Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay)
God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way)
Chance is the only game I play with, baby
We let our battles choose us

~ "Glory & Gore" - Lorde

The meeting is at the Riverside harbor.

Ordinarily, it is the liveliest hub in the Undercity. The merchants are the second-earliest risers—that is, second to the rats. The harbor vibrates with the music of boundless industry. The clanging of crates stripping off their metal clothing to unveil their wares. The riot of seafarers swapping prices in dozens of different languages. The skillet-fried sunfish and steaming mussel-soups at the stalls; the shrill calls of the gulls circling for easy snacks.

It's a chaotic microcosm of Zaun. Hard bargains struck, a knife up every sleeve, the air bleeding with fragrance and filth.

But oh! What cornucopia.

Now the harbor is nearly deserted. The exoskeletons of burnt-out ships cast massive shadows. Here and there, stragglers ply their trade. A clutch of sumpsnipes strip metal off a bomb-scored motorcar to resell at the black-market. In the feeble glow of a street-stall, an old woman skewers live eels on stakes to sell to passersby. Clusters of young men and women crouch in fire-gutted alleys, passing bottles of local rum.

A few of them stare in shock as Silco's armed entourage stalks past. Others call out—cheers that hold the same savagery as curses.

The revolution has stoked the fierce fire raging inside every citizen against Piltover. The atmosphere is still volatile as a powder-keg. The least friction between Zaun and Topside could ignite into a fray.

Piltover's envoy—ten men flanking one woman—stay tensely rooted.

The harbor was their appointed spot. But Silco has barely kept to the appointed time. They are in Zaun's territory now. Let them wait. Let them stew, and sweat and second-guess. Whatever gives his own network the extra leg-up to surveil the surroundings. His teams have already made two circuits of the harbor, one wide, the other narrow.

Now they meet in the middle: Zaun with its colorful coterie of cutthroats fanned out into a claw, Piltover with its darkly-uniformed soldiers in rigid marching rows. Each party keeps their hands open. A peaceable sign, or the absence of its opposite. They each watch the other, a crisscrossing connection of sharp gazes.

Chess sequences. That's how the game is always played.

A half-minute ticks by. Then Silco deals the King's Gambit. He steps forward, a measured tread of footsteps and a piercing directness of eye.

"Councilor Medarda," he says. "Apologies for the delay."

It is a perfunctory pleasantry. So is Medarda's nod, languid as if passed over the rim of a champagne flute.

"An Undercity custom, I take it?"

"Zaun, if you please."

"Zaun. Of course." Her voice, all suave vowels and sumptuous consonants, is devoid of humor. "Please accept my congratulations. New nation. New notions of timeliness."

"In the Fissures, we move at our own pace."

"Shall I synchronize my watch?"

"You esteem your time so highly?"

"Or yours." A tart smile touches her lips. "You're a busy man, of late."

Silco meets her gaze with a sedate veneer, but a crooked twist to his mouth.

The opening bell has rung. The game begins.

A strip of sunlight flashes at the smog-hazy horizon. It silhouettes Medarda in gold. In the squalor, she is splendidly incongruous. Looking mint, as Vander used to say of an attractive woman. Her gown is of clinging off-white satin, with dapples of red, like parchment under a downpour of blood. The fabric, hand-woven textile from the Undercity's mills, probably cost real blood in every stitch. Her hair is twisted up off her neck in a sheath of dark rich curls, and the tips of her bare shoulders gleam like the golden geometry embellishing her skin, everything shellacked from the charcoal scrubs and mineral clays in the Undercity's mines.

In every player's arsenal, there are a variety of weapons. Silco doesn't miss the sartorial message Madarda conveys. Wealth and style—but also Piltover's indispensable commercial ties with the Undercity. It strikes him with a bitter breed of poignancy that this woman is the end product of his peoples' toil: a pureblood feline grown sumptuously glossy on their suffering.

Whereas Silco's own wardrobe, rather than the upshot of that suffering, is its well-tailored symptom. A cutthroat secondhand couture of worsted suits lined in Kevlar, silk cravats edged with garottes, high-buttoned boots with steel-plated toes. In Zaun, stylishness does not serve as a signpost of idleness. It signals threats subdued and obstacles surmounted.

It symbolizes survival.

"How was your journey downriver?" Silco asks.

"Eventful."

"No unpleasantry, I trust?"

She tilts her chin. "Five checkpoints. Each with full body searches. Until I showed the guards your seal. Then it was like an escort to a Demacian gala."

Keep it that way, is the cautionary message.

Silco's smile twists deeper. "Well, you're certainly dressed the part. A Vyx label, I believe?"

"Just what was on hand in my cabin."

"Oh, indeed? We value the patronage."

"And we, the effort."

"It's a living." He gestures along the riverwalk, washed in the first faded waves of sunlight. "Shall we?"

They stroll shoulder-to-shoulder. Their entourages follow at a distance, each keeping a radius of space as if readied to draw their firearms. Neither Silco nor Medarda pay them much mind. They make small-talk, permafrosted politeness layered over sharp-edged wariness, each feeling the other out.

Strangely, they've seldom crossed paths beyond rare glimpses at Topside soirees. Silco despises pedigrees; she disfavors parvenus. Her reputation as a disinherited Noxian heiress with a chip on her shoulder is well-known among men-about-town. But it barely compares with her reputation among Topside's political players as the steel dagger in a velvet glove. Diplomacy is polished into her bones. She works by clouding judgement with a tweak of that Minerva's brow, and swaying emotions with a purr from that Venusian throat.

Ah, but what are honeyed tactics in the Undercity? Simply a confection to suck all sweetness out of.

"Candidly," Silco says, "I am surprised they sent you. I was expecting the Wonderboy."

Or the Yordle. Do they bob like a cork if punted into the water? Or sink to the bottom? Silco has always wanted to seize Heimerdinger by a fistful of fur and find out.

Medarda neither bobs, nor sinks. She meets his good blue eye, and extends an exquisite hand. "Disappointed?"

"On the contrary."

They shake hands. Silco's own is hard and chilly; it envelopes hers, the sharp phalanges pressing into her softer flesh like something locking its jaws. Medarda's smooth face shows no discomfort. Instead, she holds onto his hand and turns it over, eyeing it like a palmist.

"So many calluses," she says.

"A commoner's lot."

"Miner's calluses. Knife calluses. But here—" Her fingertip traces the rough joint of his middle finger. "A scholar's callus."

"Reading my future?"

"The past yields more wisdom."

"A regressionist and an oracle?"

"Merely well-informed." She detaches but stays within arm's reach, regarding him with hazel eyes that appear golden in the slow-creeping sunrise. "After the recent furor, the Council delved into your background. Their efforts yielded little. I took the initiative to do my own digging."

"Did you strike gold?"

"Not enough to write a novel. But certainly a synopsis." She measures him with a dark ascent of lashes. "Perhaps you'll be so kind as to fill in the gaps."

"I will do my utmost."

She keeps her eyes fixed on him. Her manner is all playful refinement; beneath that, it is reflexively probing. Tossing pebbles into the stillness of the blackwater; seeing what leaves a ripple. Silco knows she expects him to play the game accordingly. Mutatis mutandis, as the saying goes.

She doesn't realize such games are topsy-turvy in Zaun.

"You're a self-made man," Medarda says. "Undercity born and bred. You've made a fortune in the steel industry, with an extensive operation of integrated mills. Some say you have a virtual monopoly in contracts to supply Ionia with warship metal."

"Piltover cold-shoulders Zaunite businessmen. I must meet the rising demand elsewhere."

"The breadth of your assets is impressive. But your origins are modest. You were the youngest of three sons, from a hardscrabble fishing district north of the Bonscutt Pump Station."

"Somewhere between nowhere and Das ist mir egal."

She stares at him. "You speak Va-Nox?"

"My mother was Ionian. From the Sotka River in Zhyun. The Void Wars left their language a bastardization of colonizer and colonized."

"Indeed. Family records state that she fled her war-torn island with nothing but the clothes on her back. She settled in the Sumps, where she met your father, a riverman by trade. He patrolled up and down the watercourse circling the Old Hungry. On clear nights, it was his duty to haul out wreckage that had fallen into the river."

"By wreckage, you mean bodies."

She blinks, but doesn't balk.

"One thousand. That is the number of bodies Daddy dragged out of the river before his death. Suicides, drunks, children. Each one doomed as soon as they quaffed the toxic run-off from Piltover's factories." Silco's smile shows no nastiness. Yet the lulling calm of his tone is edged with something sinister. "I was three when I first saw the river's capacity for ruination. Thirty-three when I experienced it firsthand. It discombobulates human beings into shapes that defy description." He sketches a little nod, deference with overtones of derision. "But please go on."

Medarda levels an unflinching look. "You were six when your father drowned in the harbor. There were rumors that he was murdered."

"Shipping magnates don't care for backtalking unionists."

"Your older brothers passed soon after. A blaze tore through your neighborhood. Entire tenements gone up in smoke. In total, nearly eighty families perished. You and your mother escaped unscathed. A year later, the Coroner's inquest unyielded evidence of poor insulation and mass overcrowding in the district."

"Parsimonious slumlords and public safety? Poor bedfellows."

Tactfully, Medarda says, "I'm told your mother suffered a … collapse… soon after."

"Collapse?" Silco repeats with a flat scoff. "Mother went bat-raftered barmy. The Asylum of the Irreparable took her away. She stayed an inmate for the next fifteen years." He shrugs. "I'd visit her on holidays. Wished she'd die, truth be told. I think we'd both have liked that. But bodies can be stubborn."

For a moment, Medarda's expression shows the sweet bareness of shock. She recovers with swiftness.

"By seven, with no living guardians, you were sent to the Hope House Orphanage. By twelve, you volunteered to serve in the mines. By sixteen, you'd cut your teeth on smuggling and racketeering. That same year, you were arrested for stabbing a Patrolman to death. Owing to a self-defense plea, you were released into the care of the Hölle Correctional Facility for juveniles. There, you enrolled in several educational programs—and excelled. By age nineteen, the Warden himself penned a letter of recommendation on your behalf."

Silco tilts his head in remembrance. "Warden Lascelles. A good man."

"You have fond memories of him?"

"Fond isn't the right word. He was, de facto, my jailor. But he understood the impact fatherlessness and a lack of support has on Undercity youths. He preached a firm voice for morale, and a soft hand for discipline."

"His style seems to have agreed with you. Your transcripts from Hölle are exemplary. You even wrote a series of short stories and essays, that captured the mood of the Undercity. One, titled A Death in the Pilt, attracted notice from Piltover's Ministry of Education. That year, the Academy of Piltover accepted you into its school of commerce to meet the Fissures quota."

"Admitted, yes. Accepted? Never."

Her curlicued eyebrows arch. "You found Piltover's hospitality lacking?"

"Topside lets you sit at the table," Silco says mildly. "It never lets you eat."

"Trouble filling your belly?"

"Or my wallet. A bright mind is no currency in the City of Progress. What buys true respect are connections. I began at the very bottom, the lowest of the low. That made me nothing, in the eyes of patrons. To get anywhere in Piltover, you must be next-to-nothing. But that is the privilege of those ensconced in Topside's embrace. The rest of us fall through the cracks."

Medarda's lips pucker slyly. "You sketched a similar narrative in your speeches."

"My speeches?"

"Before the Day of Ash. You rose to prominence as an outspoken advocate for Zaun and Piltover's separation. The spokesperson for the youth wing of The Liberated Lanes, with a treatise published by clandestine press, titled Pay the Lessons Forward. I took the liberty of skimming through its pages." She quotes, "'In the call for resistance, there is no profound difference between a layman and a soldier.'"

Silco nods gravely. "A frank assessment of our situation."

"It would seem so. Your words struck a nerve—or tapped into a vein—for many Undercity dwellers. Street-corner vigils. Sit-ins. Protest marches. Your presence was invariably linked to each. The then-editor for the Sun & Tower Newspaper attended your rallies. He called you, and I quote 'A dangerous ideologue whipping the underclasses into a frenzy with illusions of victimhood.'"

"The article did say something to that effect." Silco blandly feigns nostalgia. "My small claim to fame."

"Or infamy. On the night known as Bloody Sunday, tensions boiled over. Enforcers were anonymously tipped off about smuggled artillery in the Temple of Janna. They raided the building with flashbombs. In the explosion, fifty-five worshipers—including thirty-two women, twelve children—were killed. Rumor has it the Temple priestess was paralyzed below the waist by a bullet. Instead of calling for an ambulance, the Enforcers beat her to death."

"After taking worse liberties."

"How do you know that?"

"I entombed her ashes afterward."

Medarda stares in finely-diluted disbelief. "You knew her?"

"Somewhat." Silco's good eye is unnervingly blank, reflecting nothing. "As per common law, at any rate."

On Medarda's expression, the barest twitch of alarm. But her gold-dark eyes stay guarded.

"No artillery was found at the Temple," she says. "The Enforcers were never indicted for the attack. For the Undercity, it was the last straw. Five months later, the Day of Ash began. A mob gathered at Bridgeside. You were in top form. Your speech was exceptionally fiery. A call to arms. Payback for desecration—then, now and always. It whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Once Enforcers arrived, the scene erupted into a bloodbath. Afterward, there were barely any Undercity dwellers left. The few who survived were arrested and summarily sentenced. You were among them."

Silco nods minimally. "Three years in Stillwater."

Three years. Enough to pare a scholar into a scourge, or grind a warrior into a worm.

That's what the three years—marked by failure and fatherhood—did to Vander. In Silco's absence, the righteous rage had drained out of him. In its wake was a soppiness that reeked of self-hatred. And for what? The deaths of friends and families? The loss of old loves? As if succumbing to the status quo would honor their sacrifice.

To Silco, it was the cowardliest rationalization. Far better to honor the fallen by carrying the torch of revolution in their name. Turn Piltover into their funeral pyre. That's what a revolution was at its core. Not blood or brick or mortar. It was an act of love. A natural cataclysm, with the capacity to sack cities and birth civilizations in the same breath.

Medarda swallows, a subtle movement of her satiny neck. "After that?"

"Hm?"

"After the sentencing. What then?"

Silco leans an elbow alongside the dock's walkway. His other hand trails lazy-fingered over the railing; pockmarked in rust. He rubs his fingertips together, then dips them into his coat to withdraw his silver cigar case. In the background, Piltover's bodyguards snap into alertness.

Silco stops halfway. A smile tugs the split scar on his upper-lip.

"You don't mind, do you?"

Medarda proffers the faintest frown. "I beg your pardon?"

"If I smoke? A wicked habit, but one I cannot forgo at this hour." He dips his head to light up, his pomaded hair picking up the diffused sunrays in a blood-red patina. Smoke curls from his parted lips; Medarda coughs delicately. "Oh dear. Allergies?"

She disguises her distaste with a twitch of her nose. "A potent tobacco."

"Zaun's own brand. Brightleaf."

"It lingers."

"Hmmm. Like bloodstains on a good suit."

"Have you much trouble with the latter?"

"I'd lead a blessed life indeed, if that qualified as trouble." Silco tips his head back, expelling a sharper stream of smoke. "Now where were we?"

"After the Day of Ash." Medarda slinks closer. Her fingertips trail along the railing until her hand nearly meets his own. "You were sent to Stillwater. What happened?"

"I served my penance. The guards at your prison are miracle workers. Truly. They change a man to his marrow." He removes the cigar, contemplating it with an idle roll of his knuckles. "When the rotting slop cores a hole through your gut, they slug it out of you in a river of puke. When the darkness closes in after lights-out, they keep you company in your cell. When the winter nibbles chilblains into your feet, they strip you naked and drag you outside to remember that life could be much, much chillier."

Medarda doesn't flinch. But her hand slips nervelessly off the railing.

"Afterward," Silco says. "I returned a reformed man. I wiped my hands clean. I put my nose to the grindstone. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps. All the things Fissurefolk do, to drag themselves from their natural state of undeservingness. So they may one day—a fortunate day!—look good, upstanding citizens like yourself in the eye."

She stares at him, disturbed or dubious, it is hard to tell. "Simple as that?"

"Simpler."

He tenders the cigar toward her. A pantomime of politeness—Care to try? She shakes her head.

"There remains a shadowy chapter in your life," she says. "I've heard only rumors."

"Oh?"

"Perhaps you'll confirm or deny them. Give me the proper… elucidation … to understand you as a man."

Silco's shrug is a shameless lure. "Whatever helps us see eye to eye."

Predictably, she pounces. "What about your eye?"

"Mine?"

She challenges him with a bold once-over across the dark disfigurement of his face, hidden beneath ashen layers of make-up. "You had a brother-in-arms. The cocky fist to your crafty tongue. You preached revolution from the pulpit. He pummeled revolution into the streets. Old mugshots and police reports mention your boyhood of shared misdeeds. They called him The Hound."

"Man's best friend."

"After your release, you had a falling out."

"All bark, no bite."

Medarda sidles closer. The heat of her body radiates through her gold-speckled gown. Silco takes in the spray of subtler gold on her cheekbones. She smells headily of hot-house hyacinths.

"They say," she whispers, "that he gouged out your eye. And you, his heart."

"Sick dogs deserve mercy."

"They say he left behind an orphan. A troubled girl."

"The Lanes are full of them."

"She was special." Her voice descends into a hush of intimacy. "You took her in. Kept her close amidst a campaign of terror."

"Raise a boy, raise terror at every turn. Raise a girl, and terror becomes you."

"You trained her for years. Not just to fight, but to do what you do."

"I taught her to survive. To never back down. To always win."

"And to unleash chaos on Piltover."

"Chaos is never unleashed," Silco says, their eyes locked from inches apart. "It surfaces wherever injustice takes root."

"And does she share your dream?"

"As she's shared far worse."

Silco's cigar glows red; a wisp of smoke curls from the side of his unscarred mouth. He thinks of Jinx, that night. The pale cleverness of her hands across Fishbones. The eye-searing blueness of her flying braids. The glow of Piltover's wreckage touching the curve of her tearstained cheek.

(We showed them, didn't we, Jinx?)

Victory cost dreams. Dreams cost blood. Blood cost love.

But what did the love of a father for his daughter cost?

He senses Medarda's deep-set scrutiny. The sun expands hazily behind the harbor's jagged escarpment. He glances off, smoke twirling from his untasted cigar. One careless hand meanders along the other's sleeve, smoothing the cuff so the barest half-inch of embroidered fabric shows. It seems like a self-soothing tic disguised as vanity.

Except it is just theater. Offering Medarda the illusion of power—then snatching it away.

In an eyeblink, he swivels.

"Shall we end on a cheerful note, or a bloody one?" he says.

"I—what?"

"Not to cut the reminiscence short, my dear. But the breadth of my life bores even me. The worst way to charm a man is to remind him how heavy his years weigh. And the best rule of a negotiation is to know when to stop belaboring."

He glides closer, Medarda sways back, and he glides closer still. Then—oh my!—she is snatching at the hem of her fabulously unfeasible gown to steer away from a puddle of dead seagull rotting on the cobblestones. Her dainty shoes skid. She barely keeps her balance. Her fingers flutter in the air, the fleeting impulse for a handhold.

Silco's cold fingers fold through hers. The grip is cocksure as a frigging in a Sumpside street-corner. She startles, he steadies her. They disengage with a mutual swiftness: affront on her part, amusement on his.

"Watch your step," he says. "Rough roads in Zaun."

Medarda squares her elegant shoulders. Her poise isn't gone. But it is off-center. Silco knows why. He is not acting according to her private script; he is not adhering to the rules of engagement.

Worse, he is no longer languishing. He is looming.

Bright fingers of sunlight poke through the smog to trace the harbor: all bullet-pocked scaffoldings and scorched ship hulls. In the intensifying glow, the ravages of war are irrefutable. Medarda's eyes pass over them, and Silco's scarred visage. A vein rises and falls in her throat. It seems to dawn on her that she's not drifted downstairs on silk slippers from her warm boudoir to her basement. She's entered a different society, with different rules.

A blind spot in the shadow of civilization.

Silco takes in her discomfort with relish. Dilettantes and despots—they both seek novelty for its own sake, a temporary rescue from their privileged bubble of boredom, which is the profoundest (the only) horror they must endure. They descend en masse to disaster zones. They gawp through prison bars at inmates on death-row like monkeys at the zoo. They size up the madmen in the padded cells of asylums like ghouls at a party séance. The reduce the victims' suffering to comedy and censure, cabaret and consumption.

Then they move on, while their leftovers are left to rot.

Medarda—prodigy of Piltover—is no different. She deigns her presence as a fragrant cloud of charity, with Zaun no better than dung under her shoe. She thinks to reopen the wounds of Silco's sad history, then wield her own attentions as a benevolent balm. His selfhood is an oyster she wants to crack open, to slurp up what's inside, leaving him an emptied husk that does her bidding.

Such sweet delusion.

Whatever she finds inside of Silco is enough to consume her entirely.

"I give you full credit," Silco says. "You blended record with hearsay most cleverly. The rest? She filled in for you."

"I'm not sure what—"

"Her. The girl staying with the Kirramans. Lapping up Piltover's kindness, in exchange for dirt on the Lanes." He flicks his cigar over the railing. "Well, every guttersnipe deserves a day in the sun. Just as Piltover deserves its nose rubbed in the dirt."

"I hardly think—"

"Ah, ah. No belaboring." He gives her a slithering stare-down. "Now listen closely, my dear. I enjoy your wit and your dimples. But I don't have time to play with you. What do you have in mind with this parley? Beyond purveying children's games?"

"I am purveying peace."

"Not payback?"

"One needn't describe it in such terms."

"A little of each, hm?"

"Or something longer-lasting." Keeping a smile in place, she closes the space between them. "Our nations needn't be at an impasse. We can help each other."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Silco says, though of course they both know better.

"It's quite simple. The girl under your charge stole something from us. Used it to tear down our city. We could demand her as tribute. One terrorist as recompense for months of mutual terror. But last time—" Her eyes shade a fraction. "—you esteemed the bargain too little."

"Talis demanded too much."

Too much for a deal struck too late. Jinx is born to blaze through Zaun's history as a miracle, not a martyr. Weighed on the cosmic scales, her crimes are barely a fraction to Piltover's crimes against Zaun. Their inhumanity, their indifference. Never a finger lifted; never a moment's mercy. In taking Jinx, did they expect Silco to show mercy in turn?

(I won't lose my child again.)

The strangling blackness returns to his chest. Pressure thick as drowning.

Quietly, Medarda says, "I think I understand."

"Oh?"

Something drains from her eyes: a gloss melting into gentleness. "A child's life, for any crime, is no even trade."

"You demanded it, all the same."

"It was a bargaining counter. But those, I find, are best suited to tangibles."

"So what is the new tangible in question?"

"The Hex gem. We would see it returned. In exchange—" her small hand rests on his forearm, "— Piltover will support Zaun."

"Once, you buried us under hostility. Now, you'd bind us through humility?"

"On the contrary. We will recognize Zaun as a new nation. We will help to rebuild it into an equal. You're at a vulnerable juncture. We can ease the transition through aid and access to our Gates. Establish a mutual prosperity between our citizens. A paradise—each in our own image."

Her gaze holds a magnetic glow of goodwill. Meanwhile, Silco feels the bullet click into place within the inner-chamber of his own skull. He gives her the first truly genuine smile that has stretched across his features in nearly three months. It isn't a pleasant smile.

"Your family," he says. "They hail from Noxus. Correct?"

Medarda nods, then blinks down at her hand on his arm. Through her fingertips she can feel it: the low-down vibrations of something monstrous uncoiling inside.

"What's it like?" Silco wonders softly. "Banishment for having a spine of watered silk instead of steel? Perhaps if you'd profited from your family's lessons, you'd have kept an eye to the horizon—instead of your coffer. Then again, Piltover has blinded itself with hubris for years. We are simply its rude awakening."

Medarda darkens and draws away, her eyes flashing.

Much better, Silco thinks.

He is too old—too damned rabid—to be led by his cock like a cunt-struck mongrel. He'd known from the beginning that she would choreograph the meeting on her terms, then offer a backhanded peace-deal like a benevolent mistress doling out scraps, while letting Zaun believe it was a banquet.

Zaun is done being Piltover's mongrel.

"It isn't cowardice," says Medarda, "to prevent more killing."

"My, aren't you the pristine pot to my tar-black kettle."

"What do you mean?"

"You had the temerity to regurgitate my life like a storybook. Yet you never noticed?" His accent carves itself into a cultured contempt that mimics hers to the letter. "My life is any Zaunite's life. My driver's, my lieutenant's, or my bootblack's. Piltover doesn't look us in the eye when it kills us. But it kills regardless—with dirty water, toxic air, gridlocked housing, rigged ballots, and Enforcer's bullets. Now you dare to offer us decolonization through political dependency?"

"Aren't you guilty of the same?" Medarda's gaze, which was golden gentleness a moment ago, is now a tigress' glower. "The Shimmer you've crippled the Undercity with. The terror you wield to keep them in line. The crimes that corrupt the very core of your shining vision."

"Two wrongs don't make a right, eh?"

"Nor good a pretext to do evil."

Silco smile becomes a mouthful of shark's teeth around a throatful of blood. "Ah, but what is evil? A game of semantics. Kick a man to death and you're a murderer. Enslave an entire nation and you're a conqueror." His good eyelid shades to a death-pall. "Surely, your mother taught you that lesson? I've met her a time or two; proselytizing for peace isn't her style."

Medarda's eyes flash brilliantly.

Silco enjoys the effect. Poised, she is attractive as an architectural edifice. You take a roving eyeful and move on with your life. Angry, she is erotically charged, and vulnerable as an exposed vein.

He can imagine how many men have dreamed of stripping away that lustrous façade to sink their teeth into the hot throb of tenderness beneath. He wonders how many more have imagined her as he can: on her elegant knees, her throat baring itself and her lips wet and distended to take what he drives inside.

"Pity," he murmurs. "It seems her lessons didn't stick. Personally, I'd pack you off to the trenches until you learned, and never forgot. You cannot create a perfect society with your eyes wide shut—while shit soils your feet. You want Paradise? Such things aren't built on lofty ideals. They are made in naked ambition, and war, and blood."

"Until there is nothing left."

She doesn't raise her voice. But the ferocity of her tone rips the words into a snarl.

Silco's polite smile becomes a lopsided rictus. Go on.

Medarda drags in a slow breath. Her anger, no longer held at a dignified distance, now suffuses her entire body like a sunlit aureole.

"I am trying," she says. "To protect both our interests." Her hands make supple curving motions in the air, describing a set of scales—or a pair of wedding rings. "We were once a unified nation. A marriage of equals. Now every moment Zaun stays separate from Piltover is moment of peril."

"Marriage? Do they beat and rape their spouses in Topside?"

She doesn't balk at the depthless hatred in his voice. Her expression is grave.

"Today, you celebrate independence from Piltover," she says. "Tomorrow is another story. A nation forged in war remains at war. The Undercity's loss will briefly unbalance Piltover. But we have the Hex Gates. The resources and international goodwill. We will recover. Zaun will not."

"Rather sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"I know that in destroying the Bridge, you have dealt yourselves the cruelest blow. The Council is already on the warpath for reparations. They will enforce sanctions. They will pressure our neighbors into doing the same. All of these are serious barriers to Zaun's growth. Remember—a newborn is most vulnerable in its first months of life."

"Now we've been demoted from battered spouse to newborn?"

She shakes her head, subtly seething. "Jeer your fill. But you are burying yourself in a hole."

"A hole has two ends."

"Isolation or Hell? Then the Fissures are doomed."

"Are they?" He tilts his head. "You destroyed our trucks, but not our depots. You burned our ships, but not our harbor. You stole our wealth, but not our mines. You've certainly not killed our potential. A population of multitalented, highly skilled and ruthless workers. Unlike Piltover, we eat, sleep and bleed innovation. You gave us no other choice. In time, we have the capacity to become a free trade zone."

Medarda's lip curls downward. "Perhaps so. But in the interim? You'll need more than schemes and Shimmer. More than your chem-barons' checkbooks. A nation needs roads, rails, flyovers, highways. It needs schools and hospitals. It needs a lynchpin of humanity. Not this den of wolves you seek to create."

"Wolves are loyal. I can't say the same for foxes."

Something in Medarda's face occludes. It is brief, but not beyond Silco's threshold of perception. On himself, such displays are farcical diversions. On her, he senses something different. The perfect mask of diplomacy dislodged by a moment's doubt.

Slowly, she says, "I'm asking you to reconsider."

"Fall in line, rather."

She shakes her head. Her mask is back in place, but so neutral that she seems to be effortfully clutching it.

Silco says, "You're taking a lot of risks, my dear. Some might argue that, with the blow we've dealt Piltover, things are irreparable between us. You should cut your losses. Cut us loose. Yet you refuse."

She smiles, but it doesn't sit right on her face. "We are the City of Progress and of Principle."

"Is that right? Or—"

"What?"

"Are you trying to prove something?" His tongue flirts absently around his mouth; a rake of incisors and chipped teeth. "Trying to earn someone's respect? Show them that diplomacy is the best recourse. The fox can outwit the worst of the wolves."

"What would you know of that?"

Her words are modulated but also fiercely wound. Her fingers trace the gold ring on her left hand—the Medarda crest. Silco takes it in, and knows he is on to something.

"I think I understand," he says. "If Piltover chose, they could defeat Zaun without bloodying their hands. Get Noxus involved, perhaps? They've a mighty army. They'd thrash us soundly. But what then? Piltover would be in Noxus' debt. In time, the City of Progress would be the City of Paupers—its funds drained and its potential decimated. Just like any Noxian colony. And should Demacia enter the picture? Well." He spreads his arms. "You'd start another Void War. All because we dared to shove your boot off our necks."

"It needn't go exactly as you describe."

"It needn't. But is the risk worth it?" His voice drops conspiratorially. "I'm told you've a taste for risk. But not for war. You're one of those decaffeinated Noxians. Conquest-free, low on bloodshed, with civilized traces of mercantilism. But scratch deeper beneath the surface, and your neurosis is based in guilt. You believe in taking responsibility. In showing mercy."

Caught between self-revelation and self-protection, Medarda scowls. His words have struck a nerve.

"In that case," Silco says, "I have a proposition."

"What?"

"Zaun will not return the Hex gem. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Under Piltover, we've already possessed so little. However—" He crooks a sharp-knuckled finger. "We will offer reparations. Safe passage to refugees; secure zones for diplomats. Mercy, in exchange for access to the Hex Gates."

Medarda tosses her bejeweled head in defiance. "Ludicrous! The Council will never accept."

"Would they prefer more bloodshed?"

"Now you threaten us?" She lets off a sweetly gilded laugh. "Zaun hasn't the manpower to lay siege to Piltover. Nor the weapons to sustain it. We would outlast you in a month's time."

"Or perhaps we'd ambush you from the inside." Silco bares his crooked teeth. "Remember, we are a den of wolves. You've starved us and suffocated us. But you've taught us to survive, in spite of yourselves. Piltover has a reputation to uphold as a beacon of fairness. Fairness doesn't factor into Zaun's vocabulary."

A hot silence grips the air. Silence like a strangulation.

Medarda struggles against its pull. "You are bluffing."

"Then call it."

"You'd sacrifice your people for pride?"

"You'd sacrifice yours for mercy?"

"War is never mercy! Curbing bloodshed is!"

"Well then."

Silco takes a step closer. Before she can recoil, he snatches her dark hands and brings them up to frame his pale neck. Lets her feel the beat of his pulse in the veins. Her wrists are satiny-hot in the callused cold of his grip. He feels the rapid thrum of her heartbeat in his fingertips.

Their eyes lock. The expression that skims Medarda's face is fleeting. But Silco sees something there. Shock, disgust. And fear that veers into a speechless subspecies of fascination. Like a nymph looking into the mouth of a deepsea monster, its jaws laid open, teeth glinting in the aquatic twilight. Her hands roving deeper inside.

"Show mercy," Silco whispers. "Curb the bloodshed."

Medarda sucks in a shaky breath. Her pupils are dilated around golden threads of iris. Their gazes stay fused in a frozen loop, two animals sizing each other up. But when Silco's good eye drops to Medarda's mouth, half-parted and inches from his, her paralysis breaks and she jerks away on a strange noise, equal parts choke and snarl.

"You—" she says.

"I, what?"

She suppresses the adrenalized tremor racing through her body. "You are intractable."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment." Her voice smooths over at the last word; a forcible repossession of self-control. "Eliminating you will not solve the crisis."

"Then what will?"

Medarda searches for something inside of herself, then shakes her head. Regret, refutation. Her eyes drop a few degrees to stare down at the graceful clasp of her own hands. The Noxian ring glimmers in the gloomy daylight.

"I make no guarantee," she says.

"Hmmm?"

She draws in a breath, then releases it steadily. "I make no guarantee that the Council will accept your proposal."

"Let them consider it."

"Letting them agree to our parley was a feat in itself."

A surreptitious smile edges Silco's lips. Hmm. A two-pronged goring in a lambskin sheath: appeal to his logic by reminding him of Zaun's precariousness; appeal to his emotion by claiming that she is in his corner and has already worked wonders on his behalf.

Well, she's good. He'll grant her that much.

"What do you suggest, then?" he asks.

She lifts her chin; a gentle summons. "A treaty."

"Entailing?"

"Peace."

"My dear." He starts to smile, then cuts it off with a warning stare. "Learn to be more explicit."

"Zaun's terms and Piltover's, merged into one. Zaun will keep the Hex gem. But we must have its surety that it will never be weaponized against us. Zaun will have access to the Hex Gates. But Piltover will have its just desserts through reparations. We will grant Zaunites amnesty for war crimes. In exchange, Zaun must host Piltovan journalists safety within its borders."

"You mean tattlers and spies."

"The price of freedom, First Chancellor."

"Or its worst impediment."

A corner of Medarda's lips curves. "Except Thyself may be/Thine Enemy—"

"Captivity is Consciousness," Silco says, deadpan. "So's Liberty."

Silence creeps like the coronal threads of sunlight through smog. Medarda blinks, then catches hold of herself.

"I confess, Chancellor, I had you somewhat typecast."

"Oh?"

"I didn't consider poetry to be your speed."

"A bit of poetry never hurts the shank end of a revolution."

"Then we are in accord?"

"I leave our future—" he says, mock-graciously, "—in your soft hands."

One of Medarda's brows spasms. Then she glances off, but not before Silco glimpses a private frown. As if she's taken his full measure, as surely as he's taken hers. She meets his eye again, and her face smooths itself, once more a study of serene sophistication.

"Thank you for attending the parley," she says. "First Chancellor of Zaun."

"A privilege, Councilor Medarda."

They shake hands. Their arms slide into synch, fingers interlocking. Two players after a satisfactory chess match.

Except, like before, Medarda holds onto his hand, and turns it over in both her own. Her smile holds no edge. Her eyes glow warmly: sunshine and honey.

"I'd like to make a small request."

"By all means."

"It will prove pivotal in convincing the Council of your good intentions." Her hands are a coaxing squeeze around his own. "It involves a citizen of Zaun."

"Anyone I know?"

"A mutual acquaintance, in fact."

A chill of premonition rises. Silco smiles, thinly, "Whom might it be?"

"The girl at the Kirraman's home. Violet."

Silco's expression snaps shut with a renewed charge of hostility. Suddenly he is all venom, as if his body is a siphon for the blackened ichor trapped within Zaun's core.

"What of her?" he hisses.

Medarda drops his hand as if singed. But her eyes stay glued to his, because the waters are chummed and the net is unfurled, and there he is: caught.

"She is a former citizen of Zaun," she says. "She asks to visit the Fissures."

"To see the corpses?"

"To see her sister."

"She has no sister."

"She does." Demurely, "Shall I be more explicit? Your daughter. Jinx."