Old Man Dumas is soft in his gut too, but that’s what the armor is for, isn’t it? Being hard over the soft bits? He’s too far away to hear, busy listening to his own breath ringing tinny back in his ears.

His helmet is a nasty piece of work, the metal beaten up into a battleship’s wedged prow, with age-streaked holes stamped in criss-cross through the steel. It’s nested down into the wedge of a raised gorget, not a glimpse of humanity in sight, save for the slow run of a bead of sweat down the breastplate.

Behind it, he grimaces against the push of Yevdokia’s skewer into Bastien’s face -- a touch of recoil translated through a drawing back of his shoulders, and the clamp of the crystal gripped in his gauntlet up to his helmet holes. To Bastien, he says:

“If you shit yourself in this market, you’re on your own.”