Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8X5A02S51T7AWE6JP2F7BZ

The Raven’s Nest was quiet for a Tuesday. Rory Carter wiped down the mahogany bar, her movements automatic. The green neon sign from the street bled a sickly light through the front window, painting the old maps on the walls in aquatic shadows. She liked this hour, the lull between the afternoon drinkers and the evening crowd. It gave the place a museum-like hush, broken only by the soft clink of glass and the distant hum of London. Silas was in the back, inventorying stock. She could hear the slight drag of his left leg, the familiar sound of his limp as he moved between crates. The silver signet ring on his right hand would be catching the low light as he worked. Rory glanced at the small crescent scar on her own left wrist, a pale souvenir from a treehouse fall when she was seven. It seemed a lifetime ago, a different person entirely. The door opened, slicing a wedge of grey afternoon into the dimness. A man stood silhouetted for a moment before stepping inside, letting the door sigh shut behind him. He was tall, lean, dressed in a charcoal overcoat that looked both expensive and slightly worn. He scanned the room with a slow, deliberate sweep, the way someone reads a familiar page. Rory put down her cloth. “We’re open. What can I get you?” The man’s eyes settled on her. They were a pale, watery blue, the color of a winter sky. He didn’t smile. “I’m looking for Silas Blackwood.” His voice was low, graveled by cigarettes or time. There was an accent there, something she couldn’t quite place—maybe Eastern European, softened by years elsewhere. “He’s in the back,” she said, her tone neutral. Silas had visitors, but they usually had an appointment, a certain look. This man had the look, but it was faded, like newsprint left in the sun. “Can I tell him who’s asking?” “Just tell him Leo is here.” She nodded and pushed through the curtain behind the bar, into the narrow corridor that led to the storeroom. Silas was perched on a stool, a clipboard in hand, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the glow of a single bare bulb. The beard, neatly trimmed, gave his face a solemn cast. “There’s a man out front,” Rory said. “Says his name is Leo. Wants to see you.” Silas went very still. The clipboard lowered an inch. The hazel eyes, usually so composed, flickered with something—surprise, then a swift, deep caution. He didn’t speak for a long moment. Then he set the clipboard down carefully on a crate of gin bottles. The signet ring tapped against the wood. “Leo,” he repeated, the word flat. “You know him?” “I did.” Silas stood, adjusting his weight off his bad knee. “A long time ago.” He didn’t look at her as he moved past, his limp more pronounced than usual. Rory followed, hovering at the edge of the curtain. She watched as Silas emerged into the bar’s main room. The man called Leo had taken a seat at a corner table, his back to the wall. He hadn’t removed his coat. The two men looked at each other across the empty space. The air in the bar seemed to thicken, to pull taut. “Silas,” Leo said. It wasn’t a greeting. It was an identification. “I heard you were dead,” Silas replied, his voice even, devoid of its usual warm rumble. A faint, humourless smile touched Leo’s lips. “Reports were exaggerated.” Silas approached the table but did not sit. He stood, his hands resting lightly on the back of the opposite chair. Rory could see the tension in his shoulders, the old operative’s posture returning like a muscle memory. “What do you want, Leo?” “A drink. A conversation. Is that so strange? Old friends catching up.” “We were never friends.” “Colleagues, then. Comrades-in-arms. Does that term still mean anything?” Leo’s pale eyes drifted past Silas, taking in the bar, the maps, the photographs of a London that no longer existed. “You’ve done well for yourself. A cozy nest. I always pictured you in a cottage somewhere, growing roses. Not this.” “What did you picture for yourself?” Silas asked, finally pulling out the chair and sitting down. The movement was stiff, deliberate. Leo’s smile faded. He looked down at his hands, which were resting on the table. They were long-fingered, elegant, but the knuckles were scarred, the skin weathered. “I pictured a lot of things. None of them came to pass.” Rory moved quietly behind the bar, pretending to polish glasses, her ears straining. She caught the faint clink as Silas fetched two tumblers and a bottle of single malt from the shelf without being asked. He poured two fingers into each glass and pushed one across the table. Leo took it, raised it to his nose, inhaled. “Still the good stuff. Some habits die hard.” “Some don’t die at all.” They drank in silence. Rory watched Leo’s face. He was older than Silas, she thought, though it was hard to tell. His hair was steel-grey, cut short, but his face was lined with a deep, weary erosion. He looked like a man who had been carved by harsh winds. “I heard about Prague,” Leo said finally, setting his glass down. “The knee.” “It’s manageable.” “Is it?” Leo’s gaze was direct, probing. “You walk like it pains you. We all carry our souvenirs, don’t we? Some are just more visible.” “Why are you here, Leo? It’s been, what, twenty years?” “Twenty-two.” Leo took another sip. “I was in the city. Thought I’d look you up. See how the other half lives.” “The other half?” “The half that got out.” There was no bitterness in the words, only a flat, factual emptiness. “The half that has a name, a place, a… neon sign.” He gestured vaguely toward the window. Silas swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “You could have had that.” “Could I?” Leo’s voice dropped, became almost confidential. “You know what they offered me. A desk in Vauxhall. Pushing papers until my eyes bled. After what we did? After Belgrade? After that fucking mess in Kiev?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t built for a desk, Silas. Neither were you, but you took it. You took the pension and the pat on the head and you walked away.” “I limped away,” Silas corrected softly. “Semantics.” Leo leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Do you ever miss it? The game. The rush. Knowing that what you did mattered, even if no one else ever would.” “It mattered to the people who got burned,” Silas said. His voice was low, but it carried. “It mattered to the ones left holding the bag when the music stopped. I don’t miss that.” Leo sat back, studying him. “You’ve changed.” “Haven’t we all?” “Not like this. You were the best of us, Silas. The sharpest mind, the coldest nerve. The Spymaster. And now you’re a… publican.” He said the word like it was a foreign term, something quaint and slightly ridiculous. “And what are you, Leo?” Silas asked, his gaze steady. “If not a desk man, then what? A consultant? A ghost? What do they call what you do now?” A shadow passed over Leo’s face. He looked down into his glass, as if the answer might be floating in the whisky. “I survive,” he said simply. “I find things out for people who can pay. I move from place to place. I have no sign. I have no nest. I have a series of rooms that all look the same.” He finished his drink. “It’s a living.” “It’s a half-life.” “Perhaps.” Leo looked up, and for a fleeting second, Rory saw something raw in his eyes—a loneliness so vast it was like looking into a cold sea. Then it was gone, shuttered behind the pale blue calm. “But it’s the one I chose. Or the one that chose me. The distinction blurs after a while.” Silas didn’t reply. He poured them both another measure, his movements slow, ceremonial. The silence stretched, filled with all the unsaid things, the operations gone wrong, the friends lost, the ideals tarnished. The weight of two decades sat between them, heavy as a stone. “Do you remember Anna?” Leo asked quietly. Silas’s hand tightened around his glass. “Yes.” “She asked about you, before the end. Wanted to know if you were happy.” “What did you tell her?” “I told her I didn’t know.” Leo’s voice was barely a whisper now. “I didn’t have the heart to lie.” Rory felt a sudden, sharp ache in her chest. She looked away, pretending to examine a bottle label. She thought of her own flight from Cardiff, the desperate train ride to London, the fear that had been a constant companion. She thought of Evan’s face, contorted in anger, and the soothing calm of Eva’s voice on the phone. She thought of the small, safe flat above this very bar, and the man who had offered it without question, without prying. Everyone had their before and after. Everyone carried the weight of the person they used to be. When she looked back, Leo was standing. He placed a few notes on the table, far more than the drinks cost. “I should go,” he said. “It was… good to see you, Silas.” Silas remained seated. He didn’t look up. “Take care of yourself, Leo.” Leo nodded once, a curt, military motion. He turned, his coat swirling, and walked to the door. He didn’t look back. The door opened, then closed, and the grey light was gone, leaving the bar once more in its green-tinged twilight. Silas sat motionless for a long time, staring at the empty glass in front of him. Rory came out from behind the bar and approached the table. She didn’t speak. She just began clearing the glasses. “He was the best of us, once,” Silas said, his voice so low she almost didn’t hear it. He wasn’t talking to her, not really. He was talking to the ghost in the room, to the man who had just left, to the man he himself used to be. “He could read a room, a document, a person… like no one else. He saved my life in Budapest. Did I ever tell you that?” “No,” Rory said softly. “He did. Took a bullet meant for me. It was a through-and-through, shoulder. He joked about it afterward.” Silas finally looked up, his hazel eyes clouded with memory. “That man who was just here… that’s not him. That’s what’s left after the world takes its pound of flesh, year after year, until there’s nothing left but the scars and the survival.” Rory placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. He covered her hand with his own, his signet ring cool against her skin. “We all change, Silas,” she said. “We do,” he agreed, his gaze returning to the door. “But God, it’s a heavy thing, to see the measure of what’s been lost.” He squeezed her hand once, then released it, pushing himself to his feet with a grimace. The limp seemed more pronounced as he walked back toward the storeroom, back to the inventory, back to the life he had built from the ashes of the old one. Rory stood alone in the quiet bar, the ghost of the conversation lingering in the air like smoke. She picked up Leo’s empty glass. It still held the faint, peaty scent of whisky, and the cold imprint of his fingers. She washed it carefully, watching the water rinse away the last traces, until it was clean, empty, and shining under the green neon light, ready to be filled again.