Iltani was about to be whipped for trying to poison Gala, but he had begged his senior guardsmen not to lay a hand on her, citing “an illness of the mind.” But since he’d taken the afront personally, he’d agreed to let them shave her head.

Through the door of our dungeon, he’d told us he would have been willing to help if we’d let him in on our plans. He’d suspected something was off with Iltani since she was so nice to him, and he’d faked drinking the brew and run away in case she was planning to kill him. He knew she was unhappy. And then, when Iltani had said she’d wanted a hug, he’d come into the cell and embraced her, and she’d practically torn off his ear with her teeth.

Now she stood next to me, her shoulders thrown back in defiance, head shaved, looking like a cat that had been bested in a street fight.

“Where is she?” Gudanna’s voice echoed from the throne.

“Who?” Iltani said belligerently, and was immediately knocked to the floor by a swift backhand from one of the guards. Where were the pitiful child guards? It seemed as though Uruku kept the strongest around him, and left the smaller, younger guardsmen to battle outside threats, his own people be damned.

“I’ll ask one more time. Where is she?”

“We do not know,” Dagan wheezed, holding his likely cracked ribs. “The last we heard, as we…repeatedly said…,” he panted, “she’d been taken to wife and died in childbirth.”

In one swift motion, Uruku stood to his feet. “LIES!” he yelled, wincing in pain. Angrily, he gestured toward the corridor, holding a knuckle to his temple. “Bring them out!”

Bring who out?

A rattling of chains and a scuffling noise, followed by a low moan, echoed from the corridor. Three bedraggled figures were tugged from the depths, their torsos and heads stuffed in linen sacks. A man and two women, judging from their bodies. Guardsmen standing nearby yanked the sacks from their heads, uncovering Shiptu, whose bones jutted from the tunic as if she’d been starved, and two people I was not expecting to see:

Nasu and Assata.

“Ummum!” Dagan strained against the ropes they’d tied around his body.

Shiptu gave Dagan a brave stare despite her thinness. Despite the fact that two of her teeth had been knocked out. “I am here, my child. Where are your brothers?” Her chin bunched with unshed tears, but she recovered. “Are they well? Have they been harmed?”

Dagan’s voice went hoarse. “They are all well, Ummum. Well and whole.”

Could she hear the falseness as I could?

Rish was not whole, and poor Shep was gone to the Netherworld.

My stomach dropped when she closed her eyes and said a prayer of thanks to Selu, clasping her tied hands in front of her mouth. She was wearing a filthy tunic and her feet were bare. Her hair was matted, but aside from the missing teeth, she didn’t look as though she’d been beaten.