In the end, I persuaded Elsa to accept help. She was soaking and exhausted, though she wouldn’t admit it. Piper fetched Zoe and Crispin, the dwarf who had been on the lookout when we’d first reunited with the resistance at the quarry. Elsa would let nobody but her lay out the bodies, but she allowed the others to take on the task of hauling the children from the tanks. She showed Piper the lever she had found in front of each tank, to open the plug at the base. As the liquid drained away, circling the plug, the mounded bodies shifted and stirred in a grotesque parody of life. The first time it happened, Crispin vomited quietly behind one of the tanks.
Nobody spoke. It wasn’t just the horror of the dead children—it was the machines themselves. I watched how Piper moved warily among the tanks, and saw how Zoe flinched when her arm brushed one of the inert pipes, as though it were hot. I’d spent years under the electric lights of the Keeping Rooms, and had seen tank rooms before, as well as the Confessor’s database. But the others navigated the room as if each pipe and wire was a snare, ready to entangle them. Everything in this room was taboo. Crispin stared at the machines the same way that Alphas stared at us: as if the machines carried the taint of the blast itself.
When each tank was drained, Zoe and Crispin climbed down the rope ladder and disentangled the bodies. I watched how carefully they both stepped, to avoid standing on the children, and how gently they slipped the tubes from the open mouths, and from the wrists, before climbing the ladder to hand their sodden burdens to Piper, waiting on the gangway. He passed each body down from the gangway to Elsa.
I had seen the world burn, and I’d seen flesh slashed in the battle only days before. But there had been no horrors in my life to equal that day, in the half-dark room, seeing the small bodies dredged from the tanks, or watching Elsa stroke their hair from their faces and straighten their stiffening limbs. She tried to close their eyes, but they had stared too long at death and their eyelids would not be moved.
Piper had ordered soldiers to fetch more sheets and blankets from the holding house, and I helped Elsa shroud the children. It was hardest when I recognized the faces. Not all the children were from Elsa’s holding house, but many were. When it was Louisa who was laid before me, I saw that her mouth was open. I couldn’t stop looking at her small teeth, and the gaps between them. Of all the things I saw that day, it was the sight of those little white teeth that made me turn away.
We worked in silence, because the words had not been made that could encompass what we did. Sometimes Elsa cried, in silence, too. When we were finished, we shifted the shrouded bodies to the doorway. Elsa carried the older children, and I, with one arm in the sling, took the babies and toddlers. Wrapped, the smallest child I carried that day was barely bigger than a loaf of bread. But even the infants felt heavier than they ought to have done, their tiny lungs and stomachs awash with liquid.
Only when all the wrapped bodies were laid out by the door did Elsa and I talk. Zoe and Crispin had gone back to the tithe collector’s office, and Piper was outside, speaking to another soldier about sending a cart for the bodies. My arm was aching, and I could see that Elsa was exhausted, and I was tempted to wait another day before I burdened her with my news. But I’d learned better than to count on more days, and there were things that we both needed to know.
It took a long time to unravel the weeks and months since I’d last seen her. I told her about what had happened on the island, and she nodded.
“Usually we heard nothing about what was going on outside, but the soldiers here were keen enough to spread that news. Before then, I’d been hoping you’d found your way to the island. Then, when the news came in, I was praying that you hadn’t.”
When I told her who my twin was, I was watching her face. She looked back at me, examining my face carefully, as if reassuring