But had she survived?
Twice my passage was blocked by rubble. My
palms became black with soot, not only because I had to move burned
refuse out of my way or climb over mountains of debris, but because
I felt the need to touch things as I went, to confirm the solidity
and the strength of what remained, to feel for Davlova’s pulse
beating against my fingers. Somewhere under this dire injury, she
fought to catch her breath. To heal. She struggled to live
on.
I’m sorry
, I whispered as I passed, not
knowing if she heard me or not. I hadn’t quite loved her, and yet,
I’d understood her. I’d seen her heart. I knew she was more than
the mayors and the nobles who had ruled her. They’d tried to bend
her to their will — using her as they used us all — but she’d
fought them with wind and fire and all the might the Goddess had
given her.
But could she really rise again? And if she
did, would it be only to find herself chained by a new
master?
I turned down Roxy Lane, torn between hope and
fear. I didn’t know what I’d find. I didn’t even know what I
hoped
to find. Part of me longed to see the theatre as it
had always been — red brick and stone gargoyles, with Anzhéla
behind her desk, Frey scowling at the world, and a den of
orphans-turned-thieves hidden away beneath them, scraping to make a
living, stealing what they could. Criminals, and yet who could
blame them for hanging on to the only semblance of warmth they’d
ever known? Anzhéla had given them a home. Fed them. Taught them a
trade, even if it wasn’t an honest one.
I’d lived in the den for nearly thirteen
years, and I remembered every detail with aching clarity. The
earthy, sweaty smell. The ever-present sounds of laughter,
coughing, sniffling, and whispering. The new kids, always huddled
in some corner, their eyes wide and warily hopeful. The bigger
kids, fighting for bunks. The few of us who stayed into adulthood,
stepping away from the politics of puberty to form our own quiet
bond. A hundred kids had come and gone in the years I’d lived
there. In some ways, every one of them had been my brother or
sister, and yet there’d only been a handful at the end I’d known at
all. Jabin and Jimbo. Lorenzo, although only barely. The rest were
nameless faces.
I shook my head, chastising myself for my
callousness. I’d always had an excellent memory, and yet I’d made a
point not to squander it on each new kid. At the time, it had felt
like self-protection. Why bother, when it could all be taken away
in a moment? Clan kids rarely let their guard down. They rarely
formed lasting friendships. We knew the city left no room for
sentimentality.
But now, I realized my mistake.
So many orphaned or abandoned kids. So many
lost souls trying to find their place amongst the predators and the
prey. How many of them lived, and how many had perished in the
flames of the revolution? I wished I’d taken the time to learn
their stories. After all, who else would remember them? Who would
mourn? Who would post their names on the plaza’s western
wall?
And if my own name wasn’t there, did I have
anybody but myself to blame?
As it turned out, Anzhéla’s theatre still
stood. Soot stained the red bricks, but the sidewalk out front was
clear of debris. The front door had been replaced with a new one
constructed of rough, half-burned planks. A sign tacked to one of
them proclaimed, “Re-Opening Soon!”
I glanced up at the leering gargoyles. They’d
always seemed threatening before, but they were tamer now, staring
down at me expectantly, as if they’d been waiting for me to arrive.
As if to say, “It’s about time you came home.”
I pulled on the door and wasn’t surprised when
it opened.
The area that had once been the lobby had
suffered obvious damage. The countertops, curtains, and carpets
were gone. I assumed they’d burned, but whatever was left had been
cleared away and scrubbed clean. The entire area smelled of
whitewash and freshly sawn wood. The sound of hammering echoed
through the door that led to the theater. A den full of pickpockets
had obviously been redirected to repairs, for the time being at
least.
“What’s your business here?”
I turned to find a lad not more than five or
six years old standing behind me. He seemed vaguely familiar,
although I didn’t know his name, and I realized he was the boy I’d
sent to Anzhéla on festival day — the very day Anzhéla had given me
a new job as Donato’s whore and her spy. It felt like a lifetime
ago, like some other me had been pickpocketing and whoring that day
and turned to find this boy begging for a penny.
“Who’s in charge?” I asked.
The boy had been soft and naive back then, his
stomach bloated from hunger. Now he was lean and hard and hostile
in that way all street kids get, and he looked fierce, despite his
youth. He narrowed his eyes at me. “I asked you first.”
I was torn between annoyance and amusement. “I
used to live in the den.” I flashed the sign of our clan at him for
good measure. “I’ve been working another job for Anzhéla. I just
got back into town and I need to see whoever she left in
charge.”
The boy whistled a sharp, low alert. Sound in
the theater ceased, and a second later, three more kids appeared in
the doorway. Two were boys, but one was female. I judged them all
to be about thirteen years old. One boy held a hammer, the other a
length of wood. The girl didn’t have a weapon, but I could tell by
her eyes she was the cunning one of the lot.
“What is it?” Hammer asked.
“He wants to see the boss. You watch him while
I go—”
But the girl suddenly stepped forward, pushing
between the two boys to stand in front. “Misha?”
I didn’t remember her, but it was enough to
know that one of them remembered me. “Yes.”
“You’re not him,” the boy with the wood in his
hand said, squinting at me, but I heard the uncertainty in his
voice.
I understood their confusion. I hadn’t been in
the den for months, and back when I’d lived there, I’d lived as a
thief. That meant doing everything I could to look ordinary. I’d
rubbed ash and clay in my hair to disguise its black sheen and worn
it in a tight queue to hide its natural kink. I’d worn contacts to
hide my eye color, and I’d certainly never been dressed as I was
now, in well-made clothes, even if they were a bit worse for the
wear.
“I am Misha, I assure you. I’ve been in
Deliphine since the night the wall fell. I just got back, and I
need to find Anzhéla.”
“She ain’t here,” said Hammer. His cohorts may
have relaxed, but he hefted his weapon a bit higher.
“I assumed as much, but whoever she left in
charge will have a way to contact her.”
The boys all traded glances, trying to decide
whether or not to trust me. The girl rolled her eyes at them and
turned to the boy who’d intercepted me at the door. “He knew the
sign, right?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“So, there’s a reason we use it, dummy.” She
waved her hand at me. “Go on up. You know the way.”
I left them in a grumbling argument behind me
as I climbed the stairs to the end floor.
It was strange standing outside the door of
Anzhela’s office. It was hard for me to believe she wouldn’t be
waiting for me behind it. I used our old knock, even though it’d
probably been changed since then. I hoped whoever she’d left in
charge remembered me.
I needn’t have worried. The door opened a
crack, and a familiar face peeked out at me.
“Misha!” Lorenzo said, throwing the door the
rest of the way open. “Holy Goddess, brother, it’s great to see
you! Where the hell have you been?” He shook my hand briskly and
smacked me on the shoulder before gesturing to a chair — the same
one I’d sat in many times while meeting with Anzhéla. “Have a seat.
I’d offer you a drink, but I ain’t got a damn thing here worth
drinking.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“We’ve been wondering what happened to you. I
think Anzhéla’s ’bout given up, but I knew you’d turn up
eventually.” He sat back on the edge of Anzhéla’s desk — the top of
which was completely bare — and crossed his legs at the ankles. He
shook his head at me in wonderment. “You look a lot better than the
last time I saw you. You’d taken one hell of a beating.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Donato had nearly beaten me to
death. The bruises had long since faded, along with the pain in my
ribs, but the memory made me cringe. “I’d forgotten about
that.”
“I don’t know how you could forget that! What
happened to you, man? Nobody’s seen you since that night. Frey had
me running all over the city looking for you. Sent me to Talia’s,
and up to some mansion on the hill, but nobody knew a
thing.”
“I was in Deliphine.”
His eyes widened. “How the hell’d you end up
there?”
“It’s a long story.” And one I had no desire
to hash over. I thought back to that night, to the moment I’d
parted ways with Lorenzo and Frey. “I take it you guys found
Benedict’s place?”
His smile turned into a scowl, his eyes
suddenly going dark. “We found it.”
“And Anzhéla?”
“Yeah, her too. It was a big house. Took us a
while to find which room he had her in, but we did. That bastard
had her tied up.” He shook his head, and when he spoke again, his
voice was quieter than before. “I thought she was dead when we
busted in. She was naked. Not moving at all. And her face…” His
voice faltered, barely suppressed rage flashing in his eyes. “He’d
been having a go at her, in more ways than one.” He turned away
from me, the color slowly rising on his cheeks. “Wish I’d never
seen her like that, you know? After all she’s done for us, she
deserved to have that kept to herself.”
I thought of my mother’s body, left naked and
bloody on her killer’s bed. “We all deserve better.”
“Yeah, well. That ain’t the worst of it. Lots
of sights that night I wish I’d never laid eyes on. People bein’
burned alive or beaten down and trampled. Everybody cryin’ and
screamin’ and runnin’ about like bloody fools.” Anzhéla had never
tolerated street cant in the den, but I could hear it creeping back
into Lorenzo’s voice as his emotions took over. “The whole damn
city goin’ up in flames. Felt like the world was endin’.” He shook
his head and waved a hand blindly in my direction. “Listen to me
rattlin’ on, as if you don’t know already. You were there same as
me.”
“I didn’t see much, to tell you the truth. I
heard the explosion when the gate came down. The man I was with had
a boat and a way out of the upper city, so we ran. Saw the fire
over the wall as we reached the docks, but we were out to sea
before the worst of it hit.”
“Goddess, you’re one lucky son of a bitch. I
never knew people could be so bad. Sounds stupid for a clan kid to
say, I know. You’d think I’d have realized, all those years livin’
on trash and what we could steal, but it wasn’t supposed to be like
that, you know? It wasn’t supposed to be about killin’.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Lorenzo pushed off of Anzhéla’s desk and paced
to the far side of the room. “It all went so wrong. We was supposed
to overthrow those rich pricks on the hill, that’s all. Knock down
the old regime, but it was a bloodbath. Those bastards from our
side of the gate were grabbin’ everybody they saw, just beatin’
them down in the street. Servants and slaves and old women and…” He
had to stop for a minute to keep his voice from shaking. “I saw
Jabin. He had no idea what was comin’. He was only tryin’ to
protect some noblewoman he was with. Why he didn’t run, I don’t
know. But…”
I swallowed hard. I knew why he hadn’t run.
The neural implant in his head had told him his new mistress was
his number one priority. “He’s dead?”
Lorenzo jerked his head in a nod. “Most of the
tattooed women had gone to the temples, and the rebels—” He
clenched his fists. “Those men from Lower Davlova — the same men
who’d been ragin’ all my life about the city guard havin’ their way
with our women — those men went in after them. They dragged those
women out of the temple. Not just the pureborn women either, but
priestesses and little girls.” He covered his eyes, his voice
ragged now as he fought to say it all. “On the temple steps, Misha.
All those poor women screamin’, bein’ held down so men I thought
were on my side could force their way between their legs. And even
the rapes weren’t as bad as seeing those women beaten to death. One
man grabbed a baby from this woman’s arms. Grabbed it by the ankles
and bashed its head on the steps. That poor woman screamed.” He
choked once on the words but stumbled on. “It was like nothin’ I’ve
ever heard, and that man laughed and turned on her, and—” He choked
again, and this time he didn’t try to say more. He buried his face
in his hands.
I went to him. I hardly even knew Lorenzo, but
I had to do something. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he shrank
away from my touch. Clan kids weren’t used to being coddled. “I’m
sorry you had to see that. I’m sorry any of it happened.” And all
because I’d taken them through the wall to rescue
Anzhéla.
Lorenzo took a deep, quavering breath and
attempted to square his shoulders. When he spoke again, the gutter
accent was gone. He was back in control. “I sound like a flat,
don’t I? Like some naive little babe off the streets, all shocked
that the world isn’t as nice as I’d like.”