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I shrugged. “Live in the trenches long enough,
you learn to sense it. Another minute or two, you would have
figured it out yourself.”

He nodded slowly, glancing at Ayo, then back
at me. He held out a dusty, calloused hand for me to shake. “I’m
Uri.”

“Misha. And this is Ayo.”

Uri shook Ayo’s hand too, but with the mock
solemnity grown men so often used with children. Ayo didn’t seem to
mind. Uri gestured with a jerk of his head toward his empty bar. “I
got the last barrel of whiskey in Davlova. Don’t suppose you’re
interested in buying a drink?”

I wasn’t, but I recognized a potential ally
when I found one. “Sure. Why not?”

He poured a generous measure for me, and
produced a jar of watered-down cider, which he offered to Ayo. The
price was reasonable too, proving he was at least honest enough not
to gouge the few customers he had.

I gestured through the tavern’s dirty window
toward Tino. “So what’s he complaining about, anyway?”

“Same thing everybody complains about. How the
whole damn world ain’t gettin’ in line to suit him. Telling
everyone who’ll listen how we’re all getting the shaft. It’s the
same as before the wall came down, always searching for somebody
else to blame for their problems. Difference is, we all used to
look up to the hill for folks to blame. Now, Uri’s looking
down.”

“Down?” Ayo asked, frowning. “What do you
mean?”

“Freed slaves,” Uri answered as he tipped a
bit more cider into Ayo’s empty glass, not noticing the way Ayo
shrank away at the words.

“The freed slaves are a problem?” I
asked.

Uri pulled a stained towel from behind the bar
and flipped it over his shoulder. “Depends on who you ask. There’s
probably a hundred of them or so wandering the city. They got no
money, no property, no place to live, and no clue what to do with
themselves now that their masters are dead. Some of them are
working and some are begging. And the rest?” He shrugged. “Who
knows. That fool out there seems to think if we get rid of them,
life’ll suddenly be nothing but rainbows and free
pussy.”

“Seems a bit simplistic.”

“Ha! Well, that’s Tino all right.
Simplistic.”

We fell silent, all three of us watching the
spectacle outside the window as Ayo and I drank. Uri was clearly
disappointed when I stood after finishing the first
glass.

“Leaving already?”

I couldn’t blame him for hoping I’d buy more.
“We want to find a place to stay before it gets too late in the
day.”

“Try the Spotted Goose, half a block north.
It’s nothing fancy, but the lady who runs it’s honest at
least.”

“Thank you. I will. And maybe I’ll see you
again.”

Tino was still preaching from his box when Ayo
and I left the tavern. The crowd around him had thinned, but he
still had a few listeners. Curious, I moved a bit closer until I
could hear his speech. His goons stood behind him, one on each
side. One looked mean. The other seemed mildly embarrassed. Behind
them all, in the blackened doorway of a gutted building, a whore
stood listening, her eyes wide. She wore an artfully torn dress, as
so many whores did, but it hung loose on her bony frame. She
glanced furtively over her shoulder at somebody inside. She was
young — too young to be whore, but not the youngest I’d ever seen
turning tricks — and I wondered if she was talking to her
clanmates.

Tino’s diatribe rose in pitch, his eyes raking
the crowd, finding mine for only a moment before moving on. “It’s
not enough we have no work and no food,” he yelled to those
listening. “Now we have to share what little we have with freed
slaves!”

Not everybody responded enthusiastically, but
a few of his listeners made sounds of support. Ayo moved as though
to hide behind me.

“It was those rich pigs on the hill who
brought the slaves here to begin with. I say we round them all up
and sell them back across the sea!”

I’d heard enough. I thought of Ayo’s tattoos —
not on his shoulder, like the marks on most slaves, but still
telling enough to inspire a bit of curiosity. I was suddenly glad
for that treacherous bit of paper in my pocket that proved he
belonged with me.

“The farther away we are from him, the
better.” I told Ayo as I took his hand and turned him away from the
crowd.

We headed north again, much as Lalo and I had
done the day of the raid. We came to the Spotted Goose, which
turned out to be a familiar wooden door under a crooked sign. The
inn didn’t look much different now than it had that day. I tried
the door, expecting to find it locked, but it wasn’t.

“What is it?” Ayo asked.

“Let’s try here.”

He glanced skeptically at the broken shutters
on the front windows, but followed me inside. The bell over the
door tinkled, announcing our arrival, just as it had when I’d come
in with Lalo. The innkeeper came from the back room. She hadn’t
changed either. Her hair might have been a bit more grey, or it
might have been the light. She put her large-knuckled fists on her
hips and glared at me. “If you’re here to ask for protection money,
you can turn right back around and leave, and tell Tino my
answer’ll be the same tomorrow too.”

“I don’t work for Tino, and I’m not here to
ask for money.”

“Well, that makes you unique enough.” She
frowned at me, cocking her head to one side. “Do I know
you?”

“Not really.”

“But you’re familiar.”

“I was here the day of the raid.”

Her eyes darkened, but I didn’t think the
expression had anything to with me personally. “Aye. You’re the one
who warned me.” She glanced out the front windows, as if expecting
to see more unrest. As if maybe I’d brought trouble with me to the
plaza.

“We need a room.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. I suspected
she was remembering the coin I’d tossed her in exchange for letting
us stay while Benedict’s men carried out their raid. “For how
long?”

“I’m not sure. A couple of nights, at least.
Maybe as much as a week.”

“Can you pay?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can have your pick.” She glanced at
Ayo, standing silently behind me. “Two rooms?”

“One,” Ayo said.

She frowned and turned a disapproving eye my
way. I’d half expected this. After all, I was in my early twenties.
Ayo was nearly my age, but nobody would know it by looking at him.
He appeared to be no more than fourteen.

“It’s not how it looks,” I told
her.

She pursed her lips. “Well, truth be told, I’d
be a fool to let my misgivings get in the way of business.” She
went behind the rough wooden counter in the corner and emerged with
a ring of keys. She started up the stairs, signaling us to follow.
“Water comes from the basin on the roof. It’s still black with ash,
but that won’t be any different at any other inn in the
city.”

“Did you get much damage?”

“Nowhere near as bad as some, but enough.”
We’d reached the landing on the second floor, and she gestured up
to the next level, toward the back of the building. “Lost part of
the roof and the back wall. ’Course there’s no good lumber to be
had. I’ve been trying to scavenge some usable wood from the ruins,
but it’s slow work. And the fact is, I’m too damn old. I dragged a
few boards back last week. Damn near killed me, and when I woke up
the next mornings, some asshole’d stolen ’em. Beginning to think
I’ll never get that roof fixed. I’d hoped to sell this place by
spring and go back to Layola, but Goddess knows I’ll never be rid
of it now.” She sighed and led us down the hallway to the second
door on the right. “This is my best room, and the only one with a
private bath, ’though it ain’t nothing fancy.”

The room was simple, but comfortable, with a
faded patchwork quilt on the bed and dried flowers in a vase on the
dresser. The window overlooked the plaza, which was now mostly in
shadow. Opposite us, the fourth quadrant was visible, much flatter
and blacker than it should have. I didn’t want to face the
trenches, but it wasn’t worth objecting. “This’ll be
fine.”

Ayo didn’t share my misgivings. “It’s
perfect!” he said, sounding more excited than he had all day. He
leaned precariously over the windowsill to stare at the sidewalk
below while I haggled with the woman — whose name was Ceil — over
the price of the room.

“That includes breakfast,” she told me. “’Bout
all I’ve got is hard biscuits and a bit of marmalade. But…” She
smiled mischievously. She had shrewd eyes, and I suspected that
once upon a time, she’d been a knockout. “I do have a bit of tea
left.”

“I take it tea’s hard to come by these
days?”

“It is.” She shook a knobby finger at me. “So,
don’t you go shoutin’ it about, or the greedy bastards’ll steal
that too. I was gonna sell it if I got desperate, but I’d rather
use it on paying customers.”

“I appreciate that.”

“They’d really steal your tea?” Ayo asked,
turning to face us from his place by the window.

She eyed him, as if suspecting he was coddling
her, but his eyes were too open and honest for that. “Aye. They
will. They’ll steal any damn thing that ain’t nailed down. And even
that, they’ll go after if they got an extra minute.” She shook her
head. “There’s looting going on all over the damn place. It’s a
disgrace.”

“But,” Ayo went on, “like you said, you’re
old. Shouldn’t they be helping you rather than robbing
you?”

If Ceil was upset at Ayo’s assessment of her
age, it didn’t show. Her laugh was dry and bitter. “You’d think,
wouldn’t you? There’s a few honest people trying to help, thank the
Goddess, but not nearly as many as are helpin’
themselves.”

“So much for the power of a united
underclass,” I muttered.

She snorted. “Don’t know why you’re surprised.
This city was corrupt before that wall came down. A bit of fire
ain’t gonna change that.”

And with that, she left us with our faded
bedspread and our view of the gutted trenches.

It only took us a minute to stow our few
things in the room, after which we wandered back downstairs and
into the plaza in search of dinner. There was little enough to be
had, and we ended up standing in line with what felt like half of
Davlova for a chance to buy a bit of fried fish. We finished it as
we walked slowly back to Ceil’s inn. Night fell soon after, and it
was the darkest night I’d ever seen in the city. The electric
lights of the hill never came on, and neither did the gas lamps
below the wall.

“Why’s it so dark?” I asked Ceil.

“Electricity hasn’t worked since the
fire.”

“And the lamps?”

“Half of them out of fuel. Nobody bothering to
light the other half, I guess.”

It was as if the city of my birth was slowly
dying and not even bothering to put up a fight. An old, dead beast,
curling onto its back in surrender.

Ayo and I went to our room. He opened the
shutters wide, letting in what moonlight there was, and then he was
pulling me toward the bed, kissing me frantically, practically
tearing my clothes in his haste to remove them.

“Please,” he whimpered, as if I had any will
to deny him. As if I could resist the softness of his flesh or the
warmth of his mouth.

I laid him on the bed, then pulled the covers
up over us both. “Not too loud,” I told him as I kissed his neck,
angling my pelvis between his sweet thighs.

He nodded, breathlessly drawing his knees up
to make my entrance easier, arching his back as I pushed inside. I
kissed him hard, swallowing his throaty moans as I began to
thrust.

There was no word for how good it felt to be
lost in him. No way to describe how he filled my senses and blotted
out every thought. He was more addictive than any drug. More
intoxicating than the aphrodisiac Donato had served me a lifetime
ago on his yacht. The way he moved. The sounds he made. The things
he could do while doing nothing at all. He was the pinnacle of
sexual pleasure. The very essence of eroticism, and in the end, it
me who made too much noise. It was me who caused the bedframe to
slam wildly against the wall. It was me who nearly screamed at the
climax of that euphoria.

“Misha.” He put his arms around my neck while
I was still shuddering from the aftershock of my orgasm. “Kiss
me.”

I did. His lips, and then his cheeks. They
were wet and cool beneath my lips. I tasted salt and I stopped
short. He hadn’t cried since that first day on the boat. I’d hoped
maybe we’d left his tears in Deliphine.

“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. In the darkness, I couldn’t
see it, but I felt it. I sensed the desperation in it. The need to
hold me as tight as he could. The inability to put whatever he felt
into words.

“Tell me.”

He shuddered beneath me. His seed was drying
between us — I’d had to say the word for him, gasping it out as I
came — but the mess would have to wait. “Tell me,” I urged
again.