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Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 18 - Sir

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

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FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

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Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |8 | 9 | 10 |11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54

CH 18: Silco's and Vander's lives change in significant ways. So does the Undercity.

Tw: mentions of child abuse and severe parental neglect.

Tw: mentions of epidemics, illness, and its aftermath on a societal scale.

Tw: depictions of dysfunctional relationships, romantic and familial.

Tw: for mentions of alcoholism.

Cw: for mentions of audism (discrimination toward deaf people, and the presumptions therein).

There is a deaf character in this chapter. Given deafness is a spectrum, lip-reading or even sign language may not always be the preferred modes of communication (and in case of the former, it's a difficult ability to master). While I've grown up around the Deaf community, I am myself neither deaf nor hard of hearing, and therefore cannot know the lived experience. I wholeheartedly welcome critique and feedback so I can do this character the full justice in future chapters<3

Vexed again, perplexed again Thank God, I can be oversexed again Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

~"Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" – Ella Fitzgerald

Two Vekauran girls—strong of limb and fair of face—walk into a bar...

It's the beginning of a famously dirty joke.

It's also how Silco met Nandi.

Better get the phonetics out of the way. It's pronounced nUn-thEE, not Nandy-rhymes-with-Mandy. A secret hot-house flower, that one. She'd been very particular that everyone say her name The way it's supposed to be said. It's only proper that Silco honor it.

Since her death, he's honored little else.

She was a good person. Better than Silco, even then. The admission bears no shame. Silco's rationale was always anchored to liberty—by hook or by crook. A lucky ship dragged with sling-hooks to Zaun's shores. Nandi's was about building that ship themselves, with the sweat of their brows and the strength of their hands.

She had strong hands. He remembers that. She worked at the ore-mines as a girl and at the open kitchens at Janna's Temple as an adult. Her fingers were rough-jointed from hours of drudgework. But her heart was soft as the rest of her. Dark skin, dimples and beautiful hair.

Gods, that hair…

Their affair began after Silco glimpsed her in the blue glare of lanterns at Rotten Row's dance parlor—The Nymph. The only dance parlor in those days that wasn't a brothel. It was a shoddy place: no mirror-balls, no well-stocked wine cellar, no tasteful menu.

In short, it was a world removed from the posh parlors of Piltover.

Silco found it unpretentiously charming. Most taverns in the Undercity operated on Topside licenses. The rest were illegal, with their small advantages (gambling dens, rat-pits, loose women.) But they were always at risk of Enforcer raids. Once Silco gained notoriety as a local firebrand, the publicans grew leerier about him stirring trouble in their places of business.

Ironically, the more genteel establishments opened their doors. Silco was one of the few who could drink and dine on credit, and be trusted to pay later. The Nymph was one such place. It had strict rules governing dress and indoor smoking. But there was also good ale of every gradation on tap, a ragtag band that played hot jazz, and a sunken dance-floor lit by blue fairy-lanterns.

Nandi was sitting at the corner table. She'd come in not to dance, but to escape the chemical rain-squalls—Gnashers—that were becoming distressingly prevalent belowground. Her dress was off-white, a soft rough cotton shift, handwoven and well-cut, the fabric clinging to her from the downpour. A cheap red embroidery-edged shawl was draped around her shoulders.

Stepping inside, she'd quivered once, then regained her composure. Sedately, she took a seat, knees close together, hands in her lap. Her body was fetchingly sylphlike; long legs bare above strappy ankle-boots; wrists elegant under a chime of Vekauran bangles. A dark sculpted face: high cheekbones, a squared-off chin and a curving nose. She had a small harelip, improperly sewn in childhood, that cut a pale white line down her upper-lip.

To Silco, it added to her allure, saving her from the banality of beauty.

Her sister was with her. Nandi's polar opposite every way. Solid and sinewy, dressed in jeans and a scuffed leather jacket. Her skin was a shade darker; her eyes a touch sharper. She moved not with a demure sway but a solid strut. Half the eyeballs in the bar swung her way. She ignored them the way a naturally confident woman is indifferent to petty libidos of uninteresting men.

Greeting the publican with a raucous shout, she cadged a tray of free vodka shots. Afterward, she sat next to Nandi, her legs propped on the table, one arm draped over the back of the chair. Silco remembers she'd kept sucking on lime wedges. Biting them appreciatively with her sharp white teeth, and spitting the seeds into a chipped glass.

It was the most revolting sight Silco had laid eyes on.

Nandi wasn't revolting. Far from it.

What Silco remembers most was her hair. Black as ink, and glittering with raindrops. He couldn't take his eyes off it. It was twisted up off her slender neck by a long wooden pin. As the bell passed, the pin loosened in stages, dark hair slithering silkily around her face. She kept tucking it behind her ear, even as it slid forward again and again.

Deep into the bell, the pin came undone, pure black cascading across her shoulders.

Silco can still picture it. The blue gloaming. Bodies on the dancefloor. Nandi in her damp red shawl. Him in his faded gloveleather vest, striped stovepipe trousers, and heavy-duty boots, sitting just behind her.

The pin tumbled free.

By reflex, he'd reached forward and caught it. Black hair fell over his wrist like thick heavy silk, releasing a burst of warm perfume. Sandalwood with undernotes of something earthier: incense, maybe? His knuckles brushed the nape of her neck. Her whole body jerked, but she didn't make a peep.

Her sister did.

Sevika's neck snapped sideways. Her lips curled on a fearsome snarl, "Who the fuck—?"

Then she spotted Silco and tucked the fledgling fangs away. A smile—half-abashed, half-pleased—showed at one side of her mouth.

"Hey, sir."

Sir.

They always called him that, as if he were a grand Piltie, not the runt from the mines. His time Topside had lent him a quiet polish that many mistook for breeding. It was only when he got down to business did his brass-buttoned roots show. How many Topsiders, after all, knew the difference between a Topper (a violent punch) and a Top-hat (a Warden)? How many, more importantly, had threatened Top-hats with Toppers for the laws that failed to protect them?

What's this new policy mean, sir? the miners would ask, earnestness in the guise of teasing. But then, how many of those miners could read a book? How many could pen their complaints down into petitions to be forwarded to the foremen, rather than spit on the ground and curse their lot?

Not nearly enough.

Silco knew his words carried weight. With the weight came responsibility he was determined to shoulder.

He just wished they'd stop calling him Sir.

After the miner's strike, he'd become a fixture in the Lanes again. His landlord at the Topside flat had terminated his lease. A fire was kindled outside Silco's door. The hallway was engulfed with blackened scorchmarks. The rest of place was riddled with graffiti excoriating the Trencher scum to get back belowground—or get put six feet under.

Given Silco’s newfound notoriety, the latter destination was inevitable.

His neighbors were quick to distance themselves. His landlord was quicker to give him the boot. To his mind, the building was safer without sump-trash stoking rebellion below, and earning justified reprisals above.

Silco loaded his few possessions into a suitcase and returned to the Lanes. Walking down narrow streets with boarded-up windows and fire-gutted stoops, he'd felt an untranslatable sense of bitterness. It went beyond his need for the Undercity to have better—better in every conceivable way—than stagnation and sloth. He wanted them to have everything. To have wealth where Piltover kept them in poverty. To have sophistication when all they knew was crudeness. Respect when all they had was degradation.

Degradation of the spirit and the body. And here he was. Part of its matrix again.

He'd found a room by the Pump Station that overlooked his family's burnt-down tenement. It had been razed into a columbarium, the Undercity's equivalent of a boneyard. Silco's own place was no better: roughly the size of a coffin. It also doubled as his office, stacks of papers everywhere and a second-hand desk that was the gray of a dead tooth.

Here—like Daddy, two decades ago—Silco listened to the laborers' grievances and kept records.

After the miner's strikes, unrest had boiled into fever pitch. The Council had recently passed a Reform Act to enfranchise tradesmen, industrialists and administrators from the Undercity. But the rest—craftsmen, artisans and miners—remained invisible. Just one-tenth of the adult population were allowed to vote in Piltovan-run municipal committees. They had nobody to represent their interests. The hovels they lived in, the gruel they ate, the indignities they suffered.

Silco's records became useful ammunition. Day by day, he gathered the miner's grievances into a docket. If some self-righteous Councilor claimed that the strikes were a ploy, and that Trenchers were lazy, or some such rot, he would refute them with a succinctly-worded letter, and factual copies of the docket, while a second folder was submitted to independent media sources. Later, he'd repeat his assertions in the speeches he made both belowground and above.

The first year after the strike, he'd worked diligently to organize the miners. They'd set up neighborhood committees and elected local reps to represent the different branches of the workforce. They'd drawn up an issues program to address concerns ranging from wages to working conditions to housing. They'd even started a fund for unemployed Fissurefolk and their families.

The older miners were chary of the change. They came from generations of rough-living chancers. They were loyal to tradition, out of fear, or sheer habit. The younger ones were easier to fire up. They were tired of gnawing on the stale crust of poverty. They wanted more than survival.

Their fair slice of the pie called Progress.

As Silco said when he'd first stood at The Sprout's stage, "What we're owed, we will take."

He'd meant it then.

He means it still.

Most miners and foremen knew him by sight. The former tipped their hats to him and called him Sir. Their respect didn't register except as an ill-fitting appellation. Meanwhile, the latter scowled and called him Rat-bastard. Their insult did register. He liked the sound of it, the way it tripped off their tongues.

There's a saying in the Undercity: If you're making enemies, you're doing something right.

By twenty-five, he'd made plenty of enemies.

As his rallies burgeoned, so did the Enforcers patrolling the Lanes. The Wardens weren't stupid. The seething embers of discontent had given them cause to watch closely. Committing the poor's voice to paper wasn't illegal. But trumpeting it from the pulpit was. The Council were quick to sign decrees that forbid gatherings of more than six people, and quash the rest with brute force.

The best way to stymie dissent is to make it seem impossible.

Silco had already been threatened with jail twice for holding political rallies without a permit. He'd also gotten his nose broken during a sit-in at Entresol. He probably would've been trounced to a smear on the pavement. Then Vander had interceded, planting his foot and rearing back at the hips until his flatiron fist nearly touched the ground, before swinging the ugliest overhand right.

It sent the Enforcer stumbling back with cracked teeth spraying from his mouth.

In a trice, they'd been surrounded by loaded guns. The captain, a broad-shouldered woman with an imposing glower, threatened to pin them both for assaulting an officer.

"Well then." Vander squared up with a devil-may-care grin. "Let's make it worth both our while, eh?"

By then, there were reporters with cameras at the scene, lured by the shortwave radios in their bullpens. Silco could feel a dozen snapshots being fired off between the scrum of protestors and Enforcers.

To this day, in Zaun's civic archives, there is a photograph of Vander and himself taken at the scene. A grainy shot, with off-balance framing—as if the photographer was jostled by the crush of bodies. He and Vander side-by-side, in black-and-white, their faces streaked in dark lines of blood. Vander standing tall as skyscraper, fists balled and feet apart, his jaw jutting like a guillotine blade; Silco's eyes shining like a lanternfish's out of a lean whipcord silhouette.

A peculiar fury is gritted into both their postures. In the photo, Silco's left hand is on Vander's shoulder. The right is raised, finger crooked.

If a picture could tell a thousand words, most would hypothesize he was egging Vander on. In fact, he was quietly reasoning with Vander to back down.

Why win the battle, if it cost them the war?

In the Undercity, the scene created a cult of personality around them. In Piltover, an account was published in the newspaper. Two rabblerousers: one on the pulpit and the other on the streets.

The Hound and the Word-Monger, they were dubbed.

Silco remembers reading the pages when they were hot from the newsagent, slouched side-by-side with Vander at the Drop, a bottle of scotch between them.

They'd recently been sprung from jail. Eighty days each, with a hefty fine for disturbing the peace. Silco's nose had healed to a crooked jut. It was an inevitability. Some days, he'd felt nearly handsome, or as if his features were edging towards its approximation. Yet he'd also known he was one roundhouse away from disfiguration.

Few kept their looks for long in the Lanes.

The damage hadn't made a dent on his attitude. Riffling through the newspaper, Silco recited the article with a plummy bombast, the same way he'd once narrated from pornographic novellas at Hope House Orphanage.

"Perhaps the most disquieting aspect of The Word-Monger's speeches is their calculated slant. A dangerous ideologue, his oratory whips the underclasses into a frenzy with illusions of victimhood. Recent months have witnessed an increasing number of disruptions in the Fissures, by those who believe they have a right to exert their influence over the Council's legislations. Indeed, it appears as if social order is no longer sacrosanct. To exploit the unlettered for misguided derring-do is the new order of the day."

Scoffing, Silco tossed the newspaper aside.

"It's by that little gargoyle at the Sun & Tower," he said, "B. Goode."

Vander snorted. "Long as they don't expect us to be good."

"No chance of that."

A smile flickered on Silco's lips, which Vander's mouth caught. Next, they were guffawing, tickled pink by their exploits written up in the newspaper, even anonymously.

The disorder had brought them together when so much could've pushed them apart. Five years of distance. Different temperaments. Different attitudes. As boys, they'd shared everything. As men, they didn't have as many interests in common, though they always made time for each other.

Since Silco's return, they'd resumed their smuggling enterprise. Their network was more expansive than ever. Not just goods but people too. They came from across Runeterra: Ionian farmers savaged by Noxian armies; mages barred from practicing dark magicks in Demacia; sailors fleeing the cutlasses of pirate lords in Bilgewater.

Many were desperate. Some were opportunists. Everyone came to escape something.

To be free.

For Silco, this meant relearning his old ways. Wearing one well-spoken persona in the daylight. Trading it for a rougher breed by twilight. The knife in his boot to replace the pen in his hand. The crisply-penned letters and fiery oratory swapped with belts of whiskey and brightleaf cigarettes. It felt less like a disguise than a second skin. When he spoke, his accent darkened with the guttural patois of the Lanes. By night, he wore a different face altogether.

He took pride in it. Flexibility is a survivor's defining principle. With strangers, he adopted the persona that best suited his needs. By himself or with Vander, he remained the closest to his core self. A double-life, some might call it. But Silco saw no shame in it.

There was shame only in surrender.

As a duo, he and Vander were ruthlessly effective. The perfect alignment of brawn and brains. In the streets, Vander was the frontman, a force of nature. He'd collide violently with any obstacles in his path, toss their broken leftovers aside, and move on. Standing six foot seven and weighing around two-hundred-forty pounds, he was a marvel of unabashed strength. Years later, whenever The Hound was mentioned, most thought of violence first and foremost.

History is like that. One moment, people talk about a man. Next, they talk of a legend.

Silco, meantime, was the strategist. He had a knack for long-term thinking and a head for numbers, softened by a sardonic wit that made him charming if not likeable. Even as a young man, he saw patterns as part of a bigger picture. His mind was always buzzing with ways to edge their latest scheme to its most successful outcome.

When he made plans, things got done. And when he spoke, others listened.

His rallies and Vander's smuggling relied on the same formula: word of mouth. Word spread like fire in the Lanes, and those whispers grew louder as others flocked to their cause.

But all trade comes with risk.

It holds true for criminals. It holds doubly so for revolutionaries.

Silco and Vander were aware of the Wardens’ scrutiny. By night, they might have ruled the Lanes. By day, they kept their heads down. Sometimes, to throw off suspicion, they'd switch up their routines. Vander would lock up the Drop; Silco would put away the dockets.

They'd do as other young men did in the Undercity. Stir up trouble.

Some nights, they went down to the basement-level boxing gyms. There, they'd employ their old boyhood formula. Silco would play master of ceremonies with a showman's flair, reeling in the punters. Vander's sheer size would take care of the rest. In the ring, he'd bash away at a string of unlucky opponents until the bell rang. Grinning, he'd lay his substantial weight on the middle ring rope while Silco collected satchels of coins. Afterward, they'd split them fifty-fifty—Vander into the Drop's coffers, Silco into the miner's emergency fund.

Other nights, they'd hit up the gambling dens. Here, Silco was in his element. He was a natural cardsharp; his face gave nothing away. Vander liked to say that, even if the Kindred came knocking on Silco's door, he'd greet them with a look of perfect blankness. His favorite ploy was the whipsaw, where he and Vander squeezed a player between them, raising and re-raising bets until the third party had no choice but to fold. Afterward, they'd pocket the spoils—though, inevitably, Vander spent his on day-to-day expenses, while Silco stashed his own away for rainy days.

Summers were the dog days. Business slowed to a slog; the heat lay thick as a steam between the walls. Silco and Vander would retreat to the actual steam baths. Their go-to was Baby's Bathwater: cheap, sturdily built, full of glittering mineral pools and subterranean streams. They'd spend the hours before dusk in the tubs, Silco with a tattered paperback novel, Vander with a well-chewed cigarillo. They were always happiest in the swelter, breathing in thick soupy air and sipping on cherry sodas between idle chitchat.

Other times, they'd light out to the Deadlands and retrace their footsteps to the oxbow where they'd taken dips as children. Stripping down, they'd leap into the waters with raucous shouts. Afterward, Vander would laze in the shade, arms outspread, luxuriating in the unnatural stillness. Silco would swim alongside the peculiar eellike fish stirred awake from winter sleep, generating effortless momentum with the barest motion of his arms and legs.

Later, tipsy on cavernfruit liquor, Vander would teach Silco dirty tricks from his boxing repertoire. The Jack-in-the-box, where you let yourself take a blow, fell backwards, then sprang back up, using the momentum to slam your fist against your opponent's chin. Or the Pipe-Punch, where you offered your victim a toke with the right hand, and slammed your left into their jaw, shattering the bone with a single blow.

Most of the time, Silco could take a stiff belt without folding. He was naturally spry from years of roof-runs. But strength was not his forte. He seldom lasted more than two rounds; no threat to his behemoth contender.

Pugilism made no difference in an Enforcer attack. Boxing gloves were no match for bullets.

The Hound and the Word-Monger never visited the same place twice. Sometimes, they'd even avoid each other for a week or two. To give off the air of independence; to lessen suspicion. But their true lives were lived in each other's pockets, and when they met again, they fell in step without missing a beat.

Those days were Silco's happiest.

When they weren't preying on the corrupt or earning a cut from their network, though, he and Vander were neck-deep in arguments. Zaun was their shared dream. But they differed on the ways to make Zaun a reality.

Silco felt that the overthrow of Piltover's rules was necessary to come into their own. Half his methods were through underhanded business and ruthless strategy—away from of the day-to-day skirmishes. But Vander thrived in the street element, and languished in boredom when considering the long-term. Fiercely talented with his fists, he was nonetheless no militarist. War was not a sport he found compelling. His quarrel with Topside was rooted in indignation rather than hatred.

For Silco, it was a bone-deep grudge that had taken an early hold of him. He was ready to give himself to it, in ways he couldn't give himself to anything else. He spent more than he had—time, energy, money—and to hell with the costs.

In the years leading up to the Day of Ash, the Lanes were volatile as a powder-keg. Enforcer raids were common at all hours. Men and women were rounded up on the barest suspicion of wrongdoing. Those who resisted arrest found themselves tossed in holding cells. The unluckier were left floating in the Pilt.

Silco had barely eluded the same fate. On a sweltering night, he'd been crossing home after an underground rally. The alleyways were depthlessly black, like piercing through a veil of ink. Keeping a steady tread, Silco became aware of marching bootsteps behind him.

Enforcers.

Three, maybe four. Their visors glinted in the gloom like insectile eyes.

They called him by name.

Silco turned, nothing but a knife on his belt. Running was unwise—futile—for a number of reasons. Foremost among them was the gut-punch that bent him to the ground. He got a few licks in at the start, but after that it was their game. With their rifle butts and boots, they were vicious. He blacked out a few times, and when he came to on the sidewalk, his face was matted with blood, nose broken and lips split wide. Under his clothes, he was all the colors of the fucking Tereshni rainbow.

They'd left him alive—barely.

Not mercy, but a message: Next time, you won't be so lucky.

Vander was aghast. He refused to let Silco step beyond the Drop until he'd healed enough to stand straight. That took a fortnight. Afterward, at a grim gathering, it was resolved that the Lanes would develop a lookout system. A chain of eyes and ears, on alert for the faintest footfall.

The youngest volunteers were sumpsnipes: boys and girls with quick wits and quicker feet. Silco taught them how to memorize Enforcers' patrol routes. How to blend in, signal, scatter. The second layer were the night-watch. Ex-soldiers, brawlers and bruisers. They knew every intimate nook of the city. If someone needed help, they'd be there to lend a hand. Vander vetted them personally. Taught them how to punch straight, kick hard, duck fast. But when Silco brought up the possibility of investing in real ammunition, he was shot down.

"Gone barkin', have you?" Vander snapped. "The Wardens will come down on us like—"

"So we just stay vigilant?" Silco fired back. "Vigilant and vulnerable?"

"That's not what I'm sayin' at all! Just—what happens if things get uglier? You're talkin' about putting innocents on the line. People we know. People relyin' on us..."

"I'm talking about defending ourselves," Silco said. "Otherwise Topside will crush our movement stone dead."

Something flickered across Vander's face. On guard, as always, for the scaly thing under Silco's skin.

"Look," he said. "You want to take risks, I'm with you. But there's gotta be a limit. Talkin' back to Topside already got you hurt once. Next time they find you, with a smuggled pistol in your jacket, they'll kill you—and the rest. Best to lay low until this blows over.”

“Lay low?”

"You heard me." Vander hesitated. "I've had a talk with Benzo. He suggested you dip into our emergency fund. Buy passage to Bilgewater. You'd be safer there. At least for a while. There's a ship due in port this week..."

Silco was adamant. "No."

"Look, you can't just—"

"I said no, Vander."

Vander heaved a breath, let it go. He seemed agitated. Too agitated to even argue. A kissing-kin sensation—awful, unbalanced—bubbled up inside Silco's gut. The same sensation as when Vander told him to leave for the Academy, years ago.

Softly, he said, "You want me safe? Or gone?"

The question brought Vander up short. His eyes traced the fading bruises on Silco's face. His jaw splotched with spiderwebbing yellow contusions. One eyelid still darkly swollen. A livid stitch on the upper-lip. Beaten and bashed and bloody, but still standing.

Defeated, Vander sighed.

"Doubt you'd stay gone," he said. "You love trouble too much."

"It's the Lanes I love."

"Silco—"

"I belong here. That's why Topside booted me out."

"Don't say that."

Vander wore a hangdog look. A look Silco hated—sticky with shame for their lot. As if Piltover set the standard for the exceptional, and they fell short. They, who worked to their bones for scraps, while Topside barely lifted a finger for riches. They, who lived in a city plagued by disease, decay, disorder. They, for whom resilience was an article of faith, the core of their being. As soon as disaster passed, they snapped back into shape.

Why shouldn't they look at the men above them—literally—and say: I deserve my share.

"I belong here," Silco repeated. "So do you."

"Blut—"

"Not because we don't deserve better, Vander. We belong because we do." Frustration corkscrewed through him. "One month, and eight beatings by Enforcers. Four deaths. That makes one per week. I want us to quit taking punches. I want us to quit eating bullets."

"You want to start shootin' back."

"It's overdue." He dragged both palms through his hair. Those days, he wore it long, a wavy tangle that always swept into his eyes unless he tied it back. "As long as I can remember they've pushed us around, treated us like dirt. Ask any Topsider on the street, they'll tell you what they think we are. It's time to show them what we really are."

"An' what are we?"

"Fighters."

Vander heaved a sigh. "You don't even like fighting."

"There's different kinds of fighting. There's fighting just to get by. Then there's fighting for what you really want in life."

"Yeah, so what?" A matching frustration grinded through Vander's voice. "How many of us fight, and don't get what we want? You think your Dad liked hauling himself to the River at two in the morning to fish out corpses, or mine loved workin' the factory line? They did it 'cause they had people to take care of. They couldn't shirk their duty."

"Yeah, but whose duty?" He stared at Vander. "You're stronger than everyone in the Lanes put together. Why let yourself get shoved around?"

Vander said nothing. He bent into the cabinet. Silco watched his broad back flex. Straightening, he twisted a cap off a bottle, where it landed with a ping in the sink. For the first time, Silco noted the sunken bags under his brother's eyes and the beard furring his jowls.

Concern displaced anger. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Could've fooled me."

Vander's face was sullen stone. But his jaw twitched once. His body-language seldom betrayed the depths of his disturbance. But Silco had an uncanny sense of arrowing into the heart of the matter. With Vander, though, he hit his mark with kindness, never cruelty.

Vander slid on the stool adjacent Silco's. Exhaling, he sipped from the bottle.

"It's Lika."

"What about her?"

"You know we're back together, yeah?"

"Me and half the street."

Vander crooked a brow.

Silco sipped his own scotch, and sneered, "You two will have the building down before you're done."

"Heh." Vander grin was smug. Then he sobered. "You remember when we broke it off four years back?"

"Do I ever. Your moping got on my nerves." Silco paused, recalling. "She lit out with another bloke for Bilgewater, right?"

"Yeah, well." Vander's mouth held a grimace. "Turns out she was pregnant."

An unnamable feeling crept through Silco's gut. He locked it down. His voice held an offhand coolness.

"Like hell."

"I know. I couldn't believe it myself. Thought I'd misheard. Turns out that's why she'd left. She didn't want a baby, especially not then. We were too young. I was too... me." He gave a ragged half-laugh. "So she left. Sailed to one of the islets near Bilgewater. When the other fellow found out she was up the duff, he cut her loose. She stayed for a time at a Missus' Cotworth's. Says it was a ladies’ workhouse. More'n likely was a whore-den." His grimace deepened. "In the end, the Missus began eyeing up the kid for 'work,' so she scarpered. Came back here. Found me. She says the kid's..."

Silco sat there. The world was cold.

"Yours?"

"She swears up and down."

"You believe her?"

Vander shrugged.

Silco fought his kneejerk instinct to probe. He and Vander, whatever intimacy they'd shared in their salad days, was done. They never spoke of it. Never even alluded to it. Sometimes it felt almost unreal to Silco, like something that had happened in a dream. Other times, he felt the unspoken truth kept him and Vander closer rather than apart. To share secrets was one way to share a body, wasn't it?

Except—again—came the wedge.

Lika.

Silco wished he could be a better man. Lika wasn't the bad sort. Though still pitifully skinny from the diet of gruel in the Lanes, she'd matured into a vivacious beauty, naturally witty, with an inventor's mind. She worked as a gadgeteer in Benzo's shop, and like any girl who'd come from a long line of wanderers and wastrels, she had a talent for making mischief.

But she also made good. When Rolak stole a shipment of copper ingots from Benzo's store, Lika set up booby traps along the route to the harbor. The poor bastard didn't make it past the third trap. Afterward, Benzo hailed Lika as his rescuer. Silco got the distinct impression he would've dropped to his knees and proposed to her then and there.

Lika had her eye elsewhere.

For all her good nature, she was an opportunist to her core. She liked having men—big, tough men—on her string. It was, as Silco would confirm later in his own life, Like money in the bank.

And Lika always wanted more.

Vander was top dog in the Lanes. Nobody could match him for sheer strength. With Silco's return, they were attracting attention from all corners. Notoriety had its flipside: adoration. Their smuggling operation raked in coins. And Silco's gift as a fixer gave them access to a network of contacts across the city.

None of this had failed to rekindle Lika's love-light. Vander was her best chance at getting what she truly craved: the good life.

And Vander?

He'd fallen for Lika all over again—and Silco hated it. Hated the mysterious power inherent in Lika's swaying hips, the lilt in her laugh and the swing of her hair. Hated the way it reduced Vander into a whipped-dog passivity. All she wanted from Vander was sex and profit. Yet the latter anchored into an affection that sunk deeper into Vander's heart, while the former had him showering Lika with gifts at every turn: necklaces, tools, trinkets.

She had a ridiculously childish thing for stuffies. Vander was so cunt-struck he’d started a collection for her, one for each letter of the alphabet. He'd just gotten to L when Silco had returned to the Lanes.

Love.

It's a funny thing, isn't it?

Funny like a brain tumor.

Flatly, Silco said, "Stick around too long, they start playing games. I always warn you."

"So you do."

"I also warned you to pay the Protection Racket."

An Undercity saying. It meant: Use a sheath.

Vander tsked. "All the Piltie cunny's spoiled you, Blut."

"I barely got any," Silco retorted. "And what I got wasn't worth the trouble."

Vander chortled, with overtones of Sure, pull the other one.

"It's true. Like screwing a mannequin. They don't move right on the dance floor. They barely move at all on a mattress."

"An' when they come, they announce—"

"I'm arriving, I'm arriving!" Silco said in shrill falsetto, beating Vander to the finish line.

They traded the old handshake of laughter. The burden receded from Vander's shoulders. Silco took the other man's emotional temperature, and dared, "Give me a sweetheart from the Lanes any day."

Vander grinned, a good-natured reflex. "Any day."

Their stares met. The moment prolonged itself into tantalizing possibility…

Hastily, Vander broke eye contact. He looked at the bottle. At his hands. Anywhere but Silco. Silco felt a hot stab of disappointment. Vander's expression was a closed book, as inscrutable as the wall of legend he'd built around himself. The Hound again. Even when his words were friendly, his hands were fists.

Those same hands now white-knuckled the counter.

"A kid," he said. "A little girl." Then, as if the confession had been yanked from him, "I'm scared, Blut."

"Who knows if she's even yours." Silco kept his voice casual. "The father could be anyone. Rafik. Sergei. Hell, even Benzo."

"Silco..."

"What? She's a freewheeler, Lika."

Vander's brows bristled like a wolf's fur. "It's not like that."

"Now you're going to say 'Her life's complicated."

"She's a bit of a handful, yeah. But it's not her fault. Lifetime of men makin' promises, then ditching her. Nowhere to go. No family left. Gives a girl baggage, doesn't it?"

"They all have baggage. Brother, father, husband, son." Silco slid his tongue across his chipped teeth, a sour aftertaste in his mouth. "It's not your responsibility to bear the brunt of every man who did her wrong before you."

Advice he'd never taken as a boy with Mother. Then again, Mother was long gone, the brain tumor warping her thoughts inside-out. Some days, she was little more than a dark blot on the edges of Silco's own mind. Other nights, he felt her loss not as an absence but an unmoving weight, squeezing something inside him until it was sealed bloodlessly shut.

Psychic scar-tissue, one might call it.

Or a son's legacy of guilt.

Find someone, she'd told him, in one of her last lucid moments. Find someone so you've got a home.

Home.

That was why he was back in the Lanes—for good. Back, and not the same Silco as before, in the eyes of the streets he'd left behind. Runt. Rat-bastard. Dirty little thing. He was all that, and yet he'd matured into someone else: respected, even sought after. He wasn't exactly a looker, all angular bones and hooded eyes. But his parents' unique genetic legacy had its upsides: poreless olive skin, jet black hair, and a glide in the stride. He kept immaculately clean and dressed well—or as well as poverty allowed.

Women were taken by the attributes he'd developed Topside: a natural courtesy in opening doors, lighting their cigarettes and never raising his voice. Men admired his head for numbers and his talent for getting a hold of things others coveted: contraband, information, favors.

What drew both was the bright burn of his intensity. In Zaun, he’d found his calling. It gave him ballast, drive, desire.

And people always yearn to be led—or led astray—by someone who knows where they are going.

In the early days, bitter after getting booted from Topside, there had been a cold comfort in accompanying Vander on social outings, and watching the room's attention split between them, where before it was a one-sided contest. On those nights, he'd crash deliberately at the Drop, with some pretty thing, letting Vander hear them through the walls of the basement bedroom.

It wasn't a ploy to stir jealousy. More to prove a point. To himself, if nobody else.

That game had stopped a while ago. Vander remained unprovoked—and Silco wasn't without conscience about using sex as scorekeeping.

Truth told, he found it tiresome. Fucking was fun. But it never satisfied him. It only replaced one emptiness with another. With women, he was always wary. Some were stimulating; others were sweet. But he preferred them at arm's length even when bedding them. With men, it was the opposite. He was comfortable with the roughness, the lack of niceties. But the comfort always lapsed into boredom.

Afterward, he'd lie in bed alone, his body insensate but his mind raging. Here he was, a rat caged with thousands of other rats, right where Topside believed they belonged. Where was the ecstasy, the drama, the catharsis? He had a need for release gnawing inside him, verging on explosion.

Sex couldn't ease it; like his work, it was a stopgap. Some days, he felt ready to die—or kill.

Just as long as the blow was struck for freedom.

Vander's demeanor softened: man-to-man. "You're as bad as Lika."

"Ha ha."

"I mean it. Throwin' your lot in with someone else isn't always throwin' yourself into a fire."

"Until you get burned." Silco pressed his palms on the table. "Worry about yours and let Lika worry about hers."

"What if hers is mine?"

Silco didn't understand Vander's expression. Dubious and yet hopeful, as if there was a chance gold could be spun out of hay. He tried engaging Vander's eye. But his brother wouldn't look at him.

"If it's yours," Silco let off a breath, "Then this kid deserves Zaun as much the rest do."

"That's the dream, isn't it?"

"It won't be a dream forever."

"And until it is?" Vander slugged his beer. "Freedom is a dream, and it's a sweet one. But it takes everythin.' It eats every ounce of your time and heart and soul. S'like the moon shining on the Pilt's water. You can chase it all night and never catch it. No matter what you try or how close you think you're getting."

"I know that," Silco said. "But what does that matter—a bell, a week, a year—if you're free?"

"Silco—"

"We could finally have space to breathe, Vander. Think of it. You, me, Lika, Benzo. All of us. There's nothing like it—that space. It brings something better out in everyone. Something they didn't even know they had. Freedom teaches us what we never knew about ourselves. Else we die strangers. Doesn't that reward make it worth the cost?"

Vander deflated. There was little point in belaboring with Silco, who had honed his skills in Piltover's intellectual battlegrounds. Still, Vander couldn't quite let go.

"Not everything's a matter of cost or reward, Blut."

"Maybe not," Silco said. "But have we ever known anything else?"

Vander stayed silent.

In winter, Lika moved into the Drop.

Her daughter was a few months shy of five. A small, sturdy bundle of strawberry hair and freckled skin. She had a habit of biting her nails down to the quick, and a way of looking at menfolk with her head uptilted as if they were strange animals who'd bite if she made a sudden move. Lika had a penchant for coddling her. Whenever she had the time, she'd carry the girl on her hip, her fingers brushing through the fine curls on the child's crown, rocking and cooing.

Her name was Violet.

When Vander heard the name, his face had broken into a broad smile. Lika had named the girl after the wildflowers that grew in the Sotka riverbanks. The place Vander's mother was from. She'd inherited the same reddish hair and blue eyes. She had the same temper too. Her squalling was thunderous, and Lika, with her high spirits and fragile nerves, was often left at her wits' end.

Vander was the only one who could calm Violet down. He had a knack with her, as if they'd known each other for years. He'd hoist her into his arms and swing her up to the ceiling to shrieks of laughter. When she was cranky, he'd bounce her on his knee, reciting colorful stories until she was giggling and tugging at his beard. Once she was tired out, he'd lay her in the crook of his elbow and gently rock her to sleep.

Violet took to the gregarious giant as if she'd waited her entire life to find him. Soon, she'd begun following him around the Drop like a little duckling. She never called him Daddy or Papa or Vati. Only Vander. But half the Lanes sussed the truth out. Vander, once wary, began to bask in his new role. Once the season turned, he and Lika and Vi were fully absorbed into the surreal dynamic of a family. It spun them within a quivering bubble sheened in something resembling happiness.

Silco tried to be glad for them. Or for Vander. But the kid felt like a wrecking-ball, a demolition crew of one. Overnight, she'd displaced Vander's attention more utterly than Lika. And yet she was just a kid. A red-mottled, round-faced kid, and nothing else whatsoever.

Silco's one redemption? He was good with her.

He was good with most children. Unlike adults, their motives weren't mysterious. They wanted to eat, shit, run, play. What could be simpler? And yet they weren't simple in and of themselves. Each one was a walking object lesson of their parents' dysfunctions. The Lanes bristled with orphans whose only crime was being born in the wrong place.

Silco never wanted to be a father. Even before his teens, he'd vowed never to bring a child to life unless it meant the child had a life.

Shelter. Safety. Freedom.

Violet had none of that.

Yet, Silco thought.

He never volunteered to babysit. But if Lika was elsewhere or Vander preoccupied, he'd find himself with Vi in his lap, or clinging to his leg. He'd even, after once catching her smeared in tar after sneaking into the Drop's boiler-room, given her a bath. A herculean endeavor. She'd bawled up at him, big-eyed, her hair and skin grimed black, her fists balled as if the world was a vast injustice and she had no language to explain why.

Silco hauled out the metal tub, filled it with icewater, and dunked her in while she'd shrieked and squalled. It was a struggle not to lose his temper. He was no fucking nanny. But after he'd lathered the sticky goo from her hair, scrubbed her down and toweled her dry, she'd subsided into stupefied calm. As if he'd pulled off a miracle. And, to his own surprise, he'd found himself feeling the same.

It was the first time he'd performed an act of kindness for someone besides Vander.

Afterward, Violet started to follow him around the Drop, too. Unlike with Vander, her gaze was brimful with curiosity; her mouth held a hundred questions. What happens if you eat toothpaste? Where do rats lay their eggs? Why is your skin that color? Are you Ionian too? If you had a tail, could I pull it?

Silco's solution was to put her to work. She was a diligent little chit. At age four, she could sort and stack, and even fold. He taught her to write her name. How to count cards. How to keep an eye on the street, where to hide if Enforcers came knocking, and when to stow coins into her stockings for emergencies. She had a birthmark on her right knee. A red spot shaped like a rabbit. If you tickled her there, she'd dissolve into peals of laughter.

After which she'd climb into your lap and drowse off.

Stealthily, Silco would slip her into her bedroll and tiptoe out—"Goodnight to you, too, Pet."

Children. They're like landmines. One false move and everything goes boom.

Except children weren't the only landmines in the Undercity. Winter was a hard, hungry season. The Void Wars were in their dying ebb. A slow crawl of refugees clogged the streets. Some gravitated to the caverns below; others to the low-rent districts above. Many took to the Lanes themselves, resorting to pickpocketing and mugging. The streets seethed with violence as if it were smog.

Sometimes it was a skirmish. Other times a bitter farce.

Once, on Silco's way between errands, a stout youth with a geometrical maze of tattoos had threatened to cut his throat in the back-alley. Silco remembered that night vividly. It was one of the coldest in the decade. The boy's breath had misted the air. Yet he was sweating like a melting glacier.

"Gimme your money."

He was Shuriman. Silco could tell by his accent. He'd clutched a grimy tanning knife at an awkward angle. The blade wavered like a feather. Rather than a stabbing, Silco felt more threatened by the prospect of a tickling. He stared into the youth's eyes. He was a big lug; a head taller than Silco, and twice his weight. And yet he jittered like a child with stage fright.

"I have," Silco said, enunciating plainly, "three Hexes in my pocket. I'll give you one if you haul a couple of crates."

The youth gurned in disbelief, "Crates?"

"Benzo's spoonyman is drunk as a skunk. I need someone for heavy lifting. You look strong."

"I ain't no whore," the youth blurted.

"I said haul crates. If I meant let's fuck, I'd have said so. Come along. And give me that knife. It's so filthy you'll give yourself tetanus just touching it."

Bewildered, the youth complied.

His story was typical. Shipwrecked on the southern coast, he'd arrived in the Undercity penniless and hungry, a younger sister latched on to his arm. In desperation, he'd turned to crime to feed them. Wherever he saw the opportunity to steal, he seized it.

Now he lived like a real sumprat, fighting tooth and claw for scraps.

Silco and Vander did their best to help those with guts. Neither of them was a paragon of virtue. But they knew how low an empty belly could lay a boy. They'd put them to work in the Black Lanes as runners. They'd teach them the basics of the trade: Vander playing disciplinarian, Silco playing mentor. The rest—the savvy, the street smarts—the kids picked up on their own.

They had no choice. The Lanes were no death-knell of social Darwinism. They were its ugliest tenets in the unnatural parameters of a petri dish. Life moved in fast-forward, and came with its own inalterable mutations. Those who triumphed did so by shedding old skin—or devouring that of their peers.

Survival was the best teacher of all.

The boy proved competent as a runner. But in a month's time, he'd fallen afoul of Enforcers, and gotten hauled off to Stillwater. Silco wouldn't see him until twelve years later, in a cage match at Rotten Row.

By then, he and Lock would both be altered beyond recognition.

Lock's wasn't the only tragic tale. As the refugees swelled, the Lanes became a crucible of filth. In Piltover, social workers exhorted the wealthy, in a flurry of open letters, to remember their paternalistic duty in offering succor to the disenfranchised, lest they fall to the depredations of vice.

The Council handled the matter at arm's length. In Entresol, a massive glass dome was built to temporarily shelter the heaving masses. Within weeks, it was overrun. Soon thereafter, a citywide epidemic of Grey Lung erupted. So horrific they called it the Ash Plague—hundreds felled in the span of a fortnight. A third were infected; a third perished. Even years later, the survivors were still coughing up phlegm.

Piltover's solution?

A city-wide lockdown.

The entire Undercity was contained in a quarantine zone. Travel across the Bridge was strictly forbidden. In the Lanes, there were rumors the plague had been manufactured by the Wardens to cull the population. Others believed a Piltie factory's chemicals had spilled into the riverwater.

Whatever the case, the Council's response was the same. If a hand was raised in protest, the hammer fell.

In the end, the Undercity was left to fend for itself. The sick were separated from the living. The former were piled up and burned. The latter were left to rot. It was the lowest ebb of the city's history: a time of despair and death. The upper-zones became a cesspool, the Lanes a midden. Silco came down with a racking cough. His lungs felt hotly congested, as if full of smoke. Vander fared no better. Nor did Benzo.

Yet, as the weeks passed, they proved among the lucky. The mines had left them sturdier than most. Even as the winter chill gripped the Undercity and the water ran brown, their strength prevailed. They worked in shifts. Kept the fires stoked. Fed the sick with scraps. Kept the living alive. The streets were silent except for the sound of coughing and the wails of the dying. Those who could work did, though their strength flagged. Many of the strongest died from sheer exhaustion.

Under the glassed dome, bodies lay tangled together like cordwood. The smell was enough to turn stomachs.

By springtime, the Ash Plague had abated. Silco and Vander and Benzo were all right. Vi and Lika were untouched. Yet their lives were forever changed. Vander's face bore a permanent shadowed glower. The light in Lika's eyes had dimmed. They each looked decades older than they felt. Silco had taken to the bottle and chain-smoking. Sometimes he couldn't sleep at all. When he did, his dreams were filled with ravaged bodies.

A voice, deep as the mines, told him, You won't die like this.

He didn't die. He was spared. He survived.

But the dead were left unburied, and the dome remained. A monument to Topside's failure; a symbol of its neglect. The living refugees made it their permanent roost, setting up stalls in its shadow or squatting on its grounds. They peddled everything from fresh fish to stolen wares to used clothes. In time, Silco and Vander began buying and selling from them. Benzo's shop became a hotbed for stolen loot. Soon, the Lanes were back in action. People were still reeling, but they breathed, and that was something.

It was everything.

Soon, the glass dome became a familiar sight. A fixture of the Undercity milieu, like the muck-soaked streets or the clogged sewers or the rusted pipes. Traders and performers were drawn to its bustle. The city's poorest and wealthiest mixed under the same gleaming curvature of glass. The market, once a dead zone, became a cherished destination.

Thus, the seeds of the Skylight Commercia were sown.

For the Council, the Undercity's shifting landscape was proof positive that the Fissurefolk were incapable of self-governance. A census program was instituted to track their movements. The data proved useful only insofar as it confirmed what everyone belowground already knew: that the Undercity's civic records were a cheesecloth of missing pages, crossed out names, and blank spaces.

Most Fissurefolk fell beyond the scope of Piltover's census. Few governing bodies beyond orphanages, schools and prisons were under obligation to collect information. Among Piltovan aristocracy, bloodlines could be traced back over centuries. Among the middle-class, the nuclear family was the bastion of social order. Belowground, there was no concept of either bloodline or traditional families.

While divorce remained unavailable to any social class outside of the aristocrats, common law marriages were frequent. Most could be entered with a simple ceremony and an exchange of rings at Janna’s Temple, as with the union of Vander's parents. Or it could be officiated by an Undercity magistrate, with the birth of each child and the death of each spouse stored in civic records, as was the case with Silco's parents.

More often than not, Fissurefolk entered what was known as a "living-in" arrangement: a temporary union between two parties under the same roof.

Living-ins weren't legally binding. If one party wished to dissolve the relationship, they could leave whenever they chose. Naturally, this meant that abandoned wives and single mothers figured large in the social milieu. Some were widowed. Others saw their menfolk rendered unfit for work through injury, and sought recourse elsewhere. Still others were left behind by men who found conscription to places like Ionia the ideal exit strategy from family life.

Silco warned Vander that he should record Violet's parentage somewhere official. Otherwise, she'd find herself without a name in the event of a separation. That didn't seem to bother Vander in the slightest. To him, Violet's existence was proof enough that she belonged to him. Silco argued that a child needed stability, especially when raised among people who were perpetually veering on the edge.

Vander shrugged it off. He already loved the little girl fiercely.

Come what may, he would protect her.

By himself, Silco contemplated the futility of it all. The dodging and weaving necessary to survive in the Lanes. The dangers lurking from cradle—Violet's cradle—to the grave. And for what? A handful of coins? A few parcels' worth of meat?

They deserved better.

He kept the moodiness to himself. Between manning the Drop on weekends, organizing rallies and running books, he rarely had time to vent. Vander was usually up for a good chin-wag, but lately he had other concerns. His life had taken a decidedly domestic bent since Like and Violet hopped aboard.

Overnight, the Hound had become a father. The pressure was getting to him. His fuse shortened. His temper frayed. More than once, Silco found himself having to step in between Vander and strangers, who'd incurred his wrath simply by looking at Lika the wrong way.

Vi didn't help matters. The Last Drop was no playground. The little girl was constantly underfoot, and catching strains of conversation unfit for her ears. By five, she had a vocabulary sharp enough to strip paint. Weekends were raucous, and she lived on the ragged edge—alternately overstimulated or languishing in boredom.

The only place that restored her equilibrium was the basement. Once Silco's old room, it had been converted into a play area for Vi. In it, the child had a private sanctum of toys and books, free from the chaos above. If Vander was too busy with pouring drinks or Lika was chatting up customers, it fell on Silco to occupy her. He'd tote her downstairs, sit her on the couch in a cozy nest of blankets, and put on a show.

"What'll it be, Pet?" he'd say, pantomiming a performer's bow. "Comedy? Romance? Tragedy?"

"Comedy!" she'd crow.

"Excellent choice." Silco would rifle through the cardboard box of dogeared storybooks. "Today's bill will consist of: The Misadventures of Mavis and Mutthead!"

She'd wriggle with anticipation. "Mutthead's a dumbass."

"Quite," Silco agreed. "But Mavis is clever. She'll teach him a thing or two."

Vi was a rapt audience. Some scenes would have her hooting with glee. Others, groaning in dismay. Silco had a knack for doing voices, and Vi adored the ones he did for Mavis, whose nasal tones and long-winded lectures were a send-up of his Academy professor's. For Mutthead, Silco did a falsetto screech and an eye-rolling grimace that sent Vi into fits. Her giggles were infectious. And, despite himself, Silco would inevitably fall into the rhythm of storytelling. Of playacting.

Of being, briefly, a child.

Other nights, his aim wasn't to rile Vi up, but settle her down. His weapon of choice was song. He regaled her with no daft lullabies of owls and pussycats. Instead, he sang ballads about the Fissures, of miners mired in the seeps and street urchins playing marbles beneath the Bridge. His voice—the tenor inherited from Mother—glided like water, slow and soothing.

Violet liked it. Her eyes would close and her mouth would shape a little 'O', as if she was trying to whistle along. Her favorite song—surefire at knocking her out—was an old sea-shanty called The Wave-Soaked Maiden. Whenever he sang it, she'd fall perfectly still, lulled as if by sea waves:

Behind her lips, her teeth were sharp/Much sharper than his knives/She said to him, "Come closer, sir/And I'll eat you alive."

Once, Vander caught Silco in the act. Leaning a shoulder against the door, he waited until Violet dozed off on Silco's knee. Then he cleared his throat.

Silco started. "What—! Oh."

"Corruptin' my little girl already?"

Vander's mockery was skin-deep. Beneath, he seemed genuinely amused. His silhouette held the looseness it always acquired after a hard day's work and hard drinks. A glimpse into the man beneath the legend. The man with whom Silco had once shared his food, his dreams, his life.

The man with whom he still shared the closest semblance to a home.

The couch creaked as Vander settled beside Silco. Cued, Silco passed over the snoozing morsel. Violet nestled comfortably in the massive crook of Vander's arm. Her plump cheek rested against the slab of his chest. Awake, she never resembled Vander in the slightest. Only in sleep did the lineaments of her features show the same stubbornness in the mouth and jaw.

She'd be a strong girl, Silco knew. Strong like Vander.

"I was only keeping her quiet," he muttered.

Vander chuckled. "She likes you. I can tell."

"She keeps asking if I have a tail."

"With the songs you fill her head with, we're lucky she hasn't sprouted one herself."

Silco shook his head. "I'm still not sure how you deal with it. Day in. Day out. The Drop. The Lanes. Her." He jerked his chin, meaningfully, up instead of down. "It's like your world's shrunk."

"Not my world." Vander grinned, a little wistful. "My girls are a handful, sure. But it's worth it. Just look at her. Isn't she a picture?"

"For now. Wait until she hits her teens. She'll give you the run-around."

"It'll be good practice. For when the Lanes are free. There'll be hundreds of kids like her." Vander laid Violet gently on the cushions, next to her favorite stuffed bunny, and hit the stained-glass nightlight Lika had designed. "This one, though. She'll always be special."

"She's certainly turned you special in the head."

"You'll understand once you've got your own."

"My own what? Live-in migraine?"

"You don't mean that." Vander sighed, bittersweet. "Every night, I count my worries. One through ten. Then she smiles an' I count my joys. One through thousand."

"That's the definition of short-term thinking."

"That's love. And with a kid..." Vander gazed fondly at Violet, his oversized palm smoothing her hair. "Well, there's no bottom to it."

"Just the bottom you have to wash up after."

"Jeer all you like." Vander kissed two fingertips and pressed them to the girl's temple. "But mark me—you'll eat that cleverness one day." A beat, "Sir."

"Don't call me that."

Chuckling, Vander touched his fingertips to Silco's temple. The touch held all the affection of decades of friendship and hardship, so ordinary and yet summoning every iota of solitude that summed up Silco's private life lately. Tonight, it was a splitting ache in his chest: love and envy tugging at each other.

"It's good enough." Vander's voice was soft, as if speaking to himself. "Being here. Being part of somethin' that'll last." His eyes met Silco's. "Maybe even outlive us."

"Zaun," Silco said, equally soft. "You and me, blut. We'll build it together. For all of them."

Their silence caught and held; a handclasp. Violet sighed in her sleep. Their bodies were divided by the little girl: her mouth a sweet pucker of dreams. Their knees were touching. Warmth poured off Vander, and its heat lit an answering glow inside Silco. His thumb touched Silco's lower-lip.

It wasn't a caress. But his eyes held a gleam of promise.

Silco could've closed the space between them. Kissed him. Slipped his palms under his shirt, and dragged his nails down the hard contours of Vander's chest. There'd been a time when the act was routine, and not the gut-deep ache of retrospect. They'd known each other's movements so well once. Made a home in each other's bodies, same as in the Drop. Yet the intimacy had left an aftertaste, like something gone stale with neglect.

"I know that look," Vander rasped.

"What look?"

"The one that says you're thinkin' too hard." His thumb skimmed the softened edge of Silco's mouth. "Better watch it."

"Always wondering what I'm thinking." Silco's smile held a bitter twist. "Never what I'm feeling."

"Blut—"

"Don't." Silco caught Vander's thumb in his teeth, then let go. "Don't make me say it."

"You never say it." Vander's voice was hoarse. "Not since..."

"Since what?"

"We were boys." Vander's gaze dropped to his mouth. "We're not boys anymore."

"No," Silco breathed. "We're not."

Vander's big body was taut. His eyes were dark. Silco could read the yearning in his face. The struggle. He knew that if he reached for him, Vander would let himself be touched. Let himself be led. His breath mingled with Silco’s, a hot cloud. Silco's palm was on his thigh. They were savoring the same air, the same warmth. A taste of what they'd lost so long ago.

Then Vander broke away.

"I can't." He scrubbed a hand across his face. "Not now. Not anymore."

"Because of her." Silco didn't hide his bitterness. "Because you want a real family."

"Don't do that." Vander's tone was a warning. "Don't turn this into somethin' it isn't."

"What's it then?" Silco said, viciously soft. "Why is it so hard to choose?"

"Choose?" Vander laughed. A hollow sound. "I'm not choosing anyone. But if I was, it wouldn't be her. It'd be her." He gestured to the child, lolling peacefully, a thumb wedged between her lips. "My daughter."

"I'm not asking you to give her up, bastard." Silco's throat seized. "I just want—"

"You want a lot of things, Blut. More than anyone I know. You always have." Vander's stare was like the sun, and the sun was burning. "It's what's kept us alive. Kept us goin'. But this... I can't do it. Not anymore."

"Vander—"

Vander's fingertips touched Silco's mouth, stilling the words. "There's always a choice. Always a price to pay. Sometimes, it's best to let things be."

"Best for whom?" Silco shot back. "Us? Or you?"

"Blut—"

"You're drunk." Silco broke the contact. "Go to bed before you say something stupider."

"Silco." Vander's palm grazed his neck. His thumb fitted to the pulsepoint. "Look—"

He stopped. His eyes fell on the stairs.

Lika's fey silhouette was in the doorway. She was smiling, but there was a shadow across her eyes. As if the sight of Silco and Vander seated close, their bodies at intersecting angles, was not a revelation, but its opposite. Vander's hand dropped to his lap. He cleared his throat, a rumble. Then again, louder, as if the sound were stuck inside him.

"Lika," he said. "Didn't hear you come in, sweet."

"No, no." Lika's laugh was brittle as the rest of her. "I'm like that. In and out. All over the place." Her eyes flitted between the two men. "Finish your talk. I'm just here to check on Vi."

"Blut was sayin' we should call it a night." Vander rose, stretching his legs. "Busy day tomorrow."

"Right. Of course." Lika met Silco's eyes. "Silco, can you carry her upstairs?"

Silco was already rising. The mood was ruined; the moment lost. It had been lost since Violet's conception. Maybe before. He lifted the child into his arms: a small solid burden. She didn't stir. Not even when Vander tucked the stuffed bunny under her chin. Silco's could feel Lika's eyes on him as he carefully maneuvered the stairwell. He was relieved to pass her. Her fruit-punch perfume always gave him a headache.

When he reached the top floor, he understood his relief had nothing to do with perfume.

A small hand fisted his shirtfront.

"Don't go," Violet mumbled.

"It's bedtime, Pet. You're dreaming."

"Dreaming?" She nuzzled close. "You're a dream?"

"I am." He tucked her into her bedroll. "A bad, bad dream."

Her mouth curled. She'd be a beauty, one day. Or a terror, depending on the toss of the coin. She'd be Vander's and Lika's legacy, either way.

Silco's legacy lay elsewhere.

Downstairs, he heard the back-and-forth of voices. The words were too low to make out. But their tone was unmistakable. Vander and Lika: fighting. Silco didn't want to listen. But his ears were an unerring trap for sounds. Lika's accusation, high and fast and furious: Are you screwing him again?! And Vander's reply, gruff and defensive: I never was!

Bullshit!

Lika. Enough, all right? You'll make a ruckus.

I'll make a ruckus? Me? Every time he's around, you get this look on your face. Like you could eat him alive. How am I supposed to feel, Vander? When it's written all over you. It's not like I don't see him eyefucking you whenever you're together!

Lika, listen—

Fuck you! Fuck you both!

Sweetheart, please—

Please what? Please don’t say what's plain? That's why he's back in the Lanes, isn't it? Because you two are—

We're not! We never were. I told you—

Oh, I know what you said. And you said you were friends. Childhood buddies. Well, guess what? Childhood's done. Be a man and pick a side, for Janna's sake. Pick a side. Or I'll do it for you.

Lika—

Him or me. Choose. CHOOSE!

The silence was like the void, and the void was endless. Then Vander's voice, so ragged Silco nearly missed it.

The kind of voice a man uses when making a vow.

You, Lika. It'll always be you.

Swear it! Swear to me!

I swear it. On my life. It's always been you. Nothing's ever gonna change that. Nothing. No one. Not even him.

Lika's breath shuddered. Her voice was small as a child's. Promise me?

I promise.

Silence. The rustle of bodies. Lika's muffled sobs. Vander's soothing murmurs. Then the moist sounds of a kiss. Their breathing hitched in sync: Lika gave a soft gasp, Vander a low grunt. The thump of the wall, like two bodies colliding off-balance. Then the creak of the couch. The susurrus of clothing shed. A zipper undone; a belt unbuckling. The wetness of mouths and the roughness of hands. Lika's cries, like she was being tortured. Vander's groans, like the pain was his. The melody blended together, a duet so familiar to Silco, he felt each note throb in his blood.

It was the sound of his own dejection.

The soundtrack spiked, subsided, sated. The last moan was Vander's. Followed by a breathless huff of shared laughter. Then their whispers. Their bodies entwined on the couch, Silco knew, without needing to see. Vander's big hand cradling Lika's head. Their foreheads pressed together, sharing the same air. Like they were the only ones in the world.

The way he used to hold Silco. The way Silco used to hold him.

Vander's murmur, a sandpaper rasp: It's always been you. Always.

And Lika, her stormcloud broken: I love you.

Love you more.

A giggle: Liar.

Never. Vander's whisper was the same one that had always soothed Silco, once. Silco could almost feel his breath against his ear. The soft, sure brush of his lips. Silco's the past. You're everything. That's what I choose. That's what I want. Us. Always.

Silco's thoughts strobed in echo of Lika's voice. Liar. He could still see the scene from fifteen minutes ago: the couch, the two bodies, the way their knees had brushed and the heat had flowed between them. He could see the scene from five years ago: him and Vander, drunk on smuggled scotch and a long day's work, falling into bed together, the same heat flowing. The same scene repeated endlessly: a loop of longing and loss.

Liar, he thought again.

And then: Enough.

A month later, he danced with Nandi.

In the Equinox, The Nymph held all-night hops.

Young couples competed for hours beneath the twinkling blue fairylights. Such tournaments of one-upmanship were no rarity in the Undercity. Dancing had long been the antidote to despair: an excuse for Fissurefolk to laugh and let loose.

The hops were different. The prize was a tantalizing sackful of coins, sometimes as much as three hundred Hexes. It was collected from a neighborhood fund: enough to cover a month's rent, or feed a family for two weeks. Such communal generosity was a fresh development. A sign, really, of how the disparate groups in the Undercity were experiencing a sense of emergent solidarity. But was that so shocking? The lack of justice for the impoverished meant those same factions had to stick together. The efforts to unionize also meant that most trades began to have representative bodies. Class consciousness was on the rise; so was community spirit.

If Piltover had torn apart the Undercity for progress—then progress kept it knitted together.

"An obstinate devotion to lose causes," B. Goode termed it in the Sun & Tower newspaper.

Silco preferred a different term.

Loyalty.

Vander and Lika attended each hop. Vander was the heart of the Lanes. Wherever he went, crowds gathered. He had an affable charm, and a knack for working the room. But in truth he had little interest in shindigs. In fact, he hated dancing.

The only reason he went was for Lika.

Her energy levels always ran high; she hated staying indoors. Vander described her as a butterfly caught in a net. Or a harridan in a hellhole. Whatever metaphor best suited her temperament. Since she'd walked in on the scene in the basement, the Drop had become a pressure cooker. She and Vander could go from bliss to disaster within minutes of each other.

It was an oscillation Silco had triggered, but as time passed, it became apparent that the rift wasn't solely a byproduct of his return. Something was wrong between Vander and Lika. And whatever it was, it was worsening. Their spats were legendary in the Lanes. Rumors abounded: that they were going to pack up and go to Bilgewater (they weren’t); that they fought over Vi's childrearing (constantly); that she was pregnant again (she wasn't).

The hops were their sole outlet. They attended often—ridiculously often, as though unable to endure facing each other without the distraction of music and stranger's voices.

Silco hadn't tagged along so much as gotten strung along. Typically, he spent weekends at the Sprout with the miners. Otherwise he holed up in his apartment with piles of dockets, before Vander fetched him after dark to inventory the black market haul.

But tonight was all on Lika.

Lately, she'd gotten it in her head that double-dates would loosen the strain. So they’d leave Violet under the care of a neighbor, and hit the town: Vander, Lika, Silco, and some friend whom she'd handpicked just for him. They were always the right sort—pretty but partnerless. Each time, Lika would preface the invitation the same way: Be a dove and keep her company?

Each time, Silco agreed with the grudging benevolence of a best friend. Later, he’d dodge with the stealth of a maritime tactician. Once the dance began, Vander and Lika would melt into the crowd. Silco and the girl would be left alone. Within thirty minutes he'd successfully drive her off too.

It was a waiting-game: playing the part of a typical male of the species—self-absorbed and uncommunicative, yet with a natural slyness for evasion. She'd try talking to him, and he'd hum, yielding one-word answers to her questions, lapsing into silence when it suited him. Letting her play her game, while he played his, until her patience waned and she flitted off elsewhere.

Ungallant? Hell, he was downright ungracious. But he resented Lika's attempts to interfere in his life. She was a natural gamester; always playing to win. Silco, a dab hand at social subterfuge, saw right through her tricks. She’d understood his interest in Vander. Understood, too, the risk of reciprocity. She never confronted Silco directly. Only hinted, teased, taunted.

She'd never find proof of anything. But she knew.

So did Silco.

The double-dates—her matchmaking—were her way of making her presence known. Of reminding Silco that Vander was off limits. In retrospect, it's a marvel she hadn't given Vander the ultimatum to stop seeing him outright. Except the Lanes' survival hinged on his and Silco's cooperation. Even Lika wasn't so petty as to jeopardize that.

So long as he kept his distance, she'd keep hers. It was an agreement of convenience, but no less effective.

And, Silco knew, no less grating.

For both of them. All three of them. A knot of emotions, all tangled up.

And Silco was growing sick of it.

Now, he watched the pair sway together under the fairylights. He watched Vander’s and Lika’s bodies say everything that had gone unseen that night in the basement. Everything unspoken out there for the entire room to see. He couldn't deny his fears any longer, that Vander and Lika loved each other. A flawed, clumsy, hopelessly inadequate love. But love nonetheless. Despite the rough waters between, they were family.

Vi linked them together forever.

Vander didn't so much as glance around at Silco. His attention was absorbed by Lika. His smile was entire.

The front door swung open; another couple were admitted. Behind them Silco caught a glimpse of the night, hot and smoky, ready to envelop him. He considered slinking out for a cigarette—damned No Indoor Tobacco rule—and just leaving. He'd hit up old haunts for word on Enforcer crackdowns. He'd talk shop, sip lager, make plans.

Maybe he'd seek out one of the boys or girls he'd taken to keeping on a string, since losing faith in the idea that he'd find anything longer lasting. They were a uniform stripe: unsavory with a side of sluttish. Dreck-magnet, Benzo dubbed Silco, but beneath the derision sat a growing unease. Silco had a penchant for attracting those on the extreme ambit of society: the broken, the battered, the bent. His partners had no qualms about getting their hands dirty. The darker side of their appetites was the flipside to his own.

They were survivors.

His bedfellows had different names: Zita, Harper, Cress. A different one every week. They were all the same in his memory: their kisses and cries, the slide of their bodies against his own. None were the sort to make a home with—but by Janna, the nights. He'd take his pleasure without apology. And then he'd crawl home, alone.

Same as usual.

Vander never noticed. Vander hadn't noticed much of anything lately. And why should he? He had his own family. The five years of separation were too much; Silco had lost him for good. He didn't want to face up to the loss. He could only flee it, from bar to bar, body to body, bed to bed.

Maybe he should just go home—and straight to his own bed.

The door opened again.

Nandi floated into the seat beyond his.

She wasn't a stranger. He'd known her and Sevika since the mines. They'd seldom conversed beyond businesslike exchanges: The spigot is broken—Fetch the iodine—No meals today. As adults, their circles had diverged. Silco had returned from Topside shellacked by self-confidence. Side by side with Vander, he'd taken his place in the heart of the spotlight.

Meanwhile, Nandi remained what she was: a quietly resilient girl from a rough brood.

Her family were known hellions in the Lanes. Two girls, three boys—and between them enough craziness to cow a wolverine. The mother had died birthing the youngest son. The loss drove her husband into a rage that was the inverse of despair.

He was nicknamed the Wharfside Devil. And he sure as hell lived up to it. A conman by trade, a brawler by reputation, and an all-around terror. His favorite haunt was The Rumbler's Den. There, he'd pulverize men to mincemeat in cage-matches. The rest of his time was spent running scams and hustling coins.

He and his children lived in a shantytown at the edge of the Sumps. Their house's walls vibrated nonstop with crashing and cursing. Worse was when it would fall silent—and a feeble scrabbling would be heard behind the walls. More than once, a concerned group of neighbors would force the door open. They'd find the father sprawled out cold among a pile of empties, and his children locked in the closet. Shit on the floor; the floorboards gnawed on.

He'd left them in there so long, they'd tried eating them in desperation.

When Nandi was eleven and Sevika was six, their father was arrested for armed robbery at the grocer's store near the Promenade. He was sentenced to a year. Then he participated in a prison riot and killed three guards. His sentence was bumped up to thirty. The Warden assumed overseership of the children. They were moved from orphanage to orphanage. Eventually, the three boys were shipped off as dockhands to Bilgewater, and the girls were conscripted to do scutwork at the mines.

Tragic, but hardly uncommon.

Sevika had inherited her father's hellion streak. Tough as nails and blunt as a hammer. As a child, she'd narrowly escaped an early death as a mining trapper by working with her sister to train the pit-animals: hoofing the donkeys, keeping the canaries fed, making sure the dogs didn't get the mange.

After the gas explosion, Silco had broken his leg, and Sevika was ordered to lend a hand in stock-piling ore. She'd been a sturdy little thing. Never cried once despite the cold or damp; just bent her head over her work. Afterward, she'd perched on Silco's knee and gratefully gobbled down the bergamots Vander had filched from the foreman's tent.

In later years, whenever she spotted Silco on the streets, she'd follow him and pat his pockets as if expecting more bergamots.

By seventeen, she was a trainee in Silco and Vander's youth squad. After-hours, she'd help them unload the black-market haul, then patrol the zone for trouble. On slow nights, she'd dog Vander's heels for fighting-tips: how to throw a kitchen-sinker, crack a nose, bash in a skull.

Other nights, she'd sit with Silco as he pored through dossiers and tallied up figures, pestering him to play poker with her and punctuating her jokes with punches to his shoulder. Her eyes always held a proprietary gleam, like a child beholding something shiny and worth the risk of a bold touch.

Tread lightly, Blut, Vander sometimes teased. That one’s got her eye on you.

Nandi was different from her thuggish clan. If Sevika was the sinner, she was the saint. Their mother's folk had hailed from Vekaura, a Shuriman border city. A bloodline of nomadic snake-charmers and soothsayers. Nandi took after them. She'd been named for her great-grandmother, who was rumored to possess the gift of foresight. Her visions were so potent, kings would travel from near and far to seek her council.

When the girl was born, they'd named her in hopes of inheriting the gift. Inheriting the money, too. Her grandmother's clan were prosperous. When the family emigrated to Zaun, they'd been part of its merchant elite. Bad business and worse luck had bled their coffers dry.

Nandi was born a pauper, the first in her bloodline to suffer the fate. And she was no seer, to her family’s dismay.

But she did possess a gift for healing. As a child, she could always be counted on to soothe the canaries and coax the dogs to heel. Her satchel was full of poultices, which she’d dispensed among the other children. Everything from salves for blistered feet to ointment for gas-rashes. Whenever the first aid supplies ran out, someone would always run off to find, The quiet girl with the potions.

As an adult, Nandi’s quietness matured into a sagacity that comes from witnessing profound suffering. Instead of soothing troubled animals, she calmed the lost souls who visited Janna's Temple—orphans, addicts, drunken husbands, battered wives.

People liked her. It wasn't hard to see why. Any single photograph would not have done her justice. But in person, her allure was undeniable. Her half-lidded eyes held a serene glow. Her slow-flowing movements called to mind transparent bones beneath her skin.

Riverside birds.

Silco had stared at her from his spot. The room tilted strangely. His senses kept sliding back and forth as if on a rolling boat. Nandi didn't notice his stare. Her body was placidly still. He studied her profile, the lush eyelashes, full lips parted, outlined in the dreamlike blueness. Her hair seemed to glimmer with a life of its own.

A rarity, such lush hair in the Undercity. Most women kept their locks shorn close to the scalp: a precaution against roosting lice. The lye soaps stripped their luster. Poor nutrition took care of the rest. Others, like the tarts, donned wigs in unnatural colors and tacky textures.

Nandi's hair was black as sin. It shone like a saint's halo. The slipping strands curled into silken fingers, beckoning.

When her hairpin fell, Silco reached out and caught it.

Sevika glanced around: "Who the fuck—oh, hey, sir.”

Nodding absently, Silco got out of his seat. He crouched in the aisle beside Nandi. The pin lay in his open palm.

"I think it wants to dance."

Not his wittiest line. But he was only twenty-five.

Nandi's eyes flitted to his. Pretty eyes, dark-gray and wide-set, with tiny fairylights glowing inside them. The kohl encircling them gave the sense of a sea-nymph peering through the waves. A softness so unexpected, Silco felt something in him soften, too. Something he hadn't known was chilled to the bone. Several locks of hair had fallen loose from her updo. They wisped around her face. With a languid motion of one hand, she pushed them aside.

Her lips curved. The smile held a rueful twist: Is that so?

Silco felt a hot unfamiliar tickle in his bones. When Nandi reached for the pin, he made it vanish in a playful sleight of hand. In the next beat, it reappeared by Nandi's ear. Her mouth twitched; a laugh stifled. When she took the proffered pin, he kept his palm open.

"Well?"

Her smile was soft as a feather. "Do you want payment?"

"For what?"

"A good deed."

Her voice was deeper than he'd expected. Husky. She spoke with the slow cadences of someone more accustomed to silence than speech. Her accent was Vekauran. He could almost trace that old magic of Shurima in her vowels. And yet the words themselves were strangely tuned. It sounded like she was humming offkey to herself.

Silco didn't understand—yet—why she kept staring at his mouth.

Innocently, he answered, "I prefer payment by trade."

Her gaze dipped, then met his again. Eye-contact was a well-known part of Vekauran culture—and courtship. "Bold proposition."

"Or a polite invitation."

Nandi's lips parted, then closed. Her gaze disconnected from his. Something in Silco's chest cried No! The hormonal intensity took him aback. He'd long-ago built up a tolerance to the hit-or-miss risk of sweet-talking a girl. It was a skill he'd matured into naturally, the same as rhetoric. As with both, he could adopt a manner either aloof or charming, depending on what suited the moment.

Nandi stared into the distance. The mythic dead-end loomed. Then she gave him a sidelong glance. Somewhat sadly, she pointed to her ears.

Silco stared, first with confusion, then chagrin.

"Ah."

Did he fail to mention before?

Nandi was almost completely deaf.

Mind you, that's deaf with a capital ‘D.' She wasn't born that way. At six years old, her hearing began to fail. By twelve, at the mercy of blasts from the mines, it had all but faded. She tried tonics, tinctures, even talismans, but to no avail. Her world was made of soft whispers and imperfect silence.

With quiet pragmatism, she'd adapted. Lip-reading was the first skill; a vital one to survive in the Lanes. With the right proximity and light, she could accurately gauge speech with only a small margin of error. That's how she'd conversed with Silco; why she'd kept eyeing his mouth. Her real lingua franca—so to speak—was sign-language. She'd learned the basics from soothsayers at Janna's Temple, who were a robust community of the disabled, with their own varied modes of communication. Their fluid, graceful gestures became hers; a poetry of motion.

Silco was fluent in the dialectal sign language from his days at the Hölle Correctional Facility. Warden Lascelles had taught him well. With Nandi, he'd acquire it as a metaphoric second tongue.

As a kingpin, the hand symbols came in handy. Slating men for death in plain sight.

That night, Silco's mind wasn't on death. It was on keeping a straight face while the rest of him scorched with embarrassment. In retrospect, it was obvious. Why else would a pretty girl sit out dance after dance in the corner?

He meant to say something suave. Or face-saving.

Instead, he blurted, "You don't need music to dance."

She smiled as if to say, Do you often dance without music?

He didn't answer, because the answer was no. He hadn't danced since Topside, at the Academy soirees: their plodding minuets and clod-hopping foxtrots. Not that he'd tell her. He could tell she'd been asked to dance before, and the experience hadn't gone well. Probably the fool had insulted her. And he didn't want her to feel like he was insulting her. Or taking pity.

He wasn't. The dance-hall's heat was like a sauna, and the energy percolating through his bones was electric, and his nerves were buzzing beyond reason. He'd have done anything—anything—to break out of the stuffy box the night had become. Even dance with a deaf girl. Especially this one.

Because, he realized, she was captivating.

He'll always know that for a fact. He'd known it then, though he was young. So damnably, stupidly young. Young enough to think, Just one dance, while his heart made a strange grabby gesture: Gimme!

He didn't grab. He signed, slowly, pulling the rhythm from memory: So?

Nandi's eyes lit. She signed back, So what?

Are you dancing or not?

Nandi bit her lip. There was irresolution on her face: half-troubled, half-tempted. At twenty-five, Silco found it charming. In his forties, it is the opposite. Retrospect has a way of stripping the illusions of romance away. He thinks instead of what might have been, and what wasn't. A man he could've been and a life he could've had, until circumstance precluded both.

Perhaps it was the same for Nandi. Perhaps she'd glimpsed the Wolf and Lamb beyond his shoulder. Both would find her in time.

Silco's palm stayed open. She put her hand in his.

In the background, Sevika slumped sulkily into her seat.

The night was a blue hazed-blur.

What Silco remembers now are tactile snatches. The warming curve of his and Nandi's bodies as they swayed to the music. His hand clasped in hers, palm on palm. In Silco's chest: the unexpected shudder, a pulse of shock. On Nandi's face: the blossoming of color, a smile of delight.

She was tall. They met eye to eye. Her nose was dusted with freckles. Her lips were a little chapped but sensuously full. Her hair was silky soft and scented like a cornucopia.

Sandalwood. Rainfall. Incense.

Inhaling, Silco felt at once hungry all over and strangely satisfied.

The dance floor was crowded with colorful shapes. The hot air bubbled with gin, hair burnt in curling irons, cheap perfumes and gimcrack colognes, all with an undernote of sweat. The music was fast, but they moved slow. He took her through the steps, song after song, with the surety of old practice.

Years ago, Vander had taught Silco the right way to throw a punch. Lead with the hips, not the arm. After his sojourn to Piltover, Silco had learnt dancing was the same. He was quick on his feet—always had been. At the perfumed Piltover cabarets, he'd needed to only observe the move of the moment for a few beats, before he caught on.

Topside’s styles paled to the frenetic energy of the Fissures. Especially the Sumpside Waltz.

The dance wasn't a performance. It was a game of pursuit. During the first set, one partner led while the other followed. A persuasion: eye contact sustained and bodies a whisper apart. During the second set, the roles reversed. The tempo kicked up a notch: the theme became one of sensuality and surrender.

It resembled a whirligig on the surface. But even the simplest step required finesse. And stamina. You couldn't afford to falter, lest you trip and break an ankle.

Nandi was awkward at first. But by the third song, she'd learnt to glide with him. Her feet no longer collided with his, but stepped smoothly in sync. Her senses were unmoored from the music. But her muscles responded to the fulcrum of his own, two clockwork gears melding into a frictionless fluidity.

The band struck up Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. Silco linked arms with Nandi for the promenade. She laughed as they scoop-stepped counterclockwise around the edge of the dancefloor. The sound was off-key but as lovely as the chime of her bangles.

She signed. I get it.

Get what?

Why you don't dance often. Her hand squeezed his arm. It brings out a devil in you.

She had Silco dead to rights.

One song ended. Another began. He didn't leave Nandi's side; she didn't leave his. For the first time in a long time, he felt at home, out of the shadows, pivoting between the couples under the shimmery blue lanterns. The way she moved with him was seamless. When Silco's gaze drifted from her face down the rest of her, he wasn't sure if he was imagining undressing her, or just tracing the outline of her body for safekeeping in the privacy of his mind.

By the time the musicians broke for a powder, they'd both broken out likewise into a sheen of sweat. Their bodies stayed loosely twined. Inside, Silco felt a slow bubbling warmth. It seemed mutual. But he was wary of overstepping the mark.

Dancing with a girl was easy. Getting her into bed was trickier. Some fell for smart patter and low-key strut. Others favored physical candor.

Silco wasn't sure what category Nandi fell in. Her manner was inviting; her body-language was demure. The mixed signals made him hesitate.

Or maybe it was the damn butterflies. Fluttering in his head, his gut, his groin.

He didn't trust them. Didn't trust his own intentions towards the girl.

They drifted to the bar. He began ordering gin. She declined. After dark, she explained, it was water or nothing. Silco indulged the peculiarity. He ordered two tiny bottles, despite them costing double the gin. They clicked them together—"To your hairpin!"—and slugged them down.

From across the room, Silco heard a familiar whistle. Vander. He was wedged into the corner table with Lika, one big hand wrapped around a nearly empty pint, the other resting casually on Lika's shoulder. Lika's mouth was wide-open with laughter at something Benzo, Sergei or Rafik were saying. She always ended up surrounded by menfolk. It was practically a running gag.

As was Vander's habit of pummeling anyone who got too close.

Tonight, however, Vander's eye wasn't on Lika. It was on Silco. He was smiling, but there was a glint of something else in his stare. Something dark and wistful and wanting. It woke a chill on Silco's skin. The same look from the night at the Drop’s basement; a reminder of things past but never gone. He wondered why it had resurfaced.

Then he understood Vander's jealousy was inflamed by watching Silco with a stranger

Watching him smile.

Watching him dance.

Watching him move on.

Silco felt the fangs of misgiving pierce his body. He tipped his chin at Vander: a query. Vander waved him over, holding up his glass to demand a refill on the way. Silco's misgiving twisted into irritation. Vander still wanted him—yes. But Vander expected it to be on his terms, or not at all. Even now, with the respect of the Lanes bolstering him, Silco still fit into his picture as... what? A sidekick? A side piece?

Fuck that.

Younger, he'd have accepted the role equably. Older, he refused to be bypassed.

Their stares caught and held. Vander's was dark-eyed, expectant. Silco kept his own implacably cool.

Liar.

He turned away.

Nandi was watching him. Her expression was witchy, warm, full of interest in everything. In Silco. He thought once more of Vander, the pull almost visceral, a taste like alcoholism. Then he let Vander slip away in favor of what was right before him.

They sipped water and talked. Well—signed. Nandi had a placid poise that was nearly spectral. Bit beneath it lay a secret playfulness. More than that, a curiosity in the world around her, in the strangeness of human nature. The twinkle in her half-lidded eyes and the touch of her hand on his arm whenever he signed something funny was nearly as charming as her off-key laugh.

In later years, he'd inevitably compare Nandi to her stalwart sister. Both were smart, strong, sultry. His favorite adjectives on a woman. Yet where Sevika burned like dragonfire, with her flashing eyes and fiery temperament, Nandi was a river: silent on the surface, at yet full of secrets barely-glimpsed and ever-deepening. Like Sevika, she was a born survivor. But where Sevika solved her problems with a right hook, Nandi exuded strength through her stillness. She was a natural at sensing the currents of another's mood. She knew when to stand firm; when to flow.

It was an inborn gift—one Silco would likewise acquire.

And put to use. For his own monstrous ends.

I think, Nandi signed, and her eyes slid down, lingering on his mouth again, You must have a lovely voice. Like a merman.

He was taken aback. What makes you say that?

When music plays—she touched her sternum—I feel the beat. Not the sound. The vibrations.

Explains why you dance so fetchingly.

Nandi proved hard to distract; his compliment brought a smile but little else. Your voice is the same. When you were close, I felt it everytime you laughed. Her eyes twinkled. I bet you're quite the singer when nobody's listening.

He felt vaguely flustered. Others had told him he had a smooth voice. But nobody had described it quite so intimately.

He signed, I prefer good company to my own singing.

That got another laugh. You are charming.

For a devil?

Her smile faded. I know devils. Her hand squeezed his arm. But it's poor form to talk of family with strangers.

She'd meant her father, renowned in the Lanes. Silco was tempted to pry, but that was poor form too. Instead, he touched her hand, the briefest skim of fingertips.

Not among friends. A half-smile. But we're only just getting acquainted, aren't we?

She gave his wrist a squeeze. A thrill passed through him. He still remembers how warm her palm was. How strong.

Later, Nandi excused herself to use the outhouse. Silco stayed with their drinks, idly scoping out the bar. His attention fell on Sevika. She slouched at her table. A few punters had dared to ask her for a dance. She'd turned them down with the bluntness of a door slamming shut.

Their eyes met. She colored up and jerked her eyes away. When Nandi returned, she began sullenly inspecting her own fingernails. Sliding one palm repeatedly over the other.

I think she's bored, Silco signed to Nandi.

Nandi frowned. Who?

Your little sister.

She turned, then sobered. A different disposition; almost maternal. She's signing that she wants to leave.

You go everywhere together?

She bit her lip. Don't you and Vander?

Silco conceded with a semblance of flippancy. We go places together, but leave separately.

My sister prefers leaving together.

It sounded like a subtle goodbye. Silco smiled, a smokescreen to strangle his own disappointment. Separation anxiety?

He meant it as a joke. But Nandi nodded. We've been together since our mother died. Our brothers left for good after they were sent to Bilgewater. Our father was...the last straw. We've been inseparable since. We keep each other safe. Give each other a home.

Home.

Silco thought of himself and Vander. How the solitude was once theirs in childhood, back when they understood each other completely, had each other's backs without question. It only made him feel more excluded now, not just from Vander's and Lika's togetherness, but from everything close and connected and worthwhile.

Except Zaun.

The pin at the top-knot of Nandi's hairdo was sliding loose again. Impulsively, he reached out and fixed it in a better place. She dipped her head, and let him touch her. There were high spots of color on her cheeks.

She signed, What brought you here?

What do you mean?

You're usually at The Sprout. Talking with the miners.

Is that a crime?

Her gaze dipped. The Enforcers think so.

Silco's expression shaded. I want the Lanes to have a life, and they want to take it away.

You don't think we have a life now?

A song-and-dance isn't a life.

Her eyes circled the lively hall. These gatherings matter. They bring people together. They take their minds off the troubles.

We're only allowed respite with a Topside permit? He shook his head. That doesn't count.

You don't think we deserve a break?

We deserve much more. Silco took a sip of his drink, before saying out loud. "A life of getting what we want when we want it. Nobody stopping us. Nobody pushing us around. And if they do, we push them back. Push them back hard—so they never forget again."

Nandi stared at him. She couldn't hear his sharpening tone. But she could see the fury in his sinews.

Slowly, she signed, You hate them, don't you?

Silco drew a deep breath, counting to five. He signed back. I hate what they do to us.

Us?

The Lanes. The Undercity.

That's why you're always working. To get even?

To do better.

Nandi stared at him. Silco wasn't sure what she saw. His rants got a rise out of most people. Topside, he'd taken a perverse pleasure in stirring up shock. Belowground, there was a deeper satisfaction in stoking the embers of resentment into resistance. Yet here, he feared somehow slipping in her estimation. Coming across as spiteful rather than squarely in the right.

Changing tacks, he signed, Will you stay for the second set?

Nandi tipped her chin. She seemed tempted by the proposal. Then she shook her head. I lead the prayers in the morning.

Prayers?

At Janna's Temple. I'm an apprenta for the Priestess.

Silco blinked. Faith was never his strong suit. All those madcap mantras of Mother's had put him off. In boyhood, he'd devoured folklore in the dusty old library books. But as a young man, his encyclopedic knowledge of the Undercity's spiritual facets extended more to the tales swapped in bars and brothels.

He signed, How long does it last, this apprenticeship?

I have three years left. In total, it lasts for six.

Six years!

She tipped a shoulder. It's no great thing.

Six years of prayer? Marveling, he met her eyes. Small wonder you seem so serene.

She hid a smile. Say that when you catch me in the Temple's open kitchens.

You volunteer there?

On weekends. I prepare the meals in the refectory.

Silco was bemused. He was many things. Charitable wasn't one of them.

In the Black Lanes, the word was a slippery thing: a byword for Sucker. Yet generosity was no rarity belowground. There is this assumption—erroneous—that when people have scraps, they'll fall upon each other like beasts fighting over bones. The truth is far less black-and-white. The Lanes were always full of self-serving hustlers. But ordinary Fissurefolk did help one another. They only had scraps—but they shared those scraps equally.

There was little choice in an environment with no hope for social mobility. You made do with what you had and made sure your neighbors did too.

His skepticism must have shown on his face. Nandi smiled, like a sage mother imparting wisdom to a young jack. It's not just the food. We work there because it's important to give something back. Our donations come from the Fissurefolk's pockets rather than Uppside's tax-dole. There's no expectation of return beyond the deed itself.

You get no support from Topside at all?

Uppsiders have little patience for mystics. Her smile dimmed. People like us barely exist to them.

Except for criticizing as primitives.

Nandi shrugged. Their criticisms don't matter. There are people here and now who need support. Many see charity as a staircase. The less fortunate have to climb step one after another. Prove their sobriety, or decency, or sanity, to be worthy of aid. The Temple doesn't need them to prove anything. It offers a foundation—a second home—where they are not turned away. No matter how many times they mess up, the doors never close.

An open door—or a vicious cycle?

Nandi remained as immune to his sarcasm as she’d been to his flattery. You know, full well, a moment's respite is not the same as enabling vice. People in our city live on the edge. Hoping for a way out, only to get knocked back down by the violence and deprivation. The Temple gives them something else to focus on. For many, it's the first time anyone has given anything to them. It saves them from a path of isolation—all its cruelties. It shows them they are cared for.

Silco tried imagining what a strange life someone would have lead for such a profound altruïsm to survive intact. He couldn't. For years, he'd kept survival straight in his line-of-sight, all the while chasing the next big thing: bigger scores, bigger deals, bigger opportunities.

His respite came only in the moments when he caught his breath, when he stepped back and saw his efforts as a whole. Not a game of survival but a blueprint towards tomorrow.

Zaun.

It had felt simple in those days. A formula for surefire success; a path with a foregone conclusion.

He signed to Nandi, Seems like a catch-22.

A what?

A catch-22. It's an old military term. When you have two equally terrible choices.

She shook her head. It's a matter of what you put first. Success measured by itself is hollow. What's more tangible a marker is what you can do with what you are given. So we work hard in Janna's Temple. We build good deeds. If we fall short in the eyes of Uppside, well—at least we don't fall short of grace in our own.

Silco felt his lips twitch. Faith in fair trade, hm?

Her eyes were luminous. Do they not discuss faith at your miner's rallies?

We discuss taking what belongs to us.

By force.

By right.

A revolution needs more than that. She met his eyes. I invite you to volunteer at the Temple's kitchens. You might find it an experience.

Silco nixed this with a headshake, My talents lie elsewhere.

Her look turned shrewd. You can't cook, can you?

"Not worth shit," he muttered.

She burst into her off-key laughter again. The tips of Silco's ears reddened. But his belly filled with a foamy warmth. It felt like the sensation of slipping between warm covers after a cold day outside.

Not home—but near enough.

He didn't know it then, but it marked the start of him growing up in a different way. Learning about the Undercity through the lens of not just barstools and smuggling and social policy, but through the lives of its tenderest folk. The ones who loved the city enough to give whatever they had. The ones who believed in doing right by their fellow men.

The ones whose generosity Silco repays now as only a monster can.

Nandi caught her sister’s eye across the room. The two girls exchanged nods. With a synchronicity that marked them—for the first time—as blood-kin, they unfolded smoothly to their feet: tall, swarthy, steady-eyed. Nandi began drifting towards Sevika, taking the tantalizing waft of sandalwood and incense with her.

Impulsively, Silco signed, Shall I see you and your sister off? It’s late.

We can handle ourselves. She softened the demurral with a tease. "Sil."

It's Silco.

The miners keep calling you 'Sil.'

You're off by one letter.

He took her wrist, and drew her hand towards him. With her fingers, he spelled L instead of R. A dark flush stole across her cheeks.

Sir, she signed. That makes more sense.

It makes none to me.

You don't like being called sir?

Silco is all there is to my name. He took a sip of his drink, and eyed her speculatively over the rim. “Unless there's something more fitting you'd like to know me by.”

Nandi's titter was a two-syllable birdsong. Is this flirtation?

I was trying to be subtle.

You weren't. Her hand rested briefly on his wrist. Next time, try harder.

Next time?

Nandi's eyes radiated—or appeared to radiate—a playful promise.

There's a hop next week, she signed. I could dance again.

Silco's heart skipped like a stone over deep water. His pulse kicked up, as if with exciting prospects yet within reach. Warmth. Scent. Sensation.

Nandi.

He signed back, So could I.