“Alright,” Hallie said. There was a small bit of temptation to push, to force an answer, but Hallie wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself if she did that.
“Waller is dead.” Donall was gripping the edge of the table as if frightened he might fall off his seat. “And buried near Reunion?”
“That’s right,” Girard said. “Someone killed him, and buried him.”
“That’s impossible,” Donall whispered.
“Well, it happened,” Hallie said, and looked around the room at the tired faces. She couldn’t be absolutely sure without questioning all of them in turn, but she didn’t see any obvious signs of guilt. If one of the Reunion settlers had killed Waller, they were excellent actors. Always assuming the killer was here.
Before she could ask more questions about Waller and his death, her conscience rose up and this time she listened. Everyone in this room looked to be at the end of their strength. She turned back to Donall and made her voice gentle again. “It looks like Nicholas hasn’t been taking very good care of you?”
“He’s decided that if we won’t work for him, he’d not going to feed us,” the man replied, settling at the end of the bench. He looked to be at the end of his strength. “We should have barred the gate against them like you suggested, Sylvie,” he said.
“I’m not sure it would have helped in the long run,” the woman who’d spoken earlier answered. Sylvie. She looked between Hallie and Girard. “And what use are the two of you?”
Hallie thought that was a fair question, as she and Girard were in exactly the same situation as the Reunion settlers - under armed guard.
“Gathering information just now,” Girard said, in the calm tone Hallie was familiar with. “And then we’ll decide what to do.” Hallie was sure he had a list of his own in mind as to what questions he wanted to ask, and what they needed to accomplish. Not least, escaping from the gunners outside.
Sylvie didn’t look impressed with Girard’s answer, settling back, frowning. Hallie didn’t blame her for that, either.
“My wife, Sylvie,” Donall said, surprising Hallie. They hadn’t been sitting together, but now he’d claimed their relationship, Hallie saw a quiet look between them that held a lot of history. She and Girard both murmured a greeting to the woman.
“So, you’ve been kept in this room for five or six days just with water?” Hallie asked. No wonder they all looked so defeated and tired.
Donall wouldn’t meet her eyes. Ashamed, she thought.
“You didn’t try to leave?” Girard asked, voice gentle. There were just two guards at the front, after all, and ten people in the room. Hallie frowned, remembering the long room with the bunk beds. There had been more than ten beds, she was quite sure. And there were no children here.
“Is this everyone from Reunion?” she asked, voice a little sharper than she’d intended.
There was a subtle shift in the tension around the room that drew her attention and a frown to Girard’s face. She turned back to Donall, Rhodda and Sylvie and caught the sideways looks that Donall and Sylvie gave Rhodda. Something there. Something Hallie couldn’t understand from that look. But she could see the fear and grief in Sylvie’s face and read the answer to her question. The settlement had had more people. Apprehension slid over her, wondering what had happened to the ones missing.
“Nicholas took the children,” Sylvie said in a harsh whisper.
Hallie stared, wondering if she’d heard that right, the odd looks to Rhodda forgotten as she turned Sylvie’s words over and over, trying to make them somehow less awful. Sylvie wiped tears from her face.
“Children,” Girard repeated, and Hallie could hear the shock in his voice. “Your children were taken from you?”
“To be looked after, Nicholas said,” Sylvie added, her tears drying up. From the edge to her voice, Hallie could tell that Sylvie hadn’t believed Nicholas. Hallie didn’t blame her. With the well-being of their children in the balance, it was no wonder that the Reunion settlers had stayed in New Hope. But they hadn’t completely given in, Hallie thought. They hadn’t gone to work for Nicholas like he’d wanted. She exchanged glances with Donall and Hallie saw the shared worry on their faces. Donall had mentioned a daughter as well as a wife. “He said that they’d get the same treatment as us until we started working.”
Hallie’s breath stopped. It was bad enough that Nicholas would hold a group of adults in one place, and give them nothing but water for days on end. Quite another thing to give the same treatment to children.
“We’ve had a few visitors. Old friends who are still in New Hope. Too frightened to follow us to Reunion. They’ve come now and then. Always after dark. Quiet, like,” Donall said, keeping his voice low, as if afraid the gunners outside would hear him. “Slipped us some food. Let us know that the children are being fed, at least.”
Hallie felt another bit of warmth blooming in her chest at that story. It seemed that Nicholas didn’t have quite the rigid control over the people of New Hope as he thought he did. If he had, no one would have dared keep the Reunion settlers fed in defiance of his orders. And it gave her a little bit of hope, too. There was kindness among the people outside this room. And a little bit of courage. Enough to sneak some supplies past the guards to keep the Reunion settlers fed and resolute in their opposition to Nicholas.
“Knowing the children are alright gave us the courage to keep saying no,” Sylvie added. “If we give in to him now, he’ll win and we’ll never be free.”
The determination on her face was reflected around the room as all the Reunion settlers murmured their agreement. They’d been working on their separate settlement and homes for over a year, Hallie remembered, and it seemed that, however hard it had been, they still found it preferable to being under Nicholas’ rule. And she had a feeling that, even without the food that their former neighbours had been bringing to them, the Reunion settlers would still have been defying Nicholas.
“We’re hoping he’ll just let us go at some point,” Donall said, although he didn’t sound too confident in that.
“We would have left before now, if it was just us.” Sylvie lifted her chin and despite the shadows on her face and the drying trail of tears, Hallie could see steely determination in the woman. There was no doubt in Hallie’s mind that Sylvie on her own - never mind with the others - could have found a way out and back to Reunion, if it wasn’t for the children.
“Are they still in New Hope?” Girard asked, voice gentle.
“Where else would they be?” Sylvie asked, bitterness in her voice. “Although we don’t know where.” Her head lifted and she turned to Girard and Hallie, a little bit of something bright blooming in her face. It took Hallie a moment to recognise the new emotion as hope. “I know you’re a very important person, a Conclave Investigator and all, but could you, I mean, would you …” Her voice trailed off and Hallie saw another tear roll down her face.
