Happy weekend everyone! Here we are at least! The hinge of this story - and the turning point for all future madness, mayhem and misery to follow!

Massive tw's for: war, sexual assault, violence and bloodshed

cw: for class differences, prejudice and poverty related trauma

Specific tw for sexual assault: A non-descriptive scene that you can skip via the search function. Begins with the line, "His crew fell too," and ends at "Tears streaked her cheeks like war-paint."

Money is the anthem of success
So put on mascara and your party dress

~"National Anthem" – Lana Del Rey

Sun & Tower: Opinion Column

By B. Goode

"Procedamus omnes in pace—all move forward in peace!"

The call on the lips of everyone in Piltover and Zaun. Two halves once delineated side by side: a "right" and "wrong" side. Now they are estranged sisters who stare into the invisible horizons of their separate lives. Everything about them—from pomp and pageantry to color and carousing—serves to mark the irreconcilability of their natures.

In Piltover, sunlight slants through an unbroken blueness of sky to create a shimmering nimbus around the Hexgates. Music swells majestically from inside pristine marquees to commemorate the historical event. Crowds of citizens carouse in sumptuous wardrobes of pistachios, butterscotches and pralines. The golden theaters waltz them into exotic otherworlds. The emerald gardens whisk them to heavenly heights.

Theirs is an atmosphere of prosperity: redolent of rich teas and refined society. By nighttime, the well-to-do adults and well-behaved children will return to homes both grand and modest. They will idle away the remaining hours till bedtime with parlor games, spiced poultry, novels, embroidery, letter-writing and laughter. The bell will toll; they will glide into waiting beds and dream their gentle dreams.

Piltover—the City of Progress. The epitome of enlightened elegance.

Zaun is different. Not at all constrained by good manners or genteel modesty. The sky here is a brilliant but muted green, the color of diluted absinthe. The atmosphere is brewed thick with alcohol fumes and hot-bubbling gasoline. Music throbs through massive onyx speakers inside the neon-lit nightclubs. Their pulsebeat snakes outward through cobbled streets, festooned in fairylights.

Zaunites live fast and party hard. Their income is liquid; always dripping from their pockets. Tonight, it spills to the subterranean surface in a phantasmagoria of tattoos, cigarettes, piercings and booze. Festivities hold a madness woven with magic. Hot Jazz, streetcar races, dance-offs, freak shows, pantomimes, prizefights. Day and night bear no distinction. Between the bell-tolls, Zaunites surmount challenges and satisfy animal drives, a collective heartbeat of wild ambition made manifest.

Zaun—the City of Iron and Glass. A paradise spun wickedly awry.

Strangely, in their eerie reversal of natures—one bright, one dark—the cities bear a shocking sameness. Hard to credit at first. They seem so dissimilar, these strong-willed sisters. Why else would their habitations be thus separated? Surely, if broken down to their base ingredients, they'd have nothing in common? From Piltover: precious silks, crisp currency, vintage wines. From Zaun: acetylene sparks, grilled eel, unrefined lager.

Yet, shared by both: hope.

Hope for a new beginning? Certainly, though it remains half-buried beneath a history of rotten luck and bitter resentment. Theirs is a different breed of hope. A hope that makes everyone and everything equal—not by birth, but through raw potential. Tenacity squared by talent. Gifts matched by grit. Darkness or lightness are scarcely distinguishable in such an arena. Piltover wears its pretty disguise of pedigree. Zaun dons its daredevil's duds. Yet at the core of both cities, there lays a survivor's resiliency, a refusal to be erased.

These sisters seek to carve a legacy into the pages of history. They seek to live forever, as legends.

To live together? Arm-in-arm; back-to-back?

With today's Peace Treaty, the first step toward reconciliation begins.

Confidential: State Files – Piltover & Zaun.

Memorandum of Encrypted Telephone Conversation

Subjects: Councilor Mel Medarda & First Chancellor Silco

Declassified and De-encrypted Under Authority of the Intra-agency Security Panel

E.O. 12583 Section 6. A(i)

Councilor Medarda: Chancellor?

First Chancellor Silco: Good evening, Councilor.

Councilor Medarda: Goodness. The connection is very clear. It's as if you're speaking right in my ear.

First Chancellor Silco: Indeed. The mind positively overflows with possibilities.

Councilor Medarda: Perhaps we should confine ours to the business at hand?

First Chancellor Silco: And it's bloody business, a very bloody business, indeed.

Councilor Medarda: You have the warmasons under surveillance?

First Chancellor Silco: For the time being.

Councilor Medarda: And eventually?

First Chancellor Silco: They will be picked off. One by one.

Councilor Medarda: At random?

First Chancellor Silco: By order of exigency. Currently, one is causing trouble at the fighting pits by Zaun's wharves.

Councilor Medarda: What trouble?

First Chancellor Silco: Recruiting cannon-fodder.

Councilor Medarda: And you'll handle it.

First Chancellor Silco:Naturally.

Councilor Medarda: …

First Chancellor Silco: Councilor?

Councilor Medarda: Wouldn't he be more useful as he is? Alive, I mean?

First Chancellor Silco: Afraid of dirty hands by proxy?

Councilor Medarda: This bargain is leaving a... strong aftertaste.

First Chancellor Silco: A hazard of the trade.

Councilor Medarda:...

First Chancellor Silco: I'm commiserating. Not talking down to you.

Councilor Medarda: I can't see your face. But I'll accept your tone as sincere.

First Chancellor Silco: Thank you for that.

Councilor Medarda: And thank you for your... proactive approach. I look forward to seeing you at the Peace Treaty.

First Chancellor Silco: Likewise.

Councilor Medarda: I trust it goes without saying, but you must have your act down pat for the ceremony.

First Chancellor Silco: I know my role, Councilor.

Councilor Medarda: And I, mine. That leaves only the wild card.

First Chancellor Silco: You mean, Jinx.

Councilor Medarda: Can you keep her leashed?

First Chancellor Silco: My daughter is not a pet.

Councilor Medarda: Of course. Still. I'm told her sharp tongue can snap quite a few spines.

First Chancellor Silco: Or a few necks.

Councilor Medarda: Do keep her abreast of the proceedings.

First Chancellor Silco: Fear not. She can be a bit unruly at times. But she'll toe the line.

Councilor Medarda: Are you certain?

First Chancellor Silco: Quite.

Councilor Medarda: I can hear the smile in your voice, Chancellor.

First Chancellor Silco: Let's just say we'll all enjoy ourselves today.

Councilor Medarda: Of that I have no doubt.

...

Councilor Medarda: What was that sound?

First Chancellor Silco: The Old Hungry near my headquarters. The clock has struck six.

Councilor Medarda: I'd best hurry, then. I will see you later today.

First Chancellor Silco: Until then, Councilor.

Councilor Medarda: Oh, and Chancellor?

First Chancellor Silco: Yes?

Councilor Medarda: Wear something blue.

First Chancellor Silco: Blue?

Councilor Medarda: A tie pin. A collar stud. Whatever is the same shade as your right eye.

First Chancellor Silco:...

Councilor Medarda: It will soften your countenance for the cameras. Make you appear less...

First Chancellor Silco: Frightening?

Councilor Medarda: Dangerous.

First Chancellor Silco: ...I shall endeavor to comply.

Councilor Medarda: It's only a well-meaning bit of input. I trust I'm not imposing.

First Chancellor Silco: Not in the least.

Councilor Medarda: Excellent. If anyone should ask, say it's a family heirloom. All the better if it's the remnant of some ancient mining seam. A cobalt or a sapphire. Something to remind the press of Zaun's heritage. A humble but industrious nation. They need to know that you're not a beast from the wilds, but a man of rich culture. Perhaps, even a gentleman.

First Chancellor Silco: Is that truly the image you'd have me project?

Councilor Medarda: It wouldn't hurt. You're not exactly beloved beyond your borders.

First Chancellor Silco: I'm barely tolerated within them.

Councilor Medarda: Today, we shall change that.

First Chancellor Silco: With a pretty bauble?

Councilor Medarda: With an appeal to human sympathies.

First Chancellor Silco: I'm afraid I left those in the gutter.

Councilor Medarda: If it's any consolation, I'm not entirely convinced they exist in Noxus either.

First Chancellor Silco: But a facsimile, as ever, suffices.

Councilor Medarda: Exactly.

First Chancellor Silco: I am your servant, in this as in all else.

Councilor Medarda: Now your smile sounds downright devilish.

First Chancellor Silco: And so my day begins.

Councilor Medarda: Until later then, First Chancellor Silco. Procedamus omnes in pace.

First Chancellor Silco: Pax vobiscum, Councilor Medarda.

[END MEMORANDUM]

Morning.

A sheen of emerald smog clings to Zaun's skyline. Louchely dressed in black formalwear, Silco climbs the spiral staircase to his daughter's hideout.

The Aerie.

It is built like a confetti-gateau cunningly rolled into newsprint: all somber black-and-white on the outside and colorfully eccentric swirls on the inside. The atrium at the top, zigzagged with metal, admits a pale patterned early-morning glow. By night, Jinx switches on a floating network of multicolored lamps. They brighten the interior into a confectioner's daydream—taffy strips of wires, marshmallows of stuffed toys, the tables glittering with a candy-crush of cogs. Even the air smells sweet.

Silco is still surprised that Jinx chose the Aerie as her lair. Usually she prefers the vertigo of extremes. The rafters, the turrets, the caves.

The Aerie is different.

Here, there is light and shadow in equal measure.

Even before the first door snaps shut behind Silco, the soundtrack of Zaun's cacophony is swallowed by the interior hush of steel architecture. The Aerie is one of the highest in Entresol, a location where the wind's voice is a softly-seething ocean.

All else is silence.

A metal mesh lift, its hydraulics discolored under a patina of old varnish, sits in the center of the room like a birdcage. It ascends and descends in service of Jinx's needs. A staircase snakes around the lift and into the upper-levels, each recessed into the walls. The light-wrought design is fractal, so that each tier of steps seems to melt into the next. From above, the stairs appear to be one spiraling coil.

Silco eschews the lift for the staircase. A holdover from his mining days; his leg muscles are honed for rapid ascent. The stairwell is not without danger, but that's another reason why Silco enjoys climbing it. From the high ceiling dangle rafts of Jinx's latest prototypes on chains. He glimpses an air purifier resembling a pufferfish. A pocket-crossbow with spring-loaded darts. An aerodynamic mini-chopper. A jack-in-the-box that hurls explosives.

Suspended so high up, luminous in the secondhand glow of the skylight, they remind him of his long-ago visit to Piltover's Drawsmith Arcade: a fantastical conglomerate of fiberglass and gearworks hung from the museum's ceiling, dusty with time.

Jinx's inventions are glossier than any model at the Arcade. A wizardry of scrap.

The first level is Jinx's metal menagerie. On an iron patio, a clockwork tiger prowls through the bars of its cage. Next to it, a gigantic white spider with a porcelain shell to mimic albinism lazily skitters between its chainlink web. At the end of the enclosure, a birdbath sloshes with the water from the cistern fountain. Glittery metal sparrows dance at the rim. A jet-black raven hops from a perch in a flutter of mechanical wings.

Its eyes twinkle red. A trap; a hidden camera.

The second level is Jinx's art studio. An atelier of mismatched mosaic canvases, metallic tinsel, bronze sculptures and disemboweled dolls. The air is laced with a stickiness of oil-paints and the tart residue of turpentine. Jinx wears different clothes for gadgetry versus artwork: her paint-streaked overalls dangle from a hook like the forgotten carapace of an exotic insect. Her corkboard is crowded with pictures torn from magazines: mythological fey and svelte pin-up girls; legendary superheroes and celebrated spies.

His girl always gravitates to the glamorous.

Her current project is a mural, ten feet across and twelve feet high, that lines the far wall. It is hidden behind a wide metallic screen that distorts the atelier's reflection into a fun-house mirror. The screen is padlocked and bolted to the floor. Jinx is mysteriously coy about what the mural contains.

"Secret project," she says when pressed. "You'll see it when you see it."

The third level is Jinx's lab. Every surface is overrun with her experiments—tubes and glassware, pipettes and copper coils, funnels and siphons. It is harshly lit and chilled as an icebox. A different scent saturates the space: bitterly antiseptic. Unlike her art studio, Jinx keeps the lab scrupulously tidy, like the barest speck of dirt could cause an explosion.

Or perhaps she believes a tidy lab will birth a tidy mind. It is here, more often than not, that she retreats when overwhelmed. Sometimes Silco will find her, crouched over a schematic, her forehead scrunched in concentration, like it's a star-chart to divine her future.

Or re-write her past.

The Aerie's fourth tier is all cozy gloom and patchwork shadows. Its atmosphere calls to mind a bat's clandestine cote. Silco glimpses silk-swathed hangings, a wrought iron dresser, an antique phonograph. Behind a wood-carved partition, he spies a claw-foot tub with a copper shower-head fitted above it. Jinx's bed—a raised black futon with a quilted midnight-blue comforter—is positioned like a king-sized nest in the darkest corner. It faces an antique oil-painting of a weeping willow that stretches the entire wall. The frame is ornately gilded, the painting an oddity of greens and blues and reds. Sometimes the languorous landscape resembles a riptide of ether; sometimes a gash of bloodied arteries.

Jinx chose it, not at a high-end gallery, but a flea-market. Silco had scoffed at the amateurish brushstrokes. But he can't deny the piece has an unsettling power. It never fails to disarm him.

Jinx keeps the lamplight low in the fourth tier. A heart of twilit privacy within the bright metal bones of the Aerie.

A hidey-hole for her—and Sparky.

Her new pet.

Sparky's presence in Jinx's life—and Silco's, by proxy—was unexpected. After the dogfight, Bilgewater's ambassador had paid a handsome sum to buy Stardust and Ziggy. Graciously, he'd offered up Cthulhu as a gift. Silco was less than thrilled. What use had he for a slobbering mastiff?

He'd nearly fobbed the thing off to Sevika. She'd always had a soft spot for ugly mutts—a throwback to the ones she'd worked with in the mines alongside Nandi.

But Jinx had taken one glimpse of Cthulhu—all fearsome teeth and frothing mouth—and fallen in love. Literally fallen. One moment she'd walked into his office, and the next she'd tripped over her own feet as if spellbound. In the sludge-filled nadir of Zaun, nothing but bats, rats and cats for company, she knew no better than that Cthulhu was perfect.

Therefore, he was hers.

Silco was ambivalent. Jinx had never had a pet before. Never even expressed an interest. Bombs and bullets were her best friends.

Pets were different: a Piltovan affectation he'd long disdained. Chem-barons kept all manner of exotic creatures, from pythons to manticores. The amount of fodder consumed by each could feed ten families in the Lanes. That kind of waste was unconscionable. To say nothing of the diseases the creatures spread in close quarters.

Yet here was Jinx, falling headfirst for this monstrosity.

Out of an abundance of caution, Silco ordered Cthulhu quarantined for contagions. He'd expected Jinx to lose interest. Out of sight, out of mind etc. Yet once the confinement was over, the first thing Jinx did was spend two bells bathing the beast, massaging oil into his black fur, and cooing over his many scars.

Cthulhu took a shine to her. Soon, he stopped growling and began following her everywhere like a puppy.

Physically, they had little in common: a mountain of brawn paired with a kittenish wisp of a girl. Yet by the week's end, they were tumbling around together, giggling and yelping like equals. At night, the dog took his place at the foot of Jinx's bed in the Aerie. In daylight, he kept to her side like a sentinel.

Silco hoped they'd tire of each other. Instead, Jinx sealed their friendship by bestowing the dog with a name.

"Cthulhu sounds like someone's hawking a loogie," she declared. "He deserves something that fits."

"Like what?" Silco inquired.

"Sparkles McBubbleton Lollipop the Third!"

"…You can't be serious."

She smiled primly. "Sparky for short."

"I prefer Magnus."

"Pfff. You can't give a doggo two names!"

"I can keep him from pissing yellow if that's what I want." He snapped his fingers at the dog. "Magnus. Come."

The beast bristled, but obeyed. Jinx pulled a face. "Meanie!"

And so, Magnus (Sparky!) it was.

Certainly, in the Aerie, Magnus had plenty of space to play. Food was also no problem. He ate a steady diet of sump-vole meat scarcely rawer than Silco's own steaks. The only thing Silco absolutely insisted on was that the dog stay out of his and Jinx's suite, and never be allowed at the table during their mealtimes.

He dared not admit he was jealous of the beast.

And yet, Magnus seemed to ease Jinx's inherent loneliness. Like her, the creature was bred for the brutality of war. Jinx's scars were radioactive burns on the inside; Magnus' scars mottled every inch of his hide on the outside. The shared suffering bonded them together.

Silco couldn't pretend not to understand.

In her spare time, Jinx taught Magnus tricks. Fetch, rollover, play dead. But also deadlier commands. How to stand guard. Where to hide.

Who to kill.

XOXO, Jinx would whisper—and Magnus would bristle into eyeblink savagery. A reminder that there was beauty in the simple fact of this monster's base instincts.

Embodying death—and yet transcending it.

Silco let them run wild. He told himself it was for the best. As the dog grew into old age, Jinx's need for him would wane. That's the beauty of four-legged interlopers: a short shelf-life. In the meantime, Silco made note of the dog's killer instincts, and prepared accordingly.

On each visit, he kept an ultrasonic silver whistle in his suit. A deterrent—and a failsafe.

Just in case.

Silco's boots are a quiet metronome on the iron stairs. He stops mid-way and peeks up toward the top level. The staircase terminates without a banister; it's all very precarious. But that's the road to progress, isn't it?

No reward without risk.

Silco takes a breath, places both hands on the railing, and vaults over it with a smooth momentum—

Straight into Jinx's spy-post.

The air is suffused with brightness. The skylight—all translucent glass and Cartesian beams—is a geometric kaleidoscope of color and shadow. Elongated diamonds of green sunlight move across the floorboards. Dust-motes dance in the air.

In the center, Jinx has erected a gigantic brass telescope. It is not a spyglass like the ones Silco recalls from his boyhood. Instead, this telescope is a hybrid of optical science and magic. Within its barrel, Jinx has fitted an array of lenses, domes and reflectors. At their crux sits the Hex-gem. A prism changes color depending on the energy the gem exudes.

At dawn, Jinx uses it to scope out hidden runes across Zaun's cityscape.

So far, she's narrowed out one beneath an alchemist's workshop in the Sumps. One within an illegal smuggling route below a fishmonger's shop at Entresol. Two in the tunnels beneath a wharf at the Ironworks. A fourth at the site of the fallen Bridge.

With each rune she uncovers, Jinx illustrates a map, the areas connected by a complexity of lines. The work is not hers alone. There's now an entire group of sumpsnipes from Silco's network, doing the same thing all across Zaun.

X'ers, they call themselves. They search for hidden runes, and spraypaint glowing pink X's across each spot.

Some of the runes they unearth are impossibly faded. Others are nothing more than abstract glyphs. But with each one, Jinx's map weaves together, drawing the city inexorably closer.

She calls it a compass, with a web of lines all pointing to Polaris.

Each morning, Jinx shares her findings with Silco. She shows him each coordinate decoded; each rune translated. He shares his own suggestions on how to cordon off the area. They're a matched set now, working toward the same goal.

Progress.

Silco lands soundlessly: a rat in a maze. Straightening, he smooths a palm through his hair, then cocks his head Usually pop rock blasts through the superannuated sound system. Today it is quiet.

Deathly quiet.

Paranoia squeezes his throat. He prowls through the spy-post. He dreads finding it empty. Jinx wouldn't do that, would she? Lull him into complacence then disappear again—a goodbye for good?

Gods, no—

Jinx isn't gone.

A shimmery emerald insect—a dragonfly?—flits through the air. Silco follows it round the corner. Instantly, he spots Jinx by a large paint-flecked mirror. She is looking herself over in it, full-length.

For a moment Silco is dazzled, failing to recognize the girl before him.

Her braids are long gone. She'd let Silco, disappointed but trying to be supportive, neaten the rest of her butchered mane into the Hellion Cut of pageboy spikes. He remembers standing behind Jinx in the bathroom, scissors clicking, a blue furze falling on the tiles like those mysterious motes after the explosion in the Deadlands.

Eyeing the results, Jinx tipped a shoulder. "Meh. It'll do."

Translated from Jinxese: I like it.

Privately, Silco is more ambivalent. The shorter coiffure ought to exaggerate Jinx's pert features. Instead it contours her face into a heart-shaped maturity. She's got cheekbones where he'd glimpsed none before. Her mouth seems different, too; more a beestung pucker than a soft cupid's bow. Even the spray of freckles on her nose and the puckish gap between her teeth seem less pronounced.

Today, she's made herself up with a brash exuberance for the ceremony. Eyes darkly ringed with eyeliner and glittery blue shadow, her mouth licked with bloody gloss. A bit overdone; such a fresh young face doesn't need the hard-edged veneer of cosmetics.

But that isn't the biggest difference.

Jinx is wearing a dress.

Silco recognizes it as one of the three he'd sent over via courier—a long, blue-black taffeta with the iridescent sheen of Zaun at midnight. It fits like a coat of paint at the sleeveless bodice and falls in clinging waves to the floor. Her silhouette, pale from night-living, flows beguilingly with the fabric. A woman's blossoming shape—a woman trained to shoot straight and slit throats.

Silco's heart twists. Pride; sadness.

He tries to separate this mysterious creature from the little girl he knows. Except their first encounter left such a walloping impact. Literally. Her loveliness was always tied up with that, an endearing secret perceived only dimly, buried as it was beneath the doldrums and dramas of adolescence.

(Growing up so fast?)

Jinx doesn't notice him. With a fabric marker, she is doodling on her gown. She does this with every outfit Silco buys her—marking and shredding them to suit her tastes. Outwardly, he bemoans the waste. Inside, he feels a wry admiration. Jinx is a spark all her own; her sense of self creeps into every corner of her life.

And into Silco's.

Satisfied with her artwork—a mélange of skull-faced comets—Jinx tosses the marker aside, then sweeps over to her work-table. It is scattered with tools and trinkets. She plucks one from the pile: a black twist of barbwire. Nimble-fingered, she tweaks it into a choker reminiscent of the Eye of Zaun. Into the whorled center, she fits a stone.

The Hex-gem.

Silco watches the stone change colors as she touches it: traceries of purple infusing the blue. They reflect in the convexity of Jinx's eyes, tiny galaxies.

Under the table, a dark shape noses the toe of her slipper. Magnus, stirring from a nap. Reaching down, Jinx pats his head, kneading the roughened skin between her fingers.

"The thing is," she says, as if picking up a thread of old conversation. "It's not enough that Gemmy's got magic. It's like a battery, y'know? It won't do any good without a conduit. That's what all the runes are for. Symbolic thingmajigs to connect the magic to the right source. And different combos do different tricks, too. Channel forces of nature. Bend time. Make a sandwich. There's an exact sequence. Problem is—some of the sequences change dependin' on stuff like the moon phases and the planets and the sun at the horizon."

She squints at the skylight. "Not that we get much down here. But this stuff matters to the Gemmie. It makes her magic stronger. Like music but the instruments are either riiiiiight there, or on top of a cliff." She begins a faraway la la la that Silco recognizes as one of the jazz songs from his phonograph. God Bless the Child. After a few bars, she says, "Near as I can tell, there's five runes that matter most. The rest are just corollaries. They add zip to the big-wig magic, but not the real juice. We've got one, right where I blasted the Bridge. A three-pronged point. But the other four..."

Magnus slobbers on her fingers. Giggling, Jinx wipes her hand on her gown.

"Anyway," she says, "I'm still workin' on it. The thing is, not all the runes gotta be the musty-fusty ones in the books. Rune are just symbols. Anything can be a symbol. A paw print. An interrobang. A music note. All's I need is to figure out the Big Five. Once I learn how they make Gemmie's magic hum, I can make my own symbols for the Hex-Code. Then I'll really make her sing." She lifts her chin, as if defying someone to disagree. "It'll be an orchestra. A symphony of spells. And I'll be the conductor! Zaun'll never be the same!" She takes up her off-key tra-la-la-ing again.

Silco stifles a smile.

He needs to talk to her, yet dares not interrupt. It would abash Jinx, and break the delicate mood. More than that, it would call attention to the great strides she's made. From feverishly muttering to her gallery of specters to confiding playfully in her pet. From enduring awful alterations to her life—thanks to the Hex-gem—to decoding its secrets to alter Zaun itself.

Silco turns to withdraw. His footstep creaks across the floorboards. Magnus' muzzle sharpens on a growl. In a blink, the blade of a throwing knife embeds itself into the wall beside Silco's skull.

Jinx—fizzy-eyed and fierce—relaxes only when she recognizes him.

"Sheeesh! Give a gal a warning, will ya?"

"Apologies."

Silco's tone is unperturbed. Survival is a simple geometric equation for two monsters. Angles of living; degrees of dying. The circle of logic closes upon itself and he is ready for anything within its circumference.

Tugging the knife loose, he hands it back to Jinx, grip-first. "Where were you hiding this?"

Jinx's smile is impish. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would."

Her smile widens. Taking the knife, she tucks it to a hiding place—a leather sheath holstered to her right thigh. Two other knives are tucked within. The design is so seamless that the outline barely shows against her gown. "The knife's composite, not steel," she explains. "Won't set off the metal detectors at the stupid ferry. I can't take Puff-Puff along. But there's other ways to spruce up, right?"

Silco's glance is infinitely soft. "You'll knock them dead."

"Huh? Oh." Jinx's pale cheeks pinken. Shyly, she smooths out her gown. "You like?"

"You're perfect."

The solemn fervor of his tone reassures Jinx. She beams at her brightest wattage. Ordinarily, she never cares for the fine art of concealment. It's her own ferocity she's primarily reliant on.

This is different.

Silco has taught her to court attention as an imperative. Notoriety is power; the star that shines the brightest eclipses the rest. Jinx has taken the lesson to heart. For Zaun, she is a champion. For Piltover, she is a scourge. Today, all eyes will be on her, the memory of Piltover's loss resurrected by Zaun's wins.

By flaunting the Hex-gem, Jinx claims the biggest win of all.

Silco gestures to the necklace. "May I?"

Jinx hands over the tangle of barbwire. Silco fastens the necklace around her throat. The gem glows against the darkness of her gown, night and star.

Jinx touches it with a fingertip. "It's always changing color."

"Like you."

"Do I look changed?"

Her hopeful tone stirs a smile. But he understands why she's asking. Under her brazenness, she is uneasy. Silco can't blame her. She'll be on unfamiliar terrain, without prior frame of reference. In battle, it wouldn't matter; Jinx is adept at thinking on her feet. But this is a different combat zone.

A ceasefire that doubles as a face-off.

"So?" Jinx finesses a strand of hair behind her ear. "Ready to go?"

"We have time."

Translation: Make them wait.

Jinx's squinched-up face says, Wait for what, Mister?

Silco exhales. This is the tricky part.

"We must discuss today's events."

That gets her frowning attention. "The signing ceremony? What about it?"

"It is far from a ceremony."

More a flesh-buffer between you and Vi.

Under the table, Magnus growls. His snout is pressed to the floor, ears flattened. Irritably, Silco snaps his fingers. Magnus quivers into silence.

"Damn beast."

"Only cause you're a meanie."

"Meanness is the price of discipline." Again, Silco snaps his fingers. "Magnus."

"Sparky!"

"Whichever. Come."

Magnus approaches him warily. Silco's fingertips stroke along his muzzle. A moment later, he seizes a fistful of fur around the dog's neck. "Guard the entrance," he says, and gives him a shove. Magnus lets off a grizzled yelp, then subsides downstairs.

Jinx pouts. "What I tell ya? Mean."

"They learn no other way."

"You never taught me that way."

"You aren't a dog," he says simply, "You are my daughter."

Jinx's features soften. He offers her his hand. She takes it, their fingers twining. Their palms differ in size and shape, yet they fit with a strange congruency: calluses mirroring each other. The war, the Deadlands, the explosion… everything is still fresh in Silco's mind. Jinx's presence at his side stands for it—a testament to her survivor's spirit.

But also to her scars.

"I meant what I said," Silco says softly. "Today is far from a ceremony. We are transitioning from one battlefield to another."

Jinx gives him a slow nod that says, I know that already.

"The Council will try their hardest to show us up at this event. A reminder of what we lost by daring to cut ties. A reminder that we aren't their equals, but monsters rising to tarred glory on wax wings. They will treat us accordingly." He meets her eyes. "There will be a squad of Enforcers at the ship. A salute by cannon fire to signal the Treaty's completion. A stampede of press with flashbulbs. There will be verbal traps. Old wounds salted. Cruelty hidden in civility. Anything to provoke an angry response. Especially from you."

Jinx's fingers encircle his own. Her eyes are ember-bright, as if the past is burnt into her retinas.

"They'll try to hurt me," she whispers. "Like they hurt us all."

"They won't."

"No?"

Silco's own eyes are glitteringly sharp. "They can't hurt us, because we are not their inferiors. And they cannot hurt you, because you aren't going into this unarmed or alone. I'll be with you every step. So will all the lessons you carry. Remember: this is just a battlefield by any other name. Come in with both barrels loaded, and you'll have the best chance of coming out the winner."

Jinx musters a smile. "You talkin' literal barrels?"

"Tempting." Humor shades into seriousness. "I need to know if you're all right with this, child."

"I am."

"You're sure? I know we've gone over everything. But I need to be certain."

Jinx bites her lip. She won't admit to fear; it's a point of pride. Fear is a trap that must be controlled—all the better to control others with it.

He's taught her that. A history of hand-won lessons practically playing out on her face: the jutting jaw, the stubborn scowl. Jinx-at-twelve, balanced on a fifty-story scaffolding, moonlight plating her wobbling body as he coaxed her to move forward. Jinx-at-thirteen, a gun in hand, its muzzle dot aimed at a gagged snitch's forehead as Silco ordered her to fire. Jinx-at-seventeen, the Bridge collapsing to embers, her silhouette against the hellish radiance, a harpy summoned to war.

Her life is a summation of fears surmounted. All culminating to this moment. The ultimate test.

If she fails…

Sullenly, Jinx asks, "Didja come here to talk about the gala? Or make sure I won't screw up?"

"That's not fair, Jinx."

"Then why the questions? You think I'll jinx the Treaty?"

Silco slips a hand under her chin and lifts her face. "If anyone jinxes the Treaty, it will be me."

"Huh?"

"I have no respect for limits set by another's pen. Piltover's accords only define what was already ours. But they won't keep us safe." His jaw hardens. "At the gala, I will make bargains for that. Flash all my teeth while lying through them. But it's you I am bargaining for, Jinx. I want Zaun free so you are free. So you have a life of protection and plenty. Food in your belly and hope in your heart. For that, I'd jeopardize all the peace in the world."

Sudden tears stand bright in Jinx's eyes. She whispers, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do all this for me? Isn't it enough that Zaun's real?"

Silco drops his forehead against hers. Jinx's eyes, taking him in, are a neon horizon.

"Because you deserve it," he says. "All of it. Every last scrap of happiness. Every moment that was stolen from you. Don't forget that. Don't forget how hard you fought to survive—or how you won despite the odds. Even when it hurts like hell, don't let go of it." His voice roughens. "Piltover will pay what they owe us. And they'll pay with more than blood."

Tears shatter from Jinx's eyes to fall like jewels on her cheeks. "We showed 'em."

"Now we move forward—"

"—we never forget."

Jinx nuzzles closer. Silco passes an arm around her, squeezing. Be degrees, her tension melts. He feels the rise-and-fall of her ribs, seamlessly matching his own. Two pairs of lungs working in synchronicity. Inside, the enormity of his rage digs bloody nails into his chest. Slashing, shredding.

An ache as powerful as love.

And beneath the love?

Fear.

Seventeen and strong as a squad of trained killers. And yet she is still so vulnerable. A million disasters could rip her away. Worse, she might rip herself away, and into her sister's arms. A nation's power at Silco's fingertips. Yet Vi's power is a different kind—spun from old emotion and memory and regret.

If she gets close to Jinx, she might turn her against him. Make her doubt herself. Make her unstable—and destabilize everything.

Jinx rubs her cheek against his shirtfront. "Your heart's doing that wonky thing."

"Hm?"

"You okay?"

"I—yes."

Jinx's eyes narrow like a cat's. Then she sleeks her thumbs up to tug his mouth into a smile—and he is the one bristling on a Sssss.

"Jinx—!"

She giggles. "What's the matter, Silly? You're all spooky."

"Stop that." He bats off her hands. "It's nothing."

"You're sure?" She cocks her head. "Your face was doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"I dunno what to call it. Your ears get pointier. Your nose too. Ooh, and your lip does this, like. Grrrrr." Jinx curls hers back in a flash of canines. "Maybe it's nerve damage."

"You say the sweetest things."

"Aww, don't be like that." She tweaks his cravat and tugs the collar of his waistcoat smooth. "You're spooky, but not like, spooky-ugly. I mean, your nose is too big. But your eyes salvage the rest of your face. One of 'em, anyways. And I like the little blue cravat pin. Makes the color in the good peeper pop. Hey, have you ever thought of wearin' a monocle?" She mimes a glass eye-piece. "That'd make you look real debonair. Or, wait! How about an eye-patch? Like a pirate king! You'd have all those Pilties soiling their fancy britches!"

Patiently, Silco says, "I'll assume you are leading somewhere with this."

Her minxy expression fades. She gnaws her bottom lip.

"I, um—"

"What?"

"I was wonderin'—if you knew anything."

"About?"

Jinx loops a finger into the buttonhole of his coat. "D'you... d'you think she'll be there?"

Vi.

Silco's expression stays impassive. His breath doesn't catch in his throat; his pulse doesn't trip. But there is a bright-edged steel in his good eye. "No."

"How can you be sure?"

(Because I've taken precautions.)

(Because I'll do anything to keep her from hurting you.)

(Anything to keep you.)

"Because," he says, "Piltover and Zaun have vetted the guest list. For safety's sake."

"Safety?"

"Theirs." A beat. "Ours."

Jinx says nothing. She concentrates on her hand, plucking the button of his coat. Her expression is pensive. Silco wants to say something reassuring. Or diverting. This Treaty signals Jinx's triumph against the odds. Her achievements for Zaun. He'll slit Vi's throat before she sullies it.

His mouth opens. But Jinx pulls her finger free from his coat and touches his lips.

"Forget it. She left me, right?" Her vivid eyes grow dull. "Families stick together. 'Cept we were never family. She saw. She snitched. She ditched. I was always alone."

Silco's hand goes to her hair, a gentling caress. "You're not alone now, Jinx."

"I belong to you."

A strange turn of phrase. Belong. A mark of ownership, not kinship. For Silco, it is easy to reconcile one with the other. Whatever he loves—for a minute, a day, a lifetime—he lays claim to. He sparks revolution in its name. He baptizes in blood until all resistance floods away.

Except Jinx isn't fashioned to be loved that way. Love for her isn't revolution. It is booms and breakage. It is fireworks. It is freedom. If Silco built Zaun as an altar to her, she'd just tear it down, a phoenix bursting from its cage. He recognizes that, even as he can't think of how else to treasure her. To prove that she's worth a nation.

Worth everything.

(Everything Vi has no claim to.)

"You belong to me," he repeats, "But I belong to you, too. Family."

Jinx's bitter smile softens. Love, this way or that, spins to fill the breach between them. A bridge like any other. She lays a hand over his heart, and goes on tiptoe to drop a kiss to his scarred cheekbone.

"Just us," she whispers.

"Always."

It is never easy, even after months of wrenching his tongue to a different groove, to say he loves her. More often, he expresses it through oblique means: a soft embrace, a softer word. By nature, he's not given to affection. Ruthless remains his default setting. And yet he cannot imagine loving anyone, not anymore, the way he does her. Even Vander's bright halo has faded to ash.

There is only Jinx. What he can do for her—versus what he can't.

"I promise," Jinx whispers.

"Hm?"

Jinx's face wavers into a sharp-eyed determination. "I promise I'll keep it together. No booms. No bawling. No fuck-ups."

"Language."

"Just sayin.'" She bites her lip: an angel with an imp's wiles. "I've even practiced my smile. See?"

Silco inclines his head, and Jinx—

Her first smile is all dimples. A bloom of rosebuds; a fairytale come true.

"Not bad. Tone down the saccharine, though."

She obeys, the smile replaced by a coy twist of lips.

"Better, but still a bit too demure. Try this."

With a magician's sleight of hand, Silco lets his facial muscles rearrange themselves. The change is subtle: a softened angle to his cheekbones, a shift of the jaw, a shuttering of the eyes. Yet it alters his whole face out of sharp-eyed severity and into a picture of benign magnetism. Even his scars seem to lose their bite: a collection of intriguing seams.

The mask he wears when business calls.

"Whoa," Jinx breathes. "No more Mr. Pointy!"

"Precisely." He reverts to his customary expression: a glint of disinterest in the good eye and a devil's gleam in the bad. "Topsiders are terrified of hidden depths. Best to offer a reassuring surface. Keep your real self tucked away—until the time's ripe. You'll find, child, that you have many faces."

She grins. "Like a Hex-gem."

"Indeed."

A nod, and Jinx closes her eyes. Silco watches them move behind the painted lids, and knows she is conjuring up her brightest self. Her smile sharpens, then smooths. Her whole demeanor morphs: a pretty veneer with a cold, cutting core. Her lashes flicker open, the eyes pure luminosity, and the transformation is complete.

Silco cannot hide his smile.

"Perfect," he says, and means it.

"I'll be bulletproof."

"You will." He sobers. "But Jinx..."

"Yeah?"

"If you struggle, just say so. If enough is enough—"

Jinx nods. They both know the signal. Four letters passed down through years of mutual survival. Sketched by Jinx's fingertips over his heart.

XOXO

Showtime.

Spears of morning sunlight quiver in the air, arcing off the gilt letters on the ceremonial ferry's pennant.

SS Niobe.

The ship is moored five hundred yards equidistant between Zaun and Piltover's docks. It holds no allegiance to either shore. Rather, it symbolizes their shared interests; one of the dozen boats and airships that will carry trade, tourists and troublemakers back and forth between the sister-cities. Half its construction came from Silco's pocket. The other half was on Medarda's dime. Its crest is Piltover's and Zaun's combined; the stylized chem-shield overlapped by the geometric column of the Hex-Gates

A symbol of goodwill, it coaxes Councilors and chem-barons to likewise invest.

Greed is a shared pulsebeat between the cities. And the stronger it grows, the more effectively Silco can anchor his influence—and chart a course to Zaun's future.

An armored skiff cuts a smooth line through the river. Bulletproof and bombproof; decked in Zaun's trademark greens. Inside the cabin, Silco sits with the crew. Jinx, Sevika, Lock, Ran and Dustin. He'd granted them the entire day off yesterday to recharge. A tactical necessity. He's commanded them for years and understands their freewheeling natures. He'd rather they attend the ceremony well-slept and well-fucked than be inclined to go prowling for sport later tonight.

The stakes are high, and he expects them sharp.

Today, they are sleekly turned out in black suits like the members of some glittering band. A band who between them have spilled enough blood to stain the river red.

Silco says, "Today, we rub shoulders with Topside swine."

"Bring in the bacon!" Dustin says, oinking. "Soo-wee! Soo-wee!"

Ran elbows him; he shuts up.

Unperturbed, Silco says, "Bacon indeed. Times are lean and we could use their fat. You know what's expected of you."

Lock nods stolidly. "Mind our P's and Q's."

Ran smirks, "Act our age and not our shoe size."

Dustin sniggers, "Swallow, don't spit."

Sevika rolls her eyes, "Depends on what you're swallowing, Dustin."

"Uhm? Mouthwash?"

The crew hoot with laughter. Silco indulges in a half-smile. It's an exchange he's engineered before: an expulsion of pent-up nerves.

It dispels the dour mood. Reminds them that whatever comes, they are prepared to handle it.

His eyes pass from the crew to Jinx. She stands apart, arms folded, leaning against the bulkhead. Her head rests on the porthole, breath streaking foggily over the glass. Her eyes trail north over Piltover's crested golden skyline. Silco spies the Hex-Gates. Closer, the remnants of the Bridge. Once a familiar sight. A symbol of equivalent exchange between the Upper and Lower city.

A hollow symbol—and Jinx burned it down as a lesson.

Silco remembers how the spires went up in a blitz of flames, the bricks crashing down to churn the river with spume.

He remembers Jinx's tears.

He remembers…

"The Siege," Jinx says.

The crew are silent. They stare at Jinx with the wariness reserved for a wild animal. She isn't one of them; she's always held a terrifying halo of otherness, and none of them go out of their way to include her in their ribald banter. Her moods mystify. Her talents terrify. Even among comrades, she doesn't belong.

And yet she belongs in Zaun.

The city she risked everything to save.

"The Siege," Jinx repeats. "I can still taste the smoke."

Silco doesn't cross the cabin to her side. Jinx needs a different stripe of comfort right now. A radius of space as if to draw her weapon, her arms extended and her grip readied to fire. He speaks instead, slowly, a reminder of his nearness.

"Zaun will sing songs about that night."

"And Topside?"

"They'll have nightmares."

A wan smile plays on Jinx's mouth. Her eyes stay locked on the horizon, a fingertip pressed to the glass. It's as if she can see the fire, a macabre tableau playing out across the waterline. Her body is vibratingly still: a tuning fork tweaked to old frequencies.

The Siege.

That's what they call the partition—belowground and above. An incursion of monsters. But, as with everything else, the definition of monster differed depending on which side of the river one's blood flowed. In Zaun, it meant the Enforcers. To Topside, it meant the entire Undercity populace. The war was a warped mirror; the inevitable endpoint of decades of resentment and repression.

Silco remembers the losses suffered, and the dead left behind. Their neon city a pitch-black hellhole. The crack of gunfire and high-pitched wails. The humid air beating down like a superheated fist; every breath dragged as if through bloodstained cloth.

The Last Drop was blown sky-high. With it, so many of Vander's hopes, and the heart of his lie. A principally foolish and persistently shortsighted lie: peace between the cities.

Peace was never in Zaun's stars.

The only bright point shone through the dark. The embers of Piltover burning.

The final night was spent in a game of deuces with the Enforcers. Zaun's last stand: a desperate gamble against the odds. Their enemy was equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry. They outnumbered the Fissurefolk ten-to-one. Their ranks were lethal and their bullets endless.

Their mistake was hubris. Topsiders had never fought for their own freedom. Why would they? They had it already, in full measure. But the Fissurefolk? They'd never known the comfort of choice. When you've got nothing left to lose, everything's a chip to bet. Every breath is a fight to the death.

Five hundred Enforcers descended into the Undercity. Only twenty-three returned home.

Silco had devised a strategy off-the-cuff. No time to weigh the pros and cons, or schedule a war-council with the chem-barons. Most had fled to their strongholds. The rest were too busy pillaging. It fell on Silco to act, and he had done it on his own terms. He'd chosen those with the most to lose from Piltover's reign. Ballbusters and bruisers; mercenaries and miscreants; chem-fiends and chemists. A motely crew, each with their own agenda. But none who could be bribed with coin or cowed by bullets.

They loved the city too fiercely. Loved it with a rage that ran so deep the only answer was freedom.

Or death.

When the Enforcers stormed, they were ready.

"Don't meet them head-on," Silco ordered. "Lure them down."

Down—where centuries of gallows fodder had hid from the law. Down—where every backstreet had bred sinners and spawned killers. Down—where every crevice was a chokepoint and every corridor a death-trap.

Down—where life was a war waged by inches.

Silco knew the terrain like the black hollows of his heart. In boyhood, he'd negotiated every cobblestone with intimate ease. As a man, he and Vander had made the back-alleys their own, long before they'd claimed the Lanes. The festering warrens deepened into a sinuous complexity that presaged threats at every turn.

The Enforcers had the firepower, but no experience. They'd been taught to take prisoners. They'd never learned to chase shadows.

"Give 'em a taste of home," Silco said, and led the way.

Into the slithering dark, he and the crew descended. Sentries were stationed along the canals; shadowrunners between the bridges. Jinx stayed by his side. The others scattered through the alleys. The Enforcers were stubborn—but their strength was not without limits. A fortnight of hard-hitting combat was wearing them down. The disorienting labyrinths left them vulnerable to paranoia. The fumes from the chemical sludge became a miasma.

By midnight, they'd gone from towering titans to terrified mice.

Jinx took the initiative. With the crew's help, she rigged the drain valves with bombs. She didn't have the resources for a big blast; not after the destruction of Piltover's cityscape. She'd had to get creative. With canisters of compressed gas, she'd flooded the streets with pressurized sewage. It was a fatal, fast-moving tide. The Enforcers were left with no choice but to retreat into Zaun's guts or face a no-man's land of filth.

Straight into Jinx's trap.

One Enforcer's footstep triggered the pressure plate. A gas of hallucinogenic potency spewed out. It had each man turning on the other in a frenzy of gunfire and screams.

Sevika and crew took aim, ready out to take the rest at close range.

Silco stopped them.

"Let them bleed," he said. "Save our ammo."

A second squad of Enforcers rolled in. They charged headlong into a Jinx's playground of razor snares and spring-loaded incendiaries. The explosions lit up the streets. The shrapnel sliced open their ranks. They fell shrieking to the gods for mercy.

Mercy was a foreign language belowground.

"Steel yourselves," Silco ordered the crew. "Their reinforcements will be prepared."

The prediction was dead-on.

In the hours after midnight, the two cities reeled. The Enforcers were dazed and drained. But they knew their mission, and followed it doggedly. When the third wave came, they were equipped with body-armor and respirators. They took shelter behind reinforced barricades, and penetrated the dark with night-vision goggles.

In the ruins of Factorywood, they cornered Silco's squad.

It was no melee. It was a massacre. The Fissurefolk knew the territory, but the Enforcers were locked and loaded. With a barrage of gunblasts, they sent Silco's men toppling. While the survivors regrouped, they began a relentless advance. The whistling scream of bullets and the liquid pop of blood vessels became a symphony. The streets ran black with gore.

Silco had to make a snap decision. Retreat or engage?

In his ear, Vander's voice:

"Kill me, if you must. But spare the Lanes."

At the forefront, the battle raged. At the sidelines, the corpses piled up. At his crux, the choice was simple.

Silco thought: You died for our cause, brother.

I'll fight for it.

Sevika's hand fell on his shoulder. She urged, "They're closing in. We need to fall back."

"No."

"Sir—"

Silco's mismatched eyes scoured the flaming skyline. He spied the Old Hungry, the first spot Vander had ever showed him. He saw its smoking turrets and pockmarked walls. He saw the gutted factories and charred canals. He saw the smoldering husks of abandoned homes. He saw the wreckage of his people's lives, and felt the ache of their loss.

He stared at the blackened vistas of his city, and knew: Vander had always meant to protect it.

To the last breath.

So did he.

"No," he repeated, and met Sevika's shocked stare. "No retreat. We box them in the sewers. Then we go all in. We fight with everything we have."

"Silco—"

"We end this, Sevika," he said, and his voice didn't come from inside his chest. It webbed up from someplace deeper still, down below the cracked foundations of his psyche. It was a place of endless hunger, unyielding rage; an impregnable nucleus of self. "No more games. No one—nothing—is coming for Zaun again. We take the fight to the bastards, and we burn them out."

Sevika's expression shifted from shock to steel.

He would never forget the look. It burned through him; bit deep into his gut. It was the look of a soldier saluting her flag; a Valkyrie summoning her chariot; a priestess kneeling to her god. It was the look that said: I will follow you to hell, and make it a home fit for us both.

A vow as binding as blood.

There was a salvo of intensifying gunfire. Shrapnel spangled off the cobblestones. There were screams and the choking stench of gunsmoke. Silco dared a look over Sevika's shoulder. He saw two of their number dead—the twins, Zoked and Szaza—their faces the same pallor as the soot hazing the foul air.

Sevika's hand squeezed his shoulder, then fell away.

She said: "I'll hold the line."

"Hold it tight. No quarter—"

"—No mercy." She smiled, a slash of teeth. "You've got ten minutes, sir."

"I've got a lifetime." A heartbeat, his eyes on hers. "Go."

Sevika went.

The troops fell in behind her, the whole company a solid wedge. She led them out. The Enforcers took one look and opened fire, their bullets blitzing. It didn't matter. The Fissurefolk held formation. Sevika's orders rang strong and cold. They'd trained under her, and would lay their lives at her feet.

Silco saw the brief radiance of Sevika's mechanical arm firing up. The blade jutted like a lance. Charging, she cut an arc of whizzing metal through the bodies. The noise of gunfire gave way to a riot of screams. More Enforcers pressed in. Their shields were a bristling wall, but Sevika kept coming. Her body was a juggernaut, a battering ram, a dragon's claw. She tore the barricade in half, sending the Enforcers reeling. They opened up a lethal crossfire, but she didn't stop. Her prosthetic arm was a meat-shredder. Every swipe opened up a torso or a throat.

Every blow was a testament.

To Zaun.

To Nandi.

To him.

Silco understood. She was ready to die for the cause—and be done with it. There was no one else left to command; he was the last line of defense. Him and whoever was left of the holdout. The street was a riven map of bodies. So many dead, their number beyond counting.

Silco counted the survivors: Twenty-three.

Twenty-three against an Enforcer's squad of fifty.

Eighteen more would die before the dawn. But not before they wiped their enemies out of existence.

Silco shouted: "Down-low!"

It was the signal.

Six of the survivors closed ranks in the narrow streets, holding off the assault as best they could. The rest followed Silco through the tar-slick warrens. A volley of bullets ricocheted off the stone walls; a flare went whizzing overhead. The fetid murk of the Sumps had never smelled so sweet.

"Fuck!" Lock shouted.

A distant explosion swelled across the rooftops. In the shower of flaming wreckage, Silco turned to glimpse Sevika. Her left was arm was a mangled twist. She'd caught the tail-end of a rocket-launcher blast. A starburst of blood hit the wall. She staggered in a daze. Her mouth shaped unsayable words.

Then she vanished. A ripple of smoke spread like a shockwave.

"Fuck," Lock said again, more raggedly.

Silco wanted like blazes to turn back. But that wasn't his and Sevika's bargain. She'd bought him ten minutes, not a lifetime. The deal was to go all in. They were out of options.

There was no turning back now. No running.

Silco let the image of Sevika burn itself into his retinas. His pulse didn't race. His breath didn't quicken. There was only a blackness of rage, spiking into a knife of pure white-hot focus that scalded his hairline down to his nerve endings.

He made a vow, then and there.

He would not fall. Not while he had blood left to shed and lives left to save.

Not while he had Jinx.

They crashed through the gritty underbrush and into Zaun's sewers. The muck sucked at their boots. The atmosphere reeked of decay. The city's bowels were a subterranean labyrinth of wormholes and dead ends. A haven of nocturnal low-lives; a last resort against Piltover's rule.

The ultimate death-trap

Silco kept a breakneck pace, navigating the complex with unerring instinct. It had been nearly a decade since he'd set foot in these corridors. But his memory spat out the layout, and his body knew the way. The tunnel branched, forked, doubled back. His crew kept in formation, their boots like a drumroll behind him. They cleared each intersection with brute efficiency. No matter how fast the Enforcers chased them, Silco knew they couldn't keep up.

Not without losing a man—or three.

The tunnels narrowed into a chokepoint of interlocking grates. Silco's hand slid across the slime-slicked wall until he reached a rusted panel. The concealed hatch yielded with a shriek. He thrust his torso through a gap and found his way down a rusted ladder. His feet hit a submerged floor. Within moments, the rest of the crew were gathered in a low-ceilinged chamber.

It was a storage depot. The air stank of purifying chemicals. Steel barrels lined the walls; rubber drums piled up in the center. Silco kicked one open. Dust spurted, and with it the bite of gun-oil. Inside was a cache of weapons. They were the same design used by the Enforcers: top-of-the-line, and packed with a payload. Enough to level a city, or lay waste to a battalion.

The crew's shock was audible. "Holy shit!"— "You gotta be kidding me!"— "Where'd all this come from?"

"A last resort," Silco said succinctly, and lifted the lid off another barrel. There was a stash of grenades. His smile spread like blood in the darkness. "We'll bury them alive."

He snapped orders and the crew leapt. The explosives were prepped and primed. The trap was laid. They set up along the tunnel's mouth. Dustin took point. Lock and Ran guarded the rear. The rest were to act as a cordon along the walls.

And Jinx—

She was to his left, just like always. Fishbones was slung across her back; Puff-Puff was holstered at her thigh. A belt of grenades encircled her hips. Her arm cradled Pow-Pow with a casual alignment of weight, like a child in the crook of her elbow.

His child—a wisp of a creature—with enough firepower to destroy a nation.

Yet the worst wreckage was her eyes.

"Jinx."

Silco beckoned, his voice soft as a slit throat.

Soundless, she came. Her face held a fritzed-out blankness. She was Jinx times ten—and yet she was almost gone, all the animation drained out of her. The past days had pushed her psyche past the boundary of human endurance. There was a vacuum inside her now: the space Silco ought to have filled with love—and hadn't.

He'd failed.

Failed as a father. Failed as a leader. Failed as a man.

He was a black-hearted monster who'd built an empire on blood and drugs. He'd cast away Vander for a knife to the gut; he'd forsaken Nandi's goodness for a last-ditch gamble. He'd sent his precious girl off to die without a thought; now he wasn't certain he could summon her back to life. In one night, he'd managed to ruin himself, and his city, and the one person he would kill for.

The universe, in its cruelty, had sent Jinx to save him.

Silco cradled Jinx's face in both hands. The brokenness of her eyes pierced him to the bone.

"Jinx," he said, "You've done well. You've done so well tonight."

Jinx stared. Her irises glowed like sickly phosphorescence.

"You've kept us alive," he said, more urgently. "Now you must hold on."

A quiver of breath. "Hold..."

Silco fought down the tide of self-loathing and forced himself to keep speaking. "Hold on to yourself, Jinx. Stay with us. The fight isn't done."

Jinx stared blindishly.

"Please, Jinx. We need you."

The words throbbed: hollow, desperate, true.

Jinx stayed silent.

"I need you!" Silco barked, a brutal whiplash of command. "Now, Jinx. Hold on to yourself—as I hold on to you. I will keep you alive, even if I have to burn their whole damn city for it."

The silence stretched on.

Then—

Jinx shivered.

The fizzle in her eyes faded. She pressed the heels of her palms to the swollen lids and rubbed. When her lashes lifted, the brightness was all the brighter. It was like a magic trick. In a trice, she was there: his wild child, his weapon, his wonder. She focused on him with such intensity, it felt as though his skull might fracture under the impact.

Her lips shaped secret syllables. Silco could barely hear them over the choking silence.

"Say again, child?"

"Show them," Jinx breathed.

"What?"

Her eyes gleamed.

"We'll show 'em," she said. "We'll show 'em all."

Silco nodded. His palms skated up the sides of Jinx's neck, a tender strangulation. Leaning in, he kissed her forehead. Then he let go.

"All in," he said.

"All in," Jinx repeated, and he knew she understood.

At their backs, the thud of boots.

"Bossman!" Ran hissed. "They're coming! They're fucking coming!"

No time for delay. The surviving Enforcers were forty-two strong, and no fools. They'd follow Silco's straight into the depths, until they could call it a victory. They were tenacious, tireless, but they had no idea who they were facing.

Silco was counting on it.

He ordered, "Bite the bullet."

In their network's parlance: Go hard. Go fast. Go out with a bang.

Tonight, there was no better motto.

The Enforcers' footsteps thudded. Closer. Closer. Silco gave the signal, and the crew went on the offensive. A canister of colorless gas spewed across the floor. In the gloom, a flash-bang. The smoky air was interrupted with sparks. Silco and the crew kept their heads down, their aim high. They wore goggles and had sealed their mouths with respirators. It was enough to keep their vision safe and their lungs unclogged.

The Enforcers were not so fortunate. They tore off their helmets, eyes throbbing from the flashbang—and began to choke. The gas was from the mines: a caustic chemical that burned their throats. They stumbled into the dark, and met their deaths at the business ends of his crew's barrels. They emptied clip after clip, the recoil jolting their arms, their hearts like hammers in their chests.

The tunnel morphed from a war-zone into a blood-red hell.

The survivors were disoriented but determined. Blindly, they charged. The crew's reflexes reverted to close-quarters combat. Blades whipped out, and the Enforcers were taken by the throat and the gut. The fight devolved into a brawl, the sound of metal and meat a ghastly concerto.

One Enforcer swung the barrel of his rifle. Its butt nailed Dustin in the gut. He went down, gasping. The Enforcer aimed his firearm. Then his head exploded. His corpse slumped. Behind him stood Jinx, the muzzle of her gun smoking.

A shriek came from the left. Ran went down, a knife stuck in the arm. The Enforcer drew a pistol. Silco was quicker. His palm gripped the bone handle of Vander's bowie knife like a lover's throat. Soundlessly, he crept up behind the Enforcer. The blade went in like a kiss, deep into the man's jugular.

The Enforcer gurgled; his pistol dropped. Silco's boot slammed into his back. The Enforcer toppled. Silco followed, and the knife went in, and out, and in. The man thrashed, his last words a plea. Silco twisted the blade. He didn't bother with the mercy of a quick reply.

In the background, the Enforcer's comrade charged, and died screaming. A scythelike swipe of metal took his legs off, and sent him spinning like a child's doll. Sevika rose out of the haze. Her prosthetic arm was a fritzing exoskeleton—but her blade was intact. Her hair was charred against her skull and her silhouette bloodsplattered.

She didn't look human anymore. She was the dragon in the flesh: a thing made of rage and fire and steel.

A third Enforcer lunged at her blind-spot. Silco pivoted, and whipped out his boot knife. He threw it. It spun in a whirling blur, then buried itself hilt-deep in the man's left eye-socket. He slumped.

Sevika's eyes caught his. A nod was traded between them; a debt owed and paid.

Then their attention went to the carnage.

To the hunt.

The Enforcers were down to sixteen. Silco's own crew were reduced to the same number. They'd done their job: a suicide mission turned triumph. Now it was a matter of finishing the fight.

Silco gave the final order: "To the Bridge!"

It was the home-stretch. It was also the greatest risk. They'd never had time to run drills, and Silco had never wanted to test their mettle in a live-fire scenario. But their survival depended on it. If more Enforcers charged belowground, the fight was over. Their city was lost. Their freedom, forfeit.

They could not stay in the Sumps any longer. They had to go above.

"Jinx," Silco shouted. "It's time!"

Jinx nodded. Fishbones was slung over her shoulder. Her eyes were a smoldering pink, and her mouth was set. She was a small, vicious thing, armed and ready.

And she was his.

Together, they sprinted. Up through the subterranean tunnels. Up through the stinking dark.

Up towards the light.

The battle was not done. Soon, it would be. They had the upper hand. They had the Hex-gem. And they had the element of surprise. Piltover hadn't anticipated the Trenchers' zeal. Now they would learn the full truth: that a cornered beast will bite and bite hard.

Silco would do the biting. He'd sink his teeth in, and twist, and tear until he tasted blood.

And he would savor every drop.

At his side, Jinx was a bright streak. Her eyes shone. She was the broken girl he'd plucked from the streets: the comet who'd saved his life.

Now she'd save their city.

At Bridgeside, there was an oncoming wave. A troop of Enforcers. They were the vanguard, and Silco's crew would have to fight tooth and nail.

So they did.

In the heart of the firestorm, Silco took the helm. Sevika was his right hand. They were two beasts of war, their teeth bared and their claws out. Every inch was suffering; every breath was a challenge. There were bullets and blades, screams and smoke. Silco's mind was caught in a mesh of razor-wire. His hands were a blur, the knife an extension of his arm, the pistol an extra digit. He didn't know how many Enforcers he killed. Only that they'd fallen, and kept falling.

His crew fell too. He saw Thieram's head blown off his shoulders. He saw Cath, slumped over in a pool of entrails. He saw Ran dragged into an alleyway by three Enforcers. He heard the shred of cloth and the crack of bones. Ran's screams rang out, a high-pitched wail of violation.

The others fell to the sludge in the aftermath, their eyes staring blindly.

And Jinx—Jinx was a blur. Pow-Pow and Puff-Puff were her wings. Fishbones was her trumpet. She cut a path through the swarm, a gloriole of destruction.

In the final surge, the Enforcers were taken apart. Silco and Sevika became the butchers. Jinx was the killing-blow. With a scream that resonated to the rooftops, she unleashed her arsenal. Fishbones's rocket sailed. The Bridge exploded, a chain reaction that rippled down its length. The night was ablaze; a perfect blue inferno.

She painted Piltover with magic and doused it with blood.

She saved them all.

She saved them, but victory came at a steep cost. War is like that. It sinks inside you, under your skin, into your lungs, rooting itself in the mind and soul. You must surrender something of yourself as a matter of brute survival—or perish. In the aftermath, there was no jubilation. Only the sun rising on a city laid waste, and a long march down the path to progress.

His squad were reduced to five. Each one was in rough shape. Sevika had gone into shock from the blowback on her left arm, bronze skin turning ashen, her dark eyes glazed beyond the sphere of pain. Ran huddled under the blanket, bare-skinned and slicked to the elbows with blood, features distorted with agony. Dustin lay pin-cushioned with morphine syrettes, a twitchy pup yelping for rescue. Lock stayed standing, but he resembled something badly-chewed: ragged with wounds and missing whole layers of himself.

Jinx, meanwhile, crouched in the shadows. She'd kept pushing bullets into Pow-Pow's chamber, then emptying them out. Over and over, with no real sense of purpose, as if they were memories she was trying to jam inside and then blast out for good. Her eyes were huge, pupils ringed in luminous pink. Tears streaked her cheeks like war-paint.

Silco stood in their midst, a crooked silhouette plastered with blood. His fingers clenched and unclenched on Vander's knife. Everything will be fine, he could have said with a slickster's ease. A lie, but the dogs of war were fed by lies. The machines of progress were fueled by them.

He could have lied, out of necessity, or cruelty, or mercy.

He hadn't.

Words failed to take the night down to scale. It was too big, too bloody. It was freedom, and the past, and the future.

It was Zaun.

By dawn, they'd picked their way to a safehouse in Entresol. Bodies everywhere on the street. Slabs of spoiling meat. The ones still groaning, he'd ordered dragged to the temporary shelters. The rest, they'd left where they lay. The time for cremation wouldn't be for weeks yet. By then, most corpses would be unrecognizable.

Inside, Singed was waiting with medical supplies. Together, they'd tended to the wounded who trickled slowly in, patching up bullet holes and setting broken limbs. In the end, few survived perfectly unscathed. Some lapsed into comas that they never awoke from. Others died in a rictus of anguished screams. The lucky ones went silently, slipping into death's embrace with a sigh.

It was near sunset by the time Silco slept. By then, the light in the safehouse was an eerie twilit green, just enough to make out the bodies of his crew rolled in threadbare sleeping bags: Lock an unmoving mass, Dustin sprawled on onto his back in a jittery sprawl of limbs, an arm flung out, knuckles nearly touching Ran's hair, peeking in tufts from the fabric, the rest of their body enfolded. Silco found himself in the corner, apart from the others but close enough that if someone went into Shimmer convulsions, he'd be at hand to stabilize them.

Across from him, Sevika lay sprawled on her side, eyes shut. Her good hand lay stretched out, in the weak halo of the candle. Silco had stared at it. For a moment he'd wanted to take her hand in his, all rough and bruised. Nothing else. Just take her hand. The war had reminded him that there were facets to his life that he couldn't keep by the wayside forever.

Desires that had nothing to do with Zaun.

He hadn't touched her. The candleflame was flickering, and they couldn't waste it. He'd licked a fingertip and pinched it out. And in the dark, he'd rolled, fitting his chin to the hard curve of Jinx's skull. His child lay nestled close. Dead to the world; her scent salty from weeping. Tears still seeped from under her sleeping eyelids.

He wanted to sleep too. But the safehouse was full of specters. Vander. Nandi. Lika. Benzo. His knife lay close at hand, the blade clean. He'd stared at it, and vowed that Topside would never be forgiven.

The night never forgotten.

Now, they stare at the Bridge's remnants. A symbol of their city's division, and its destruction. In Zaun's streets, the citizens belt out the national anthem with the rawness of their throats, their lungs, their hearts. In Piltover, the citizens sit shellshocked, wondering how it came to this.

Wondering what comes next.

Lock breaks the spell. "Not every day you outlive an apocalypse."

Dustin's grin is a rictus. "Fuckers never knew what hit 'em."

Ran sneers. "They deserved every bullet."

Sevika has been silent until now. Holding the line, always. Now her voice resonates, a bronze bell:

"We'll give 'em more," she says. "Much more."

"Hell yeah!"

"Damn straight!"

"Count me in!"

Their cheers are savage. They are a crew of four. They are a nation, united in their antipathy. A hatred of Piltover's cruelty; of its blind arrogance. Like everyone from the Undercity, they've lived under its boot, and carry the scars.

Like everyone from the Undercity, they've never forgotten.

Jinx doesn't acknowledge the cheers. Her eyes remain on the horizon. It's as if she's somewhere else entirely. Another night; another bridge. A child's lullaby unspooling in her head; her sister's hand in hers. Silco feels the tug of her memories, as if they were his own.

Softly, he snaps his fingers.

Jinx rouses as if out of a dream. Her gaze, soft-eyed in reverie, meets Silco's.

He doesn't break his stare. But his voice is pitched to the entire crew. "Let's show them how it's done."

As one, the crew chorus, "Yes, sir."

Jinx's smile wavers, then sharpens. "Right-o."

The skiff noses alongside the SS Niobe and docks with efficiency. Stationed blackguards swing the stairway into position. Silco and the crew ascend smoothly topside. Gritty morning sunlight throws embers across the ferry. Piltover's Councilors have already arrived with their armed convoys.

So have the press.

Shutterbugs swarm the scene. Flashbulbs pop like gunfire. The afterglow dazzles.

The crew are prepared. They fan out ahead of Silco, walking four abreast. Dustin and Lock ward off the crush while Ran takes questions from a choice handful of journalists. Sevika marches ahead, chin held high and shoulders squared. Even in her finery, she looks ready for battle. Her dark eyes are a sweeping assessment, her stride an imperative to clear the path.

Glancing toward Silco, she gives the hand signal. Proceed.

He ascends the stairs in a measured tread, a sharp silhouette melting out of the shadows and into the sun. Jinx follows. Two monsters rising up to the surface, and their eyes give them away: glowing red like well-stoked embers. The press jostle, snapping photos, shouting queries. A feeding frenzy of scavengers starved for scraps.

"First Chancellor! This way!"

"Jinx! Look here!"

"Silco, can we get your thoughts on rumors of chemical weapons?"

"Jinx, what will you say to the families left behind?"

"Is this really about rebuilding trust between Zaun and Piltover?"

"Will you address allegations of war crimes?"

"JINX! JUST A PHOTO! JINX!"

Jinx keeps pace with Silco. Her spine is steel; her face is stone. But he notices her hands are trembling. Fear or rage?

Hard to tell. Not a good sign.

Briefly, Silco reaches across the space between them. His knuckles skim Jinx's in unvoiced offer.

She glances neither down at his hand, nor up at his face. For a moment, he thinks she might refuse. Then her hand catches his, their palms fitting together with complete certainty. She squeezes once. He squeezes back. They remain linked until they reach the top of the staircase.

There, they separate. Silco glides forward, leading the pack. Jinx remains at his heels, matching his stride perfectly.

Then she stops.

Her arm extends. Two fingers pointed, thumb cocked. Like a pistol. Slowly, she traces an arc across the reporters in her radius. Takes aim, and fires a headshot at each skull. A move so unexpectedly, menacingly playful that it stuns the blood in Silco's veins. If Jinx had a real gun, nobody would survive. He knows that—and so do they.

Jinx smiles crookedly and mimes blowing a wisp of smoke from the gun barrel.

The message is plain: Don't forget.

Thunderous shouts. Breathless shrieks. Flashing cameras.

Not the soundtrack of terror—but titillation.

At his shoulder, Sevika says softly, "Guess you were wrong, sir."

"What?"

"That is how it's done."

Before Zaun is allowed to rub shoulders with Piltover, they must endure a full-body search.

A squad of Enforcers wait at the checkpoint. Each one dons hypoallergenic white gloves, as if touching radioactive waste. It's equal parts precaution and power-trip. Zaun may be have won independence, but in the eyes of the Councilors, it remains a volatile ghetto. The riffraff must prove their worth through a series of underhanded gauntlet-runs before sharing the same air as their betters.

Hubris by tradition. Humiliation by design.

Silco and his crew give no quarter. They've endured this rigmarole before, and take it in stride. Some are stoic, their features insensate to even the most invasive probings. Others see it as a chance to flex, their bodies a tribute to lifetime of crime and combat.

Dustin hops into the line of Enforcers with a devil-may-care grin. Off comes his jacket. He twirls over his head like a floor-show at the Last Drop—to the Enforcers' deep displeasure. His body is all whipcord sinew and pockmarked scar. Catching the eye of a particularly dour Enforcer, he blows him a kiss.

The Enforcer's expression sours further.

Lock and Ran play along. They crack deadpan jokes about Dustin's affinity for strip-searches, and speculate as to what pestilence might be squirming inside his boots. They even start a bet on whether or not his skivvies are clean.

At Silco's side, Jinx is a shadow. Her fingers twitch once: nerves, temper. But she doesn't give away an inch.

Silco says, too low for any but her ears to catch: "Remember. It's just a dance."

She nods, once.

"You know the steps."

Jinx's shoulders roll. She steps forward.

The search is a typical tedium. Every pocket is emptied; every sock turned inside-out. Dustin's boots—a heavy-duty reinforced version of miner's galoshes—are sent to a specialist to have the insoles inspected for explosives. Ran's piercings, climbing the tongue in concentric rings of small, smaller, smallest, are unscrewed for contraband. Lock's elaborate tattoos are scrutinized with ultraviolet pens in case they are toxic.

One Enforcer unzips Sevika's coat and frisks her from armpits to ankles, taking his time, enjoying the view. Sevika watches him implacably. She doesn't even bat an eyelid when his hand slips dangerously close to a breast en route to her prosthetic arm. Perhaps he believes Fissure females have electric prods concealed in their nipples.

Then again, death isn't without appeal when it's an Amazon staring you down.

"Anything that isn't heavy-duty on you, sweetheart?" he drawls.

A common habit of their lot. Always denying Trenchers the courtesy of a formal address. It's always Sweetheart, Buddy, Boy. Everything stripped of respect and spoken with the wrong syllable and wrong intonation.

Sevika gives him a flat stare. "Just my patience."

Leering, the Enforcer lets her pass. She stalks off smoothly, a lioness with an unruffled pelt.

His colleague is having less luck with Jinx.

The pat-down is perfectly proper. But Jinx's smile grows more unsettling as his lingers. A fine tremor runs through the Enforcer's fingers. His eyes keep darting to her hands, then away, as if she might whip a machine gun out of nowhere. Jinx knows this, too, and does nothing to ease his tension. She lets her lashes dip down as if shy, then brings them up slowly—too slowly—to fix him in her crosshairs.

The Enforcer swallows. He's not one to give in to intimidation, but the little brat is getting to him. With every second, he is no longer a man taking pleasure in his job, but a human barometer; his sweat is the dial of his fate.

And it says: Hot as hell and ready to blow.

Abruptly, Jinx's demeanor shifts from incendiary to innocent.

"Careful," she lisps. "I'm ticklish."

The Enforcer swallows again. His pat-down concludes with alacrity. Hooking his thumb over his shoulder, he mutters, "All clear."

Jinx, all sunny smiles, twirls on a heel.

And—

"Catch!"

A silver arc zings. It hits the wall by the Enforcer's head—a composite blade, so well-concealed it went completely unnoticed.

The Enforcer's jaw drops. Jinx winks and sashays off.

Silco is given the most cautious rifling of all. His cufflinks may be deadly alloy; his pocketwatch an explosive capsule. The Enforcers anticipate an arsenal and fan out accordingly. Each one is sorely disappointed. Unlike Jinx, Silco has no steel on his person, beyond a cold crux of prudence. Even his bad eye, inspected at length, is revealed to be no sorcerer's orb, but an ordinary deformity.

And his scars are only scars.

After a minute or two of prying, one Enforcer removes a fountain pen from Silco's breast pocket. He eyes it dubiously, as if expecting it to fire rockets.

The Zaunite Chancellor's half-lidded smile troubles him further.

Privately, Silco marvels at the absurdity. A lifetime of blood, sweat and spite to achieve the unachievable, and Piltover's finest believe he'd bother to come all this way just to slash open the Council's jugulars with a writing implement.

Ironic, too, given that's exactly what he intends.

"The mighty saber of revolution, hm?" Silco mocks.

Bemused, the Enforcer hands the pen back. Silco makes a Ta gesture, and walks on.

The ceremonial chamber is an imposing space.

No doubt that is the intent.

It is a high-ceilinged, richly decorated ballroom. The tasteful curl of a chandelier glows upon two polished walnut lecterns. Zaun's ceremonial copy of the Treaty sits on the left side, Piltover's on the right. A carpet of deep red separates them like a river of blood. During the photo-op, the delegates will stand at the two podiums. They will sign the redacted version of the Treaty, and the press will snap a hundred photographs, preserving the moment in history.

The real Treaty—awaiting signatures from both parties—is laid like a priceless tapestry on a grand wooden table. The document is a veritable museum exhibit: five sheets of vellum, two-and-a-half feet long and three feet wide, framed by a thick border of gold-leaf.

Places are laid out side-by-side, with a set of ornate calligraphy pens. Here, the delegates will sit down and make history.

All without blood staining the page.

A phalanx of Peacekeepers stands to attention around the chamber. Their faces are hidden beneath visored helmets; their bodies enrobed in armor. Their insignia—a hexagon with two overlapping hands, meant to signify cooperation—is stenciled onto every breastplate. Loaded rifles are strapped across their chests.

On a day of truce, they are dressed to kill.

No doubt that is the intent, too.

Silco approaches the Councilors at a deliberate stroll. His entourage fan out behind him. Sevika looms at his right; solid as an anchor. Jinx, on the left, buzzes like a spark. Her eyes dart from Enforcer to Enforcer. He knows she is counting their weapons, the same way other girls count their blessings.

She whispers, "If I'd brought Fishbones, we'd have ourselves a barbecue."

Sevika whispers back, "If you'd brought Fishbones, we'd all be laying at the bottom of the Pilt."

"I'd make an exception for ya."

"Yeah?"

"I'd just poison the booze."

"Brat."

"Ogre."

It's the usual back-and-forth: bitingly casual. Yet the two women stride shoulder-to-shoulder. Practically in lockstep. There is no love lost between Jinx and Sevika. But one doesn't need love when there's a brigade of Enforcers to face down.

Their eyes—gunbarrel dark and neon bright—take in the scene.

Silco knows what they see.

The Siege. The Day of Ash. Bloody Sunday.

Atrocity piled upon atrocity. A century's worth of cruelty and generations' worth of suffering. Zaun's ghosts are numberless, and yet they live on in every step the survivors take. Silco feels them at his heels, a hundred footfalls that strengthen his stride, a thousand eyes that steel his spine.

Vander is the vanguard, his palm heavy on Silco's shoulder. He whispers, "Was it worth it, Blut?"

Adrenaline is a black tide in Silco's chest. He exhales.

Just as there are tactics to survive the battlefield, there are steps to navigate the ballroom. Preparations that, with time, become reflex. For Silco, there is little difference between a gala and a garroting. The outcomes are the same: an impediment removed.

He's spent the past six years courting danger. Yet it's never been a welcome waltzing partner. His act is solo; a series of isolated steps.

Then it hits him.

He isn't solo now. Two shadows follow: his XO, his XOXO. Six years, they've played his counterpoint and counterpart in the shadows. A history of blood and violence and suffering, sliced and diced and doled into thirds.

Now they've stepped into the limelight.

Jinx's arm passes through his. She whispers, "Look alive, Silly. Finest swine up ahead."

Barely stirring his mouth, Silco says, "There are lip readers at this event, child."

"Oops."

"Smile. Let those dimples do the talking."

"The Pilties sure ain't dimpling."

A charitable understatement.

The Councilors are already at the table, fenced by respective aides. Their expressions are thunderous. They are early; Zaun is late. Its timetable is now irrelative to theirs, a mechanism that cannot be hurried.

And they hate it. Loud and clear.

These are potentates who have never waited for anyone. Who are given their heart's desire with a snap of their fingers. Now they must play nice with someone else. Someone who has historically commanded less authority, fewer resources, and far greater cunning.

Oh, they hate it.

Hoskel, the old blowhard, bristles under a thin blanket of bonhomie. Kiramman, fastidiously elegant, stares in frigid contempt. Shoola stays still as a panther, while dislike pours off her in waves. Salo, slouched in his chair, sulks like a child. Bolbok flaunts his authority like an iron rod, but it's just bravado. Underneath, he is fuming.

But the main attractions are Talis and Medarda.

Piltover's golden couple.

They sit side-by-side. Their feet nearly touch left to right, the triangular tip of Medarda's sandal against the polished dark of Talis' shoe. Medarda is in an ivory satin gown so fluid it resembles milk about to stream off her delicious dark limbs. Her expression is enchantingly natural; her smile is sweet as honey.

No evidence of hers and Silco's clandestine blood-bargain on the yacht, or their shared telephone conversation in the morning. No sign that she's finessed her fellow Councilors into the Treaty for her own benefit as surely as Piltover's.

No hint of deception whatsoever. Just radiant goodwill.

Next to her, Talis is tall as a pillar: the tallest in the room. He wears a suit cut from midnight blue serge, with a pristine white cravat. His princely profile, with its brilliant eyes and boyish brow, graces billboards and magazines across Piltover. Parables spun and praises sung for the working-class hero: a story of struggle and determination. A father taken in tragic circumstances, and a dutiful mother who sacrificed everything for her boy's success.

With a little help from House Talis' hammer factories.

Hatred rises like a toxic effervescence in Silco's veins.

(These Pilties, eh, Vander?)

(These fucking Pilties.)

In a city whose lifeblood is old money, they are the crème de la crème: an elite group steeped in Piltover's rich heritage of trade and commerce. A century ago, the city was a drowsy backwater, a middling port of fishing settlements and warehouses. The Council's forefathers were Shuriman midshipmen, Ionian merchants, Noxian brigands and Demacian bureaucrats. Men and women who made their fortunes through sheer tenacity and hard graft.

Then came the boom.

Beneath the settlement lay caverns with rich deposits of minerals. Soon, smelters dotted the waterfront, and shipyards sprang up along the bay. Steel became gold. Iron turned to platinum. The age of industry dawned: Piltover blossomed into a manufacturing metropolis.

Then came the Void Wars. In a trice, the city's population doubled. Zhyunian refugees fled by boat; Noxian merchants came by steamships; Demacian scholars boarded trains and Freljordians rode in on zeppelins. Language diversified; the city grew cosmopolitan.

In the coming decades, successive waves of migrants were swept onto Piltover's shores: from noble families seeking to expand their power across Valoran to small-town traders laden with cheap luggage and big dreams. By the century's end, they'd propelled Piltover into a global megacity of palatial mansions, art deco skyscrapers and pristine streets hosed clean every morning before the business hubs threw open their gilded gates to the bon ton.

The population boom meant more houses to build, more food to eat, more clothes to wear. All of which required labor, capital investment, and raw materials.

All of which came from the Fissures.

In theory, the Undercity should have prospered hand-in-hand with Piltover. Yet little of the riches from the Fissures' recesses was ever relished by the Fissurefolk themselves.

They were cut from a different cloth from their over-the-Pilt brethren. Their ancestors were miners and craftsmen, not shipmasters and merchants. Their culture was a clotted stew of customs and dialects; most didn't even speak Piltovan. They weren't born in the city itself but in its shadow, living in close-knit riverside settlements and twilit caverns.

Physically, they resembled deepwater piranhas compared to their sun-kissed kin—narrow bones, wan skins and sharp teeth. Culturally, they were foreigners. And socially, they were inferiors.

Their economy was a rich relic of the Oshra Va'Zaun empire. The Cataclysm had left them displaced, but decades of isolation had only deepened their ties to the land, and its secrets. Their gemcraft and metalworking industries were well-established. Their artisans were peerless and prolific. Their alchemical scholars were the backbone of innovation. They had a robust labor force, a thriving entrepreneurial class, and a history of keen ingenuity.

Their forbearers had traded along a flourishing network of maritime ports and river routes. They bartered with Bilgewater; bankrolled the gold mines in Shurima; forged trade deals with Ionia. They even had stakes in the black markets of the Shadow Isles and the mercenary guilds of Noxus.

They did business with every corner of Runeterra. And they did so proudly.

A century would turn the glad tidings into bitter tides.

During the first wave, the Undercity's wealth was a windfall for Topside. The demand for labor and resource was insatiable. But the Undercity's resources were finite. When Piltover's population ballooned after the Void Wars, the Fissurefolk were forced to compete. Lacking the natural advantage of fertile terrain and plentiful sunlight, they had no choice but to cut corners. In a trice, the factories and mines teemed with orphans and the elderly, each one paid starvation wages and offered none of the protections aboveground. By the century's end, the Undercity was squeezed dry, a sweatshop with a single employer.

Piltover.

As the upper-city's wealth quadrupled, mercantile clans rose up, each vying for control over the mineral deposits in the Fissures. These overlords were no friends of the Fissurefolk. Their purview was profit, and profit meant one thing above all else:

Exploitation.

Their first order of business was stymieing the Undercity's trade routes and keeping its resources under lock and key. The collapse of the old Sun Gates had already trapped the Fissures beneath an inescapable shadow. Now a second barrier was erected. On the pretext of a far-flung safety net, the Pilt's remaining tributaries were stymied. In their place, a bridge was erected. A single span of steel and stone connecting Zaun to the mainland, with an elaborate array of locks, levers and barricades. Merchant ships ascending from Down-Low were forced to pay exorbitant fees, and their cargo was heavily taxed. If the toll was not paid, the goods were confiscated, the crew arrested, and the merchant fined.

No exceptions. No remorse. No quarter.

In time, the Undercity's local markets choked. A slow strangulation of wealth reduced former artisans and alchemists to scavengers. Tariffs trapped them in a perpetual cycle of debt and debasement. Once-proud traders stooped to selling their own daughters for coin. Others tipped over into outright smuggling.

Soon, Piltover launched its second phase: a systematic strangulation of the Undercity's voice.

Fissurefolk were barred from owning or leasing property aboveground. Their children were denied access to Topside schools. Their customs were deemed barbaric. Their traditions were branded as backward. Their dialect was derided as guttural filth. They were derogatorily referred to as Sumprakers—as if their entire existence was an aberration.

By the century's end, Piltover had transformed from a trading partner into a hegemony. The Fissurefolk were no longer perceived as citizens, but as the Other.

An enemy within.

Soon, Topside began consolidating power by buying up land around the Fissures. Displacing the poor and demolishing their homes, they drove them deeper and deeper belowground, while putting the leftovers to use. Historic districts were privatized. Temples were razed. Marketplaces were shut down. The Undercity was reduced to a febrile womb of raw material, ready to be ravaged.

And ravaged it was.

When the first mining rig was installed in the present-Deadlands, the Fissurefolk rioted. The unrest was put down. More mines followed, and more riots. It wasn't until the Enforcers were established as a body of justice that the tide turned in Topside's favor.

These overseers were a law unto themselves, their ranks composed of mercenaries and miscreants. Their uniforms were black; their hearts were blacker. Their methods were a brutal amalgam of medieval torture and modern bureaucracy.

Under the banner of peace, the Enforcers were tasked with quashing dissent belowground.

They did so—brutally.

Piltover's third phase was total dominion.

The first merchant houses had grown rich off the Undercity's spoils. But the new generation hungered for something more: absolute rule. They were no strangers to political maneuvering. Their forefathers had been shrewd tacticians: men and women who'd honed their wits through war, diplomacy and backroom deals.

They knew how to twist the knife, and keep their own hands clean.

Before long, they'd allied with Piltover's industrial magnates and the monied elite. Together, they formed a cabal of oligarchs, each as ruthless as they were influential. Thus, the Council was born: a body of seven self-appointed sovereigns charged with regulating trade, enforcing laws and levying taxes.

They saw the Fissurefolk as a means to their own end. Disregarding their petitions for better sanitation, downplaying the contributions of their labor, and turning a blind eye to the rampant pollution, they proceeded to carve the Undercity's soul from its body.

When the Fissurefolk protested, the Council responded with Enforcer raids.

And bloodbaths.

By century's end, the Council had built a wall of bureaucracy between themselves and the Fissurefolk—most of whom were treated with neo-colonial contempt. Meanwhile, their wealth continued to reach dizzying heights, with every merchant ship that sailed through the port's grand arches.

The Hex-Gates only quadrupled their fortunes. With every invention by Talis, investors flocked and the Council's influence grew. The wealth they had hoarded was now limitless. They could build a brand-new city, if they so desired. But why should they, when the Trenchers had already done the hard work for them?

Today's Council—Hoskel, Salo, Bolbok, Shoola, Medarda, Kiramman—are Piltover's pivotal political force, decreeing laws with a gesture from their grand parlors. They're the ones who decide whether jobs are created or lost, how many schools are funded, what taxes are levied.

They make decisions that affect every citizen in the city—every bloody day.

They are also corruption incarnate. Yearly, they've swallowed over one-third of the allocated Undercity budget, without accounting for a single cog. Between them, they preside over an empire of private business interests in everything from real estate to racehorses, stowing away their wealth in Demacian bank accounts, Noxian jewelry splurges and private islands dotting the annexed Ionian shores.

To them, Silco's coal-mining origins are as offensive as a rat turd in their caviar. Among Topside's upper-crust, he's a social climber, a rabble-rouser, and a scabrous opportunist. He wasn't born into privilege: he made his wealth through the cutthroat crudeness of industry.

More offensive still, he keeps a singlehanded stranglehold on his fortune, no different from a smuggler stowing all his coins in his codpiece. He never invests in stocks or allows Piltovans to buy shares in his enterprises. Like his factories, everything he owns belowground—publishing houses, restaurant chains, repair garages, gyms, nightclubs, salons—employs Fissure-bred workers, and is rumored to be a front for funding anarchism.

As if that weren't bad enough, he has no inhibitions in debating money or politics in their glittering ballrooms. Worse, he mocks them for entertainment—all while displaying impeccable manners.

Case in point—

With grave courtesy, Silco bows his head, "Councilors."

They winch themselves stiffly out of their seats. Equally stiff bows are exchanged. Silco proffers a hand, but when none move to shake it, he lets it slip, casually, into his pocket. Only the faint crease at the corner of his mouth betrays amusement.

Kiramman speaks first, her mien icy. "We expected your representatives sooner."

"Apologies." Silco makes a show of checking his pocketwatch. "Our schedules did not align."

Hoskel huffs. "Your schedule? You're meant to represent your city! It's unacceptable that you keep us waiting!"

Silco's fangs stay hidden behind the mild line of lips. "Zaun has waited longer for worse."

Reconnaissance by fire. Shoot into the tree line. If someone shoots back, you've hit your mark.

Predictably, Talis steps forward. Out of everyone in the Council, he'd pushed the hardest for a parley with Silco. After negotiations fell apart, he'd thrown himself into organizing aid efforts, and was instrumental in calling for the ceasefire during the Siege, as bullets raged back and forth and the bodies piled up.

But compassion has its flipside—complicity.

The same man who'd advocated compromise had also enabled the carnage: five hundred Enforcers and a thousand Trenchers primed for slaughter. His Hex-tech had comprised the bulk of the weaponry for the Siege. He'd publicly denounced Silco as a madman, and yet put him in the untenable position of choosing between his child and his city. He'd decried Silco's enterprises as criminal, yet profited from the Undercity's black market by procuring raw crystals—the very crystals that rocketed Piltover to the zenith at Zaun's expense.

Now he stands, the Boy of Tomorrow, his big dreams terraformed by the Man of Today. His eyes are shadowed; his shoulders heavy. With war comes wreckage, and even the blindest idealism cannot flee its radius.

The high ground, in the end, is matter of perspective.

"This Treaty was negotiated at a high price, Chancellor," Talis says. "Or do you plan to make a habit of gambling with your citizens' lives?"

Mordekeiser's ballocks, why not have some fun?

"I only gamble," Silco drawls, "when the stakes are worthwhile."

"Peace isn't worthwhile enough?"

"Depends on the price. A fair bargain, and I'll pay it." Silco lets a moment's silence pass. "But I don't sell my own for cogs."

Talis' features contort into anger. He has the sort of face that is most striking when impassioned: the dark brows slashing and the high cheekbones flushing. It evokes a feral stirring in Silco. Not desire, but appetite. He wants to eat the boy's skin and make a necklace from his perfect white teeth.

With brusque formality, Talis extends his hand. Silco enfolds it in the icy clamp of his own. He can feel the imprint of the younger man's grip—hot as a hammersmith's forge. They lock gazes. Neither one squeezes harder to prove a point, but neither one backs down either.

Tension crackles. The aides fidget. Fingers tap and nerves fray.

Exercising diplomacy like a physical skill, Medarda steps between them.

"Gentlemen," she says. "We're here to discuss the future. Not the past."

Talis takes a steadying breath. "Right."

Silco nods with coiled courtesy. "Of course."

"On my part, I favor a little delay," Medarda says. "Poor timing can lead to worse execution."

"Execution?" Silco quirks a brow. "Surely we've had our fill of those."

Talis shakes his head. "You're determined to make a farce of this, aren't you?"

"Did the war feel farcical to you, Councilor Talis?"

"It felt like the thrashing of a cornered snake."

"I do remember a good thrashing." Silco's eyes hold a devouring darkness. "My condolences to Piltover's fallen."

"And mine to all of Zaun."

"Gentlemen," Medarda chides. "If you'd both care to be the bigger man?"

"Hear that, Councilor Talis?" Silco says blandly. "Peace requires bigness."

Talis' eyes flash. He opens his mouth to retort. Medarda shakes her head fractionally. Her golden eyes are eclipsed in warning. Silco intuits that these are waltzing steps she knows well—steps that she must continually coax Talis to follow to best suit her interests.

Silco almost pities the boy. If a woman can enact such sublime stratagems in the boardroom, she is equally adept at calculated performance in the bedroom.

Then again, Silco is no better.

Medarda proffers her hand. He accepts it, the politest squeeze of fingertips. She smiles serenely. "I am sure we will all find common ground between us."

He nods. "That's the idea."

"By the day's end, it will be fact." She glances past Silco's shoulder. "But forgive my manners. Will you make us known to your striking escort?"

"Escort?"

Surely she's not referring to Jinx? Only the obtuse mistake her for Silco's arm-candy. He expected better discernment from Medarda. Then he realizes her eyeline is slanted right, not left. Up, not down.

Silco swivels on his heel. His eyes meet Sevika's, then disconnect. Sevika's habitual glower smooths out. Silco's own features school themselves into deliberate neutrality.

Well, hell.

"You know," Medarda muses, "I always had the impression that you were a solitary man, First Chancellor."

"I've always preferred singularity."

"And yet here is a second shadow."

"Regrettably, you're mistaken." Silco gestures; Sevika steps forward. "You are addressing my Executive Officer. Zaun's Deputy Chancellor."

"Indeed?"

"Sevika. My loyal right hand."

Sevika's nod is curt. "Ma'am."

"Forgive my presumption. I thought—" Medarda sidesteps the faux faux-pas. "Well, one can never quite decipher the cues of old comradery. I stand by my compliment." She extends an elegant palm to Sevika. "Were we in Noxus, a pack of warriors would be vying for your hand."

Never to be outdone, Sevika accepts the handshake with a brisk pump of her mechanical wrist. "If we were in Noxus, I'd beat your warriors with one good hand."

Medarda lilts a gilded laugh. Sevika's own smile is little more than a spark in the dark eyes. They are both formidably attractive women. But there is a difference. Medarda is polished as an opal, all shining splendor crafted beneath an artful jeweler's hand. Sevika is rougher in appearance and disposition, like raw granite honed by the relentless elements. Observing them side-by-side is not unlike sizing up a pair of weapons forged for different purposes.

Aphrodite's girdle versus Athena's shield.

"I have no doubt." Medarda releases Sevika's copper prosthetic with lingering fingertips. "Tell me. Do all Zaunites fancy chem-tech augmentations?"

"Just the ones who don't fancy a knife in the throat."

"A rousingly Noxian attitude." Medarda's scrutiny is not without speculation. "And what exactly is your role as Executive Officer?"

"Whatever the Chancellor requires."

"An enviable position."

"You have no idea," Sevika deadpans.

"I suppose the duty requires an intimate understanding." The remark is posed with a socialite's silk. But Silco catches the subtle jab. "How exactly did you acquire the post?"

"Killed the competition."

Medarda's eyebrows wing up. "Killed—?"

"In a manner of speaking." The barest gleam of white teeth. "They're buried in the Sumps."

Medarda's poise don't crack. But her eyelids flicker: a muted tell.

Satisfaction stretches darkly behind Silco's ribs. As a gambling man, he can always bet on Sevika. She'll take a hit and come back twice as strong. Nor will she tolerate her successes downplayed because a glamorous foreign dignitary is accustomed to calling the shots.

Speaking of—

"Are we just gonna stand around and jaw?"

Jinx's voice—a sullen little rasp—makes every head snap.

She stands off to the corner. Her sloe-eyed expression makes her seem bored. Beneath that is a gleam of interest. Like a cat sizing up a roomful of canaries.

Her proximity affects the Councilors in different ways. Hoskel's jowls quiver. Kiramman's spine goes taut. Shoola swallows with a dry click of her long neck. Salo gawks shamelessly and Bolbok falls still as a mantis tangled in a spiderweb.

They have never seen Jinx in person. But they can sense the aura around her, an electric fizz that clings to the skin.

Medarda's face goes motionless. Adept at games of diplomatic poker, she is out of her depth with this wildcard.

Evenly, she says, "This must be Jinx."

Silco nods. "My pride and joy."

"Breathtaking."

Jinx quirks a brow—a look Silco recognizes as a hand-me-down. "Lack of fresh air'll do that."

The Councilors whisper among themselves. Their aides stare openly. Here is Zaun's famed terrorist. The girl who stole the Hex-gem. Who massacred hundreds in a bid for the Undercity's freedom. Now she stands before them, looking as though she's just stepped off a runway rather than blown it sky-high.

Medarda extends a hand. Her Noxian ring catches the light like a cross of fire. "We are pleased you could join us, Jinx."

"What? Get dolled up and gawked at by a dozen strangers?" Jinx offers an impudent little hand that she withdraws in almost the same instant. "What gal could resist?"

"I'm sure everyone is only taken by your charms."

"Or they're suffocating." Jinx's little nose, poking from behind the curtain of short hair, sniffs. "Didja break a bottle over your head?"

"It's Shuriman hyacinths. Is it not to your tastes?"

Jinx snorts. "Not sure I'll taste anything else for a week straight."

"Jinx."

Silco's tone is reproving, but not without wryness: Put the claws away.

The Councilors exchange glances. The collective mood is perturbed.

Hoskel says, sotto voce, "Has she been briefed on protocol?"

Salo whispers back, "Damn the protocol. Has she been frisked?"

Jinx's ultrasonic ears catch the exchange. Her eyes snap sideways.

"Why?" she purrs. "You boys volunteering?"

Hoskel flinches. Salo gives a nervous chuckle, then looks mortified when six heads swivel toward him. "What? No!"

"Councilor Medarda," says Kiramman, keeping her cold eye on Jinx. "I believe our proceedings could've done without this—this—"

Medarda maintains the fragile balance of civility. "Jinx is a fellow signatory."

"What, precisely, is a child's signature worth?"

Jinx's eyes hold a deadly glint. "Say again?"

"A child," Kiramman repeats, scathing. "One unfit for such an illustrious ceremony."

Jinx performs a chuckle of catty mischief from her magician's hat of tricks. "What can I say? It's all that clean living. But I'm not exactly virgin goods. Details get hazy after the ninth or tenth fella."

"Watch your tongue!"

"Or what?" Jinx's grin is all starry edges. "You'll send me to Stillwater?"

"Child, this is your final warning—"

"I'm no child. You know that. Everyone does." Jinx's stare cuts through the room. "I've killed enough of yours to make my point." Her smile spreads. "Question is: can you count that high?"

Silence. Utter and deafening.

The Councilors' horror is a work of art. Their invitation to Jinx was a bone thrown to Silco's pride. Now the reality of what they've invited to their table is sinking in. A girl who is no bargaining chip, but a knife in the gut.

Who, even now, can make them bleed.

Medarda is the quickest to recover.

"This is a day of truce, Jinx," she says. "Whatever your grievances—"

"Grievances?"

"It means—"

"I know what grievances mean." Jinx's compact little body, enfolded in whispery dark cloth, stirs to life. Everyone jerks back at the same time. "Let's go around the table and address them, shall we?" She circles said table and hops up on to it, swinging her feet. "Let's see. The esteemed Councilwoman Kiramman has a daughter my big sister's age. A girl who's never wanted for anything. Never starved. Never been left orphaned by the Bridgeside." She touches her chin. "Oh, wait. That's my story. Except I was four."

Kiramman's features are carved from ice.

"Hmmm. What else? Oh!" She pins Hoskel and Salo in her crosshairs. "There you are. Messrs Salo and Hoskel! Tell me. When you passed that housing ordinance that got my Daddy arrested and our shut utilities off, how much time did you spend drafting it? How many days did you spend debating the pros and cons? Did you know it was winter when our house lost power? That we slept in the rafters of an old factory, and when it snowed, my sister and I took shifts keeping each other warm with our breaths? How long did it take to write that legislation? One day? One bell? Less?"

Hoskel and Salo are statues.

"Oh, lookie! There's Bolbok. I hear you're all about progress, Mister Bolbok. How's that coming along? You ever had your house raided and your valuables repossessed? What's that? Oh, right. You're not broke!" Jinx throws up her arms with false cheer. "And you, Madam Shoola. Your wife's the Commissioner of the Enforcers, right? Must be nice having a spouse who can put a bullet in someone's skull if they look at her cross-eyed. You know what the penalty for being late on a tax payment is, where I'm from? A bullet, too! You ever paid your debts with blood, Madam Shoola?"

Shoola's face spasms. Bolbok is voiceless.

"How about you, Councilor Medarda?" Jinx draws one knee up, arms hooked around it, one leg playfully dangling. "You're a newcomer, aren't you? From far-off Noxus. Well, not as far-off as Zaun. Never seen you cross over to our side. Maybe you can't afford the toll. But you've got an eye for a bargain, right? I mean, look at you. You're practically dripping in gold! Ever wondered what it's like to dress in rags? Or sleep on rotting floorboards?"

Medarda's composure stays intact. "I can't say I have."

"No? Well, let's fix that! Stay at my place. My old place. The one your Enforcers blew up." Jinx leans back, braced on her palms, feet kicking merrily. "It's not much. Just a crater in the Lanes. But I'm sure you'll be comfy. You might need to watch your step, though. Water-rats love a pretty face. Oh, what's that? You've never been jumped? That's a relief. I'd hate to see your dignity stripped, cloth by cloth, until there's nothing left."

"That's enough!" Talis snaps.

Jinx's cat-eyes pounce from Medarda to him. Her pupils dilate. Her lips curl. She's always been like that: transfixed by sparkly things. But no good comes from being the object of her fixation.

In the Lanes, most have learnt that the hard way.

"Don't worry," she says. "Only one grievance to go." Her fingernail taps the gem on her necklace: an ominous tink. "It's the teensiest."

Talis' stare rakes Jinx's pale silhouette before bullseying on the Hex-gem at her throat. His jaw drops. In his shock, he forgets social propriety. He forgets that the girl standing in front of him is a known criminal. He forgets that his duty is to stay neutral.

He forgets that he is a Councilor and not a man robbed.

"That—that's not a toy!"

Jinx's feet stop kicking her. Her grin remains: unrepentant.

"Oh, I know," she says. "Toys aren't half so fun."

"You stole that!"

Medarda puts up a cautioning hand. "Councilor Talis—"

"You stole it. Stole our research. Destroyed a building. And killed a half-dozen people to do it."

Jinx's eyes crackle as if she's considering a sneak-attack. Instead, she goes still, the way a bomb stops ticking. Somehow the effect is doubly unsettling.

"They weren't people," she says softly. "They were Enforcers."

"Call them what you want," Talis snaps. "They lived and breathed just like you and me."

"Yeah?"

Jinx's passage is an eyeblink's blur. Suddenly she's right before Talis. He jerks backward. But Jinx loops a finger through one of his coat's buttonholes. Balanced on one foot, the other tucked behind her ankle, she is coy as a girl greeting a blind date.

But her smile is glittering and dangerous.

"Mister Man," she says. "I hate to tell ya, but there's a biiiiiig difference between the way I breathe—" her sigh unravels in a slow, rasping provocation, "—and the way Topside breathes."

A ripple spreads through the chamber. The Councilors' dread needs no consensus.

Talis takes a moment to break from his paralysis. "There's a price attached—even for living in 'Topside.'"

"And who pays it?" Jinx asks. "Wait. Lemme guess? The ones who get shoved in a hole an' told to get to work, right?"

"We're still people under all that."

"Guess that's how you kept that pretty face, huh? What with all that backbreakin' labor in the mines and battlefields…"

"Let's not start on battlefields." Talis' stare, hot with disgust, rakes hers. "I've seen you, Jinx. During the Siege. I've seen the damage you caused. Hospitals razed. Homes bombed. You didn't spare a soul, did you? You're no saint. Just a cruel little girl with a lot of guns."

"A little girl who built those guns from scratch." Jinx bites her lip, faux-cutesy. "Built the abacus for your Hex-gem from scratch too. Bet you never dreamed anybody else could pull it off, huh? It's gotta be Piltover with the hammerlock on progress! Else your mighty hammer knocks us down!"

Talis's jaw hardens. Jinx's own is equally taut. A vein throbs in her temple, and Silco knows she is no longer playacting. Her anger is as real as his own.

Then she whispers, "It's not the first time."

"What are you talking about?"

Jinx's eyes dip down, then up. When she speaks, her tone is strangely altered. A childish lilt hidden in the hard-candy shell. "Back when. Waaaaay back when. The crystals in your workshop. The explosion. You remember, right?" Tugging his lapel, she pulls him close. "But do you remember the little girl? The one who caused it?"

Beads of sweat pop on Talis' hairline. He is thinking back: a lifetime ago. "I don't understand." His gaze roves over Jinx, seeking clues. "You're not—" A flash of understanding. "Oh my god."

Jinx grins: her teeth are shards of bone. "Ding-ding-ding!"

"You blew up my workshop?!"

"I ate your sandwich too."

"You nearly killed me!" Talis says raggedly. "You trashed my goddamn life!"

"Me?" Jinx's grip tightens on his coat. "Silly-Billy. You're the one who forgot to put your toys away. I'm just the one who picked them up. That's our deal, isn't it? Topside drops the ball. We catch it." She chuckles darkly. "Only it wasn't a ball."

"Why?"

"Why, what?"

Talis' rage is so enormous it pinions him. This is old news, so old, but its impact is as fresh as yesterday. "Why would you do that? What could I have possibly done to make you destroy everything I worked for?!"

"Oh, y'know." Jinx runs her tongue across the point of one eyetooth. "Little girls. Got a taste for shiny things."

"Is that why you stole our Hex-gem? To finish what you started?"

"Was it?" Jinx pouts her lower-lip, a foamy daub of spit bubbling. "Dunno. Bored, I guess. Or was it angry? Don't remember. Had a lotta reasons. Life's just a hotbox of reasons and I'm a little crispy round the edges. Progress Day was a wash. All the fireworks were a yawn. I was in the doghouse. But so was the rest of Zaun. So, I did something about it." Her fingers itsy-bitsy-spider up Talis' shirtfront. "Should've done it a loooong time ago."

Talis' control splinters. He seizes her wrist.

In the next instant, a blade materializes at his throat. One of Jinx's composite knives glints at his jugular.

"Let go," she says, deathly flat. "Before I show you what little girls do with shiny things."

The chamber recoils. The Councilors rear back, hands flying up to their own throats. The Peacekeepers unsling their rifles. If a single bullet is discharged, it will trigger a massacre. Blood will stain the Treaty's vellum, and a century's worth of suffering will culminate in a final act of slaughter.

Silco stays where he is. At his left, Medarda holds a sculpturesque stillness. At his right, Sevika shifts, a casual realignment of balance. Her eyes are not on Jinx, but him. One nod, and she'll cut down every Peacekeeper in the chamber.

Silco checks her with headshake. He'd known this was coming. Known it the moment he set foot on the ship.

Now he'll see it play out.

They stand in a tableau. Talis: incensed; Jinx: implacable. And between them, one blade. All that separates two souls on opposite sides of the river from a world of dark and light.

"Let go," Jinx repeats. "And I'll tell you why I took your crystals."

Talis takes a jittery breath. His fingers drop from her wrist.

"There," Jinx coos. "That's better." In an eyeblink, she replaces the weapon. It disappears beneath the folds of her skirt. "Now we can talk like grown-ups."

Silence.

"Here's a little exercise: if I do this," she turns a pirouette, "what will you do? Match my steps? That's how a dance starts, right? You do for me and I do for you."

"What are you talking about?" Talis grits out.

"I'm talking about give-and-take. That's how dancing works. That's how peace works too." She circles him, a playful whirligig of skirts. "C'mon! Gimme a twirl! Show me you're not all talk."

"No."

Their stares clash across the space. Jinx throws up her arms in mock-defeat. "Sheesh. Can't blame a gal for trying. This isn't dancing but it is a dance, see? Between you and me. Between our cities. There's a set of rules we both have to follow. A social contract." She looks him dead in the eye. "Him that takes plays nice with him that gives."

"If you're saying you were owed the Hex-gem—"

"Not the Hex-gem," Jinx corrects. "Everything."

"You—"

"Sssh." She touches a finger to her lips. "This is a dance, remember? I'm not done with my steps." She spins once, twice, eerily balletic. "You probably know what it's like to be hungry for something. Freedom. Success. Happiness. The things you see in your dreams. And when you wake up, you still feel that hunger. I get it. I've been there, too." Her palm starfishes across her belly. "Bet you've never felt real hunger. I don't mean when lunch is a bell late. I mean with teeth in your gut and nails in your bones. And when you're that hungry, you're mad. Always, always mad."

Talis' throat works. He doesn't take his eyes off Jinx.

She goes on, "There's a dance between our cities, too. Him that gives, gets nothing. And him that takes, takes everything. Only that's not really a dance, is it? If we're dancing, it's gotta be even. And that's not us. The world spins and you stay on top, while we're at the bottom. And the bottom's dark, Mister Man. It's dark, and there's no space to make workshops. No money to go to school. But that doesn't mean we're not hungry for more."

"There are always opportunities," Talis argues. "For everyone."

"Yeah?" Her smile is a crack in a funhouse mirror. "What are we doing here, then?"

"Look—"

"Answer me. If everyone has a chance, then what the hell are we doing here?" Her eyes go pulsatingly bright. Rage licks the air like a current. "We're here because we're not people to you. To any of you. You'll use us and fuck us and kill us. But you'll never treat us like equals. This cotillion's the first time you've invited us upstairs. All because of what I had to do. For all of us. My city. My family." Her voice hitches. "I didn't want your crystals, Mister Man. I wanted a life. But the dance floor's got rules. Him that takes gets what he needs. Him that gives gets a kick in the ass." She dips into a courtesy. "Guess I was tired of dancing to your tune."

A direct hit.

Talis takes a step back, as if he can no longer bear Jinx's proximity. He is a man at the zenith; he's strived every inch of the way. It is a point of pride: Piltover's defining ethos. Yet there's a difference between a life of hard work and a life of hopelessness.

The distinction is a blade, and Jinx holds the edge.

Roughly, he says "What do you want?"

Jinx cocks her head. "Huh?"

"From us?" A note of defeat. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To take back what's owed?"

"I'm here because you're here. And so is she." Jinx nods to Medarda. "And them." Her stare passes to the other Councilors. "Everyone's here, Mister Man. And for the first time, we might get the same thing. But first we gotta figure out the steps."

"Steps?"

"For our dance." She looks him up and down. "How about it? Wanna try the Sumpside Waltz? It's easy if you know how."

"I don't think so."

"No? Well, here's a secret: there are only two steps. Him that gives gets what he needs. Him that takes gets what he deserves." Jinx sobers. "Or did I get dolled up and come upstairs for nothing?"

Talis' face goes from stricken to stone. He understands that any further discussion is pointless. The die is cast, and he can only accept the fallout.

"I think," he says, "you should return to your spot."

Jinx looks cheated out of a fun game. She recovers in a twinkling. "No floorshow?"

"Not today."

"I'll settle for a kiss."

"What?"

A ripple passes through the chamber. The Council are shellshocked. Jinx's performance has stripped them raw. Their authority: a mirage. Their egos: an illusion. Worse, they have no idea what comes next. It is as if they're witnessing a live bomb, primed to detonate. The best they can do is stand and watch it fizz.

And, if they're lucky, keep their heads.

At last, Silco melts out of the shadows. His hand cups Jinx's elbow.

"Jinx."

Remonstrance for its own sake. Jinx swivels. Something passes between them at an imperceptible wavelength.

"Oops." Her face is a child's again: unspoiled and lovely. "Just kidding!"

Silco crooks a finger.

Jinx obeys, her body flowing away from Talis. All interest lost.

At Silco's side, she resumes her place. Her small hand folds in the crook of his arm. Her dazzling shell is mere limescale now: a fragile shield of dried blood. Ten minutes with the Council, and she's already gotten their measure. Her very self, all its mutilations, inside and out, collide against their pampered mode of existence.

She'll never let them see the pain.

Talis stands like a sailor marooned on sharp rocks. Recomposing himself, he locks eyes with Silco. "This confirms it."

"Confirms what?" Silco says.

"This Treaty is imperative. Especially if we're to prevent further cruelty in the Fissures."

"And you've much knowledge of cruelty, Councilor Talis?"

Finally, Talis explodes. "I can see your pride and joy has been poisoned by Shimmer! I can see it's made her into something inhuman! I can see you've used her for your own ends, taking more lives than all of Stillwater's inmates combined!"

Silco smiles. Behind the urbane chill, he seethes. "Ah, but we're all killers here, aren't we? All no better than beasts."

The Councilors break into an uproar. Their pride is on its last leg. They can't abide another blow. Nor can the Treaty survive it.

Sevika sets her fingertips on Silco's arm. He knows she is telling him: Enough.

But it isn't enough. It will never be enough. Not until their blood runs.

Turning a frigid eye to Silco, Kiramman interjects, "First Chancellor, you and your doxy have gone too far."

"On the contrary," Silco says, with the precise diction of a bladesman's cut, "we've barely scratched the surface. So let us, in good faith, attempt to change the parameters. A social contract. Isn't that what my little doxy called it?" A beat. "Or are you afraid to see us in your selves?"

Silence—dead and absolute.

Silco's eyes glitter darkly, and his smile cuts like a wolf-trap.

"The truth is," he says, "this is no Peace Treaty. It's not even a social contract. It's an armistice written in bad blood. We have the right to sign, yes. But you begrudge us every drop of ink. That's why you invited us here. To show the world how generous your city is—while behind closed doors, you make us jump through hoops, rummage through our clothes, then disdain to even shake hands."

He circles the chamber, his own hands laced behind his back. It belongs to him now, his voice suffusing the space: a shadowy timbre that grows teeth. Every soul in the chamber is held hostage. The monster isn't under their beds, but here, before their eyes.

And there is nowhere to run.

"Equity," Silco says, "is the cornerstone of justice. But you've no experience with equity, have you, Councilors? Your city is built on the bones of our dead. Your riches, siphoned from our blood. Yet, here you sit, daring to claim the moral high ground. You, who are not just killers, but hypocrites. You, who dress up your crimes in finery, and bury the rest in semantics. You, who call rape business and murder peacekeeping." His eye pierces Talis, a blade wedged deep. "And you. Who've lived with a silver spoon shoved down your throats since childhood, yet act as if our children have stolen your birthright."

Talis' shoulders flex. The ripple of anger expresses itself beneath his well-cut suit. In that moment, his and Silco's memories make the same quantum leap: the Shimmer factory, the dead boy, the failed parley. Two men at a crossroads, with no common ground between them but the corpses piled up in the name of progress.

That, and a girl held at ransom.

"Get me Jinx. And I'll give you your nation of Zaun."

Chagrin breaks across Talis' face. Visibly, he reels himself back. Silco flashes him a smile sharpened by a lifetime of foul underground fodder, before aiming it at the others.

The Councilors sit like cornered rats. He can taste their blood.

Every drop sweet.

"We are not here," Silco goes on, "to rehash the past. What's done is done. But if this is a pact between killers, let's have no illusions between us. You've taken great pains to remind me of my crimes. For parity's sake, let us not discount yours." He comes to a stop at the head of the table. "For instance, Councilor Kiramman, I have it on very good authority that the Piltovan Treasury—under your aegis—regularly doles out 'donations' to Noxian arms dealers responsible for the genocide in Thanze. All in exchange for the patronization of your munitions factories. I've no doubt you're aware of the statistics."

Kiramman is too well-bred to glower. But her mouth holds a shape that cannot be described as anything else.

Silco glances into the unwelcoming faces of Hoskel and Salo. "Gentlemen, I have contacts in the Ionian docks who tell me you've cosigned a warrant for the arrests of thirty unionists. Former workers who threatened to expose your illegal smuggling ring of Noxian spirits. I believe the Wardens left the spokespersons' bodies to rot on spikes as a warning."

Salo blanches and Hoskel blusters, "Preposterous—!"

Silco's focus snaps to Shoola. "Likewise, Councilor Shoola, your meat-packing factories test offal on their workers. The contamination has resulted in deaths by the dozens. And Councilor Bolbok—" His good eye cuts sideways, "—you oversaw the largest slum in the former Undercity. You allowed the worst elements of society to thrive unchecked while imposing strict rules on those who wished to seek relocation Topside. Yet when a thousand citizens petitioned you to lift restrictions—a petition, for the record, I personally organized—you responded by calling them 'looters,' and sanctioned Enforcers to gun them down."

Shoola's features harden. Bolbok straightens his spine but makes no answer.

"It seems to me, Councilors," Silco concludes, "that the killers you profess to abhor are yourselves. Well, so be it. We all choose the monster we wish to be. And we dress it up in different ways. For some, it is wealth. For others, knowledge. Piltover likes to parade its own as Progress. Now here we are. Ready to find that fine line between your monstrosity and ours."

Silence spills like gush of blood. The Councilors exude two smells, surreally blended: sweet perfumes and spiced colognes over the raw pungency of hatred.

Silco takes a savoring breath, satisfaction but no pleasure. Loathing trickles through own veins. He is aware of the throb in his knuckles. The scarred fingers are clenched into fists. It's as if he's in been a brawl. Blood stoked; blood spilled.

Blood everywhere.

Medarda has been quiet all this time. Now she approaches on delicate feet that conceal an iron will.

"I believe," she says, "a recess is in order." She lays a hand on Talis' forearm. "Refreshments in the sunroom to cool tempers." Her eyes meet Silco's. "Fresh air for all."

Sensing the effort, Silco rouses himself to matching pretense. "Of course."

A recess.

A moment for her to whisper in Talis' ear—and bend the Council's. A moment to press her advantage in both their favors.

The blood-letting is done. Now comes the balm.

Medarda leads the procession with a sway of her hips. Talis walks at her side, their shoulders nearly touching. The Councilors follow in an exodus of polished shoes and silky hems. The look as if they're staggering uphill after a massacre.

In the sunroom, the air is warm beneath the stained-glass ceiling. Shafts of sunlight sparkle over a table arrayed with a sumptuous spread of fruits, cheeses, and decanters of wine. In deference to the Treaty, a smattering of Fissure-brewed spirts are mixed with the Piltovan reds and whites.

The Councilors descend en masse. They glut; they guzzle; they gorge. And yet they are careful to show only their backs and not the evidence of their greed.

A microcosm of history.

Slouched by a mantelpiece, Silco observes them. Hoskel's flabby cheeks are stuffed with Shuriman dates, a delicacy from his orchards. Salo takes a flute of priceless Lurrikara wine and polishes it off in a single gulp. Shoola plucks a chunk of gourmet goat-cheese from its ramekin and takes the barest bite. Kiramman samples a segment of rare pear as if it were an afterthought. Bolbok sits stolidly with a gold-rimmed flagon of Noxian ale and refuses to take a sip.

Talis, meanwhile, keeps pacing. Every once in a while, he makes an abortive move to seize a drink. Then he thinks better of it. His eyes pass, irrepressibly, to the Zaunite party. Anger is etched into his features. He is aggrieved by the morning's indignity. He is equally distressed that no accusation was without basis.

Politics is no place for a man who believes in his city's ideals.

Talis nods, grudgingly. Medarda smiles. Under her radiance, his grimness gentles into something more genuine, nearly boyish. For a moment, Silco glimpses the dashing young inventor he must've been at the beginning. A man who'd never wanted to be a politician, but a hero. Someone who'd make a difference.

Now, the only difference is that his skin is thinner and his conscience compromised.

Yet there's that hint of that old idealism, and its potential. Medarda, her hand still on his arm, coaxes him towards the table. She heaps a plate with fruits and cheeses, then passes it to him. Talis accepts the offering. He takes a bite, and color creeps back into his cheeks. The next mouthful is less hesitant. Before long, he is eating with gusto.

Medarda stands by, her stare strangely tender. It's not the look of an owner charmed by a puppy; nor is it a proprietress' indulgence. Whatever lies between them is an entanglement of another sort. When Talis meets her stare, her expression didn't change, but her eyes do; the gold deepening into a nearly hazel hue, the subtle sign of a woman in thrall. Her fingers curl into his sleeve. In return, Talis' palm settles on the small of her back.

Silco watches them with interest. The attraction crackling between them in unmistakable. It's there in how they position their bodies. In the small touches exchanged; the secrets traded with a glance. Even the way their hands linger over the food-a game of footsie conducted by the fingertips. It is also, he recognizes, not not a relationship of long-standing. It's still in its first flush, radiating heat like an apple pie from the oven.

A treat, to be a serpent in that apple.

A glass of icewater appears before Silco—exactly what he'd wanted. He accepts it from Sevika with a nod. She takes her place at his right, a sure-handed sentry. At his left, Jinx lolls loose-limbed and insolent on a settee. Her cat's eyes are slits. Her soul, Silco knows, is raging.

Too much grief. Too many ghosts.

No peace without a reckoning.

"Take a breath," Silco says, low. "You can do this."

Jinx summons a smile. She's good at playing her cards close. But today her ace has no face.

Sevika catches Silco's eye: You think she'll keep it together?

Silco's only answer is a nod. He'd never lay odds against Jinx. If the Siege couldn't break her, the Council won't. It's simply a matter of playing her strengths—and preying on their weaknesses.

At length, Jinx rises. Smoothing her gown, she traipses into the heart of the sunroom. The Councilors fall still. The silence is so complete, the tinkle of a single fork would ring like an avalanche. Their eyes follow Jinx as she plucks a plum from its crystal bowl. She takes a bite, then rolls it around her tongue.

"Sweet," she says. "A mite too sweet for this little tart."

Salo chokes on his drink. Hoskel's face reddens.

"Little pitchers." Jinx points to her ears. "Always listening."

She pops the rest of the plum into her mouth. Her jaw works, savoring with coy deliberation, until the pit pops out. She holds it between her fingers: a tiny, perfect sphere.

"Think I'll keep this," she says. "A memento of our magical morning."

Smoothly, Medarda enters the fray.

"You're welcome to it," she says. "And if you wish, we'll gladly send you a crate."

"A bribe, Councilor? Tsk-tsk."

"An expression of goodwill."

"Goodwill, huh?" Jinx's smile holds no sharpness. But a blade is a blade once it's buried between your ribs. "We've sure got a boatload today."

Medarda's own smile is soft as candleflame. "It's a matter of redressing the balance."

"Yeah?"

"A little goes a long way, I've always found." She touches Jinx's skirt, a blink-and-miss-it skim of fingertips. "For instance, I admire the cut of your gown. Simple, almost stark. But the two-toned sheen catches the eye when you walk. And the black fabric calls attention to the bright patterns. Your designs, I'd wager?"

Jinx's lip tweaks saucily. "You like?"

"You have an eye for color."

"Not much of that in here, either."

"You believe so? Look again." Medarda gestures to the prismatic lamps illuminating the sunroom. "You see the base of each lamp? It is embossed in crystals from the Fissures. Old burial mounds from Oshra Va'Zaun. They surround the room in a hexahedron pattern. Their refractive nature captures different hues of the light spectrum. In daytime, they diffuse into dappled shades of gold. By night, they shine in every color of the rainbow."

Jinx's takes them in with a teenager's cultivated nonchalance. "Huh."

"We commissioned Zaunite artisans because their gift for gemwork is unrivaled. Each facet takes hundreds of hours to polish. Exquisite craft hidden in simple strokes." Medarda's attention returns to Jinx's gown. "A labor of love, wouldn't you say?"

"Love," Jinx says, "or a reminder."

"A reminder of what?"

"That perfection's just one blink away from breakage." Her eyes are chips of ice: unreflective. "All it takes is a crack."

Medarda's focus narrows, but her demeanor stays gentle. "It seems you have an eye for fragility too. Have you any interest in sculpture?"

"Sculpture?"

"It requires an appreciation for delicacy. The need to balance raw surface with deft precision. A give and take." She extends her hand. After a moment's silence, Jinx deposits the pit into her palm. Medarda turns it over so the gradations catch the lamplight. "You see these zigzag patterns on the surface? They're common to Piltovan plums. When we return to the chamber, be sure to look at the walls. You'll see the same zigzag texture on the frieze. That isn't a coincidence. It's a special limestone from Oshra Va' Zaun. It's not the easiest material to work with. But the effect is breathtaking."

Jinx's chin tips, and Silco sees a flicker of curiosity.

"So—what? These are special plums?"

"Indeed." Medarda's thumb caresses the pit. "The pits are planted on Piltovan riverbanks. But did you know they can't grow without Zaunite limestone? It is crushed into a powder and mixed with the soil. The minerals enrich the harvest. They give each plum its famous pigment and sweetness." She holds the pit to her eye. "Without your city, our orchards would be barren. Our fruit, flavorless."

"And somehow," Jinx retorts, "I've never tasted a bite."

"I hope we can redress that balance too."

"With a crateful of plums?"

"With our shared history." Medarda takes Jinx's hand and lays the red pit into her palm. Gently, she folds the girl's fingers over it. "Tell me, did you see the name of this ship?"

"Niobe," Jinx says. "The Queen who cried her eyes out."

Medarda's glossy brows lift. "You know your folklore."

"Silco does." A sidelong glance. "I listen."

Silco keeps his distance. Medarda is proving herself as adept a diplomat as she is an aesthete. But Jinx has never been taken in by honeyed words or a pair of soft hands. She is a creature of extremes. She sugarcoats nothing; she serves hard truths on a bloodstained platter.

And yet there is no aggression in Jinx's stance. She meets the older woman eye-to-eye. In the backdrop of lanterns, the glow cast upon her is ethereal. For the first time, Silco sees a strange dignity to her, something so secret it's gone unperceived even by him. The earlier glimpse of her trying on the gown hadn't prepared him for the full effect.

He has seen Jinx in countless iterations. This is the first time he understands that she belongs here.

At the pinnacle.

In the light.

"Listening is an important skill," Medarda says. "My father taught me the same. He believed it was the key to building trust. When someone shares a story, they give you a precious gift. The only way to earn the gift is to listen." Her stare rests on Jinx. "Do you remember how many children Niobe had?"

"Seven, I think."

"That's right. Legend goes that Niobe boasted to the Mother of Life. So the gods punished her by killing her children. Niobe was turned to a pillar of limestone. Her tears fell for days, until they formed a river." A wistful look skims her features. "Some say that river flows to this day between our cities. Same way every stone in the Fissures holds the memory of Niobe's pain." She nods at the pit in Jinx's palm. "On the Equinox, we plant those pits by the riverside. The plums that sprout the next year are harvested in honor of Niobe's seven children. A warning to guard against hubris. But also a reminder that pain can create beauty."

"Like a ship?"

"That's right. SS Niobe was commissioned for the Equinox. A testament to our roots. Piltover and Zaun are a river apart, but our waters flow from the same source. There is strength in that union. But only if we learn to listen."

"I'm listening." Jinx's head tips. "Question is: are you?"

"Ask and you shall receive."

"Receive what?" A sly quirk of lips. "A kiss?"

Medarda doesn't bat an eyelid. She enfolds Jinx's small hand in both of hers. And there is the kiss—a flutter of lips to Jinx's forehead.

The Councilors draw in a collective gasp. Talis looks as if his jaw will crack. Silco's own knuckles whiten around his glass. Jinx doesn't balk. In fact, her color rises. Silco realizes with a jolt: she is enjoying herself. A grubby-fingered urchin bestowed the highest possible accolade. And yet she accepts it as if she is Janna taking her due.

Medarda's lips linger a heartbeat more than politeness dictates. The touch is neither patronizing nor prurient. It holds the solemnity of a vow.

When she pulls away, Jinx's laugh is a little giddy.

"Well," she says, "that was way sweeter than a plum."

Medarda keeps Jinx's hand in hers. "What is a kiss worth? Not a thing, if not given freely. A peace accord is the same. Only when it is willingly shared does it hold any value." She sobers. "I don't know the circumstances of your past, Jinx. But I can see it was not easy. In a better world, you would be spared that. But since the Fates are not kind, let me share what I can. Peace, between our cities. Time, for healing. And, when you are ready, a chance to talk."

"Talk?"

"About our differences." Medarda's hands impart a squeeze. "You have the strength of a city inside you. I believe the Council can learn from your resilience. Perhaps even learn to listen. And if we do, we will find answers to questions we did not think to ask."

Jinx stares at Medarda. Bright, so killingly bright. Her silence isn't the sullen refusal of a child. It's the thoughtful quiet of a young woman. The skylight dusts her lashes with gold motes. The eyes beneath are shadow.

Yet Silco senses a strange frisson. A moment of shared wavelength between two souls diametrically opposed.

Then Jinx tosses the plum-pit into the air.

It spins end-over-end. She catches it neatly in her fist, then opens her fingers with a flourish. It's an old sleight-of-hand. Except instead of an empty palm, a red crystal lays on Jinx's palm. Its facets glitter madly. She'd plucked it off a lamp during a lull in the conversation.

Medarda blinks, "When did you—?" A smile uncurls. "Very clever. You have a gift for misdirection."

Jinx's lilting voice is a wry riff on Medarda's. "Simply redressing a balance."

Medarda's smile recedes into something more private. The radiance remains: gold in the gloaming.

"If a crate of crystals is a start," she says, "let it be an earnest one."

"And a warning."

"A warning?"

Jinx's eyes meet Medarda's over the crystal. Tiny sparks ignite in her pupils. Her smile is the smile from the Aerie: a bladed brilliance.

"All it takes," she says, "is one crack."

Medarda nods. She has gotten Jinx's measure. This is no deranged bomber. Just a girl—breathtakingly astute and shockingly perceptive. An artist's eye for color; a tinkerer's eye for detail. And yet, a girl who is the sum of her fractures.

In her own twisted way, she is an innocent. But even innocence can be weaponized.

"I believe," Medarda says, "we have an accord."

"Guess so." Jinx pockets the crystal. "Good talk, Councilor."

She swans back to Silco's side. She looks different, somehow. As if a door has shut behind her. The girl-with-shards-for-skin has left the room. In her place is someone sturdier. Medarda's words may have struck a chord—but Jinx's own melody is no lullaby.

It is a national anthem of fire and fury.

The rest of the Councilors observe Jinx's retreat. Their bellies are stuffed; their heads are dazed. The conversation between her and Medarda moved too fast for them to follow. But they've been paying attention, and that is all the better.

Medarda has already begun to spin this. To humanize the hellion, and her city.

This is why she'd asked Silco to bring Jinx. This is why he'd accepted. Both he and Medarda understand the bedrock faultline of narcissism: one crack is all it takes.

Medarda was the pen. Silco was the icepick. Jinx is the punchline.

In the span of minutes, she has shown the Council the precariousness of their seats. They've come face-to-face with the very things they despise: humiliation, accountability, and the truth. Now, to redress their errors, they must acknowledge the girl who has risen despite them.

Who is rising still.

Ice clinks in Silco's glass. He sips, and bites a jagged shard. His smile over the rim is inscrutable.

Medarda smiles back.

"Councilors." Her stately tones resonate across the chamber. "I believe we're ready."

This time, the Council put on no airs. The door to the chamber swings open. They troop out in grim procession. At the table, the Treaty waits. An exquisite scroll flanked by quills. One is a fine, gold-filigreed plume. The other is jet-black, with an iron tip.

A dove and a raven at their perch.

The Piltovans take their seats. The Zaunites do the same.

Silco's stare passes over the table. Talis meets it head-on. There is real conflict in his eyes. Silco recognizes it for what it is: the fury of a man who believes in something larger than himself—and has seen it betrayed. His city's ideals: hollow. His inventions: warped. His hopes: undone.

All because of a girl from the gutter. A girl who stole from him, as his city had stolen from her.

"Councilors," he says. "Before we begin, there's something I must say."

The Councilors blink. Even Medarda is taken aback.

"By all means," she says, measured, "if the First Chancellor is amenable."

Silco's glass rings in the stillness. He lifts it, an idle salute. Speak.

Talis' shoulders square. He is no calculated orator. His words come from his heart: the last stronghold of his pride.

Today, it's been laid waste.

"First Chancellor Silco," he says. "You've taken a huge gamble on history's table. With this Treaty, you've won big. But winning isn't enough to sustain a city."

"I gambled nothing," Silco says. "Zaun only took what was due."

"Jinx did."

At Silco's left, Jinx bristles. Silco's demeanor stays implacably calm.

"On my orders."

His words are met with stunned silence. Nobody expected him to admit it so readily.

"I bear responsibility," Silco goes on, and lets the words hang before twisting them into a nose, "as the leader of a city that was denied its autonomy. It was the right of my people to seek independence, and I will not apologize for their actions. But I will accept the choices I made on their behalf. They were my choices. And I stand by them."

Talis' jaw works. "Then you admit—"

"I'll say it again. We gambled nothing." He sips the icewater, slowly. "You did. You wagered our future on the promise of progress. Then you turned a blind eye to the consequences. You saw fit to condemn the victims. Today, you face them." He sets the glass down: a cold chime. "Not a pretty sight, are we?"

The silence strangles.

"You're right," Talis says. "It's not pretty. You've exploited your own. We've failed ours. And for every choice made, we've each lost something. Nearly five hundred Enforcers were lost to the war. And I'm told you lost nearly a thousand Fissurefolk, and a hundred more to riots, starvation and disease."

Silco knows the numbers by heart. In dreams, they haunt him. Awake, they serve as lessons.

He says, "And?"

Talis' features darken—not with anger but bitterness. "We lost something as cities too. Something precious. Trust. Not just between Zaun and Piltover, but within ourselves. All the casualties could have been avoided—if we as Councilors had opened our eyes sooner. All the major institutions of our city failed to solve the Fissures' problems. Our leaders failed. Our businesses failed. Our judicial system failed. Everyone failed, and because of that, there was a vacuum. Filled by a man like you."

Silco's good eye chills, a calibration of controlled contempt. "A man like me."

Talis stare holds. It is a moment of raw, unfettered antipathy.

"A man who saw opportunity and seized it at the cost of lives." His eyes pass to Jinx. "Even those closest."

Defensiveness stirs in Silco. Talis has no idea what precipitated Jinx's change. But it remains a sore point. A father's failure in plain sight.

Jinx laughs: light, lilting, loathsome, "Don't flatter yourself."

Talis blinks.

"My life was always forfeit." Her head droops sideways, slowly, like her neck in made of strings stretched too thin—or stuck in a hangman's rope. "Same as any Trencher under Topside's boot."

A flare of emotion crosses Talis' face. Then his features resettle into grimness, "You're not under Piltover's boot now. The question is, what happens next?" He turns to Silco. "You've gained independence for the Fissures. But it was through bloodshed, Shimmer and violence. With respect, I harbor doubts about how you'll course-correct now that you're First Chancellor."

"With respect," Silco rejoins, "Zaun's course correction is not the Council's purview."

Talis' lips make a tight angry smile. "That's true. But in the interests of ensuring a tragedy of such proportions never repeats itself, we expect your government to abide by the Peace Treaty, as Piltover will. To be cooperative, aboveboard and accountable."

The barest sneer cuts Silco's lips. "Everything the Council wasn't, hm?"

Talis doesn't flinch. "Everything necessary to move forward."

"...but never forget," Jinx finishes.

Talis and Silco stare at her—Talis reconfronted with a confounding chimera that is half-cat, half-girl; Silco wondering whether her inner demons are goading her into an explosion of epic proportions. It wouldn't shock him. She's already braved so much. She's been the figurehead for his voyage, the anchor keeping him grounded despite the blackening tide of his rage.

He's asked too much of her then. He still expects too much of her now.

Mercifully, Medarda intercedes. "Let us remember we are not the first nations to build peace on rocky shores." Her words are a golden salve. "We won't be the last. But we will persevere." She gestures to the scroll, the quills, the Treaty itself. "Shall we begin?"

Silco nods.

Talis does not. But he follows Medarda's lead.

The aide proffers the gold quill. With an elegant flourish, Medarda signs her name. Silco follows suit with the black quill, in crisp cursive. Sevika, a heartbeat later, does the same. The remaining delegates, with varying degrees of alacrity, etch their own. The last signature is Jinx's. It is a colorful scrawl: a smattering of sharp lines and jagged angles.

In the margin, she jots:

XOXO.

Talis stares. "What's that?"

Jinx winks. "Just a kiss with a twist."

Talis' jaw clamps shut. He doesn't say another word.

The quills are returned to their holders. The aides gather the Treaty, and place it reverently inside an ornate glass-fronted cabinet. They close the lid, a click of finality.

It is done.

A heaviness falls: hollow and strangely dispiriting. Decades of blood reduced to a few lines on a piece of parchment.

Medarda rises, a regal silhouette. She extends a hand; Silco clasps it in a firm grip.

"Procedamus omnes in pace, First Chancellor," she says. "You have your nation's independence. Piltover and Zaun remain bound only by the river between us."

"Pax vobiscum," Silco replies. "And may the Fates spare us the consequence of hubris."

Their eyes hold, a moment's collusion. With a final nod, they part.

The Piltovans reconvene to the sunroom. The Zaunites—unrepentant smokers—retreat to the promenade deck. There will be a half-hour's interval before the press conference. The speeches will be broadcast live to both cities. In the evening, the Council will descend to Zaun. There will be a gala held in their honor. By midnight, they will share the traditional Equinox banquet. Afterward, they'll pose for the commemorative photo-op.

Smiles will be flashed. Deals will be struck. The unmitigated rawness of revolution will yield to the saccharine optics of togetherness.

Silco leans an elbow on the rail, a cigar twigged between two fingers. Jinx is tucked against his left side. Her head is heavy. Her breathing, slow. In the chamber, she played her part to perfection. Now the adrenaline is bleeding out. Enfolding her arm through his, she presses her hot forehead into his shoulder.

On his right, Sevika stands steadfast. The tip of her cigarillo glows red. The smoke is a blue thread uncoiling into the afternoon.

"Hell of a show," she remarks.

"The start—" Silco exhales a lazy stream, "—of their march to the gallows."

"Smiling all the way."

"So will we." He flicks ash. "Once we burn it all down."

A fresh wind scallops the water, salt-spray diffusing the gloom. Beneath pewter clouds and golden sunrays, Piltover gleams like a jewelbox. In the shadows, Zaun glows beneath a blanket of green smog. A predator in wait.

Zaun.

No longer a whisper. No longer a lost cause with borders drawn by faith.

It breathes. It lives. It will rise anew.

Silco lays a hand over Jinx's fingers, curled into his coat sleeve. She stirs, a smile wavering. She is a child clinging to a blanket. She is a fighter, readying herself for the next round.

Gently, she squeezes back.

TREATY OF MUTUAL COOPERATION, TRADE AND SECURITY BETWEEN PILTOVER & ZAUN

The Nations, Piltover and Zaun,

Desiring: to strengthen the bonds of everlasting peace and prosperity between them, and to uphold the principles of progress. To encourage economic stability in their nations. To live in peace with developed peoples and governments.

Recognizing: that they have the inherent right of individual or mutual self-defense, and a common concern in the maintenance of peace and security in Valoran and Shurima.

Having resolved to conclude a treaty of mutual cooperation, trade and security,

Accord as follows:

ARTICLE I

The Nations shall respect each other's sovereignty. The Nations shall refrain from any action which could be construed by another party as an attempt at territorial acquisition. No nation may claim territory belonging to another without express permission of the claimed government; nor can it interfere in internal matters of foreign states except for those actions explicitly authorized under this Treaty. All treaties concluded prior to signing remain valid unless otherwise stated therein.

ARTICLE II

In times where there is no clear violation of Valoran law on either side, disputes will be settled through peaceful negotiation between the parties involved. In cases involving violence, both sides agree to submit all evidence relevant to the case to an independent arbitrator appointed by agreement of both countries' leaders. This arbitration shall take place within twenty-four hours after the request has been made by one of the two signatories. If the dispute cannot be solved peacefully, then war must not commence before six days following the announcement of hostilities, and if the conflict continues beyond this point, neither country shall initiate military action until a full week after such declaration. Neither side may launch attacks against civilians. Both sides are obliged to provide humanitarian aid during wartime, including foodstuffs and medical supplies. Each nation agrees to release prisoners of war upon surrender or capture, according to the terms agreed to when the prisoner was first taken into custody.

ARTICLE III

Each party acknowledges that the other has the right to pursue commercial interests anywhere on Valoran. However, should these activities cause harm to the environment, the affected Nation(s) shall be compensated for damages caused. Should damage occur due to negligence, compensation shall only cover costs necessary to restore the damaged area back to its previous condition.

ARTICLE IV

Neither nation shall undertake aggressive acts against ships on water and air owned or operated by the other. Such vessels are considered neutral in the event of armed conflicts between the nations. Ships operating near disputed territories may be subject to search and seizure by authorities.

ARTICLE V

Both nations acknowledge the existence of a free market economy. They recognize the importance of competition in fostering innovation and advancement. While the respective economies of the nations are complementary rather than competitive, the Nations do not intend to engage in direct currency exchange or impose tariffs or taxes on goods produced elsewhere. Any national laws restricting the sale of products manufactured outside of their own borders may not discriminate based on nationality. It is forbidden to export technology capable of harming people or property, including but not limited to biological weapons. The Nations also agree to prohibit the weaponization of both magical and chemical warfare agents.

ARTICLE VI

Should either nation feel threatened by an imminent attack, it reserves the right to defend itself using all available resources. In such a situation, neither nation may initiate hostilities until the other has declared war. When possible, each nation undertakes efforts to avoid causing civilian casualties.

ARCTICLE VII

In the event of aggression against either nation by a foreign power, each signatory has the right to ask the other for military assistance. This request will not be made in the event of a simple demonstration of force, but in a situation where hostilities are imminent. The signatory countries agree that military aid mutually offered under these circumstances extends to the protection of civilian populations of the nations attacked. Should a nation come under attack by more than one foreign power, both signatories will offer assistance.

ARTICLE VIII

Each nation recognizes the need for strong diplomatic ties in order to maintain stable relations between them and with third parties. To facilitate this goal, the heads of state of both nations meet annually to discuss issues pertaining to the relationship. These meetings shall continue indefinitely unless terminated by unanimous vote of Zaun's Cabinet and Piltover's Council.

ARTICLE IX

This Treaty becomes effective once signed by representatives of each nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned Plenipotentiaries have signed this Treaty—

FOR PILTOVER:

Councilor Melika Medarda

Councilor Banoy Bolbokk

Councilor Cassandra Kiramman

Councilor Uwe Hoskel

Councilor Casimir Salo

Councilor Tope Shoola.

Councilor Jayce Talis

FOR ZAUN:

First Chancellor Erik Silco

Deputy Chancellor Sevika Mitra

Baron Fredrich Chross II

Baroness Renata Glasc

Chief Diplomat Dario Kühn

Clerk General Ola Gartner

Jinx – XOXO