Hooves clop over sweeping cobblestone. In the growing dark, the paraffin lamps that light the Arborem district’s main avenue glow a soft orange against curling wrought-iron gates. Darius tugs the reins to slow his horse, allows a passing couple to cross ahead of him, and tries not to give anything of his impatience away.
He’s running late. Not a good look, he knows, but there was a scuffle down in Paleaside and one of the junior agents thought the perp’s description sounded something like Tiago-Laith—the living one, that is—and with the Chief General already gone for the night it fell to him to sort it out. Agent Oha had been wrong, of course, and probably knew exactly what she was doing, but by the time Darius knew that, he was far down in the lower districts and already running half an hour late.
Across the thoroughfare, then, and up the neat gravel road that twists away into Breakwater Estate. Stately, draping elms line the drive to keep prying eyes away, then open out past stables and greenhouses, past the sprawling lawn and far distant chimneys of clustered client homes, all the way up to the manor house itself. Gray shale and high arched windows, spires and balconies and chimneys, it sits atop a jutting peninsula on cliffs overlooking the Sargasso Sea. He’s never been here before, too newly settled into Luxana for that. But Breakwater House is one of Sargassa’s great historical sites, one of those names you read so often as a child it becomes familiar as myth.
Dating all the way back to the Great Quiet, the grounds rest at the very tip of the Arborem and sprawl out a good deal further than that into the Hazards—the wild oak and hickory forest marking Luxana’s city limits. Great swaths of untamed land stretch between here and the outskirts of Siracusa, hundreds of miles away, with travel between cities so notoriously dangerous that the lower castes rarely chance it. Children are taught early to stay on the Imperial Road if they do have to travel at all—better that than chance a meeting with savage Ynglot raiders or noxious clouds that herald smoking fever, or any number of the other unknown dangers lurking in the wilds. Eight hundred years later, Sargassans are still discovering what strange savageries the Great Quiet left behind.
Low-caste superstition, Darius used to think, back before he’d made the journey himself. He knows better than that now. He’s seen it for himself, that altogether unnatural something in the wild and oppressive dark of the woods beyond the Road. He isn’t particularly keen to find out what’s hiding in their depths.
Inside Breakwater House, the viewing is already well underway. Darius straightens the lapel of his black Intelligentia uniform, and ignores the flutter of anxiety sprouting in his gut. Stop that. He belongs here just the same as anyone else. He’s earned it.
Turned out in resplendent mourning gold, the Kleios familia’s guests make for an impressive sight. It’s politicos, mainly. Old men and women arguing in tired voices, nervous young staffers too green to hide their awe at having been invited to something anywhere near this important. And beyond that, the usual suspects. The Halithas, the Everses, the Briagos. The pinnacle of patrician society. Here and there young men and women cluster together importantly, self-satisfied and luxuriating in their boredom. Middle-aged socialites gossip happily about friends who haven’t yet arrived, or pick apart the latest tabloids—a famous actress’s affair with a serva, racketeering in the Paxenos senator’s office, some drug scandal involving a clavaspher player from the local league. The woman who invited him, however, is nowhere to be seen, and Darius has to stop himself from craning his neck to look.
“You’re late,” says a familiar voice instead.
There’s a gold band wrapped around his left arm, but otherwise Quintus Kopitar looks the same as he always does. Salt-streak hair neatly combed back and a strong, broad chest despite his advancing age, ceremonial medals over a formal uniform marking him Chief General of the Cohort Intelligentia. That twinkle of stern humor behind it all, easy to miss if you don’t know him very well. Darius, though, has known him for going on ten years.
“Business in the downdistricts,” he tells him, taking a glass of wine from a passing serva’s tray. It’s not an excuse, but Kopitar understands the way things are. The job comes first.
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really. Agent Oha thought she had a lead on the Revs. She didn’t.”
“Shame. That girl could use a win.” And Darius could use a day where the junior agents stop messing with him for their own amusement, but that isn’t likely to happen, either. He keeps that to himself.
“Seen the senator yet?” he asks instead, taking a sip of the frankly excellent wine.
“From afar. Buried under a sea of well-wishers.”
“Poor woman.”
“Save your sympathies for someone who needs them, Miranda,” Kopitar says, that knowing something like amusement. “For someone like her, this is a work event.”
Darius frowns. On a night like this, somehow he hadn’t imagined Senator Kleios would be feeling very social at all. Vague images of a subdued widow in mourning veils had come to mind, even through the latent nerves and how undeniably pleased he’d been to receive her invitation.
Something of the surprise must show on his face, because Kopitar leans in close. “Friendly word of advice,” he mutters, caution caught between his teeth the way it might have been when Darius was still a junior agent fresh from the universitas, green and untested in the field, still in awe that someone like Kopitar had decided to take him under his wing. “Luxana society’s a different breed. They’ve got claws under those duskras.”
“You say that like you aren’t one of them.”
“Perhaps. But you’re one of us now, too.”
A bead of condensation slides down the glass onto his thumb, and inexplicably Darius remembers being thirteen. Frustrated and embarrassed to tears by some long-forgotten slight, he’d sat down at the shabby heirloom desk in the cramped bedroom he shared with his older brother Titus and written down a list. Well, more of a manifesto than a list, if he’s being entirely honest about it. Miranda’s Fifty Rules for Success in the Course of One’s Imperial Duty. Quite the accomplishment for one so young. He’d imagined himself something of a prodigy at the time. He could see it very clearly, actually—stacks of books in store display windows and an induction to the Imperial Archives and important scholars debating its merits and, “Did you know this Darius Miranda fellow is only thirteen years old? Impressive. Most impressive.”
It had never happened, of course. The pretentious piece of overwrought self-importance was altogether unpublishable in hindsight, though not for lack of trying. Instead, he’s slashed it apart and amended it to the Quiet and back for his own personal use a hundred times since.
Academic goals and study methods tweaked over the course of his superior and undergrad. Philosophical musings on familial piety replaced with duty to the Imperium every time his father showed up drunk to a public engagement again. Additions about the necessity of marriage and children, the continuity of familia more abstract duty than anything to do with desires of the flesh. Having that one written down in stark black and white made it easier, somehow, knowing what would one day be required. Even if he’d never be the Miranda paterfamilias, it was only right.
A blanket ban on drugs or alcohol, unfortunately, had to go entirely. It was obvious after about five minutes at Halcya Universitas that you didn’t get anywhere without the ability to have a social life. No one likes a bore.
No debts, though. That one will never change. Darius learned that lesson early and he learned it well, with humiliation burning in his cheeks every time his parents begged another loan off of wealthier plebeian neighbors. The Miranda fortune was squandered generations ago, with nothing left to show for the patrician name but the hereditary role of Ithaca’s Chief General and a house they couldn’t afford. Without assets or staff, Darius’s childhood was one of worn-out hand-me-downs and snide remarks from classmates and being sequestered to only a handful of rooms in the sprawling old manor home. Paraffin is expensive, after all, and they could hardly keep servae to maintain the hearths beneath the floorboards. Darius’s father had tried to rectify the situation through marriage, only to gamble and drink away each and every one of his mother-in-law’s loans.
Inherited poverty is one thing. A man can do something about that. Flagrant stupidity, on the other hand, is something Darius finds impossible to forgive.
So he’d been smarter. He’d had to be. The youngest of four, he would never be paterfamilias, never inherit his father’s job, but perhaps therein lay opportunity. If you worked for it. If you could figure out the rules to success. So yes, no debt. No complaining. Only the highest grades. Remember everyone you meet. Cultivate mentorships from those whose qualities you admire. Be worthy of their admiration in return. The Imperium, after all, rewards those who take responsibility for themselves. And it paid off, in the end.
At just thirty-one years old, Darius Miranda is now the Deputy Chief of the Cohort Intelligentia, down in the shining capital city of Roma Sargassa. It’s the highest position he can ever hope to achieve. He gained the title decades before anyone ever expected him to. So maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, being invited to the viewing of Alexander Kleios when he never met the man in life. Darius has only even met his wife, the senator, once. But the invitation had come from her office all the same, sealed with the Kleios sun and a personal note scrawled at the bottom of elegant vellum.
Please say you’ll come. It would mean the world to me.
Darius hadn’t shown anyone that part, not even Kopitar. No one likes a peacock. Still, he can’t help it, the little thrill. He must have made an impression.
“Straight back, Deputy,” Kopitar chides then, and with a flush Darius realizes he’s half turned, craning without quite realizing it for a glimpse of Senator Kleios somewhere in the crowd. But instead of another reprimand, his mentor’s thin lips press together in the obvious ghost of a smile. “Watch out for the claws.”
“I don’t—”
“On Terra, if that isn’t Chief General Kopitar.”
Darius turns.
Free at last from whatever mob of admirers she’s found herself buried beneath, Naevia Kleios cuts a statuesque figure. Just as with the first time they met, Darius is instantly struck by how easily she might have spent her life relying on looks alone, had she been so inclined. Fast approaching fifty, recent widowhood becomes the legendary beauty uncommonly well. Gold mourning silk striking against the honey umber glow of her skin, the only trace of grief taking its toll lingering somewhere in the hard crow’s feet about her eyes. And beyond that—the bold certainty of power. That wherever her footsteps land, she’s sure to be welcomed.
It’s not attraction, he thinks, that jolt in his gut. Not exactly. Not the way he’s observed between husbands and wives. Still, Darius finds his shoulders pulling back.
“Senator Kleios,” Kopitar greets, kissing the woman’s cheek.
“Oh, none of that, Quin, you’ll make me feel about a hundred years old.”
“Naevia,” he says, half-amused. “It’s been too long. I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“A beach in Aymara comes to mind. Summer of ’55, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t start. You remember Deputy Chief Miranda.”
The senator turns her gaze on him then, warm smile at the ready, and Darius straightens his back. “Yes, of course. How lovely to see you again, Deputy. I’d hoped our paths would cross sooner, but . . . well, life rarely takes what we want into account, does it?”
If this were a philosophical debate, Darius might argue that. In his experience, life takes exactly what you want into account, actually, so long as you’re willing to put in the work to get it. But he knows a rhetorical question when he hears one, and he knows better than to expect pure logic from a widow in the throes of grief. Her husband has just been taken from her well before his time. The survival of her familia’s continuity now passed down to her only child, a mere girl of twenty-two. It must be disorienting.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says instead, because it’s the thing to do.
Her lips purse into a smile, one that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Thank you.” And then, turning to Kopitar, “Quin, do you know an Emilius Gainol?”
“Unfortunately. Pulled him out of a tight spot earlier in the year. Don’t tell me you’ve invited him.”
“Had to, really.” She sighs. “But he’s parked out by the bar telling passersby the more . . . delicate details about that tight spot. Not that anyone would believe it, of course, but I did think you ought to know.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Kopitar slams his drink on a passing tray and disappears promptly into the press of the crowd. Darius is half a step behind him, no clue really what this Gainol’s on about—not that it matters, not when some belligerent fool’s threatening the integrity of the Intelligentia’s reputation for anyone to hear—but then a hand darts out, elegantly snaking around his arm in a surprisingly firm grip.
Senator Kleios smiles up at him. “Walk with me?”
Somehow, it doesn’t feel very much like a question at all.
It’s only right to let her lead, the pair of them passing arm in arm through the crowd, and Darius in that moment can’t help the pride of it swelling in his chest. Gleaming gold buttons on a pressed black uniform and a famous woman on his arm, the personal invitation here to the most important event happening tonight in the most important city in the world—outside, naturally, of Roma herself. If his father ever sobered up long enough to see his youngest son now, Darius hardly thinks he’d believe it.
Guests part like the sea as the senator steers him through, the rings on her dark hand gleaming in the candlelight. “How are you settling in, Deputy?” she asks. “You must be missing Siracusa terribly.”
“No, not really,” he says, and feels awkward the moment it’s left his mouth. “I’m happy to go where the Imperium sends me.” That’s no good, either. He sounds like an ass. “That is to say—I’m originally from Ithaca.”
“Are you?” She raises a brow, and he hopes to Terra she doesn’t seize on that particular thread. “Well, even so. We’re lucky to have you here now.” And with a smooth turn left, she guides him out to the edge of the sweeping balcony overlooking the ocean below. Darius stiffens. Here, laid in state, is the late Alexander Kleios.
The former Imperial Historian, he’s somewhat surprised to see, had been a robust man in his late forties. Without reason or opportunity to meet him in life, he realizes now that he had been imagining the stooped and frail sort of scholar who had taught at his superior—not this tall, broad-shouldered man with a full head of white-flecked auburn hair and the build of a clavaspher player in the prime of health. Aside, of course, from the fact that he’s now dead. Body preserved with the alchemical use of balms and salts, and some effort has been made into rectifying the greenish pallor from the sunken face to garish effect.
He’s seen plenty of dead bodies out in the field, but there’s something peculiar about this one that sets his teeth on edge. The indignity of it, perhaps. That such a fine man might be laid so low. Darius runs a hand over his slicked-back blond hair, smoothing stray pieces into proper place.
“You never had the chance to meet him, did you?” asks Senator Kleios, gazing down at her late husband with a sad sort of fondness.
“I didn’t, my lady,” he answers, and wonders what in Terra’s name else he’s supposed to say to that. She saves him the trouble of working it out.
“A shame. I think you might have gotten along famously.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. Masters of intelligence and information, the pair of you. You and Alex would have had much to talk about.”
“I didn’t realize the late Historian had such an interest in the law.”
“Oh, Alex was interested in all manner of things. Law was more of an abstraction to him, I’ll admit—his perspective was often more cerebral than practical, really. But crime thrillers always were his favorites at the theater.”
“Forgive me,” Darius laughs, “but those dramatizations hardly ever come close to the real thing.”
“Yes, and he really could have used a friend who was willing to point that out.”
White teeth flash in a sad smile, and Darius finds himself glowing warm at the idea, the sudden vision of what could have been. Drinks and conversation in a well-appointed study, he imagines something like leather armchairs and a fatherly hand on his shoulder. He’s never had much use for scholars, not really, but he respects the work happening in the Archives as much as the next Sargassan raised to understand the weight borne by any who take on the Historian’s mantle. Too much was lost during the Great Quiet, the progress of ages wiped away. That’s why it has to be overseen carefully now, knowledge arcane and modern, delivered from all corners of the world to the central sanctum of the Imperial Archives where it can be preserved and kept safe.
For Darius’s own part, the work he does matters. It’s crucial, keeping the empire running in defiance of those who would risk its success with their own stupidity and laziness and simple malicious intent. It matters. Except that its importance doesn’t permeate in the same way—it isn’t drilled into schoolchildren across the empires, isn’t a constant refrain of schoolyard rhymes and poetry. Those who forget are doomed to repeat their mistakes, and that sort of thing. But the senator is right. The Intelligentia deal in the shadows, their work the stuff of living knowledge to keep the empire running at its full potential. A practical arm of that same promise that keeps the Archives sacred at the Imperium’s heart and soul. And if Senator Kleios thinks that her husband would have found common ground, who is Darius to presume otherwise?
The senator smiles then, something sad still tinged at the edge. “Oh, but you know, what Alex really loved was people. Their stories. How they came to be where they were. Which is why I think he’d have been particularly interested in you, Deputy. Youngest in history, a little bird told me—that’s no small accomplishment. I’m sure he’d have loved to hear the story behind that.”
Darius fights down the flush. Luxana may be hundreds of miles from where he grew up, but that doesn’t mean the gossip’s stayed behind. He’s spent a lifetime with people talking behind his back, the name Miranda patrician enough to merit notice, shameful enough to merit scorn. He sees it in his junior officers’ faces every time he issues an order, the hidden smirk and how very much they’d love to shirk his authority. So no. He doesn’t believe for a moment that a woman like Naevia Kleios is unaware of who he is or where he comes from. But before he can say anything to that, she smiles gently, the hand around his arm squeezing a reassurance.
“I, on the other hand,” she says, “don’t see the need to go prying into people’s pasts. Not when I can see them for who they’ve clearly become. I’m a poor substitute, Deputy, but in lieu of the impossible, I would very much like us to be friends.”
That smile again, and the twist around Darius’s heart unclenches. Yes. Yes, this is right. This is the arc of the universe veering toward justice. “I’d like that, too, my lady.”
“Good. So we are friends, then.” She leans in, dark eyes belying some deep trust. “And I wonder if, as my friend, you might do something for me.”
“Oh?”
“Quin and I go far back. Maybe a little too far back.” She laughs, shaking her head in fond commiseration. “He and my older sister were involved, actually, once upon a time, but you didn’t hear that from me. The problem, though, is that we go so far back it seems our trust ran out at a certain point. His did, at any rate, though I can’t imagine what I ever did to warrant that. And I worry there might be something he isn’t telling me.”
“My lady, I’m sure that’s not true. The Chief General—”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. The unfounded paranoia of a widow. I do know I’m not in my right mind. But a widow whose husband was murdered, so can you really blame me?”
He frowns, not entirely sure he’s comfortable with where this conversation’s somehow gone. Naevia Kleios’s hand around his arm tightens then, the crow’s feet around her eyes somehow deeper than before. “Forgive me for putting you in this position, but Alex was assassinated two weeks ago and Quintus Kopitar has hardly seen fit to inform me on the progress of the investigation. And, forgive me, but I quite frankly refuse to believe that it’s because the Intelligentia are so very incompetent that there hasn’t been any.”
Darius hesitates. The senator is right, of course. The hunt for the Historian’s assassin has unfolded rapidly in the weeks since the man’s death, but has for the most part resulted in little but dead ends. The Revenants are the obvious culprit, terrorists with no aim other than to destabilize the Imperium and strike fear in the hearts of its law-abiding citizens. There have even been public announcements made on that front, street orators promising a reward for anyone who brings forward information about the anarchist group. But that doesn’t mean the Intelligentia are any nearer to closing in on them than Darius is to willingly bringing Naevia Kleios in on the finer details of the case. Senator or not, she isn’t Intelligentia. No one gets to know their inner workings. It’s too delicate, too easily compromised for that.
“Senator . . .” he starts, and runs his hand back over his hair again. “Would it be enough to have my assurance, as a friend, that the Historian’s murder is our highest priority?”
She closes her dark eyes, breathes in deep. “I wish it were, Deputy, I really do.” When she opens them again, they’re wet. Her hand fragile around his arm. “But if you could find it in yourself to keep me in the loop . . . What Quintus doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and it really would go so far to soothe a grieving widow’s heart.”
Women, in Darius’s experience, have never made particular sense. It’s been a source of annoyance and confusion both, something like terror in the darkest night when he really just needs to go to bed already, because things always look better in the morning. But occasionally, very occasionally, that particular blind spot tends to be a secret weapon. This, it turns out, is one of those times.
Because Darius doesn’t understand women, not really, but he does understand people. And when he can close the separation between the two then he can actually see them more clearly than his fellow agents or older brothers, precisely because he lacks distraction. So Naevia Kleios looks up at him with her dark eyes, damp clinging to those long eyelashes, and Darius—who just five minutes ago had been so, so proud to be in her company, sharing in her confidence—feels nothing but contempt. He understands now, with a sudden and furious clarity, that this has been her plan all along. Darius doesn’t wrest his arm away, but it’s a very near thing.
“You’re asking me to play the spy.” It’s blunt, not a question.
Naevia blinks. “Of course not. I’m asking—”
“For me to betray the confidence of my Chief and compromise the integrity of the Intelligentia.”
She laughs, not that charming thing but a dump of breath that now seems to Darius altogether repulsive. “I’m asking for a friendly favor,” she presses, “that’s all. What leads you’re chasing, that sort of thing.”
“An informant. You’re asking me to be an informant.”
“That’s dramatic.”
No. No, it isn’t. Not when there’s a proper way to do things, an order and decorum at the heart of Sargassan values, order and decorum that demand respect because they work. Perhaps Naevia Kleios can’t appreciate that, and Darius curses himself now because he should have seen this coming. Flattering words and a personalized invitation, and he should have known better.
The senator is a Dya’ogo by birth. An Aksumite, really, because the familia she was born to is only a generation removed from the independent empire south of Roma, and he should have seen this coming. She’s already proven herself a snake, worming her way into one of Sargassa’s most esteemed familias. Sullying Breakwater House with a lingering sense of foreign decor. He should have sniffed her out the moment he walked through the doors.
“I think,” he says instead, and hands his glass firmly over to a passing serva, “that maybe it’s time for us to speak honestly, Senator.”
Naevia Kleios’s eyes, by now, are entirely dry. Something shrewd and sharp in her gaze instead, something like a shark. Kopitar, after all, had warned him about this. “I wasn’t aware we were doing anything but.”
“This is a matter of domestic terrorism, my lady. Of course we presume the Revenants to hold some responsibility, that much has been made publicly known. But I’m sure you can understand—”
“I understand,” she hisses, “that it’s been weeks and I have yet to see any progress except for whining about some terrorists who haven’t actually been active in years.”
“That bridge in Bostinium last year—”
“Collapsed due to poor maintenance. You and I both know perfectly well that the Revenants have become a convenient name to drop whenever someone needs to save face. When terrorists actually want to cause terror, they claim responsibility for it.”
“The Revenants are slippery,” he tells her flatly, unimpressed. Kopitar was right. He was right, and Darius is a fool. He allowed the senator to play to his vanities, and he’s a Quiet-damned fool. “And this leader,” he goes on. “This Griff—he might as well be a ghost. But I assure you that—”
Abruptly, he stops. Because out of the corner of his eye, Darius notices something strange. A serva—the one he’s just handed his glass of wine—standing in place, staring directly at him.
“Excuse me,” he snaps. “Can I help you?”
The serva nearly jumps out of her skin, then promptly drops her eyes down somewhere in the vicinity of his clavicle, where they belong. Scraggly ash-blond hair, cropped short and neat like most servae. A prematurely lined face, late thirties maybe. Overall uninteresting aside from her nose, clearly broken. No, he’s never seen her before. He’ll certainly remember her now.
“Sorry, sir,” she says, and moves on. Darius watches her go.
“Ynglot,” Senator Kleios tells him, watching her impertinent serva disappear into the crowd of guests. “A native. Decades in service and still barely any manners. She’ll be dealt with.”
“I’m sure. But to the point, Senator. The Intelligentia, I assure you, are treating this matter with utmost gravity. I’d have you trust that we will bring those responsible to justice. And hope you might not ask me something like this again.”
Her lips press together. “Of course.” Then they relax, the sudden transformation back to a woman at perfect comfort, a queen amidst her court, like nothing of the last five minutes might have happened at all. “Well, tell me,” she says, the very picture of a hostess at ease, “is there a Madam Miranda I should have invited?”
Darius smooths his hair into place once more. “I don’t think there’s very much I can tell you that you don’t already know, Senator Kleios.”