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“You want me to believe the implants are
good?”

“Not at all.” He smiled, and, once again, I
had the distinct impression he was enjoying himself. “But I’d have
you believe they’re not bad, either.” He must have seen the
skepticism on my face, because he pushed on before I could respond.
“The chips themselves have no moral ramifications whatsoever.
They’re nothing more than a tool.”

“A tool that alters people’s perception of
reality and changes their behavior.”

“Imagine you found a piece of wood on the
street. Would you immediately define it as bad? Of course not. Any
judgment you’d make would come from how you used it. You might use
it to patch your roof, or to build a fire in your hearth. In those
cases, the board is good. But what if you used it to beat somebody
to death? Is it the board that’s bad?”

“Of course not, but—”

“The board itself is only a tool.
Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said, grudgingly.

“And what if rather than use the board
yourself, you sold it? Perhaps you had no need for it, but somebody
else did, so he bought it from you. It’s money in your pocket, so
you’d call that good.”

“I suppose,” I admitted. “But…“

“But what if he then turned around and used it
to beat his wife? You’ve now aided in that crime. Are you as guilty
as he?”

“You’re confusing the issue.”

“Am I? I’d argue that you’re over-simplifying
it.”

I covered my eyes with my hand, wanting to
block out the world. Ayo’s face rose in my mind, his eyes innocent,
but his forehead bleeding from ramming it against the bedpost.
“They’ve taken his entire life from him. Erased everything. Taken
away his ability to determine his own fate.”

“Yes, but that’s the Dollhouse you’re talking
about, not the chip.”

“But it’s the chip that allows them to control
him.”

“How do you know they didn’t help him too?
Maybe his childhood was wretched?”

I shook my head. Tool or not, I hated the idea
of them tampering with his brain. “I can’t imagine any scenario in
which an implant is the best option.”

“Really? Not even in Rhianne’s
case?”

“Being made into a whore?”

“She’s not a whore,” he said, his voice
hardening for the first time since I’d returned to his home. “And
I’d ask you not to disrespect her again.”

I remembered Rhianne’s genuine delight when
I’d asked if she was happy. Less than an hour earlier, I’d been
able to admit to myself that I’d nearly accepted the same deal as
Rhianne, only with a much crueler master. I'd once been paraded
around La Fontaine with a velvet leash around my neck. Who was I to
judge her? I ducked my head, feeling somewhat chastened. “You’re
right. I’m sorry.”

“As someone who’s obviously been witness to
what happens in the slums, I’d think you’d appreciate the comforts
she’s been afforded. Many women would envy her
position.”

Plenty of men too, myself included, but I kept
that thought to myself. I’d given plenty to Donato, and he’d never
even known my name. “You call her your wife. Did you really marry
her?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t have to, no, but I wanted a partner,
not a slave. She serves me in more ways than one, and in return,
she has status, money, and a peace of mind few of us will ever
achieve. I removed the worst moments of her life from her memory,
at her request. I gave her the happy family she always dreamed of.
Does that not qualify as good?”

Did it? I couldn’t answer that.

“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 thought immediately of my mother, lying
naked on a bed, her legs spread wide, her eyes open and lifeless.
It was a memory that haunted me, not only because it was the day my
life changed forever, but because the memory itself felt like a
violation of everything she’d been. Every decent memory I had of
her was tainted by that last glimpse of her body.

And yet, without that memory, I wouldn’t be
me. To lose it would be to forget the injustice done to her. But
did knowledge of that injustice do either of us any good now? Was
it not also a disservice to her memory, having the years of love
she’d given me be overshadowed by that one horrific
sight?

It was too much. I was exhausted, both
physically and mentally, and sick with worry over Ayo. The moral
implications of neural implants were more than I could even begin
to fathom. The thought of trying to unravel it was almost enough to
make me cry.

I stared out over Deliphine. This part of the
city was relatively clean, but it didn’t feel any less foul. If
anything, it felt even more foreign. It felt like being on the hill
back in Davlova.

“I can’t stay here,” I said.

“I promised them you wouldn’t leave
town.”

“And I won’t,” I assured him. “Not without
Ayo. You know that. But I’d rather find my own rooms.”

He didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter to me.
It wasn’t a question.

It took me only a minute to gather our
belongings — both mine and Ayo’s, because the Dollhouse thugs
hadn’t given him a chance to take his small bundle of clothing.
Gideon stopped me at the door.

“Don’t go past the canal. It’s far too
dangerous down there.”

I wondered if he would have considered the
trenches “far too dangerous.” But this wasn’t Davlova. I knew
nobody here. I didn’t know the alleys or the rules of the street.
I’d be foolish to ignore his warning. “I won’t.”

“Let me know where you end up. Please. They’ll
want to know.”

I would rather the Dollhouse not know where I
was, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of bargaining power. I checked
the sun, falling fast toward the western horizon. “I’ll stop by
first thing in the morning and tell you where I’m
staying.”

He didn’t like it, I could tell. But he didn’t
stop me, and he didn’t demand an explanation. I was glad, mostly
because I barely had one to offer. I only knew that somewhere in
the city, the clean, manicured lawns of the rich would give way to
the ramshackle huts of the poor. And in those seedier areas was a
life I knew how to live. I still had money — some my own and some
given to me by Jenko — but I had no idea how long it would last. It
didn’t matter. Anzhéla had always stressed that the skills she
taught us could be used in any city. Picking pockets was the same,
anywhere in the world. It wasn’t a job I wanted to undertake, but
it was something I was willing to fall back on, if
necessary.

And for now, at least, it seemed the only
thing I could do was wait.

I found an inn only a few blocks from Gideon’s
house, nestled into the corner of an open plaza. The neighborhood
wasn’t as nice as Gideon’s, but still nicer than Jenko’s had been.
My room was small, but clean, with a shared bathroom at the end of
the hall.

The next day, my thoughts were with the
Miredhel. I knew how to get to her from Jenko’s tenement, but I
didn’t know how to get to Jenko’s except from Gideon’s house, which
was ridiculously out of the way from my inn. I needed to scope out
a direct route so I’d be ready to go the minute I had Ayo
back.

And if that never happened? If the Dollhouse
sold him to a new buyer instead? I had no idea what I’d do. I could
try to track him down, but chances were they’d have wiped me from
his memory. If that happened, I’d be going home alone without the
one person in my life who made me want to wake up again each
day.

I wasn’t ready to face what that meant quite
yet.

I returned to Gideon’s as promised, but
declined his invitation to come inside. Instead, I stood on his
doorstep and asked for directions to the market Jenko had led Ayo
and I through on our first day in the city. “I know it’s that
direction,” I said, pointing. I knew where it was in relation to
Dead Man Bridge. “But is there any reason I shouldn’t pass straight
through it?”

The question intrigued him, I could tell, but
he was polite enough not to ask why I needed to go that far when
there was a market right outside my inn. He pointed
north-northwest. “See the spire? It’s narrow, so it’s hard to see,
but it’s just to the right of that water tower?”

It took a bit of searching, but I finally
found the landmark he was pointing to.

“That’s a temple of the Duo. Stay to the west
of it until you pass the graveyard. Then you can cut back to the
east. During the day, you might be safe enough either way, but if
you want to play it safe, that’s the way I’d go.”

I followed his directions, veering west of the
ornate temple as Gideon had instructed, paying careful attention to
landmarks as I went. I found the river and headed east, but after
nearly ten minutes of walking I realized I’d miscalculated and
turned around. Fifteen minutes later, I found the market, and from
there I was able to backtrack to the docks.

I’d worried since we’d left Jenko’s that the
yacht would somehow disappear, or that the supplies we’d stocked
her with would be stolen, but everything was as we’d left it. I
spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon working out
the quickest route between my inn and the dock before returning to
my room, where I paced the floor until well after
midnight.

The next day was unbearably hot, and I woke
restless and irritable. Deliphine’s waste-strewn streets and
gutters reeked more than ever. I feared I’d never be free of the
smell. I’d thought living in my own element would soothe my nerves,
but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. By noon, my confinement
had become too tedious to bear. I spent nearly every moment
brooding over Ayo, wondering if I’d gambled everything only to lose
him to the Dollhouse. If so, I’d killed the man I loved, and helped
burn Davlova to the ground for nothing. When I managed to push Ayo
and Donato from my thoughts, it was only to worry about the state
of things in Davlova, and to wonder how many of my friends had
survived. But there was nothing to be gained by sitting in my room,
anguishing over things I couldn’t control, so on the third day, I
took to the streets.

The open market outside my hotel was slightly
smaller than the one in Davlova’s central plaza. In some ways, it
felt unbelievably foreign. There were too many languages spoken.
The food was far different than what I was used to, with more
options than I’d ever imagined, many of them too spicy for my
palate. There were three different types of currency in
circulation, only one of which I was familiar with. But no matter
how out of place I felt, some things were the same. Whores were
still whores. Thieves were still thieves. And more often than not,
pockets were still left unguarded. I lifted the first wallet before
I’d even realized I was going to do it, as if my fingers made the
decision without consulting my brain. The second one, I planned,
scoping out a mark and tailing him carefully until the moment was
right. When his purse slid free of his pocket and into mine, I
nearly laughed out loud. It wasn’t even that I needed the money. It
was more about occupying my mind. Or about reclaiming something I’d
lost.

Still, it wouldn’t do to find myself in a
Deliphine jail, and this wasn’t like all those years in the den,
when my survival depended on what I stole. There was no need to get
greedy. I limited myself to two wallets per day. The rest of the
time, I dedicated to observation, in an attempt to become more
familiar with the city that held me hostage.

Or, at the very least, with the neighborhood
immediately surrounding my inn.

The plaza held the usual vendors — gloves,
colognes, wallets, scarves — and was surrounded by the usual inns,
shops, and taverns. There was a bookseller, a map shop, and a
blacksmith. There was also a juggling troupe, a wild-eyed preacher,
and a mime, who I quickly learned to avoid. Policemen walked the
beat at predictable intervals, making it easy for thieves to rotate
opposite them, ridding flats of their wallets as they went. The
heat wave had continued unabated, baking the piles of garbage in
the alleyways, bloating the corpses of rats, cats, and humans
alike. The rankness of the city seemed to increase with each
passing minute, as did the tempers of the plaza’s
patrons.

Foreign or not, the plaza still managed to
remind me of home.

At least two clans worked the area. I learned
to identify one by the hand signals they gave. They were clumsy
about it, and so obvious they would have earned a serious reprimand
in Anzhéla’s den. The other group was more subtle. Definitely
better organized. By my third day in the courtyard, I began to
recognize faces, and to notice the way they made eye contact with
each other every so often. But they were observant too, and that
worked against me. By the fifth day, I knew two of the older kids
were tailing me.

I knew how territory worked. The problem was,
I had no way of knowing if I was stepping on toes or not. It was
entirely possible the plaza was fair game. It wasn’t as if I could
walk up and ask them. Still, I wasn’t surprised when they
approached me. One stood in front of me, blocking my way. The other
stayed behind me, in case I tried to run. I judged them to be a
couple years younger than me, but no less dangerous for their
apparent youth. They were certainly old enough and big enough to do
serious damage, if that was their intent.