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“Right.” Although I still wasn’t sure. And
more importantly, I wasn’t sure what else I could possibly do. I
still had a decent amount of money left, but it wouldn’t last
forever. I thought once again of the safe on the hill.

“I want you to know, Misha, whatever you
decide — whatever answer you give her — I’ll back you, one hundred
percent.”

“Against Anzhéla? Why would you do
that?”

“Three reasons.” He held up a finger. “One:
because you did your job and you did it well.” He ticked off a
second finger. “Two: because I owe you. You got me through the wall
so I could find Anzhéla before Benedict did any real damage. I’ll
always owe you for that. And three…” He stopped, biting his lip.
Outside, thunder echoed through the plaza. When Frey spoke again,
his voice was quiet and strained. “Because I understand wanting
out.”

I heard more in his voice than mere sympathy.
This was
empathy
. I blinked in surprise. Frey’s dedication
to Anzhéla had never wavered. Or was it only that I hadn’t known
him well enough to know about it?

“You’re having doubts too?”

“Saying it out loud makes me feel like a
traitor, but yeah, I guess things aren’t how I expected either.” He
winced, still fidgeting with his rings. “We had such dreams for
this city once the gate came down, but it’s all gone to shit. The
new governors are nothing but a bunch of corrupt fools. I guess
that shouldn’t surprise me, but I’d hoped it’d be different this
time around.”

“And Anzhéla? Is she a corrupt fool
too?”

A slow flush moved up his cheeks. “It’s a hard
line to walk, between working with them or setting herself so far
against them that they force her out. She’s always been a
powerhouse, and she isn’t about to let them beat her at her own
game.”

“You didn’t quite answer my
question.”

He laughed dryly. “I know. Mostly because I
don’t know what to say.” He shook his head. “Goddess, I don’t know
anything anymore. I’ve stood by her all these years. I’ve loved her
for so long, I can’t even remember what it’s like not to. I never
thought I’d start to question her, but this path she’s on…” With
the skies so dark outside, it felt like our little inn was the only
spot of light in Davlova. “It was one thing being in the trenches,
taking in orphans, thinking we were doing some good, but now?” He
finally met my gaze. “I hate the hill and every damned thing it
stands for. I always have. It’s hard for me to reconcile that with
the woman I fall asleep next to every single night.”

“Will you stay with her?”

Frey sighed and focused on his rings again,
uncomfortable with such a personal question but clearly needing to
say it. “I won’t leave her. But… I don’t know. Nothing’s the same.
Before the revolution, I had a job, you know? I had a purpose.
Now?” He sighed, sounding defeated. “I can’t help her with this new
fight. Truth is, I’m a hindrance. She won’t say it outright, but I
know it’s true.”

“Why would that be?”

“Because of who I am.” He touched the small
bald spots behind his right ear. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m
not a man. I’m not a woman, either. I’m some kind of sideshow
freak. It’s hard enough for her trying to get those pricks to
respect her as a woman. Then they see who she takes to her
bed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m used to it from people like
them.”
But not from her.
It remained unspoken, but it hung
in the air between us. He sighed again. “I’m not used to feeling
like such a third wheel.”

It unnerved me to see Frey so lost, and for a
moment, we didn’t speak. We just sat there listening to the rain on
the roof and the slow rumble of thunder. I glanced toward the
plaza, struck again by the distinct lack of light. No silver glow
of electric bulbs from the hill. No flickering yellow light from
the streetlamps in the lower city. Nothing but darkness, as far as
the eye could see.

“What about the electricity? Certainly they
could use your help with that?”

“Maybe. Not that they’d ever ask. But the
truth is, I already looked into it. The wires were all fried by the
fire. The generators are ruined. Even if I could get the
transformers running, it’d take an army of men to get everything
connected again.” We both turned toward the plaza, as if expecting
help to appear, but an army was nowhere in sight.

“I have to get back.” Frey’s chair scraped
noisily across the floor as he stood, turning away
self-consciously. He’d said too much, and now he wanted to distance
himself from everything. He opened the front door of the inn and
stood in the opening without looking back. “Will you and Ayo come?”
he asked.

“Yes,” I promised. “We’ll be
there.”

Ceil and Ayo appeared as Frey left. Ayo’s
cheeks were red from the wind, his hair a wild tangle around his
head, his smile so bright and full of joy, it made me
ache.

“It’s really windy out there!” he called as he
raced up the stairs with a basket of laundry. “We almost lost my
best pants.”

I felt Ceil’s patronizing gaze on me as I
watched him disappear. I heard the door to our room bang
shut.

“So…” Ceil pulled a rag from below the bar and
began wiping it, even though there wasn’t a spot of dirt on it.
“Another summons from Anzhéla, huh?”

“Were you listening?”

“Aye, I ain’t above a bit of snoopin’. Had the
impression the last meeting with her didn’t go so well, but she’s
asking for you again. You must be more valuable to her than you
like to admit.”

I hadn’t ever told Ceil the details of my
past, but she was too smart to let much get past her. I rubbed a
hand over the back of my neck, debating how much I dared say. “You
know Anzhéla?”

“I know
of
her. So does anybody in this
town who keeps their ears open, I reckon. Some think she’s a
savior, lifting us up out of our own mire.”

“And others?”

She tossed the rag over her shoulder. “Others
say she’s just one more person grabbing for power, not noticing who
she steps on her way up the hill.”

“And what do you think?”

She shrugged and moved to one of the tables,
straightening the chairs. Nobody had sat there in the entire time
we’d been staying at the inn, but she wiped it down anyway. “I say
you’re a paying customer, and few enough of those to spare. I won’t
go disparaging the woman if you’re one of hers. I had a feeling
maybe you were, what with Frey coming around so much.”

I turned away to stare out the window at the
plaza, and at the remains of the building that had once housed a
pack of street kids like me. Right up until Benedict’s thugs had
raided it. They’d killed some and dragged others off to be sold as
slaves in Deliphine. I’d sat next to Lalo in this very spot and
watched it go down.

“She saved me. I was out there on the streets,
and she took me in.”

“Aye. Put you to work too, I
think.”

Of course she had. What else could she do?
Feeding a den full of kids meant having food, and that meant she
needed an income. “Up until her, I was a victim.”

“And after her, you were a
criminal.”

Anger flared in my chest, and I turned to
confront her. But she held up a hand to stop me.

“You did what you had to do. You think I ain’t
let my rooms to men worse than you?”

I subsided, scratching my fingernail on the
rough, pitted wood of the table. “She wants me to take over the
den.”

“Trainin’ pickpockets, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“I’m not sure I have a choice.”

“So maybe you used to be a thief.” She jerked
her head toward the hill. “Worse criminals been up there lording it
over us, running this city to the ground for longer than I been
breathing. A few pickpockets ain’t the worst of it, but they ain’t
the solution either. You fight fire with fire, lots of folks come
away burned.”

The blackened ruins of the city were testament
to that. Still… I’d lived on the streets. I’d seen how the trenches
worked. You were either a predator, or you were prey.

“What choice is there? You join them or you
fight them. Take or get taken. Steal or be robbed.”

She narrowed her wrinkled brow at me. “That
what you think?”

“It’s what I’ve seen.”

“It’s what you were taught to see.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I ain’t judging you, boy, so stop being
snappish. What you done for Anzhéla as a boy, you had to do.
Someone held out a hand and you took it. Can’t fault you for
that.”

But her tone told me she wasn’t done. “But
now?” I prodded.

“Now? It’s up to you. You got money, clothes
on your back, and that boy to take care of. I’m just saying you
might consider all your options before agreeing to waste your life
as Anzhéla’s errand boy.”

I laughed. “It was being her errand boy that
got me the money and the clothes.” And Ayo too, for that
matter.

“Aye, that and a whole lot of trouble with
Miguel Donato. You’re lucky you got away with your life. Don’t you
think you done enough?”

She had a point, and so did Frey. I’d done my
job. I’d spied on Donato while working as his whore. I’d delivered
the info that ignited the civil war. I’d let them use me, body and
soul. Yes, Anzhéla had lifted me out of the gutter more than
thirteen years earlier, but at what point did my obligation to her
end?

“What other choice do I have?”

“The same choice the rest of us got. Look
around you. Folks are trying to rebuild this city, and what help
are they getting? They have new governors up there on the hill,
talking ’til they’re blue, but not doing a thing. They got thieves
and looters stealing everything they see, and thugs like Tino
claimin’ it’s their right, and meanwhile nothing but a few rats and
piles of fish to eat. But I’ll tell you what…there’s still plenty
of us here, trying to make a living. Trying to get this city back
on its feet.”

Not fast enough though. Davlova would die
before any real progress was made. How could she not? We had no
usable lumber. No nails. No soap. No tools. No workers except the
whores. No buyers except those people who’d hoarded away money in
one way or another, often at the expense of the lower
city.

“It was supposed to be different after the
revolution.”

“Can’t build a life on ‘supposed to.’” She
shrugged. “The mayors. The hill. The slavers in Deliphine. The
nobles with their tattooed faces. They’re all the same. Now we got
this new batch, trying to take control. Anzhéla’s just another in a
long line. Didn’t start with her. Won’t end with her either. The
machine keeps rumbling on. That don’t mean you got to be part of
it. Don’t mean you got to be caught under its wheels,
neither.”

I turned away, pondering her words. The plaza
was empty now, visible only when the lightning flared, but I’d
spent half my life there. I knew how it looked on any given day.
The pickpockets and their guileless marks. The whores and their
skulking johns. And always, lurking amongst them, the soulless
victims of the trenches, hiding with their sunken eyes in the
alleys, waiting for nothing more than for somebody to end their
pain.

But for the first time in my life, I looked
beyond them all. I pictured the innkeepers trying to rebuild their
rooms, even though nobody was renting. I saw the barkeeps watering
down what beer they had left, ready for the next customer, and the
tailors with their racks of fabric, waiting for somebody who could
afford to waste what money they had left on new clothes. And among
them, the men and women clearing rubble, scrubbing soot from the
walls, dragging lumber, scrounging for iron to take to the
blacksmith so nails and tools could be made, waiting for their
lives to start again.

Anzhéla had housed me. She’d fed me. She’d
taught me a trade. But Davlova was my true mistress. She’d been
beaten and burned, but her heart was strong. She lay there beneath
the rubble, ready to rise again, but somebody had to fight for her.
Somebody had to take a stand, even if what that really meant was
backing away from the only life I’d ever known and reaching for
something new.

I had money. I had a boat. I had
Ayo.

And now, I had the beginnings of a
plan.

***

I found Ayo tucking the last of our folded
laundry into a dresser drawer. It surprised me how readily he’d
embraced his new role as Ceil’s assistant. It reinforced my belief
that maybe we could make a simple life together, away from Anzhéla
and her theater. But my promise to see her for dinner the next day
caused doubt to creep into my heart. The rain had abated, but the
storm wasn’t over. The electricity in the air and some dark sense
of foreboding told me we were in the eye, merely waiting for the
brunt of the gale to descend upon Davlova. Our room was strangely
silent as I sank onto our bed, thinking about Frey and the money
that might be hidden in Donato’s safe on the hill, and about the
joy on Ayo’s face as he learned to make apple turnovers.