Dawn arrives overcast and drizzling on the port of Luxana, salt winds blowing in violent, erratic gusts off the dark gray sea in the weak morning light. Anyone who’s lived long enough in Roma Sargassa’s capital city knows the signs of a hurricane on the horizon, and Theodora Nix has lived here all their life.
Not that the dangerous weather will put off the local street vendors. Nothing ever does. At barely six in the morning, the slate-and-brick Regio Marina neighborhood stirs feebly to life the same as always. Little girls with wheelbarrows in oversized oilskins and thick woven duskras, shouting out their parents’ fresh eel and seaweed haul. The sizzle of acorn-flour on cast iron as men entice passersby with stacks of fried dappham from beneath dripping canvas tents. Rickets collectors, discount servae traders, hemp and spice and indigo merchants. They’ll be here until the very last moment, the promise of one last sale too valuable to miss. Hurricanes can last up to a month in this part of the empires—empty stomachs can’t.
Pulling their wool scarf tight around damp black hair, Theo makes their way down the wharf. Past the fishermen as they shout and haul in their catch, past seafoam-green shutters flung open for one last gasp of fresh air, past a splintering wooden underpass sheltering a pair of whispering lovers they’d be willing to bet never made it to bed.
Pa’akal and Avis are waiting for them with the cart at the northwest end of the Regio, hunkered over and grim in their oilskins. Izara isn’t here, she’s been deep undercover for months. Griff’s not here yet, either, but that’s no surprise, she’s always the last to show up. Never mind that she’s the one who called them here, but Theo has no idea what Griff actually does most of the time. None of them do, and that’s as it should be. There’s safety in ignorance. Not safety for themselves, but for the greater network of the Revenants across Sargassa. Cells in Halcya and Paxenos and Bostinium, all reporting back to their central base here in Luxana, and even so, Theo, who thinks they might be the closest thing Griff has to a friend, has no idea just how large the network extends.
What they know is what Griff allows them to know, and for Theo that means operations in Luxana, the political and cultural heart of Roma Sargassa. Infiltrating and collecting intel on the movements of the Imperium’s fine institutions, the Archives and the Senate and the Institute Civitatem. Positioning themselves strategically for when the time comes—though the time for what, Theo isn’t entirely sure.
Direct democracy. Independence from Roma. That’s always been the Revenant goal. But where Griff’s predecessor had looked to messy fixes and instant gratification—kidnapping a petty officer to interrogate him on naval defense, intercepting supply lines out to the legions, the sort of aggression that resulted in nothing but friends and fellow Revenants dropping at an alarming rate—Griff has always been cleaner than that. Seen the bigger picture laid out broad, and relied on subtlety to shift the tides of opinion.
“People aren’t going to throw themselves behind chaos,” she told Theo once over a late night mug of tazine, back before she was Griff, back when she was still quietly consolidating power. “That’s too frightening. It’s too much to ask. And anyway, it’s too early for this sort of offensive strategy. There’s no revolution without popular consent, so we need the rest of Sargassa if we’re going to see this thing through. Before anything else, we need to open people’s eyes to what’s possible.” Theo doesn’t know if that’s the moment she earned their loyalty, but it’s what they thought back to, later on, when they shoved a knife in the old Griff’s gut to make way for the new.
So no, Theo doesn’t always understand why Griff asks what she does of them. They aren’t privy to the master plan, what exactly Griff’s waiting for while she moves her chess pieces into place. They believe in her all the same. Everyone in the Luxana cell does.
Pa’akal Zetnes is part of the old guard, been doing this for longer than Theo’s been alive. Maybe even longer than Griff has been involved. Certainly longer than the seven years Griff has had command. He’s the muscle, and a good humor exists beneath that bristly gray beard and suit of black tattoos extending from ear to toe. Avis Tiago-Laith is a different story, mainly because Theo doesn’t actually know him very well. He’s new, and slight, and serious, and very, very green. If he hadn’t mentioned remembering the Brushfires of ’52, Theo would swear he’s younger than they are. But Griff recruited him personally, and while Theo doesn’t see much in him beyond his access as an employee to the Ministerium of Records, they trust their mentor’s reasoning. They smile brightly at him. He’s doing his best to hide his nerves. He’s failing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a mild voice cuts through the squall.
Griff is an unremarkable-looking woman. Forty-something, maybe. Five-foot-something, maybe. Somewhat brown, somewhat thick. Not beautiful, not ugly. The kind of person you don’t think to notice. Theo sometimes catches themself thinking of Griff as a mother figure, and immediately has to bring that line of thought to a screeching halt.
She’s not a mother. She’s a spider.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” she continues, as if any of them would have refused. “Shall we?”
The cart clatters down the cobblestone from the Regio Marina into the Third Ward and the very heart of the city. The streets are emptier than usual, though still lightly bustling with people determined to complete their morning errands before the storm gets any worse. Plebs, mainly—the sprawling concra streets and trash piles of the Third Ward play home to the rabble, maybe the odd Cohort officer patrolling here and there, looking for trouble. As they approach the more upscale Seven Dials district, however, they’re cut off the road by a sudden convoy of riders. Green uniforms mark them as Cohort Publica, but the wary-eyed rider in black bringing up the rear gives them away. Cohort Intelligentia. Blackbags. The not-so-secret police.
Avis goes rigid at the sight, and Theo can’t help but roll their eyes. “Relax,” they whisper. “Griff always manages to get them out of the way.” He nods, stiff, and they feel a sudden stab of pity. They’ve been doing this since they were sixteen. Eleven long years. Enough time to forget how truly shit-your-pants terrifying this actually used to be. Avis may be older, but age is meaningless against experience. Theo squeezes his shoulder.
Through Seven Dials, then, to the Scholar’s Gate and up into the Universitas District. All limestone townhouses and academic halls, though there’s not a soul to be found from the famed Luxana Universitas out on the street. If the people who live here need to go out in this kind of weather, they can afford to send someone to do it for them.
If they were anyone else, their party would come up through Iveroa Promenade next—a wide pedestrian avenue paved in that same white limestone, dotted here and there with stone benches and manicured gardens for study and conversation, ending at last in the towering Imperial Archives. They’re not anyone else.
The back entrance to the Archives is guarded by a single unlucky sentry. Unlucky to begin with, on shift during weather like this. Unluckier still as Theo draws one of their blades across his throat, silencing him before he can shout the alarm. Blood mixes with the rush of rainwater around cobblestone, and briefly they wonder at how much easier this has gotten. A clean slice through stubborn inches of sinew and cartilage requires an even measure of willpower and physical strength. Willpower they had from the start, a fury born from the same hellhole as their starved and malnourished frame. By the time they had built their body into something worthy of fighting back, fury had converted to something far more dangerous. Purpose.
Theo’s never been inside the Imperial Archives before now. Most of their adult life has sidelined them to the shadows. Even if they had somehow managed to make their way here as a child, the sentries in their crisp, powder-blue uniforms would have taken one look at Theo’s ill-fitting and filthy tunic and called the Publica.
There’s a classic grandeur to the domed marble ceiling of the cavernous foyer, the brass paraffin lamps lit dimly in their sconces. Rich Anatolian carpeted hallways, woven in silver and crimson, soften their steps underfoot. Outside, the screaming wind and gradual build into torrential rain has kept the students and scholars and tourists away, dry and warm and safe. It’s a stroke of luck, but Theo can’t help feeling a twinge of disappointment all the same. They’ve been perfecting their cut-glass patrician accent—they were looking forward to taking it out for a spin.
Griff navigates them through the endless maze of corridors, meeting rooms, and lecture halls. One wide passageway doubles as a two-story library, shooting outward into row after row of shelves, and Theo finds themself rooted to the sleek wooden floor, gaping upward at the dark arched ceiling far above. The sheer number of books in this one room alone is easily more than they’ve seen in the entire course of their life. Harder to wrestle their mind around is the knowledge that within the Imperial Archives, the epicenter of all written knowledge in Roma and her client empires across the world, this must barely count as a library at all.
Theo doesn’t ask how Griff knows her way around so well, just trusts in whatever muscle memory she apparently has of the labyrinthine Archives until the four of them arrive at the top floor, thirty stories high, and a long hallway ending in front of a magnificently wrought door of oak and iron.
Inside his office, the Imperial Historian is dead.
“Fuck,” whispers Griff, bronze face bloodless beneath her scarf. “Frag it, Alex.”
To all the world, the man could have just fallen asleep at his desk. But Theo knows poison when they see it. The tracks of lurid blue snaking down his neck would be enough of a giveaway, even without Griff delicately tilting his head to one side, revealing the milky cataracts formed over wide green eyes.
This was definitely not part of the plan.
This is a rescue mission, as far as Theo’s aware. Griff had sent a message in the early hours of the morning—one of their own was in trouble, and that’s all Theo needed to know. But surely she hadn’t meant . . . Alex?
Either way, rescue or not, a dead patrician was not part of the plan. The Revenants aren’t the mindless butchers that the Roman Imperium and their puppet Cato Palmar paint them out to be in their propaganda. Not even under previous, less careful leadership. Oh, they’re killers to a one—the unfortunate sentry outside is proof enough of that—but it’s never for its own sake. And they aren’t stupid about it. High-profile murder is messy—questions and investigation and the Cohorts gone power-mad in the streets—and the Revenants are in the business of efficiency. Assassination’s useless when the next patrician brat just springs up to take their parent’s place. It’s rarely worth the risk.
But this is what the Imperium does. Paints political dissidents as monsters, lest the general citizenry be allowed to think for themselves. They’ve been dancing to this tune for a long time now. Two hundred years, some say, ever since the first Revenant escaped the executions and slaughter that ended the Twelfth Servile War. Others say there have been Revenants as long as there’s been a Roma, or a Roma Sargassa, or an end to the Great Quiet some eight hundred years ago. Others, Theo among them, say it doesn’t fucking matter. They’re here now.
Griff runs a hand over her face and says, “Right. That’s unfortunate. But we move on. Pa’akal—guard the door. Avis, are you all right?”
The man looks like he’s about to vomit, warily eyeing the Historian’s dead body, and his voice is thin and strained when he responds. “Yes. I . . . I don’t mean to be . . . It’s just that you said we were going to the Senate.”
“Really? That was careless of me.”
Avis opens his mouth, like he’s about to push the subject, then seems to think better of it.
“So who are we looking for?” Theo asks. This is a rescue mission, supposedly, but other than a corpse there doesn’t seem to be anyone here.
Griff doesn’t answer, not at first. She’s still staring at the dead Historian, her face impossible to read. There’s a slip of paper just peeking out from under his pale, bloated hand, something scrawled across in neat and elegant loops. Griff slides it out with two fingers, the divot between her brows furrowing as she reads. Then, with a slow but decisive finality, she crumples the paper into her palm, slips it into the pocket of her long oilskin coat.
Then she turns back to the Historian, slouched over at his desk in undignified death, and draws her own dagger. Theo frowns as Griff takes the blade to her own palm, squeezes it tight. A few errant drops escape her clenched fist before she places a bloody thumb to the Historian’s forehead. An old rite, older than Roma’s rule over Sargassa, for those who fall before their time. Sentiment, Theo would put it down to, if Griff had a sentimental bone in her body.
“Let’s move out,” says Griff, and avoids the question in Theo’s eyes.
• • •
Warning bells clang from the nearby city watchtower as they emerge out the back door with the rest. Either someone discovered the sentry’s dead body and raised the alarm, or the storm is shaping up to be worse than anybody expected. In either case, dark figures of the Cohort Publica move in the rain-fogged distance, one of them shouting angrily as they catch sight of the four Revenants exiting out into the street. But the torrential storm provides a welcome cover of confusion, and they slip easily away through the empty streets of crumbling brick and stone, quickly putting distance between themselves, the Cohort, and the Imperial Archives.
In no time at all, they’re back to the safety and relative anonymity of the derelict Third Ward. A flash of lightning splits the dark morning as Griff raises her hand, signaling their stop beneath a concra-covered overpass.
Theo bends over to catch their breath, a hand resting against the cool building. They tug the scarf down from around their face, gasping the free air and relishing the absence of oppressive damp wool sticking to their mouth. Somewhere to their left, Griff is murmuring quietly to Pa’akal, then moving to check in on Avis, who’s currently barfing into a wheelbarrow.
“Holding up there, Shrimp?” asks Pa’akal, just low enough for them to hear beneath the howling wind. The nickname’s an old one, an ironic holdover from darker days. Theo grins.
“You know me. Always.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says, and nods over to Avis. “Look sharp now.” They frown but don’t question it, just follow him over to where Griff is bracing Avis by the shoulder. She looks up as they approach, only for a moment.
“First time seeing a dead body?” she asks Avis, not unkindly.
He nods, still looking vaguely ill.
Griff squeezes his shoulder. “You did well in there.” And for the first time all day, despite his shaking, despite the brewing hurricane and the Historian’s death-still face and the smell of his own vomit, Avis smiles. Griff returns it in kind, gives his shoulder another little squeeze. Then she looks up again at Pa’akal and Theo. “Such a shame.”
And all at once they understand.
Pa’akal seizes Avis, locking him in place. Theo draws their blades.
“I took the long way round past the Senate this morning,” says Griff, still pleasant as a meridiem date. “The Cohort Intelligentia were waiting for us there.”
Avis Tiago-Laith’s eyes widen, realization taking hold at last. Theo has witnessed this happen before. It disappoints them now as much as it did then.
“I never tell a new recruit the real mark,” Griff says, casually removing a dagger of her own from inside her overcoat. “It’s been a good strategy so far.”