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“Do you know the theatre on Roxy
Lane?”

She scrunched her nose as she considered. “The
one with the monsters on top?”

“That’s the one.”

“What about it? You wantin’ I should see a
show?”

“There’s a clan there. A good one, where girls
your age never have to work as whores.”

She looked skeptical.

I couldn’t blame her.

“It used to be Anzhéla’s den. You’ve probably
heard enough about Anzhéla to know you can trust her.”

She pursed her lips. “Aye, but she ain’t
runnin’ it no more, is she?”

“Not directly, no. Lorenzo’s in charge at the
moment, but I promise you, he’ll treat you well.”

She chewed her lip. “He won’t expect no
service in return?”

I didn’t know anything about Lorenzo’s sexual
proclivities, but I knew how we’d been raised. “Absolutely
not.”

She chewed her lip some more, finally pulling
her dress up to cover herself. “I’ll think about it. But that’s
all. Maybe talk to him. But I ain’t promising a thing.”

It was the best I could do.

For now.

Ayo was ecstatic when I presented the pail of
berries, his smile so bright and wide, I felt it all the way to my
toes. Ceil was full of questions, even more so after I told her
about hiring the freed slaves to fix her inn.

“How do you reckon I’m supposed to pay them
anyway?” she asked.

“I was going to pay them myself.”

She scowled at me. “And why would you do
that?”

“You need the work done, they need a job, and
I have money. It seemed like a logical solution.”

She shook her head, clearly thinking I’d lost
my mind. “I never met a fool so anxious to part with his money. You
must have made one lousy thief.”

For some reason, her comment made me happier
than I’d been all day.

If my nerves the first day had been bad, they
were double the second day — the day I was to see Anzhéla. Hugo and
Benny arrived at the back door, hats in hands. Ceil’s reservations
seemed to melt away upon meeting them, and by lunchtime, the steady
sound of hammers echoed through her small inn.

I took some strange amount of pride in knowing
I’d set it all in motion.

Finally, the time for my rendezvous with
Anzhéla arrived. Ayo and I debated whether he should go with me,
but he was reluctant, and so I left him with Ceil and went
alone.

The house I was to meet Anzhéla in was on the
hill. I stopped at the ruined gate for a moment. I’d never been
allowed past that point, except for the nights Donato had demanded
to see me. I’d had to present a pass to the guards. Now, I simply
walked through.

It bothered me for reasons I couldn’t
explain.

I followed Frey’s directions to a row of neat,
white houses on the western side of the hill that had escaped the
worst of the fire. I couldn’t help but wonder how Anzhéla had
managed to get a house at all. Had there been any kind of legal
transaction? Or had the members of Davlova’s new Board of Governors
simply moved into the abandoned homes of the elite?

I decided I didn’t want to know.

Frey answered the door, smiling. “I was afraid
you wouldn’t show, and Anzhéla would send me to track you
down.”

He led me down a hallway and into a large
sitting room with an empty fireplace. The furniture was all
mismatched, clearly scavenged from other houses. The glass in the
wide double doors was still intact, but the view they afforded now
was of scorched earth and leafless trees. An abandoned swing swayed
in the breeze, looking strangely like a hangman’s rope. I wondered
who had lived here before. Had a mother watched her children play
in that yard? Had Anzhéla had their bodies disposed of before
moving in, or had she found the house deserted? I didn’t have time
to dwell on it because Anzhéla chose that moment to enter the
room

She looked older. That was the first thing I
noticed. And her face—

Just below her right eye, somebody had carved
crooked, spidery symbols. It was a cruel imitation of the tattoos
Davlova’s nobles had worn.

“Hey, kid,” she said, hugging me. “It’s about
time you showed up.”

As a child, I’d lived for these moments when I
could tell myself she was as much my mother as my boss. Now, I felt
awkward. “I wasn’t sure how to find you.”

“Do you want a drink? I have sour ale or wine,
or I have a bit of whiskey.”

“Those are pretty hard to come by these
days.”

“Well, it’s all been watered down, but it’s
better than nothing.”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Why don’t we have a seat?” she said, as she
went to bar at the side of the room to pour the drinks.

I examined my choices. The room held a couch,
two armchairs by the fireplace and, just in front of the glass
doors, two rickety wooden chairs facing each other across a small,
round table. Closer inspection revealed an inlaid checkered board.
“Somebody must have played chess here,” I said, lowering myself
into one of the chairs.

“The board’s the only thing that survived.
Most of the pieces were smashed or stolen by looters.”

I winced. Even with all the other atrocities
of the revolution, the destruction of a chess set seemed extreme.
“That’s a shame.”

She set two glasses of weak whiskey on the
table and took the seat opposite me. I didn’t touch my drink, but I
watched her as she sipped hers. The scar tissue on her cheek looked
wet in the waning sunlight that fell through the
windows.

“Did Benedict do that to you?”

“Yes.” She touched the scars lightly with her
fingertips. “It’s nothing. Crueler men than him have done worse,
believe me.”

I thought of what Lorenzo had said about the
way they’d found her, but Anzhéla dismissed it all with a wave of
her small hand.

“Tell me what happened to you.”

I started at the beginning and, for the most
part, I told the truth. I told her about Jenko and the yacht. I
told her about Deliphine, the Dollhouse, and my inadvertent
betrayal of her secrets. I told her about Gideon and Mama B. The
places where I strayed from the truth were few. I told her Donato
died by his own hand rather than mine, not because I feared she’d
judge me for my actions, but because our final moments together
felt private, and I wanted her to know he’d died with honor. And I
didn’t say a word about the safe under his icebox.

“
That’s quite an adventure,” she
said when I was done.

“One I hope never to repeat.”

She smiled, leaning back in her seat. “Now
that you’re back, you can take over the den. You know how it works.
You can keep Lorenzo as your second if you want, or I can assign
him somewhere else. Caldone will report to you too. He lost every
pedal cab we had in the fire, but we’ll get more
eventually.”

I'd never even met Caldone. I'd only even
heard of him once or twice. I knew he ran Anzhéla's pedal cab
business, but nothing more. Now I was to be his boss? Anxiety
twisted my stomach, along with a generous measure of guilt. I
didn’t want this job. “Why me?”

“I need somebody I can trust in the lower
city.”

“Isn’t that what you have Dharma
for?”

I expected her to be surprised at what I knew.
Maybe even to be defensive. She was neither of those things.
“Dharma’s part of it, yes,” she conceded. “But she doesn’t know the
fourth quadrant like you do. She only lived in the trenches for a
brief time, and it was years ago.”

I scrubbed my hand over my eyes, trying to
sort out my feelings. “What if I don’t want to live in the trenches
anymore either?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked
her head at me. “The theater suddenly isn’t good enough for you,
Misha?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just—”

“Just, what? Did you think you’d be living on
the hill?”

“No.” And that much was true. Except for that
brief time when I’d considered moving in with Donato, living in
Upper Davlova had never really occurred to me. But now that I had
Ayo, I wanted something better than being left to rot in the den
for the rest of my life. “I’m not sure I want that life anymore.
That’s all.”

“So, what will you do?” she asked, not
bothering to hide her amusement. “Become a blacksmith? Maybe a
tailor? I think you’re a bit too old to apply for an
apprenticeship.”

“There must be something.”

“Yes. There’s taking care of orphans and
bringing in enough of an income to keep them fed.”

“By stealing?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

I sighed in frustration. “It was supposed to
be different after the war. The lower city was supposed to change,
remember? We weren’t supposed to need clans and pickpockets. This
was supposed to be a new beginning for all of us—”

“And it is.”

“No, it isn’t! Maybe somebody new is in
charge. Maybe things have changed for you, but have you been to
Lower Davlova? Have you seen what’s going on down there? People are
starving. There’s nothing but fish and rats and the occasional
pigeon to eat, and little enough of those. There are still kids
starving in the gutters and children having to work as
whores—”

“And you think that’s my fault?”

“I don’t see you doing anything to fix
it!”

Her nostrils flared. “These things don’t
happen overnight. It takes time. And meanwhile, those kids need
somebody to take care of them. Those starving, whoring kids you’re
talking about are exactly why I need you.”

“Isn’t it enough that you’ve made the
priestesses part of your plan?”

“You disapprove?”

“I think for somebody who railed against
corruption in the government, you’ve done a bang-up job beating
them at their own game.”

Her eyes flashed, showing real anger for the
first time. “You have no idea what’s involved in rebuilding a city.
You think it happens by all of us holding hands and being
nice?”

“I think that’s the way it
should
be.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

I sat back, feeling as if she’d slapped me.
I’d never argued with Anzhéla before. I didn’t like doing it now.
“I guess I am. All the more reason for me to not take over the
den.”

She pursed her lips. I couldn’t tell if she
was rallying for another attack, or if she was trying to come up
with a different argument to convince me.

“This city will change, Misha. It will get
better. The Goddess—”

“The Goddess hasn’t given a fuck about Davlova
in a century. Why should she start now?”

Anzhéla sat back, crossing her arms across her
chest. “Did you know that soldiers often get erections during
battle?”

The sudden change of subject confused me. I
shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “No.”

“There’s a reason it’s called ‘bloodlust.’
Some men become so addicted to the adrenaline and the power, they
can’t get it up under normal circumstances. They need that heat of
violence and death to inspire them to passion. And when the
soldiers have slain the defenders — when they’ve slaughtered the
men on the battlefield — do you know what happens next?”

I stared down at the table, not wanting to
answer.

“What happens next is, they take the city. And
they take the women. All that pent-up, gore-filled rage is brought
down on
us
, not with axes or swords, but with the might of
muscle and engorged cocks. Men are biologically compelled to spread
their seed among the conquered. And do you know what happens when a
woman witnesses a rape?”

I attempted to speak, but my mouth was too
dry. I only shook my head.

“Her body produces lubricant. It simulates
arousal. She’s horrified. Her heart pounds with fear. She fights
not to be sick. She cries and begs for mercy she won’t get. And yet
some animal part of her brain tells her loins to get ready, because
deep down, we all know if we’re witnessing rape, we’re probably
about to become victims of it ourselves. Some primal piece of us
knows that
this
is how nature works.”

My mind reeled. I remembered Ayo, and what
he’d said about his programming.
My body betrays
me
.

“Since the dawn of time, this has been how
nations are made. Victors planting their seeds in the bodies of the
conquered, proving their might with their Goddess-forsaken cocks.
And us?” She slapped her hand to her chest, leaning forward, her
eyes dark and angry. “We’re nothing but spoils of war.”

She sat back, drumming her fingers on the
tabletop. The scars on her cheek glistened eerily in the light of
the lanterns. “That’s why the Priestesses came here. That’s why
they built that wall, to keep from being forced to carry the child
of a killer. And still the men came and took over.
I
was the
one who fought to bring them down.
I
was the one who saw the
way. And now, after everything I’ve done, after proving over and
over again that I have a better head on my shoulders than any of
those self-righteous pricks who’ve made themselves governors, they
want me to disappear, all because I don’t have a cock to rape my
victims with. They want me to lie down and let them have their way
with me one more time.” She lunged forward, slamming her palm onto
the tabletop. “I am more than my biology! I will
not
be
spoils of war. Not now. Not ever. And if I have to use my influence
with the priestesses to make that happen, I will. Because a victory
for me is a victory for them. Do you have any idea how many of them
— how many priestesses who swore to never lie with a man — are even
now carrying the unwanted spawn of some lower-city rapist
pig?”