Chapter Text
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The Last Drop hadn’t changed a bit. Tables crammed too close together, the old jukebox churning some silly love song out the speakers, foaming tankards of beer and lowball glasses of liquor, the thick warmth of smoke in the air. Best of all, the soft lights in the darkness—ghostly green lamps, red-illuminated gaming tables, and the golden glow behind the bar.
It was easy to tell the old crowd from the new. People who once knew her as Powder fell quiet as she walked by, watching with an ugly mix of sadness and disgust. To the rest, she was just a girl with too-long braids and a pistol on her hip. She drew some stares, but most Zaunites didn’t give two shits about a stranger’s business.
When Jinx sat at the bar, she found Vi behind it, scowling.
“How’s it hanging, sis?”
“Cute.”
Vi grabbed Jinx’s cup from beneath the bar and poured her a mock drink. Only filled a quarter of the way, which couldn’t be a clearer get the fuck out.
“What are you even doing here?” Vi asked.
“You forgot my straw.”
Since Vi just continued to stare her down, Jinx sipped her stupid non-alcoholic liquor, the choice for remorseful drunks and the knocked up. Or, in her case, too crazy to handle actual spirits. At least her bitch-baby mock drink tasted like her favorite sour candy.
“Vander around?” Jinx asked.
“No. He’s got business with Benzo.”
It was better for her not to see Vander anyway. He was always so kind, so understanding, and Jinx never knew what to do with it. Powder probably would have, but Powder was as dead as her brothers.
“You haven’t shown your face around here in a year,” Vi said lowly. “Why now?”
“Sheesh, I’m feeling welcome.”
“Maybe if that’s what you wanted, you should have taken one of Vander’s hundred invitations to come by.”
Vi shot her one last nasty glance before disappearing down the bar to tend to a yordle couple.
She should leave. She would leave if she didn’t have half of Margot’s gang out looking for her. For better or worse, she was safe at The Last Drop. The Vyx wouldn’t fuck around in Vander’s territory.
Someone tugged on her left braid and Jinx spun toward them with her hand on her knife. The guy let go, leaning away from her, and said, “Whoa, whoa, didn’t mean any trouble.”
He wasn’t bad looking. Around her own age, middling height with big brown eyes and a mouth made for going down. She might’ve taken him home if he hadn’t met a threat with a white flag. Pathetic.
She really needed to get laid if the thought had even crossed her mind for this guy.
“...damn enforcers cracking down on us. Like any of us got the breath to fight after a day in the mines.”
Jinx turned to get a look at the speaker, a forty-something man with greasy hair flattened from a helmet.
She pulled a stool over to his table and plopped down. “What’s this about the enforcers?”
The miner seemed a second from telling her off, but his companion said, “They’re doubling their numbers at the mines. Council’s orders. Some bullshit about protecting us.”
“Blue-bellied fucks,” Jinx spat. “Can’t wait til somebody takes a pick-axe to one of them.”
The miner and his friend raised their drinks to that.
“Now, what’re we toasting?”
Vander. No mistaking his voice.
Jinx tilted her head back and said, “Zaunite solidarity.”
Vander’s frown might be upside down, but it didn’t look anything like a smile.
He patted her shoulder, covering her from the crook of her neck to her upper arm with his huge hand. Fatherly gentleness that made her chest clench and her stomach turn.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s catch up.”
Vander led her behind the bar and refilled her cup—to the brim this time. She got that smile from him now, as comforting and warm as the smoke from his pipe. Too kind for a mean thing like her to deserve.
“Heard you ran into some trouble with the Vyx,” Vander said. “If you need somewhere to stay for the night, your room is still free.”
“Thanks. I could use a place to lay low.”
Sleeping in her childhood bed sounded like a special hell, but maybe she should’ve thought about that before screwing over a chem-baroness.
Vi wiped up spilled liquor—whiskey, by the smell of it—and got up in Jinx’s space while she cleaned. “So that’s why you’re here. Knew it wasn’t for a family reunion.”
“Hey,” Vander said, as sharp a tone as he ever used with Vi. “Powder freed a dozen slaves that Margot had headed to her brothels. If she needs a place to rest her head, we should be proud to give it to her.”
Vander never got her name right. At least Vi had finally given in on that front.
Vi hesitated with her soaked rag dripping over the bartop, not quite frowning. “You really did that?”
Jinx couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes when she said, “Someone needed to bring Margot down a peg. She’s gotten too big for her crotchless britches.”
Vander nodded at her. “Whatever your reason, you did a good thing.”
Jinx’s skin crawled. Vander was more delusional than her if he believed she had any goodness left.
She took a big sip of her sour-sweet drink, set it on the bar, and said, “Think I’ll skip the sleepover, actually. I got stuff to take care of.”
“Powder! It’s not safe out there.”
Jinx danced up on her tip-toes to kiss Vander’s cheek, patted him on both arms, and reminded him, “Not my name anymore.”
She headed out before Vi could throw in her opinion.
At least it wasn’t a long walk from The Last Drop to her workshop. She climbed up the ladder to the crashed airship’s propellers. Relief crept under her skin once she was safe in her workshop, surrounded by the sharp scents of neon paint and metalwork. Incomplete projects were scattered around: prosthetics and powder bombs, half-finished drafts for impossible dreams, and various paintings.
And in a rusty iron box, she had two dozen grenades.
Since Mylo and Claggor, Jinx had sworn off making weapons. That promise had lasted until she’d left home at fifteen, but at least she never used her bombs and guns—except for the pistol she carried, a necessity in the Lanes.
She kicked the bucket of grenades, watching as they settled in more tightly together, touching each tip of each of her teeth with her tongue as she waited to see if one went off.
They shouldn’t. They were well made. Still—accidents happened.
She thought about what the men back at Vander’s bar had said. More enforcers in the mines was only a bad thing; more eyes meant more punishments, more fists meant more of the weakest to fall under them.
She kicked the bucket again, then turned her back on them, not bothering to keep time. It was all down to the council, trying to keep the people of Zaun under their thumb. Jinx was a girl of the underground through and through; she didn’t want to be under anyone’s thumb.
She gathered paint on her rickety work table, adding motor oil to the more dried out pots and mixing colors together to make her supply last longer. She was running low, and while spray paint usually worked better for vandalism topside, she wanted the finesse of a brush this time. Pulling a trigger didn’t feel like enough to contain this feeling inside her—of not belonging with Vi and Vander, of doing things she thought were right and hearing later that it was also good when Jinx wasn’t good. She was never, ever good.
She needed the knife of a paintbrush, to stab and slash and slice color onto Piltover.
When Jinx had what she needed gathered, she looked over her workshop. It was always cold and damp here, with no means of temperature control, leaving everything threatening to rust and molder. But it was hers, and maybe an apartment was just some Piltie idea of what home should be. Maybe she could live here, make herself a working plumbing system, nick a dehume from some topsider who cared about the dampness of their cellar.
Maybe someday, after it was all nice and pretty and liveable, she’d kick the bucket hard enough to actually kick the bucket, and it would rock the foundations of the city that made her people so miserable.
Jinx hiked the satchel with her paints and brushes and sponges and cups and tape and rags higher on her shoulder, then pointed her hand at the heap of explosives, shaping her fingers into a gun.
“Pow!” she said, giving her hand plenty of recoil and blowing away imaginary smoke from the fingertip barrel. She brought the play-gun to her temple, digging her nails in until they stung.
Then lowered her hand.
Today she’d go topside and just make Piltover a little more ugly. Maybe tomorrow she’d blow this all to smithereens.
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Over a decade in Piltover, and still Silco wasn’t used to the most spoiled creatures at the top. He understood them, manipulated most of them, but he doubted he’d ever shake his disgust in their dealings.
Least of all with Cassandra Kiramman, who was too noble by half. He could always hear the woman coming for about a minute before she arrived, her heeled boots probably specially made to noisily announce that someone very wealthy and important was headed this way. She seemed headed his way more often of late, and Silco squared his shoulders as he paused in the vaulted hallway.
“Councilor,” Silco said. “What brings you to the Academy?”
The arts wing of the Academy was one of the few ancient buildings in Piltover that didn’t have Kiramman’s name emblazoned on it, but she still occupied it as if she owned it. It was one aspect of power that he’d learned to master early, to fake greatness in every situation until it became second nature. Until it became real.
He matched her haughtiness with insouciance, looking down his long nose at her so she knew full well that though she was a member of the council, in these halls, he was of top rank.
“I needed to speak with my daughter. Tell me, how is she settling in?”
“Very well,” Silco lied. “Not all talented artists have the skill to reach students.”
And Caitlyn Kiramman lacked that skill as well, though Silco had seen worse new professors. He suspected the problem was less Caitlyn’s lack of potential as a teacher and more her lack of interest. Silco supposed that was what happened when nepotism backfired, shoving a child into a coveted position they didn’t want.
The most privileged of problems; he didn’t pity the girl for it.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” the councilor said. “Caitlyn has always been a bit… rebellious.”
If Cassandra thought her studious daughter was rebellious, it was no wonder the morally ambiguous people of Zaun found themselves so policed. Silco wouldn’t doubt that this straight-laced woman approved the increased presence of enforcers in the mines and elsewhere. Who knew what rules and curfews she might help inflict on the people of the undercity. Hell, the council might fill in the fissures entirely one day and be done with it.
“An artist without passion is an empty thing,” he said, his voice cool. “Perhaps she’s learning to channel those energies into her work.”
“I suppose you would know all about that. Controlling oneself, using your work to achieve.” Cassandra’s smile took on an even more aristocratic edge, holier-than-thou and patronizing. “Necessary for the Chair, of course.”
As if this woman knew of achievement. “I’m humbled that an esteemed councilor pays so much attention to a simple art professor.”
Her flinty eyes narrowed, and though Silco was loath to recognize it, he felt a prickle of unease at her next words. “Well, I’m hardly the only councilor who’s taken note of you,” she said. “I believe Councilors Salo and Hoskel consider you a friend.”
Cassandra Kiramman might be spoiled and power-rich, but she was smart and resourceful, and she saw things most others did not. Silco hated that. Most of the elite was so easily led, so easily duped—like the councilmen she mentioned.
“You overestimate their fondness for me, but they are generous patrons of the arts.” Silco shrugged lightly. “For that, I’m grateful.”
And it wasn’t a lie. They were generous with their donations, and in return he was generous in his contributions, though what he gave back to the community wasn’t always fine art—and wasn’t always legal.
But he was careful and the very picture of discretion. There was no reason to have Cassandra sniffing around, unless one of his or Sevika’s men was getting sloppy. He’d have to find the leak immediately, and pave it over.
It was a few more minutes until he was able to make his escape from that odious woman, and he felt her gaze on him as he walked away, so he had no choice but to follow through on his excuse for leaving.
He had to visit his small campus studio, where his greatest frustration awaited him.
The sculpture sat with a fine layer of dust on it, the motes dulling the effect of the sunlight on the sheets of copper. What aggravated Silco the most about the thing was that it was nearly done. The basic shape was complete, all he had to do was go in and add minor details to the face and hands and work more on building the patina.
But the brutalist silhouette of one being laying a brick into an incomplete wall while another handed up the next was one of the most uninspired pieces of shit he’d ever hammered and welded into existence. It was slated to be unveiled at the annual Founder’s Gala for the Academy and this year’s theme, Progress, was decidedly uninspiring.
As much as he wanted to, Silco knew he couldn’t blame the entire thing on a terrible prompt. He’d been making art from the time he could use crayons against the walls of his mother’s house, but it seemed his inspiration had dried up in recent years. Maybe since accepting the job as Chair of the Arts College. The position put in a place of power he’d craved, completed a goal he’d set about not long after the crayon murals, but the promotion had also taken away most of his teaching duties—a task he was surprised to find he enjoyed.
And it had made his art performative.
It should be an honor to be something of an artist in residence, but when every piece was put on display and analyzed by every professor and student and visiting dignitary, Silco found himself creating for all the wrong reasons.
It was easy to burn out a flame when it must light an entire house.
He pushed over the statue with an unholy shout, and copper screamed across the marble floor. There. The most destruction he could afford in his position.
Not enough, but it would have to do.
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Maybe she should’ve gone with the spray paint. Quick and easy, so she could get the hell out faster when she was done, with just enough flair to satisfy. No, she needed to give it her all for this job. Buckets of pink, blue, purple, green sat at her feet, open and dripping neon bright. She needed big colors thick on the Academy walls for the best big fuck you.
Not that much of anybody would see it, here in this narrow alley between lesser-used buildings, but she’d get caught if she left her message anywhere with more traffic.
Jinx swiped the broadest strokes in pink, and maybe she was thinking of Vi (sister, sister, always missed her) but that didn’t matter. Blue fought the pink, purple a careful peacemaker along the sharpest edges. Green barged in here and there, almost throwing the whole thing off.
In the end, she had a painting of the council, their lungs exposed. Healthy in real life, with none of the stink and tar of the fumes from the mines. But here they were crawling with skeletons. That was the price for their clean air and their sparkling city, wasn’t it?
With a few messy strokes, she finished with her signature: JINX WAS HERE!
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Silco found his muse in a dingy, cramped alleyway. She was a hungry kind of thin, with sharp hip bones edging out of baggy shorts, and skin the color of polished marble. Blue clouds floated over her skin, the same shade as her prominent veins, and her cyan hair was long enough to tie her down with.
She was vandalizing Academy property with a macabre painting of great talent, her name shamelessly emblazoned at the bottom.
She was perfect.
“I hate to spoil your fun, but I’m afraid the council won’t take kindly to your laudation.”
Jinx looked down on him from her ladder. When he stepped closer, she canted her head sharply, birdlike, and asked, “What happened to your face?”
Silco clenched a fist behind his back to keep from touching his bad cheek. The powder he’d applied to the disfigured skin was likely fading, and there was of course nothing that could be done about his eye.
“Never mind,” she said, shrugging. “Guess that’s not my business!”
Funny little thing. He was keen to call campus security, but where there was shit there would soon be flies, and the sniveling rent-a-cops would bring enforcers.
They’d lock this creature away, and he didn’t even know her name. He hadn’t seen enough to set her in stone.
“It isn’t,” he said. “But history was never made by girls who don’t ask questions.”
She wrinkled her nose, enormous eyes narrowing. Silco’s fingers itched like they hadn’t in months. A year? He’d have to set up a delivery of materials. When was the last time he’d worked in his personal studio?
“Do you always talk like that?”
Well, he had just said…
“No, I don’t. Get down from there. And scratch out your name. Now, lovely.”
She stared at him for a long, hard moment before swiping over her signature with purple paint, then climbed down the ladder and asked, “Happy now?”
Silco gestured at her art. “You’re very talented for—”
“Trencher trash?”
He bit down on a smirk. Cheeky. He didn't often gravitate to this sort of behavior, preferred those around him to fall in line, not challenge him, intrigue him.
“For someone your age. Candidly, the concept is a little forced, but you show great promise.”
“Go talk to the miners’ kids about how forced their mommies’ and daddies’ graves are, then get back to me. Piltie.”
He felt a muscle below his right eye twitch. A tell he’d long fought and had never defeated. This girl was fearless in a way that would either save her life or kill her, either bluff her out of danger or land her in the hands of someone up to her fire.
Silco stepped closer, taking her in. Thin and smaller than average, she was trimmed with lean muscle. Bruises and scrapes dotted the wide expanses of exposed skin, but at the same time, from the narrowness of her wrists to the web of purple veins showing through the delicate skin around her eyes, she showed an unexpected fragility alongside her rough and tumble front.
Jinx crossed her arms over her chest, pulling his attention back to the moment. “You going to report me to the blue-bellies or not, old man?”
Taking the brat’s bait would only please her. And he felt like he might enjoy pleasing her, perhaps, but he was no rube.
“No.” He pitched his voice low, testing his effect on her. "Your misdeeds are safe with me, Jinx.”
“Thanks,” she said, frowning now. “You’re not too bad for a topsider.”
Silco huffed a short laugh. “Your approval means the world to me.”
Jinx thanked him again, now with a one-finger salute.
“You could be rude,” he said. Another step closer. She smelled like cheap paint and motor oil. Something else. Sugar? “Or you could go to dinner with me.”
He looked her over so she'd notice, appreciating her negative space rather than her curves. She was beautiful; she was beautiful in the way a deep, painful bruise was beautiful. So many changing colors. She touched her exposed middle, her collarbone, then tugged a braid.
Jinx the vandal turned away. She shook her ladder until it collapsed in on itself into a single neat bar, then put it in a deep cloak pocket. Very, very clever. She’d have to leave the paint behind—a great expense for someone living off Zaunite wages—but she didn’t seem fussed. Either she made decent money working in the Lanes or she simply stole her art supplies.
“Where did you get that ladder?” he asked.
“Built it.” Jinx shivered, and no wonder. The outfit under her cloak barely qualified as clothes. “All right. Take me to dinner—and it better be good.”
Brash words, but she broke her bold eye contact.
Shame? So much could be done with shame.
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