The uniform is a help, most of the time. Does half the job for him. One look at crisp black folds and shining gold buttons generally has backs straightening to comply, and whether that’s out of respect or fear or just some bone-deep understanding of the natural order of things, it doesn’t particularly matter in the end. But that’s in the orderly mid-districts, Ecclesmur and Seven Dials and the tiny, oft-forgotten Fourth Ward. Down in the Kirnaval, Darius knows better than to think the Intelligentia uniform will get him anything but belligerence and a stone wall.
Even then, he’s got his work cut out for him. Dirty work boots and a duskra belonging to his housekeeper, and still the proprietress of this particular establishment barely gave him the time of day. “Order something or clear out,” she’d finally snapped, apparently immune to flattery and flirtation, like she’s got the first right to be there herself. Granted, the long line growing behind him probably had something to do with that, too, but Darius still feels the flick of annoyance. The Publica should have shut this makeshift taberna down ages ago, with its illicit slick-tack tables and chairs spilling out at sundown to perch precariously on the crumbling steps between two Kirnaval tenement halls. He’d have a word with the district prefect himself if it didn’t mean erasing a lead.
So that’s a problem for a different day. In the meantime, if the Revs are using this as a meeting place, he’ll have to sniff them out a different way.
Darius sets himself at a table with a pint of watery hops, ignoring the suspicious sticky patina covering its surface, ignoring the ugly bubble in his gut that says this is a waste of his fragging time, and tries not to let his distaste show. This is the last on Leks Tiago-Laith’s list, and not one of them—not the taberna by the Regio Marina docks or the mid-tier Ecclesmur bathhouse—have yielded so much as a whisper of Revenant activity. Three days of this and it’s become abundantly clear that either Avis Tiago-Laith was deliberately misleading his husband about his whereabouts, or he was never as far up in this Griff’s esteem as his messages back to the Intelligentia made out.
A waste of time. A waste of resources.
But it’s pointless even to think it, because both Kopitar and Consul Palmar’s instructions were explicit. The threat behind them even more so.
If I ever hear so much as a whisper of you slandering a good familia’s name again—never mind that of the Imperial Historian—I swear I’ll have you packed up and shipped back to that hovel in Ithaca so fast you won’t even have a chance to dismount your horse.
Kopitar is a good man. He is. Darius has reminded himself of this time and time again over the last couple of days, because he can’t shake the memory of harsh words and the blood running to ice through his veins. Kopitar is a good man, with good instincts, and moreover he is good at his job. Aided and guided Darius for ten years in a way his own father certainly never bothered, and never once led him astray. He’s only trying to protect him, Darius knows that, because he isn’t stupid enough not to understand the repercussions if he gets this wrong. He’d only thought the Chief might quietly give him leave to pursue it a little further if he asked.
He hadn’t, though, and Darius is trying to make his peace with that. It isn’t worth losing everything he’s worked his entire life to gain.
Instead, he’s knocked on doors and followed the fast-vanishing ghost of Avis Tiago-Laith’s trail. Which is how he’s somehow ended up amidst the stinking, indecorous rabble of Sinktown. Half of them probably don’t have two ceres to rub together, and still decide to spend the one on booze. It’s hard to feel anything but disdain.
He’ll have to get over that, though—or pretend to, at least. Darius casts another glance around, looking for someone likely to strike up a friendly conversation. Someone who looks like they might be a regular, might have seen something or, with any luck, actually know the name Avis Tiago-Laith. The rowdy table of eelwomen, that’s an obvious mark. Or there, just a little ways up the steps from them, two old men deep in silent concentration over a battered game of chess. Or—
His heart doubles on itself.
No.
There’s no way that’s . . .
But it is. Black curls and honey skin, wide and curving in a cheap green duskra. He doesn’t know her name. But he knows her on sight. There’s a jav in the Plaza Capitolio he likes to frequent during meridiem, sheltering from the hot sun under the relief of cool blue tiles with a cold glass of hibiscus tea. She spends her meridiem hour there, too. And that’s hardly something notable, just another face in the crowd of regulars—capitol staffers and politicos all—but there’s no mistaking her now, and there’s no honest reason he can think of for a decent young woman like her to be here of all places.
Darius doesn’t believe in coincidence. And, all threats of demotion and banishment aside, he doesn’t believe in ignoring his gut. He hasn’t spoken to her once in his life, knows her by sight alone. That doesn’t mean he isn’t perfectly aware of whose senatorial office she works in.
“This seat taken?” he asks quietly.
Dark eyes flick up, then go wide. “Deputy,” she says, and he doesn’t know whether to feel guilty or not at the obvious shock. It doesn’t particularly surprise him that she knows who he is. She gestures to the empty chair. “By all means.”
He sits.
So. She knows him on sight, too. That follows easily enough—he’s sure the Arborem mimas make it their business to know when someone new and unattached comes to town, then make it their children’s business, too.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” he says with a pleasant smile all the same.
The woman—mid-twenties, maybe, something clever in that sharp grin now she’s gotten over the shock—laughs. She actually laughs, and Darius can’t help but be slightly discomfited by how quickly she’s moved past the surprise of him being there. She really should be much more worried than she is.
“Theodora Arlot,” she tells him instead, extending a hand. “But you have to call me Theo.”
“Why do I have to?”
“Well, all my friends do.”
He takes the hand, despite himself, suspicion still percolating. There’s just no earthly reason for one of Naevia Kleios’s staffers to be at a suspected Revenant nest. “Theo, then,” he says. “Forgive me, but this doesn’t seem like one of your usual haunts.”
“And you know all about my usual haunts, Deputy Miranda?”
He’ll give her that. He didn’t even know her name until thirty seconds ago. “Fair enough. You could forgive a man for being curious. This isn’t the sort of place I’d expect to find a nice patrician girl.”
“No, I wouldn’t either,” Theo says. “Then again, I don’t see any of those around. Do you?”
Darius stares. Pieces falling into places.
“Arlot,” he says at last. “I’m not familiar with the name.”
“No, you wouldn’t be. It’s new. Given by a family friend.” And then she winks. She actually winks.
Outrage at Theo Arlot’s sheer audacity wars with shock at the realization of what she’s implying. What this means. That this woman is a plebeian, and not just that, but the daughter of a freedman. One who somehow climbed her way up the ladder high enough to merit a position in the Greater Senate of Roma Sargassa. And yet, for all the shock and outrage, what ultimately wins out in Darius’s chest is something like relief. The nagging voice shutting up again. The ordered universe returning to rights. Theodora Arlot came from this rabble, so at least her being here isn’t the obvious incongruity he’d taken it for, nor is it further damnation against Naevia Kleios. He slumps back in his chair, suddenly tired again.
“So, what,” he asks, “this is old stomping grounds?”
“No, I’m not from Luxana. Updistricts are a lot, though, and I don’t . . .” She hesitates, something rueful at the edge. “I don’t always feel entirely welcome, to be honest.” There’s something about Theo Arlot, something he can’t quite put his finger on. Something where he thinks his own annoyance might otherwise be for any other low-class pleb, except. Except that she’s crawled her way out of the gutter, same as him. “Sometimes it’s just nice to get away.”
“I know something about that,” he tells her, taking a long drink. “But you know, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to get yourself some distance from this crowd.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I mean you’re obviously smart, and ambitious enough to end up where you have. You don’t want anyone else holding you back.”
Darius learned that the hard way. There had been a time, if he’s perfectly honest with his own memory, that he thought he could do both. Keep the needle moving, rise above what had been given to him at birth, but still keep his family close. Not his father, of course, or his idiot brother Aulus, the familia heir. But Titus and Florian, his mother . . . Well, it doesn’t matter now. His mother turned to religion when the rest of her life became disappointment, half-stoned on incense burned at the altar of a woman meant to be some Terra idol. Florian’s a drunk. And Titus never managed to amount to much, still riding on the Miranda name and hope that the meager fact of just being patrician will somehow be enough to sustain him once the money runs out completely. Darius doesn’t like it, but he understands the way the world works, the slights and passing-overs that come along with a family as embarrassing as his. The very material consequences that come with the shame of association. He’d had to cut ties completely.
Now, that rueful something plays at the corner of Theo’s lip. “I’ll remember that,” she says. He wonders if maybe there are already people she’s left behind. “All right. Your turn.”
He pauses. “Me?”
“Mm-hm.” She sips at her hops, waggles a dark brow. “What’s your excuse? Wait, no, let me guess. You’re meeting your secret lover.”
Darius rolls his eyes despite himself. “Hardly.”
“All right, not that. Must be some top-secret Intelligentia business, then, if you’re down here in that getup.”
“What’s wrong with my getup?” Darius blusters, glancing down at the dirtied duskra.
“Nothing, nothing.” She laughs. “It’s just . . . different from your usual look.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“Yeah, but we already covered me. Now spill.”
Darius hesitates. Obviously he isn’t going to tell her the truth. Not the full extent of it, anyway. Even if Theodora Arlot didn’t work for the senator, wouldn’t report back what she’d learned in an instant. Which she will, no doubt. Ambition and loyalty make for a powerful cocktail. But there’s something easy about her, something that makes the frustration of the last few days bubble up, demanding to make itself known, and Terra, Darius’s head hurts.
He doesn’t have to tell her the whole truth, after all.
“You’re right,” he says, and downs the rest of his drink. “It’s Cohort business.”
“Any luck?”
“Like I’m going to tell you that.”
“Fair.” She grins. “Well, if it helps at all, I haven’t seen anything suspicious since I sat down. Except for an Intelligentia agent trying to blend in, of course.”
“Ha. Ha.”
He raises his empty pint in mock salute. She bangs hers against it, an aide of no importance who he’ll probably never talk to again after this. A kindred spirit, even then. Someone who’s clawed her way up. Terra knows why that’s what does it. Days and days of unsteady ground. He buries his face in his hands with a groan.
Theo’s brows shoot up. “You okay?”
“Not really.” He wishes there were more in his pint, watered-down shit that it is.
“Must be a hell of a case.”
“I’m not telling you,” he says, a laugh punctuating the exhaustion despite himself.
This is ridiculous. What is he doing, talking like this to one of Naevia Kleios’s staffers? He only even came over here to make sure she wasn’t up to anything she shouldn’t be, and, having sufficiently determined that she isn’t, he really should get back to work. And yet . . . he’s tired. That’s the truth. He’s really, really fragging tired. The voice in his mind saying Kopitar’s wrong, it’s never said that before. It’s the one that chimes in when Darius knows the right thing to do, the right path to follow, and never once has it diverged from what’s prescribed as duty. The misalignment of the two sits ugly in his gut.
“Have you ever—” he starts, unsure, faltering because if there’s anyone who’s ever been in this position before it might very well be the woman sitting with him at this table. He tries again. “Have you ever felt like there were two options, and one was right, but one was . . . I don’t know, the done thing?”
Theo stares at him, incredulous, one brow raised. “I’m first gen,” she says. “You think me being on Senator Kleios’s staff is the done thing? You think anyone wanted that to happen?”
“Fair enough.”
It was a stupid thing to ask, anyway. He respects what she’s achieved. It’s admirable, the dream of Sargassa laid out. But it’s not the same, not really. People can talk and make snide comments about her all they like; that doesn’t mean she’s ever directly disobeyed a superior to get to where she is. Only then Theo’s looking at him in that way, the one that says she’s been exactly where he is, and says, “I’m going to tell you what I think.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I think you’re looking for the Revenants.”
Darius doesn’t choke, but it’s a near thing. “I’m not going to tell—”
“You’re not going to tell me, I know, I know. That’s why I’m guessing. And if I’m completely off base, then you get to ignore me and go back to the Ministerium of Intelligentia and laugh about this with everyone, but in the meantime that’s what I think. Everyone knows your office is after the Historian’s killer and the street orators already announced that the Revenants are your prime suspects. Not exactly a leap of logic.”
Darius opens his mouth to—what, correct her? Deny it? He can’t, because she’s right.
“But you know what else I think?” she says, and leans in close over the sticky tabletop. “I think you have a different idea of who’s done it. And I think you want to chase that lead.”
Darius presses his lips together, giving nothing away, even as his heart hammers double time, and he’s beginning to get a sense of how, exactly, Theodora Arlot rose so high so fast. She sees the things that other people don’t. Same as him. They understand each other, this pleb girl and he. Terra knows how, but they do.
“If,” he says slowly, “and that’s a big if—but let’s say that were true. And let’s say that I had been . . . discouraged from following that other lead. What would you do?”
Dark eyes shine in the cheap paraffin light. “I’d ask for forgiveness instead of permission.”
“Do that in the senator’s office a lot, do you?” he asks, and tries to ignore the way that it’s a deflection from the traitorous rise in his chest.
Theo smiles. “All the time.”
His heart still bangs against the cage of his ribs, but even for that he can’t help but welcome the wave of fresh clarity. If it turns out there’s really nothing more to Naevia Kleios than a politico pushing in where she has no business being, well. What Kopitar doesn’t know can’t hurt either of them. But if there’s more to it than that, if Darius can bring him hard evidence—or, even better, the perpetrator himself . . . Forget demotion or banishment back to Ithaca, Kopitar will probably give him a fragging medal.
Darius breathes in hard, and steels his nerve.