The four walls of his new room closed in on Lutz with a silence that was more oppressive than the snores and grunts of the bunk room. The transaction with Karl had left a film on his soul, and the simple act of placing his meager belongings—the bought books, his gear, the materials gathered from the doctor's house, his spare clothes—on the single shelf and under the cot did nothing to scrub it away. He was a prized tool, neatly stored in its own box. The lock on the door was not a promise of privacy, but a measure of his value. He felt a sudden, claustrophobic need to be outside, to move, to remember that the world extended beyond the Baron's ledger and Karl's calculating gaze.
He found Henrik near the main warehouse entrance, the old man shrugging on a worn, stained coat, a list of errands clutched in his gnarled hand.
"Heading out?" Lutz asked, his voice sounding too loud in the quiet tension of the post-meeting warehouse.
Henrik turned, his single good eye blinking. The other, a milky ruin, seemed to stare at something just beyond Lutz's shoulder. "Aye. The glamorous life of a quartermaster. Need lamp oil. Twine. A new whetstone. Gerhart's complaining his blade pulls to the left." He sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand such errands.
"I'll come with you," Lutz said. The offer was out before he could question it. "Nothing else to do. Could use the air."
Henrik studied him for a long moment, his gaze penetrating. He saw the restlessness in Lutz's stance, the tightness around his eyes that spoke of a victory that felt like a defeat. He was, in many ways, the only one who could.
"Suit yourself," Henrik grunted, not with hostility, but with a weary acceptance. "Just don't complain 'bout the pace. These old bones don't move like they used to."
They stepped out into the mid-morning haze of Indaw Harbor. The fog had burned off to a low-hanging mist that clung to the cobblestones, and the air was thick with the smells of salt, fish, and coal smoke. They walked in silence for a while, Lutz falling into step beside Henrik's slower, more deliberate pace. It was a different rhythm from the predatory stalk of a collection or the frantic flight from danger. It was… human.
Their first stop was a chandler's shop, its windows filled with coils of rope and blocks of tar. While Henrik haggled with the proprietor over the price of lamp oil, Lutz's eyes automatically scanned the shop. His Marauder senses tingled, not at the valuables, but at the tools. A set of fine-grit sharpening stones behind the counter, a roll of high-quality sailmaker's needles. He saw not their monetary value, but their potential utility. The instinct was so ingrained it was now subconscious.
"You look at a place like a man casing it," Henrik remarked as they left the shop, the clinking bottle of oil in his bag. "Even when you're not working."
Lutz didn't deny it. "It's hard to turn off."
"Aye. That's the danger," Henrik said. "The job becomes the man. I've seen it before. The best cutpurses, they don't even think about it. Their fingers are just… emptier than they should be. You're heading that way, boy. Faster than most."
They moved on, to a general store that smelled of dried herbs and cheap soap. Henrik picked over a basket of whetstones, testing their grain with his thumb. Lutz watched, curious.
"How do you know which one?"
Henrik held up two stones. "This one's too coarse. It'll take off too much metal, leave a ragged edge. This one," he selected a smoother, grey stone, "is for finishing. Puts a fine, clean edge on it. You need both, see? The coarse to set the bevel, the fine to hone it. Like most things in life. The rough work first, then the finesse."
He paid for the stone, and they continued their walk. The conversation, once started, began to flow with the easy, meandering current of two people with no particular destination.
Henrik pointed out a tailor's shop. "See the apron on that man in the window? The stitch on the strap is pulling. He's using a straight stitch on a point of strain. A box stitch, or even a cross-stitch, would hold it. A small thing, but it's the difference between an apron that lasts a year and one that lasts a decade."
Lutz, whose knowledge of sewing was limited to hastily darning socks, found himself listening intently. It was a language of care, of making things last, a stark contrast to the Vipers' philosophy of use and discard.
He felt as if his father was teaching him, but strangely, this didn't bring back memories from Earth.
Because his father did never teach him anything like this, he wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't very present either, if it wasn't working, it was sleeping, if not, it was out drinking, if not... it was discussing with mom about their unproductive, dream-chasing son...
"How do you know all this?" Lutz asked. "The sewing, the stones…"
"I told you i was a ship's carpenter, once," Henrik said, his gaze growing distant, focused on a memory across the sea. "Before… all this. You learn to be handy. A ship is a world of wood and rope and metal, and everything has to work, or men die. You learn to mend a sail, sharpen a adze, splice a line that'll hold in a gale." He patted the whetstone in his bag. "A sharp tool is a safe tool. A dull one slips. Gerhart's a brute, but he's right about his blade. A clean cut is better than a ragged tear."
The city unfolded around them as they walked from the commercial streets towards the quieter, slightly less dilapidated lanes where small workshops stood. The conversation drifted from the practical to the personal.
"Did you ever want to go back? To the sea?" Lutz ventured.
Henrik was silent for a long time. The only sound was their footsteps and the distant cry of gulls. "No," he said finally, the word absolute. "The sea took enough from me. Gives you a living, then claims a price. My price was… Annelise." He didn't say more than her name, but the way it settled in the air between them was a story in itself. "The Baron found me after. Gave me a purpose, of a sort. A different kind of ship to tend to. Just as rotten, in its own way, but it keeps the water out."
Lutz understood. The warehouse was Henrik's lifeboat, and the Baron was the cruel captain who had fished him from a sea of despair.
"What about you, boy?" Henrik asked, his milky eye seeming to see straight through Lutz's carefully constructed calm. "What's left for you? You've paid your debt, I hear. Got your own room. You're on the rise. What does a rising man in the Vipers look forward to?"
The question hung in the air, more profound and terrifying than any threat from Karl. What was left? Revenge was a goal, a destination, but it wasn't a life. It was a fire that consumed all the fuel around it, leaving only ash.
"I don't know," Lutz admitted, the honesty surprising himself. It was a luxury he couldn't afford with anyone else. "Sometimes it feels like I'm just… getting sharper. Like Gerhart's blade. But I don't know what I'm supposed to be cutting anymore."
Henrik nodded slowly, as if this was the answer he had expected. "Aye. That's the trap. You get so good at the doing, you forget the why. You become the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you're still just a tool in someone else's hand. The Baron's. Karl's. Even your own rage's." He stopped walking and turned to face Lutz, his expression grim. "I told you before, some things, once they're gone, no amount of power can bring them back. That goes for pieces of yourself, too. Every time you do a thing like… what happened with the traitor and his sister… you give a piece away. You can tell yourself it's for a reason, for a grand plan. But the piece is still gone. And one day you'll look inside and find nothing left but the sharp, hard edges."
The words landed with the weight of truth. Lutz saw Silvia's face, felt the phantom resistance of the knives sinking into Jhin's eyes. He saw the terror of the woman in the alley. He was accumulating power and shedding humanity, and the exchange felt increasingly unbalanced.
"So what's the answer?" Lutz asked, a rare note of desperation in his voice. "If you can't go back, and going forward means hollowing yourself out, what's left?"
Henrik sighed, a sound of infinite weariness. "There is no answer, boy. Not a clean one. Just choices. You find small things to hold onto. You mend an apron with the right stitch. You sharpen a knife so it cuts clean. You walk an old man on his errands." He gestured around them at the bustling, grimy, vital life of the city. "You look for things that aren't part of the transaction. A decent piece of bread. A joke that isn't cruel. A moment of quiet that isn't just waiting for the next fight. It's not much. It's not a purpose. But it's something. It's what keeps you from becoming a ghost entirely."
They had completed their circuit, arriving back at the mouth of the alley that led to the warehouse. The familiar gloom awaited, a maw ready to swallow them back into the world of ledgers and leverage.
Henrik clapped a hand on Lutz's shoulder, a brief, surprisingly strong grip. "You asked what's left. Maybe the question isn't what's left for you. Maybe it's what are you going to leave in your wake? A trail of blood and stolen coin? Or a few mended things, here and there? Even in a shithole like this, you get to choose that much."
With that, the old man turned and shuffled into the alley, leaving Lutz standing on the threshold.
Lutz stood there for a long time, watching the fog curl around the chimney pots. The conversation had been a whetstone, not for a blade, but for his soul. It had honed the edges of his dilemma to a painful sharpness. Henrik saw the path he was on with a clarity that was both brutal and compassionate.
He felt like Henrik was the first person that treated him as human, the first person he could call friend ever since he arrived in this wretched, cursed world.
He had his room, his payment, his freedom from debt. He had the Baron's favor and Karl's investment. He had the cold, growing power of a Marauder. But as he finally turned and followed Henrik into the shadows, the only thing that felt real, the only thing that felt like it truly belonged to him, was the memory of a simple conversation about mending aprons and sharpening knives, and the terrifying, fragile choice of what kind of edge he was going to be.