of mistakes, but he didn’t deserve what they did to him.”
For a while we just sat there, looking out at the courtyard with its assemblage of broken furniture.
“Do you know what they were looking for?” I said. “Did you ever hear anything about Elsewhere, or a place called the Ark?”
“No.” She shrugged. “He never talked much about the stuff he traded in,” she said. “I didn’t want to know, to be honest—I was happy enough to look the other way. And it’s not as though I didn’t have plenty on my hands, with the kids to take care of. He traded on the black market, sure, and he dealt in some relics and dodgy stuff. But he wasn’t stupid. Any machines, anything with wires, he knew it was more trouble than it was worth. That stuff freaked him out, to be honest—and I wouldn’t have let him bring it near the house. The bits and pieces from the Before that he traded were just tat—papers, broken crockery. Bits of metal. The kind of thing that’s a bit of a curiosity to most people. Half of it, to tell you the truth, wasn’t even from the Before. One summer he and his friend Greg did a roaring trade in a load of pottery that they said was taboo. It was just some fancy stuff they’d nicked from the back of an Alpha cart, then chipped and soaked in tea and dirt until it looked ancient. People liked a bit of that: something exotic, a bit dangerous.” She gave a bleak smile. “He wasn’t one to look for trouble, my Joe. He was too lazy for that. He was only interested in little odds and ends—stuff he could sell quickly, bring in a few easy coins, a bit extra that the tithe collector wouldn’t know about.”
“He wouldn’t be the first person to trade in taboo stuff, or to dodge tithes,” I said. “That’s not enough to explain why they’d kill him. Or torture him for days.”
At the word torture Elsa flinched as though she’d been struck.
I pushed on. “You never saw the things he traded?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want anything shady here—not with the kids around. He kept his work stuff in his storehouse by the market anyway. Slept there, too, often enough—I didn’t like him being around the kids when he’d been drinking.”
“The storehouse,” I said. “Is it still there?”
“Don’t be stupid. The day after they took him, it was burned down—took out the back of the bakery, too. It was no accident, of course—Greg saw Council soldiers clearing it out before dawn, taking away everything in it.
“I kept waiting for them to come for me, after that,” she said. “But for once it worked in our favor, the fact that they don’t acknowledge Omega marriages. They knew he worked here sometimes, or they wouldn’t’ve searched the place like they did. But because he had his storehouse, down at the market, they thought he lived there. And because they think of us as not much more than animals, they never figured we were married.”
She fell silent again.
“Tell me what they were looking for,” I said. “Please.”
“I’ve already told you,” she snapped. “He never told me any details about that stuff.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t know.”
I’d never seen Elsa look like this before. I was used to seeing her striding around, badgering Nina about the shopping list at the same time as braiding a child’s hair. But now she was deflated, shoulders folded inward. Her eyes were unfocused, her lips pinched.
“I’ve kept quiet about this for four years.” She was whispering, even though we were alone in the kitchen. “I saw what they did to Joe. Now I’ve seen what they did to the children.”
“I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid,” I said. “You’re right to be afraid. I saw what you saw—I helped you pull the children from the tanks. We both know what the Council’s capable of. But that’s why you have to tell me.” I took her hand. “If we don’t find what they’re looking for, we can’t stop them. There’ll be more tanks, and more killings. Until we’re all tanked.” No more children in the holding house dormitory, no more voices in the courtyard. Just the silence of the tanks, and the children floating.
She was motionless, as if the tanks had come for her already.
“Do you know what Joe was hiding?” I said.
“Not what,” Elsa said. She straightened her shoulders and wiped