It’s windy outside, chilly enough to sting the ears as they haul Holden out into the sunset reds and purples touching the outskirts of town ablaze at its peaks and through its streets. Rather than steer around to the back of the tent as intended, at Jim’s last second request, Dick digs in to turn them down the throat of an alley instead.

“This way.”

It’s further to walk and here the shadows are even colder, but there is a wall ready to take Holden’s weight once they’re in deep enough to slough him down against it.

Silas has produced a slender knife from his pocket and flicked it open in less time than it takes him to see Holden fully deposited -- a subtle series of developments that sees the blade slipped in under the cuff of his own rolled sleeve and drawn swift and sharp across the back of his arm. To business.

The cuff was already crimson and fresh blood follows the blade, running hot in a tangle from his sleeve to his wrist.

If he looks to Derrica while he does it, it’s only because it’s polite that she have a chance to interject or smite him with lightning before he really gets started. Only a few meters behind him, the street is alive with surgeons and soldiers and fresh-injured streaming over sunlit cobblestone.

Jim doesn’t get a choice.