She was eighteen years old the day her life ended.
Tair remembers it like a dream, like something underwater. Something happening to some other girl, because there was no way to make herself understand that this was real. The words passing through air, and the voice sounded like Gil’s, sounded like concepts that should make sense. Sentenced and magistrate’s decision and eligibility revoked. None of them mattered. None of them were real. Not until hours had passed and she saw Selah’s face. Something about that had brought her reality crashing in with alarming clarity.
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t blame. Nothing about what had happened was either of their fault, not when it came down to it. Not when Tair could see it now, how slim her chances had ever really been. She’d just gotten closer to it than most.
So when Una woke her in the middle of the night, a hand over her mouth and vague, hushed promises on her lips, Tair hadn’t been as suspicious as she probably should have.
“The people I work for, they can help you disappear.”
“What? Who are they?”
“You’ll find out soon, but we have to leave now, while everyone’s still asleep. No, don’t take anything. They’ll give you a new life. They’ll protect you. You’ll be free.”
Free. What a fucking word. It hadn’t occurred to Tair before then that she was anything but. Of course there were rules and chores, laws she had to abide by, but didn’t everyone? Wasn’t that the price you paid for living in the Imperium’s civilized embrace? It wasn’t like she was a serva, after all, locked for life into menial labor as consequence for her own bad decisions. She had a future. She had a purpose. One that was gone forever now, wiped away in an instant with a magistrate’s shrug, and in that tiniest of moments Tair could see the lies for what they’d been. Even as a verna, she’d never had a future at all. Not one with anything but the flimsiest illusion of choice. A little wooden house next to Gil’s and the name Alexander and a head full of knowledge-organization systems to assist Selah in her work and for as long as she could remember Tair had wanted that. She had wanted it so, so badly, but she had never actually asked for it. It was handed to her with a reminder to be grateful she had been given anything at all.
Was it what she had ever really wanted? How could a person know the difference?
Now, with that one word freedom on Una’s lips, Tair could feel it like a buzzing in her skin, all the tiny pieces of her body reaching out to meet all the tiny pieces of the world. Endless possibility. Boundless creation. True freedom meant that she could do anything at all, and savage Quiet was that a terrifying thought—terrifying but intoxicating, that capacity to invent beyond what she had ever dared to imagine.
Tair had hesitated, both Selah and Gil making a place for themselves in the space between, but only for a moment.
Why me?
Una hadn’t had an answer to that.
Truth be told, she’d been half expecting Una’s mysterious employer to turn out to be the Revenants. Maybe it was childish, a byproduct of news headline and urban legend, because you can’t get three blocks in this city without hearing some Imperial street orator blame the burning of an apartments complex in Paleaside on Revenant terror. They are the Enemy that loom large in the popular imagination of Roma Sargassa, and Tair had been shocked at first to find that there were only four of them total.
Griff had been quick to correct that assumption.
“Most of us still have the cover of our regular lives,” she’d told her over a mug of tazine in that little network of underground halls that was now her home. “What you’ve got down here are those of us who’ve been compromised. Or have nowhere else to go.”
Griff. Pa’akal Zetnes. Theodora Nix. Izara Charis. And now Tair.
“So what’s the end goal?” she’d asked, very early on. “If you’re not actually responsible for half the crap the Cohorts pin on you.”
The older woman had smiled, too warm and open to be the monster in the night. “Self-rule, Tair. On our own terms. A true people’s representation, never mind who your parents were. A direct democracy of the people by the people.”
It was exciting, at first. For all Tair was ready to embrace her newfound freedom, her sudden and completely novel ability to wake up when she liked and eat what she liked and tag after who she liked asking whatever questions popped into her head, it was overwhelming, too. The problem with choice is that it’s endless. Turns out there actually is such a thing as too much. So she was glad for the routine. The communal breakfasts and close combat training with Theo and afternoons spent with Griff answering question after endless question. Details about the Archives and its classified contents and even the personal lives of the Kleios familia, and Tair had learned to ignore the Selah-shaped guilt in her gut that told her this was a betrayal.
She learned to ignore a lot of Selah-shaped things.
Then the novelty wore off.
Tair, if asked, would never be able to pinpoint the exact moment she realized what was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe it began small, a seed that took root and grew over the two months she spent with the Revenants until it was just too big to ignore anymore. The way that no one ever questioned Griff. The way that all she had to do was say the word and her foot soldiers leapt to obey. Orders couched as requests are still orders, after all, and the more she watched Griff the more Tair had trouble picturing the Revenant leader ever willingly handing over that kind of power to a people’s self-rule. And then one day it occurred to her, watching Izara abandon her dinner halfway through to follow Griff into the city at the drop of a word—just as no one ever asked if she wanted to be a verna, no one had ever asked if she wanted to be a Revenant, either.
The bad taste in her mouth lingered from there, and it didn’t go away. Because she had done this before. She had been through this already. Blind obedience to what she’s been told she’s supposed to want. A true people’s representation, never mind who your parents were. A direct democracy of the people by the people. It sounds good in theory, but if the very people who are fighting for it can’t demonstrate that in the way they operate among themselves to get there, then what hope could Sargassa ever have to see it on a grand scale? Tair was done with being told what to do. She was done working for a goal someone else told her she was supposed to have. She was done with following orders when she doesn’t understand why.
A new life was promised to her. Freedom. She had left behind too much to deny herself that.
Leaving had been surprisingly easy. She waited until the others were gone on some mission no one had bothered explaining, and slipped back aboveground. Even Theo, who had returned early and sent her on her way with a black eye, had ultimately let her go. Tair has always wondered about that.
Tair was eighteen years old the day her life ended. She was eighteen years old the day her life began.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?” she asks now, when Theo finally shows up in the brick alley behind Neptune’s Folly. String music and rowdy singing spills from inside the taberna, laughter and lamplight. They’re half an hour late.
“Trust me, the thought occurred,” they say. “But I had a feeling Arran and Selah might not be too thrilled.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Do I?”
Infuriating. Fucking infuriating, but that’s on Tair, honestly, for getting herself mixed up with Theo or anyone from that crowd again. Not that it was her decision, mind, they all but ran into each other in the road, unable to speak freely thanks to the brother and sister they’d somehow each managed to collect. Tair doesn’t like it, keeping the whole truth from Selah. It’s only been a day since they crashed back into each other’s lives, after all, and maybe that means that Tair doesn’t owe her the whole truth yet, but it still feels wrong. Lying, even by omission. But it’s only been a day, and the Sisters of the First are one thing. Admitting that she was briefly a Revenant is another one completely. The sooner this is over, the better.
The plan, in theory, is a simple one.
Theo, it turns out, has a surprisingly thorough knowledge of the layout of the fighting pits, and Tair has her suspicions about that but she hasn’t pressed. According to them, there are multiple entrances secreted around the city where you can find your way down to the pits—a nondescript cellar door behind Neptune’s Folly being one of them. That’s Tair and Theo’s way in.
Selah, on the other hand, is Palmar’s guest. She and Arran are meeting him at his estate and will go with him from there. Selah will stick with him the entire time, making sure he’s happy and distracted and, if possible, preferably drunk. Meanwhile Arran will be sent to wait for his match with the rest of the fighters, which should give him enough time to find Miro Ontiveros if he’s actually there. Once he’s found him, he’ll meet Tair and Theo behind the cells where the servae fighters are kept and hand off Miro from there. According to Theo, there should be a secret way out back there, unknown even to the handlers who make their living down in the pits, where they can smuggle Miro back above the ground.
From there, it should be easy. Arran sends word via a handler that he’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want to fight. Selah will make a scene about it, yell at him or whatever else it takes to throw off Palmar’s suspicion, and later on they’ll all meet up at Theo’s apartment again. After that, if Miro knows where Diana is, if he has even a hint of an idea, they’ll follow her trail from there.
Easy. Right.
Except for the part where she knows Theo. She knows they don’t do anything without good reason, and that reason more than usually has to do with Griff’s orders. So she needs Theo for now, Theo and Arran both, but Tair still knows she’ll have to be ready for the double-cross when it inevitably comes.
There’s something Ibdi says now and then, whenever the Sisters of the First find themselves working with surprising allies. District prefects, that sort of thing. No permanent friends, no permanent enemies. Something about how, if you’re waiting around for pure ideological alignment, you’re going to be waiting for a very long time. And in the meanwhile, you’ll get nothing done at all.
Tair feels for the Iveroa Stone in the bag at her side, a solid reminder that it’s still there. All this for the hope that Miro knows where his mother is. All this to protect the Sisters from her blackmailer. If nothing else, all this so that a man will go free.
At least she knows why she’s doing it.