Lyra crossed the threshold, and the shack received her into its semi-darkness like an old mother, tired of loneliness, receives a prodigal child—without words, without reproach, only with silence and warmth.
The door closed behind her, cutting off the outer world with its stench, filth, and eternal threat. And immediately—contrast. So sharp that Lyra, every time she came here, felt a slight dizziness. Outside—rot, ruin, death. Inside—order.
The floor was swept clean. The boards—old, creaky, but whole, without holes. Against the wall—a wide bench covered with rags, but those rags were washed and stacked. A table in the center—heavy, oak, clearly not from these parts, dragged from who knows where and how. Two chairs beside it—rough, homemade, but sturdy.
Along the walls—shelves. On the shelves—jars, pots, bundles of herbs. Lyra knew that Hector understood herbs better than any healer in Ebros. People came to him for treatment—those who had no money for real healers, and those for whom it was dangerous to show themselves to real healers. He took payment not in money—but in services, information, sometimes just food. And even then, he did it rarely and only when he felt like it.
In the corner, on an iron sheet, coals smoldered in a brazier. From them came the dry, steady warmth that was absent outside. And over all of this—a smell. Of dry herbs, roots, old wood, and something else elusive that could only be called one thing: peace.
If not for the owner of this place, the shack could have been called cozy.
But the owner was there.
Hector stood by the table, leaning on it with bony fingers. Stooped—so much so that it seemed his spine might break at any moment under the weight of years. Withered, like an old mushroom, wrinkled, with skin like parchment that had been soaked in rain and then dried in the sun.
And yet—tall. Lyra, standing two paces away, barely reached his shoulder with the top of her head. This always evoked in her a strange, unconscious thought: how tall must he have been before?
She imagined him young—straight back, broad shoulders, head towering above the crowd. The image didn't match what she saw now. Too different were these two men—the imagined one, and this one standing before her.
He wore a gray robe—patched and re-patched, but clean. The patches lay neatly, the thread matched in color. Did someone care for him? Or did he, blind, manage to do it himself? Lyra didn't know. Just as she knew almost nothing about his life.
But the main thing was his face.
His eyes.
White. Completely. Without pupils, without irises—only a milky-white film covering what had once been sighted. Hector never closed them. At least, Lyra had never seen him blink. His lids were half-lowered, but between them that whiteness was always visible—terrible, motionless, unblinking.
He was definitely blind. Lyra knew this. Saw how he groped for objects with his hands, how he moved by touch, how he listened to every sound. His gait—shuffling, cautious—betrayed the blind man from a mile away.
But those eyes... They seemed to see more than the sighted.
Now, for instance. She entered—and he was already looking directly at her. Not to the side, not through—but exactly at her. The white film turned toward the door through which she had entered, toward the place where she stood. As if he saw her silhouette through the murky veil.
Lyra suppressed the familiar chill between her shoulder blades. Old fox. A complete mystery. Who was he? Where from? Why did he live here, in the slums, when he could have—judging by his intelligence and connections—lived somewhere else?
She didn't know. And she never pried.
Perhaps that's why they'd held on with each other for so long? She didn't ask unnecessary questions. He didn't meddle in her affairs, except those he paid for. A silent agreement between two loners: I don't touch your secrets, you don't touch mine.
Hector stepped toward the table—a shuffling, confident step, his hand landing on the back of the chair precisely, without groping. He sat down, and even in this movement there was a strange, incongruous fluidity.
Lyra stood by the door, not daring to approach. Habit. Always leave a path for retreat.
Hector turned his head toward her. His white eyes looked directly at her, and Lyra caught herself wanting to look away.
"I was beginning to think," he said. His voice was hoarse, creaky like an unoiled hinge, but a smirk was clearly audible in it. "Our little star, having caught some luck, would forget all about this old man."
Lyra went cold.
Little star.
That's what they called her in the slums. Not often, not everyone—but those who knew, who remembered her story. "Forsaken Star"—a nickname earned by years of surviving where few lasted longer than a few months. She hated it. There was something wrong in it, foreign, as if she'd been dressed in clothes from someone else's shoulder. A star—that was something bright, high, distant. She was dirt, cold, and hunger. What kind of star was she?
But Hector knew. Knew how she felt about it. And still he said it. Said it—and smirked.
Lyra clenched her teeth. The chill between her shoulder blades was replaced by heat—a dull, useless anger that couldn't be released because the old man had done nothing. Just named her. As he always named her.
Because it was the truth. No matter how much she wanted to forget.
Hector, as if sensing her reaction—and he always sensed things—tilted his head slightly. His white eyes didn't change, but the smirk in his voice became a little more noticeable.
"Enough propping up the door," he nodded—precisely at the chair opposite. "Sit down. Tell me what brings you to the old man."
Lyra hesitated a second. Then peeled herself away from the door, crossed the shack's space in three silent steps, and sat down.
The chair was hard and sturdy. On the table before her—nothing. Only dark wood, smoothed by water.
Hector waited.
His hands lay on the tabletop—long fingers, knotted, with large joints. They didn't move, but Lyra knew: these hands saw no worse than eyes. Now, they probably saw right through her—all of her, down to the last thought hidden behind her ribs.
Silence hung between them, thick as fog over morning Ebros. Lyra was silent, gathering her thoughts. She knew the rule: spill everything at once, and the old fox would fleece you triple the price, or even leave you empty-handed if he sensed the matter smelled risky. You had to bargain with him. Not only with silver—with words, with pauses, with the weight of each question.
"Carl Nowenstein," she said at last. Her voice came out even, without a trace of agitation. "What can you tell me about him?"
A pause. Very short—and she added, remembering his endless lectures about how "coarseness of language leads to coarseness of thought":
"Esteemed old man."
Hector laughed softly. The laugh was dry, rustling, like wind in fallen leaves. He shook his head slightly—his white eyes swayed with it, unblinking.
"Oh, little one," he said. "You still have much to learn. Well, that's neither here nor there."
He leaned forward, and on his face appeared something Lyra had never seen before—a predatory, wolfish grin. A baring of teeth that sent a chill down her spine.
"Five silver."
Lyra almost ground her teeth.
Five silver. She knew the value of money better than any moneylender. A laborer in Ebros earned 5 copper a day, if lucky. Silver was already luck. Five silver—that could live high on the hog for ten days. Rent a corner, eat hot food, not think about tomorrow. And frugally, beggarly—it would even last a month.
And here—just for a name. For general information any capital gossip would give for a mug of ale.
She clenched her jaw so hard the muscles bunched under her skin. But she didn't argue. Because she understood: the old man wasn't just jacking up the price. He was testing her. Seeing how important this was to her. And if she flinched—he'd fleece her even more, just on principle.
Lyra exhaled—slowly, evenly, killing the anger in its cradle.
"Expensive," she said. Her voice didn't waver. "Then give me information about someone else as well."
The old man didn't react. Shrugged his shoulders—dry, sharp shoulder blades shifting under his robe.
"Depends on who."
"A mage. Corvin. Different-colored eyes—one light, one dark. Last seen—most likely somewhere in the city."
The smirk slid from Hector's face slowly, like water from soaked cloth. His white eyes seemed to darken—though how can white darken?—and fixed on her with such weight that Lyra wanted to move back.
The silence became different. From tense-bargaining—to dead.
"Little one," said Hector. His voice had lost all its hoarse playfulness. It sounded hollow, flat, like a stone fallen into a swamp. "Free advice. Don't go near this. Forget your luck. Try to find new luck."
Lyra was bewildered. So much so that for a second everything inside her chest dropped away.
She had known Hector for three years. For three years, he had been what no one else was: a constant. Always the same. Always with a smirk. Always with that squint of his white eyes and eternal half-mockery in his voice. Even when he spoke of death—he spoke lightly, as if about the weather.
Now a different man sat before her. Old, mortally tired, and—Lyra suddenly understood this with distinct clarity—frightened. Not for himself. For... her?
She blinked, shaking off the delusion.
"My path is already chosen," she said quietly but firmly.
And again silence. Long, viscous as pitch. Hector sat motionless, and only his fingers—those same ones that saw better than eyes—trembled almost imperceptibly on the tabletop. He was deciding something. Weighing. Calculating—not money, but lives.
Lyra waited. Her heart beat steadily, though inside everything trembled with tension.
Finally, the old man sighed heavily. The way one sighs when making a decision that will bring no joy.
"Twenty silver," he said.
It wasn't a question. It was a statement. As if he knew in advance how much she had. As if he saw through walls, through her jacket, through her skin—that very pouch Aina had thrust upon her at parting.
Lyra said nothing more. She simply unbuttoned her jacket, pulled out the pouch, and silently counted out twenty coins. Precisely, without a tremor in her fingers. The silver clinked against the wood of the table, and each clink echoed hollowly in her chest.
Hector didn't look at the money. He looked at her—with those white eyes of his, from which you couldn't hide.
"The mage is on the run," he began, when the coins lay in a neat stack. His voice was again dry, businesslike, but the former lightness was gone. "An abandoned house in the south of Lower Ebros. Not far from the weaving workshop. Fullers' Street, if you know it. Third house from the corner, with the collapsed roof."
Lyra nodded, memorizing. She knew Fullers' Street—a rotten place, almost as bad as this one.
"And as for the Earl," Hector grinned crookedly, but the grin was joyless, "you have no money left for that. So sorry."
She nodded again. That was fair. Information about Nowenstein now cost more than she had left. And that wasn't why she'd come.
Hector was silent. Then added—quietly, as if with effort:
"They're already after him. The Razors—and not only them. Better hurry if you've decided. Though I," he hesitated, "I still wouldn't advise it."
Lyra stood. The stool didn't even creak—she rose without a sound, as a shadow rises.
"Thank you," she said.
Short. Dry. But in that word was everything: for the advice, for the warning, for three years during which he had been the only one who hadn't betrayed her.
She walked to the door.
"Little one."
The voice stopped her on the threshold. She turned.
Hector sat at the table, hunched even more than usual. It seemed the last minutes had added ten years to him. His hands no longer lay on the table—they were clenched into fists, the knuckles white with tension. His white eyes stared somewhere at the floor, past her, past everything.
"From this moment on," he said. His voice sounded hollow, as if from a grave. "Forget the way here."
Lyra froze.
She knew what this meant. He was closing the door. Forever. That shack, which had been the only more or less safe place in Ebros, ceased to exist for her. The old man, who for three years had been her quiet harbor, was erasing her from his life.
She understood that the business she'd gotten into could burn everything around. And he didn't want to burn with her.
Lyra stood for a second. Silently nodded—though he couldn't see. Then said:
"Take care of yourself, old man."
And walked out.
The door closed behind her with a quiet, creaky thud. There was no click of a bolt—he didn't lock it. But Lyra knew: she would never enter here again. Even if she wanted to very much.
She stood on the threshold, inhaling the damp air of the slums, and felt, inside, beneath her ribs, a cold, viscous emptiness spreading.
Another door had closed.
In her life, few things opened for long.
Lyra adjusted the bag on her shoulder, felt for the dagger under her jacket, and stepped into the darkness.