Whatever they could have expected Arran to guess at, it was just about anything but the truth. Theo breaks into an incredulous laugh.
“Sure,” they say, rolling their eyes. “Big scary terrorist, that’s fully me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, totally.” It’s not a seed of truth they have to dig for here. It’s the whole damn bushel. “Skulking in alleys, slitting throats, you know me.”
“Theo—”
“I’m actually late for a rendezvous at our super-secret headquarters just now, so if you don’t mind me kicking you out in a few—”
“Theo,” he barks. “Stop it. I know. I’ve known from the start.”
And the laughter dies on their lips, because Arran isn’t joking. But he isn’t yelling for the Publica either, or flushing red with anger at the lies, or any of the things they might have expected from a well-bred young man facing a marked enemy of the state.
What in the actual fuck.
Theo runs through the various hiding places they’ve stowed their knives, just to be safe, then asks, quiet, “How?”
“I told you,” he says, and it’s not an accusation, “the very first night we met. No one talks to me unless they want something. I know when I’m being used.”
“I wasn’t—” they start, but that’s a lie. That is such a fucking lie. They have been using him. They’ve been using him since the start. They used him with the full intention of getting closer to his sister, and they were preparing to turn him to their side just so they could make their peace with that. Before, of course, Griff put her foot down, and Theo’s stomach quickly turns at that, the thought of what Griff would do if she knew that Arran were here. That he’s forced their hand. That he knows.
“My canaries,” they realize. “Yesterday, looking for Selah in the downdistricts. Overkill?”
“Just a little. And then there was that man who called you Nix. Confirmed my suspicions more than anything, but I had a hunch from the moment you snuck out of my room.”
Of course he did. Of course.
Arran’s half-caste, and he had to grow up quickly. Had to learn how to read rooms. How to sense danger, and the undercurrents that no one else would ever think to notice. He had to, if he wanted to survive. To endear himself to a hostile world. Theo knows this, because they had to do it, too. They should have known better than to assume he wouldn’t be equally skilled at weaving through the facades of other people’s perceptions, and that includes their own. People see what they expect to see. And Arran expects to be used. But Theo had been so caught up in their own schemes, so caught up in showing off, that they hadn’t noticed him noticing them.
“I’m sorry,” they say, and this might be the first time in their entire life that they’ve actually meant it.
“Are you?” His face is impossible to read.
“Yes. I’m sorry for using you. Sorry for lying. Even though a lot of it was the truth . . . I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this.”
“Well,” he says with a shrug, “I’m not.”
And it’s the way he’s looking at them now. With a barely-there smile. Like Griff and the senator and dei ex machinis don’t exist. Like it’s them and him and nothing else in the world in between. Theo can count on one hand the number of times since joining the Revenants that they’ve been at a loss for words. This marks one more.
“You—you’re not?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m not.” A small burst of laughter punctuates the word. “I’m done trying to fit in where I was never meant to be, and this—this is what I’m meant to do. Can’t you see it?”
“Arran . . .” they start, heart sinking just a little, because Griff said no but Griff may have had a point. “Do you know what that actually means?”
This still isn’t like playing dress-up. This is even less of a game.
Arran sets his jaw. “I do.”
“No, I mean, do you understand what we’re really after? The Imperium calls us terrorists, but most of the shit they pin on us, we had nothing to do with. We’re not, you know, anarchists. We just want Roma to leave. We want a democracy of our own. One that actually works.”
“I know,” he says again. “I told you about my friends in Teec Nos Pos—”
“Fagan and Enyo, yeah. Kids playing at revolutionaries.”
“Revenant informants. For the Fornia cell.”
“I—what?”
Cells report back to Griff, deferring to her as the spider at the center of the Revenant web, but they have to have a certain amount of agency to operate on their own. Communication and travel between cities is just too slow and unreliable on the Imperial Road for anything else. Theo knows that the head of the Fornia cell is a man called Chirag, but that’s the extent of it. They don’t have the first idea who else is under his command.
“They didn’t know I knew,” Arran says then, and that grin is back. “Figured that out on my own. Amazing what you start to notice about a person once you start sleeping with them.”
They don’t ask which. They don’t care. Their heart is racing, because Arran wants to join the Revenants and he’s had time to think it through. Griff said no, but he knew all along and he knows what’s at stake and he wants to join.
He wants to join, and he saw them from the start.
He sees them. He always did.
“Canaries,” they say, licking their lips.
“Come again?”
“Not informants. We call them canaries.”
He sees them. He knows their name. His mouth is red where he’s bitten down on it, and Theo could crash their lips against his. They could, and so they do.
They fall onto the bed, scrabbling at each other’s shirts against the backdrop of seagulls and children playing in the broken-tiled courtyard somewhere below. His hand splayed across their hipbone, he trails an urgent hum down their throat, follows that column to their navel and down down until they’re bowing their head and biting out something that’s half hiss, half laugh. Theo wraps their arms around him, after, buries some murmured thing into his hair as he folds his head beneath their chin, touches their ribs one by one until the buzzing under their skin subsides.
• • •
When they come alive to the world again, it’s the height of meridiem and there’s little point in doing anything but take their time. They roll over to play a hand idly through Arran’s hair, his green eyes hazy with want. He makes a halfhearted attempt to roll out of bed but they pull him back, kissing away the protests that try to escape. By the time they actually do push back the sweat-sticky sheets, the noise from the streets below is reaching a peak. Shouting carries over the wind faintly from somewhere in the distance.
“They’re gonna get themselves arrested doing that,” Theo notes dryly, pulling their trousers back on. “I’m starving. You getting up?”
“No, I live here now,” he says, and Theo sees his point. There’s no reason to move, not even for food, not when the bed is comfortable and Arran’s cheeks are flushed with the linger-fading meridiem heat, and Arran knows. Arran knows.
“Fair enough.” They shrug, and splay back down onto the white sheets.
Theo closes their eyes, enjoying the soft glow of midday sun that plays across the inside of their eyelids, the cool breeze sweeping in from the open window, the clatter of wooden shades. They lie there and try not to think about how to present this to Griff, try to focus instead on the pads of Arran’s fingers skimming along the path of their ink-packed tattoo scars.
“Can I ask,” he starts, halting. “If it’s not too personal.”
They raise a lazy brow, and decide not to point out that the two of them are both naked for the second time this week. They think they’re a little past personal.
“Except,” he goes on, a little awkward, “I know it’s sort of . . . all-encompassing. Thremid.”
Oh. Right. That.
“Means something different for everyone,” they tell him with a shrug. They’ve never really had to put it into words before. “The world sees whatever it wants to see. Just means I know who I am.”
Arran nods, brow furrowed in thought, and seems to accept it. Maybe because he knows something about that. “Theodora Nix,” he says into the October air instead, and the sound of it is enough for their heart to turn pleasantly on itself. “Theodora.”
“Theo.”
“Never Theodora?”
“Mm, maybe. If you’re nice to me.”
“Theodora . . .”
They punch him in the arm, hard. And then they hesitate. “Arran, listen. About Selah . . .”
They haven’t planned this far ahead. Their hopes for bringing Arran over to the Revenants seemed dead on arrival after Griff’s order to end things. Well, Arran had shot that plan to the Quiet and back by being far more observant than Theo had given him credit for, but now that leaves them in the unfortunate position of improvising where to go from here. They’re already going to be in deep shit with Griff as it is. They really don’t want to make the situation any worse by misplaying their hand. But if Arran wants to join the Revenants, really wants to join them, then he deserves to know exactly what he’s getting into. And Theo needs to lay a foundation of trust.
He’s watching them, waiting expectantly for whatever comes next.
Theo goes with their gut.
“I was at the Archives the morning your father was murdered.”
Arran’s eyes go wide. “You—”
“He was dead when we got there,” they cut in, preempting whatever assumptions he’s no doubt making even as they speak. “I swear. I swear. If anything, it felt like maybe we were there to help him, but got there too late. Griff didn’t say as much, obviously, but—”
“Griff,” he says, brows raised.
Griff is the most wanted person in Roma Sargassa. Enemy number one. The bogeyman parents warn their children about to keep them from wandering into seedier parts of town. The very real criminal turned to myth, not least because the name keeps getting passed down. Theo can’t imagine how strange it must be for Arran, to hear her dropped into casual conversation like that. Myth made flesh. Better get used to it, though, he’ll have to meet her sooner rather than later.
Theo is one thing; it’s up to Griff in the end whether he gets to join them, and she’s already made her opinion on the subject clear. Theo ignores the way their gut flips.
“Griff,” they confirm instead. “Anyway, it felt . . . I don’t know, something was off about the whole thing. The Historian was dead at his desk when we showed up, and we didn’t even leave with anything to show for it.”
“You said this was about Selah.”
“It is.”
Arran is sitting up now, frowning down at them. They follow suit, and want to take his hand, but maybe they’d better not.
“There’s a reason Griff wanted me in Naevia’s office. Beyond just passing information. I didn’t know why until after your dad died, but she . . . she wants me to get close to your sister. She wants Selah to join us.”
Arran goes stiff.
“Griff wants access to the Archives, I think, among other things. And she wants . . .” Full steam ahead. No turning back now. “She wants something that Selah has. It’s called the Iveroa Stone. It’s . . . well, I don’t really know what it is, actually. I think it’s a book, but Griff says it’s some kind of weapon. Something big. Something . . .” They trail off, unsure how to phrase this. Arran may understand the Revenants’ functional reason for being, but beyond Theo and his canary friends, he hasn’t met them. He doesn’t understand what it’s really like.
“Right now,” they continue, “this isn’t a war. This isn’t even a fair fight. Every time the Revenants change leadership, we get someone with different ideas and different tactics—so then whatever progress that last leader made, we’re starting from scratch all over again. The last Griff was too chaotic. He just wanted to watch the world burn. But this Griff . . . she believes that the only way we’ll ever be independent from Roma is if every single person in Sargassa collectively decides to be. And I believe in her. So it’s a long game, even if I can’t always see the pieces the way she can. But the Iveroa Stone . . . Griff seems to think it’s powerful enough to make that game a hell of a lot shorter.”
Fuck it. They grab his hand. “I like Selah. I do. I’m not trying to drag her into something dangerous here. I don’t believe in a magical solution that’s automatically going to win us a revolution. But if this is real, and there’s a way to see some actual progress, some actual freedom for Sargassans before I die . . . then it’s worth it. It has to be worth it.”
Arran has stayed quiet all this time, as Theo’s looked to explain the complicated reality of what he’s asking to be brought into. He hasn’t flinched, or taken his hand away, but he hasn’t really looked at them either.
“I think,” he says finally, and pushes the sheets off the bed, “it’s time you introduce me to Griff.”