As her eyes adjusted, shapes rose out of the darkness. Small forms crouched all about her.

Children! Children taken by the guards! Chest tight, Alba saw a tangle of bodies—at least a dozen, no, more, two dozen, perhaps, boys, girls—were crowded together in the wagon, pushed up against the walls, clustered over the floor. Some stared blankly ahead; others held themselves small and close, faces hidden in their arms.

Under the canvas, the air was humid and thick, even sour—the smell of bodies too warm, the smell of children sick with fear. Alba tried to steady herself. Had this been what she imagined when the butcher told her the king was taking children? No, not this. Perhaps she’d thought the guards—despite the order—would be kind. Perhaps she’d thought the guards—some who must be fathers themselves—would comfort the children, that they would not leave them scared and alone.

Beside her, a boy, smaller than the rest, hunched on the floor. She could feel him shaking—his delicate shoulders shuddering with deep, suppressed sobs.

Swallowing, trying to keep panic out of her own voice, Alba leaned close. “What’s your name?” she said softly.

The boy glanced up, eyes swollen and dark. Seeing Alba bending over him, control slipped away—an audible sob cracked from his throat; then, more sobs breaking, he hid his face in his arms again.

Alba placed her hand on his shoulder, feeling the slightness of his bones beneath her palm. So young. She swallowed again. “My name is Alba,” she said, still softly. “I’ll help you return to your parents.”

Around her, Alba felt bodies shift. Others seemed to be listening.

A long quavering gasp broke from the boy. “H-how?” he wailed.

“Yes, how?” said another in the dark. The voice sounded older, his words clipped—cynical and unbelieving. “They took my sister first, then came back for me. You think my sister didn’t struggle? Didn’t do everything she could to come home?”

The wagon bumped along, the children knocking against one another in the dark. Alba, feeling them waiting for her answer, wavered, unsure. Yes, how? How would she see these children returned to their families? “I know how to convince the king,” she said at last, unable to keep uncertainty from seeping into her voice.

“How are you any different than the rest of us?” another child said. “You were taken just as we were.”

“I chose to be. I’m—” Alba hesitated. “I’m the oracle-apprentice. I know the—”

“Pfft.” The older boy snorted. “Oracle? I don’t think so. You look more like you belong to a family of swineherds.”

Alba, frowning, plucked at the butcher’s wife’s tunic, now mud-splattered and torn. “But I am!” She tried to give her voice some of its oracle-weight. “I promise, I’ll help you. All of you.” How, how, how? she asked herself anew. She felt again the small pip of herself against all the size of the king. It was not enough to want to help. But surely, surely… the king could be convinced by an oracle’s words? Even one who’d been abandoned by priests?