"It is strange," Phil had admitted. "I heard about it from the older kids too."
"But is Mama even all right with it?" she'd asked, more confused than before.
Nobody had ever answered that.
She remembered him surrounded by smiling children, one of them riding on his shoulders. He had taught them to write. He had taught them to defend themselves. He had done it hoping they would grow up safe, which was the only ambition he seemed to have.
He had taught them other things as well, over the years: dagger arts, back-alley negotiation, the full curriculum. She remembered fanning herself beside him while he yawned elegantly. She remembered herself as Lithia, leaping clean through the air with gold and jewels turning in the light around her.
Sophia raised a fist in excitement at the memory. Ian watched her do it without any expression at all.
The children of Mama's home were busy recounting how Ian's sword had split the priest's blade in two, with gestures. Ian accepted the admiration with visible pride, and Sophia grumbled about it, because there had been a time when she was the one being idolised in this house.
Mr. Mama thanked them both for helping Phil and asked where they were from, one big hand resting gently on Sophia's back.
"We live nearby," Sophia said brightly. "We just came to play on Haven Street."
Ian looked around, confused. "What is this place?"
The children swarmed their mama, greeting him, and he lifted a small one onto his hip and explained that he was the guardian of this home, which was for children without parents.
"The official orphanages are run by the temples," Sophia told Ian. "They aren't safe."
Ian was shocked into silence.
He looked at the noise and the laughter for a while.
"I'm jealous," he admitted quietly.
Huh? Sophia panicked slightly — was he seriously sitting there thinking about the responsibilities of the Herman bloodline?
A young girl put her head out of a doorway. "Mama. Carla hasn't eaten again."
Mama's face changed. "That's three days."
"Is one of them sick?" Ian asked.
The injured girl lay in bed, bandaged. Whatever had done that to her, the word for it was demons.
Mr. Mama sat down and stroked Carla's head, coaxing her to eat, telling her not to give up. The other girls stood in the doorway in sorrow, and one of them cursed the filthy priest bastards under her breath.
"What about Ext?" one of the children said. "Ext might help—"
"No!"
Mama turned on her, furious. "Savina. Don't ever mention that again."
Sophia's face fell.
She had never met Carla in her past life. That was the thing she couldn't get past. By the time she had come to Mama's home, in the life she'd already lived through, this girl must have already been gone.
Her expression hardened. She would never get used to this — not the sadness, and not the anger under it.
"I'll get more medicine," Mr. Mama said, watching over the bed. "The rest of you, be careful out there."
"Run from High Priest Charone," Sophia said suddenly, urgently. "Him and everyone with him. They're demons."
Mr. Mama looked at her, and his expression went grim.
"Charone kidnaps children," he said. "And does terrible things to them. They're locked in his villa." He nodded at the bed. "Carla got out. The wounds she took getting out are too deep."
In the memory that went with it, a girl was crying and blaming herself, because she and her friend had both been hurt in the escape.
From the bed, Carla told it weakly. They had only got out of that hell at all because the other captives had helped them.
Tears came down her face. "I have to go back. I have to help them, before it's too late—"
The red-haired man with the false beard wiped her cheek. "Get better first, Carla."
A silver-haired child in a dark cloak held out a small red pouch.
"Mr. Mama."
He took it, puzzled, and opened it, and went still, because it was full of gold coins.
"Are you two aristocrats?"
He tried to give it back. Their opponent, he said, was the high priest himself. They should leave. Both of them, tonight.
"No," said Sophia.
Ian put his hand on her shoulder and stood with her. He told Mr. Mama, quite confidently, that the temple would be afraid of their family.
Then he turned to her.
"What do you want to do? Remember what I said."
A memory surfaced with it — a regal blonde woman, telling a child that she was free to do as she wished, so long as she never ran from her responsibilities.
Sophia's fist closed.
She saw the wounded girl again, crying in that bed, and her resolve set around it while she thought about what she wanted.
On Haven Street, in an ornate building, a man with long dark hair sat alone in a lavishly decorated room.
A young attendant approached. "A letter has arrived for Sir Charone."
Charone smirked and took it.
"Have the escaped brats been found?"
The priests were searching the back streets, the attendant reported. That was where they were believed to be hiding.
"What a sickening place," Charone said. He went on at some length about the Herman Duchy, and how disgracefully it neglected its poor.
His own plan was cleaner. He would become the priest of the Imperial Palace, and once he had that, he would have the slums destroyed and a temple raised where they had stood.
He began to cackle, imagining the poor looking up at him in desperation, and his laughter went out across the city under a full moon.
At the Herman Palace, in the sunlight, Sophia and Ian stood before a desk where two stern silver-haired men sat waiting.
They were on the wrong side of a very grand door, and Sophia thought that both of those men looked quite capable of eating someone.