Babet bows her head in acknowledgement. “You may go, Messenger.”

Giggles sound behind me as I head off to find my brother.

Jorzy, smoothing down his wet hair, is coming out of the communal bathroom. Under one arm is a grimy bundle of shirt and trousers from his day at the factory, which Nanna will wash and hang overnight in front of the stove so they’re ready again for Jorzy in the morning.

“Grub’s up,” I tell him.

“Goodo,” he says. “I could eat a whole cattle-beast.”

Then I take the stairs two at a time up to the next floor. The old wooden treads are worn in the middle from years of foot traffic. There’s a new family living up here that I don’t know well. They came from a building in Tor Street that got blown up by the Black Marks for some kind of insurgency, and I know them only by sight.

This floor has a long corridor with rooms opening off it. Some of the rooms still have doors, while others have a curtain or nothing at all. My nose wrinkles trying to identify the various cooking smells, and I wonder who might have meat tonight. Voices float from the rooms, and there’s a burst of laughter. Unlike our floor, which is divided into three roomy apartments, this floor is just single rooms, though everybody’s still crammed in together, some rooms holding up to a dozen people.

At the end of the corridor, I stop at an open doorway. Marina, her long dark hair tied up with a rag, and an older woman are sitting on wooden crates, deep in conversation.

“Leho,” says Siri, noticing me there. “You look so like your sister.”

“Our dinner’s ready,” I say gruffly. Sometimes I don’t know how to talk to the new people, whether to trust them or not.

Siri squeezes Marina’s hand. “Thanks, it was good to talk.”

“I know.” Marina smiles, looking so much like Ma it makes me shiver. “For me too.”

We move along the corridor. “Poor thing,” murmurs Marina. “Her son didn’t come home the other day. Turns out he was pulled from work and sent to a wild camp.” We start down the stairs as she adds, “And he’s a bit younger than Jorzy.”

Sitting on the banister, I slide my way to the next floor, not wanting to think about Jorzy being taken too.

“Maybe he was lazy, or a troublemaker,” I suggest, just for something to say.

“Maybe.” Marina frowns. “Though that’s no excuse for taking him away.”

At the bottom of the stairs we make our way through the hole in the wall and along to the corridor to our kitchen.

“Well, Jorzy’s a good worker,” I tell her, mainly for my own benefit. “He’ll be all right.”

“Yes,” my sister says quietly, “but for how long?”

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