Release

by A. M. Sexton

  I would have born the injuries a thousand times over, if it would bring Ayo back. Tears welled in my eyes every time I thought about the way he’d looked, lying motionless across the bed. He’d wanted me to use the word—begged me, even—but that didn’t make me feel any better about what I’d done.

  Once she found out I was awake, Talia brought me something for the pain. She also sent me to the luxurious room with the giant tub that I’d used on my first night in her house. Soaking in the warm water eased the pain in my battered limbs, but hardly refreshed me. Outside, the noise of the mobs in the streets was growing louder with each hour. Talia closed the whorehouse for the night, rather than risk inviting in angry patrons who would take their frustration out on her whores. Some of her employees went out into the mob, eager to be part of history. Others hid inside, gathering together in the common room to speculate on what the morning would bring.

  I did neither.

  Lalo tried to lure me into a game of chess, telling me I could use a distraction, but I declined. I retired to my room, unwilling to face the others after everything that had happened. I didn’t care about the fate of the city, now that Ayo was dead.

  Just after the dinner bell, there was a timid knock on my door. It opened, and Tawny stepped inside, looking scared and apologetic at the same time. “I’m sorry I spied on you.” She shrugged nervously. “It was only a job. You understand.”

  I did. As much as I may have wanted to be angry at her, there was no reason. If our roles had been reversed, I’d have done the same thing. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She smiled shyly and took a step closer, pulling an envelope from her pocket. “He sent this for you.”

  I took it, wondering how it had come to be here, in my hand. It certainly hadn’t come through the gate. “How’d he get it to you?”

  “I have a sister who’s a priestess, up in the first quadrant.” She shrugged again. “They have their ways.” She let herself out as quietly as she’d come in.

  I looked down at the letter in my hand, wondering if I wanted to know what it said. Part of me wanted to shred it without reading it, but I couldn’t do it. Not now, knowing that whatever we’d shared was truly over. Whether it had been love, or only business, there was no going back. Whatever form the city took after the chaos had passed, I’d never again be his whore.

  I was beyond his reach, forever.

  I opened the letter.

  Darling,

  I have so much to say to you, and I’d give anything to say it in person, but I see now that it can never be. The end is coming, and if I have any hope of making peace with you, it will have to be here, with this pen and parchment, and the alarming inadequacy of these two words:

  I’m sorry.

  A shallow sentiment, when spelled out this way, but it’s true. I am deeply and sincerely sorry for hurting you. I’d give anything to take it back. I think of nothing but the way you looked when my rage passed. I fell to my knees when I saw what I’d done. I begged you to forgive me, but you were beyond my reach. I feared I’d killed you, and I wanted to die, too. Even now, knowing that you’ve betrayed me, that you’ve told the rebels of the raids, I feel no anger. Only sorrow. I’d give anything to hold you and be given the chance to make things right.

  I know you, my pet. I know how your mind is slow to forget, and yet your heart longs to forgive. Please believe me when I tell you, this thing involving the arrests and Deliphine was not my doing. It was Benedict’s idea, and the Council’s. It’s been the city’s only source of income now for more years than I care to admit. Did I profit? Yes. I won’t lie. But I objected, too. Especially in the beginning. Work camps are one thing. Even being sent to the gallows has its own sort of dignity. But what they’ve done is beyond reproach.

  I know you will ask, why didn’t I stop it? I should have, but how? Who was I to tell? Nobody can control the Council, and when I dug in my heels, they reminded me what happens to those who oppose them. They asked me if I’d like to share the fate of the High Priestess. After all, it would cost them nothing to replace me. There are plenty of men who’d like to live as I do. When I finally demurred, they paid me off. Not with money, but with the boy.

  They knew my weakness.

  Still, this last raid at Talia’s was not something I wished for. Nor was Anzhéla’s arrest. I warned Benedict that seizing her would push the lower city to its breaking point, but what can I say? The man is a fool, and that poor woman will never even stand trial. Benedict wanted her, and the Council granted his request. He has her locked away somewhere at his home. I hate to think what he’s doing to her. I bear no love for the woman, but I wouldn’t wish his cruelty on anybody.

  I also want you to know that the boy is alive. You thought you’d killed him, but he’s fine. He slept for the better part of a day, and when he woke, he asked for you. I think he nearly said your name before he caught himself. I was jealous, I admit. He has a piece of you I will never have. Part of me resents him for it, but I’m also glad that in the midst of the savage chaos of his life, you’ve given him some comfort. The Goddess knows he’s had none of it from me. I can’t even remember why I denied him the culmination of his pleasure all those years. I think I was angry at him. He represents my biggest failures, both personally and professionally. He represents my lack of control. He represents every part of me that I hate.

  It’s a poor excuse, but it’s the only one I have.

  I’ll never know how you learned his trigger word, or why you used it when you did. You could have asked me. I would have told you the word. I would have given you permission to use it. Not on one of my bad days, no. But on my good days, there’s nothing I could deny you. I wish you had trusted me, and yet I understand why you didn’t. I wish I could have given you that gift, but it simply wasn’t meant to be.

  I’m glad now that I never had a chance to move you into my house. You’re safer where you are. But I worry for the boy’s sake. The wall will come down. The city will fall, and I will fall with it. Once the gates are open, the remainder of my life will be counted in hours, if not minutes. I’m ready for that. Truly, I am. I don’t have the will to fight it. But what will become of him? Revolutions are rarely bloodless, and those savages on your side have stopped distinguishing nobles from servants or slaves. Everybody on the hill will have to beg for their mercy, and few will receive it. You of all people understand the danger he’ll be in when they discover the depths of his conditioning. I shudder to think of the horrors they’ll inflict upon him. I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be better to end both our lives, by my own hand, together.

  But I won’t. I’ve been a cruel master to him, I know, but I can’t bring myself to kill him, even if it might for his own good. Besides, there is still a chance, however slim, that things will work out. That maybe the wall will hold. The rebels will go back to their basements. And I’ll have a chance to beg you in person for your forgiveness.

  It’s unlikely, I know. But I hold onto that hope.

  I love you.

  And I’m sorry.

  Miguel

  The letter left me in tears. I could hear his voice in my ear. I could feel the warmth of his touch. Not my master, but my lover. Not Donato, but Miguel. Part of me wanted to give him the chance to make amends.

  But it wasn’t up to me.

  I wept uncontrollably when I read that Ayo was alive. A tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. But at the same time, it was replaced with a new urgency. Donato was right about one thing—the rebels would not show anybody mercy. Ayo was in grave danger.

  And the bit about Anzhéla...

  I had to find Frey.

  I dressed quickly. I tucked my knives into their places. They felt odd now, less natural than they had in the past, yet still familiar and comforting. I tucked my money into different pockets, deep inside my clothes, away from the nimble fingers of clan kids. It was a risk taking it all with me, but I had no way of knowing if or when I’d be back, and if nothing else, I m
ight need it for bribes. Coins often made hard tasks easy, merely by crossing the right person’s palm.

  The streets were chaos. The sound of a battering ram against the Plaza Gate echoed through the streets at regular intervals. Crowds of people bearing weapons gathered on each corner, listening to the words of the men in yellow. And those men no longer wore masks. There was no point in hiding. Not at this late juncture. The revolution would happen tonight, or not at all. I ducked my head and took to the alleys. The people who still lingered here were too old, or too sick, or too tired to care about storming the hill. They watched me with hollow eyes as I made my way back home.

  The street that fronted Anzhéla’s theatre was practically deserted. It was too far from all the action. The only people I saw were hurrying toward the plaza.

  The theatre was locked. Hand-scrawled signs tacked to the door announced that all shows had been canceled until further notice. Now what? I glanced up at the gargoyles, somehow expecting them to be gone. They’d been on guard the night Anzhéla was taken, and they’d failed.

  I debated trying to go in the back way, through the den, as I’d done in the past, but after everything that had happened, they would have changed the code. Besides, what was the point of subterfuge? We’d live through this night and see the end of the hill, or we’d all die trying. There was no sense in pretending.

  I knocked on the door. It opened immediately, although only an inch. A bright, wary eye peered out at me. It widened comically in recognition.

  “Misha? Holy Goddess, what happened to your face?”

  I reached up to touch my bruised eye. It was strange that I could forget how bruised it was. “Nothing. I need to see Frey. Is he here?”

  I was afraid Lorenzo would tell me no, that Frey was somewhere in the mob that filled Lower Davlova, but to my relief, he nodded. “He’s here.” He opened the door a bit wider to glance up and down the sidewalk. “You alone?”

  “Yes.”

  He let me in, closing and latching the door behind me. “He’s in the projection room. You know the way.”

  I found Frey pacing the length of Anzhéla’s office. He looked older than he ever had, and utterly exhausted, but by the time I’d finished telling him my plan, his eyes were bright with excitement.

  “The only problem,” I concluded, “is getting through the wall. Do you know of a way?”

  He laughed cynically. “If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “What about the black market? You guys must have contacts—”

  But he was already shaking his head. “Nothing came from inside the wall. We bribe shippers and smugglers and shop owners, but it’s all done on the outside.”

  “All right.” I’d figured that might be the case. Like Frey said, if they had a way in, they’d have used it already. “I may have another way of getting in.”

  The question was, could I bribe a priestess? And even if I succeeded, could Frey rescue Anzhéla and open the gate for the mobs before I’d escaped Upper Davlova with Ayo?

  It was time to find out.

  The biggest issue we had was how many people to take with us. Faced with breaking Anzhéla out of Benedict’s house, Frey could have used a small army. But getting that many people through the wall would be too conspicuous. Our chances of succeeding were considerably higher if there were only a couple of us. Besides which, a good portion of the people we may have counted as allies were already engaged somewhere in the city, waiting for the wall to come down. There was no time to troll the mobs, looking for them.

  “Maybe I’m over-thinking this,” Frey said. “Benedict won’t have guards on his house. Not with the gates about to fall. He and his men will be on the front line.”

  Whether it was true or not, we had no way of knowing, but it made sense.

  “Sure wish I’d managed to get that radio up and running,” Frey grumbled. “It’d make this a lot easier.”

  “You couldn’t get it to work?”

  “It works fine. It’s just a matter of getting one set up for each our various partners in crime. Right now, I can talk through them, but every one of the units is here. Nobody else wanted to risk siphoning the electricity.” He laughed. “The funny thing is, by tomorrow, it won’t even be illegal.”

  He sent one of the remaining clan kids running somewhere with a message instead. “Pull up your shirt,” he told me while we waited.

  “Why?”

  “I can tell by the way you’re moving that your ribs still hurt.”

  Frey’s jaw clenched when he saw my abdomen. Ugly yellow bruises stained both sides of my ribcage. He poked and prodded, judging which ribs were cracked by how hard I sucked air between my teeth. Eventually, he wrapped my entire midsection.

  “I can barely breathe,” I said when he was done. But the limited mobility helped ease the pain.

  Shortly afterward, we were joined by two large, scarred men who looked like they’d been making a living in the back-alley boxing rings of Lower Davlova. Frey also recruited Lorenzo. He was young, and certainly not as muscular or scary as the other men, but he was quick on his feet and plenty smart.

  We left the theatre without fanfare and made our way north and east, to the first quadrant.

  The crowds here were lighter. There was still a mob at the first quadrant gate, but otherwise, the streets seemed deserted. Even the docks were empty of people. Fishing vessels and leisure yachts bobbed merrily in their ports, unconcerned with the politics of the city.

  I led our group to the temple. It was far busier than it had been on my previous two visits. The pews were filled with women and children, seeking refuge from whatever violence was to come. The priestess who greeted us stared in wide-eyed alarm at Frey’s muscle-men.

  “The Goddess will not grant sanctuary to men,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “Only upon a special dispensation—”

  “We’re not seeking asylum. I need to see Dharma.”

  She was surprised, but I suspected she was also relieved. Telling men as big as Frey’s guards to leave obviously wasn’t a task she relished.

  I led the group off to the side, to the dark corner where I’d met Dharma in the past. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy to see me.

  I was right.

  “What are you doing here?” She wouldn’t yell in the temple, but her angry whisper had the same effect. “The priestesses won’t take part in your revolution!”

  “No,” Frey said dryly, “but they’ll sure step up for a place in the new government when the time is right, won’t they?”

  Dharma ducked her head. In her heart, she was still a clan kid, and Frey was second in command. Only Anzhéla would have held more sway. And Frey knew that. “Benedict’s taken her,” he said, pushing his advantage. “I’m going to get her back. That’s all.”

  Dharma nodded, sniffling. “I’d do anything for Anzhéla. You know that. But I have no power here. I’m only a novice. I have no authority over the other priestesses. And even if I did, I couldn’t convince them to fight.”

  “We don’t need you to,” I assured her. “The only thing we need is for you to take us through the wall.”

  Her eyes grew wide, and she took a step backward. “Are you insane?”

  “I know you can do it. You told me yourself that the library is on the upper side of the wall. The temples were built as a bridge between the two cities. The priestesses told the Council that they’d closed all passages, but I know it isn’t true.”

  She looked around in alarm, but there was nobody within hearing distance. “I could be thrown out of the temple. I’d lose my place here—”

  “Nobody has to know.”

  “And,” I pulled a small bag of coins out of one of my pockets, “we’ll make a donation.”

  She eyed the bag, thinking, but I knew she’d relent. It was only a matter of time.

  “Fine,” she said at last, taking my coins. Whether she’d use them herself or give them to the Goddess, I didn’t know. She tucked them away inside he
r robe. “Follow me.”

  We did. Through a door, down a hallway, through another door. It was a maze, and Dharma was obviously taking us the back way, in hopes of avoiding any of her fellow priestesses. “The passage to the library is the only way,” she said as we walked. “Nobody’s studying today. They’re all too busy dealing with the civilians.” It was slow going, stopping at each corner so she could peek around and make sure the coast was clear. Twice, we ducked into side rooms or closets to hide. Every minute felt like an age, but we finally reached the library. It was deserted, as Dharma had predicted. She led us through rows and rows of books, then back into a series of hallways. “Hardly anybody works the upper side,” she explained. “And any who are working will be in the temple, dealing with refugees, so we can’t go out that way. I’ll show you a door that will take you outside, but you won’t be able to get back in. Nobody will open the door for you. Not even me.”

  “I understand,” I told her.

  Next to me, Frey nodded his agreement. “You’ve risked enough.”

  I had no idea how I’d get out with Ayo. And whether Frey snuck back out with Anzhéla, or whether he opened the gates for the rebels, I didn’t know or care. I only hoped I’d have enough time to do what needed to be done.

  Another turn, and we were at a door. I knew it was the way out by the number of locks on the inside. Even a small army wouldn’t get through it from the other side. Dharma unlocked them, one by one, and opened it for us.

  “Good luck.”

  We exited into an alley. It had been just after dusk when we’d entered the temple. It was darker now. The alley was lost in layers of shadows. We looked around, waiting for our eyes to adjust. Behind us, I heard the steady clicks as Dharma secured each of the many locks on the inside of the door. On our side, there were no keyholes. There wasn’t even a knob.

  We were truly alone.

  At the end of the alley, we met a quiet, empty street. My heart began to pound. Somehow, I’d thought that once we were through the wall, it would be easy. But now, faced with the pristine boulevards of the upper city, the idea of passing unnoticed to Donato’s house seemed ludicrous, even in the dark. And how Frey and his oversized companions would get by, I had no idea.