Theo knows, in an intellectual sort of way, that the chances of being recognized down here are slim to none. They have eleven years and a good hundred pounds on them since the last time they were here, their hollowed face made full by three reliable meals a day, black hair short and thick and glossy with health.
That doesn’t mean they can’t suspend disbelief for a moment of fantasy. The satisfaction of hailing Kyrie or Wieler or one of the other handlers over to answer some question or other away from the crowd. The realization in their eyes just in the shuddering moment before Theo takes their trusted blade and puts it right through his or her shocked face. That they would know they were meeting their end at the pleasure of little Theodora. Jarol’s kid. The one that got away.
It’s a pretty thought, revenge, but it isn’t one that belongs to tonight.
They come through the back alley behind Neptune’s Folly, Tair close behind. They’ve made it a point since escape to know each and every entrance to the pits, for when the time really does come. So there’s something reassuring in knowing that there’s a Revenant stationed at each one, ready and waiting to act if things down here go south. Griff in the Regio Marina. Pa’akal in Paleaside. Any number of other operatives elsewhere whose names Theo has never known.
Griff wasn’t thrilled about it, but she agreed in the end that there was no way they were letting Selah Kleios and the Iveroa Stone go down into the pits alone. Especially not in the company of Cato Palmar and his designs on both the girl and the weapon itself. And she also agreed that the Stone and its potential are useless to them without the knowledge of how to operate it. Finding Diana Ontiveros is a priority.
“Timeline’s moving up.” Griff had drawn Theo to the side before leaving the amphitheater, an urgent warning on her lips. “I wanted to give you more time to work on Selah, let it happen naturally. But I don’t think we have the time for that anymore. Things are developing faster than I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“He shouldn’t know. Palmar. Una said he knew what the Stone looks like. He shouldn’t.”
“She said he probably read about it somewhere.”
“Not possible.”
“How do you kn—”
“Later. Keep your eyes sharp on him down there. He knows more than he should, and I don’t like it. Leave through the Regio exit with Selah once you’ve found the Ontiveros boy, and make damn sure she has the Stone with her. I’ll meet you there.”
Kyrie’s taken point at this door, checking for weapons and collecting the entry fee, and Theo freezes as the enormous woman pats them down. The last time she touched them, they’d been unconscious for two days after. Theo was fifteen. This time, she manages to miss all three weapons concealed amongst Theo’s boots and clothes. Tair drops two ceres in her palm, and nudges Theo along.
“What was that?” she hisses. They ignore her.
Their head is buzzing slightly, which is more disconcerting than anything, as they move through the thick press of the crowd. Through laughter and drinking, arguing and betting, and the purpose that Theo has carried with them all these long years feels dangerously close to converting right back to wild, unconfined fury.
Breathe, they think, and hold their head up high. Just breathe.
At the far end of the pits is the little corridor carved into the earth, the one that leads to the fighters’ living quarters. If you can call it that. A damp, cold hallway where darkness presses in, and if you happen to take a right instead of veering left toward the holding cells, you might just stumble across the same crack in the earth that Theo found, all those years ago. That innocent crevice where they hid from a drunk and violent Wieler, and found that it just . . . kept going, all the way out to the world above.
Theo glances around to make sure no one’s watching, about to slip inside, when Tair says from behind, “Wait. Stop.”
At the urgency in her voice, they just barely suppress the well-honed instinct to grab for the knife hidden against their ribcage. “What?”
“What are you doing with Arran?” Tair asks, unexpected.
“Making out, mostly.”
Tair doesn’t laugh, doesn’t budge from where she’s glowering like some red-headed little gargoyle. “You’re undercover at the Senate?” It’s less a question than a statement of fact.
“This is true.”
“You’re spying on Senator Kleios?”
“Mm-hm.”
They have to wonder where this is going. Tair’s stone-faced, like someone just died and it’s all Theo’s fault. Which is unfair, really. If anyone has the right to be pissed, it’s them. Tair’s the one who took advantage of the Revenants’ generosity only to throw it back in their face, the one who nearly derailed Griff’s plans for the Iveroa Stone, and now, because of Tair, Theo is standing in the one place they swore they’d never return.
Now, Tair is still glaring at them, but there’s something else going on as she twists her lips. “Look,” she says. “I know Arran seems . . . fun. A good time or whatever. But I’ve known him my whole life. Stop fucking around with him.”
“Savage Quiet,” says Theo, suddenly realizing what this is really about. “Is this a shovel talk?”
“No.”
“It fully is. You’re giving me a shovel talk.”
“I just don’t want you messing him around and then disappearing. He’s had enough of that. And he’s not like you and me. He tries to hide it, but he’s sensitive.”
Theo rolls their head back, pushing back the laughter that wants to escape. “If that’s him trying to hide it, he’s doing a pretty terrible job.” And then, because Tair is still glowering—“Babes. This is sweet. But you have got to give him more credit than that. When it comes to me, Arran knows exactly what he’s getting into.”
And Tair’s eyes go wide. She stands up straight, arms uncrossed. “No.”
“Yep.”
“Gave him the seal of approval and everything. Sorry to break it to you, but it looks like we’re all on the same side again.”
“We’re not on the same side,” Tair growls. “Not until you tell me why the Revenants want the Stone.”
Ah. Clever girl. Theo thought they’d done a pretty good job, back at their apartment when Tair pulled a slab of rock out of her bag and casually declared it was the Quiet-fucking Iveroa Stone, of keeping their reaction to themself. Apparently they were wrong.
“We don’t want the Stone,” they lie, and again there’s that kernel of truth. “We want Selah to have the Stone.”
“And why the fuck would you want that?”
Theo’s lip quirks, just a little. Then there’s a blade in her hand, pressing just slightly into Tair’s side, and they’ve angled themself just there so that anyone in the passing crowd would assume that they’re a pair of lovers taking a moment in quiet talk. Tair’s eyes go wide, her pale brown face flushing with something between anger and fear, but Theo gets there first.
“You asked me why I didn’t kill you five years ago.”
“Don’t dodge the question.” Tair’s voice is a hiss.
“I’m not. You were right to ask. I’ve killed for less, never mind a runaway verna brat who knows way too much about Griff and the Luxana cell. But the thing is, you were never a loose end. Griff was onto you. She knew you weren’t going to stay, and she had a feeling you might be useful down the line. And she was right. Look who you’ve brought together. Look at the present you brought us.” Theo leans in, a whispered caress blowing against the frizzing red hair around her ear. “That’s what you never understood, Tair. The long game. I don’t follow Griff like a stupid fucking dog blindly obeying its master. I have faith because she earned it. And it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”
A long moment passes then, the angry inhale and exhale of the girl in front of them, and Theo’s never been one to play with her food. Still, they don’t put the knife away just yet. “While we’re on the subject,” they say, conversational now. “How long exactly are you planning on lying to Selah about how we know each other?”
Tair’s face darkens. “Don’t you dare—”
“It’s just a question. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“What is taking so long?”
Speak of the Quiet. The blade is gone in an instant, tucked safe back in Theo’s sleeve.
It’s Selah, hands on hips as she materializes through the crowd. Tair shoots a worried glance their way, but it’s a wasted gesture. Theo isn’t about to drop that sort of major payload on Selah—not here and now, anyway, never mind how much fun the fallout would be to watch. Instead, they just roll their eyes. “It’s been barely twenty minutes.”
“That’s forever and a half for her,” says Tair, nudging the other girl’s hip with disgruntled fondness, hard suspicion still ghosting at the edge of a glare. “You get used to it.”
• • •
When the three of them arrive at the dark corridor’s crossroads behind the fighters’ cells, Arran is there as planned. Miro is not.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses at Selah, eyes wide. “Where’s Palmar?”
“He’s talking with someone from the Intelligentia, it’s fine. He won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“That might be a good thing.” Arran purses his lips. “Palmar is—”
“Where’s Miro?” Theo interrupts.
Of the four of them, Theo is the only one with real covert mission experience. So they don’t mind taking the reins, steering the others back on course, and the simple fact is that they don’t have the time for this. Palmar’s done some real damage to Arran and Selah’s family, yes, but right now they have the advantage on him. If they’re going to keep it, they have to stay working on a tight schedule.
“He’s here,” says Arran, eyes suddenly blazing. “I found him. Locked in the holding cells.”
“Fuck.”
Pit fighters weren’t allowed to roam free, exactly, when they were a child, but neither were they locked up in pens like cattle. Still, they should have planned ahead. They should have slipped Kyrie’s keys from her belt just in case, instead of just standing there useless. Theo knew some things would have changed since they were here last. This puts a dent in things.
“Yeah,” says Arran, looking grim. “And there’s another problem, too.”
Miro Ontiveros is waiting at the back edge of his cell when Arran leads them to him, anxiously glancing now and again over his shoulder. His cellmates seem to have realized something’s going on, and are doing their best to obscure him from the view of gawkers and handlers up at the front.
“These your friends?” he asks Arran, when they come to a stop.
“Selah, hi.”
“Tair. Your sister was my—”
“I’m Theo. I grew up down here.”
Miro stares. So does Selah. But they don’t have the time to build up the man’s trust. They need it now.
“Sure you did,” he says.
Wordlessly, they unbutton their duskra, shaking arms out of sleeves to reveal keloid tattoos, then hike up the back of their undershirt as they turn around, leaving their back exposed to his view. They can’t see Miro, but they can see Tair, jaw set firm. Tair will know what this means, has felt the burn of fire and ink herself, and the searing pain mixed with gentle humming as Ody worked. They can see Selah, too, utterly confused. And then there’s Arran, curiosity and a dawning realization mingling as one. He’s seen them naked twice now. He just didn’t know to look. That crude shield and spear at the very base of their spine, the same one the handlers will have given to Miro when they dragged him down here, Theo’s own nearly faded now beneath the scarification they underwent to declare themself free.
Nearly. It’s still there, underneath.
“My dad. He owed a lot of money,” they explain, shrugging the duskra back down. “And my mima . . . wasn’t well. No one knew where she was. So they just processed me with him. I was three.”
“So you were verna?”
It’s Selah who asks, dark brow furrowed hard. Theo just shakes their head. “No.”
Verna are born, not made. There’s no limit to how young a serva can be.
“Dependents have to stay with parents, so.” They shrug. “Anyway. I was too little to fight at first, too scrawny after that. Believe it or not. But someone’s got to polish armor and clean the cells and feed the fighters and everything.”
Something’s struggling to pull together behind Selah’s eyes, some pieces falling into place that make her dark cheeks go pale, and it occurs to Theo then that they’ve done this before. Sitting across jav during the humid meridiem hour while they laughed and joked and Theo spun tales about some invented childhood while Selah listened along with rapt attention. Those had been outright lies. These aren’t, but they wouldn’t really blame Selah for not believing them. But she says nothing, and when Theo turns back around, Miro is silent, too. He just nods. He’s spent enough time down here to understand the way things are.
“There’s a way out back down that way,” they go on, nodding in the direction of the crevice escape. “If you keep going straight instead of turning toward the arena. It’s how I got out last time. It’s how we can get you out, too, but first—Arran says you know where your mother is.”
Miro takes a deep breath. “I don’t know where she is, not exactly. But the sentries took her somewhere in that same direction when they brought us here, and I see the Consul heading down that way all the time. There’s . . . noises, too. I can’t explain it. We all hear them. Booms and that. Like fireworks, but worse, coming from somewhere below. I know she’s still alive, though. Or . . .” and here he blinks, the alternative too awful to consider. “That’s what he tells me, anyway. The Consul. She’s alive, and if I step out of line, he’ll hurt her. He already has.”
He’s glaring again, this time at the floor, like it’s offended him somehow.
“It’s my fault,” he says through gritted teeth. “It’s my fault she went into that Quiet-damned house in the first place. My fault for getting cocky—I was so excited. The Consul wanted to sponsor me. I—”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s all fully tough for you, but we don’t really have time for the self-flagellation right now,” Tair cuts in, eyes shining with the news that Diana is alive—that she’s here—and Theo could kiss her. “You’re fighting tonight, right?”
“Second-to-last match.”
“Okay, that’s a lucky break.” The gears in Tair’s head seem to be working double time, and her eyes slide over to Arran and Selah. “If Diana’s down here somewhere, we may not get another chance at this. I’ll go.”
“I’m going with you,” Selah says at once.
“No.” Tair grabs her hand, urgent. “Palmar can’t suspect anything.”
“Tough. Booms and explosions? You’re not going down there by yourself.”
“I can—” Theo starts, but Selah cuts them off.
“You can keep an eye on Palmar and make sure he behaves himself. But I’m going with Tair.”
This is ridiculous. Selah isn’t a fighter and Palmar will be wondering where she’s gone. If anyone should be going with Tair for protection, it’s them. Theo opens their mouth to tell her exactly that, but before the words come out, Arran steps down lightly on their foot.
“I think that’s a great idea,” he says, firm, and all at once Theo remembers the very real threat that Palmar poses to Selah. He isn’t just after the Stone. He thinks he needs her, too. And it isn’t just that Griff wants them both on their side and safe from Cato Palmar, who somehow knows more about the Iveroa Stone than he should—it’s that Arran will do what he has to in order to protect his sister. Theo isn’t used to thinking in those terms.
“Sounds good to me,” they find themself agreeing, through barely gritted teeth, and there’s a ghost of a twitch at the corners of Arran’s mouth.
“Fine,” Tair snaps. “Fine. But Palmar can’t think anything’s off. Not until we’re all well clear of this place. Theo, you’re on Palmar Watch. Arran . . . you’re actually not too bad with those fists, right?”
Arran catches up to her at exactly the same time Theo does.
“Not too bad, no,” he says, and their heart sinks at the determination in his eyes. Non-lethal, they remind themself. Opening matches aren’t to the death. “I can buy you time.”