Threads That Bind (Threads That Bind, #1)

by Kika Hatzopoulou

Knot it once, the saying went, and she will know you’re still fighting. In the Silts, people added a second verse: Knot it a thousand times, and she will still cut it.

Io had no railings, but she had fear, lots of it. She wrapped it around her, clutched tight like a shield. Here’s what her sisters never grasped: fear didn’t numb you. It made you cautious, alert. Io was always, always alert.

It was an ugly sight: wood and wires and cement hanging like the entrails of a gutted beast.

In the eyes of the police, there were few innocents in the Silts. All of them had taken up work for the gangs at one point or another, even if it was just bussing tables at their clubs or mopping the floors of their gambling dens. For people like Io and Nina, it was honest work, the kind that harmed no one and put food on the table. For the police, however, it was as good as a conviction.

But Io could wield patience like a weapon.

One did not deny the mob queen, or the messengers she sent to their doors. Those who had tried no longer had a tongue to deny her with.

Once, a customer was getting handsy with your sister—has she ever told you that story? I sent Edei here to help her, but by the time he reached her, Ava had already broken the man’s nose against the table. And when I asked why she didn’t just wait for help, you know what she said? My mama taught me to take no prisoners.

Their names, affiliations, and powers would be listed in public records for everyone to see. People had a right to protect themselves, authorities said. Bullshit, Thais always argued. It’s us that have had to protect ourselves from them.

a magnificent fountain of the three Graces. The Charites, as was their original name, were depicted naked, embracing each other lovingly. They represented humanity’s best qualities, hence their prominent place in the Plaza, which Io found both sexist and hypocritical. The former because more than two-thirds of government employees were male, the latter because they pretended to worship the goddesses when they treated their descendants, the grace-born, like harlots. But that was Alante for you: alabaster duplicity.

His silence drilled into her certainty until it hit doubt.

Well. Did he have to be smart, too? Why couldn’t his perfect jawline and broad shoulders suffice? Why did he need to be intelligent and perceptive and unwilling to let go of the things that others ignored daily and happily? And why, oh why, did the fact that he had outsmarted her make Io blush even harder?

She made a living breaking other people’s hearts—she simply couldn’t refuse when they begged her to put it back together.

She stopped. She was starting to sound apologetic, which she hated. Somewhere in the course of this conversation, she had tricked herself into feeling guilty, into fearing what Edei might think of her. But these were her choices, her threads she sacrificed to cut theirs, her consciousness stained. She had weighed it in her mind’s scales and found helping them worthy of the cost. She refused to feel judged for that.

I understand. There is violence in kindness, and kindness in violence.”

You’re afraid of heights, right?” Io’s stomach somersaulted. “How do you know that?” He shrugged, a minuscule movement so as not to disturb the beam. “Your sister makes fun of you a lot.” My sister, Io thought, is going to die a slow, painful death.

She had given him an order and expected him not to like it. What a silly reaction, that she should feel guilty of taking the lead on something she was clearly more skilled in.

Bianca Rossi traded in pain;

Bianca had demanded no apology, which made Io all the more desperate to give it.

“Do you know of the term Roosters’ Silence, cutter?” Of course she did. A Roosters’ Silence meant a silence agreed upon and obediently kept by a large group. The term had an element of the nonsensical, a silence impossible to achieve, like all the roosters agreeing not to crow at dawn.

Ava orbited back to Alante like a meteor scattering grief in its tail.

Lies curdled love into something sour and noxious.

She’s my sister, Io wanted to say. She’s not supposed to ostracize me to be happy.

This city, her mother had often said, is going to try to steal the good out of you, Io. But you’re not going to let it, are you? As a child, Io had always promised she wouldn’t. But then she had grown and had had to work and pay rent and bills and groceries, and she realized . . . All these people like her, the other-born and the immigrants and the lower-class who no one would hire, they didn’t let the good get stolen from them, did they? It got nicked little by little, every time they were fired with no back pay, or their apartment application was denied for no reason, or they got looks of suspicion on the trolley. To assume they let it happen was to make them responsible for a system that was rotten long before they ever came along.

the Silts were a cesspool of information, its residents packed so tight there was no room left for secrets.

The mist clustered around them like an overbearing pet lapping about their legs.

Humankind might be surviving at the moment, but the gods would always win in the end.

she stood out like a mushroom in a rosebush.

“You might survive,” Io told Edei, “but tolerating wickedness seems to me just a slow kind of death.”

Gods, she was tired. Getting angry, staying angry, was exhausting.

“Are you safe, Io?” Safe? It took her by surprise. In all the imagined confessions, to Ava, to Rosa, to Amos, even to Thais, she had never pictured them asking this. Safety was a luxury Io had never had time to consider, like bubble baths or decorative plants. No one had asked her before. She hadn’t even asked herself.

But that was just hypocritical bullshit. If only one in ten were found guilty, it was because only one in ten was guilty. Other-born were constantly accused of crimes they didn’t commit, just because they had the ability to commit them.

Why did Saint-Yves phrase it as if it was admirable that he actually saw other-born as human beings? Why did other-born need to prove their worth to the world by servicing a city that kept pushing them to the fringes whatever chance it got? Protecting the same people who created this screwed-up system, where other-born were a thing to fear? Io shook with fury. This was such propagandist bullshit, and the worst thing was these people were eating it all up!

I think you’re right. About tolerating violence being a violence in itself.”

Destiny robs us of choice,

Her lack of sexual experience was not something she cared to discuss before breakfast.

“If you pump enough hatred into a person’s head, she will become anything.”

Thais: the first, the deepest, the most important of all of Io’s unrequited love stories.

like many things in her life, her memories of her parents were secondhand, too:

“Is our comfort so important that you’ll let people keep dying for it?”

“So you think he’s a good guy,” she asked, “Saint-Yves?” Amos lifted their shoulders. “He was a good lieutenant to his soldiers.” A good lieutenant was also a good killer, though.

Gods, Io hated it when she thought like that. Like they had lived in gloom and misery, thirsting for a chance to go someplace better, be someone better. Their life had been hard, but whose wasn’t? And life could be hard and happy at the same time, couldn’t it?

The world had burned to ashes because of men’s good intentions.

“I am a cutter. I’m paying an extra danger fee to live in my building. My private investigator license was rejected, twice, on the basis of threatening abilities. You have a job other-born can only dream of, you’re drinking coffee with the future Mayor, and you’re dressed in a suit the price of my rent. It’s bad for all of us but this”—Io gestured at the porcelain cups, the well-dressed guests, the sweet-smelling patio—“is a layer of protection few other-born can claim. Take that into consideration the next time you demand the instant forgiveness of someone you assaulted in a dark alley.”

Io’s mouth was half-open, eyes flying between the five of them. They were smiling, laid-back, and warmly expectant. As if it was completely normal to apologize for assaulting her, lecture her about equality, offer her a job, and plan a wedding—all in the span of two minutes. And they were so casual about it, as though they couldn’t imagine Io refusing. As though she was already one of them.

It was the warped form of this conversation; she felt like she was being evaluated in some way. Like they had taken her very justified anger and twisted it to their advantage, to something they could use in their campaign.

They were being used and manipulated and made into monsters—and no one seemed to care about this part except Io.

She knew all about how hard it could be to reexamine your loyalties. To take the people you loved apart and decide if what was left was worth loving.

I began to associate her moods with my happiness. If she came home tired and grumpy, I would stay in my room. If she smiled, my whole day would brighten up.

“Someone wise told me once that tolerating wickedness is just a slow kind of death.”

“I think the people we love can be cruel. Our love doesn’t absolve them. Nor should it.”