A red band unfailingly unites us
~ "Blut" – Till Lindemann (Translation)
The flare-gun blasts skyward.
Its tracer explodes into a shimmering sphere, a dying sun in the night. It douses the acre-wide impound in a blood-red glow. Shaped like the spokes of a wheel: six warehouses funneling into a concave central hub that must've once been a wrecking pit. Steel girders bisect the inky backdrop of the sky. Strobelights fitted on telescopic tripods chase multicolored pinwheels on the walls and floors.
The place is a hotbed of debauchery.
The impound is packed with party-goers. Tatted-up bikers showboat on glammed-up crotch rockets. A crew of girls sweep across the concrete in wide arcs, tires screeching and rubber burning. One performs a stoppie, riding on her front tire with both rear-ends high in the air, flashing gold thong and silver chrome. In brightly-lit marquees with pure oxygen filters, well-heeled chem-barons schmooze between sips of martinis. On buffet tables, trays are garnished with multicolored hors-d'oeuvre, platters of shrimp suzette and crawfish étouffée crowded against elaborately-designed fruit platters glistening with syrup.
Music throbs so hard that the vibrations judder through the air. Dancers with bedazzled bodies in deluxe costumes undulate on ramps. Two androgynous performers strut in the halogen lights with scissoring steps timed to the beat. Chem-punks splice through the crowd on hoverboards, wearing too much make-up and jewelry and laughing too loudly. From the distance come the intermittent riot of gangs scarring the concrete in juiced-up musclecars in breakneck races. The air reeks of ganja, spilled liquor, gasoline, barbecued meat.
And blood.
Vi swallows. Her throat makes a dry click; she badly wants a drink.
Except the suds are probably poisoned.
She sits shackled like a Stillwater prisoner: leg irons and wrist manacles, each one hooked to a rung on her seat. She supposes she ought to be grateful she's not in sweltering heat or blistering cold.
The temperature inside Silco's marquee tent is perfectly controlled, and scented with something that may as well be Eau de Chingching. The interior is black as an oil-spill and just as sleek. Low mood lighting; luxury furnishings. The space is halved by a sleek screen: one portion reserved for private quarters, the other for a glossy minibar and a banquette as well-appointed as any five-star restaurant. The tent's flaps are peeled back to take in the chaos unfolding across the impound.
An Undercity gala on steroids.
The biggest commotion is at the fighting-pit. It is roughly twenty meters in size; sunken like a skateboard rink and splattered as a charnel pit. At least six dozen spectators range around the sawhorses that block it off. Neon discs are strung at the rims: cotton-candy pinks and toxic-sludge greens. The flashing lights distort the spectator's faces into carnival grotesqueries. A pack of deranged clowns waving fistfuls of coins.
In the center of the pit, two brindle-coated rotties—Ziggy and Stardust—toe the scratch against a black cane-corso mastiff the size of a bear. Its eyes are sunk like embers inside its wrinkle-pitted face. The points of its canines extrude in a vicious leer.
Silco's goons, clumped outside the marquee, place bets.
"Ugly bastard," Lock grunts.
"The Bilgewater ambassador's moneymaker," Ran says, crouched on a rusted turbine. "Cthulhu."
"Gesundheit."
"No." Ran enunciates slowly. "Kuh-thoo-loo. That's his name."
Dustin drums his kneecaps with the hilts of two bone-handled blades: dum-dum-dap. "How much is Bilgewater wagerin'?"
"Three year's supply of rainbow trout," says Lock. "And their best kegs of rum."
Dustin whistles, his head swaying back and forth as if on a gyre. Ran tips a feline smile. "Sucks to be Bilgewater."
Lock cracks his knuckles "Ziggy and Stardust ain't just game. They're dead game."
"Seventy Hexes on them ending the fight in twenty minutes," Ran says.
"Ninety if they draw first blood."
"Pfff. You expect to see blood for a cog."
"Best of three, then?"
"Doubt there'll be a rematch."
"Let's set a fixed time. Say, twelve minutes? And see which rottie draws blood first?"
"Deal."
They spit in their palms, sumpside-style. Lock's huge fist envelopes Ran's metal-silvered paw. A Spit Swear, the lite version of the Blood Bargain.
The kind of oath you don't break without breaking your neck.
Behind the marquee's screen, Silco's baritone scrapes the silence: "Razor the dogs."
The three goons lose their nonchalant attitudes, a Pavlovian snap of spines straightening. Lock gives a four-fingered hand signal to a girl perched at the guard-post. She stands ready with a flare gun, her hips shot to one side, taking puffs from a cheroot so thick it'd take a year to finish. At Lock's signal, she nods. Her gun-hand goes up. The flare upspirals to burst like a volcano.
The game begins.
The dogs are chivvied toward the scratch line. Ziggy and Stardust move in tandem: a liquid flow of muscle. Cthulu cuts forward like a ballistic missile. The dogs' noses touch. Stardust licks Ziggy's snout; Cthulu's jowls ripple. The dogs' handlers withdraw their blades—Zaun's girl a butterfly knife from her boot, Bilgewater's man a short, wickedly-curved cutlass from his belt. The slit a shallow gash into the dogs' flanks.
Fingers wetted with the blood, they smear it across their own dog's nose, then the challenger's. Cthulu snuffles and lets off a frenzied bark, red droplets spraying. Ziggy and Stardust go still as statues, their teeth daggering, a wicked red luminosity entering their eyes. The blood mainlines like adrenaline into their systems.
"Fuck," Lock says with admiration. "They're practically gagging for it."
The handlers yank the dogs to their corners, hands white-knuckling against their scruffs. The dogs' bodies give off an inexorable ferocity. Ringed around the fighting-pit, the rogue's gallery hurls cheers and insults. They seem no different from the dogs: the bloodsport whets their appetites into mania.
The flare gun ignites a third time.
The handlers drop their charges and clamber out of the fighting-pit. The dogs fly at each other as if catapulted. The impact is brutal. Ziggy and Stardust pounce in tandem, with terrifying synchronicity. Cthulhu bulldozes straight at them. They flatten as one, letting his massive shape sail overtop. Their heads twist and rip into Cthulhu's flanks on either side. Teeth leave oozing half-moons in the fur. Cthulhu snarls, angling himself away, mere inches from the pair's gnashing teeth. Next he is bulling forward, using his superior bulk to back Ziggy and Stardust into a corner, batting at them with his ferocious forepaws, his fanged head arrowing towards the nearest dog's throat.
The pair feint gamely. But it is a calculated carnage. Wherever Cthulu's skull darts and comes away, a shiny pink divot is left behind on Ziggy or Stardust's pelts. Next, it fills with blood and splatters the concrete. The music is ripped apart by shrill yowls. Likewise, the crowd's din spikes into a foghorn. Dismay; delight.
"That's it, Cthu! Atta boy!"
"Get at him, Ziggy! C'mon!"
"Rip their fuckin' heads off!"
"Yeah, Star! Bite him!"
The bloodbath sears itself into Vi's retinas. She feels sick deep in her guts. She's seen a lot of shit. Poverty, prostitution, prison brawls. But this blows everything out of the water.
A lean shadow falls over Vi's chair.
"Not fond of hounds?"
From behind the screen, Silco slithers out. Sevika lumbers after him. They'd been conversing in low tones inside his quarters. Vi couldn't hear what they were saying. Now she realizes they were watching her. Silco's eyes glitter darkly, drinking in her distress. Behind him, Sevika's expression is stony as a Marwian idol, but with a tiny sneer on her lips.
Vi sets her jaw.
She's out of her depth. Alone and unarmed. But she isn't scared. It will be a cold day in hell if she's scared of anything after Stillwater.
Even a monster whose motivations defy logic.
She says, "Rabid types aren't my thing."
Silco eyes her speculatively. "They have their uses."
"As entertainment? Or meat shields?"
"Whichever comes first."
Vi hooks her chin toward Sevika. "That why you've got her on a leash? Or—wait." She glances pityingly at Silco. "Is she your seeing-eye mutt?"
Sevika's eyes snap hotly to Vi's. She seems to be debating a riposte, the physical type. But something in Silco's sideways glance—an idle warning—defuses her temper.
Leaning in, she mutters in Silco's ear. His lips twist at the edges. The shark-eye gleams, merciless.
"Half and half," he says.
"Half now. Half later."
"Settled."
He offers his hand: a sharp-jointed a talon. Sevika clasps it in her own.
Vi notes the grip. It doesn't resemble the friendly handshake between Ran and Lock. This is loaded with sinisterness. For the first time, she wonders about their history. Side by side, their affiliation makes no sense except for the obvious: money and power. Beyond that, they are two very different animals: scavenger and predator. Sevika with her rough-and-tumble attitude, all brutish gimcrack and straight-shooting snark; Silco an unsettlingly scaly enigma of well-soaped wit and scalpel-edged schemes.
Yet she senses a mutual respect, if not a fealty. What the hell is their endgame?
Vi snaps, "You two done being skeevy?"
They don't even glance at Vi. The consensus of scorn needs no speech.
Silco slides into the banquette seat. Sevika sets a large serving platter with a silver lid in front of him. By this time, it's probably lost most of its heat. Still, when the platter is unveiled, a delicious aroma suffuses the air. Vi fights the raw squelch of hunger. She braces herself to stare at over-the-top exotica and rich delicacies.
But the contents are surprisingly simple. A bowl of creamed soup sprinkled with tiny herbs. A large green salad. A butter-seared clutch of crawfish with twinkling heaps of potatoes, peas and carrots.
Sevika doles out the crawfish and a big spoonful of vegetables into a plate. Her expression is deadpan. Yet her body-language isn't that of a servile hostess. Freaky as hell though it seems, Vi is reminded of Caitlyn. The way she boils Vi a cup of tea after a hard day's work. Sometimes Vi teases her for getting all sweetly domestic. Playing wifey again?
Caitlyn always arches an eyebrow: Only because you can't brew tea to save your life.
Bittersweetness nearly escapes the tight clench of Vi's heart. She inhales sharply. She needs to stay alert.
Stay alive.
Sevika untwists a bottle of whiskey from the minibar. Vi can't see the label, but she's sure it's something pricey. The other woman pours a stiff belt into two glasses, and cocks her head at Vi. "You still like a splash of cherry soda in yours?"
Vi grimaces. "I wouldn't touch anything here with a ten-foot pole."
"Suit yourself." Sevika's tone modulates. "Sir?"
Silco makes a dry moue. "Sugaring up good whiskey?"
"I've got simple tastes."
"To the manner born, as they say."
"You didn't grow up sipping top-shelf hooch, either."
A wry little smile plays on Silco's lips. "Look forward, not backward."
"But never forget."
They clink glasses. Sevika downs hers like a shot; Silco sips his own with a savoring slowness.
Vi's throat itches. She almost regrets refusing a glass.
Almost.
Sevika crosses to the tent's entrance. Stops, and cuts her eyes from Vi to Silco. It is almost a question. Silco makes a three-fingered hand signal. Sevika nods. The flap falls closed on her retreating shape. The dogfight's furor muffles. A chill descends from Vi's skull down to her toes. She is alone.
Just her and the monster.
Silco's face is inscrutable as he surveys his meal. He might be inspecting a raw carcass on a slab. Then he does something unexpected. Something Vander used to do. He sits back and balances the plate on his knees. Ignoring the silverware, he begins rapidly transferring the food to his mouth with his fingers.
At Vi's stare, he offers an upticked eyebrow, "Excuse me. My stomach thinks my throat's cut."
My stomach thinks my throat's cut.
That was Vander's favorite saying. It meant: I'm starving. Powder always found it hilarious. Everytime she heard it, she'd wrap her hands around her throat, pretending to stanch a gaping hole with high-pitched sound effects. Gak! Blurgle! Pteh! The memory goes through Vi on a reflux of grief.
Her own stomach, meanwhile, switches places with her brain.
Urrrggh, it gurgles.
Silco stops, a roast potato halfway to his mouth. He tricks out a sly smile. "You're no better."
"Shut up."
"Are you hungry?"
Vi refuses to answer. Point of fact? Fuck yes. She'd been keyed up since yesterday night, and barely kept down her breakfast this morning. Now, between the after-effects of a fistfight, psychological anguish and adrenaline, she's redlining into collapse. Her body demands fuel to keep carrying on. But pragmatism wrestles with pride. How can she break bread with a man who killed one half of her family, and destroyed the other?
Silco says, "Shall I uncuff you?"
Vi blinks.
Silco pops another roast potato in his mouth. "Shall I uncuff you to eat? You've no reason to misbehave. The odds are stacked against you. The guards. The weapons. The crowd."
"Suppose I take my chances?"
"Too many witnesses."
"Good for corroborating my story later."
"I own every single eye in this impound."
Vi's jaw clamps. Rationally, he's right. She has no recourse if she attacks him. His goons are outside the tent. His blackguards are patrolling the grounds. The Undercity is his chessboard. And yet she's ready to reject rationality. She wants to attack him. Wants him to give her the smallest excuse. If he does, she'll have no choice but to react.
She'll trounce him, and to hell with the fallout.
Silco says, "I'll untie one wrist."
Vi snaps back to the moment.
"Just one. Take your time and eat. But if you make one stupid move…" His lips peel back from his crooked white teeth. "My crew are eager for entertainment. I've no problem if they make a show of you. Have you on a leash—or have you in the dog-pit." Softly, "Like a proper bitch."
The awfulness of his message spreads through the tent like Fissure-gas. Vi's lungs tighten; her pulse hitches. Silco tilts his head, measuring the steel in her spine. She matches his stare with as much steadiness as she can muster.
"You'll behave," he says. "Won't you?"
Jaw set, Vi nods.
"Good," he says softly. "Good girl."
Rising, he approaches her slowly. "Right hand or left?"
Vi exhales. "Right."
"Right it is."
Taking the key from his waistcoat, Silco leans in, fitting it to the manacle. There is a click. The metal unclamps from Vi's bruised wrist. Her right hand drops free. Her breath saws with relief. Raising her hand at eye-level, she flexes her fingers, rotating the wrist at the joint, then repeating the exercise with her elbow and shoulder.
Her cramped muscles twinge. Blood-flow resumes.
"Better?" Silco asks.
Vi pins him with baleful eyes. Silco's own are raptorially set, a casual venom in his half-smile.
"Well then," he murmurs. "Tuck in."
A strained silence hangs during the meal. Neither she nor Silco speak, or if they do, it is only through sharpened scowls cutting the space between them. But the soup, cream-of-shrimp with basil, is delicious, the salad as sweetly verdant as anything from Piltover's gardens, and the crawfish, when Vi cracks it open with her thumb in a veil of steam, tastes as if it's leapt straight out of the freshwaters.
Vi gorges without apology. She'll need her fortitude for whatever Silco is planning.
Once in a while, she hazards a glance at him. He's switched to the flatware. Yet his manner of eating is no less carnivorous. He holds each forkful at a bite's distance, then darts forward, snapping off each mouthful and grinding it down between sharp teeth. His proximity makes Vi's skin prickle.
Up close, she can only see everything that is unnatural in him beneath its much-scarred humanity. She doesn't believe in auras, or mojos, or other Fissure superstitions. But he has a vibe, eerie and amorphous and devouring, like the darkness at the bottom of the river. How can Powder stand to be near him?
Powder.
A red mass of tension pulses in Vi's chest. She flashes back to her sister's silhouette at the pool. Her far-out smile. Her pale body enfolded in the towel under Silco's hands. Her glowing innocence somehow revivifying his expression, as if he'd stolen her energy and taken it for himself.
Rage sucks all the flavor from her meal. Vi drops her spoon with a clatter.
Idly, Silco asks, "Full already?"
"Lost my appetite."
"Something off about the entrée?"
"Just your face."
His throat thrums out a sound that is nearly a laugh, but not quite. "You're quite the charmer yourself."
Shoveling the last forkful into his mouth, he swallows with the eerie sinuosity of a snake devouring a sump-vole. Then he pulls a black cambric napkin from his vest, smooths it out into an edge, and primly dabs his mouth. Its borders are fringed with a multicolored embroidery that reminds Vi of the funky cross-stitches Powder used to decorate her clothes with.
Neither of them could do needlework like grand Piltie ladies. But making do with hand-me-downs, year after year, meant learning how to sew. Vi was adept at basic hemming and mending. But Powder had a real flair with the needle. Vi remembers how her sister would fix up old sweaters and shirts and socks, making them extra-poppy with pink lazy daisies and red fishbones and yellow spiraling stars. Vi can almost see her at the corner of her mind's eye, sitting crosslegged, upper-lip caught between her teeth with concentration: Onesies, knit, twosies, knot…
Vi flinches, clubbed by nostalgia. She cuts her gaze away. Except it is too late. Silco intercepts her stare, and unexpectedly their eyes are locked. An unwanted understanding flows between them.
Vi says, "Did Powder make that?"
"Her name is Jinx."
"Did she?"
A muscle jerks in Silco's jaw. He nods.
"Can—can I see?"
His features stay hard and sharkish, all oily black eye and cut-steel face. Yet his good eye loses some of its chill. Matter-of-factly, he extends the handkerchief. Doesn't hand it over, but holds on, pinched tight between a thumb and forefinger. Vi traces the needlework carefully. The stitches aren't sophisticated. But they are tiny and astonishingly delicate: a rainbow crosshatching of XOXOs. A far cry from the clumsy squiggles of Powder's childhood.
Just like her bombs.
Gooseflesh breaks over Vi's skin. She drops her hand. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why haven't you killed me yet? Especially if I'm such a threat?"
Folding up the handkerchief, Silco tucks it away like a stolen prize.
"I told you before," he says. "Your usefulness outweighs my reasons."
"Usefulness."
That makes no sense. He's no longer a terrorist in Piltover's shadow. He's First Chancellor of his own nation. He's allied with bigger fish than Vi on the threat assessment scale. Probably found easier ways to intimidate others into doing his dirty-work, because a little easier is all it takes for men like Silco.
Why would someone so dangerous and well-connected need Vi for anything?
Silco says, as if reading her mind, "Zaun is independent. But it isn't invulnerable. The wheels are half-on, half-off. Under Topside, it's what we were accustomed to. On our own, we deserve better." His idle gesture encompasses the tent, the feast, the furor. "I can stage a damn good spectacle. I can lure foreign investment. People always respond favorably to good showmanship."
"A little razzle-dazzle works magic," Vi mutters, a hat-tip to another of Vander's favorite sayings.
Silco eyes her strangely. His face is etched with darkness, as if troubled thoughts are massing. "Razzle-dazzle works on the surface. It's the foundation that must stay strong. I can deal with the chem-barons. I've spent half my life stopping blowhards from pushing their territories to ruin with shortsighted double-games. Most of them live for the moment, anyway. It's why they die at a moment's notice. But Zaun—as a nation—must live."
"Under your boot?"
He shakes his head. "With or without me. There are certain fortunes I wish to guide and certain favors I plan to extract to make it so. Otherwise any fool in the future could undo the hard work of the past." He meets Vi's stare. "For that, I need eyes and ears inside Piltover."
"My eyes and ears?"
"Among other parts."
Her eyes narrow. "I thought you said Piltover set us both up."
"They did."
"I also thought you don't trust me."
"I don't."
"Then what the hell are you—?"
Silco cuts her off. "I'll explain. Drink?"
Vi glowers. "I'm not letting you liquor me up."
"I meant water."
Rising, he goes to the minibar. Vi watches him fill two paper cups from a cooler. The liquid is acid green. Transparent and cloudless, but green.
That isn't disturbing in itself. Vi has known it be worse colors. The Undercity's tapwater is a cesspit of contaminants. Loaded with turbidity, chloride, mold and bacteria. The water-supply infrastructure is ancient, and interminably crippled from lack of funds. Worse, as the population expanded, neighborhoods developed in a haphazard tangle, each unplanned sector massing beyond the ambit of civic services. That meant slipshod cross-connections, with sewage lines regularly spilling over into supply lines. There was always news of waterborne diseases; kids dying or posh Pilties getting poisoned.
In Vi's teens, water-mafia wannabes began cropping up everywhere. They set up illegal hydrants across the Undercity, tapping into the mains to steal water, then selling it to citizens for jacked-up prices. Shortly before his death, Vander was working with the communities to stop their water being siphoned. Vi often heard him growling that the scale of theft went all the way to Topside.
Silco sips from his cup. Vi expects him to grimace. Instead he holds the water contemplatively in his mouth, then swallows. "Still too sweet."
"What?"
He proffers a cup. "Try it. It's certified safe."
"Certified by who? Your poisoner?"
"Try it."
She stares at the green liquid, parched but wary. It doesn't smell weird. In fact, it doesn't smell like anything. Screwing up her courage, she takes a small sip. It tastes clean. There's a faint aftertaste of mint, like leftover mouthwash.
Silco eyes her closely. "Well?"
"It's …not bad?"
Silco nods, silent for a couple of beats. Then: "It's been fully treated for contaminants. But the offshoot is the color." He takes another sip, lips skinning back from his teeth. "And the taste. Still, it won't sicken anyone. Presently, this treatment is limited to the water plant at Entresol. In time, it will supply Zaun in its entirety. No more clogged filters. No more rations. No piling up a fortnight's soiled laundry before doing the wash. No families bathing two days a week with the same bathwater, just to tally every bloody drop wasted."
Vi notices that his accent has changed again, like when he'd smoked brightleaf at the warehouse, like when he'd complained of an empty stomach. The cultured cadences—closer to Topside than the Fissures—lose their enunciation to a familiar grittiness of bitten-off consonants and blunted vowels.
It's disconcertingly close to Vander's style of speech. With exceptions, the younger generations in the Undercity have a uniform accent. Standard, as it's called. But the older generations are a mixed bag. Each one has a distinct dialect to go with their particular neighborhood, so no single word is pronounced the same: wader, watta, vota.
Vander's neighborhood was the Pump Station. She wonders if Silco grew up there too.
Shaking it off, Vi takes another sip. Minty-clean. But it doesn't mean Silco's intentions are the same. His spiel about purification plants may seem convincing. But she reminds herself that he is likely accustomed to operating on multiple levels of deception. She can't trust him. She knows that. Yet she hates that she almost wants to believe him anyway.
Silco's stare is inexorable, the shark-eye seeing right through her.
"It must be difficult for you," he says.
"Difficult?"
"Living half-in, half-out."
Vi looks away. "I'm not getting into this with you."
"Ah. So there's something to get into?" He circles a fingertip around the rim of his cup. "Is this really what you want? To play lapdog as Topside's Peacekeeper? To waste your talents working the beat?"
"I have my reasons. They're the only ones that matter."
"Reasons change. Especially once your eyes are wide open."
"Are yours? Hard to tell."
"You can deflect, but you can't lie. It's why you can't keep away from the Undercity. Why you're back again."
Vi bristles. "I'm back for my sister."
"You're saying life in Piltover is peaches and cream? You're lucky, certainly. It's not the usual way for an ex-con from Stillwater to smarm it up with the Kirramans, despite not having a cog to her name. Getting an apartment with a closet bigger than most rooms in the Sumps. Getting three square meals and permission to go wherever she pleases. But in exchange, they expect you to sing for your supper, don't they? To be eager to please, in exchange for getting rescued? You were brave to overcome your ordeal, but you're blessed now, aren't you?"
Vi refuses to answer. But her shoulders flex into a yoke of tension. He's needling her. She knows it.
That doesn't mean he's off the mark.
Silco drains his cup half at a go. Setting it aside, he thumbs the greenness off his lips. "Take it from someone who's been there and back, girl. Piltover will never accept you as one of them. You'll stay there. Never live. Stay. Like a dog stays in a kennel until the master bids it to heel. You'll never be allowed to hold your head high. Always be a target for their mean-spirited prejudices and ignorance. Even the well-meaning Pilties—like your Kirraman girl—have no idea what you've endured. The hardness it builds on the inside. It's like they live in one dimension. Meanwhile you live in three. Surviving as an orphan on the Day of Ash. Surviving as a casualty of Topside's negligence. Surviving as a Fissure-born emigre, only to find the part of you that's formed in violence will always respond to nothing but violence."
Vi swallows her drink. It burns going down, but that's not the water.
She knows what he's talking about. She wishes she didn't—but she does. Her eyes drop to Silco's hands. They are freakish appendages: long and bony, with a terrain of heavy metacarpals. Well-kept, but the demarcations of old scars are plain. Burn scars. Fisticuff scars. Knife scars. The same type as Vander's.
The same type as hers.
Against her will, she imagines a younger Silco, with an unfucked-up face, dead-drunk and pitching himself into a bar-brawl, his knuckles splitting open against someone's tooth, blood on his hands, on his clothes, on the floor. So much blood, night after night, just to scrape by and survive. He's been there. Vander's been there. Vi's been there. Even Powder has.
Caitlyn—sweet Caityln—has never been there.
Silco holds her eyes over the rim of his cup. "I wasn't lying when I said Piltover set you up. You were the gasoline to start a political fire. Deny it all you like. In your gut, you know the truth." He empties the rest of the cup in one swallow. "In losing Zaun, they've lost precious resources. Our factories. Our mills. Our mines. We're negotiating a treaty. But the course of peace ne'er ran smooth. They'll find loopholes to keep us beholden to them. Same as always."
He uses the royal plural; we, us, ours. As if he and Zaun are two halves of a single machine grinding inexorably into infinity.
As if Vi is part of the machine too.
She scowls. "I'm not playing your errand girl."
"You wouldn't be."
"Or your attack dog."
"I've no shortage of those." His good eye narrows. "I need a nexus."
"Nexus?"
"A link between Piltover and Zaun. Someone to serve as a bridge, in the absence of the old one. A bridge that works both ways, rather than solely in their favor."
"People walk all over a bridge."
His scarred upper-lip curls. "No one could possibly walk over you, pet."
"Don't fucking call me that."
"It suits you."
Vi isn't sure if his expression is a stifled smirk or a low-key leer. It makes her want to smack him. Is that the reaction he's trying to provoke? Or is it a mind-game at a deeper level, something to get under her skin? Make her emotionally volatile?
Vi grits her teeth.
Whatever he's doing, it's working.
"I meant what I said," Silco goes on. "Razzle-dazzle only works if the magic is real. Zaun's is limited, especially compared to the mightiest empires. That's why we need security as much as investment. As much as sharp minds in politics, military, corporations, and the media. A shield protects against outside threats. A sword does maximum damage. Zaun needs its own. Something big enough to scare everyone else off."
Vi glowers. "You've already got the damn Hex-gem."
Silco tilts his head. "Sitting pretty on it won't protect Zaun."
"What?"
"It's like a bomb. It must be placed in the right spot."
"I'm not following you."
"It means—"
"I mean I'm not taking your job."
Silco falls silent. Then: "Let me ask you a question. What notion has been relentlessly drilled into the head of every sumpsnipe since birth? About their place, and Piltover's?"
Vi shifts in her seat. "I don't know. That we're one city, I guess."
"Close. That we are one city. But every time Piltover is in need, they take from us. A famine in Ionia cripples produce. So we must forfeit our sleep and wages to make up for declining productivity. A flood capsizes shipping vessels full of Shuriman timber. So we must build our houses with cheap mortar while they construct sturdy homes. A housing crisis sends rent skyrocketing. Yet the Wardens charge us ten times the price per cubic foot in our shantytowns than in the finest streets on Mainspring Crescent." He locks his unsettling eyes with hers. "They get the Kindred's share. We make do with scraps."
Déjà vu dopplers. Past conversations with Vander, overlapping the present. Vi doesn't flinch. But it's an effort to hold still under Silco's scrutiny.
"Zaun is free now," Silco says, his voice vibrating with a barely restrained fervor. "But to stay free, we must seize our future. So we are longer exploited. Not by Piltover nor any other enemy."
"And where do I fit into this?"
"We'll discuss it. If you choose to join me."
Vi shakes her head. "Already said I won't."
"Because Piltover is your new home?"
"Because of what you are."
Silco's insinuating demeanor sobers. "Better the monster than the meat." Lounging back in his seat, he drums his fingers on the table's edge. "Still… I regret that it turned out this way. We weren't meant to fight one another. We were supposed to stand as one against Topside. Just like Vander and I."
A livewire twists in Vi's gut. "That didn't stop you from killing Vander."
Silco tips his chin, a cold glitter in his mismatched eyes. "You have this notion—I don't know where it came from—that my feud with Vander sprang up overnight. Perhaps it's more comforting to imagine it did. But ask the other fellow, get the other side of the story. Our dispute took its time within a squared circle of debts and decades. What we owed, we both paid." His jaw tenses, then relaxes. "I couldn't work with Vander, though I respected him. Hopefully I can work with you."
Vi stares warily.
"You're like him. Fierce. Independent. Smart."
Vi snorts, faux-modest. "You need to quit."
"But like him, you turn a virtue into a vice. You don't understand when to do business, and when to stay out of it."
The knot in Vi's gut becomes a dagger. "Business? You mean drugs and murder and blackmail?"
"Exactly."
She shakes her head. "You really are a piece of work."
"I do what I must for the best interests of Zaun. It's a messy dilemma. But the longer you remain a Peacekeeper, the more you'll be mired in the same. Piltover preaches pacifism in the limelight. But they break just as many laws in the dark to further their ends." His tongue plays over the point of an eyetooth. "The difference is that Piltover has the luxury of choice. Zaun doesn't. The things I've done were necessary for our freedom."
Vi seethes in disgust, "Shimmering up the Lanes was necessary?"
"Everything is permissible when there's no other way."
"You're full of shit."
"And you're abysmally naïve." He smiles without mirth. "That's the charm of youth. Like falling off a cliff. By the time you see the end, it's too late." A beat. "Rather like love."
"What the hell are you yapping about?"
His smile fades. "Jinx."
The word passes through Vi on a shock of paralysis.
"Do you want to see her?"
Hatred burns Vi's lungs and hope strangles her heart.
Silco stares at her with surface calm. But his mouth twists at the corners. "There are three tasks I need you to do. They are necessary to establish Zaun as a sovereign power. Complete each one, and I'll grant you access to Jinx. Unrestricted. No tricks up the sleeve. No strings attached."
His offer catches like a hook in Vi's ribcage. She struggles against its pull.
"You're lying," she states flatly. "I'm a threat. You told me yourself. Why would you let me near her?"
Silco's eyes hold hers in a moment of deepening silence. Then he glances away. His unscarred profile holds both bitterness and irony. As if she is a truth he dares not turn his back on.
Quietly, he says, "You are a threat. I do not take kindly to those. But you're also her sister. You're Vander's girl. That earns you the barest grace. If you expect more, then prove yourself. Show your loyalty to Jinx. Zaun may no longer be your home. But it is hers. With each task you complete, you'll leave it safer for her future."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then it becomes a matter of payment and cost."
"Just math, huh?"
"Survival is a simple equation." His darkening stare is a prelude to a kill. "So is fatherhood."
Fatherhood.
The word sounds rancid on his lips. She remembers his eyes boring into Powder at the skyscraper balcony. Remembers the way he'd set his hands on her as if he was going to swallow her up.
She doesn't care what Sevika says. Something about him and Jinx together is inherently rancid. Fathers don't touch their daughters that way. Don't corrupt them into trigger-happy terrorists. Don't stow them away in towers like prisoners.
It isn't natural. It isn't right.
But nothing about Silco is natural or right.
(I'll get you away from him, Powder.)
(I promise.)
Forcibly, Vi swallows. Her voice comes hoarse but steady.
"All right."
"Hm?"
"I'll do your fucking jobs. But I want to see my sister first."
He shakes his head. "You've already seen her. Killed a blackguard in the bargain too."
Fury scalds Vi. "I told you. I never—"
"You did." His tone is a clash of contradictions, cold civility yielding against a warm lure of truth. "I saw him at the morgue. He had a crushed trachea. Perhaps he wasn't dead when you left him. But certain injuries, a man succumbs to afterward."
"I—"
A vein throbs in Vi's temple. She feels physically sick. Silco is lying; he has to be. She knows the blackguard was alive. He was breathing when she'd left the alleyway. But—
But she also knows bodies are unpredictable.
Fuck.
Is Silco telling the truth? Had she killed the guard by accident? Or had Silco conspired to make it happen? Either way, Vi could argue it was a hazard of the trade. As Vander used to say: Queensberry Rules. Once the gloves are on, the bets are off. Everything within the ring is sanctioned. She knows this. The blackguard would've known too.
And yet—
"I know you think this is self-serving theater," Silco says. "But fact is fact."
Vi's eyes flick to his.
"Fortunately, facts can be distorted. Between us, we'll make the issue go away."
Vi's eyes burn, her mouth spasming. "Quid pro quo, huh?"
"You play the bone-breaker. I play the undertaker." He lets off a strange chuckle: worn-out and vacant. "I did the same for Vander."
Vi's mind feels pulped; she's not sure how many more blows it can withstand. Instinctively, she makes a real fist with her freed hand, and slams it knuckles-down on the table—a sharp thud.
"Tell me what you want."
She nearly shivers at the expression that crosses Silco's face. It isn't triumph. His features remain impassive. But something flares to cold sharp life within the interior of his skull. His eyes exude an alien glow. "Three tasks. Once you've completed the first, I'll give the second. Once you've accomplished that, you'll get the third."
"Then I'll see my sister?"
"You have my word."
"Then shake on it."
"Hm?"
"Shake on it. Like a real fucking Trencher. With both of us standing up and facing each other."
A smile etches itself across Silco's lips. "You expect to be untied?"
"If we're going to do this? Yeah."
Silco doesn't say anything for a moment. His unnerving eyes rove across Vi's face. He might be considering her odds of attacking him. He might be considering her chances of warding off his goons and escaping into the crowd. He might be measuring how completely he can take her word, the same way she can take his.
After a moment, he nods.
Dipping a hand into his waistcoat, he tosses her the key. "Go on."
Vi wastes no time. She undoes her left hand's shackles. Next the chains locking her ankles. The manacles fall with a heavy clank. Rising, she limbers up, trying not to wince at the stiffness. Torques the hips, rolls her shoulders, bobbing briefly on the tips of her toes. Silco remains at a distance. His eyes roam over her physique. He isn't scoping her out. He is scrutinizing her as impassively if she is a rottweiler in his dog-fight.
A pawn in his chessgame.
Vi sticks her hand out. Rising, he takes it in his own. His grip is chilly, like handling a dead twist of muscle. They don't break off. Just stand with clasped palms for a tense moment. Outside, a wild cheer goes up. The thunder of a hundred lungs emptying themselves in a chorus of triumph. Vi hears the music speakers blast a throb of drumbeats and shrieking guitar riffs. She recognizes the song.
Blut.
The anthem of the Undercity. The victory call for Ziggy and Stardust. The dotted line with Vi's signature in blood.
"Well," Silco says. "Now that—"
Vi's fist barrels into his solar plexus
It is a lightning-fast right-hook. Vi summons into it all the hatred from the depths of her being. It clocks Silco straight between the ribs. He makes a sound like a dry-gulch. The impact of her knuckles judders through his chest with the flat smack of beef-cut slapped onto the chopping block.
He staggers, and Vi follows with her own momentum, pivoting to slam the heel of her palm into his throat, knocking him backwards against the table. Glasses topple and a plate crashes to the floor.
Vi holds Silco down. He thrashes, driving his knee toward her underbelly. Vi blocks it with a retaliatory stomp to his instep. thighs pinning his own. She'd expected to manhandle a jangling skeleton. But the narrow musculature beneath her is whipcord-wiry and vicious. She can barely keep him stationary beneath the clamp of her arms and legs.
Maybe he wasn't lying about being a miner. Vi had sparred with a few in Stillwater. Most had a strength that didn't announce itself—right until it crashtackled you.
She doesn't give Silco the chance. Her knuckles jam deeper under his throat. Their eyes lock from inches apart.
"You shitbag," Vi breathes. "Tell me why I shouldn't crack your skull open."
Silco's lips are curled back over a jagged row of teeth. The glow in his eyes is feral. A blackness pouring into his expression.
Then he smiles.
"You forgot Vander's rule."
"What—?"
"Never drop your high guard."
Suddenly there is a butterfly knife in his right hand. He whips it wide-angled across Vi's face. The blade rakes along the fine hairs on her cheekbone, a cold vibration sharpening into hot pressure as blood spills. Vi gasps, loosening her grip. Silco jerks free and swings again, the knife a flashing arc. Vi rocks back on her heels, dodging, and reflexively snaps off an uppercut. It connects with air.
There is nobody on the table.
In the next blink, a flashbang shoots from the butt of the knife and erupts inches from Vi's face.
The shockwave is like getting blowtorched. Stars spiral before Vi's eyes. High-pitched noises ignite in her ears. Yowling, she jerks back. Her hands stay fisted despite the unbearable urge to claw at her face. Wheeling, she tries to keep Silco—a blood-red shadow—in her sightline. The second blow isn't a flashbang, but the silver tray caroming off her shoulder. She grunts, torquing to evade. Silco closes in and hits her twice more, sideways and then full-on, the tray slamming off her skull.
Vi's knees buckle, and in slow-motion, she is sliding to the floor. The rugs are so soft against her colliding cheek. Like cotton batting or Caitlyn's breasts.
She lays sprawled for a moment. Dazed. Her heart pumps with rapid unevenness. Blood seeps from the slash on her face.
Three Silco's loom over her, before coalescing into one.
He is breathing rapidly. His left hand massages his bruised ribs, then goes to his throat. Fingertips caress the blotched skin. He swallows with a rough click, muttering a paragraph of fluent billingsgate that is punctuated by a single word: Bitch.
"Worth it," Vi slurs.
She starts to get up. Matter-of-factly, Silco plants his boot on her bruised shoulder and pushes her back down. He stands over her, regarding her through flat eyes. The fingers of his right hand play over the knife handle—a cresting arc of metal like a shark's fin. Vi stares at the bright blood on the blade. She thinks of how it's a weapon signifying neither skill nor strength. It only requires a black core of ruthlessness and a willingness to cross the hardest line.
It's what puts her at a disadvantage against this monster.
Pursing his lips, Silco lets off a brisk whistle. The tent's flap lifts. Sevika walks in, followed by Ran and Lock. They turn the corner and stop short. The aftermath of the altercation crackles like electricity through the air. Sevika's dark eyes go from Vi to Silco. There is no shock in her appraisal.
Slipping a hand into her pocket, she flips Silco a gold Hex. He catches it neatly.
"Called it," Sevika says.
Silco nods. "Except your half later."
A paralyzing chill spreads through Vi. She realizes Silco had anticipated her attack. Planned it. Provoked it.
And once again, she'd walked into his trap.
"You fucker," she hisses.
Silco tilts his head to one side. "I did warn you not to misbehave."
He jerks his chin. Ran and Lock swarm to enclose Vi. They drag her to her feet, wrenching her arms behind her back. A fresh pair of cuffs are slapped on her wrists. Vi's head throbs from the impact of the silver tray. But the pump of emotion speeding her pulse isn't fear. It's a pent-up fury she can only liken to Murderus Interruptus.
Shit—she'd been so close. She'd nearly bashed his skull in. Whatever it took to end this madness.
To save the Undercity, and Powder's life.
With a napkin, Silco wipes the blood off his butterfly knife. He returns it to the hidden sheath at his belt, with the same uncommon care he'd shown Powder's handkerchief. Crossing over to Vi, he mops the blood off her face. Vi tries to wrench away. Ran grabs a fistful of hair at the back of her skull and keeps her immobile.
Taking her jaw in one hand, Silco regards her eyes. "Pupils seem about right."
"Get out of my face!"
"I can hardly have you concussed."
"Bad optics, huh?"
"In more ways than one."
His tone is all mildness, and for a moment, Vi loses her bearings. Ten seconds ago, his face was a rictus of bloodthirst. Now it's a study of aloof reproach, as if she's a mutt who's tracked mud on his carpet. An ordinary person would be disquieted by the split. Vi takes it for what it is: proof of a lifelong intimacy with violence. She's known inmates in Stillwater who were the same. Crazies who were so adept at compartmentalizing that their different selves were like two faces of a coin. Tails; retreat. Heads; destroy.
If they deemed something necessary, they acted with no remorse and even less warning.
"Let's go," Silco says.
Vi tenses. "What? Where?"
The dog-pit. He'd threatened they'd have her in the dog-pit.
Fuck. Fuck—
Silco's savoring stare meets her stricken one. "Don't look so concerned. You're being escorted to the chopper. We'll deliver you back to Topside."
"You rotten piece of shit! We're not finished here!"
"On the contrary," Silco agrees, "we've scarcely started."
Vi's body turns into a cold block of lead. Around her, the goons crack knowing smiles. Sevika's stare is sharply glossed. Ran hums to herself, a two-note chuckle. Lock bobs his head in time to no beat.
None of it bodes well.
Especially not the curve of Silco's smile.
"Deal's done." His shark-eye glints in private relish. "Welcome to the family."