She was so struck by the change that it took a moment to realize he was looking their way in surprise, staring directly at Jean, who sat on Max’s shoulders, bobbing above the sea of heads.
Susan’s breath caught.
“Get down! Jean! Get down! He’s seen us!”
Jean slid to the ground, but it was too late. The man had snapped his fingers, pointing, and red cloaks were leaping from the bandstand into the square, muskets up, breaking a path through the crush of bodies.
“Come on!” Max shouted, yanking Jean by the arm. “Now!”
“Susan!” Nell yelled. “Snap out of it! Run!”
Kate’s hand was still in hers, and together they dashed after the others, smashing through knots of people, burrowing under adults’ waving arms, and ducking around frenzied chanters as the soldiers plunged after them.
They sprinted for the side streets. The crowd screamed and cheered, and now they could hear soldiers shouting “Make way!” as they charged through the mob in pursuit.
“Stop them!” someone shrieked, and Susan snatched Kate from beneath a grasping hand and kicked at the pursuer as they lurched free of the crowd and leaped for the curb. “Get them! Stop them!”
A man stepped into their path, and Max mowed him down, hauling Jean behind him. They veered round a corner, past a shuttered store where the windows had been smashed. Glass crunched beneath their feet, and they turned again only to find themselves rushing headlong toward another part of the mob, which had now surged into the side streets, hunting sleepers.
“This way!” Nell yelled. She turned and they ran deeper into the city, searching for an empty path. But the soldiers had reached the streets, too, and in the gaps between buildings, Susan could see them fanning out along the main roadways on either side. One block, two, and there seemed no place to go. Her chest was bursting when she passed one of the dirty old buildings that loomed above the rest. She darted into the alley beside it, yelling for the others. They ran down the long passage, past clouded windows and heavy doors, as the shouts from the streets bounced muffled against the walls. Jean tripped and fell, sprawling. Kate slowed, panting.
“Don’t stop!” Susan cried. “They’re coming!”
But they had stopped. Max had his hands on his knees, and Nell stumbled.
“Search that way!” someone yelled.
Desperate, Susan scooped Jean from the ground and yanked her into one of the deep, recessed doorways in the side of the old building. She beckoned to the others. Kate scurried in and Max and Nell squeezed beside them, pressing their backs to the splintering wooden door.
Susan heard the clatter of boots in the alley.
“Oh, please,” she whispered. “Please.”
And then she tumbled backward as the door opened. Someone grabbed them from behind, dragged them inside, and shut it, quickly, again.
Susan stifled a shriek, jerked herself loose, and turned to find three sharp-faced sleepers’ children, two of whom still had her siblings by the collars.
“Quiet!” one of them said, putting a finger to his lips. He had a chipped front tooth and blond hair clumpy with grime. With him stood a girl who’d wound her light hair in knots on top of her head and a small dark-eyed boy with protruding ears. None of them could have been more than ten years old, and the smallest looked like he might be younger than Jean.
With a jerk of his head, the blond boy took off down the hall, moving silently through the once grand hallway, where the remains of a mosaic, pitted with missing stones, showed smooth-faced women harvesting apples on a green hill. Susan glanced at it as she followed the sleepers’ children down a corridor, through a set of double doors, and into a large room with a high ceiling and wide windows. A fat iron stove took up the center of the floor; garbage littered the rest — rags, half a broomstick, part of a rusty chain. Even the stone fireplace between the windows was stuffed with lengths of broken pipe. Three narrow closets lined the right wall. One of them, doorless, gaped like a lost tooth.
Susan could hear the soldiers in the alley now, boots pounding on the paving stones.
The smallest of the street children, the hollow-faced boy with dark eyes, shot a frightened glance toward the door. He ran to the stove, wrenched it open, and folded himself inside, pulling the door shut. The other two hustled the children toward the doorless closet.
“In here,” the blond boy said, pointing to Susan. “You!”
He reached down, pulled at an uneven edge in the wooden flooring, and lifted it to reveal a square pit like the one in Liyla’s house. He gave Susan a little shove toward it. “Get in,” he said. “And take these with you.”
He meant Jean and Kate.
Susan turned back for Max and Nell. “What about them?” she whispered.
“We got other places!” the girl assured her. Nodding, the boy nudged her toward the pit again. Susan jumped into it. Unlike the cellar at Liyla’s, this place was warm and shallow. If she stood straight, her chest and shoulders cleared the floorboards and stuck up into the closet. But when she squatted in the darkness, Susan could stretch both arms and only touch the crumbling edge of the wall. She put her hands down and realized it was not dirt but wood she was touching, a floor beneath the floor. Kate and Jean hopped in beside her, and she pulled them to her, their bodies so close she could feel their hearts making frantic moth-wing flutters against her chest. The light-haired girl pressed the board into place, and a mildewy darkness descended, the floorboards overhead framed in pencil
