Ten minutes before Ray put his shoulder into that door, Finn was still fighting uselessly against the rope binding his wrists, wood floor rough beneath him where he'd been shoved down against the cell wall.
"I can't get any slack," he muttered, twisting his hands again, wincing as the rope bit deeper. "Whoever tied these knew what they were doing."
"Personally offended they didn't teach me that trick," Silas said, though his usual grin didn't quite land, something distracted pulling at the edges of it. "Would've made my job considerably easier these past three weeks."
"Focus, please. Ropes."
"I'm aware of the ropes, Finn." Silas twisted his own bound wrists experimentally, testing the give, and found none. "Believe me, they're rather difficult to ignore."
Footsteps approached from the corridor, unhurried, and both of them went still. A guard's shadow fell across the gap beneath the door before the lock rattled and it swung open — the same wiry man from earlier, lantern in one hand, expression bored rather than alert.
"Master wants the girl brought up," he said, stepping in. "Not you two. Sit tight."
"Actually," Silas said, straightening despite the ropes, some of his old ease sliding back into place like a mask he'd simply forgotten he was still wearing, "before you go — could I trouble you for a favor?"
The guard frowned. "You're not in a position to ask favors."
"No, I suppose not." Silas held his gaze, something shifting subtly in his own expression — focus, maybe, or intention, Finn couldn't quite name it. "But you're going to give me the keys anyway. And then you're going to help me get my friend here untied. Aren't you."
The guard's frown didn't fade so much as simply stop meaning anything. His eyes glazed, faint and strange, and when he spoke again his voice had gone flat, distant.
"I'm going… to give… you the keys," he repeated slowly, like the words belonged to someone else and he was only borrowing them. "And… help your… friend…"
Finn's mouth fell open. "What did you just—"
"I have absolutely no idea," Silas said, watching the guard fumble the ring of keys free from his belt with hands that moved too slowly, too obediently, like a puppet whose strings had been picked up by someone new and unpracticed. "I've never done that before in my life."
The guard knelt, working the rope from Finn's wrists with the same slow, glassy compliance, and the moment Finn's hands came free, Silas moved — fast, decisive, driving his elbow hard into the man's temple the instant he'd finished the task, dropping him where he knelt.
"Sorry," Silas told the unconscious guard, with what sounded like genuine, if brief, regret. "You were surprisingly helpful there at the end."
Finn stared at him, rubbing his freed wrists, disbelief and something close to alarm both crossing his face at once. "You just made a grown man hand you his own keys and untie me. With your voice."
"I noticed, yes." Silas's charm had gone thin and brittle around the edges now, the joke landing without much weight behind it. "Would love to discuss the implications of that at length. Preferably somewhere that isn't a slave ship."
"That's fair." Finn grabbed the keys, already moving toward the door. "Later, though. You're explaining everything later."
"Getting quite a list of things I owe explanations for tonight," Silas muttered, following him into the corridor, some of his usual quickness returning now that motion had given him something other than his own unraveling nerves to focus on. "Add it to the pile."
They crept down the corridor together, past a second guard who glanced their way and — strangely, thankfully — simply didn't react at all, eyes sliding past them like they weren't worth the effort of noticing.
Finn caught Silas's arm before they reached the next junction, voice low. "That guard back there. Did you do that too?"
Silas didn't answer right away, his jaw tight, something working behind his eyes that looked less like triumph and more like fear.
"Probably," he admitted finally. "I don't know what I'm doing right now, Finn. I only know that it's working."