Children of Refuge

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Ouch.

  “Again—not my fault!” I complained. “And not Rosi’s fault either! Why . . . why wasn’t there sound with the video of the Cursed Town marketplace to begin with? No offense, but how is it that nobody but you figured out a way to read Rosi’s lips? If the police—or whoever, those Enforcers—if they’d heard what Rosi actually said, I bet she wouldn’t have been arrested for fighting!”

  “Yeah . . . you’re probably right,” Kiandra agreed, almost absentmindedly. She was scanning the screen again. “At least, she shouldn’t have been arrested. I think it was kind of a setup. Maybe these Enforcers provided the video. Maybe they’re the ones who wanted to make it look like more of a battle than it really was. Except . . .” She slumped back against the couch. “People really did fight in Cursed Town. Your friend really did break a rule by escaping from prison.”

  “So we can’t ever find her,” I muttered, slumping in defeat. “If those Enforcer types haven’t found her, we won’t be able to either.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” Kiandra said, still peering at the screen. She typed long strings of information. “What do you know? Looks like I can hack into alien computer systems too!” She turned the screen toward me. “Want to look at the people who were interrogated about Rosi’s disappearance? Maybe we can figure out some clues the aliens couldn’t see!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A man appeared on the screen, sitting at a table in front of a boring gray wall. The words WITNESS/POSSIBLE ACCESSORY #1, CASE #1 were stamped below his image.

  “Is this anyone you know?” Kiandra asked.

  “Rosi’s dad,” I said. “Her real . . . er, her father in Cursed Town.”

  Strangely, I could refer to my own parents as “real,” and I’d slipped into thinking that way about Zeba’s dad at the Ref City soup kitchen. But it seemed like for Rosi, her Fred-parents were the ones who deserved the name “real parents,” more than the parents who’d given birth to her. Was it just because Rosi was so much more like her Fred-parents?

  I didn’t think Kiandra could help me figure that out.

  “Rosi’s dad—really?” she asked. “He’s kind of scary-looking, isn’t he? He must have lost his arm in the war.”

  I looked again. When I’d met Rosi’s parents in Cursed Town, I hadn’t paid any more attention to them than I usually paid to adults. That is to say: I’d lied to them, and I’d kind of gloated that they probably knew I was lying but couldn’t prove it.

  I hadn’t known about the war back then. I’d barely noticed that Rosi’s father was missing an arm. And that wasn’t what made him scary, anyhow. It was the deep lines carved into his face. It was the anger that seemed entrenched in his very skin, as if he’d been mad for years, maybe for decades—for so long that his whole face had become a mask of fury.

  He was scary-looking.

  But something made me defend him.

  “You don’t like people judging you on how you look, Kiandra,” I said accusingly. “Do you think it’s his fault, what he looks like?”

  “Touché,” Kiandra mumbled. She reached for the keyboard. “Let’s hear what he told the Enforcers.”

  On the screen Rosi’s dad raised his head. Someone we couldn’t see asked, “Where is your daughter?”

  “I doan know,” Rosi’s father groaned. “Doan you thunk I’d tell you if’n I did?”

  “That’s not how he talked before!” I said. “It’s like he’s making himself sound stupider than he really is!”

  Kiandra raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s kind of smart,” she said admiringly.

  “We know your daughter was present in your home after she escaped from prison,” the interrogator said, still offscreen. “Our patroller called it in . . . before he vanished. You have a lot to answer for, Nelsi Alvaran.”

  Rosi’s dad reached across his body and held up his empty shirtsleeve.

  “You think I coulda done anything to an Enforcer?” he asked. “Or even captured my own daughter? Me, one-armed and blind?”

  “He’s blind, too?” Kiandra said, and even she sounded distressed by this news.

  “Could you just tell us what happened that night?” the interrogator asked. He didn’t sound like he cared about Rosi’s father’s problems.

  “Oh, be careful,” I whispered. I knew from all the times I’d gotten caught lying in Fredtown: It’s the open-ended questions that can trip you up.

  Rosi’s father nodded once and squinted his milky eyes.

  “I’s sitting in my own home, minding my own business,” he said. “The girl show up and say she’s goin’ steal our boy from us. Our boy! The one we really care about!”

  “Sexist, awful . . .” Kiandra muttered.

  “Don’t you think he could be pretending about that, too?” I asked Kiandra.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Go on,” the interrogator prompted.

  “Minute later, patroller break down our door, screaming ’bout the girl,” Rosi’s father continued. “Girl shove past me, trying to get away. She knock me over. Clean over! I hit my head and black out. Wake up to you sticking da gun in my face and screaming questions.”

  Kiandra froze the action on the screen and turned to me.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she asked. “You know the man.”

  “I met him once for five minutes!” I protested. I didn’t admit that Rosi had told me about her father too. Something about how he didn’t like her nose. It hadn’t made sense to me at the time—all I’d really noticed was how sad it made Rosi.

  I focused on Kiandra’s question.

  “It is really convenient that Rosi’s dad blacked out and couldn’t capture Rosi and give her back to the Enforcers,” I said. “And that would also mean he didn’t know what happened to the patroller. But saying that is kind of a risky strategy if it isn’t true.”

  I liked talking about this as if I were just evaluating lying skills. Not looking for clues that could save Rosi’s life.

  Kiandra restarted the video.

  “You expect me to believe that you were unconscious until I showed up?” the interrogator roared at Rosi’s father. “So of course you couldn’t see what happened to the girl, you couldn’t see what happened to our patroller, you couldn’t see—”

  “I couldn’t see nothing nohow,” Rosi’s father interrupted. “Haven’t seen nothing in twelve years. Can’t never be no eyewitness for you.”

  His face was still scary, and he still wasn’t talking right. And he was saying he couldn’t see. But there was something strangely powerful in how Rosi’s father answered that question, something that reminded me of my own father, even though the two men looked nothing alike.

  Rosi’s father seemed almost dignified.

  The scene on the laptop screen dissolved into static and fuzz, and I jumped at the louder noise.

  “I hope that was the end of that interrogation,” Kiandra whispered. “I hope they didn’t . . . hurt him.”

  “Hurt him?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? He answered the question!”

  “Oh, Edwy, there’s so much you don’t know about how the universe works,” Kiandra said, as if I were a preschooler. Maybe even a toddler.

  I would have protested, but Kiandra was already summoning up the next interrogation. The words WITNESS/POSSIBLE ACCESSORY #2, CASE #1 appeared at the bottom of the screen before the scene focused in.

  This time, a woman sat at the same interrogation table, in front of the same blank gray wall.

  “Rosi’s mother,” I told Kiandra, and Kiandra winced.

  “Her face,” she said. “Was it burned in the war? And then she probably didn’t get good treatment, so it didn’t heal right. . . .”

  “How am I supposed to know?” I asked. “Remember, I’m the one who doesn’t know how the universe works!”

  “Just see if you can figure out anything from what she says,” Kiandra muttered.

  We both leaned back against the couch. Kia
ndra tilted the laptop so I could see the screen too. Rosi’s mother had just started to protest, “I already told you everything I know. Poor women like me, it’s not like we know much of anything!”

  “You were there that night.” It sounded like the same interrogator who’d questioned Rosi’s father. “And surely you’re not going to claim that you were unconscious too?”

  “No, sir,” Rosi’s mother said. Her eyes darted to the side, which made her look sneaky.

  No, no, I wanted to advise her. When you’re about to tell a lie, just keep looking straight ahead! Don’t give yourself away!

  On the screen Rosi’s mother straightened her back.

  “I was there, but that don’t mean I know anything,” she said. “Girl came in and grabbed our boy; patroller came in and screamed at her; everyone ran away.”

  “And you were totally innocent,” the interrogator said sarcastically.

  “Yes, sir,” Rosi’s mother said. “Nothing I could do about any of it. You gonna pay to fix our front door? The one the patroller broke?”

  “You were harboring a criminal!” the interrogator yelled. “Of course we’re not going to pay to fix your door!”

  “Girl ran through our house,” Rosi’s mother said with a shrug. “Your patroller chased her. Don’t see how that’s our fault.”

  “The pattern of footsteps in the mud around your house does not support your story,” the interrogator growled.

  “What footprints?” Rosi’s mother asked. It seemed like she was trying to make her eyes look wide and innocent. But that didn’t work very well with her scarred, haggard face.

  I could almost hear the smile in the interrogator’s voice.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Strangely enough, it looks as though someone tried to smooth away all evidence of footprints around your house.”

  Rosi’s mother shrugged.

  “It was nighttime, and I was wearing my robe,” she said. “It’s long. When I stepped outside to see where the girl and your patroller went, it musta drug on the ground.”

  Now the interrogator leaned toward her. I could see the back of his head: dark, matted hair.

  “And yet, despite the attempt to destroy evidence, we were still able to make out some footprints,” the interrogator purred. “Some incriminating footprints.”

  I was pretty sure Rosi’s mother had been lying. But maybe she was better at it than me. She didn’t even flinch.

  “I don’t know big words like that,” she said.

  “So many footprints were swept away,” the interrogator said. “But it’s clear there was a second woman at your house that evening. Maybe an accomplice?”

  “Don’t know that word neither,” Rosi’s mother said calmly. “We have neighbors stop by all the time. May have been someone there that afternoon. May have been someone there even earlier in the day. I don’t keep track.”

  “I might have tried to work out a deal with you, if you’d confessed,” the interrogator said. “If you’d told me the accomplice’s name right away.”

  “You think I’m going to buy my own freedom, selling someone else’s?” Rosi’s mother asked. “You think I’m that lowdown?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the interrogator said. His back was still within the camera’s range, and I saw his shoulders rise and fall in a cruel shrug. “Our patroller did an identity scan on your whole house, when he first got there. He sent that in even though, oddly, it was his last transmission. We know who else was in your house when the patroller arrived.”

  “If you already knew, why’d you bother asking me?” Rosi’s mother said.

  I wanted to tell Kiandra, This isn’t how Rosi’s mother acted the last time I saw her. The one time I’d seen the woman, she’d seemed mousy and angry and afraid. What had happened to turn her so brave, to give her the courage to talk back to an Enforcer?

  But before I could say anything, a door opened near the table where Rosi’s mother sat, and someone shoved a woman in a hooded cape into the interrogation room. She jolted against the table, almost falling, and the hood slipped from her hair.

  “Oh no,” I said. “Oh no.”

  “Do you know that woman?” Kiandra asked.

  “She’s a maid,” I said.

  “Why would that matter?” Kiandra began. “Unless—”

  “She works for our parents,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kiandra grabbed my arm.

  “Does this maid know anything about you?” she asked. “Anything about Enu and me?”

  I shook Kiandra’s hand away.

  “Kiandra—I lived in our parents’ house for barely twenty-four hours!” I protested. “I’m doing well to recognize her! To know anything!”

  This wasn’t entirely true. According to the Freds, one of my worst traits was that I liked to snoop in other people’s things. I wasn’t like my father—I never stole anything from anyone. But sometimes I just wondered what people kept in their cabinets and drawers, what they hid away and thought no one else needed to see.

  If the Freds back in Fredtown had just been honest about everything from the start, I wouldn’t have felt like I needed to be so sneaky, I thought, as if I needed to defend my motives.

  But I didn’t know that for sure. Maybe I would have been a curious kid no matter where I grew up.

  Anyhow, just in the first night I’d spent in my parents’ home, I’d wandered the whole house. I’d pulled out every drawer in my father’s desk and looked at every piece of paper. I hadn’t discovered any secret door down to the hidden tunnel and warehouse and office under my parents’ house, but I’m sure I would have eventually.

  On the screen Rosi’s mother gasped.

  “Drusa,” she whispered, to my parents’ maid. “Believe me, I didn’t tell them about you. I didn’t try to drag you into this. . . .”

  The maid—Drusa?—hugged the other woman’s shoulders.

  “And I won’t say anything about your daughter,” she said. “I promise.” She peered straight at the interrogator, which made it seem as though she was peering straight out at Kiandra and me. “Not that I know anything to say.”

  “Oh, how very sweet,” the interrogator mocked them. “Of course neither of you knows anything. Let’s see what you say separately.”

  Guards came in and pulled Rosi’s mother away. The interrogator ordered Drusa to sit in the abandoned chair. In the spotlight.

  A new label appeared on the screen: WITNESS/POSSIBLE ACCESSORY #3, CASE #1.

  “At least this woman looks normal,” Kiandra muttered. “I bet she’s a lot younger than Rosi’s parents. And—she’s a lot prettier.”

  Drusa’s green eyes sparkled, while Rosi’s mother’s had been shadowed and scary. Freed from the hood, Drusa’s long hair fell in waves down her back.

  “Right, because what she looks like really matters right now,” I told Kiandra.

  Kiandra bit her lip.

  “I guess it’s a habit, always noticing what people look like,” she said. “But in this case . . . maybe if the interrogator thinks she’s pretty, she can sweet-talk him, and then—”

  “What?” I said, a little too sharply. “Can she convince the Enforcers not to chase after Rosi? Not to even try to find her? Can she get them to stop saying they want Rosi captured, dead or alive?”

  “Never mind,” Kiandra whispered.

  Drusa settled into the chair slowly, as if she wanted to make the interrogator wait.

  “Can Mrs. Alvaran hear what I tell you?” Drusa asked. “Will either of the Alvarans know what I say here?”

  “Of course not,” the interrogator said. “What you say here is only between you and me.”

  “And all the rest of the Enforcers,” Kiandra muttered. “And . . . anyone like me who can hack into their account.”

  But Drusa was nodding trustingly at the interrogator.

  “That’s good,” she said, leaning forward. “Because I think I can help you find the outlaw.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIG
HT

  “Why, that dirty, double-crossing . . . snake!” Kiandra exclaimed, jolting back so dramatically that the laptop almost fell to the floor. I had to grab it and hold it steady.

  “Shh, shh, let’s hear what she has to say,” I begged Kiandra. “Maybe whatever she tells the interrogator, that will make it so we can find Rosi first. . . .”

  “Edwy, this interrogation took place a week and a half ago,” Kiandra reminded me, but I ignored her. I turned up the volume on the laptop, so I could hear the conversation between Drusa and the interrogator better.

  “Now, why would you help us?” the interrogator asked. “Why would you betray your neighbors—and your entire species?”

  “Because I know your people are in charge now,” Drusa said. “Because, what are my neighbors to me anyway? And because—did you know that that evil child Rosi stole my daughter when she ran away?”

  “Rosi would never do that!” I protested, and now it was Kiandra’s turn to shush me.

  The interrogator leaned across the table. I still couldn’t see anything but the back of his head and now the top part of his dark uniform, but I could tell from his voice that he was smiling again.

  “Please explain,” he purred. “Our theory was that you had perhaps sent your child away with Rosi and her brother Bobo, because you misguidedly thought that was a route to safety, rather than a path to death. And I assure you: Your daughter will die. She will die a horrible death unless you come clean and help us find how to rescue her. How many more deaths are necessary—two? Or three?”

  “That’s, that’s—” I gasped.

  “Blackmail,” Kiandra muttered beside me. “Emotional manipulation.”

  Drusa winced, but she also leaned closer to the interrogator.

  “It would not be fair for you to punish my daughter for the other girl’s crimes!” she protested. “Not when my daughter was taken as a hostage . . .”

  The interrogator recoiled.

  “A hostage?” he said, surprise in his tone. He looked down, as if peering at notes on the table in front of him. “Your daughter Cana is five, correct?”

  “Drusa is Cana’s mother?” I asked. “That’s who she’s talking about?”