When Savine looked into those ranks of hungry faces, it was no sappy desire to hold them and stroke their hair that rose up but a trapped panic. An urge to run, barging children out of her way. The challenge of each of her own two babies was almost more than she could manage. How could anyone satisfy the scale of the need in this room, let alone this house?

“By the Fates,” she whispered, unable to stop herself putting a hand over her mouth at the overpowering stink.

“You forget, once you’re used to it,” said Citizeness Vallimir. “We do our best to keep them clean, to contain the sickness and the lice, but there are too few of us, no soap to be had, no spare fuel to heat water. We keep the younger children downstairs, the older ones upstairs.” She glanced towards the great staircase in the hall—down which Savine used to sweep, in the giddy height of fashion—as if she was a general frowning into no man’s land. “They are more… malevolent. They form gangs. They prey on each other. At night… well. One must be careful here at night.”

“How many do you have?” whispered Savine, staring about her mother’s old salon. It made her think of the mill in Valbeck, where children once toiled for her profit.

“Honestly… I couldn’t say. We kept records to begin with, where we could. Names, birthplaces, ages, but… once we realised what was happening in the city…” She gave a helpless sigh. “The children band together and huddle anywhere warm. Then they are in terrible danger. They are hunted, rounded up like sheep. They are bought and sold. Traded into slavery in the mills. Pressed into… worse kinds of slavery. They started to come here by themselves. Soon there were dozens of them crowding about the gate every morning. We were less interested in counting them than in getting them out of the cold, feeding them, and then…” She hopelessly raised her hands, hopelessly let them fall, eloquently conveying the size of the challenge.

Savine felt Zuri’s reassuring touch on her shoulder. “You have done good here. All the good you could. Never forget that.”

It was hard for Savine to imagine, at that moment, that she had done anything more than concentrate the most intense misery into one place. She forced the hand away from her mouth, forced down her panic and tried to think through it, like any other problem. She had been expecting challenges of education, occupation, betterment. Having taken a few steps over the threshold, it was clear no one was looking past survival. “You need money, for food, fuel, clothing.” She had given the last of what she had to Leo so he could bribe the People’s Army. “If I am to go to the government…” If there was anything left still worthy of the title. “Or find some wealthy benefactor…” Though those who had money were hoarding it to hide behind. “I need at least some idea of how many we have.”