My breath quickened. "With two boys? But then..." A million questions and a million horrifying scenarios ran through my mind. I held my head in my hands. "No, Poly."

"It could be Ryan," Rosa suggested nervously. "One of them could be Ryan. The man didn't see the boys clearly. He wasn't even sure if they were boys or just short men, but they were much taller than Poly."

"If it was Ryan, who would the other one be? Ryan doesn't know anyone in Midelus."

She didn't answer, and we both looked at Mother Lily, who seemed just as speechless as the little ones. "Well," she said, then stopped. "Well."

Roly looked up at me, her food still clutched in her hands. "We found Poly?" she asked, in a small voice.

"...yes," I said as I smiled weakly at her, then raised my head to look between Rosa and Mother Lily. With a stronger voice, I said, "We found Poly, and that's better than nothing, right? Let's ask a couple other vendors around here, and then I can go look for Poly with Rose."

Rosa nodded. "We'll do that. And when we go, mother can take care of the other two."

"Where will we meet up?" Mother Lily asked.

"At the fountain. In thirty minutes."

Mother Lily pursed her lips but nodded all the same. "Then I'll take Becca and Roly and look for Ruth."

Mother and daughter shared a firm look of confidence, then Rosa motioned for me to follow her. I turned to go with her.

"Wait!" Roly said, hopping down from Mother Lily's lap. She ran to me, then held out the skewers that she'd been saving for the past few blocks. "If you see Poly, can you give these to her?"

My heart broke, and I blinked back a surge of tears. I crouched down to her eye level. "Of course I can, Roly. And when she's back, you can tell her yourself how hard you worked to get her back, okay?"

She nodded, wiping some of her hair out of her face. "Okay."

I took the skewers and pressed my lips into a firm line to stop them from quivering. "And is the stew for Ruth?"

"Mhm." She sniffed, once, then ran back to Mother Lily and Becca, who watched us in silence. I waved bye at them and hurried after Rosa, heart heavy.

I caught up with Rosa in no time, who glanced at the skewers and asked, "What's with the food?"

"They're for Poly," was all I said, and we didn't say anything more on the subject.

We talked to a few more vendors, who didn't have much to say, though one other person did think they saw two boys and a little girl near the same alleyway, too.

"Do you remember the boys?" we asked.

She shook her head. "No, only that they were quite lanky and probably common."

We thanked her and walked on, surmising what could've happened as hopefully as we could. Maybe they found her in the alley, and the boys were taking her out. Maybe one was bringing Poly to Ryan. Maybe... 

But we didn't voice out our greatest fears. We didn't need to.

The alley was hidden behind a few huge warehouses, where only the shop owners went to if they needed some extra poles or something. It was as dark and eerie as it was practically impossible to find had we not been actively looking for it. I exchanged a long, wordless look with Rosa and felt my mouth go dry. Nothing about this place looked remotely good.

"Should we...?" Rosa tilted her head towards the alley.

I pursed my lips and nodded. I had two knives on my body as always, and I was pretty sure Rosa still carried two around, so I wasn't too concerned for ourselves. But I didn't want to imagine what could've happened to Poly if she had had to enter here.

"Wait," I breathed, just before we entered. I nodded towards the supply tents. "Let's see if anyone in there saw her."

"Good idea."

We walked with quiet footsteps into the nearest warehouse, a vast, closed area that had no internal lighting except for the windows of light that came through the doorway behind us and the cracks between planks of wood in the walls. I wrinkled my nose-- it smelled like wet wood in here.

"Hello?" I called. The tent did let some light through its surface, but my eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the dimmer lighting. "Is anyone in here?"

"They're not meeting here anymore!" a gruff voice shouted. A bulky figure stood up from behind a stack of barrels. "Stop bothering me here and go away, you and your foolish Society!"

Society? I looked at Rosa, who was squinting hard towards the dim corner where the man stood. "I think you have mistaken us," she shouted back. "We're not here for any societies. We just have a question."

He seemed to regard us carefully in the silence that followed. "Not answering questions," he finally said. "Get out of my warehouse."

I stepped forward. "Sir," I called, as politely as I could make my voice in a ringing space like this one, "it will only take a while. We're just looking for someone."

"Nobody in here," he replied gruffly, but his voice did not seem as hostile as he had first been. I continued.

"She's just a little girl, sir, and we've been looking for her all day."

He paused, and Rosa took over, stepping forward as well. "She's my little sister, six years old with brown hair, about this tall. Some people told us they saw someone like her with two boys around here, would you happen to know?"

"Seen plenty of boys 'round here, but none with little girls," he said after a while. "Your boys could be part of the Society."

"The Society?"

"Never 'eard of them?" he asked, and we both nodded. He appeared to consider something, then sighed and motioned us in. "I'll show you."

He lumbered to the back of the room and opened a door that we hadn't noticed before, and Rosa and I looked at each other in startled surprise. "I thought this was just one giant room," I whispered to her as we trailed after him.

"Me too. Isn't that what warehouses are supposed to be?"

I shrugged, carefully stepping over a stray pole. "I guess even warehouses evolve."

When we went through the doorway as well, the room that greeted us was a pretty narrow space, a strip just long enough for maybe fifteen-ish people to fit standing toe-to-toe with each other. But that wasn't the important part: what made me stumble back and knock my head against the door I'd just closed was the entire wall that faced me.

"What is this place?" I whispered, feeling the inexplicable pressure to be absolutely quiet. My eyes roamed the entirety of the wide wall, covered with newspapers, pictures, and what looked like blueprints, even.

The man, who'd been standing at the side waiting for us, surveyed the wall as well. "This is what the Society does," he rumbled.

"The Society?" Rosa echoed, her voice hushed.

"The Society against Division, Elites, Aristocrats, and The Hierarchy, or DEATH." He grunted. "Calls themselves SAD. Society Against DEATH."

I frowned. While this did sound pretty sad, why would they call themselves sad? Calling themselves sad was kind of... sad. Huh. Guess that works out that way.

Rosa snorted. "SAD sounds appropriate." She eyed the wall with obvious disgruntlement. "So what, they're against all nobles?"

He nodded.

"And are you part of this group?"

"No," he growled, and he clenched his large fists. "They used my warehouse for too long."

"But they didn't take this entire wall of, um, stuff?" I asked, waving a hand at all these scraps of paper on them. "What were they planning to do, anyway?"

Rosa put her face as close to the wall as possible. "A bunch of these are about the festival," she reported. She looked around. "That one's a picture of the Crown Prince, that one's a picture of the Queen..." She gasped, sneezed, and turned around, looking up at the huge man. "Are they going to terrorize the festival?"

He shrugged. "Don't know."

I could practically hear the gears whirring around in Rosa's brain. She held her head in one hand and leaned against the wall, muttering all the while. "This isn't, wait. First year festival... terrorist event? No, there wasn't anything like that. Does that mean we're safe? But if events can change... Ugh, is it a butterfly effect..?"

I left her alone and turned to the man. "Where are they meeting, then?" I demanded.

The man looked down on me, and I finally got a semi-good look at him now that my eyes had adjusted to the dimness. He had a large beard and was wearing overalls over a brown, long-sleeved muslin top, his bushy head covered with a hat. He was massive, so even just looking up at his face required me to crane my neck considerably. "Don't know," he rumbled again. "Not here."

I chewed the insides of my cheeks. "Then what did you mean? About the two boys maybe being part of this Society."

"Many boys in the Society. Not many little girls."

I processed his words for a few moments. "So you're saying," I said slowly, "that maybe the two boys who had our sister could have been part of this Society, but they took her with them, right?"

He nodded.

I let go of my breath with a whoosh. Rosa kept muttering things to herself. I clenched and unclenched my fists, at a loss for words. When I could finally think straight enough to speak again, and I could say was, "Can this get any worse?"