Arcane: TTB: Ch. 153

"Councilor Talis," Camille said, lifting her teacup. "Why make this harder than it needs to be?"

Steam rose from the tea in curls, carrying its rich aroma through the cold mountain air. The blend wasn't anything magical, not like the enchanted varieties that supposedly grew in the Dreaming Pools, but it was expensive.

"You went to the trouble of brewing tea," Jayce said. "So I figure I might as well hear you out. What's the worst that happens? You kill me?"

He shrugged and sat down across from her. The pain from Katarina's beating was already fading, whatever medical treatment they'd given him working faster than it should. With the agony fading, his natural stubbornness was reasserting itself.

"There's always time for tea. No matter the circumstances."

Camille poured him a cup and slid it across the table. Jayce didn't reach for it.

"Five years ago," Camille said, setting down her own cup, "I went to Zaun. Specifically, to Cipher's bedroom. Do you know what he did?"

She smiled faintly. When she'd first received Cipher's instructions about this performance, she hadn't fully understood his intentions. She'd assumed this was personal, that Jayce had pissed him off somehow and this was revenge dressed up as politics. But now she was starting to see the bigger picture. The kid had never been truly tested. He'd coasted through life on talent and privilege, never facing consequences for his idealism.

He was, in the most technical sense, hardheaded as fuck.

"What did he do?" Jayce asked, curiosity getting the better of his defiance.

He knew about Camille's assassination attempt five years ago, it was part of Zaun's founding mythology at this point, but the specific details had never been made public.

"He accepted the tea, even though we both knew I'd come to kill him."

Camille refilled her own cup. "If our ideological differences hadn't been so irreconcilable, perhaps we could have become allies. Even friends, under different circumstances. You're an intelligent man. You understand what I'm saying."

The meaning was clear: accept the tea and the conversation, or things would get unpleasant. She had exhausted her patience for polite overtures. If Jayce insisted on playing the martyr, she'd let Katarina continue his education in the realities of Noxian negotiation tactics.

Let him experience firsthand what "diplomatic persuasion" meant to people who'd been raised in a culture that valued strength above all else.

"You went to all this effort to kidnap me, and dragged me out to the middle of nowhere. What exactly do you want?"

He wasn't an idiot. He could read between the lines. And after getting his ass thoroughly kicked by Katarina, he'd developed a healthy appreciation for picking his battles.

He reached for the tea and drank it down in one gulp.

"I want to discuss cooperation. The future of Piltover. Zaun as well, for that matter."

Camille's smile widened slightly. Breaking through Jayce's stubborn idealism was proving more entertaining than she'd expected. The kid had spirit, she'd give him that.

"Piltover's future belongs in the hands of people who built it," she continued. "The great manufacturing houses. Advanced industry is our foundation and reason for existing. We're what made Piltover the City of Progress in the first place."

She poured him another cup. "We're the ones who made this city great."

This was the script, more or less. The purpose wasn't to recruit Jayce to her cause, that would never work. The purpose was to make him understand exactly what kind of people ran Piltover's economy. To strip away any illusions he had about reforming the system from within. Because when pushed, when profit was on the line, the factory owners and merchant houses would risk hanging rather than give up their advantages.

Cipher had been remarkably restrained in his approach to Piltover, all things considered. If he'd been truly ruthless, all he had to do was withdraw Medarda military support. Without Ambessa's soldiers backing the new council, Jayce would collapse under internal pressure within weeks. The old guard would eat him alive. They'd ally with Noxus directly if they had to.

Without external protection, Jayce's fate was already written. He just didn't know it yet.

So Cipher's conscience was clean. He was doing Jayce a favor, really. Giving him an education in reality before reality broke him.

Plus, the whole wilderness survival thing was going to be broadcast at The Last Drop. Jayce hadn't paid a single coin for the publicity, and he was about to become famous across Zaun. He should be grateful.

"You're out of your mind," Jayce said flatly. "You might as well kill me now."

He stood up, meeting Camille's gaze directly. "I will never work with people like you. The indentured worker scandal showed me exactly what you really are. What all the so-called noble houses really are."

His voice was rising. "You'd let thousands of people die just to save a few coins on labor costs. You watched tens of thousands of workers suffer and die, and you felt nothing. To you, human lives are just numbers on a balance sheet. If Piltover falls into your hands again, how many more will die? How many more will be ground up and spit out just to pad your profit margins?"

He was shaking with anger now, all pretense of calm gone. "I won't allow it. I won't let my home become a slaughterhouse for parasites like you!"

Camille's expression went cold. "Still a child after all."

Her voice had lost its warmth, taking on the flat quality. "Your understanding of Piltover is pathetically shallow. It's almost insulting. You govern a city now. So let me ask you something that you should have asked yourself years ago. Piltover has no standing military. Our enforcers are glorified police, not soldiers. For hundreds of years, Noxus has sat right next door. So why haven't they invaded?"

Jayce opened his mouth to answer, then closed it.

"Do you know what people outside Piltover call us? City of Gold. They say our streets are paved with Hextech innovations and our vaults overflow with trade wealth. We're the fattest, richest target in eastern Valoran, sitting right on Noxus's doorstep with no real military to defend ourselves. So why are we still independent? Why hasn't the Grand General sent his legions over the mountain pass to take everything we've built? Have you ever thought about that? Or were you too busy feeling superior to consider the realities of geopolitics?"

Even with her emotional responses mostly dampened, she could feel something like anger pulsing through her energy circuits. This brilliant young man, so quick to judge, so eager to condemn... he had no idea what it had cost to keep him safe.

"You'll speak up for indentured workers. But you won't speak up for the Clan Ferros. You won't acknowledge what we sacrificed to buy you the luxury of your idealism. Do you think centuries of peace just fell from the sky? That Noxus chose to be neighborly out of the goodness of their hearts?"

She stood. "Without the Clan Ferros bearing that burden, Noxian military boots would have been stomping on Piltovan necks decades ago. Every man, woman, and child would be conscripted. Your precious factory workers would be shipped to the front lines as cannon fodder. Without what we sacrificed, Piltover's citizens wouldn't be any better off than peasants anywhere else in Noxian-occupied territory. One conscription order, and everyone marches to war."

She had never believed the Clan Ferros was guilty of anything except survival. In an age of empires and conquest, her family had preserved Piltover's independence. If a few outsiders had to die for that, so what? The Clan Ferros wasn't just innocent, they deserved recognition for their service.

Bowing to Zaun had been a necessity, not a choice. And if not for the Clan Ferros giving Jayce the safe, stable environment to develop his talents, what right did he have to stand there judging them?

As a child, he would have been conscripted by Noxus years ago. Probably handed a pack of explosives and told to run at enemy fortifications until he died.

"I don't know," Jayce said quietly.

The admission seemed to deflate his fury. He sat back down. He was a scientist. Debates required evidence, logic, and facts. Pretending to know things he didn't would just make him look like a fool.

"The Clan Ferros reached the height of wealth and power in Piltover generations ago. We expanded our perspective from a single city-state to the wider world. And in doing so, we discovered how weak we really were."

Camille took a sip of tea. "Before Noxus we had nothing. The northern mountain range provides some natural defense, but it wouldn't stop an invasion. The Clan Ferros understood this. We made a choice. We entered into service with certain powerful figures within Noxus, trading loyalty for peace."

She raised her teacup slightly, as if in a toast. "For Piltover's sake, the Clan Ferros sold our soul. And what did we receive in return? Nothing... Tell me honestly. Do you think that's reasonable? Do you think that's fair?"

This was what she really wanted to ask Cipher, if she was being honest. But their current positions made that impossible. She had no standing to question him. So she'd use Jayce as a proxy, knowing Cipher was watching through his drones hidden in the nearby trees.

She knew Cipher hated Piltover and the Clan Ferros specifically for the centuries of exploitation Zaun had suffered.

Piltover under Ferros control had bled Zaun dry for generations. That was undeniable. But Ferros had also sheltered a city through an age of conquest and empire-building.

By Cipher's ideology, all nobles with power were guilty by definition. But even by those standards, the Clan Ferros was comparatively restrained. At minimum, they'd transformed Piltover into an advanced society. The City of Progress wasn't just propaganda, it was real. Piltover led the world in technology, education, and quality of life. Children born in Piltover could pursue futures. They didn't have to learn to fight from childhood.

If this was just about survival of the fittest, she wouldn't care. But Zaun's ideology explicitly rejected that framework. Which meant her grievances mattered, at least in theory.

That's what made this so frustrating.

"Maybe the Clan Ferros had merit once. But you're still clinging to an outdated survival philosophy. You don't value human life. And you don't treat it with respect or dignity."

Jayce met her gaze directly. "The meaning of the City of Progress is improvement. Endless exploration. The commitment to build a better future for humanity. Piltover didn't betray you. You betrayed Piltover. You betrayed what the City of Progress was supposed to stand for. If you hadn't ordered Cipher's assassination, Professor Heimerdinger would still be here. And Viktor might still be in Piltover. Camille, you were wrong. Not about everything, maybe. But about the things that mattered most. It was you. Your family. Your decisions. That's what made Piltover stagnate and decay."

He was good at this, Camille realized. Natural charisma and born leadership potential. The problem was his development had been too smooth. He'd spent his entire life in Piltover, never seeing how the wider world worked.

He couldn't judge whether her claims were true or false, so he'd apparently decided to assume they were true, and condemn the Clan Ferros anyway. Even accepting that the Clan Ferros had protected Piltover, he still saw them as guilty. Just from a different angle.

The family might have merit, but their methods were unacceptable. Their willingness to sacrifice outsiders for Piltover's benefit was morally indefensible. All the justifications were just excuses for cruelty.

Jayce came from a factory-owning family. Combined with the recent indentured worker scandal, he'd clearly developed some strong opinions about Piltover's business class. Most factory owners weren't like him. They didn't want to pay fair wages. They didn't see their employees as human beings.

If not for Piltover's legal system, they wouldn't hire Piltovan workers at all. Too expensive.

"Have you read The Book of Revolution?" Camille asked, abruptly shifting topics. "The one Cipher wrote for Viktor."

Watching Jayce's performance, she decided to stop arguing. Every move she made was being monitored anyway. She couldn't speak freely. Better to probe his positions on Zaun's ideology.

"I have," Jayce admitted.

During the indentured worker incident, both he and Caitlyn had read it cover to cover. Trying to understand the framework that had Piltover's elite so terrified.

"What did you think of the reform ideology it promotes?" Camille asked, one eyebrow raised. "The 'Wind of Change' philosophy."

This time, by betraying her former Noxian patron and selling out the Clan Ferros to Cipher's network, she'd secured some measure of survival for her family. As part of that arrangement, she'd gained access to certain intelligence.

For example: Caitlyn and Mel had both already defected to Zaun. Only Jayce himself remained oblivious.

His relationship with Zaun wasn't hostile. If he chose to defect, he'd certainly be offered a high position. Yet he stubbornly refused to commit, maintaining this ambiguous middle position.

What was he waiting for? What was holding him back?

"I think..." Jayce hesitated. "It's too extreme. Most business owners in Piltover are problematic, yes. But there are still many who try to do better. There's one factory that produces audio equipment. I remember it clearly."

The memory was vivid in his mind. The factory owner, a man named Elivin, had consulted him about using hextech to manufacture musical devices. It was for his daughter, who had some kind of medical condition that music helped manage.

That girl, Seraphine, had been remarkably beautiful. Even Jayce, who'd grown accustomed to Mel's sophisticated elegance, had found himself staring a bit longer than appropriate. The impression had stuck with him.

He'd talked with Elivin for hours, learning that there were many conscientious factory owners in Piltover. Most just hadn't scaled up yet, still operating small workshops rather than major industrial operations.

That was why he hadn't joined Zaun. Cipher's Wind of Change would put Piltover on trial. He believed Piltover could still be saved, and that its business class could still be reformed. So he chose to stand up himself. He would lead Piltover and use Hextech to build the future they deserved, one that didn't require purges.