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It took me two tries to force my answer out.
“No.”

She ran her hand over hear forehead, leaning
back as if her fury had exhausted her. “Too many, Misha. Too damned
many.”

My hand shook as I finally picked up my drink,
downing it all in one swallow. I placed the empty glass carefully
in the center of the checkered table.

“I’m doing everything I can,” she said, her
voice more gentle than before. “You have to believe that. But the
other governors are fighting me every step of the way, and I need
you now more than ever.”

The weight of obligation was hard to take. I
almost wanted to cry. “I’ll think about it,” I said, as I stood to
leave. “That’s all I can do for now.”

***

“You’re awfully far away,” Lalo said to me the
next morning. I’d made a point of visiting him and insisting on a
game of chess, but he’d now beaten me twice in an embarrassingly
short amount of time. “You want to tell me what’s bothering
you?”

We were in his tiny office with its lone
window overlooking the fourth quadrant toward the sea. I could
barely make out the gargoyles on Anzhéla’s theater from my seat,
and I found my gaze drawn there again and again.

“Anzhéla expects me to take over the
den.”

He froze in the middle of resetting the board,
one pawn in his slender fingers, held an inch or two above its
designated spot on the board. “And?”

“I don’t know if I want it.”

He laughed without much humor. “The whore
becomes an ineffective master of whores. The thief becomes an
unwilling master of thieves.” He set the piece down and raised his
eyebrows at me. “Strange how we become what we hate because it’s
what other expect of us.”

I leaned back in my chair and shook my head.
“It was supposed to be different after the revolution. There was
supposed to be enough of everything to go around. We weren’t
supposed to have to steal to survive.”

He bit his lip to keep from smiling. “Did you
honestly believe that would happen?”

I scrubbed my hands over my face, feeling like
a fool. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought it
through.”

“In your defense, you weren’t the only one.”
He touched the pieces on the board, one by one, as if reassuring
himself they were in the right spots. “And Ayo? What does he
want?”

I sighed. “I haven’t talked to him about
it.”

His surprise was obvious. “Why
not?”

It was hard to explain. On one hand, I knew
Ayo should have a say in what happened to us. On the
other…

“He doesn’t understand. He’s never lived on
the streets. He’s never had to lie or steal. He’ll do whatever I
tell him is best, and he’ll do it without question, but the truth
is, he doesn’t understand the choices.”

“What choices? Do you have other
options?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you have money?”

And that, of course, was the crux of the
issue. Nothing would be certain until I knew what Donato’s safe
contained.

I’d been putting it off ever since we’d
returned to Davlova, but it was time for me to face whatever was
waiting for me on the hill.

“Let me come with you,” Ayo begged later that
day, when I told him my plan. Benny and Hugo’s hammers echoed from
the top floor of the inn. Agnes and Karina would be there with them
because they were afraid Tino would catch them alone in their
hiding place.

Ayo’s request surprised me. “You want to come
with me to Donato’s house? Why would you want to go back
there?”

He glanced away, biting his lip, a slow blush
creeping up his cheeks, and I winced. No matter what kind of master
Donato had been, his house had been Ayo’s home for four years.
Thanks to the Dollhouse’s questionable influence, it was the only
home he remembered. Was it any wonder that he felt compelled to go
back one more time?

“You’re welcome to come, if that’s really what
you want. Truth be told, I’d be glad to have some
company.”

We crossed the plaza together, but I stopped
short at the ruined gate. Ayo passed through without hesitation,
and turned to face me from the other side. “What are you waiting
for?”

How could I explain the unease I felt,
crossing to this side of the city? It had been forbidden to me my
entire life. The only exception had been those months when I’d
worked as Donato’s whore. I’d had to present my pass to the guards
at the gate every time he’d ordered me up for a night of fun.
Walking through unquestioned only emphasized how much my world had
changed.

“Nothing,” I told, forcing myself forward.
“Let’s go.”

I’d only walked to Donato’s house once and
that had been from the temple in the first quadrant. The route from
the plaza gate was longer than I’d realized, much of it uphill. The
fire had taken its toll on the upper city as well as the lower, but
the result was different. Here, houses were widely spaced with
expansive green lawns. There had been no ramshackle tenements or
thatched roofs to help spread the flames. Homes had burned, yes.
But they hadn’t been reduced to nothing but ash and wreckage. Most
of the white stone houses still stood, their windows bleeding
black, showing gutted interiors.

I stopped at last on a broad, familiar street,
lined with similarly haunting houses.

“It’s one of these,” I said
quietly.

“You don’t know which one?”

“I never went in the front door.”

I led him through the alley. When I’d ridden
this way in Donato’s carriage, the path had been clean and clear,
but now it was made almost impassable. We climbed over piles of
burnt rubble, went around one overturned carriage, the charred
remains of a horse still attached to the hitch. Finally, we found
it.

Like all the buildings on the block, Donato’s
once-pristine white house was black with soot. The roof was gone,
but the back door remained. I remembered the way Jenko had
hesitated as we’d left.

It feels strange not to lock the
door behind me.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s disturbed it,”
Ayo said.

“No, it doesn’t.”

We opened the door, and I soon realized why
looters hadn’t bothered to enter. Almost nothing remained of the
inside. Carpet, draperies, furniture, and paintings had provided
ample fuel for the flames. The kitchen was full of piles of
charcoal and ash. The table Jenko had sat at last time I’d entered
was gone completely, as were all of the cabinets and countertops.
Even the walls were missing. The hallway that had led to the dining
room was impossible to locate in the wide, gutted interior of the
home.

I went farther into the ruined space.
Splotches of sunlight dappled the ground, and I looked up to find
that nothing remained of the upper floors. Walls and doorways had
disintegrated, leaving a clear view from the ground to the broad,
blue sky. I’d worried about whether I’d feel obligated to climb the
staircase to the bedroom we’d shared and witness what was left of
his body on the bed.

Donato truly was gone. I was glad. The raging
inferno of his house seemed like a suitable funeral pyre for the
man I’d thought I’d loved.

“I’m not even sure where my room was,” Ayo
said in a hushed voice, as if he were afraid of disturbing his
master’s ghost. “I think it was over there, on the second floor,
but it’s so confusing with all the walls gone.”

“It’s just as well.” I squeezed his hand.
“Let’s find that safe and get the hell out of here.”

We were black from head to toe by the time we
located the battered, metal icebox under the burned rubble in the
kitchen. We shoved it aside and found a square metal door sunk
several inches into the concrete floor. A large round dial ringed
with lines and numbers sat in its center. It appeared to be
undamaged.

“Do you know the combination?” Ayo
asked.

“Yes. He gave it to me that night.” I’d begged
Donato to change his mind and come with me. I’d wanted to flee the
city together, along with Ayo. It had seemed reasonable at the
time, but in hindsight, it was better this way. “Twelve,
thirty-two, fifteen.” I’d never actually seen a safe before. I
squatted and examined the dial.

I had no idea how to work it.

I tried simply turning the knob to each number
in turn, but that didn’t work. I tried extra turns between the
numbers. I tried clockwise and counterclockwise, but the end result
was always the same.

“I don’t know how to open it,” I finally
admitted, falling back against the pile of rubble behind me. “All
this time, I worried somebody had beaten me to it, but it never
occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to get it open.”

“Do you know anybody who could help?” Ayo
asked.

Good question. Did I?

And immediately, the answer came to
me.

Frey. He’d grown up on the hill, and he had a
knack for all things mechanical. The question was, could I trust
him?

My heart said yes.

My gut wasn’t so sure.

***

“Do you think you can find more fruit?” Ayo
asked, as we crossed back into Lower Davlova. “We wanted to make
more turnovers.”

“I had a feeling.” They’d sold out of the
berry turnovers almost immediately, and it’d be several more days
before our new friends went back into Upper Davlova to scout for
more.

I eyed the market. The usual vendors sat by
their wares, some stoic, some hopeful. A few people were shopping,
although I knew from experience, most had no money and sought to
barter for what they needed. Whores, beggars, and pickpockets
lingered on the periphery, desperate as they always were. I didn’t
see Tino, but I knew he’d be there with his cronies, working their
way through the crowd, stopping anybody they didn’t recognize and
demanding to see their shoulders.

“You go back to the inn,” I told him. “I’ll
look for something you can use.”

I waited, watching until I saw him disappear
into the Spotted Goose, ready to intervene if anybody bothered him,
but nobody did.

I waded into the hubbub. There was rumor of a
procession later in the day, which meant the plaza was a bit busier
than usual. I found a woman selling skinned rats and making a tidy
profit because even rat meat was a nice change from fish. I found a
man selling some questionable pink mush which he claimed was beef
tongue, and I found another woman selling horse milk, but not a
single piece of fruit.

Unfortunately, I also found Tino.

Or, more to the point, Tino found
me.

“Hey, you!” Tino called, pushing his way
through the crowd to get to me. “I need to talk to you.”

Seven or eight of his men were with him, and
they quickly moved to surround me. They already had one teenage boy
with them, his hands tied behind his back and his face tear-stained
and bruised. I didn’t even think about running. I wasn’t going to
let Tino intimidate me.

Once he was sure he had everybody’s attention,
Tino put his hands on his hips and leaned back on his heels.
“Where’s your little friend, huh? Not selling turnovers
today?”

“Why?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Hungry?”

“I been hearing rumors about that boy of
yours. I’m wondering if they’re true.”

My heart raced, but I did my best to maintain
the outward appearance of calm. “In my experience, most rumors
aren’t worth the breath it takes to repeat them.”

“Well, these rumors say that lad’s a product
of the Dollhouse.”

My clamoring heart skipped a beat before
bursting into a renewed frenzy. Who could have told them? Certainly
not Ceil or Lalo. Uri knew too, as did Frey and Anzhéla, but I
couldn’t see any of them sharing the information with Tino. That
left only Ayo himself, and the fact was, he wasn’t as quiet about
it as he should have been. It was completely possible he’d told
somebody while selling them a pastry, and the rumor had made its
way back to one of Tino’s thugs.

Tino stood waiting for my answer, with his
feet spread wide, a knowing smile on his face.

I made myself laugh, hoping it sounded
genuine. “The Dollhouse?” I shook my head. “If you believe that,
you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

A few of the onlookers laughed with me, but
Tino didn’t budge. “A fool, am I?”

“Gullible as any babe, I’d say. Next you’ll be
telling us there’s a dragon living atop Priestess Point. Do we need
to sacrifice a virgin?”

Some of the onlookers laughed at this, but
Tino didn’t budge. “If I’m wrong, then bring the boy out here and
prove it. Let us see what’s under his shirt.”

“The Dollhouse doesn’t exist. Everybody knows
it’s a myth. And you’ve already seen Ayo’s shoulder. You know he
isn’t a slave.”

“We checked his shoulder, but we didn’t check
for a Dollhouse mark.”

“Well I assure you, he doesn’t have
one.”

“And we’re just supposed to take your word for
it?”