Light spills in through green slatted shutters, piercing the cool darkness. It creeps in red over her eyelids until she has no choice but to open them, sore and spent and utterly exhausted as she is. Tair rolls over in her narrow bed with a groan, and right onto something that squishes beneath her with an odd crackle. Still not entirely awake, she reaches down to unearth an oat and raisin roll. Ibdi must have gone already, the absolute mother hen. Squinting into the stucco apartment’s morning light from beneath Terra-twists hanging in front of her face, she tears off a chunk and frowns, the previous night flooding back in exhausted waves as sleep falls away.
Breakwater. The Hazards. Selah. Savage fucking Quiet, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Running into Selah had always been a risk, but Tair had been certain she could remember her way around Breakwater well enough to avoid being seen. Only she had forgotten about the slightly longer drop down to the first foothold below the study window, and that is entirely on her. As is the very real possibility that the Publica will now be swarming the streets looking for her, stolen property in possession of more stolen property. Five years of distance and relative peace had lulled her into a dangerous sense of security, and now Tair might have to go underground again. Great.
Pushing the woven blanket away, she stuffs the rest of the roll into her mouth and grabs a pair of Ibdi’s leggings off the floor. Scoops up the strange leather-bound stone slate and stuffs it into her bag. All this for a piece of rock.
The first message came in the middle of yesterday afternoon, delivered through a little boy she sometimes sees at the Sisters’ free breakfast. When she’d asked him who had sent it, he’d just shrugged and said, “Some lady.” Well, whoever some lady was, the message in the note was clear:
I know who you are. Bring me the Iveroa Stone, or I will expose you as a fugitive, a terrorist, and a runaway.
There had been more to it than that. What, exactly, an Iveroa Stone even looked like and where it probably was. Details from Tair’s own life—how she had left Breakwater, and the people who helped her do it—things a stranger couldn’t possibly know. And, of course, the threat of exactly what would happen if she were to ignore her instructions.
The second message had been verbal. Egeria from across the way had flagged her down as she was arriving home after dark. “Some man wanted me to tell you to ‘do it tonight’? And that he’ll meet you in a week.”
“A man?”
A shrug. “Could’ve been thremid. They said you’d understand.” Then, with a suggestive sort of smirk, “Tair, what are you up to?”
Truth be told, she has no idea. She just knows that the moment she’s exposed, the Sisters of the First go down with her. And there isn’t a chance in the Quiet she’s about to let that happen.
Dawn broke hours ago, she realizes, stepping out onto the ledged pathway three precarious levels high over the Kirnaval’s main thrust. She’s slept in way too late. Down the uneven stairs, then, where she hops over a pile of waste and shouts a greeting over the canal to Egeria and Wes and Iris, sharing in a final cigarette before they head off to bed. The prostitutes, friendly as always, wave a hello back before Tair joins the throng, her cruiseboard gliding easily through the packed towpath, eyes on the alert for telltale uniforms of black or green.
But the Publica haven’t bothered with the Kirnaval yet this morning. They’ll be here later, with their bullshit reasons to stop-check and arrest whoever they like. They’ve never left the slums alone before, but lately it’s just getting out of hand.
Diluvoside, they call it. Sinktown. No broad avenues of white limestone here, no cobblestones or even the packed-down dirt and straw of Paleaside and the Third Ward. No, the Kirnaval flooded a long time ago—that, or its denizens were left with no choice but to build out into the bay. No one can really remember which came first. Levels on levels of once-colorful wood and stucco, built up precariously high over crumbling jetties and waterways, and with each storm and hurricane sinking steadily deeper into the Sargasso Sea. Home to countless thousands, the low-class rabble. A district to be set aside and ignored, only to be bothered with when one of them steps out of line. It’s a good place to disappear. A good place to become someone else entirely.
With a well-practiced grace, she maneuvers her board through the crowd. It’s a deliberate, if not obvious, zigzagging pattern, making it difficult for any plainclothes Cohort who might be following to keep track of her for very long amidst the colors and shouts, the narrow bridges and canal-side alleys, the press of bodies and the smell of salt and manure and crispy fried smelt. This was one of the first things Ibdi taught her, back at the start. It’s come in handy any number of times since then. The Sisters of the First aren’t criminals, and their work isn’t outside the law. That doesn’t mean the Cohorts are fond of them, exactly.
Up the side path and around the corner, across the cement bridge to the small plaza where old men play chess and stallholders shove dead fish and squares of hemp at passing barges and pedestrians, then down a narrow flight of steps into another alleyway as she stops on her rounds. To the children’s home to pick up Oyeli’s practice universitas entrance exams. To the apartment shared by Elissa Stinam and her rowdy gang of siblings, to make sure the poppam fever hasn’t taken a turn for the worse. And finally, at the very end of Naqvi Row, to the cramped, unassuming headquarters of the Sisters of the First.
“Got your beauty sleep in all right?” Ibdi needles her, plump olive arms spooning out helpings from a vat of baked beans when Tair arrives at their side, nudging a place for herself amongst the other morning volunteers. Tair piles some beans and two seaweed dappham onto a plate, hands it to the preteen boy who’s next in line. Then she turns and punches Ibdi in the arm, hard.
“Why didn’t you wake me up? I was late for rounds.”
They shrug, handing over another plate. “Revenge, mima.”
“Revenge.”
“Yeah. You didn’t invite me with wherever you went last night—Hey,” they bark out suddenly across the long buffet table, dangerously brandishing a ladle. “You two better not be. Put those in your mouth or get out and stop wasting my food.”
A boy and girl, no older than nine, look over guiltily from where they’ve been pelting beans at one another, and promptly begin eating them instead. The round table where they sit is one of about ten cramped inside the first-floor community center, every one of them packed with kids. Elementary-level children mostly, but here and there a few older teens who can prove they haven’t dropped out of school yet.
Smirking at the pair of troublemakers, Tair flicks a bean in Ibdi’s face and says, “I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow. Flip night at the Bitter End. I’ll buy.”
“Bet?”
“Believe.”
“Tair.”
Artemide Ekagara stands in the entrance to the stairway, arms crossed over his broad chest. The chairman’s hair and beard are more salt than pepper these days, but his black, unwrinkled face gives him an ethereal, almost ageless quality.
“Morning, Art,” she says, and he tilts his head slightly, beckoning her to follow. She looks at Ibdi for some kind of hint, but they only shrug. So she flicks another bean at them and follows Artemide up the stairs to his third-floor office.
There’s a kettle steaming away in the corner, and Tair perches on one of the rickety wooden chairs crammed into the office as he pours a mug of tazine for each of them. Tair breathes in the warm spices as Art takes a long sip, then gets down to business.
“So. The Watchers.”
Ugh.
“What about them?”
“Don’t give me that,” he says, leaning against his desk. “Jinni needs you.”
“Jinni doesn’t need anyone. She’s frighteningly self-sufficient.”
“Tair.”
“I told you already I don’t want to. I’m happy in Education.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” he tells her, and it’s not harsh. Just true. “It matters where you’re needed. And it’s done, so enough with the face. You’ve done a lot to turn the Education Corps around—we’ve more than doubled our retention rate since you joined. But let’s face it—you’re not the most patient teacher, and the Watchers is where you can do the most good.”
“So why didn’t you put me on there to start?” she asks, feeling disgruntled and more than a little ornery. Maybe he’s right, maybe the Watchers is where she can do the most good, but being reassigned to them will put her out in the open, dangerously exposed.
“Don’t be cute. You were holding out on us and you know it. Quiet only knows why. You told us you could read, but you didn’t say a thing about calculus. Or history. Or politics and rhetoric and law. That came later.”
Tair flushes, because it’s true. She’s never told the Sisters where she comes from—but, to be fair, they haven’t asked. It was enough for them to know that she was running from something, that she needed anonymity and protection, and eventually came to believe in their work enough to join them in it. Guilty as she feels knowing that Ibdi and Artemide and the rest are clearly under the impression she was fleeing an abusive home life, Tair can never tell them the truth. It doesn’t matter that they’ve laughed and eaten and mourned and worked together for years. It doesn’t matter that she and Ibdi share an apartment. In fact, it makes it all the worse. To knowingly harbor a fuga would put their life’s work at stake, never mind their liberty.
It’s why she didn’t tell them at the start, knowing they would have turned her away. It’s why they can never find out.
Which is exactly how she’s found herself over the last month in this ongoing argument with Artemide over joining the Watchers—an arm of the Sisters she can’t deny suits her perfectly, gives her the chance to use her mind in ways far beyond tutoring schoolchildren. There’s great value in that, of course, but he’s right—she doesn’t have the temperament for it. Half the time she wants to strangle her students, unable to see how they could miss what’s so clearly in front of their eyes. Gil used to call her a prodigy, and Tair had taken pride in that. She knows better now. People only call you that so you’re stuck living up to their expectations.
But the Watchers turn the tables. They’re accountability in action.
Most advocates won’t touch the people the Watchers work with—plebs skimming either side of the poverty line, the lost causes. But citizens are allowed to represent themselves in the courts, and that’s the loophole that the Watchers work within. Preparing defendants to defend themselves. It’s rare, practically unheard of, for someone to actually manage to get themselves free and clear, but the Watchers ensure that they at least don’t go down without a fight. They arm their charges with the facts and the words they need to make it clear to anyone with one working ear and half a brain that no justice is being served that day. They stand watch in the background during court proceedings, reminding the magistrate that they’re there. They have seen everything. And they will remember.
Of course, there’s more to it than that, or Tair would jump at the chance to join. The problem is street patrol. The Watchers aren’t just legal aid. They offer lessons in self-defense, and they go out in shifts, every day and every night, ready to stand witness to Publica brutality and raise Quietfury in the district prefect’s office whenever an officer gets overenthusiastic. That’s the part that worries her.
In Education Corps, at least, she can stay safely out of sight.
“I—” she says, then stops. How to spin this in a way that isn’t a lie, exactly, but could be something that Artemide will accept? “I can’t—” she tries again, and he raises a brow. “You’re right. It’s a good place for me. And anyway, I lied before. I’d like to be a Watcher. But I can’t.”
“And why’s that?” he asks, draining the last of his tazine.
She stares down at her own mug, little motes of resin and spice swirling to the top. “Someone in the courts,” she says finally. “They’d know me.”
This is the truth, in a technical sense. Whether the magistrate who sentenced her is still active in the courts system, she doesn’t know. Nor would she be willing to place so much as one ceres on him remembering her face in particular amongst the countless other vernae lives he’s undoubtedly ruined. But such a public-facing role as the Watchers has the potential to put her in direct contact with any number of people who would know her. And if it makes sense to Artemide to assume that it’s a specter from her past who would drag her back into the mire of her old life, well. He’s not wrong about that.
He takes this in, regarding her as he leans back slightly onto the desk, one hand on his gray-flecked beard.
“I remember the day Ibdi brought you into the clinic,” he says at last. “Half-starved, living on pigeons and rats. Shit fully kicked out of you.”
“More like fully covered in shit.”
They hadn’t been kind, those two months before Ibdi had quite literally tripped over her, exhausted, tucked into the alley behind a bakery, trying to steal a moment’s sleep. The Kirnaval hadn’t been the obvious place to disappear, not at first. But weeks of looking for work in Seven Dials and Paleaside and the Regio Marina had only resulted in closed doors and pitying looks. It wasn’t long before she was sleeping in gutters, avoiding both Publica patrols and Egeria’s comments whenever she passed the brothel that it isn’t that bad a job, really, and all the while trying not to think that maybe she had made a huge mistake.
“My point is, I don’t know that girl anymore,” says Artemide. “She’s not in this room, anyway. She didn’t speak her mind as freely as you do. She didn’t fight like you do, that’s for damn sure. You’ve worked hard and given over a lot to become the person you are now. But all this time it’s been clear to me you were never running toward something. You’ve been running away.”
He stands, and crosses around to the other side of his desk. “You can’t run from shadows forever, Tair. You’re no good to anyone if you don’t turn and face whatever’s haunting you at some point. No good to yourself, and definitely no good to us. I know I don’t need to remind you of all people that we’re not a charity. You’re only as good as what you can give back.”
The finality in his voice leaves no room for argument, and she keeps silent, eyes fixed on the darkened spot of stucco to the left behind Artemide’s head as he rummages through sheaves of paperwork. There’s nothing to say, not without edging closer to the truth, and for Tair that’s just not an option.
“Here,” he says at last, and hands her the folder he’s been looking for. “Give this to Pio. It’s for his Ontiveros case, the Seven Dials girl. Tell Jinni I sent you.” And, off her mutinous glare—“Cheer up. She won’t put you out in the field, not right away. Not until you’re ready.”
• • •
The Watchers may not be doing anything illegal, technically, but they are the arm of the Sisters that verges closest to what the Cohorts would consider criminal activity. As such, they keep their headquarters separate from the rest. Better to be safe, in the event of a raid.
The sun has nearly reached its high point in the clear blue sky when Tair steps back out onto the jetty, and the normally crowded bustle of the Kirnaval has thinned out accordingly, its denizens retreating into the cool respite of their homes and shops for the crushing, dangerous heat of meridiem. Sticking close to building walls to escape the searing sun, she cruises her board quickly down the cement towpaths and back across the plaza, uneasy thoughts guiding her way.
Tair turns the corner to a side alley and doesn’t notice the enormous man heading her way. Not until she’s skated directly into him, barely catching herself before she ends up eating the bite of hard grit cement.
“Oof—Terra, sorry.” Then she notices who it is exactly she’s crashed into, and with considerably less empathy says, “Oh. Hi. Bye.”
Without missing a step, Pa’akal Zetnes leans a massive arm against the wall, neatly blocking her way. She glances up at all near-seven feet of him, then tries to go around the other side. He blocks that way, too.
“What?” she snaps, any remaining pretense of niceties gone.
“Boss wants to see you,” says Pa’akal, and Tair’s laugh is hollow.
“Maybe you missed this while you were busy flexing in the mirror, but I don’t work for her anymore.”
He shrugs, unbothered, acknowledging the truth of it. Pa’akal isn’t the type to exert himself unnecessarily, she knows this. Not the kind of man to be cruel or get angry without good reason. Still, he’s dangerous, so when he reaches to close a hand around Tair’s arm—and whether it’s to frog-march her out to wherever the Revenants are hiding these days or to throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, she neither knows nor cares—she moves on pure instinct. There’s a combat knife a hair’s breadth from his groin before he’s so much as shifted weight. Pa’akal may be bigger—an understatement, if ever there was one—but she’s faster, and she knows how to use that to her advantage. Glancing down, he grins, and doesn’t attempt to conceal a hint of pride. Theo taught her well, once upon a time.
“Fair enough,” he says, and releases her arm. “But for old time’s sake—why go home?”
So they know. Of course they know. It’s the only logical reason for Pa’akal to be here now, bothering with her for the first time since she joined the Sisters. Perhaps some small part of her had hoped they had written her off, but even in thinking it Tair knows it doesn’t work that way. She owes Griff her freedom. No doubt the Revenants have had tabs on her since the moment she left them, one eye on her as she begged and starved and lived on the streets until Terra sent Ibdi her way. Biding their time, waiting for the moment she became useful to them again. Or got in their way.
The high noon sun beats mercilessly down on the both of them, sweat gathering in Tair’s palms as she grips her knife all the more tightly.
“It’s not my home,” she tells him, ignoring the question.
“Not anymore, maybe, but it was,” he says, not remotely bothered by the large blade edging closer to his valuables. “Maybe you were feeling nostalgic. Felt like taking a trip down memory lane. Thought maybe, for the right price, you could go back. Have your comfy rooms and nice books again and all that.”
Tair blinks up at him, and has to resist the urge to laugh. So they know she was at Breakwater last night. They know that much, but they’ve clearly misinterpreted the reason why. They have no idea what she was really there to do—and Terra, how easy it had been. She’d fully expected to have to tear the room apart, but the Iveroa Stone was just sitting there on the Historian’s desk like it was waiting for her all that time. So the Revenants have no idea. Savage Quiet, they probably have no idea what an Iveroa Stone even is. She certainly doesn’t. All they know is that she’s capable of telling Selah—and, maybe more alarmingly for them, Senator Kleios—plenty of information that would bring their little revolution to a swift and decisive end.
Like Tair would ever be petty enough to risk her freedom for that.
She returns her knife to its sheath, concealed in the inner pocket of her coat. “If Griff has questions for me,” she says, “she can come and ask me herself. She’s not a queen. Not yet, anyway.” And with that, she pushes past him and cruises on.