‘Rajid led the excavation work. It was dangerous but incredible, like rediscovering a forgotten underground maze,’ Aelia added.
‘Does Cassius know?’ I asked, trying to keep up with all the revelations.
I recalled his face the day he thought I was at his mercy – just minutes before Unus arrived. It was a look that had hard-wired itself into my brain. Cold venom. Like a death adder.
‘He didn’t, but he does now, of course. And the first thing he and Livia did was freeze the new freedom of movement powers August brought in to support the Integration Agenda. Cassius said it was just to retain balance until August returned. But there are those …’
‘… who know better?’ I muttered.
She nodded.
‘And he’s sending out search parties on a daily basis to bring back the missing Prolets. Armed search parties.’
Max looked from me to Aelia, his frown deepening.
‘She can’t help.’
I’d been listening so intently, I’d forgotten Mum was at the back of the circular room, shelling beans. I gazed at her familiar face, brown and seasoned from her years spent working in Arafel’s fields. Eli and I took on her load as much as possible, but Grandpa’s death had hit her hard, especially since he’d filled the breach Dad had left eleven years before.
‘It’s OK, I’m not going anywhere,’ I reassured her.
‘Aren’t you also on the Senate, Aelia? As General in Command of the PFF?’ I asked, trying to understand how so much could have been undone so quickly.
She smiled in a way that said everything.
‘You mean ex General in Command. Cassius voided my position within the first week August was missing,’ she relayed, her brow puckering.
‘He said there was no need for the PFF any longer, since we were working together with a new vision for Isca Pantheon. Made a big deal about all positions on the Senatore needing to be earned through the popular vote, although the prejudiced voting system hasn’t been replaced, and so guess what? The only people currently entitled to vote live within … Pantheon.’
Max scowled. ‘But then the Senate vote is never gonna reflect Prolet will.’
She smiled again, her teeth just visible, and I could tell her nerves were frayed.
‘Eat,’ I urged, pushing her refilled bowl back towards her.
Jas stirred from her comatose position beside Rajid, and my gaze shot back to the trapdoor, though I knew exactly what had made her beautiful flocked ears perk up. Jas was the most intuitive watch-cat in the world. Whenever Eli took an early hunting shift in the outside forest, she waited for his return intently, and always seemed to know when he was back on Arafel soil. I strained my ears and, sure enough, a few moments later detected a scuffle at the bottom of our tree.
Mum was up in a breath, flying across the floor towards the trapdoor, to let down our woven willow ladder. Seconds later, an earth-streaked hand pushed aside the rough netting we hooked over the exit, and a mop of sandy-brown hair appeared.
I drew a breath as his grey-blue eyes followed, his expression quickly changing as he acknowledged the newcomers. He vaulted through the trapdoor like a forest cat, and Jas stretched out her sleek hunting body in response, bypassing Rajid as though he’d never existed. She padded up to Eli, purring like a queen bee in the height of summer, as he bent to reassure her, a bundle of cloth cradled beneath his arm.
He held the small wrap out to Jas, who sniffed with her usual casual interest, before he let a tiny, doleful little owl peep out of the top. A murmur of interest whispered around the room as he straightened, placing the newcomer inside one of the egg-shaped woven baskets suspended from the ceiling. We were very used to our treehouse being an impromptu animal hospital, and immediately Mum started warming some thinned milk.
‘Orphaned?’ I signed.
‘Yes, and this little guy was the last in his nest,’ Eli signed swiftly before walking across to Aelia and giving her an affectionate hug.
None of us missed the question in his eyes. The entry tunnel into the village was a long-kept secret, and revealing it was punishable by expulsion. Clearly, he hadn’t been to the animal infirmary on his way back.
‘She and Rajid caught the overnight haga to Arafel,’ Max interjected, a gleam in his eye.
There was a ripple of laughter as Eli held his hand out to Rajid. He gripped it with respect. There was something in Eli’s unflustered air that calmed even the hormone-fuelled bucks at rucking time, and as Rajid inclined his head respectfully, I noticed the Cerberus climbing his neck doing the same.
‘Haga?’ Eli signed incredulously. ‘Where on earth is this intrepid bird? And how did they know how to find us?’ he added to me directly.
I raised my eyes at Max. Only Eli would ask after a bird before enquiring about Aelia’s daring journey.
I signed quickly, bringing him up to date, as he gently removed the little owl from its basket cocoon and pipetted thinned, warm milk into its open beak. Watching him sustain such a tiny fragment of life as though it were the last helped to calm my jumbled thoughts.
‘So, where are the group that escaped now? How many Prolets made it out?’ Max asked in a low voice.
I was still signing, but my ears pricked up. Max was always the underdog champion – no matter the stakes. He wouldn’t leave a rabbit alone to face a fox. But this rabbit could be anywhere, and I was still reeling with the news that Cassius was still alive. There could be no crueller fox.
‘Prolet Levels Thirteen and Fourteen emptied overnight. So, a party of around sixty is unaccounted for,’ Rajid offered, sauntering back to join Aelia by the fire.
‘Livia spared no time in offering her services to help flush them out, should they fail to return within three days,’ she added with a grimace.
‘And she doesn’t mean round up.’
My stomach twisted like one of Max’s trap knots. At last Aelia’s urgency was clearer. But Arafel was already in the region of three hundred heads. How could it support another sixty? And wouldn’t a rescue mission just bring Cassius directly here to Arafel?
‘Care for the seed, and it will care for you.’
I had no idea where Grandpa’s whisper came from. It was just there, hanging in the oaken breeze, as though he was beside me now.
I straightened my shoulders and cleared my throat. I had to think like Grandpa.
‘It’s a matter for Art and the Council,’ I said decisively and quickly, ‘but I don’t think we have any choice.’
I was conscious of all eyes in the room swinging my way, including my mother’s.
‘Grandpa taught us to value life above everything else. All life. We can’t sit here in our safe idyll of a valley, while others scour the Dead City sewers searching for us!’
‘Talia, think!’ My mother looked ashen as she rose to her feet, the beans she was shelling spilling onto the wooden floor.
‘We just about manage to feed everyone as it is. We can’t support sixty extra mouths through the winter months. What if bringing them here also brings that … that monster to our home? And how do we know she wasn’t followed?’
Mum pointed towards Aelia, her face twisted with fear. My chest contracted. Mum had been through enough, but how could I justify putting her above the needs of sixty desperate Insiders?
Jas whined above the chatter of a capuchin in a nearby tree.