I should tell them, Graces help me. If I was going to be dead in several hours, that was relevant information.

“Listen …” I began.

“Got it!” Zaira crowed. She cast the grille aside with a clang.

Hands strained to reach out of the hole, fingers waving like seaweed. An excited babble rose up from the cellar.

“It’s open! We’re free!”

“Padric, quit shoving!”

“I can’t reach! Let me out!”

Marcello’s arm tightened around me in a brief spasm of sympathy or pain. Then he strode to the drain without looking back. He plunged both arms into the hole and pulled up a child, quick as a conjurer’s trick. The boy shrieked and wriggled; the moment his toes touched the floor, he took off and started running in circles.

“I’m going home! I’m going home!”

My eyes stung. No matter what might happen in the next hours, in this moment we were doing exactly the right thing.

“So much for stealth,” Zaira grumbled.

Marcello hauled up another child, a girl not more than four. When he put her down, she threw herself headfirst into my stomach and squeezed her arms around my waist, knocking the breath out of me. I smoothed her hair as she sobbed.

“It’ll be all right. You’re free.”

Shoulders straining, Marcello heaved another child out of the cellar, and another. When he got tired, I took a turn. Some of them burst out laughing, full of energy and joy; others clung to us, or to each other, tired and afraid. Soon a whole pack of them tore around the empty space like dogs let loose after a rainy week, shrieking and playing. I had to admire their resilience.

When we’d lifted up fourteen children, I leaned over the hole and at last saw nothing but deeper shadow below.

“Is this everyone?”

“I think so,” came Jaslyn’s thin voice. She counted them aloud, calling names, starting over a few times.

Marcello crouched next to me, peering down into the drain to make sure. I leaned my forehead against his. We stayed that way, for a few heartbeats. I closed my eyes, wishing I could stay in this moment, this small fragment of peace.

“We need to get this circus out of town,” Zaira said.

“Where should we take them?” Marcello rose. A small boy grasped my hand, and a girl clung to my coat. “The garrison?”

“No. We need to get them back to their families.”

“We don’t have time to deliver these brats door to door all over the city,” Zaira objected.

I bit my lip. The garrison was no good; they would look like our prisoners. The River Palace certainly wasn’t safe right now.