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Shoving her newsboy cap atop her head, Lila considered her options.
Tristan had come through, all right, but this stunt had not been for her. It had not been improvised. It had been planned. It had been why she needed rescuing in the first place. He had used her as a diversion. If Dixon was on the roof, overseeing the operation, it meant that Tristan was elsewhere.
Lila turned east on Leclerc.
Dixon followed.
Gritting her teeth, Lila kept to the shadows, avoiding the occasional soul who stumbled into her path. The bystanders stared, each one entranced by the blast and the smoke and the fire, not content merely to pull back their curtains like the rest of polite society.
Most people who lived near Leclerc Street were lowborn professionals, that class of citizens who owned at least one business. They had either been born into their lowborn status or had beaten the consequences of a poor birthright as slaves or contracted servants, capitalizing on every educational opportunity and business loan they could find. These were the rare success, these few who had burst through the workborn ceiling, and they all strived for more. Some even held positions in Low House, the lesser, lowborn chamber of the senate.
They had been asleep like proper ladies and gentlemen, that much was certain, for their dresses sat askew, their breeches had not been properly tucked into their boots, and the collars of their elegant matching coats were twisted at the neck. Though their attire might have been made of fine wool and tailored elegantly, all of it was wrinkled.
Thankfully, they kept to their stations. None of them stopped to chat with the poor workborn servant. They sidestepped her completely and tried the doors of the nearest apartment building, ready to rush upstairs for a better view.
One enterprising child—she could swear it was the ginger boy from the roof—even held open his building’s door and charged admission. Given the twinkle in his eye, Lila was hard-pressed to believe that he lived there at all.
She scanned the roof line. Dixon stared down at her from across the street.
Lila slid into the darkness and walked on.
She avoided everyone she saw, brushing away the ash and grass on her coat whenever someone new came into view. She hid whenever she heard a siren. The highborn militias had either sent a few patrols to assist Bullstow or to spy.
The increased security helped Lila as it hampered Dixon. She finally caught sight of him on a far-off rooftop, peering down at a street she had passed ten minutes before.
His companions had long since scattered into the night.
“Told you I was better.” Lila smirked, emerging under the closest functioning streetlight, blocks away from the fire. She turned her back on Dixon and continued on, hoping he would not pop up again later.
The size of the buildings shrank the farther she traveled from Bullstow, and the paint became more chipped and faded. Flattened cigarette butts, chip wrappers, and crumbled scraps of paper dotted the street more frequently until the gutters overflowed.
Shabby pawnshops and liquor stores soon replaced the bookstores and cafés of the more well-to-do workborn. She ignored the blisters on her heels, both bleeding and stinging, and moved her gun into her front pocket. People here would notice the telltale bulge, whether or not the weapon had survived the blast intact.
Plenty had ventured from their homes after the explosion, workborn mostly, all wrapped in ill-fitting coats and cheap scarves. Some huddled on the stoops of apartment buildings or in the yards of crumbling houses, smoking cheap cigarettes and stamping their feet against the chill. Their heads turned infrequently toward the tower of smoke.
Not everyone paid attention to it. These workborn contracted with the poorest lowborn families, falling into bed late and rising early. It was not curiosity that drove most from the warmth of their beds. If they didn’t prove to their neighbors that such commotion would wake them, they could expect to be burglarized before the end of the week.
She already saw a few sideways glances at darkened windows.
The front door of an apartment building opened.
“Radio says it was a gas explosion across from Bullstow,” an old woman called out to her neighbors. She joined them on a stoop, her shoulders wrapped in a frayed knitted blanket. She held a steaming, chipped mug in place of gloves.
Lila did not ask for details. She kept her eyes to the ground, hoping no one would remember her tomorrow or notice that her peacoat and hair had been dusted with ash. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think that they wouldn’t. Studying a person too intensely, especially one’s face, was not done in this part of the city. Indeed, if Lila’s habits slipped and she looked around too closely, it would mark her instantly as a highborn. And that they would not forget.
The wealthy did not travel here. They sent proxies.
Lila turned down an alley, the stench of urine and month-old trash choking her throat. She stepped carefully, eyes tracking behind dumpsters and overturned boxes, with only a dim, flickering street lamp down the block to guide her. No one lay in wait. Only rats and cockroaches skulked in the filth.
She marched to the end of the alley, finally reaching a door that had been graffitied in a rainbow of hoary cartoons and letters. A stenciled red phoenix had been spray-painted above the sliding peephole. The door hung partly ajar, one hinge broken. For some reason the carelessness only made her angrier.
She took the thermal hood from her pocket and pulled it over her face, shoving her newsboy hat atop it and tugging the small brim down low. There was no telling who had already come back from the job or who had stayed behind. No one in the motley group had ever seen her face, except for Tristan, and she would keep it that way. The only thing that his people might recognize was her disguised voice, for plenty had heard her speak. Tonight they would hear her yell. She already had a half-composed tirade perched on the tip of her bitten tongue, waiting.
Lila yanked open the door and stepped inside.
The backroom of the old hotel was empty. Not just empty of people but empty of everything. The only things inside were grimy paint, the ever-present musty smell of an old building, and four piles of trash pushed to each corner of the room.
She bent down, snatched up a piece of crumpled-up cardstock, and unfurled it over her thigh. It was another AAS flyer, exactly like the one she had caught in the air near the explosion.
