god, let me live, I whispered into them. Let me live a little longer, and I’ll speak your truth for ever.
Perliu looked to Catrin now, as if he had forgot what was meant to come next. Catrin didn’t need no more invitation than that. She got to her feet right away, and that made me hope a little harder, for I knowed she didn’t favour killing me.
“Cat,” Perliu said. “You tell him. Tell him what we decided.”
“We’re deciding now, Father” Catrin said. “That’s why we brought him before us.”
“A waste of all our time,” said Fer, but Catrin didn’t answer her sister nor so much as look at her. She took some time instead to rearrange the room to her own liking. She went around behind me and picked up the lantern from the floor, then come in front of me again and set it down between us. I liked this better, on account of being able to see her face, but there was a hardness there that made me somewhat afraid. She kneeled down, facing me. It was like it was just the two of us now. The rest of the Ramparts wasn’t even shadows any more. There was just this little circle of light, and me and her in it, and nothing else but dark going on for ever, it felt like.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Koli,” Catrin says. “Not the ones I asked you down in the Underhold. These is new questions. And here’s something to keep in your mind when you’re answering. The first time you lie to me – and I’ll know when you do – I’m going to switch my vote. That means Rampart Remember will take you downstairs and kill you this very night. This very minute, even. You understand me?”
“Yes, Dam Catrin,” I says. And I mostly meant it. Somewhere away in the back of my head, though, I was thinking that I lied to her before, about Ursala, and maybe I could do it again if I had to.
Then she set something down on the floor between us, right next to the lantern, and when I seen what it was, that thought flew out of my head, and every other thought along with it.
“You see that, Koli?”
I nodded, for I couldn’t speak.
“Tell me what it is.”
“Key. It’s… it’s a… I’d reckon it’s a key,” I said, the words coming out crosswise and stumbling, with my tongue in the way of them.
“And what’s it the key to?”
I didn’t say nothing at first, for there was two answers to that and I didn’t want to give either of them.
“The first lie will be the last one, Koli,” Catrin reminded me. “You won’t get another chance.”
“It’s the key to the room where the tech is kept. In the Underhold.”
“And what else?”
If she was asking, it meant she knowed the answer already. “It’s the key to our storeroom,” I said. “At the mill.”
Catrin give a nod. I seen in her eyes she was happy I told the truth. “Yes, it is,” she says. “It’s that key, not the Underhold key. I keep the Underhold key on the ring at my belt, and it never goes from me. You want to know where I got your storeroom key from? Your mother was here, Koli. This afternoon. She was sitting where you are now, though we give her a chair and a cup of mead for she’s not accused of anything yet.
“You see, it had been puzzling me how you got into that room. Getting into the Underhold is not too hard, but that room is kept locked the whole time and we made sure the lock was a good one. Then I remembered how that locksmith was billeted with Jemiu at the mill, all them years ago, and I wondered. So I asked her to bring her keys with her, when she come, and as soon as I got a look at them I had my answer.”
“If the bitch bites, drown the litter,” Fer said, from where she was sitting off in the darkness behind Catrin.
Anger rose up in me, and I didn’t try to push it back down again. It was so much better than the fear! “My mother’s no bitch, Rampart Arrow,” I said. “But looking at your litter, I guess I know what you are.”
Mardew swore an oath, and I guess either he or Fer jumped up, for Perliu snapped, “Keep your seats!”
“Whether he speaks the truth or not, he’s got