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Everybody — Tino’s followers and the innocent
bystanders alike — turned toward Tino, waiting to see how he’d
react. His jaw clenched again as he debated whether to let a little
old woman tell him what to do. He wanted to argue, I could tell,
but he’d used all his ammo and come up empty. He wasn’t smart
enough to think of anything else on the fly.

He settled for pointing a dirty finger in
Ceil’s face. “I better not find out you’re lying, old
woman.”

He stalked away. His men went with him,
scowling and rubbing their knuckles at me, posturing to save
face.

“I don’t think you made yourself any friends
just now,” Ceil said to me, but I saw the wicked glint of amusement
in her eyes.

“I wasn’t aiming to.” Embarrassing Tino might
have been a mistake, especially in front of so many people, but he
knew well enough now that I wasn’t from out of town, and I wasn’t
about to be pushed around.

A minute or two later, the drums began. They
were distant, echoing along the Boulevard from the fourth quadrant
into the plaza. The crowd began to buzz in anticipation. I left
Ceil and Ayo with their pastries, drawn into the buzzing hubbub by
my instincts as a thief. My fingers itched to lift a wallet or two,
but I refrained. It wouldn’t be right when I probably had more
money than anybody else in the plaza.

The drums grew louder as the crowd in the
plaza jostled for the best view. I wanted to see what was
happening, but I was reluctant to push my way into that chaotic
throng. I found a stoic-looking vendor, slumped on a three-legged
stool by his cart. He barely glanced up as I approached. He clearly
wasn’t expecting to sell anything. I eyed the goods he had on
display — silver knickknacks and crystal decanters and little glass
bottles of cologne, all of which would have been imported from
overseas.

“I heard no ships had been in from Deliphine
since before the fire,” I said.

“Aye, you heard right. I had all these before
that night. Thought I’d done well to save them, but now I’ll never
be rid of them. Folks who got any money left at all ain’t wastin’
it on trifles.”

No, luxuries like knickknacks and perfume
would have to wait for another day. “I’m afraid I don’t need any
cologne, but I’ll pay for use of your chair.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, clearly not
understanding my intent, but he agreed readily enough when I
flipped a coin his way. Then I climbed on top of his stool to get a
better view of the procession over the heads of the other
onlookers.

The drums resounded through the plaza, echoing
off the walls. Less than a minute later, the first of the
priestesses appeared. They were young, all wearing simple white
dresses, their hair tied back in unadorned braids. They walked in
two rows, moving along the wall of people who lined the Boulevard,
smiling at their audience, reaching out to touch the outreached
hands of the crowd. Behind them came three wagons, pulled by
matching teams of white mares. The wagons in front and back held
the older priestesses, seated on padded benches, facing the crowd.
But the middle wagon was different. It held a platform, designed to
lift its occupant above the mundane hubbub of the crowd. On top of
the platform sat a throne-like chair. And sitting on that
chair…

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “It’s
Dharma.”

I made no effort to connect with Anzhéla,
despite having told Lorenzo that I would. The fact that she was
behind the reinstating of the High Priestess didn’t surprise me,
but I’d assumed the priestesses would have chosen their own leader.
Seeing Dharma in the place of honor in the Procession of the
Priestesses proved otherwise. After all, they certainly wouldn’t
have chosen a mere novice as their elected leader. Somehow or
another, Anzhéla had used her rather significant influence to
expand her own base of power.

It troubled me. On one hand, I knew it
shouldn’t have. I’d been working for her since I was a boy. I’d
seen over and over again how her reach extended deeper into the
city than anybody knew. But somehow, this act felt more treacherous
than the others. I imagined the city like some giant machine, and
each one of us nothing more than one of Anzhéla’s cogs. The more I
thought about it, the less I wanted to do with any of it. And yet,
here I was, back in Davlova. The only life I knew revolved around
her. The theater, Anzhéla, and an entire den full of kids were
waiting for me to step into my rightful place as one of her
underlings, but I wanted something new. Something
more
. It
was an intangible thought, hard as smoke to grasp, but always there
in the back of my mind.

Dharma’s new elevated status also changed my
plans with regard to Ayo’s tattoo. It’d been one thing to walk
unannounced into the temple and ask to see a mere novice. I
suspected an audience with the High Priestess would be much harder
to manage. Besides which, I had to assume that anything Dharma
knew, Anzhéla would know soon after.

I didn’t know what to do, and so I did
nothing. I settled into the semblance of a simple life at the inn
with Ayo. Every day, I took him into the plaza market to search for
fruit or preserves they could turn into pastries. Most of what we
found was bruised at best, wormy at worst, but Ceil and Ayo made
the best of it. I bought him some secondhand clothes, but not too
many. Already, he was beginning to change, his voice deepening,
peach fuzz appearing on his upper lip and at his groin. He was
green as any flat in the crowded market place, an easy mark for any
pickpocket, and I was torn between teaching him how to survive, and
wanting to maintain his innocence. Some dark sense of foreboding
told me it wouldn’t matter either way. With each passing day, I
felt an unwanted presence creeping ever nearer, threatening our
peace. The third line of tattoos on Ayo’s chest had healed, as had
the wound behind his ear, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that
some new evil was brewing.

Tino and his thugs didn’t help. Each day, they
shoved their way through the market in search of the free slaves he
felt sure were the cause of Davlova’s problems, sometimes stopping
people they didn’t recognize and demanding to see their shoulders.
They steered clear of Ayo and me, but that didn’t stop me from
worrying.

At some point, Tino was going to become a
problem.

On the third day after the procession, Frey
arrived at the Spotted Goose.

He came mid-day, the bell above the door
drawing Ayo, Ceil and me from the back room of the inn. He looked
the same always, dressed in men’s clothes that hid the underlying
feminine nature of his body. He wore heavy work boots. His hair was
shorn short, revealing the scars behind his right ear. I’d almost
dreaded running into him, but now, seeing him filled me with an
unexpected sense of happiness. I really had come home.

“Misha,” he said, pulling me into a tight hug.
“Thank the Goddess you’re safe.”

Only a few months before, I would never have
imagined him showing any real interest in my wellbeing, let alone
embracing me. But somehow, my time serving Donato had brought me
closer to Frey while moving me away from Anzhéla. I gladly returned
his embrace. “I’m glad you’re safe as well.”

“Lorenzo said you were in Deliphine?” he
asked, as he released me.

“We had a run-in with the
Dollhouse.”

His eyebrows rose. “And yet you escaped
unscathed?”

I glanced at Ayo, who was hanging back as if
hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. “Mostly,” I said, opting to change
the subject. “And you? You found Anzhéla?”

He scowled. “We did.”

I remembered what Lorenzo had said about the
state they’d found her in. “And she’s all right?”

“She’s a rock. It’d take somebody stronger
than Benedict to break her.” His gaze slid away from mine to land
on Ayo. “This is the boy you went after?”

“Yes. Ayo, this is Frey.”

Ayo barely responded. He simply stared at Frey
until Frey stepped forward and held out his hand. Ayo seemed
terrified, although I had no idea why. He hesitated, but finally
reached out and shook Frey’s hand.

“He talks, right?” Frey joked, turning to me,
and, as he did, he revealed the scars behind his ear to
Ayo.

Ayo gasped, his eyes going wide, his
unexplained wariness suddenly gone. “You have one too.”

A wrinkle appeared on Frey’s brow. “One
what?”

Ayo pointed with a shaking hand toward Frey’s
ear, then reached back to touch the spot behind his own ear. The
wound had healed well, and his hair mostly covered his scars, but
his meaning was clear.

Frey stiffened at the mention of his implant,
his smile becoming forced. “It’s from a long time ago.”

Ayo glanced at me, a question in his eyes, and
I took a chance. It wasn’t my secret to reveal, but I suspected
Frey wouldn’t mind Ayo knowing. “Frey found a way to deactivate
his.”

Ayo’s already wide eyes grew larger. “How? Can
you do it for me too?”

Frey shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “It’s
not something I’d want to try. I nearly died.”

“But it worked?” Ayo swallowed hard. “The
program, I mean. Is it all gone?”

“Yes.”

“And the black spot?”

Frey blinked, then grimaced as understanding
dawned. He shook his head, wiping his hand over his forehead.
“Black spot,” he said, more to himself than to us. He shook his
head again and rubbed his eyes before meeting Ayo’s questioning
gaze. “I’d kind of forgotten about that, but yeah. It’s gone
too.”

“See?” Ayo said, turning to me. “They lied,
Misha. If the program was gone, I wouldn’t still have the black
spot.”

“Maybe,” I conceded. I wanted to believe that
it was only because of the more subtle suicide block the Dollhouse
had left in place, but I suspected he was right. There was more
going on here than we knew. But I could tell Frey had arrived on
business, and that business didn’t include hashing out his
past.

I glanced toward Ceil, and to my relief, she
took my hint.

“Come on, boy,” she said to Ayo. “Those
turnovers won’t bake themselves, and there’s laundry to be brought
in from the line too.”

Ayo hesitated, glancing at me once before
relenting and following her toward the back of the inn, leaving
Frey and me alone.

“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing him to one of
the bare tables. “I’d offer you a drink, but—”

He laughed and held up a hand to stop me. “I
know, there’s nothing left in the city but water from the cisterns,
and even that’s filled with ash.” He hooked a chair leg with his
booted toe and slid it out, straddling it backward to face me. “I
was inclined to let you avoid us forever, but Anzhéla insisted I
track you down.”

I sank slowly into the chair opposite him. “I
wasn’t avoiding you.”

“You sure?” There was no venom in the words
though. He smiled at me as he absentmindedly twisted one of the
rings on his slim, delicate fingers. “You understand the clan and
the theater are yours if you want them?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t want them, do you?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, wishing I had
an answer. “I don’t know. I thought so before. I always assumed
Anzhéla would promote me eventually. I hoped she’d give me a job
that meant more than picking pockets, but now…” I glanced toward
the back of the inn. “I thought coming home would be the start of
something new. Something real.”

“And running the den isn’t real?” he asked,
incredulous.

“I have Ayo to think of now.”

“Exactly. I can’t think of a more perfect
example of why you should be the one to take Anzhéla’s place at the
theatre.” He leaned forward and placed a warm hand on my shoulder.
“You care, Misha. You know what it’s like for those kids on the
street. You know how much they need somebody to take care of
them.”

“By turning them into criminals?”

“It’s better than being shipped to a workhouse
overseas, or sold as a slave. Better than starving to death in some
stinking alley, or being forced to turn tricks to make ends
meet.”

I shook my head, frustrated by inability to
explain myself. “Everything was supposed to be different after the
wall came down,” I said at last. “We weren’t supposed to need to
keep being thieves and whores to survive.”

“Change takes time. Nothing happens overnight.
Anzhéla’s doing everything she can, but she’s facing a lot of
resistance. That’s why she’s so anxious to have you back. She needs
people she can trust.”

“She
can
trust me,” I said, wondering
if it were true.

“Yes. But can she
rely
on you? Because
those aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

The soft sound of Ayo’s laughter reached my
ears, feeding that inexplicable sense of longing I felt in my gut.
How could I explain that after a lifetime of living in the shadows,
I suddenly craved sunlight and afternoons spent swimming in the
sea? How could I put into words the nagging certainty that there
was more to life than what I’d been taught?

“She’s requesting that you meet with her the
day after tomorrow to talk about your options. Will you
come?”