“No, you don’t. Being horrified by cruelty
doesn’t make you weak or naive.”
“Goddess, I never hated the city so much. I
never hated being male so much, either. I wish that fire had taken
us all. I wish it’d left nothing but a pile of blackened stones.
Sometimes I think that would have been better.”
He turned away from me, retreating from my
attempt at comfort, pushing his hair out of his face and wiping his
eyes, and I feigned a sudden interest in the ceiling on the other
side of the room in order to grant him a bit of space while he
regained his composure. I couldn’t imagine how awful things must
have been to unsettle him so much. And Lalo…
Lalo had been just as rattled.
Two men who thought they’d seen the full
extent of human cruelty and depravity, and both of them had come
away scarred. I heard Gideon’s voice in my head.
Misha, be
honest now: is there no memory you’d erase, if given the chance? No
horror in your past that you wish you could forget?
I couldn’t
help but wonder how many residents of Davlova would have begged for
one of Gideon’s implants, if only to forget the sights and sounds
of that night. So much horror and bloodshed, and somehow, I’d
escaped. I should have been relieved, but all I felt was
guilt.
Guilt for my part in bringing the wall
down.
Guilt for having a hand in the deaths of so
many people.
Guilt for having escaped virtually
unscathed.
“I’m sorry,” Lorenzo said. “I didn’t
mean—”
“Don’t apologize. Please.” Especially not to
me.
“I have these dreams. I keep seeing those
women on the temple steps. I see that baby’s skull bursting open
against the stone.” Despite the brutal nature of the topic, his
voice had returned to normal, and I turned again to face him. He
met my eyes with obvious embarrassment and more than a little
shame. “Nobody talks about it. We all stumble around through this
ruined city, pretending like we didn’t live through hell.” He shook
his head, laughing uncomfortably. “At least the theater’s still
here, right? The seats and the curtains burned, but it’s mostly
damage we can fix.”
“What about the den? Were the kids all
right?”
“The den was fine. I was afraid we’d come back
and find them all suffocated, but the few who stayed down there
survived. It was the ones out in the street who didn’t fare so
well.”
“Jimbo?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “Dead.”
Jimbo and Jabin, both gone. It was a lot to
take in. They’d been the closest thing I’d had to friends when I’d
lived at the theater, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
I glanced around the office. It was a space
I’d been in many times, but it seemed different now. Anzhéla’s desk
lacked its usual clutter, the bar on the sidewall was nearly empty,
and Frey’s table full of electronics was missing completely. It was
an empty shell of a room, waiting to be returned to life. “I guess
you’re in charge now, huh? Running the clan?”
He laughed. “No way, brother. Not now that
you’re here. Everyone knows you’re next in line. This whole place
belongs to you.” He smacked the bare desktop. “I was just holdin’
down the fort for you, boss.”
I rubbed a hand over my hair, trying to digest
that. Trying to decide how it made me feel. I’d known for years
that Anzhéla was grooming me for something bigger. I’d even
imagined it might be this. But now…
Was this what I wanted? To take in orphans and
teach them how to be criminals? To turn more predators out onto the
street, with my only consolation being that at least they weren’t
still prey? And yet what other life could I possibly lead? I didn’t
know any trades but thieving and whoring.
And how would Ayo fit into that kind of life?
Would he learn to pick pockets? Would he learn to turn a blind eye
as one starving kid after another passed in and out of the
den?
“Hold it down a bit longer,” I told him. “I
need to sort some things out first.”
I still needed to collect my things, so I
headed for the whorehouse after leaving the theater. I went in the
back door, waving idly at the women in the kitchen before heading
up the stairs to Lalo’s office. He was sitting at his desk, exactly
as he had been the day before. He smiled when I came in, but it
didn’t quite reach his eyes. His shoulders were stiff as he greeted
me.
“Back again so soon? Did you find a place to
stay?”
“Yes. The Spotted Goose, on the western side
of the plaza.” I hesitated. “It’s the place you and I stopped that
day when we went out shopping.”
“Ah.” He set his pencil down but continued to
stare at his desktop. “Benedict’s raid.”
“Yes.”
“With everything that’s happened in the last
few weeks, I’d almost forgotten about that.” He gave me a sad
smile. “What kind of world do we live in where something that
horrifying ends up being just another bad day?”
I took a seat on the wooden chair opposite
him. “We’ve both seen a lot of bad things.”
He nodded, then glanced toward the door. “The
boy isn’t with you?”
“I left him at the inn.”
He nodded stiffly, hesitating. “He’s staying
with you?”
“Of course.”
“I see.” He rubbed his forehead, debating.
Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “I know it’s not my
business, but…” He regarded me with wary eyes. “I’m concerned about
him.”
I wasn’t surprised that it was a sensitive
subject with Lalo, who had been forced into prostitution before he
was even ten years old. Still, despite his appearance, Ayo wasn’t a
child. It would be a relief when his physical appearance caught up
to his true age. “It’s not how it looks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I saw the way he watched you, Misha. The way
he looks at you, like you’re the sun rising in the sky.”
“He’ll grow out of that.”
Lalo’s chair screeched across the wooden floor
as he pushed away from his desk and rose to his feet. “I would
never have believed it of you, taking a boy that young to your bed.
You know what it does to people. You know he’s too young to
understand—”
“It’s not like that.” I stood as well, so I
could meet his accusations face-to-face, rather than letting him
tower over me.
“So, you’re not bedding him?”
The heat rose in my cheeks, too quickly for me
to quell.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Yes,” I confessed. “I’m sleeping with him.
And I know he looks young, but—”
“But what, Misha? He has an ‘old soul’? Are
you going to feed me that metaphysical garbage in order to justify
taking advantage of him?”
I sighed, slumping into my chair in defeat. He
was wrong about Ayo’s age, but I couldn’t help but feel that maybe
he was right. Maybe I was taking advantage of Ayo’s devotion to me.
And yet, who else did he have? I cared about him. I wanted to take
care of him. And yes, I slept with him too. Why would I deny him
what we both wanted?
But Lalo was my friend, and he deserved the
truth.
“Ayo is from the Dollhouse.”
Lalo took a step back, bumping into the wall
behind him. “What?”
“He belonged to Donato. That’s why we went
back to Deliphine. To try to get his program deactivated.” It was
an oversimplification, but he didn’t need to know about the hook
they’d planted in Ayo’s brain.
Lalo stared at me, his eyes wide with
disbelief. “The Dollhouse?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Ask him. He’ll show you the tattoos.
He’ll tell you everything. He’s already given our innkeeper an
earful, believe me.”
“The Dollhouse.” Lalo leaned back against the
wall, staring at some point over my head as he considered it. “But
he’s so young.”
“He’s not as young as he appears. They did
things to him…”
“They can alter his age?”
“Not exactly, but they can change the way it
affects his body. It stopped his body from aging.”
“Holy Goddess.”
Now that he was no longer on the attack, I
relaxed back into my seat. “When I met him, he didn’t know his age,
but they told me he’s close to twenty.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “Only the Dollhouse knows, I
guess. The good news is, now that Donato’s gone, they’ve removed
the neural block that keeps him from maturing. They say his
physical appearance will catch up to his true age in about six
months.”
“Ha!” I was glad to see that Lalo’s disbelief
had passed, and along with it, his disgust at my perceived
transgression. “You’re telling me he’s about to go through all of
puberty in the next six months?” He laughed again, shaking his
head. “I don’t envy him that. Or you, for that matter.”
I laughed too, although I wasn’t entirely
amused. I stood up and crossed to the window to stare out over the
ruins of Davlova. Across the avenue, a half-dozen men were working
to clear a corner lot of scorched lumber. Past that, halfway to the
shore, I thought I could see the gargoyles of Anzhéla’s theatre.
Farther out, beyond the buildings and the wreckage, the sun glinted
off the sea. I remembered my days on the boat with Ayo. “He was
worse than a whore, Lalo. He’s endured things I bet even you can’t
imagine. And yet, he’s cleaner than any one of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“His heart is pure.” But could it remain that
way if I took over the clan?
I listened to Lalo’s slow footsteps on the
planks of the floor as he came to me. I felt his hand on my
shoulder. He turned me to face him. “So is yours.”
“No. I’m a thief and a whore and a
spy—”
“You’re none of those things, Misha. Not
anymore. And I’m sorry I doubted you.”
His hand was solid and warm on my shoulder,
and I returned the gesture. We were the same height. The same
build. Both of us raised on the streets, but he had the weight of
years upon him. It wasn’t that he looked old, but I could sense the
damage Davlova had done to him. I could see those scars behind his
eyes, and they were far worse than mine.
“Apology accepted. It’s to your credit that
you would try to protect him, even against a friend.”
Lalo smiled. He took both of my hands in his,
holding them between us. He stepped closer. The sunlight through
the open window bathed one side of his face, highlighting his
short, thick eyelashes. “You are my friend. You know that,
right?”
“And you’re mine.”
He ducked his head, staring down at our
clasped hands. “I admit, I’d halfway hoped that you and I might
come to…an arrangement, of sorts.”
I started, pulling away instinctively,
although I immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to hurt his
feelings. But when he looked up at me, there was amusement in his
eyes. He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to declare my undying
love for you.”
“Oh.” The conversation was spinning wildly out
of my control. I searched for footing and found none.
He turned away from me, away from the
brightness of the window, to walk slowly toward his tiny desk, as
if he hoped to wrap himself in the deep shadows of the room. As if
the script for what he needed to tell me might be found on his
desk’s scarred surface. “I’ve been a whore now for more than thirty
years. It makes me sick to think of the number of men I’ve been
asked to service. Of the sheer amount of semen I’ve had dumped into
me in some way or another, and all the things those men have said
to me either before or after they made use of me. Sometimes they
were awful, and sometimes they were kind. But the kindness becomes
as intolerable as the cruelty.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t be. I don’t tell you this to gain
your pity. But it changes you. I don’t think you had to do it long
enough to realize how being a whore warps the way you relate to
people. How it destroys the fabric of intimacy.”
I said nothing, but I thought I understood
what he meant.
“Once Talia was gone, and the whorehouse was
mine, and I realized I never had to let anybody use me like that
again. It was a tremendous relief. It was the greatest gift she
could give me, leaving me in charge. But I began to realize, I’m
terrified of growing old alone.” The color was high on his cheeks
as he turned to face me, but his eyes were unapologetic. “That’s
what it boils down to, Misha. I’m lonely. And I suspect you’re not
the type to demand too much of your lovers. I thought maybe I could
provide enough that you’d be happy with me. I wouldn’t even have
denied you a few dalliances, to be honest. I just…” He shrugged.
“I’d hoped I could convince you to stay.”
It broke my heart. It raised a lump in my
throat. The sun still shone through the window, but I suddenly felt
chilled in that cramped, shadow-filled room. “You’re telling me
that you don’t love me, and you don’t desire me, but you would have
given yourself to me in order to keep me as your
friend?”