At the bottom of the town hall steps, Henry turned toward home.
He had followed Ms. Aparo without objection through the offices and down the long staircase, but here, where the road divided around a dry fountain, his feet found their own direction. The left-hand street led past a bakery. Beyond it were the steps he climbed every evening, sometimes dragging his broom behind him when he thought nobody could see.
He had gone several paces before the mortician caught up.
"This way, kid."
Henry looked at the street ahead. A woman was standing outside the bakery with a basket hooked over her elbow. She moved aside for a cart, then resumed her conversation through the open window.
"My things are there," he said.
His voice sounded strange after so long without using it.
"We'll arrange to fetch them."
"I know where they are."
Ms. Aparo waited beside him. He could feel her watching, and for a moment he hated her for it. He wanted her to keep walking so that he could go the other way.
"Nobody is asking you to forget where you live," she said. "But I have to get you settled before I leave you anywhere."
There was no good answer to that. Henry rubbed his nose against his sleeve and turned back toward her.
They descended through Rocheforte. The houses grew taller as the streets narrowed, their upper floors leaning over passages scarcely wide enough for two carts. Above them, the town hall's dome remained visible between rooftops. From below, the pale stone looked almost white.
Henry watched the ground. He knew some of these streets by their gutters: the stretch where broken pottery collected after market days, the alley that never dried properly, the corner where a shopkeeper swept his refuse out again as soon as Henry had passed. He had been working there only recently. It seemed impossible that he would have to do it again.
Then he remembered that he had missed work today.
"Will they tell Mr. Besson?"
"Who?"
"He gives me my streets."
"I'll mention it when we arrive."
Henry looked back up the slope. Mr. Besson would already have sent somebody else. He disliked finding work unfinished, and he disliked having to find out why even more. Henry tried to remember whether he had put his broom away properly. The thought occupied him until they reached the orphanage.
Rocheforte General Orphanage stood behind a low wall on a street crowded with workshops. Its front door had been painted green, though most of the paint had worn away around the handle. A row of narrow windows overlooked a yard where shirts and bedsheets hung between two bare poles.
There were children everywhere.
Two small girls sat on the front step, picking dark flecks from a bowl of beans. A boy stood barefoot on the wall while another argued with him from below. Somewhere inside, several people were calling for somebody who did not seem inclined to answer.
One of the girls pulled the bowl toward her as Henry approached. The other stared at his face.
Ms. Aparo knocked once and pushed the door open.
The entrance smelled of boiled cabbage and damp wool. A woman at the far end of the passage was trying to fasten a child's coat while the child twisted away to look at the visitors. She finished the last button, turned him around, and sent him toward the yard.
"Concetta."
"Mrs. Vautrin."
The woman looked at Henry, then at the papers under Ms. Aparo's arm.
"Another?"
"Youth Affairs sent us."
"They would."
She took the papers and read them standing in the passage. Her lips moved slightly over one line. Then she looked back at Henry.
"Henry Wells?"
He nodded.
"Have you eaten?"
He could not remember.
Mrs. Vautrin seemed familiar with that answer, even though he had not spoken it. She opened a door beside her and pointed to a chair.
"Sit there. I'll find something."
The room was small and full of objects that appeared to have been left for somebody else to deal with. A cracked washbasin stood under the desk. Three shoes, none alike, rested on a shelf beside a tin of buttons. Henry sat with his hands between his knees while the two women spoke in the passage.
He heard his surname, followed by something about the district. Then Ms. Aparo mentioned Mr. Besson.
"He can remain indoors tomorrow," Mrs. Vautrin said.
"I can work."
Both women turned toward the doorway.
Henry wished he had kept quiet. He had spoken loudly enough for a boy passing through the hall to stop and look in.
"I didn't say you couldn't," Mrs. Vautrin replied.
"They'll give away my streets."
"Then I'll send word that you're here."
"He doesn't always—"
"Henry. Let me send word first."
He lowered his eyes to the floor. Beneath the desk, somebody had scratched a shape into the wood with repeated, uneven strokes. He followed the marks until Mrs. Vautrin placed a piece of bread and a mug of water beside him.
"Eat what you can."
He took the bread because she was waiting. His mouth was dry, and the first bite took a long time to swallow.
Ms. Aparo came into the room and stood by his chair.
"I have to go back now."
Henry stopped chewing.
He had wanted her to leave at the fountain. Now he could not remember why. Beyond the doorway, the house was full of footsteps and voices he did not know.
"Mrs. Vautrin will help you with your things," she continued. "I'll speak with her about the arrangements for your parents, too."
"They'll still be there?"
She glanced toward the passage, then drew the door partly closed.
"At the mortuary, yes."
Henry pressed his thumb into the bread. He had meant his things. Or perhaps he had not. He could no longer decide which question he wanted answered.
Ms. Aparo rested a hand on his shoulder. She left it there briefly before letting go.
"You can ask her to send for me."
He nodded without looking up. A short while later, he heard the front door close.
"You're sitting on my coat."
Henry lifted his head.
A boy stood in the doorway with a bundle of folded linen balanced against his chest. He was taller than Henry, with black hair cropped unevenly around his ears and a red mark along one cheek. The heel of his right boot had been bound with cord.
Henry stood at once. A brown coat lay crumpled beneath him.
"I didn't see it."
"I know. You were sitting on it."
The boy put the linen down and shook the coat out. Something fell from a pocket and rolled under the chair. Both boys bent for it, striking their heads together.
Henry recoiled.
"Sorry."
"Just move your foot."
It was a small brass nut. Henry found it beside the chair leg and handed it over.
"What's it for?"
The question came before he considered whether he wanted to talk.
"My boot. Once I find the bolt."
Henry looked at the cord around the heel.
"It'll press into your foot."
"Only if I put it inside."
The boy pocketed the nut and picked up the linen again.
"I'm Nadir. Mrs. Vautrin says you're to come upstairs."
Henry took his bread with him. He had eaten less than half.
They climbed a staircase worn hollow in the middle. On the landing, an older boy was cleaning mud from a pair of shoes with the handle of a spoon. He drew his feet out of their way and looked Henry over.
"Where's he going?"
"Upstairs," Nadir said.
"I can see that."
Nadir continued without answering. Henry followed, conscious of the other boy watching until they turned the corner.
The dormitory occupied most of the upper floor. Beds stood in two rows, with narrow spaces between them. A few had coats laid across the blankets. Beneath others, boxes and small bundles had been pushed back against the wall. There was hardly anything on the plaster except a square of darker paint where a picture must once have hung.
At the far end, a bed frame stood on its side beside an open cupboard.
"That one," Nadir said.
Henry looked for the place it would fit.
"We have to move mine." Nadir dropped the linen onto a mattress by the window. "Take the other end."
Henry set his bread on the sill and bent to grip the frame.
"Wait. The box underneath."
He had already pulled. A wooden box caught against the bed leg, tipped, and spilled its contents across the boards.
A short length of string, two stockings, a comb with missing teeth. Several screws rolled toward the next bed.
"I said wait."
Henry knelt and began gathering them. His face had grown hot.
"I can get them."
"They're mine."
Nadir reached past him. Henry held the box while the other boy checked beneath the bed, then set it carefully on the mattress.
This time he waited.
They shifted the bed toward the window and lowered the spare frame into the space it left. Nadir went to the cupboard for a rolled mattress. Henry followed and caught the lower end before it touched the floor.
The mattress was awkward, heavier on one side, and kept folding over his hands. He pulled harder whenever it slipped. Halfway across the room, Nadir stopped.
"Let that side down."
"I've got it."
"You're carrying it over your own foot."
Henry looked down. He was.
They lowered it, changed their grip, and tried again. When they finally dropped it onto the frame, dust rose into the light from the window.
Henry coughed into his sleeve.
"Beat it out tomorrow," Nadir said. "You'll only make a mess now."
He took a sheet from the bundle and passed Henry the opposite corners. Together they spread it over the mattress. Henry tucked his side in, then went around to straighten a fold by the pillow.
"It's going to wrinkle when you sleep in it."
"It was crooked."
Nadir left him to it.
Outside, somebody in the yard began to cry. A window opened on the floor below, and Mrs. Vautrin called down to ask what had happened. Several children answered at once.
Henry sat on the edge of the finished bed. From here, he could see the tops of the washing poles and the sloping roof of the workshop opposite. Farther away, houses climbed the mountainside in crowded terraces. He searched among them for a roof he recognized, but there were too many.
"Which streets do you do?" Nadir asked.
"It changes."
"Besson's?"
Henry turned.
"You know him?"
"He sends for us when he needs more hands. I was clearing a drain for him yesterday." Nadir rubbed at the mark on his cheek. "Under the cloth market."
"There's two."
"What?"
"Two drains. The little one is behind the stalls. If you don't clear that one, the other fills up again."
Nadir looked at him for a moment.
"Well, that would have been useful yesterday."
Henry looked back toward the houses. He had not meant it as a criticism, but he could hear how it might have sounded. He tried to think of something else to say.
"The stallholder puts a board over it," he added. "You can't see it."
"I'll remember."
Downstairs, a bell rang twice. Doors opened along the landing, and the staircase filled with feet.
Nadir picked up the bread from the sill and held it out.
"Bring this. Somebody will eat it if you leave it here."
At supper, Henry sat between Nadir and a little boy who held his spoon in his fist. There was soup with barley at the bottom and cabbage floating on top. A basket of bread moved along the table, each child taking a piece before passing it on.
Henry passed it without taking any. He still had the piece Mrs. Vautrin had given him, now flattened from being carried in his hand.
The room was loud enough that he could listen without answering anybody. A girl across the table was describing an argument with a shopkeeper. Farther down, two boys disputed how many slayers had passed through the square that morning.
"Six," one insisted.
"Two. The others were carrying things."
"They all had swords."
"So does the man at the tollhouse."
Nadir leaned forward to join in, but the little boy beside Henry knocked his spoon into the soup. He tried to retrieve it, pushed it farther under, and began looking anxiously toward Mrs. Vautrin.
Henry took the bowl, tilted it, and caught the spoon against the side with his own. He wiped the handle on a clean corner of his sleeve before handing it back.
The boy resumed eating. A few moments later, he shifted his bowl farther from the edge.
Henry stirred his soup. His mother used to remind him to do that. He had never understood how she noticed where his bowl was while she was eating from her own.
He set his spoon down.
Across the room, Mrs. Vautrin was dividing the last of the bread between two children. Somebody laughed at the far table. Henry stared at a knot in the wood until his eyes blurred, then wiped them with the heel of his hand.
Nadir had turned back toward him.
"Are you finished?"
Henry nodded.
"You have to take the bowl over."
He stood too quickly, catching his knee against the table. Soup spilled over the rim. He reached for it with his sleeve, but Nadir caught the bowl first.
"I'll take it. Get the cloth by the door."
Henry nearly told him that he could carry his own bowl. Instead, he went to find the cloth.
By the time he returned, Nadir was waiting with a place cleared on the table. They wiped up the spill together. Nobody else paid them much attention.
The dormitory filled slowly after supper. Boys undressed beside their beds, hanging shirts over the ends or folding them beneath pillows. Henry watched long enough to work out where to put his clothes. He kept his shoes under the bed with their toes facing outward, as he always did at home.
Mrs. Vautrin came upstairs carrying a lamp. She stopped to examine a boy's swollen finger, told another to take his wet stockings downstairs, and reached Henry's bed last.
"I've sent word to Besson," she said quietly. "You won't be expected tomorrow. We can discuss the day after."
Henry nodded.
"Is there anything you need from the house?"
He had been thinking about his things all afternoon. Now that she had asked, he could not remember any of them properly. There was a shirt drying by the stove. His other stockings. A cup with a little chip beneath the handle.
"I want to go myself."
"Someone will go with you."
He wanted to object to that, too, though he could not have said why. Mrs. Vautrin waited until he nodded again, then moved toward the door.
The lamp went with her. In the darkness, the boys kept talking until she called up from the stairs.
Henry lay on his side, facing the window. The room smelled different from his room at home. The mattress sagged beneath his hip, and there was a loose thread on the blanket that kept brushing his mouth.
He pulled it away and shut his eyes.
For a little while, he tried to count the sounds: a cart passing outside, someone coughing, the floorboards shifting as a boy turned in bed. At home, his father usually came in after he had lain down. Henry would hear his boots in the passage and the scrape of a chair being drawn up to the table.
He waited for the boots until he caught himself doing it.
Then he pressed his face into the pillow.
The bed beside him creaked. Henry held his breath, ashamed of how loudly he had been breathing.
"Henry?"
He did not answer.
Nadir was quiet for a while.
"When you go back to Besson's," he whispered, "tell him we can do the market together. You can show me that drain."
Henry pulled the blanket down from his face. He wiped his nose with it before remembering that it belonged to the orphanage.
"You have to move the board first," he said.
"All right."
"The stallholder won't do it."
"Then we'll move it."
Nadir settled back into his bed. Henry lay awake beside him, listening to the carts outside.