HEO
Dawn arrives overcast and drizzling on the port of Luxana, salt winds blowing in violent,
erratic gusts off the dark grey sea in the weak morning light. Anyone who’s lived long enough in
Roma Sargassa’s capitol city knows the signs of a hurricane on the horizon, and Theodora Nix
has lived here all their life.
Not that the dangerous weather will put off the local street vendors. Nothing ever does. At
barely six in the morning, the slate-and-brick Regio Marina neighborhood stirs feebly to life the
same as always. Little girls with wheelbarrows in thick woven duskras and oversized oilskins,
shouting out their parents’ fresh eel and seaweed haul. The sizzle of oatflour on cast iron as men
entice passers-by with stacks of fried dappham from beneath dripping canvas tents. Rickets
collectors, discount servae traders, hemp and spice and indigo merchants. They’ll be here until
the very last moment, the promise of one last sale too valuable to miss. Hurricanes can last up to
a month in this part of the empires—empty stomachs can’t.
Pulling their wool scarf tight around damp black hair, Theo makes their way down the wharf.
Past the fishermen as they shout and haul in their catch, past seafoam-green shutters flung open
for one last gasp of fresh air, past a splintering wooden underpass sheltering a pair of whispering
lovers they’d be willing to bet never made it to bed.
Pa'akal and Avis are waiting for them with the cart at the northwest end of the Regio,
hunkered over and grim in their oilskins. Izara isn’t here, she’s been deep undercover for months.
Griff's not here yet, either, but that’s no surprise, she’s always the last to show up. Never mind
that she's the one who called them here, but Theo has no idea what Griff actually does most of
the time. None of them do, and that’s as it should be. There’s safety in ignorance. Not safety for hemselves, but for the greater network of the Revenants across Sargassa. Cells in Halcya and
Paxenos and Bostinium, all reporting back to their central base here in Luxana, and even then
Theo, who thinks they might be the closest thing Griff has to a friend, has no idea just how large
the network extends. What they know is what Griff allows them to know, and for Theo that
means operations in Luxana, the political and cultural heart of Roma Sargassa. Infiltrating and
collecting intel on the movements of the Imperium's fine institutions, the Archives and the
Senate and the Institute Civitatem. Positioning themselves strategically for when the time
comes—though the time for what, Theo isn’t entirely sure.
Direct democracy. Independence from Roma. That’s always been the Revenant goal. But
where Griff’s predecessor had looked to messy fixes and instant gratification—kidnapping a
petty officer to interrogate him on naval defense, intercepting supply lines out to the legions, the
sort of aggression that resulted in nothing but friends and fellow Revenants dropping at an
alarming rate—she's always been cleaner than that. Seen the bigger picture laid out broad, and
relied on subtlety to shift the tides of opinion.
“People aren't going to throw themselves behind chaos,” she had told Theo once over a late
night mug of tazine, back before she was Griff, back when she was still quietly consolidating
power. "That's too frightening. It's too much to ask. And anyway, it's way too early for this sort
of offensive strategy. There's no revolution without popular consent, so we need the rest of
Sargassa if we’re going to see this thing through. Before anything else, we need to open people’s
eyes to what’s possible."
Theo doesn’t know if that’s the moment she earned their loyalty, but it’s what they thought
back to, later on, when they shoved a knife in the old Griff's gut to make way for the new.
So no, Theo doesn’t always understand why she asks what she does of them. They aren’t
privy to the master plan, what exactly Griff’s waiting for while she moves her chess pieces into
place. They believe in her all the same. Everyone in the Luxana cell does.
Pa'akal Zetnes is part of the old guard, been doing this for longer than Theo’s been alive.
Maybe even longer than Griff has been involved. Certainly longer than the seven years Griff has
had command. He’s the muscle, and a good humor exists beneath that bristly grey beard and suit
of black tattoos extending from ear to toe. Avis Tiago-Laith is a different story, mainly because
they don’t actually know him very well. He’s new, and slight, and serious, and very, very green.
If he hadn’t mentioned remembering the Brushfires of ’52, Theo would swear he’s younger than
they are. But Griff recruited him personally, and while Theo doesn’t see much in him beyond his
access as an employee to the Ministerium of Records, they trust their mentor’s reasoning.
They smile brightly at him. He’s doing his best to hide his nerves. He’s failing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a mild voice cuts through the squall.
Griff is an unremarkable-looking woman. Forty-something, maybe. Five-foot-something,
maybe. Somewhat brown, somewhat thick. Not beautiful, not ugly. The kind of person you don’t
think to notice. Theo sometimes catches themself thinking of Griff as a mother figure, and
immediately has to bring that line of thought to a screeching halt.
She’s not a mother. She’s a spider.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” she continues, as if any of them would have
refused. “Shall we?”
The cart clatters down the cobblestone from the Regio Marina into the Third Ward and the
very heart of the city. The streets are emptier than usual, though still lightly bustling with people
determined to complete their morning errands before the storm gets any worse. Plebs, mainly—the sprawling concra streets and trash piles of the Third Ward play home to the rabble,
maybe the odd cohort officer patrolling here and there, looking for trouble. As they approach the
more upscale Seven Dials district, however, they’re cut off the road by a sudden convoy of
riders. Green uniforms mark them as Cohort Publica, but the wary-eyed rider in black bringing
up the rear gives them away. Cohort Intelligentia. Blackbags. The not-so-secret police.
Avis goes rigid at the sight, and Theo can’t help but roll their eyes. “Relax,” they whisper.
“Griff always manages to get them out of the way.” He nods, stiff, and they feel a sudden stab of
pity. They’ve been doing this since they were sixteen. Eleven long years. Enough time to forget
how truly shit-your-pants terrifying this actually used to be. Avis may be older, but age is
meaningless against experience. Theo squeezes his shoulder.
Through Seven Dials, then, to the Scholar’s Gate and up into the Universitas District. All
limestone townhouses and academic halls, though there’s not a soul to be found from the famed
Luxana Universitas out on the street. If the people who live here need to go out in this kind of
weather, they can afford to send someone to do it for them.
If they were anyone else, their party would come up through Iveroa Promenade next—a wide
pedestrian avenue paved in that same white limestone, dotted here and there with stone benches
and manicured gardens for study and conversation—ending at last in the towering Imperial
Archives. They’re not anyone else.
The back entrance to the Imperial Archives is guarded by a single unlucky sentry. Unlucky to
begin with, on shift during weather like this. Unluckier still as Theo draws one of their blades
across his throat, silencing him before he can shout the alarm. Blood mixes with the rush of
rainwater around cobblestone, and briefly they wonder at how much easier this has gotten. A
clean slice through stubborn inches of sinew and cartilage requires an even measure of willpower and physical strength. Willpower they had from the start, a fury born from the same hellhole as
their starved and malnourished frame. By the time they had built their body into something
worthy of fighting back, fury had converted to something far more dangerous. Purpose.
Theo’s never been inside the Imperial Archives before now. Most of their adult life has
sidelined them to the shadows. Even if they had somehow managed to make their way here as a
child, the sentries in their crisp, powder-blue uniforms would have taken one look at Theo’s
ill-fitting and filthy tunic and called the Publica. There’s a classic grandeur to the domed marble
ceiling of the cavernous foyer, the brass paraffin lamps lit dimly in their sconces. Rich Anatolian
carpeted hallways, woven in silver and crimson, soften their steps underfoot. Outside, the
screaming wind and gradual build into torrential rain has kept the students and scholars and
tourists away, dry and warm and safe. It’s a stroke of luck, but Theo can’t help feeling a twinge
of disappointment all the same. They’ve been perfecting their cut-glass patrician accent—they
were looking forward to taking it out for a spin.
Griff navigates them through the endless maze of corridors, meeting rooms, and lecture halls.
One wide passageway doubles as a two-story library, shooting outward into row after row of
shelves, and Theo finds themself rooted to the sleek wooden floor, gaping upwards at the dark
arched ceiling far above. The sheer number of books in this one room alone is easily more than
they’ve seen in the entire course of their life. Harder to wrestle their mind around is the
knowledge that within the Imperial Archives, the epicenter of all written knowledge in Roma and
her client empires across the world, this must barely count as a library at all.
Theo doesn’t ask how Griff knows her way around so well, just trusts in whatever muscle
memory she apparently has of the labyrinthine Archives until the four of them arrive at the top loor, thirty stories high in the air, and a long hallway ending in front of a magnificently-wrought
door of oak and iron.
Inside his office, the Imperial Historian is dead.
“Fuck,” whispers Griff, bronze face bloodless beneath her scarf. “Frag it, Alex.”
To all the world, the man could have just fallen asleep at his desk. But Theo knows poison
when they see it. The tracks of lurid blue snaking down his neck would be enough of a giveaway,
even without Griff delicately tilting his head to one side, revealing the milky cataracts formed
over wide green eyes.
This was definitely not part of the plan.
This is a rescue mission, as far as Theo's aware, so they can only assume the plan was never
actually to kill the Historian. Not unless he got in their way. Griff had sent a message to them in
the early hours of the morning—one of their own was in trouble, and that’s all Theo needed to
know. But surely she hadn’t meant… Alex?
Either way, rescue or not, a dead patrician was not part of the plan. The Revenants aren’t the
mindless butchers that the Roman Imperium and their puppet Cato Palmar paint them out to be in
their propaganda. Not anymore, not even under previous, less careful leadership. Oh, they're
killers to a one—the unfortunate sentry outside is proof enough of that—but it's never for its own
sake. And they aren't stupid about it. High-profile murder is messy—questions and investigation
and the Cohorts gone power-mad in the streets—and the Revenants are in the business of
efficiency. Assassination’s useless when the next patrician brat just springs up to take their
parent’s place. It’s rarely worth the risk.
But this is what Roma does. Paints political dissidents as monsters, lest the general citizenry
be allowed to think for themselves. They’ve been dancing to this tune for a long time now. Two hundred years, some say, ever since the first Revenant escaped the executions and slaughter that
ended the Twelfth Servile War. Others say there have been Revenants as long as there’s been a
Roma, or a Roma Sargassa, or an end to the Great Quiet some eight hundred years ago. Others,
Theo among them, say it doesn’t fucking matter.
Griff runs a hand over her face and says, “Right. That’s unfortunate. But we move on.
Pa’akal—guard the door. Avis, are you all right?”
Avis looks like he’s about to vomit, warily eyeing the Historian’s dead body, and his voice is
thin and strained when he responds, “Yes. I… I don’t mean to be… It’s just that you said we
were going to the Senate.”
“Really? That was careless of me.”
Avis opens his mouth, like he’s about to push the subject, then seems to think better of it.
“So who are we looking for?” Theo asks. This is a rescue mission, supposedly, but other than
a corpse there doesn’t seem to be anyone here.
Griff doesn’t answer, not at first. She’s still staring at the dead Historian, her face impossible
to read. There’s a slip of paper just peeking out from under his pale, bloated hand, something
scrawled across in neat and elegant loops. Griff slides it out with two fingers, the divot between
her brow furrowing as she reads. Then, with a slow but decisive finality, she crumples the paper
into her palm, slips it into the pocket of her long oilskin coat.
Then she turns back to the Historian, slouched over at his desk in undignified death, and
draws her own dagger. Theo frowns as Griff takes the blade to her own palm, squeezes it tight. A
few errant drops escape her clenched fist before placing a bloody thumb to the Historian’s
forehead. An old rite, older than Roma’s rule over Sargassa, for those who fall before their time.
Sentiment, Theo would put it down to, if Griff had a sentimental bone in her body.
“Let’s move out,” says Griff, and avoids the question in Theo’s eyes.
***
Warning bells clang from the nearby city watchtower as they emerge out the backdoor with
the rest. Either someone discovered the sentry’s dead body and raised the alarm, or the storm is
shaping up to be worse than anybody expected. In either case, dark figures of the Cohort Publica
move in the rain-fogged distance, one of them shouting angrily as they catch sight of the four
Revenants exiting out into the street. But the torrential storm provides a welcome cover of
confusion, and they slip easily away through the empty streets of crumbling brick and stone,
quickly putting distance between themselves, the Cohort, and the Imperial Archives.
In no time at all, they’re back to the safety and relative anonymity of the derelict Third Ward.
A flash of lightning splits the dark morning when Griff raises her hand, signaling their stop
beneath a concra-covered overpass.
Theo bends over to catch their breath, a hand resting against the cool building. They tug the
scarf down from around their face now that the soaking wet wool is no longer necessary, gasping
the free air and relishing the absence of the oppressive damp sticking to their mouth. Somewhere
to their left, Griff is murmuring quietly to Pa'akal, then moving to check in on Avis, who’s
currently barfing into a wheelbarrow.
“Holding up there, Shrimp?” asks Pa'akal, just low enough for them to hear beneath the
howling wind. The nickname’s an old one, an ironic holdover from darker days now that they’re
catching up to him in width. Theo grins.
“You know me. Always.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says, and nods over to Avis. “Look sharp now.”
They frown but don’t question it, just follow him over to where Griff is bracing Avis by the
shoulder. She looks up as they approach, only for a moment.
“First time seeing a dead body?” she asks Avis, not unkindly.
He nods, still looking vaguely ill.
Griff squeezes his shoulder and says, “You did well in there.” And for the first time all day,
despite his shaking, despite the brewing hurricane and the Historian’s death-still face and the
smell of his own vomit, Avis smiles. Griff returns it in kind, gives his shoulder another little
squeeze.
Then she looks up again at Pa'akal and Theo. “Such a shame.”
And all at once they understand.
Pa'akal seizes Avis, locking him in place. Theo draws their blades.
“I took the long way round past the Senate this morning,” says Griff, still pleasant as a
meridiem date. “The Cohort Intelligentia were waiting for us there.”
Avis Tiago-Laith’s eyes widen, realization taking hold at last. Theo has witnessed this happen
before. It disappoints them now as much as it did then.
“I never tell a new recruit the real mark.” Griff says, casually removing a dagger of her own
from inside her overcoat. “It’s been a good strategy so far.” ...
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