“Who said that?” I asked. “The lady who was just here?”

“Yes. The one with the gray mask.”

A Shadow Gentry mask. Perhaps she kept it in the crates.

A scuffling sounded in the drain.

“Quit pushing!”

“I want to see!”

“Are you going to let us out? Is it time?”

I tried to reach through the grille, but couldn’t fit more than my fingers. Small hands flicked up to touch them, one after another; one little fist curled around my thumb. My eyes stung, and I had to swallow to speak.

“The lady in the mask told you a man would rescue you?”

Tiny bodies pressed in tight around the little girl now, and half a dozen pairs of eyes stared up at me, but she clung to her place in the center. “Yes. She told us that soon, when the time is right, a man will come rescue us, and return us to our parents. But we have to wait.”

“What man?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Did she tell you anything else?”

Nods stirred the shadows below. “Yes,” a boy said. “A name.”

“She tells us over and over to remember the name of the one who kidnapped us,” the girl confirmed.

“I’m sick of it,” a thin, strong voice cried from the back. “I don’t care about the name. I want to go home.”

“You will,” I promised. “We don’t have the tools to open this now, but I swear we’ll be right back. We’ll get you out.”

More fingers touched mine, clinging. Smiles stretched their pale faces. I couldn’t stand to see the hope lighting their haunted eyes.

“What’s the name she told you to remember?” I asked.

“Gabril Bergandon,” they chorused, as if in school.

I stared into the drain. The shadows deepened as the last gray light faded from the sky; it was getting harder to see their faces. “Gabril?”

“She told us a hundred times,” the child in the back complained. “I hate that name.”

“I think she’s lying,” the girl said.

“You’re a smart girl,” I said. “She is.”

So that’s what Lady Savony wanted with Gabril and the Shadow Gentry. To get Ardence up in arms against Raverra, and then use them as scapegoats.

“We need to go.” Zaira grabbed my arm. “Every moment we stay here is a moment we could get caught, and then no one will save these brats. We need to get the Hells out of here, grab your soldier boy and some tools, and get back here to put an end to this.”

“What’s your name?” I asked the little girl.

“Jaslyn.”

“Mine’s Padric!” the boy called.

“I’m Mirelle!” another cried. And more names, running over each other, until I couldn’t hold them all. More than a dozen.