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I chewed my lip, debating. “How would you feel
about hiring freed slaves?”

The old man blinked at me, debating. “I’d not
care if they were slaves or nobles, long as they’re not
thieves.”

I nearly laughed at that, being a thief
myself. “I’ll send them around. Maybe you can come to an
agreement.”

“Thank you, sir. I’d appreciate it. And I
appreciate the business.”

“Turning into quite the altruist,” Frey said
once we were on our way back to the plaza. “Anzhéla taught you
well.”

I shook my head, feeling the weight of the hat
and gloves I didn’t actually need tucked under my arm. “I’m not an
altruist, and I’m not a gentleman, either. I’m a thief in nice
clothes who made a good haul on his last job.”

Frey laughed and clapped me on the back. “And
all this time, you’ve been thinking there was a
difference.”

***

I knew the minute Frey and I arrived back in
the plaza that something was wrong.

On procession days, the plaza felt mildly
festive. Every other day since my return to Davlova, the atmosphere
had been a strange mixture of melancholy and industrious hope. Now,
less than an hour after leaving it, the plaza buzzed with anger and
excitement. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. My heart
began to race, adrenaline tingling in my groin and under my arms as
some instinct I’d honed over the years alerted me to danger. We’d
come into the plaza on the south end, and I turned left, toward
Ceil’s inn.

What I saw made the blood run cold in my
veins.

A throng of people milled about, just outside
of Ceil’s door. Some pushed forward, trying to peer through the
windows. Others had gathered in clumps, some seemed scared, others
angry, others simply curious. I broke into a run, Frey hot at my
heels. The crowd saw us coming. Angry murmurs and anxious gossip
turned to a hushed whispers, as if they’d been waiting for us to
arrive. The crowd parted to let us pass.

Ceil sat at one of the tables in the front of
the inn, holding a towel to her cheek. Uri sat next to her, his
face red with anger, his muscular shoulders tense, his hands held
in beefy fists before him. Lark was there too, her eyes red and
swollen, the kohl around her eyes smeared halfway down her cheeks.
She didn’t look like a whore. She looked like what she was — a
scared little girl.

“Where’s Ayo?”

It was Uri who answered. “Tino and his thugs
took him.”

I felt like my world collapsed, every fear I’d
tried to deny since our return to Davlova suddenly alive and on my
trail.

“When?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” Ceil said, dropping the
towel. Her lip was split, and an angry bruise was already forming
on her cheek. “Maybe thirty. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I tried to
stop them, but—”

“Not just him!” Lark said, speaking for the
first time. “All of them. Hugo and Benny and Agnes and—”

It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the others,
but Ayo was my primary concern. “Where’d they take him?”

“He didn’t even fight,” Ceil said quietly.
“Benny and Hugo did, but not the boy. Maybe if he’d
fought—”

“Where’d they take
him?”

Nobody spoke. They all just blinked at
me.

They had no idea where Tino had
gone.

“Fuck!” I dropped my package and put my head
in my hands, trying to still my heart long enough to
think.

“Misha,” Frey said, laying his hand on my
shoulder. He gestured toward the crowd in the street. “Somebody
must have seen where they went.”

He was right. Tino had his makeshift clan, but
he had far fewer allies in the city than he realized. “Lark, did
you ever go to that theatre on Roxy Street?”

“I went by once and—“

“Go there now, as fast as you can. Tell
Lorenzo that Frey and Misha need back up. Tell him we need them
big, and we need them
now
. Got it?”

She nodded, looking stronger now that somebody
was taking charge. “Aye. I’ll have them back here in a
flash.”

The crowd parted for her too, and she took off
running, skinny knees causing her skirts to fly as she flew across
the plaza toward the blackened trenches.

“Do we wait for them, or do we leave now and
figure they’ll catch up?” I asked the room in general. Safety
dictated that waiting for muscle would be wise, but every minute
they had Ayo was a minute they might spend hurting him, and if they
learned what the Dollhouse's response conditioning could make him
do…

I shuddered at the thought. I knew that was
why he’d gone without a fight. He’d been afraid they’d hurt him if
he struggled, and he knew his body would betray him.

“We go now,” Frey said. He went to the door,
scanning the crowd. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled,
the shrill sound cutting through the hubbub outside our
door.

“I’m going with you,” Uri said, pushing to his
feet.

“It isn’t your fight. I’ll understand if
you—”

“To hell with that. We give than bastard an
inch now, he’ll take a mile later. It’s time someone put him in his
place.”

In truth, I was glad to have him. He’d be more
intimidating than Frey and I put together. “Let’s go
then.”

Outside the inn, Frey was talking quietly with
nearly a dozen clan kids who had materialized out of the crowd,
falling like lost buttons from the jumbling chaos of the mob to
land at Frey’s feet.

“Flea and Crab here know where they went,”
Frey told me, pointing to two boys whom I guessed to be about
ten.

“They’re kids!” Uri said.

“Aye, and we’re bloody smart too, old man!”
one of them said.

Despite the gravity of the situation, I was
pretty sure Frey nearly laughed. “Tino and his men took one of
their clanmates earlier today, and they tailed them then. Flea will
show us the way, and Crab will wait here for Lorenzo.”

I glanced back at Ceil, wondering if it was a
mistake to leave her alone, but she waved her towel at me. “I’ll be
fine. You go get that boy and bring him home.”

“Are you goin’ after ’em then?” a man from the
crowd called as we left the inn.

“Aye, we are,” Uri yelled back. “Who’s with
us?”

One man stepped forward immediately. He was
big and scarred and ugly. He looked mean enough to give most kids
nightmares. “I’m in.”

“What’s your name?” Uri asked.

“Moses. Those bastards took my wife this
morning while I was working. I been asking around all day, trying
to figure out where they’d taken her.”

“What about the rest of you?” Uri called to
the crowd. “Any of you yellow bastards got the stones to join
us?”

A few people laughed. A lot more of them
lowered their eyes, backing slowly away, not wanting to get
involved, but one man stepped forward, followed by another, and
soon almost half a dozen of them were with us. One held a hammer,
and another a wooden club. I was pretty sure none of the others
were armed, but I was glad for the help.

We followed Flea, and a handful of clan kids
followed us. It didn’t surprise me that clan kids could help us.
What surprised me was that they were doing it willingly, without
asking to be paid for it, despite the fact they weren’t all from
the same clan. Yes, some of the kids behind us came from the
theatre, but I knew by their odd nicknames that Flea and his friend
Crab ran with a clan out of the eastside docks, and two twin girls
behind me came from a clan on the southwestern edge of the fourth
quadrant.

“Isn’t that Tino’s turf?” I asked them as we
walked.

“East of the ditch, it is. But we’re on the
west side. We cut up to Canal Street before we cross over. That’s
open territory, up there.”

“All our little kingdoms,” Frey said quietly.
“But it seems we’re united in our dislike of Tino.”

Flea led us south, then east, into the lower
regions of the trenches. It reminded me of my trip back to the
theatre. Blackened husks of buildings occupied nearly every corner.
Here and there, brick structures still stood, standing sentry over
the ruined landscape. Some of the bigger lanes had been cleared,
but many of the alleys were impassible. There were pockets of life
— stretches of tenements where men and women worked to rebuild what
they’d once had — but there were also areas that appeared not to
have been touched since the fire. Even here, a crowd as big as ours
drew attention.

“What’s happening?” kids and adults alike
asked.

“Is it a fire?”

“Is there to be a lynchin’?”

The words “slaves” and “Tino” rustled through
the crowd, like a breeze fanning flames, and more people fell in
behind us, although I knew most of them were more interested in
being spectators than participants.

We turned south again, and Flea stopped and
pointed. “In there.”

It was a stable, and how it had survived the
fire, I’d never know. It was only one story high, built wide and
deep.

“They used to run hansom cabs out of there,”
Frey said.

“Still do,” Flea said. “But they got all the
horses that survived the fire in a paddock out back.”

“You managed to see inside?”

“Only a bit, but it’s how you’d expect. Sort
of an empty space up front, and another in the rear. Stalls on both
sides in between.”

“Perfect for locking up slaves, I guess,” Uri
grumbled.

“Did you see how many men Tino had with
him?”

Flea shrugged. “I don’t know. Fifteen. Maybe
twenty.”

I glanced around at our group. Most of the
adults who’d trailed us the last few blocks fell back, obviously
only along for a bit of entertainment, but three of them — two men
and one woman — came forward, clearly intent on fighting with
us.

“Tino’s been makin’ our lives hell since the
fire,” one of them grumbled. “It’s about time somebody decided to
do something about it.”

That made twelve adults in our group going in,
until Lorenzo showed up with some backup. Not great odds, but it
could have been worse.

I eyed the building. There were no windows.
One big double door in the front, wide enough once both sides were
open to allow two hansom cabs, side by side. I assumed there was a
similar entrance in the back.

“How do we do this?” I asked. “Bust down the
door? Walk up and knock? What?”

To my surprise, the entire group of clan kids
began to snicker.

“You been off the streets too long, man,” one
of them said. “Whatcha think we come along for? Just to watch you
all bustin’ in there like those fool guards from the hill on a
bloody raid?”

“Uh—”

“Those of us who ain’t armed will make a
ruckus out back,” one of the boys said.

“And those who are?” Frey asked,
smiling.

Flea pulled a small knife from his belt. The
blade wasn’t more than four inches long, but I could tell it was
plenty sharp. “We’re goin’ in with you.”

Part of me wanted to object — to point out
they were only kids — but I’d been one of them once. I knew better
than to try to coddle them after the world had knocked them down so
many times. Besides, they had a clanmate inside too. I wondered
briefly about the kids who’d joined us along the way — the ones who
probably weren’t orphans — but Frey was ahead of me in that
regard.

“The rest of you stay out here,” Frey said to
them, as the majority of the clan kids went slinking off down the
alley. “Wait for our friends and let them know what’s going
on.”

Not that Lorenzo and whoever he brought with
him would have a hard time finding us with an entire audience
waiting outside, but hopefully it was enough to keep the normal
kids out of the chaos.

Frey pulled a knife from his boot. I took the
one from my waistband. Somebody from the crowd offered Uri a
hammer, and he took it.

“Once Tino’s men go out the back, we hit that
front door hard,” Frey said, making eye contact with Uri and Moses.
“I’m sure it’s latched from the inside, so we need our biggest men
in front. We’ll make a hell of a racket getting through, but we’ll
have to hope they can’t hear it over whatever those kids have
going.”

“If any of Tino’s men are still inside, we’ll
have to take them down fast,” I added.

“It’s a clear aisle down the middle, between
the stalls,” Flea said. “If those of us with weapons push all the
way to the back door, we can bottle ’em up there before they know
what hit ’em. Keep the bastards busy in the back while the others
free our friends.”

“I’ll fight up front,” Moses said, “but
somebody has to promise to find my wife. She’s a little thing.” He
held up a hand to show us. “Barely this high. A scar on her right
cheek. Her name’s Corliss.”

“I’ll find her,” the woman who’d joined our
ranks said, and he nodded.

“Somebody needs to stay out front,” Frey said.
“Keep Tino’s men from circling around and trapping us in the
middle.”