toddler runs up too, wearing just a shirt. He’s filthy – they all are. Filthy and half starved. I can’t believe this is the happy family I shared meals with after Shrine. Their cries slice into me and I pause, holding out my good arm to the toddler, but Major Zungu scowls and gestures to me to hurry up.
Around another corner, the youngest wife, Nomkhululi, is cradling a tiny baby, her haggard face wracked with worry. She ignores Mr Frye but reaches a thin arm to me through the bars. “Please, Ebba, take my baby. They’re going to kill us. She hasn’t done anything wrong …” Tears run down her face and the baby wakes up with a feeble wail. She holds the child close, rubbing her tiny back. “Please, ask the general if you can take her.”
I stare, seeing an image of my own mother holding me when she faced down the army. “Mr Frye?” I turn to him.
Major Zungu reaches in and shoves Nomkhululi in the face. “Move along,” he snaps. “Move along.”
Hal is in the next cell. His face is swollen out of shape. Some of his teeth are gone and there’s a festering sore on his cheek. Seeing me, he limps forward, his eyes fixed on mine, his face hopeful. “Ebba, I knew you’d come.”
“There’s nothing I can do, Hal,” I whisper.
“You have to.” He presses his once handsome face against the bars, just inches from me. “You said you have powers from the Goddess.”
I swallow. “Not any more. Your father stole my amulet, Hal. Where is it? I have to get it back.”
He ignores my question. “They’re hurting Cassie.” His voice cracks. “You’ve got to get her out of here.”
“I’m so sorry, Hal,” I whisper, reaching for his hand. “They’re arresting me too.”
He looks taken aback, and then the light in his eyes seems to go out. He lifts his lip and spits in my face. “Liar! You’ve joined them. I always knew you would.”
I’m stung. “What do you mean? I haven’t joined them. I loved you, Hal. I just didn’t want to marry you, and your father tried to force it.”
“You were too busy with that garden-boy scum,” he snarls. “If we’d got married, none of this would have happened. It’s all your fault. First you kill my father, and now you won’t even save a newborn baby. You fooled me, you really did, with your big-eyed innocent act! You’re nothing but a two-faced, murdering slut …”
“Keep moving, Ebba.” Mr Frye’s voice is firm in my ear. “Come along.”
We’re reaching the end of the passage. I can see the gate, thank the Goddess. But there are two cells before we get to it, and the door of the second one stands open.
Please let it be Micah in that last cell. Please let me have found him.
But then I hope it isn’t. I’d rather imagine Micah on the mountain, in the open air with the sky above him and the sun on his cheek, even if he’s dead.
Three more steps, and at first it seems there’s no one inside. Then I see a figure huddled next to the wall, arms wrapped around his long thin legs, head bowed.
He doesn’t look up.
“Lucas!” I hiss. “Lucas.” I crouch down next to the cell bars, trying to see his face.
He half lifts his head.
“What have they done to you?” I gasp.
His face is smeared with blood, there’s a gash down his chin and it looks like his nose has been broken. But it’s his eyes that shock me.
They’re dead. Totally dead.
I want to hold him until they light up again. I have to help him.
“Mr Frye,” I get up and grab his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter what they do to me, but you have to get Lucas out of here. He saved my life. He brought me the keys when the High Priest locked me up.”
Major Zungu turns. Oh Goddess, did he hear me? If he did, he’ll punish Lucas even more. He’s scowling under his thick eyebrows. So much hatred in one look.
“Hurry up,” he barks, pulling at the door of the unlocked cell. He’s going to throw me inside, I know it. This time there’ll be no Clementine and her little boy to help me, no Lucas to bring me the key or draw me a map. They’ll hurt me like they’re hurting Cassie. They’ll break my nose and pull out my nails, and I’ll be here forever until I rot and fester like Hal’s wounded cheek, until I die. Without the amulets, not even the Goddess can help me.
“Please, Mr Frye,” I half sob. “Don’t let them lock me up. Tell the general I’ll do everything he says. Everything.”
“This way, Miss den Eeden,” Major Zungu snaps, rapping the bars with his revolver.
I clutch the empty necklace with my free hand. Please, Goddess, I pray silently. I’ll do anything. Just save me.
There’s a pause. The voices of the Poladion family echo down the corridors: Cassie sobbing, Evelyn screeching ugly words, Hal calling me, ordering me to get him out. The baby starts to cry, a thin wail that shatters me.
Only Lucas is silent. Head drooping in the corner of his cell, he sits as if he is already dead, waiting to be buried.
I’m too scared to move, terrified of hearing that cell door clang shut behind me, of being locked up away from Isi, from Greenhaven and Micah and Aunty Figgy and everyone I love.
“This way,” Major Zungu’s voice is rising.
Mr Frye looks back. “Come along, dear,” he says.
“Don’t let them. Please, please, Mr Frye, for my mother’s sake, my great-aunt … I know I’ve made you angry. I can change. I –”
But Major Zungu isn’t pushing me into the last cell. He swings the door shut and stands aside as the guards open the iron gates.
“The general does not appreciate being kept waiting,” he says, pointing to the stairs.
This can only mean one thing: I’ve got to appear in front of the council again. They’re going to execute me.
I grip Mr Frye’s hand as we start the climb back up the dark stone stairway.
“Please,” I whisper, “protect me. It wasn’t my fault the High Priest died, I swear it.”
He squeezes my fingers. ‘There, there, Ebba,” he murmurs. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
Easy for him to say – it’s not him being summoned to the council chamber.
“Just remember you are extremely wealthy,” he says quietly as we reach the top of the stairs and turn down a long passageway leading deeper into the mountainside. “Wealth is power. Use it. Bargain with them.”
Me? Power? I’m a sixteen-year-old girl up against the general and his whole army. I’ve enraged every
