Bill looked at the face.

“Don’t be scared,” it said.

There were shouts from outside, the sound of running feet.

Bill tensed; his hand squashed the face into a flattened mess. That was the only visible sign that he was concerned. His expression gave nothing away. He had lived so long now on edge, waiting for something awful to happen, reacting to it when it did, that he was like a small wild animal. Constantly alert. All his senses tingling.

The footsteps passed by. Ollie and Whitney exchanged glances. It all went quiet again.

The face had reappeared in the Blu Tack.

“It’s okay,” it said. “You’re safe now.”

64

The royals sat in their bedroom in the dark, staring into space. It smelled in here. They had long since forgotten how to use the bathroom. Every now and then they were herded downstairs to sit on their thrones, but otherwise nothing happened in their world.

A cockroach crawled across the leg of a young man who was sitting on the floor. The young man’s face was so bloated with swellings that his eyes were two tiny holes, and his nose had disappeared. He picked the bug up and put it in his mouth.

They were always hungry.

There was a noise in the corridor outside. Something scraped the door. All the heads in the room turned as one and looked in the direction of the noise.

There was a bang, the crunch of splintering wood. A second bang ...

The door opened.

The corridor was empty.

Still chewing the cockroach, the young man got up and shambled to the door.

The others followed.

David’s two guards had been sitting outside the sick bay for five hours straight. They were bored stiff. David had promised them that somebody would come to relieve them after three hours. No one had come.

This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t as if anything was going to happen anyway. The heavy wooden door was locked. There were only three kids in there. Two girls, one of whom was injured, and a boy with a concussion. What were they supposed to do? Batter the door down and overwhelm the two of them?

Fat chance. They had guns, after all.

“They’ve forgotten about us,” said the taller of the two. He had short brown curly hair and a bad case of acne.

“They always do,” said the other one, a fair-haired boy with a big nose. “Everyone thinks that just because we’re in David’s guard, our lives must be great. But this sucks.”

“We do get a bit more food than the others,” said Spotty.

“Oh whoop-di-doo,” said Big Nose. “If I could, I’d trade this in and do farming or something. This is just tedious.”

“We’re the elite.”

“So what?”