The taberna by the docks of the Regio Marina is dark, and musty, and mostly empty this early in the morning. Only a few salt-worn sailors crowded around a table in the corner playing cards, making the most of shore leave, their laughter echoing loud enough to make up for the lack of other patrons. There’s a reason this place is called Neptune’s Folly.
Theo’s contact isn’t here yet.
Cloak-and-dagger intrigue is decidedly not the life they had envisioned for themself as a child, but to be fair, in those days they didn’t tend to think much further than their squirming stomach. Even after Pa’akal put a blade in their hand, it had taken time to realize that sixteen years of want and shame had also given them the means to their own liberation. Don’t be noticed. That one had been instilled in them early. Not by their useless father, but by older whispers and hard-earned experience. Don’t be noticed. There’s nothing more dangerous for a serva than being noticed.
It took some time, but as Theo became more proficient with their daggers—started putting on muscle and real body fat for the first time in their life, long since outgrowing Pa’akal’s nickname Shrimp—they began to realize that they already knew how to wield their greatest weapon—dancing between the lines of what people expect to see. They’ve by no means come by it honestly, but they’ll be the first to admit they’re a damn good spy.
Resisting the urge to scratch at the long blond wig they’re working with today, Theo feels as though they actually deserve a drink after all. But before they can make it over to the bar, a small commotion breaks out some ways down at the other end, and all thought of drinks and self-congratulations go out the window.
Una has got to be the worst canary in their ring.
Not that they’ll ever tell Griff that. Recruiting Una was a coup, and Theo’s coup at that, a serva right at the heart of the patrician Kleios familia. Recruiting her had been the key to working their own way into the senator’s circle of trust, using the information Una passed on about Naevia Kleios to place and present themself just right, ultimately—per Griff’s instruction—securing a place on her senatorial staff. They couldn’t have done any of it without Una, and they aren’t in any hurry to let that debt go unpaid. Even if it means they now have to rescue her. Again.
There’s a sailor who has Una pressed up against the bar, skin turned to leather from the merciless sun, the overpowering stink of sea and canvas and too much alcohol sweating from his pores. Theo heard the slap that Una dealt him before they saw her, and grits their teeth at the unforgiving hand the man has buried in her yellow hair, pulling at the roots while Una’s eyes begin to water. Whether from the pressure or the stench, Theo doesn’t know.
“Oho,” he’s saying, eyes straying to the cuff around Una’s ear. “Off on a little walkabout, huh? Who let a pretty thing like you off their leash?”
Theo is a good actor. They are good at weaving through the dark. But there isn’t always a difference between efficiency and satisfaction, and they’ve never been one to deny themselves the latter.
“I did,” they say, and punch the sailor squarely in the balls.
• • •
Despite being a terrible informant, frankly, despite being bullheaded and arrogant and all the things that Theo themself learned as a child not to be in order to survive, they have always liked Una. She was raised in the Ynglot clans beyond the Imperial Road, a godsdamn hurricane held captive now in enemy territory. Ynglots are native, insular, and tribalistic nomads who survive by way of raids on Sargassan settlements and traveling parties. At seventeen, Una had been part of a supply run on one of Luxana’s outlying agricultural villages—always a gamble, you never know what sort of defenses you’ll find yourself up against. The legionaries stationed in places like that are either the dregs of the barrel, too out of shape or just plain drunk to wield a sword, or fresh green conscripts on their mandatory year, eager to see some action. Whichever it was, Una’s luck hadn’t been with her that day. She’d been knocked out early, and woken up inside the Institute Civitatem.
“Una,” she’d laughed bitterly over an illicit cigarette, back when Theo was still trying to gain her trust with well-placed questions and contraband gifts. “Creative, right? I was first in line for servile processing that day. Can’t be having any uncivilized savage names in the jewel of Roma Sargassa.”
She’s never actually told them her real name.
Now, Theo sits languidly on the stoop just inside the abandoned apartment that passes for the movement’s Regio safehouse, and rolls a dagger through casual fingers as the argument unfolds in front of them.
“But with the Historian dead, I thought—”
“Una—”
“I can do more than just pass on gossip,” Una insists, her belligerence taking up the whole of the crumbling room. Griff, across the broken three-legged table, remains unfazed. “I’d be a better asset on the ground. I’m smart, I’m discreet, I know the city, I know the wilds outside the city, and you know you can trust me—”
“Which are all reasons why I need you where you are.”
“But he’s dead.”
“And now there’s a new one.”
Keep an eye on the Imperial Historian, tell us what we need to know about the senator, and we’ll get you free someday. That was the deal Griff had struck. Theo had been there, the day the promise of Una’s freedom was made in exchange for information out of Breakwater. This, if nothing else, is the reason Theo’s relatively confident that their aborted rescue mission to the Imperial Archives had nothing to do with saving Alexander Kleios from his fate. If he were one of theirs, there would be no need for a canary in his house.
Now, Una flares her nostrils in dangerous discontent, but Griff takes her hands in hers.
“Listen to me,” she says, low and deadly serious. “What you’re doing for us isn’t just passing on gossip. I know it’s frustrating, I’ve been there. But it’s essential. You’re the wheels that this entire operation rides on. I can find a blade for hire anywhere if the coin’s right. But eyes and ears who are already in the right places? That I already know I can trust? You have no idea how hard that is to come by. We need you. Just for a little longer.”
Theo is a good actor, but Griff is a master at work. They watch the concern in her eyes, the conviction of spirit, the hand that seems to stretch out between her and Una as if to say, You and I are one—and we are in this fight together. They watch these things and know that Griff could not melt away Una’s fury without that small, pure seed of truth sitting at the heart of it.
“How long?” Una whispers. “How long until we end all this?”
And Griff lets out a bark of laughter, though it doesn’t seem to be at Una’s expense.
“A year,” she answers. “Fifty. Two hundred. Una, I don’t know. The Imperium has had its grip on the world for millennia. If no one can remember a time before Roma, how are they supposed to even begin to imagine a world without it? And people need time. Time to get used to new ideas if they’re going to help us achieve them. Force it on them when they aren’t ready to accept it and we’re just a new version of the old thing. But I’ve given over half my life to the Revenants, so if you can think of a faster way, I’m certainly listening.”
Una slumps, as if giving in to a mother’s weary warmth. “I can’t spend the rest of my life like this. Not even half.”
“You won’t, I promise,” says Griff, and now Theo knows for sure that she’s lying. Without another reason, one that directly helps the movement in some tangible, actionable way, the Revenants aren’t in the business of playing the freedom trail for every serva that asks for it. Collective liberation, after all, means individual sacrifice in service of the greater plan. Even Theo had to find their own way out.
“Now,” she says, “about the viewing. Tell me everything.”
• • •
Una may not be the best in the Luxana cell’s network of canaries, but she’s usually able to come through with something useful. This time, she’s able to tell them about the notable guests who will be at the late Historian’s viewing, how many servae and vernae are on staff, entrances and exits of service hallways, that sort of thing. What Una hadn’t been able to tell them was anything that Griff or Theo themself didn’t already know.
“Happy now?” Griff asks, once Una has gone. “I told you she was a waste of time.”
“Just wanted to be sure.” Theo shrugs, and stretches luxuriously before climbing to their feet. “You know how much I hate surprises.”
“That,” says Griff, “is a bald-faced lie. Behave yourself tonight.”
“Don’t I always?”
“Such a liar.” The corners of her mouth twitch, halfway to a smile, but there’s something more to it. Something taut, like spooling tension. Theo, who had been halfway out the door already, stops. That flicker of uncertainty, the chink in the armor.
This is what happens sometimes. Moments like this where it’s just the two of them, when Griff suddenly ceases to be Griff—the idea, the figurehead, that impenetrable symbol of their collective strength undaunted—and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, what’s left in her place is just a woman, flesh and blood and that string of purple-white shells she always wears around her neck. A woman with too many cares and concerns for one person to hold. This happens sometimes, when it’s just the two of them, and Theo doesn’t think twice about saying it.
“There’s something else.”
A moment of hesitation, brief, but it’s enough. They slide the dagger back into their boot and wait. Griff purses her lips as she seems to make up her mind, and then olive fingers reach into the pocket of her overcoat to pass a crumpled piece of paper over into Theo’s hand.
It takes a moment to place, but yes. They’ve seen it before, slipped out from under the lifeless fingers of Alexander Kleios during an early hurricane morning two weeks ago.
Selah—Ask Gil where I’ve left
It’s not a complete sentence. Elegant loops and curves of the Historian’s penmanship shake violently where a poisoned hand had tried and failed to finish off the note.
But that’s it. That’s all there is.
That’s not the part that has Theo frowning down at the unfinished letter. Because they’ve been undercover in Senator Naevia Kleios’s office for a few months now—long enough to know the familia’s major players, but not quite long enough to know why Griff wanted them there in the first place. They have a feeling that’s about to change.
Selah.
They know that one. That one’s easy. They’ve even spent a fair amount of time with her. They like the senator’s daughter, or at least as well as one can like an ivory-tower patrician. She’s amusing, at any rate, in the way that naive idealists sometimes are. Would-be saviors of the downtrodden who don’t have the first idea how their world really works. Back when Theo was first hired onto her mother’s support staff, Selah had tracked them down at the Senate and they’d humored her for a long meridiem break at a nearby jav, answering questions and making up stories about a plebeian childhood and education and career that belonged to some girl who didn’t exist. It’s sweet, really, the way Selah had been so enthralled, caught up in the exact sort of feel-good success story every liberal patrician wants to believe so they can live with themself. The two of them have seen each other a handful of times since, Theo easily charming their way into her good graces, though not so much since Alexander Kleios died. They’re given to understand that Selah’s a bit busy these days.
Gil.
That’s another easy one, though they’ve never met the man himself. Anyone with half a brain and access to the senator’s daily calendar knows that Gil Delena is her husband’s secretary. Was, anyway, though he’s still got to be around somewhere.
Theo looks up.
“Ask Gil where he’s left what?”
A wan smile crosses Griff’s face. “I don’t know. Not for certain.”
“But you have a guess.”
“I do. A good one, actually.”
“Why do I have a feeling it’s the reason you wanted me getting close to the Kleios familia in the first place?” And all this time Theo had thought it was to do with the senator.
“Probably because we’re having this conversation.” Griff takes the slip of paper back from them, then stows it in her pocket with a surprising amount of care. Then, blunt as anything, “There’s a book.”
Theo blinks. “A book.”
“Yes. We need it.”
“That’s frustratingly vague.”
The corner of her mouth crooks up. “Then let me clarify,” says Griff. “It’s not just a book. It’s a weapon.”
At that, Theo can’t help it. They snort. They’ve heard that sort of platitude before, from street orators and elementary-level mantras and that starry-eyed universitas undergrad they were fucking a few years back. Print cuts sharper than swords and all that. Elitist bullshit.
“They call it the Iveroa Stone,” Griff goes on, ignoring them. “I can’t explain to you how it works. Not now. But I have seen it with my own eyes. I know that it exists. I know that—Well. I know what it has the power to do. And more immediately, right now, I know that it was in the possession of Alexander Kleios last, and his mother before him.”
“And now, what, his secretary has it?”
“If he hasn’t already given it to Selah by now.”
“So, what, you want me to kidnap her?”
Maybe it’s stupid, the blunt instrument of that kind of methodology not like Griff at all, but Theo can’t see what else she might be implying here. It wouldn’t be hard, not really. An invitation back to the jav where they first spent a meridiem together, maybe, though Theo would probably never be able to show their face in public again. But that isn’t Griff’s way. Her plans are more calculated than that, wheels set into motion long before you can see how far they’ve actually carried you. It’s why Theo supported her takeover. It’s why Theo was her blade in the dark.
“Of course you aren’t going to kidnap her.” Griff rolls her eyes. “If anything happened to the new Historian, the city would go under full lockdown. The last few weeks have been bad enough with the ruckus her father’s death caused. And anyway, I think we might’ve stumbled into a golden opportunity here with Selah Kleios. Alexander was a non-starter, too set in his ways. But from what you’ve told me about his daughter . . . I want you to keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing. And I want you to spend more time with her.”
It clicks, then. Of course that’s what this is.
“You want me to turn her.”
Griff nods. “Idealism and a savior complex can be useful weapons, too.”
It makes sense. It makes all the sense in the world. The initial reason why Theo was put in the senator’s circle seems obvious now. More than just spying on the senator’s movements, but influencing the future Historian toward their cause. Only it’s come to fruition decades early. The sort of golden opportunity no one could have predicted or even thought to hope for.
Selah Kleios is wide-eyed and fresh to her position. Selah Kleios knows nothing about how her world really works. Selah Kleios comes with funds and connections, access to every higher institution and political body in the entirety of the empires, and—if what Griff’s told them is true—Selah Kleios is in possession of some sort of book that’s actually a weapon. One that the Revenants need.
“Griff, this Iveroa Stone . . . if that’s supposed to clarify anything—”
“It’s not. But I need you to understand the importance of what you’re doing in that house.” And this time it’s Theo’s hands that she grasps between her own, something raw and genuine shining in those gray eyes so unlike her act for Una’s benefit. “I need you to gain her trust, influence her toward us, so that soon she’ll hand the Stone over to us willingly. Because this . . . this is going to change things. This is the answer to expelling Roman rule from Sargassa. This is what I’ve been waiting for. We’re ready and we’re strong, but we can’t do it until we have the Iveroa Stone in our possession. Theo, this is a Quiet-damned deus ex machina.”
Vaguely, they’re aware of the urge to laugh. Strong words for a couple hundred pages sewn together, unless those pages happen to be made of sharp steel blades—and even then Theo can’t fathom how in the Great fucking Quiet a book could hold so much power. But stronger still is the ferocity behind Griff’s gray eyes, and the indomitable strength of their own curiosity at such bold words. The laughter dies in Theo’s throat.
The answer to overturning Roman rule in Sargassa. A deus ex machina.
It’s been a long time since Theo believed in gods and fairy tales. They believe in Griff and the cause now, instead.
“How?” they ask.
“You’ll know when the time is right. But first I need something. First I need Selah Kleios on our side.”