It cost a couple hundred dollars for a bag of grain large enough to feed one person for one week, a few hundred more for fresh water and a supply of vitamins to prevent someone from getting scurvy. Add to that the fact that most people in New Seattle had no way of making money or growing their own food.

Before Dorothy had arrived, the Cirkus had been a gang of petty thieves. They’d numbered hardly more than thirty members, all children and teenagers, most close to starvation. They’d been like stray dogs, nipping at each other, fighting over scraps.

Dorothy had organized them. She’d taught them simple cons, convinced them to work together. They made hundreds a week stealing from anyone stupid enough to be out on the docks after dark.

At least, they used to make hundreds a week. It was impossible to get a city to trust a gang of thugs when they robbed them blind each night, so Dorothy had urged the Cirkus Freaks to lay off the thefts. Just for a little while.

It had not made her popular. The Freaks liked money, and that was running dry.

“Mac asked me to deliver the message,” Mira said. “He’d like the rest of his money by tomorrow evening.”

Voice toneless, Roman said, “And if we can’t get it?”

Dorothy glanced at him, seeing only the lower half of his face beneath the edge of her hood. There was no possible way for them to get the money by tomorrow evening, but she wouldn’t know it by looking at Roman’s expression. The annoying thing about her partner was that he grew even more cool and collected the angrier he got.

Right now he seemed to be all calm, unworried confidence. But Dorothy noticed that a muscle in his jaw had gone tight. His only tell.

Mira considered him, head tilted. “Mac didn’t say, but I can’t imagine he’d be happy.” She glanced at the broadcasting equipment in the corner, her lip twitching in a way that made Dorothy think she’d been watching from the shadows while Quinn Fox went on air to appeal to the people of New Seattle. “Perhaps he’ll come by your little party and you can speak with him then.”

Something prickled, uncomfortably, in Dorothy. Was that a threat?

The Cirkus Freaks were strong, but Mac was stronger. He made real money off his disgusting whorehouses, and that allowed him to procure certain things from the Center.

Firearms, for one thing. And bullets. The idea of going to war with him chilled Dorothy to her core.

Mira turned, and then she was out the door and gone.

“Well,” Roman said. “That ruins everything.”

8

Ash

Ash wasn’t entirely sure how he made it back home. One moment he’d been hunched over the bar, staring into the dwindling remains of his drink, and the next he was hauling himself through the window of the old schoolhouse, the taste of something sour clinging to his tongue.