“A couple of hours,” Hester insisted. “Call me about five. What about Enid?”

“I've persuaded her.” Callandra smiled faintly. “Now go on. You can't stay up indefinitely. If you don't rest you'll be no use. You've told me that often enough.”

Hester gave a rueful little shrug. There was no honesty or purpose in denial.

“Watch the boy over there on the left.” She gestured towards a figure lying crumpled, half on one side, about twenty feet away. “He's got a dislocated shoulder. I've put it back, but it slips out if he leans on it when he sits up to retch.”

“Poor little creature.” Callandra sighed. “He looks no more than ten or twelve, but it's hard to tell.”

“He said he was sixteen,” Hester replied. “But I don't suppose he can count.”

“Did it happen recently? The shoulder, I mean?”

“I asked him. He said he got across Caleb Stone and got beaten for his cheek.”

Callandra winced. “There's a woman on the far end with a knife scar on her face. She said that was Caleb Stone too. She didn't say why. He seems to be a very violent man. She sounded still afraid of him.”

“Well, I don't suppose we'll see him in here,” Hester said dryly. “Unless he gets typhoid. Nobody comes to pesthouses to collect debts, however large-or to exact revenge either.” She glanced down the dark cavern of the warehouse. “No revenge could be worse than this,” she said softly. “Go and rest,” Callandra ordered. “Or you won't be fit to work when I sleep.”

Hester obeyed gratefully. She had not dared to think how tired she was, or she could not have continued. Now at last she was free to go into the small outer room, where there was a pile of extra straw, and let herself sink into it in the darkness, away from duty, the sounds of distress and the constant awareness of other people's suffering. For a moment she could forget it all and let exhaustion and oblivion overtake her.

But the straw prickled. It had been a long time since Scutari, and she had forgotten the feeling of overwhelming helplessness in the face of such enormity of pain, and she could not so easily blank it from her mind. Her ears still strained for the sounds and her body tensed, as if in spite of everything Callandra could say, she really ought to go and do what she could to help.

That would be futile. She would become too worn out to take her turn when Callandra and Kristian needed to sleep. She must fill her mind with something else deliberately, force herself to think of some subject which would overtake even this.