“Shut your teeth.” The bartender snapped a towel at him. “She didn’t do it herself.”

“Her folk blew his train. And he weren’t an Ospie. He just shoveled coal.”

“Three dead today,” said the first journalist. “None of them Ospies, either. Come on, Makricosta, what’d she think?”

It spread just like the news of Oleksa’s arrival had, only now the heads were turning his way. Eyes found him, and questions clogged the air. He couldn’t breathe. The rancid gin was burning back up his throat and he just had to get out, get out—

How he made it to the street, he wasn’t sure, but awareness found him on all fours under Kostos’s shadow, vomiting into the gutter. There was little in his stomach to bring up but acid.

“Told you not to trust the gin,” said Kostos, offering him a handkerchief.

Aristide eschewed it in favor of his own, which would be ruined. Small price to pay for spite.

“I’ll get you a cab,” said Kostos. “Least I can do.”

“Thank you,” said Aristide, spit sour in his mouth. “But I prefer to walk.”

PART

3

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Despite the bombing, they shuttered Damesfort and came to town. It was too expensive to keep both houses open and travel between them, if they were going to be paying a lawyer as well. Jinadh needed to be in the city for work—keeping his unmarried name had saved his job. Fewer folk clocked him straight off. His sections sold papers, and his writers liked him and turned their stories in on time. He was an acceptable risk to his employers. Lillian was thankful, as his income kept them from drowning too quickly.

They let most of the staff go, and none of the outgoing employees seemed terribly torn up. Magnusson remained, accepting a cut in pay. “I’ve always been sympathetic to the DePauls,” he said, “ever since the Spice War. The women in your family make hard decisions, and they don’t make them lightly.”

Lillian could have kissed him.

Stephen kept his head bent on the drive into town, reading books for a spring term he might never see. At least not at Cantrell. Even with Rinko offering an old friend’s rates, it was a serious question whether they could afford to send him back, the results of his probation notwithstanding.

They would find a way. If there was not one hidden somewhere in all this mess, she would will one open. There were some things, surely, she could still control.