Chapter 27 – Lost Children

Chapter 27 – Lost Children

 

The boy had not moved very far. He had staggered back from where the guard left him and now stood near the mouth of the alley, shoulders hunched, wiping furiously at his face with the heel of one grimy hand as though ashamed to be crying in public.

Around him, the festival continued without pause. A woman passed carrying an armful of flowers. A musician nearby struck up a cheerful tune on the lute. Someone laughed. Someone else called out the price of honey cakes.

And in the middle of all that sunlight and celebration, one frightened child looked as though he had fallen through the cracks of the world.

Liria’s expression softened.

She crossed the street together with Seris. The boy noticed them only when her little sister stopped directly in front of him.

He startled and immediately took half a step back, instinctively defensive, like a stray thing too used to being shouted at or shoved aside. Up close, he looked even worse than before. He was painfully thin, all elbows and knees and hollow cheeks, with a bruise darkening one side of his jaw in ugly shades of yellow and purple. Dirt was ground into the hem of his tunic and caked under his nails. His eyes were too sharp for a child his age, too watchful, too ready to flinch.

Seris looked up at him with such open concern that his guarded expression faltered almost at once.

“Hello,” she said gently.

The boy blinked.

Then he looked at Liria, clearly registering the hood, the quality of her clothes, the strange quiet authority she carried even while trying very hard not to carry it, and his shoulders tensed again.

“We’re not here to chase you away,” Liria said before he could bolt. Her voice was calm and even, warm enough to soothe without becoming patronizing.

Seris nodded vigorously. “We want to help.”

The boy stared at them for a few long seconds. Then suspicion crept back into his face.

“Why?” It was such a small word, but it carried a wariness that sat ill on someone so young.

Before she could answer, Seris spoke first.

“Because you’re sad,” she said simply, as though that alone were reason enough. “And because if your friends are missing, then they’re probably scared too.”

The boy’s mouth parted slightly. Seris took a cautious step closer.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He hesitated. Then, very quietly, “Tomas.”

“That’s a good name,” Seris said at once, with such sincere approval that Tomas blinked again.

Liria had to look away for half a second.

Seris, meanwhile, continued with all the solemn grace of a tiny saintess conducting delicate diplomacy.

“I’m Seris. This is my big sister.”

Tomas glanced up at Liria again. She inclined her head in greeting.

“Can you tell us what happened?” she asked.

For a moment, Tomas said nothing.

His fingers twisted in the hem of his tunic. His eyes darted once toward the crowd, then toward the alley behind him, then back to them. He looked like a child trying to decide whether hope was worth the risk.

Seris waited patiently.

At last, he swallowed and nodded.

“There’s four of us,“ he said. “Usually.” Something in his voice gave Liria pause.

“We sleep in the old washhouse near the south canal when the weather’s bad,” Tomas continued, voice rough with effort. “Or under the broken arch by the lower market when it’s warm. We stay together so nobody gets taken or beat up too bad.”

Seris’s hand tightened around Liria’s. Liria said nothing.

“Two nights ago,” Tomas went on, “Renn didn’t come back.”

His voice wavered, then steadied again through sheer force of will.

“He said he was gonna try and sneak near the festival kitchens because people always throw out extra food before big holy days. He told us to wait. He always comes back.”

Liria’s gaze sharpened. “And he didn’t.”

Tomas shook his head.

“Then last night, Miri and Joss went looking for him.”

His face crumpled a little on the names, but he pushed through it.

“They didn’t come back either.”

For a moment, the sounds of the festival seemed very far away.

Liria lowered herself into a crouch so she could look him in the eye without towering over him.

“When was the last time anyone saw them?”

Tomas sniffed and scrubbed at his face again.

“People saw Renn near the back kitchens by the western plaza,” he said. “And Miri said she heard things before she left.”

Liria stilled. “What things?”

Tomas’s gaze flicked toward the alley behind him again.

“She said she kept hearing crying at night.”

Liria’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. Beside her, Seris had gone very quiet.

“Crying?” Liria repeated softly.

Tomas nodded.

“Kids crying,” he whispered. “Only… weird.”

“Weird how?” Liria asked.

He swallowed. “Like it was far away and close at the same time.”

The festival noise seemed to dim around them. Somewhere nearby, a cluster of bells chimed in the breeze.

Liria nodded thoughtfully.

This was not the sort of detail frightened children invented for dramatic effect.

This was what happened when sound was being distorted through layered stone, tunnels, enclosed chambers, hidden corridors, or old magical architecture.

Seris looked up at her, big blue eyes quiet and alert. She had understood too.

Liria returned her attention to Tomas.

“Where did she hear it from?”

“The lower streets,” he said immediately, as though he had repeated this part to himself a hundred times. “Near the old cistern stairs. Behind the shrine gardens.”

Liria’s mind moved quickly.

The lower streets behind the shrine gardens sat on one of the oldest foundations in Elysium. The city had been rebuilt and expanded over older structures more than once across the centuries. Beneath the polished avenues and flower-lined plazas, there would be maintenance tunnels, forgotten storage chambers, sealed water routes, and probably at least three kinds of ancient nonsense no one had properly mapped in generations.

Wonderful.

“Did you tell the guard that part?” she asked.

Tomas’s expression turned frustrated.

“He said I was making things up because I wanted attention.”

Seris inhaled sharply.

The look she gave the retreating direction of the guard was so offended, so deeply scandalized, that Liria almost felt sorry for the man. Almost.

“Did anyone else go missing before your friends?” Liria asked.

Tomas nodded at once, too fast for that answer to be new.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“A few,” he said. “Not from the nice parts of the city.”

His mouth twisted around the words.

“Kids from the alleys. The bridge camps. The old laundry sheds. Beggars. Little ones nobody looks for proper.”

The last sentence landed like a stone dropped into still water.

Liria’s jaw tightened. Of course. That was why it had gone unnoticed for so long.

Children on the margins always disappeared first. Children without powerful names attached to them. Children the city had learned, quietly and shamefully, to look past.

Seris’s face had gone pale. Her little fingers curled into the fabric of Liria’s sleeve.

“Big Sister,” she whispered.

Liria turned slightly toward her.

Seris’s voice was tiny. “Can we find them?”

Liria looked at her for a moment.

Then she looked back at Tomas, at the bruise on his face, the dirt on his hands, the fear he was trying so hard to keep from swallowing him whole.

And beneath that, she let her awareness unfurl once more. Past the sweetness of flowers. Past incense and sugar and warm stone and festival smoke.

Into the bones of the city.

Her gaze sharpened. Something was blocking her senses. This did not bode well.

She did not let her misgivings show.

“Yes,” Liria said, projecting serene and unshakable confidence. “We can.”

Tomas stared at her. For the first time since they approached him, something in his expression gave way.

It was not relief, not yet. Relief was too fragile a thing for a child who had already been disappointed too many times in too few days. But some of the fear in his expression had finally eased.

He swallowed. “You mean it?”

“I do,” Liria said.

Then she glanced at Seris. “Would you like to take the lead, little one?”

Seris blinked in surprise. “Seris?”

Liria smiled faintly. “You’re the one who wanted to help him first.”

For a moment, Seris looked caught between nervousness and determination.

Then she straightened.

Her little shoulders pulled back. Her flower crown, slightly crooked from all their wandering, sat atop her golden curls like a very earnest and somewhat lopsided halo.