“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?”
“You know this Cana?” Kiandra asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Back in Fredtown, everybody knew everybody. It wasn’t like Ref City, where people just pass each other on the street. Or Cursed Town, where . . .”
“Where people fight,” Kiandra finished for me.
I had to look away. I let myself think about Fredtown, about all the community events there: the endless school programs and the potluck suppers and the group birthday parties that occurred once a month, celebrating everybody born in March, everyone born in April, and so on. I’d probably started whining, Do I have to go? to my Fred-parents way back when I was a toddler. I hated all those community events. But now . . .
Was it possible that I missed even that aspect of Fredtown now?
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.
“Cana was the smartest of all the little kids in Fredtown,” I told Kiandra. “Sometimes she figured out things I couldn’t.”
Things . . . and people, I thought.
Cana had been the one who’d told me Rosi was just as upset as I was about going back to our real parents and their hometown—to Cursed Town. Because all I’d seen was Rosi doing what the Freds wanted her to. Just like she always did. But Cana had brushed her little curls out of her face and whispered, No, Rosi’s sad and worried. She just doesn’t want anyone to see her cry. . . .
“Maybe it’s genetic,” Kiandra said, and I had to snap my attention back to remembering she was talking about Cana, not Rosi. “Maybe her mother’s really smart too, and she knows exactly what she’s doing, playing out some story for the interrogator.”
“Yes, my daughter Cana is five,” Drusa was telling the interrogator. “So?”
“You expect me to believe that humans are such vile creatures that a twelve-year-old girl would take a five-year-old girl hostage?” the interrogator asked.
Drusa lowered her head and narrowed her eyes at him.
“You are sitting in Cursed Town, the scene of a massacre so horrible that twelve years ago alien creatures had to intervene to stop it,” Drusa said. “And now you are here to stop the warfare that started today. And you have to ask if humans are vile creatures?”
“Whose side is she on?” Kiandra asked.
“There were rumors flying that the Alvaran girl had escaped from prison,” Drusa said. “I went to their house to warn her parents that they couldn’t expect any help from anyone in the neighborhood if they tried to hide her. But when I stepped through the frot door, the girl was already there. The patroller arrived a moment later, and when he tried to capture the girl, she grabbed my daughter Cana and held her body like a shield, to keep the patroller from attacking.”
“That would be . . . against our protocol,” the interrogator said.
“Wait—does he mean it would be against their protocol to attack someone with a five-year-old hostage, or against their protocol to care?” Kiandra asked.
I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer.
Drusa let out a sob.
“Please find my little girl,” she said. “Please bring her back to me.”
“You have to help us,” the interrogator said. “Tell us everything you know about this Rosi. Even if you never met her except when she kidnapped your daughter, you must have heard lots of rumors about her in your town.”
“Oh, but I did meet her before tonight!” Drusa said, reaching across the table as if she were about to grab the interrogator’s hand. Then she stopped herself, as if it would have been too presumptuous to touch the interrogator. “Rosi and her brother, Bobo, came to the Watanabonesets’, where I work, earlier today. This afternoon. Right before the riot in the marketplace.”
“Indeed?” the interrogator asked, a certain slyness back in his voice. “Please, tell me what happened.”
“Edwy, is this true?” Kiandra whispered. “Was Rosi at our parents’ house?”
“How would I know?” I said helplessly. “Drusa’s talking about what happened on Monday afternoon. I was already in the truck with Udans then, on my way to Ref City.”
I watched the gleam in Drusa’s eyes, the animated way she waved her hands, telling her story.
“Rosi knocked at the door, asking if her friend Edwy could come out and play,” Drusa said. “But Edwy was already out playing—wandering the town, most likely, up to no good. You know how boys that age are.”
Even if Drusa didn’t know Rosi very well, it seemed like she’d figured me out. Well enough to have come up with a plausible-sounding lie about where I’d been that afternoon.
“So then this Rosi left?” the interrogator asked.
“I thought so,” Drusa said. “But a few minutes later, I discovered she’d sneaked into the Watanabonesets’ house.”
“Rosi would never do that!” I protested. “Not Rosi! That just isn’t—”
“Shh,” Kiandra said. “You made me miss the rest of what Drusa said.”
She had to back up the video a little, so once again we heard Drusa say, “. . . sneaked into the Watanabonesets’ house.”
And then Drusa went on: “I found the girl in Mr. Watanaboneset’s office. I chased her away.”
“Did you tell your employers?”
Drusa shook her head.
“I was afraid they’d fire me, if they thought the girl had gotten in because I forgot to latch the door.”
“That is plausible,” Kiandra mumbled. “Our parents would fire a maid without even thinking about it.”
“So nothing really came of your encounter with Rosi, earlier in the day,” the interrogator said. “You’ve wasted our time, telling me this story.”
“No, no—you haven’t let me finish!” Drusa said. “Later, after I heard what that girl did in the marketplace, I went back to my employer’s office. I started worrying . . . what if she’d stolen something? What if, when I chased her away, she’d already taken something that was small enough to hide in her clothing?”
“And did she?” the interrogator asked, leaning so far forward now that he practically could have kissed Drusa’s cheek. “Was anything like that missing from Mr. Watanaboneset’s desk?”
“Yes, sir,” Drusa said. “A map. Rosi stole a map.”
I buried my face in my hands and moaned, “No . . .”