"No."
Tomek looked at the girl with a frown creasing his forehead. "You need to go. It's late."
Bianca looked at him, then at her mother, and then she sighed and sat up.
Rohilah's mouth twitched. "I see how it is. You listen to Tomek but not to me." She lifted Bianca onto her hip.
The girl looked back at Tomek over her mother's shoulder with sad eyes and a pouty mouth. "Bye, bye."
"Bye, Bianca." He waved at her. "Come back tomorrow, and we will play again."
As tears started gathering in Bianca's eyes, Rohilah patted her back. "Let's get you some chocolate milk, and if you come without crying, I might find a couple of cookies for you."
"Cookies?" The tears dried up immediately.
"Yes, and chocolate milk to dunk them in. Wave goodbye to Tomek."
Bianca waved, and Tomek waved back with both hands as if seeing her off on a long voyage.
Rohilah opened the playground gate and turned to Sullha, lifting her hand briefly in her direction before leaving.
Tomek dusted his hands on his shorts and ran toward the climbing structure, where two other boys were trying to hang upside down from the highest bar, and within ten seconds he was attempting to outdo them.
Sullha exhaled and turned to Yaaf.
"Well?"
"She's good to go," he said.
"That was my impression as well. What did you see?"
"That she would do anything to get Bianca out of here. If you tell her there's a way, she will not just say yes. She will fight to be at the front of the line. The miscarriages were not all natural. One was real, and the other two were induced."
"How come she kept Bianca?"
He shrugged. "The miscarriages were hard. She was tired, and she knew that if she had another child at her age, she would not be sent to the breeding building again. Bianca was her ticket out."
It was a cold calculation, but Sullha understood.
In the enclosure, each woman found her own way to survive. Rohilah was not made of stone. She was a fighter who had been waging the only battles she could from a body that belonged to the Brotherhood.
"You didn't show her Tersan. Why?"
"She wasn't ready."
He was probably right, but Sullha wondered what he'd seen in Rohilah's mind that led him to that conclusion.
"How do you know that?"
"She's wound up too tight. She only appears calm on the outside. If she suddenly saw him appear out of thin air, she would have either screamed or fainted, and we don't want her to do either of those things when she's holding a little girl in her arms. She wouldn't have been able to absorb it. She would have made a sound, or fallen down, or said his name out loud, and any of those would have been dangerous."
Sullha nodded. "We need to prepare her for the reveal slowly, but we don't have time for that."
"I know." He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "We have to wait until we are on our way out of here."
She turned to look at Tersan, who was still in his retreated state, hiding his awareness in some interior room in the collective's mind.
Yaaf put a hand on his shoulder, and she could see Tersan becoming present, and then she witnessed the silent communication that she now recognized as the collective having a meeting inside their combined minds.
