In the earliest hours of the morning, the Vigilant Men struck. Their shouting and gunshots yanked me from my sleep, thrusting me into a reality that flickered with firelight.

Ferdinand rushed into the room, his shirt unbuttoned to his waist, his skin glistening with sweat. Our eyes met, his frantic and fevered, mine confused and still dull with sleep, and he reached for my hand.

"They're burning the row houses. We have to get out now or we'll burn along with everything else."

I smelled the smoke then, filling the room. Gray leaked in through the door to the hallway, crawling across the roof. The sound of crackling came from above us, in the attic. Panic hit me as I realized we were trapped beneath flames, and surrounded by the choking smoke.

With my hand still in his, Ferdinand grabbed the satchel of our things, throwing them over his shoulder and adding his coat and my blanket to the bundle. They were all we had time to snatch before the timbers above us gave a great groan and the plaster showered down in a heated cloud. We ducked out of its path, though we couldn't dodge the smoke that billowed in through the holes in the ceiling. I gagged and stumbled, trying to keep up with Ferdinand as he rushed into the common room and to the door to the hallway. I raised my arm to my nose, trying to block what I could, but the smell and taste of smoke was everywhere.

We dashed down the stairs, pushing our way through the crowds of other tenants trying to escape the impending flames. The crush of bodies on the stairway made it nearly impossible to move, and I knew if they didn't clear out within the next few minutes they would be crushed or burned. Ferdinand elbowed his way through, our dancers' legs and flexibility serving us well in winding through the bodies that blocked our path.

The gleam of the rising sun greeted us at the bottom of the stairs, and we rushed toward it. The cobblestones leached the warmth from my feet, but it was better than the sickly warmth of the flame heated floors inside. I managed a glance over my shoulder, to see the destruction, and felt ice flow through my veins. The rowhouses surrounding the boarding house were in flames, their windows burst and the tar from the shingles dripping down in black tears. They'd spread the flames to patches on the boarding house's roof and façade, though it wouldn't be long before it was surrendered to the orange flickering flames as well. Ferdinand didn't even send a single glance toward his old home, and ran across the street and down the sidewalk.

We ran and ran, until I shivered with the cold and limped from the pebbles and hard pavement that ripped at my feet. As if he'd only just noticed my unsuitable attire, Ferdinand slowed and then stopped in front of a seemingly harmless shop window as he dug inside the satchel for my boots. He offered them and I pulled them on with a pair of thick stockings. We hadn't grabbed my coat, so he gave me his. It was overly large and the fur collar pressed up high on my cheekbones. It was gloriously warm, though, and I stuck my hands in the pockets to try and warm myself.

"We can't stay out in the roads right now," Ferdinand said, his gaze flicking in the direction we'd come. Though we were out of sight of the burning buildings, we still saw the rising smoke. I shivered at the memory of the ragged men and woman watching the destruction from the street with their eyes gleaming.

"The theater?"

Ferdinand shook his head. "As dangerous as your apartment. They might be watching it."

"Well, let's see," I said. I put on the facade of business that I usually adopted when Mr. Lennox left me alone in the flat after I flubbed a combination during rehearsals. I liked to have my body busily run through tasks in order to keep my mind from charging down that path of What Ifs that too easily lead to hopelessness. So I turned with a purpose to survey our surroundings.

"We need lodgings," I said, tapping my lip. "I think we'd best make up our minds to not mind something a little more rustic than where you've been living."

He didn't say anything, so I forged on, thinking rapidly of all the seemingly seedy areas that no one would live in willingly, thus would not be expensive or picky about who they let into their rooms. "There was one place by the river..." I mused.

"We'll go to my parents."

My gaze snapped to his face, but his features were set. He adjusted the satchels on his shoulder and nodded firmly. "They won't be happy, but we'll say that you're my wife. If they find out the truth later, fine, but we just need a roof to sleep under until either the companies are allowed to come back, or I can find a job. My father might have a banking position still open, if this rioting doesn't get any more out of hand."

He began walking purposefully down the road, our steps bent in the direction of the fashionable side of town. I kept right behind him, noticing his tense shoulders and pinched lips. For me he would returned to his family home. For me he'd become the banker he so desperately ran from being. My hand slipped into his once again, my ring growing warm with his heat. He pulled me close and kissed the top of my head.

"Even if they won't like that you're a dancer, I know they'll be kind to you," he said. "No one could help loving you."

My face burned and I found I couldn't say a word. Ferdinand looked straight ahead, his expression unreadable. I curled my toes in my boots as we cut across an alley, and tried to slow my pulse before he felt it in my hand.

An hour later we finally emerged from an alley and into the fashionable streets of Rumonin. The rows of townhomes, all made of brick in either rust or white, boasted glossy black shutters and wrought iron gates in front of the stairs to the house and down to the staff entrance. A few of the homes were gracefully draped in ivy and surrounded by roses wearing their winter thorns. None showed any signs of life, and all showed chilling signs of the riots.

How could we ever think this area had escaped the Vigilant Men? It sat like a jewel out in the open, the wealth obvious from just a glance at the uniform doors. Of course the mobs would target the rows of perfect houses.

Windows gaped in jagged pieces, their glass glistening the lawns. Doors hung from their frames by twisted hinges, leaving small portals of vision into gutted insides where papers and statuettes lay scattered on torn and dirty carpets, and walls were streaked in mud and paint. We slowed our walk, looking at these once grand buildings that were now husks and former visages of their past glory. As we walked, our shoes ground the glass into the street, making a crunching noise like snowfall. I kept close to Ferdinand's side, half hidden in his fur coat, staring at the empty windows of the buildings that seemed to gaze on me like a corpse's dead eyes.

Ferdinand's parent's home stood at the end of their row, a little smaller than the others, but with a bigger garden. Ivy wound around the fence, curling right up to the sign that declared this the residence of the Popovs in perfectly embossed iron. Ferdinand grabbed the top of one of the spikes and swung the gate open, letting me walk through and following behind me. There was a short brick walk leading up to the white building and the green door.

Someone had managed to replace the door on its hinges, though it didn't quite fit within the frame anymore. Ferdinand lifted the knocker and let it drop to create an echoing knock within. While we waited, I glanced about, taking in the house.

The grass in the small lawn lay in lumpy, muddy clods by what looked like horse's hooves. The bricks were scorched right up to the ground floor windows, which had been broken like all the others. Unlike the nearest neighbor, however, these had been boarded up with wooden planks nailed into the shutters. They looked so rough and crude against the elegant black and white, like pieces of nature caught in a hospital. My palm went slick in Ferdinand's, but I couldn't tell if it was he or I that was anxious.

Finally the door pulled inward, a full minute after Ferdinand's knock, but instead of a butler or a face that resembled Ferdinand's, there stood a tall woman dressed in faded scarlet, her hair loose and face dirty. She looked us over with curiosity, but didn't seem to be too worried at our appearance. She yawned and blinked expectantly.

"Well?" she asked, raising her heavy eyebrows and tapping the side of the door with a broken fingernail. Ferdinand stared at her, his mouth slightly open. She rolled her eyes and looked over her shoulder.

"Anton, there's some new ones at the door!" she shouted. She gave us one last look and then slunk back into the belly of the house. She'd left the door open, revealing a foyer much like the ones we walked past before. The table that lined the wall in front of us, usually displaying the calling cards of the famous or beloved, lay on its side and the cards coated the wooden flooring. Some were crumpled and others bore boot prints. Ferdinand stared at them blankly.

From the bowels of the house, a husky man with a greasy beard appeared, drying his hands on a leather vest that was the only thing he wore on his torso. He looked annoyed until he caught sight of me, at which point he flashed his crooked teeth and leaned up against the frame. His face was near enough mine that I smelled onions on his breath. Ferdinand pulled me back instinctively, and I gripped his arm.

"Well, well, well," the man said, his voice raspy and harsh and tinged with the accent from the north. His teeth were rotten and his hair was sloppily braided into a queue down his back. "You looking for a place to stay, love?"

"We more interested to know what happened to the folk who lived here?" Ferdinand asked, unable to keep the edge of anger out of his voice. The man narrowed his eyes and straightened up, his hands going to his belt where a pistol lay lodged. He didn't draw it, only looped his fingers through the belt.

"Wouldn't know," the man said. "They ran like all the other cowards when the Vigilant Men came knocking to call them to task about living in such fine manners while people like myself rotted away in places more fit for dogs."

Ferdinand's jaw worked and his eyes shot fire. I squeezed his arm, hoping to calm him.

"Do you know if they happened to leave a note, perhaps?" I asked. The man shifted, fixing his blood-shots eyes on me.

"Why? You one of their little royalist servants loyal to the pigs what thinks themselves so much higher that they can hire people to clean their filth from the chamber pots?" he said. "Well, I can tell you that the lapdogs to the former king are barely better than their master. There weren't no note, and even if there was, I'd eat it whole before handing it off to you lily-livered lot."

"Thank you, we'll take our leave," Ferdinand said through clenched teeth. He spun on his heel and practically ran down the stairs and out the gate, bringing me with him. The greasy man watched us go as he leaned against the door frame, picking his teeth and casually waving as I looked back over my shoulder. His woman appeared, watching us closely and asking questions. We were too far away to hear, but I knew that if we were not out of sight soon, there would be trouble.