," Kane said. "Take it off if it itches."
Lig stood in the doorway. "If he lives," he said, "I find him."
"Then bring him back," Kane said, because the line had to be said by someone. He was already looking past Lig, down a shaft in his mind where doctrine slid like water.
Lig left before he did something he couldn't fix.
When the door closed, Kane put a hand against the cracked glass. Rain traced lines around his fingers, found its own prayer. The office smelled faintly of clay from the broken cup.
If he really lives, he thought again, steadier now, then the Angel wasn't a myth. The thought didn't frighten him. It organized him.