What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

A young man named Arkady lives with his friend Giacomo, who is like a brother to him, and their dog Leporello in an apartment. They live in a place where the tyrant king drowns people in the river when they anger him, which happens often. Both of Arkady’s parents were killed this way, and he woke up one day as a child to find that he was alone. Recently, Arkady threw a key into a fire as part of a plan to kidnap the tyrant’s daughter.

The daughter, known as both Eirini the Second and Eirini the Fair, was named after her mother. Eirini the First was almost stoned to death because the child looked nothing like the tyrant and much more like a man her mother loved but had never even spoken to. The man came to the execution to vouch for Eirini the First, and she was spared. However, when the man asked to see the child, the tyrant denied the request and drowned him. The tyrant had executed so many people by this point that houses stood empty and the marshlands surrounding the kingdom were full of human remains and house keys. Eirini the Fair would later go to the marshlands to thank the man who resembled her for saving her mother, but she could not distinguish his body from the countless others drowned there.

Eirini the Fair realizes that most people wanted her father dead. It has crossed Eirini's mind that someone might try to harm her to get back at her father, but she reassures herself that she is well-guarded.

After his parents’ deaths, Arkady ran out of food and ended up on the streets. There he met Giacomo, who was being swindled when Arkady found him. Giacomo is naive and sees the best in people, so Arkady felt that he had an obligation to look after him. Leporello, a gold-colored vizsla puppy who had been following them around, became their last companion.

One day when Arkady was at work, Giacomo discovered that the key to their apartment also opened the doors to other apartments in their building. He found one with a view he particularly liked. When Arkady found out, he expressed concern about their own safety and Giacomo’s trespassing, but Giacomo promised to be careful, and Leporello agreed to help keep Giacomo out of trouble.

Arkady was at the time working for Lokum, a beautiful woman who is the tyrant’s physician and latest obsession. His job was to clean up, but he also served as her test subject, trying squares of lokum that she had mixed with different medicinal concoctions. One piece caused Arkady to express attraction to Lokum in a way that she felt wasn’t safe given the tyrant’s affections. Lokum therefore dismissed Arkady, leaving the already struggling young man without a steady income. Food became scarcer, and Giacomo started to develop fevers. After three months of missed rent, they were evicted from their building.

Arkady found the three of them a room to rent elsewhere, but Giacomo asked to go home, having kept the key that opened all of the doors in their old building. This is when Arkady takes the key and throws it into the fire. He contemplates kidnapping Eirini the Fair to stand up to the tyrant and hopefully also get paid a ransom, but instead of taking any action, he goes to sleep. He dreams of a fire and sees the key burning in it, and he is awakened by police. They accuse him of burning down his former building, killing nine people who were still inside. He insists that he did not burn down the building, but he is arrested and thrown in a cell. The police convince him to confess to the arson by showing him images of the nine people who died; they take his confession even though he gets a lot of the details wrong.

The tyrant comes to visit Arkady in prison, believing that they have a lot in common because he likes to kill people as well. Arkady tells the tyrant that he should be in the cell with him. The tyrant has Arkady’s meals withheld as punishment, but the guards don’t obey these orders for long; Arkady overhears the guards express doubt about his guilt, claiming to have heard of buildings with keys that can open every door.

Lokum agrees to marry the tyrant but makes him promise not to drown anyone else. The tyrant sends Eirini the First and Eirini the Fair to a nearby kingdom so that he doesn’t have to think about them. He tells Arkady that he and Lokum are going to marry and apologizes for losing the key to Arkady’s cell, admitting that he’d hastily drowned the only person who knew how to make another key. When Arkady sends Lokum his regards, the tyrant becomes jealous and tells the guards to spring Arkady’s lock so that he will never get out and will die in the cell. The guards, believing the punishment too harsh, ultimately disobey. When the tyrant tells Lokum what he’s done, she begs for mercy for Arkady, but he tells her that it’s already too late.

Many of the tyrant’s subjects flee to the neighboring country, and when the tyrant notices that the streets seem empty and quiet, he assumes he has drowned too many people. The marshland starts to overtake the city, submerging houses and businesses, and the tyrant doesn’t notice. On his wedding day, he takes Lokum out to the longest bridge and covers her in gasoline, lighting her on fire. However, she discovers that he cannot kill her and pulls him into the flame, setting him ablaze. He jumps into the swamp, but the people he drowned push him out onto the land, letting him burn.

Unharmed, Lokum walks back to the city, changes clothes, and goes to free Arkady, bringing him food and then Giacomo and Leporello. She then leaves to find a way to release Arkady from his cell. Arkady asks Giacomo and Leporello if he should leave the prison; he isn’t sure if he’s responsible for those nine deaths. Giacomo tells him that the people died because they couldn’t get out. Giacomo doesn’t answer when Arkady again asks if he was to blame, “balanc[ing] a leaf on the tip of Leporello’s nose” (175).

Eirini the Fair becomes the owner of a drinking establishment in her new country, her mother having drowned in the Danube soon after their arrival. She learns from people who escaped her father’s country that most of it is now underwater and that he is gone. Lokum comes to ask Eirini if she took a key from her father. She remembers the key and hopes she was able to inconvenience her detested father one last time. As Lokum and Eirini return to the tyrant’s prison gates, Eirini looks down into the water and sees that her mother has found her way to the “drowned city” and has reunited with the man who looks like her. Eirini the First signals to Eirini the Fair that she wants grandchildren, but the younger Eirini pretends not to notice.