And then I go and spoil it all
By saying somethin' stupid
Like: I love you
~ "Somethin' Stupid" – Frank Sinatra
The Eye of Zaun's morning begins in a twister of chaos—with himself at the nexus.
Five a.m. The buzzer of the alarm clock sounds on Silco's night stand. His brain surfaces out of a blackness that splits down its center in bright-blue. His eyes snap open. His muscles burn, a fire that suffuses his whole body. The call for movement. The mines have gnawed punctuality into his bones. Asleep, he is insensate as a corpse. Awake, he rouses to alertness in an eyeblink.
A biological clock from Hell—Vander called it.
Silco sits up in his sleeping flannels. Plucks off the moisturized pad wedged over his bad eye. On his nightstand clock, the buzzer sounds a second time. He hits it with a closed fist. Five seconds awake, and the burner under his temper is already climbing at a low simmer.
By the day's end, it will be a boil.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Silco encounters a stuffed rabbit under his foot. Scowling, he stoops to retrieve it. Déjà vu dopplers. Years of straightening up Jinx's clutter or stubbing his toes on her contraptions. Yet it holds a bite of humor, too.
The Eye of Zaun. Yet behind closed doors, he's no different from any father picking up after the spoor his careless child strews in her wake.
Twisting, Silco eyes the shape of said child nestled under the blankets. The tangled blue mop of her hair is impregnated with fuzz. Her face is mashed into the pillow, mouth open, eyelids moving beneath their closed lids. She looks adorably eleven-years-old. She sleeps like the dead.
Silco resists the urge to take her pulse.
She's begun sleeping undisturbed. No night terrors lately. No daytime tantrums, either. But she finds very little reason to wake at the appropriate bell. Silco supposes the impetus rests on one's duties for the day. The fewer duties, the less reasons to rise at a reasonable hour.
Ordinarily, idleness is Silco's bugbear. Jinx is the exception. His daughter has pushed herself to superhuman extremes to win Zaun. She is the nation's savior, and its ugliest casualty.
She's earned her rest.
Hitting the shower, Silco gives himself seven minutes for lathering and rising. Drying off, he goes to the large walk-in closet. Undressing for Silco is a nearly reptilian act of biomechanics: with every layer shed, he never loses the predatory persona. It simply acquires a sharper sheen of lewdness and license.
Dressing up is the opposite. Soothing that wild creature back into a cage of cool, articulate, well-spoken civility, until he inhabits control like a second skin.
His fingers stir through tailored sharkskin suits hung in transparent garment bags. Everything is lined in antiballistic fabric: the high couture of kevlar. Each garment sumptuously pressed and at the theatrical height of fashion that becomes nearly its somber parody. Spectacle is a weapon; style is a statement. Silco wields both in a disdainful display against convention.
A buttoned-up striptease.
Five-twenty. In the kitchen, Silco whips up breakfast with a practiced hand. Blood sausage and black coffee for him. Waffles with confetti sprinkles for Jinx. The latter, he leaves in a covered tray on the table, next to a note in his jagged script: Will be out and about today. Back by dinnertime. XOXO.
Six o' clock. He goes to check on Jinx a final time. Predictably, she has cycled through at least five other positions in his absence, ending up on her belly, arm dangling off the side of the bed. She stirs, almost waking when he smooths her hair, then subsides into mumbles.
"Sharks are like bunnies. Don't talk much."
In dreams, Jinx moonlights as a poetess.
Outside the suite, the blackguards snap off salutes. Silco imparts a one-handed signal: Watch Jinx carefully.
The surveillance is the closest compromise to privacy that Silco dares. Jinx's moods are stabilizing. She no longer needs his attendance every three hours. But her temper remains volatile. On a dime, she can flip from sweetness to savagery. In Silco's absence, the blackguards monitor her at intervals. If something is amiss, they'll raise the alarm. And if she suffers another episode? He'll return to a suite splattered in blood.
Neither scenario appeals.
But Jinx's safety is Zaun's survival. Silco will take no chances.
(I won't lose my child again.)
At headquarters, everyone can sense when the Eye is awake. His presence pulls what was loose implacably tight. Without warning, every clerk, courier, cutthroat and chem-baron is dragged into a stranglehold of centrifugal force. From the moment, Silco descends the elevator, the twister wields his will. In the boardroom, deals are cut with the same precision as throats. In the war-room, the softest commands are dropped like bombshells. On the streets, outbursts of violence are stomped out before the grim procession of sump-scrappers, slop-workers, and shop-keepers can drag on their long boots. In the shadows, blackguards deal with the stragglers the same way they deal with the rodents that outlive the traps and poisons.
There's a saying in the Undercity: Let no lips loosen and no threats slide.
A credo that Silco has made lifelong practice.
Nine-thirty. In his office, Silco sinks into his seat. Hard-backed, like he prefers. Softness of all kinds is his bugbear. So is wasted time. His schedule grinds with the same relentless rhythm as the Old Hungry. Trade talks with Bilgewater. A negotiation with Demacian merchants. An upcoming gala that doubles as a dogfight. A meeting with a Noxian warmason representing Jericho Swain.
At the window, the sky is a bowl of deepening green. Bombed-out buildings cut across the skyline. The masonry is being replaced, bell by bell, brick by brick. In the distance, there are strobelike flashes of welding. Construction cranes loom above the blight; backhoes scoop away rubble.
Zaun is worse for wear. But it burns with a survivor's spirit. It won't succumb to inertia.
Nor will progress.
Signing off papers, Silco's mind skates from point to point. A priority sequence of lowest to highest. Shimmer and Singed. Trade and exports. Security and threat. Piltover and Vi.
Jinx.
He trusts the Doctor's methodology but not his motives—least of all his growing interest in Jinx's reproductive capacity vis a vis Shimmer. Singed's surveillance must to be upped; his proximity to Jinx kept at a minimum.
The F12 project is faring smoothly. But suboptimal results on fresh vegetables must be rectified. Zaun's growth is dependent on a timetable.
Ditto for international trade.
Previously, Piltover collected the Kindred's share of the Undercity's revenues. By enacting heavy tax laws on local businesses, they'd made it illegal for most to operate without paying land rent, transit charges, manufacture tariffs, and a hundred other hurdles designed to disempower even the most driven.
Zaun's criminal underworld arose to bypass the arbitrary laws. Since then, it has become its own independent economy, keeping fistfuls of wealth within local hands. But now the economy stands shaky without Piltover's bulwark—and access to the Hex-Gates. Productivity is high; revenue is lagging. Zaun must gain a foothold within foreign markets via trade deals and exported goods.
In the first arena, the chem-barons best not drag their feet—unless they want their bodies dragged pulseless from the Pilt. For the latter, they'd better put their best foot forward and kindle bilateral agreements with foreign partners—lest he chop their legs off at the knees.
Zaun's security is another dilemma. Silco has the Hex-gem in his possession. Which means every weathercock and chancer wants a crack at it. Bilgewater's pirates are already making overtures. One bastard dared to propose an alliance of marriage and magic. Himself and Jinx wedded; their gangs united under a flag of swashbuckling sorcery.
The proposal got tossed overboard.
Noxus' warmasons were less tactful. They threatened a conflict so fatal that neither Zaun nor Silco would survive. They'd raze everything. Slit every throat and stake every heart. And take Silco's headstrong little witch as a trophy.
Silco bid them luck. The blackguards showed them the door.
To curb cataclysm and minimize vulnerability, Zaun must make itself known on Runeterra's stage. Not just as a nation, but as an entity unto its own. The gem is key to both. A powerful tool; a double-edged blade. It can secure lifelong power, or sow a century of havoc. Its use hinges upon who wields it. And it can't be wielded except by someone who understands it.
Someone with the gift to bring a nation to its knees.
Piltover is another headache. Medarda unfurls the Peace Treaty like a bull-fighter. Silco dangles the pen like a lure. So far, they have exchanged a dozen missives via pneumatic tube—the first ten dictated through their secretaries, and the last two handwritten. The tone is delicately probing: self-interest hidden under a glossy shell of gentility. Ironing out the Treaty's wrinkles, gilding the details to suit both parties... all of it requires the delicacy integral to success.
Especially with Vi in the mix.
Silco must tread carefully. Everyone and their grandmother brands Jinx as a jinx. Yet her sister damaged Silco's operation more utterly in two days than Jinx could in six years. Payback in the circumstances is imperative. For Zaun, and his own peace of mind. He'll take her out, and sleep better because of it.
But first he'll put her to use.
And Jinx…
By restless habit, Silco lights a cigar for his elevenses. He wants desperately for his child to be well again. To be better than before. Yet the black hole of pain in her heart cannot be healed by plans and plumbing lines, by Ionian fringed rugs and Shuriman calfskin boots, by exotica like crab bisque and meadow truffle, by bottled sparkling water and tanks of pure air. Even though these things are all real and attainable.
Even though he is endeavoring to make them permanent.
What he cannot change is Jinx's refusal to be part of Zaun's evolving milieu. It is as if she can no longer glimpse the dimensions of a bright future. As if happiness, once a tangible taste, is now a phantom beyond her mind's fingers.
So Silco doubles his efforts. Tries more tirelessly. Schemes more strategically.
He doesn't know what else to do.
Twelve o' clock. His lieutenants troop in. Lock, solid as titanium, declares that the last rubble is cleared from the Promenade. Ran, sleekly morbid as a blood-splattered vampire, confirms that the unnamed corpses have been cremated, Janna rest their souls. Dustin, jittering in an effluvium of cocaine and cologne, reports success in subduing the rioters. Sevika, stoically alert despite five hours of overseeing the city-wide cleanup, states that the blackguards are pursuing the Firelights through Zaun's southern tunnels.
Passably good news.
Silco radiates calm. He's always had the talent. Now it is doubly necessary for the restoration of order.
His crew are tired; tiredness a byword for shellshock. Four months, and the war's aftermath is creeping through their systems at different rates. Dustin has already cracked—an unhinged meltdown last week after he mistook a hooded stranger for an Enforcer. Ran followed two days later during a spar, feline grace giving way to a jag of uncontrollable vomiting. Lock has been blearily frozen, but downtime and a bevy of paid beauties are thawing him out.
Sevika is the team's mainstay. As one of life's implacable survivors, she wields stability like a physical skill, wrangling the troublemakers in line. But her dark eyes stay watchful. She is smart enough to know equilibrium top-down is necessary for the rest of Zaun to function.
She also knows Silco's private life is hell.
To reassure her, Silco confers responsibility. She's ready to demonstrate her competence; she needs him to demonstrate recognition of it. He orders a mourning ceremony in honor of their fallen comrades. A well-timed spectacle to serve as a stress valve. The others get stress valves too. Ran gets a brand-new apartment in the Promenade. Lock gets a private chat and a sizable line of credit at the saloons. Dustin gets an icy rebuke, but also the attention he craves.
It isn't enough to erase the burdens. But a pat on the back, sometimes literal, is necessary to offset the weight of the past. They need to be told that it is all right, that they've done the right things, that the corrosions of conscience are sacrifices for the nation.
Scars to be worn with pride.
Privately, pride is not what Silco feels for his scars. He has no patience for vainglorious rot. Scars don't matter. Suffering is transient. Thousands of Zaunites scarred themselves; thousands more suffered. What matters is Zaun, and its survival.
Except a nation is nothing without its people. Those who shape it, and infuse it with life.
(Like you, Jinx.)
Hope matters, even among killers. And a good businessman knows how to leverage it.
Sometimes Silco wishes he likewise had a listening ear. Vander. Six years gone, yet the need for his brother's validation lingers like a sickness. But Vander is dead, and Silco is resigned to bearing the burdens alone.
A solitary pinnacle is better than a shared pit.
Six o' clock. Sevika wanders by, a decaf refill in her hand. "Sir?"
"Hm?"
"Planning to join the crew for supper?"
"Not tonight."
She pours into his empty mug. Caffeine provokes a brazen devil in Silco. Part of Sevika's duty is to curb his intake before it stirs up trouble. "Should I have your meal sent up?"
"Do. Make sure it's not late."
Another bugbear. His supper is typically sparing: greens, soup, crawfish. Afterward, a bowl of apples as a palate cleanser. But he expects it served on the dot. Failure leads to firings. Not literal, mind you—but the line is thin. Chalk it up to a childhood sustained on starvation.
Sevika nods. Her mechanical fingers click a code against the jug handle: Want some company?
Impassive, Silco glances up. It's not that he isn't game for a leg-over. But knocking his schedule off-course will knock something loose inside him—calm dissolving into the heat of violence. Too much stress; too little sleep. The monster is primed to crack.
Tonight, he needs it sharp, not sanguinary.
He signs back, No.
Then: "Double-check the details for the Bilgewater gala. I want to separate their ambassador from his money quickly and definitively."
Well accustomed to his turn of mind, Sevika crooks a brow. "Got a circle dance to spin?"
An Undercity saying. It means: Planning a long con?
Silco nods, "Use the trade talks as a smokescreen. A business deal is ordinary enough. Once he's distracted, bring up the dogfight in passing. By the time he's laid the bet and witnessed the bloodbath, he'll forget all about negotiating."
Sevika's bland expression flickers into a nasty smile. "Yes, sir."
"Wrap up the meeting by nine. Afterward, your time is your own."
"Sure you don't need a hand here?"
Silco says, "No," and returns to work.
Sevika's exhale is resigned. When she leaves, Silco goes through the trade missives. At the floor-to-ceiling window, sunlight burns down to embers at the skyline. A layer of iridescent smog glows across the inky night.
He stays in late. Well past nine o'clock. Yet his body jitters in stillness. His nerves feel abraded from the new Shimmer strain. He keeps gnawing things—ice cubes, cigarettes, pencils. His decaf is tasteless, his bad eye buzzes and 'proforma' does not have six 'J's in it.
Enough.
He leaves the papers scattered on his desk and walks away. He needs to see Jinx.
The elevator ride feels an eternity. In the corridor, the blackguards snap to attention. Silco dismisses them and continues the rest of the way alone. As he nears the suite, he is astonished to hear rock music from a phonograph—manic drumbeats paired with a riffling guitar.
The back of his neck prickles. His boots accelerate their pace.
Rock music doesn't just trumpet a multitude of sins. It hides them. Bodies thrashing in the tub. Blood gurgling from a slit throat. A bullet lodging inside a temple.
His keys click into the lock. He opens the door to Jinx sprawled facedown in the parlor.
Fuck.
Silco's knife is in his boot. Yet he is disarmed, crossing in three strides to kneel beside Jinx. She is breathing softly, her lips parted to show the gap between her teeth. Her blue hair blitzes across the carpet. Paints and papers and tools are scattered around her. A butterfly-knife lays inches from her hand. In the kitchen, the kettle cools with a bitter waft of tea.
Silco's mind connects the dots. Jinx… was tinkering … brewed a cupful of tea… drifted off.
No doom. No dead daughter.
Silco exhales. There is a bloody-minded itch for a cigarette. But his eyes refuse to unpeel off Jinx.
She is bundled into her fuzzy pink-striped robe. Her face is stripped of eyeliner and lipstick, a puppyish fold of fat under her chin. At her temple, a pimple reddens the skin. She's prone to flare-ups, especially near that time of the month. Typically, Silco could expect a raid on his cosmetics cabinet, and conversations full of looping non sequiturs about life and death and ice cream.
Seventeen years old. But with her head angled ten degrees sideways, she still looks like a child.
Gods, what was Silco doing with life at her age? Seventeen. Already a man. He'd survived the mines. Pneumonia-related sepsis. A nasty bout of gonorrhea. He'd been neck-deep in tobacco smuggling. He'd killed a Patrolman. He'd been an inmate at Hölle Correctional Facility. He'd read the Grundriss enough times that the book's spine was cracked. He'd had a smart mouth and a bellyful of rage channeled into a snakelike gift for scams.
He'd had Vander.
Jinx's life feels different from his own. His was a crooked gash. Hers is full of wonderments: star-spangled and fast-swooping.
By seventeen, she's freed a nation.
Silco skims his knuckles across Jinx's hairline. His eyes fall on the pictures scattered around her. She's drawing again. A good sign, surely?
Curious, he leafs through the pages. The colors are unlike Jinx's multicolored riots. They hold a muted queasiness. The first is a girl's face coalescing out of polluted gray-blue water. Her half-lidded eyes seem at once angry and lost. The second drawing is easier to concretize. It is a bridge split in half, its edges jagged like the serrations on a bone saw. It is framed against an eerie blueness that could be twilight sky—or intense flame.
The last sketch is the most puzzling. Jinx, or a blue-haired sprite resembling Jinx. Except her braids are missing. She sits cross-legged in a red wheelbarrow, her arms spread, as if to fly. Around her are a jumble of bewildering shapes. A mop-headed doll with goggles. A lanky stick figure with spiked hair. A pink blob that resembles a bunny. The space around them is haloed in violent red slashes.
The Jinx-figure's mouth is open in a laugh. Or a scream.
Something spasms in Silco's chest. Abruptly, he could scream too. He could place his head by Jinx's feet, a supplicant for forgiveness.
"Mrrrrp."
Jinx's eyes flutter open.
Silco drops the drawings. "Are you all right?"
"Uh-huh."
Jinx curls upright, yawning like a cat.
"What were you doing on the floor?" he asks.
"Just stuff."
Her eyes are shaded. She picks up the butterfly-knife, fondling it almost defensively. Silco tracks her hand. Knives are more his thing than Jinx's, unless she's got no bombs to fling. For taking the piss, for boring her, for standing too close. For no reason at all.
The handle holds a flared metal strip like a shark's fin. The sheath is doodled with red teeth curved into a grin.
Neutrally, Silco says, "You made this?"
She shrugs awkwardly. "There were a coupla scraps lying around."
"New friend?"
She shakes her head.
"What then?"
"A gift." She goes for casualness. But the shell is friable. "For you."
Something splatters inside Silco's chest. A Rorschach gunblast of gratitude.
He reaches for the knife. Jinx jerks it away. At his bewildered look, she says, "It's not done yet." She emits a sound that is too hollow to be a laugh. "If you'll still want it later, anyway."
Silco reaches out. Not for the knife. His hand finds Jinx's, fingers threading together.
He says, "Of course I will."
She smiles, a tremulous reflex that becomes real.
In the background, the intercom buzzes. Jinx jerks; Silco stifles a curse. Rising, he goes to the buzzer. Jinx likewise stands, hands jammed in the pockets of her robe, and wanders away. It feels a precursor of loss so poignant that Silco nearly pulls out a pistol to shoot the intercom. Pressure pincers him from all sides. The sense that however much he finesses a winning hand for Zaun, where Jinx is concerned, every hand is dealt wrong.
Then his fingers are flicking the switch. The hushed voice of his secretary crackles.
"Sir? We've received a message from Piltover via pneumatic tube."
"From whom?"
"Counsellor Medarda."
"I'll look it over later."
"Sir... she's requested a reply asap."
Temper climbs Silco's spine. Its only evidence is the edge cutting into his voice, cold as a garotte. "Do you work on Medarda's coin, or mine?"
The secretary falls silent.
"Don't disturb me again."
"Yes, sir." A beat. "Should I send your nightcap—" your whore "—to the Laguna Lounge?"
From the phonograph, jazz warbles a familiar song: I know I stand in line until you think you have the time…
Once, Silco might've tetchily told Jinx to turn it down. Except Jinx is in the parlor, spinning on tiptoe. Her mercurial blue mane sways in time with her movements. Her eyes are closed and her lips are moving. Silco isn't sure whether she's singing, or in a seance with her ghosts.
He says, "Never mind the nightcap," and unplugs the intercom.
Shrugging off his coat, Silco tosses it across an armchair. Then he crosses over to Jinx. She still has her eyes closed. The energy around her is a bottled-up fizz. Silco isn't sure if it will uncork into mania, or drain into emptiness. He approaches her sideways, eyes measuring.
Jinx's hand shoots out, catching a fistful of his sleeve.
"Daaaance."
Her eyes open. The pink irises disorient him every time. Her eyes used to be so blue. Silco's own are blue, but hers were the quintessence of the color. It delighted him every time he looked at her. Like glimpsing drops of the river where you least expected it.
Now the river has bled away. Only an unnatural crackling fire remains.
"I wanna dance," Jinx says, gripping his sleeve in her strong fingers.
"No dancing."
"Why not?" Her lip curls sullenly. "You'll be gone again soon. Busy as a bee lately. Your intercom's always going bzz bzz bzz."
The word busy drags with loneliness, sadness, resentment.
And, for Silco: guilt.
He says, "I won't be."
"Huh?"
"My schedule is clear for the rest of the night." He smiles. "Do you want eel pie? I'll cook."
Jinx lights up like a birthday candle. A look so impossibly childlike and loaded with déjà vu that he nearly kicks himself for not suggesting it sooner.
Being busy is no excuse.
Pre-Jinx, Silco seldom cooked, and wasn't the least disadvantaged for it. Typically, he'd send someone from his crew to Jericho's to fetch a carton of blackened squid. He'd never paid attention to the quality of his meals, either. It was always a repetitious conveyance of mouthfuls until the time was up.
That changed after he met Jinx. Take-out was not in-tune with a growing girl's appetite. Jinx needed to be fully fueled in the morning and topped off every three hours to keep her engine of ingenuity running. A cupful of coffee and a plateful of blood sausage proved unequal to the challenge—"Ewwww! What's this ick?!" Likewise, his lunch of peas and mash and dinner of boiled mutton evoked expressions of utter horror balanced with pity. Once, she'd taken him aside, and asked sotto voce, "D'you have a sad tummy? You can tell me. It's okay."
She wasn't off the mark.
Now, Silco recognizes the indifference as part and parcel of a dearth of small pleasures. His life, pre-Jinx, was a chessgame of cold stratagems, the senses nearly excluded.
Living with a child changed that.
Jinx changed that.
Despite the damage sustained by her psyche, she never lost her wonderment for small things. An inventor's mind, Silco reasons, is all about small things. Everything in the natural and unnatural world is held together by a quicksilver web of quantum associations. The attitude carried over to food.
Before, Silco had never spent much time in a kitchen. His working-class roots also dictated that the meals leaping from his hand be down-to-earth, not fanciful.
Jinx was all about the fanciful.
All at once Silco's diet was revolutionized: sizzling slabs of beefburger, a fluffy mousse of deviled eggs, confetti-dusted trays of pancakes, triple tier sandwiches with slathers of melted marshmallow. He cooked her healthy nosh too—obviously—but with enough fatty bribes to prevent rebellion. Most of the ingredients were smuggled from Topside. There was a sly satisfaction in that—and in watching Jinx grow strong off their stolen goods.
The fruit and grain and vegetables that should've been hers by right.
Neither of them had eaten so well in a long time. Silco knows—from his old relationship with Nandi—that once a man becomes acclimated to home-cooked meals, all hope is lost.
Jinx catches his hand in both her own, and tugs. "Can we have cupcakes too?"
"At this hour?"
She smiles winningly. "It's always cupcake hour."
"I'll make six. No more."
"Awww."
"But you can lick the bowl after."
Her secret grin says: Sucker. Silco knows he's been played. He doesn't care. Let her have her little victories. She deserves them.
She deserves everything.
In the kitchen, he assembles the ingredients with a practiced efficiency. Everything smells of bread and parsley, and he is touched by an abnormal sense of normalcy. Jinx pads in and out of his periphery. Sometimes rummaging through the stack of vinyls near the phonograph. Sometimes retracing her steps to the parlor to tinker with the knife. Sometimes popping up at his elbow with requests: "Can the cupcakes have icing?" "We've a ration on cream."—"If I eat those old mushrooms, would I mutate?" "Just with botulism."—"Can you make it so the eels' heads stick outta the pie crust? Like they're drowning?" "No, you little ghoul."
And etcetera.
Usually, Silco enlists her to be more useful. Mixing the batter, setting the table etc. But every scrap of brattiness fills a void inside his ribcage. Not a return to a happier status quo—happy only in retrospect—but a familiarity shaped by strangeness. The past few days, he'd sensed Jinx walking on tenterhooks. Tonight, she seems ready to push limits.
Testing whether he'll yield? Or explode?
(Oh, Jinx.)
(You ought to know me better.)
The aroma of baking bittersweetly spreads. They sit at the counter, the stools tilted so they are companionably knee-to-knee. Jinx presents the finished butterfly-knife like a game-show prize. She points out the features: a secret compartment for poisons, a hollow in the handle for flashbangs, a trio of clip holes for chains. She spins it clockwise between her dexterous fingers before turning it over to Silco. He whirls it effortlessly counterclockwise, then sheaths it with a half-smile.
He'll carry the gift around everywhere, and look for the narrowest excuse to gut someone with it.
Later, Jinx gorges on three slices of eel pie and makes short work of all the cupcakes. Silco eats one slice and chases every other bite with iced sips of his nighttime brandy. His is, as ever, more interested in watching Jinx than in anything on his plate. She's always had an admirably fierce appetite; much like him as a boy. Watching her gorge and grow strong is its own nourishment.
Sensing his scrutiny, Jinx giggles. "What?"
"Nothing. How's the pie?"
"I like it." A tickled moue. "Guess you do too. You don't usually eat so late, Mister Brandy-for-Bedtime."
"My stomach thinks my throat's cut."
A favorite saying of Vander's. It means: I'm ravenous.
It earns Jinx's standard response. Clutching her neck with both hands, she makes high-pitched choking sounds. Silco's lips twitch. His body aches with the sloughing-off of tension. A state only possible with Jinx.
He knows her chipper phase may not survive the night. But the gleam of sameness in her eyes forebodes better times. For him, and Zaun. Silco's mind races with plans on the railroad of progress, a locomotive speeding out of a blackened tunnel. But Jinx is necessary to reach the destination. He needs her creative spark to fuel his own.
Needs her—home, and by his side.
Jinx glances at him. "You're all thunderstormy."
"Hm?"
Her fingertip flicks at his unscarred brow. "What'cha thinking?"
"Just glad you're on your feet."
He thumbs off the crumbs on her chin. A habit of affection at contrast with its rarity.
Jinx's smile is little-girl sweet. She's tactile, deep down. They both are. It's how they acquaint themselves with things. And yet Silco can't remember the last time he'd caressed her on impulse. Years now, by his own choice. In the early days, he'd let her cling like a limpet. But in the intervening time, he'd begun handling her more sparingly. From gathering her close to merely squeezing her shoulder, or loosening the meshwork of their fingers in favor of letting her twine her arm through his.
She was maturing into a young woman. With it came with a modicum of reserve.
Jinx—in Jinxian fashion—missed the memo. She grew cuddlier, took liberties. First with Silco, then upon his terse rebuffs, with others in the crew. In anyone else, it would've been an act of rebellion. In Jinx, Silco sensed a child's innocent need for connection. Ordinarily, he'd ascribe to her antics the same immersion theory as in other arenas of Jinx-rearing. Let her experiment. Let her make mistakes. Let her learn.
Except this was the Undercity.
Threats lurked at every corner. For a growing girl, mistakes could be fatal.
By nature, Silco is possessive. With Jinx, the possessiveness grew teeth. Biting whoever came close, and biting hard. By Jinx's thirteenth year, the punters were already lining up. Street toughs with seedy swaggers. Chem-barons licking their dirty lips. Hustlers holding their crotches as if caging their erections. All of them wanting a taste of Silco's shiniest prodigy.
His child.
The Lanes have a hierarchy. So does Nature. What sucker paws a predator's pup and expects to survive?
At the Drop, Silco routinely kept to the VIP lounge, while Jinx pinballed gleefully across the dancefloor. He'd watch, cloaked in shadow, for any fool who gravitated too close. Their shock at getting snapped up—then snapped in half—by his crew was a rousing aperitif. But the real feasting came afterward. He'd ordered one chem-punk's hands chopped off after he'd copped a feel. He'd had a peeping-tom's eyeballs plucked from his skull after he'd 'accidentally' stumbled on Jinx in the private bath-house at Entresol. Another bitch got embers crammed down her shrieking mouth after she'd tried kissing Jinx—intercepted only after Sevika shot her elbow up and her lips smashed into the knob.
Teaching the uncouth a lesson in respect. Tops the list of Best Fatherly Experiences.
The river full of ragdolling bodies afterward.
Jinx didn't need his cosseting. The girl was deadly as dynamite. He remembers how he'd given her a somber, discursive lecture on safe sex—and its thousand unsafe parallels. She'd guffawed, then asked to learn bare-handed combat. Trapped alone with a stranger, she'd know exactly how to disarm him. How to dislocate his kneecaps. How to crack his spine.
Overkill? Silco begs to differ. The Undercity's streets weren't kind. And pretty girls were perennial prey for Enforcers. Jinx needed to protect herself—not just against the usual scum but from predators higher up the food chain. It was Silco's responsibility to show her how.
Fatherhood is like warfare. One's territory must be defended in blood.
Then. Now. Always.
Equably, Silco finishes his pie.
"Sooooo," Jinx says, faux-casual, "Your schedule's clear, huh?"
"Hm."
"All's well in our brand-new Zaun?"
A complicated subject. But with Jinx, Silco can improvise from his heart. "We're finding our feet. Businesses are reopening. Trade talks are ongoing with Bilgewater and Ionia. We've made headway in construction for a water treatment plant at Entresol. Another is in the works at Sump-level. They're also drafting an outline for electricity substations to combat the unseasonable heatwave."
"Whole lotta technical stuff."
Silco shrugs. "It's the cost of business. But—"
"What?"
"I'd like a second opinion." His good eye fixes on hers. "Yours."
Jinx gives the barest wince.
Gentler, Silco says, "We could go for a drive through the city. Just us."
"Go where?"
"Anywhere you fancy. Afterward, we'll stop by Jericho's."
"Jerry's still kickin'?"
"Jericho would survive the apocalypse."
Yesterday, after making the Sumpside rounds with the crew, Silco had exchanged token pleasantries with him. Same as ever; all razor teeth and stubbly chin. He'd looked tired though. Well, everyone was tired. The war etc. But his seafood special was savory as ever.
Jinx's expression downshifts. She's remembering all the things she's missing, cooped up in the suite. But beneath her restlessness sits something haunted. Too many memories, and not all are pleasant. Not all of them are even memories. Some remain here and now.
Like Vi. Like him.
Silco says, "Whenever you're ready, child."
Jinx shakes her head. A clammy silence unrolls between them like a sheet over a corpse. She mumbles, "I know…"
"What?"
"I know… I haven't been pulling my weight." She takes a nervy breath, as if crossing a point of no return. "We had all these plans. For—for this thing of ours. I promised to be useful. With the rebuilding and inventing and—"
"You don't have to build anything," Silco says, with a roughness that grates dangerously close to anger.
She eyes him warily. "What?"
"Things are being handled. It's not an issue."
"I don't get it."
"You've devoted years to our cause. Now I want you to devote time elsewhere. The big picture, not the cogs."
Her body resumes its high-intensity jitter. "D'you n-not want me jinxing things?"
"Not that at all."
"You've always hated slackers."
"You're not a slacker," he retorts, "You're—"
A spiel is on the tip of his tongue. Except what are spiels in Silco's mouth? Well-lubricated fictions to finesse a result. He authors his entire damn life and scripts it. Nothing leaves his mouth without being assessed for the outcome it will yield.
Jinx deserves the truth.
Gently, Silco takes her hand in both of his own. It is balled into a tiny fist. In the charged lines of her body, he sees all the scenarios if Jinx had never come to him. All the roads untraveled, twisting into a horror-story with the same dismal end: Jinx as a Shimmer addict sprawled in a ditch, Jinx as a Firelight perforated by his crew's gunfire, Jinx as a mundane casualty in Babette's brothel.
Instead—tragedy of tragedies and best possible outcome—Silco found her first. Found her, so she stayed his to keep.
And now?
Safekeep.
"My lovely…"
"Wh-what?"
He lets off a ragged exhale. "I can't fault you for doubting me. I should have made it known before. But it's a mistake I won't make twice." He squeezes Jinx's hand. "I know you want to be useful. To share your gifts. It's why you push yourself to such extremes. It's what I respect about you. But your usefulness is not your worth, Jinx. You're my daughter. I love you as you are."
Jinx stares. Her lips waver apart. She seems utterly unbalanced.
"You—you—?"
"I love you," Silco repeats, low but steady. "Forgive me for not saying it sooner. You deserve to hear it. You deserved it every day—wearing blood for me; fighting battles for me. You deserved it without blood or battles or anything to at all. Doubt everything under the Grey. But not that. Do you understand, Jinx?"
There is no answer. Only a long moment of quiet. Jinx seems to have trouble decoding the words.
"Love." A hitching swallow. "Me."
"Yes."
She shivers, tears glittering in contrails down her face. Silco senses her impulse to break loose. To slap down the fact as falsehood. Liar Liar Liar. Her worst wound; her ugliest trigger. Sometimes he wonders if that is how she saw the reality of everything between them for six years.
"You love me." Her eyes glow with inhuman intensity. "Even if I'm like this?"
(You're like this because of my mistakes. But you're not a mistake, Jinx.)
(Far from it.)
The words nearly run out of the corners of his lips like blood. He holds them back.
"This way or that," he says. "You're still Jinx. Just be Jinx."
Her fingers tremble in his. She whispers: "I'm not…"
"What?"
"I'm not sure who Jinx is anymore."
Silco's hand drops from hers—a shocked reflex. Her words fill his skull in blinding little pops. Not bombshells but snapshots of randomness that his mind rearranges into a pattern of understanding. Her unkempt hair. Her spaciness. Her isolation. It all connects to a possibility he'd not fully considered. A divided mind; a divided self.
Silco takes a breath. Steady. He must be steady. So much depends on him. So much depends on Jinx.
Perhaps… too much.
Taking her chin, he lifts it so their eyes meet. "We'll figure it out, child. Meantime, don't worry about it. Or about anything. I just need you where you belong."
"Belong?"
"In Zaun. Where else?"
Jinx's lip quivers. Without warning, she pounces into his arms. Silco catches her, his cheek fitting against the curve of her head. His throat tightens with an inward anguish. It doesn't feel like their embrace outside the factory. Nor does it feel like their talk weeks ago, in her room. She feels sturdier, and not just because of the Shimmer in her veins. Like something in her body is loosening of its recent skittishness.
Remembering its old flow—or learning a new one.
Like Zaun.
Jinx snuffles, "D'you mean it?"
"Mean what?"
"You keep saying I'm your daughter?"
Silco loosens his hold to regard her. "Shouldn't I?"
"You never did before."
No, he didn't. And yet he remembers nights of descending to her workshop, to find Jinx dozing on her work-table, then carrying her back upstairs wrapped around him like a little monkey. She's too old for babying, Sevika always grumbled. And yet Jinx felt so small in his arms. It was nothing to pick her up. Her body was a tiny power plant, kicking off such life that the tiredness melted from his bones.
Father was never a word he'd applied to himself. Even now, it doesn't come as a revelation. More as a fact that has always lain beneath bloodied waters. Hidden in plain sight.
The night at the Bridge burnt the pretenses away. Fire purifies everything.
Jinx stays nestled close. Her left foot jiggles, fingers plucking at a fluorescent band-aid on her shin. A cut from last week's altercation with the blackguards. It peels off to disclose smooth skin. She heals up so fast now. But the mind has its own tricks for healing or hurting itself. Differentiating between the two will take Jinx time.
Time Silco can afford to give her.
He says, "Tomorrow..."
"What?"
"I will make it official."
"Official?"
Silco hefts the knife she's made for him. Flips it idly between his fingers.
"I appreciate this gift," he says. "I appreciate all the gifts you give me."
"Um... thanks?"
"But a gift is a private thing. Family is not. Ours will be in Zaun's civic records."
The expression on Jinx's face is heartbreaking. A stare of incredulity melting into equally incredulous hope.
"You mean," she says, "with paperwork and everything? Like the Pilties do it?"
"I don't give a damn how Pilties do it."
Except where it concerns sovereign legality. Piltover will have trouble wresting Jinx away if the Peace Treaty goes into effect. As his official heir, she'll be a citizen of Zaun—not a ward of Piltover. Not theirs to take. Or Vi's. They'll try anyway. But Silco is ready to cover each contingency.
To fight tooth and claw.
For now, he rises, spilling Jinx gently to her feet. She doesn't detach, but nestles closer. No dancing, he'd said. And yet he is letting her turn him in a circle to the music, their feet instinctively keeping pace with the melody, and each other.
Another small pleasure Jinx restored to his life. In the early days, dancing began as a way to get her comfortable with her body. Trade clumsiness for grace. Silco still remembers her, eleven years old and standing on his insteps, gripping his hands as he spun her around the room to jazz classics.
But as Jinx grew older, it became an impromptu ritual.
He's not danced in a long time. Has forgotten the simplicity of it, movement that doesn't hinge on violence. Yet violence was a longtime partner of Undercity dances—sometimes its muse, other times its catalyst. Most styles were born as a means of self-expression—an uninhibited celebration of the body where all else was risk. Girls wined in eellike defiance; boys spun like daggers at the kill. A rapid tempo, fast footwork, plenty of improv—a summation of Zaunite life.
The Sumpside Waltz, they called it.
In Piltover, the style was dubbed indecent. Its display was banned in dance parlors. The press took up a moralizing cudgel: "A dance best confined to the harlots and hedonists on the road to Perdition." Morally, Topsiders were an odd contradiction. Laissez-aller in terms of glorifying the body, prudish in their deliberate ignorance of its base use. Their dances were the same: silhouettes marooned at the center of lavish costumes and elaborate steps, like a children's game of ring-around-the-rosy.
Zaun's riposte?
Ashes, ashes; they all fall down.
Now, Silco lets himself go. Playfully swoops Jinx from one end of the parlor to the other. They mix and match different moves. The shimmy, the slide, the swing. Jinx is so delightfully light-toed. She doesn't dance so much as float a half-inch above the ground. Her ribboning giggles twine around him; Silco feels at risk of serenity.
A sudden rage grates his ribcage. Gods, why can't Piltover let him have this? Why can't her hellbitch sister? What does it boil down to—when you strip away the politics, the precautions, the pretenses?
Just this.
Taking his child from his arms.
Jinx rests her head against his chest, "Your heart's wonky."
"What—?"
"Your heartbeat." She taps her fingers—bare of candy-colored gloss—against his ribs. "It's all thumpity-thump."
Silco draws a breath, and himself, into the usual implacable calm. "It's a new Shimmer strain."
"Who's been dosing your eye?"
"The Doctor."
A spasm goes through Jinx. She jerks away.
Reflexively, Silco's arms move to regain the closeness. Then he understands. That night, he'd been desperate for Singed to save Jinx's life. But for Jinx, it wasn't a nick-of-time rescue. It was an assault of her mind and body. A transformation without consent, and with agonizing force.
Bodies aren't built to be thus desecrated. A father, confronted by his child's alteration to the inhuman, should let them go. A mercy. Isn't that what Singed called it? The question mirrors into a dozen distortions. Would it have been a mercy to kill the girl in the alley six years ago? Never take her under his wing, and turn her feral with her own aptitude for bloodshed? Was it a mercy to let her die with Vander and her siblings, and spend the rest of his jinxless days maneuvering in the darkness?
Perhaps.
Except Silco isn't built for mercy. He'd made his choice.
And will pay the cost.
He murmurs, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"'Bout what?"
"The night on the Bridge. Or after?"
Jinx's spasm becomes a paroxysm. She twists, arms folded across her chest, like her body is knotting up. A defensive pose Silco knows too well.
"Why—?" she begins.
"What?"
She drags in a jittery breath. "Why'd you do it? Why'd you let him do it?"
Remorse is an obsolete emotion for Silco. Yet something gnaws his chest. It is an act of will to meet Jinx's eyes. "To save you. To bring you home." He swallows. "It was all my mind could focus on. What little was left that night."
The pink intensity of Jinx's eyes makes the rims of his own sting. She whispers, "I saw things."
"What things?"
"Things. On the table. And before." She gusts out a sigh. "The night you took me to the Pilt to drown Powder, I saw something. I saw me, but... different. It was a different I'd felt before. After V-Vi left me, I mean. It kept creeping on me. Growing on me. I ignored it. I buried it down deep. That night in the water, I got my first taste. Something... free. Free to do what she wanted. To be what she wanted. But when I was there, strapped to the Doctor's table, I saw them. Vi and that Enforcer girl. Trying to rip that new part of me to pieces. Trying to unmake me. The Doctor cut me up and shoved in lots of needles. I was in pieces at the end, too. Not in literal pieces, but the pieces were trapped inside my body, kinda like gears gone to rust but the framework's still intact, y'know? I remember screaming..."
She trails off, her eyes glazed. Silco meets her stare steadily, with only the smallest swell of nausea.
"Then the war started, and the screaming stopped. For a little bit. I made Topside scream instead. I shot the Enforcers down. I was surrounded by bodies. I—I was one of 'em. A dead body trapped in a live one. Or maybe the other way around. I was seeing through this hole inside myself. Lying at this pit at the bottom of the river. There were faces on the other side. They kept calling to me from the surface. Telling me to die... or change."
"And do you feel changed?"
It isn't the question Silco should ask. Yet it is the only one he can think of.
Jinx seems brought up short by this. Her faraway expression fractures. "Can you change—like colors change? 'Cause I don't think I have any left. The colors went away with the Bridge. It's all black and I can't see my way clear of it. There's no Jinx anymore. There's nothing; I'm no one. But now you're saying Jinx is your daughter and you love her, 'cept you're always lookin' at her like a booby prize that's gone to the wrong person and—and—I'm talking Mylo will you SHUT UP?"
Seizing the nearest object within reach, Jinx hurls a lamp on the bureau against the wall. It shatters with a choir of shrill tinkling.
Silco's palms come up in a steadying gesture. "Jinx—"
Her hands ball into fists. Dropping on her wobbling knees, she drums them against her skull. "Shut up! Just shut up! You'd think with all the broken bits rattling around un-Jinx's brain, they'd let up. But nooooooo! Gotta get their two cogs in. And everything else!" She focuses on Silco, and like something melting at a high flame, her fury gives way to pleading. "You said we'd show them! I did! I showed 'em all! But they still won't stop! They still—"
Her stricken words give way to sobs.
"Jinx."
He reaches out. She jerks off his gentling hand, crumpling into a corner. Silco kneels too, giving her space. The urge to gather her in is excruciating. Instead, he speaks in the same lulling whisper from the early days. Leading Jinx's mind out of downspiral and into truth.
His truth—and hopefully hers.
"You've had a terrible journey. But it's finished."
"I'm finished."
"Ssh. I know finished. I know it like the back of my hand. That's not you. It never will be."
She squeezes her eyes shut. "I'm dead. Jinx is."
Silco does reach out now. The cradle of his palm fits to Jinx's wet-streaked cheek. Her eyes are drowning with Shimmer tears and she won't look at him. But she doesn't jerk away either. For a moment Silco does nothing but touch her, small caresses to her hair and face. Her sobs cut through him like razors.
Quietly, he says, "If you can't find Jinx inside yourself, let it be. Someone new will take her place."
"She won't be what you want."
"Let me be the judge of that."
"You'll leave me. Like Vi. Like everyone else!"
"I won't." His tone holds the dead certainty of a threat. "I will always be there. No matter what, you're safe with me."
"You aren't safe."
The double-meaning is blatant. A grim smile stirs behind Silco's face.
"Nothing is safe," he says. "But you can always be sure about me."
"You lied before. What if you're lying now?"
Silco starts to argue, then stops. Had he lied to her? Yes and no. He'd not lied that Vi was dead. He'd truly believed she was. What he'd done was lie by omission. Never told Jinx that Vi was dead, because he'd ordered Marcus to make it so. Now he must lie again, by shielding Jinx from his negotiations with Piltover. His plans for Vi. He has to—because truth or lies are beside the point.
There is only Jinx. What he can do for her, versus what he can't.
(I won't lose my child again.)
He whispers, "Will you give me a second chance?"
"Wh-what?"
Silco draws back, so he is no longer touching her. "I mean... I'd like us to try again. Have a fresh start. No misgivings between us. Or... Gods, how do I put this? I want us to be able to rely on each other. With our troubles or anything else. Like family ought to. Does that make sense?"
Jinx's sobs hiccup into slowness.
"I know you're afraid. But it's all going to work out. Trust me."
She swallows.
"Do you, Jinx? Do you trust me?"
Jinx bites her lower-lip.
The seconds pass. Silco's heart skips once, sharply, with the gutting edge of the unknown. Fear. He forces himself to breathe, and meet his daughter's eyes.
"Child, do you—?"
She stares.
"Do you want to leave?"
A full-body shudder takes Jinx. "No! No no no no…"
"Tell the truth. I won't be angry."
Jinx shakes her head. Her answer comes from someplace deep inside, as if she is feeling her way through the dark. "If I left, I think—all that nothing in me would rip itself to pieces. Hurt whatever it wanted. Me. You. Everyone. But if I stay…" She brings up a hand to touch his face, thumb tracing his scarred cheekbone. "If I stay with you, nothing matters. Not the voices. Not Vi. It's all quiet. A safe place."
"I thought I wasn't safe?"
"You're safe like I am. Your heart's wonky." Her mouth crumples. "So's mine."
"Family, after all."
Jinx breathes shakily, and nods.
"There's only the family you have right now," Silco whispers. "That's all that matters. All we need."
"I need…"
"Hm?"
Jinx's voice descends to a whisper. "I need time. Until I can be… elsewise."
"Elsewise?"
"Someone. Anyone." Her sigh runs ragged. "I need to rest."
Gently, Silco gathers her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. "Like this?"
Jinx shivers. Then her arms encompass him. Squeezing hard.
"No," she whispers, and doesn't let go.
Jinx sleeps.
Silco stays awake. His body is an insouciant slouch in the armchair. But his senses are leashed to Jinx. No sedatives tonight. The crying has done its job, leaving his child wrung-out. Burrowing under the covers, she'd drifted off in fifteen seconds. Tears still spiderweb her cheeks.
Silco hopes her night terrors won't resume. It has been weeks since the last. A turn for the better—though he is now vigilant for the worst.
(The worst?)
(Why not look in the mirror?)
Next to his bed, Silco keeps a stack of Psychicker periodicals. He'd begun reading them since Jinx shot into his life. He despised the Piltovan school, led by that troll Freud. His work was refreshingly blunt, but he reduced the psyche to tissuey layers soaked with wet dreams of incest and cocks and cigars.
The Demacian branch was more palatable. The psyche was a gemstone of facets, in degrees of light and dark.
Just like Jinx.
Her earlier outburst hadn't unnerved Silco. It was overdue. He's known for years Jinx is capable of painfully convoluted understandings of herself. Of reality. These convolutions led her to outbursts of both random or premeditated violence. Under his tutelage, she'd learnt to wield them as weapons. Unpredictability sparks terror; terror feeds power. Jinx deserved empowerment.
The Undercity was rife with dangers. He couldn't childproof it. But he could make his child danger-proof.
Now he's been hoist his own petard.
Silco isn't a stupid man. He knows that Jinx's upbringing—her silvering—was deeply damaging. A child deserves a carefree life. To grow up cultivating hobbies, not bombshells. But wishes are for fools, and what one deserves is different from what one receives. Certainly, Piltover wouldn't understand. The agony of being perceived as lesser. Being cold-shouldered and gutted, with no way to fight back.
At the parley, Talis had demanded: Get me Jinx.
In reply, Silco gave him war.
Better war than Jinx's erasure. In Piltover's hands, she was as good as dead. He imagined her locked up in Stillwater; at the mercy of bastards with shock prods and beastly impulses. Imagined her dehumanized daily by doctors with no notion of what it is like to breathe in air so polluted that you develop a smoker's bronchial rasp, or to be victimized by Enforcers' bullets for bloodsport. He imagines her branded a dirty little thing for surviving in circumstances beyond her control. For daring to kill those who'd kill her first.
Fuck that.
Jinx didn't need to justify herself. What she needed was payback.
(We showed them, didn't we?)
Their shared history had always intensified Silco's sense they were different from others. Human on the surface, with a darkness beating in their hearts.
Monsters.
It's not inconceivable to cherish a monster. They are beautifully resilient. Survivors born of broken things: shrapnel and steel. Burying those edges under a soft guise is exhausting. Silco knows from experience. It is hard to go through life, always repressing the disjointed parts of yourself. Succumbing is easier.
Sharp edges make fine weapons. And Jinx is the perfect weapon.
"I'm not sure who Jinx is anymore."
A terrifying notion. A threat—and his instincts beg to respond in kind. Because he is the Eye of Zaun, unrelenting. Whatever challenge he meets, he surmounts. Except how can he command his child into a breakthrough into someone she's outgrown? Their conversation has already shown the depths of her disconnect. The effort to remain his prized monster, to bask in his praise and earn her privileges, lest she collapse from his misuse of her.
Her talents turned into time-bombs. Her potential perverted for his ends. All because he'd demanded that she shed weakness and embody strength.
Just like Zaun.
Silco shuts his eyes.
(Forgive me, Jinx.)
Love bleeds through him. Everything blurs into it. Jinx's rage. Her hate. Her tears.
It's true. His heart is wonky. But it belongs to Jinx—awfully and utterly. They've kept each other alive for six years. Kept each other strong, even as they exacerbated each other's hurts, even as everything they shared was pure blackness.
Now it's finished. The war is won. Zaun is free.
Silco owes Jinx better. Owes her a lifetime of softness to make up for the past. To pay the cost.
And make Vi pay it too.
(I won't lose my child again.)
Silco rises from the armchair. Outside, it is drizzling: hot water with a sting of acid. He shuts the window, sending an emerald green dragonfly on the sill skittering. Lightning from the shuttered glass glows over Jinx like a striped blanket. He smooths a palm over her real blanket, and drops a kiss to her temple.
Then he is gone.
Wired on adrenaline, Silco bypasses the elevator and descends the stairs, so his mind is drained of anything except brute black-and-white. The vestibule is empty. The secretary has retired for the night. In the underlit gloom of his office, a golden missive rests on his desk.
Dropping into a chair, Silco unrolls it beneath the lamp. The parchment smells faintly of hyacinths—an effect that can only be deliberate. He half-smiles. Medarda knows the game. That they're both aware it's a game doesn't make it any less entertaining.
The letter, in curlicues of polished script, reads:
Esteemed First Chancellor,
Rise and shine. Your last missive took its time in arriving. I dare not accuse someone with your self-assurance of dragging his feet. Instead, I can only assume Zaun's timings and Piltover's are inverted, as is much else. We rise at the crack of dawn; you languish in daylight, and come alive at night.
Certainly, your handwriting is livelier than I anticipated. Instead of rigid typeface, your letters resemble sleek fish swimming in the Pilt, all flowing into each other. It is also a relief to exchange correspondence with someone who can spell 'maladministration' and who can differentiate between contentious vs conscientious. I might be so forward as to request all our missives be handwritten from hereon out.
However, you will be growing impatient with such blandishments (however sincerely meant.) Instead, I must direct your attention to the treaty terms still lagging. The Council anticipates your agreement on Articles 4 and 6. Access to our Hex Gates is contingent on Zaun's diplomatic disarmament. I also seek assurance that you will be dutybound to our terms when hosting our Peacekeeper in your territory. Harm to her would hamper our hard-won truce. I am certain you are as keen as myself to prevent a relapse to more bellicose days.
I await your response. As do the Council, with impatience. Your boldness of action will carry the day—or night.
Meanwhile, I trust you and your citizens are bravely weathering the storm of Zaun's early days. Janna tempers the wind to a shorn lamb, as they say.
My cordial wishes,
Mel Medarda
Silco scoffs. Not bad. Tart warnings hidden in boons. That is how she plays it, how she gets opponents to drop their guard. But Medarda, as a Noxian heiress, is as adept at wordcraft as at warcraft. After their first encounter, he knows better than to underestimate her.
Nor does he lack for insidious artillery.
Councilor Medarda,
I'll rise. The shining, I'll leave to you.
Zaun's citizens are strong. They have weathered worse storms. In the meantime, they are much enamored of freedom, quite as if they never tasted it before. If the future is kind, they may someday taste sunlight too. It would do much to sync our schedules, so you are afforded more chances to critique my 'maladministration,' while I admire your script for its elegant use of contentious substance and conscientious style. As for shorn lambs—I can't say we've glimpsed any down below. Unless you count the Kindred, under whose thrall we all succumb.
But one can spend only so much time pondering death before the appetite whets itself for better things.
Articles 4 are 6 are amenable to Zaun. As is your Peacekeeper's arrival. No harm will come to her. In turn, she must do no harm within Zaun's borders. Otherwise our truce would suffer the fate you have already divined.
In circumvention of bellicose days,
Regards,
—S
The missive is dispatched via pneumatic tube. He folds Medarda's letter, and holds it over a lighter flame. It sizzles into embers. Silco watches them pulsate in his ashtray. The jagged shadows cling to his body like teeth lengthening.
Closing in for the kill.
FLASH MESSAGE
SUBJECT: ?
Hey.
You alive?
END OF MESSAGE.
FLASH MESSAGE
RE: SUBJECT - ?
UNDELIVERABLE - RECIPIENT NOT FOUND.
END OF MESSAGE
(Correspondence recovered from Entresol Zone C)