Roland sighed. “We’ll do what we can to spare him. That much I promise you. I don’t know if it will be a mercy or not—the Slightmans are going to be through in this town, if there’s a town left after the end of next week—but perhaps they’ll go north or south along the Crescent and start some sort of new life. And Jake, listen: there’s no need for Ben Slightman to ever know you overheard Andy and his father last night.”

Jake was looking at him with an expression that didn’t quite dare to be hope. He didn’t care a hill of beans about Slightman the Elder, but he didn’t want Benny to know it was him. He supposed that made him a coward, but he didn’t want Benny to know. “Really? For sure?”

“Nothing about this is for sure, but—”

Before he could finish, the singing children swept around the corner. Leading them, silver limbs and golden body gleaming mellowly in the day’s subdued light, was Andy the Messenger Robot. He was walking backward. In one hand was a bah-bolt wrapped in banners of bright silk. To Susannah he looked like a parade-marshal on the Fourth of July. He waved his baton extravagantly from side to side, leading the children in their song while a reedy bagpipe accompaniment issued from the speakers in his chest and head.

“Holy shit,” Eddie said. “It’s the Pied Piper of Hamelin.”

Three

“Commala-come-one!

Mamma had a son!

Dass-a time ’at Daddy

Had d’mos’ fun!”

Andy sang this part alone, then pointed his baton at the crowd of children. They joined in boisterously.

“Commala-come-come!

Daddy had one!

Dass-a time ’at Mommy

Had d’mos’ fun!”

Gleeful laughter. There weren’t as many kids as Susannah would have thought, given the amount of noise they were putting out. Seeing Andy there at their head, after hearing Jake’s story, chilled her heart. At the same time, she felt an angry pulse begin to beat in her throat and her left temple. That he should lead them down the street like this! Like the Pied Piper, Eddie was right—like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Now he pointed his makeshift baton at a pretty girl who looked thirteen or fourteen. Susannah thought she was one of the Anselm kids, from the smallhold just south of Tian Jaffords’s place. She sang out the next verse bright and clear to that same heavily rhythmic beat, which was almost (but not quite) a skip-rope chant:

“Commala-come-two!

You know what to do!

Plant the rice commala,

Don’t ye be…no…foo’!”

Then, as the others joined in again, Susannah realized that the group of children was bigger than she’d thought when they came around the corner, quite a bit bigger. Her ears had told her truer than her eyes, and there was a perfectly good reason for that.

“Commala-come-two![they sang]

Daddy no foo’!

Mommy plant commala

cause she know jus’ what to do!”