"Come out, now!" I command. 

Silence. 

I snarl. "Come out or I am coming in to get you."

That brings results.

"I'm coming out." It is a high quavering voice. A moment later, she crawls out. A wisp of a waif, even skinnier than Alvar had been. Dirty, disheveled. She moves warily to behind the nest of a bed, back against the wall, eyes darting at me and then away.

"Oh," she says with the sort of relief you feel when you realize you're only facing a pack of brigands rather than an egg stalker. "You're an elf. What do you want?"

Apparently she thinks we're playing a game where she gets to ask questions. She's wrong.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"I live here." A hint of defiance.

"Since when? This is Alvar's hole."

"Since Alvar said I could. And Ciana and Landor, too."

"Ciana and Landor? Elf-girl and elf-boy, about the same age as you and Alvar?" She nods. Well, that explains who the other two drugged street rats in Calmorien's warehouse were. I wonder why this girl wasn't with them.

"So, where are they?"

"I don't know." Fear pulses stronger from her face. And something else. Guilt.

"I think you're lying."

"I'm not!" she screeches. "I don't know where they are. I don't! They left yesterday morning without me." She is telling the truth. But not all of it. "I wish - I wish they would come back," she finishes forlornly.

"Where were they going?"

"I don't know," she says. "It's a secret. Even from me."

"Why? If you live here with them, why would they keep secrets from you?"

The girl's eyes glow with the fervor of an ideologue. "They were going on . . . a mission." She imbues the word with deep meaning as though it had religious significance. Was Jeamo's operation part of some larger cult?

"To what purpose?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why not? I'm Alvar's friend, just like you."

"Alvar didn't have any friends. Just us." Her eyes narrow in suspicion. "Who are you? Why did you come here? Are you a spy for the humans? I won't tell you anything!"

I scoff. "As if you have anything to tell." I return to seriousness, even mustering a bit of sincerity. "But you're wrong about me. I am Alvar's friend. He works for me every morning."

She gasps in belated understanding. "You're the giver of bread!"

"Yes." Now I understand why Alvar stayed so scrawny. He was sharing his portion of bread with three other street rats. He never let on about it, though. I hope this girl in front of me is not so good at keeping her secrets.

"So?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.  The girl looks confused by the question.

"So . . . ." she says. "Thank you! For the bread. We would have starved without it." She looks at me with imploring eyes as wide as a puffer's in her thin, drawn face. "Do you have any more? I am so hungry. I haven't eaten in two days."

I shake my head. I have some back at the Lydia, but I am not taking her there. If I leave to get some she'd disappear while I was gone.

"I carry none. But when we are done here, I will get you some." I lie. "If you are Alvar's friend, then you are mine as well. Maybe you can get my bread in the morning until he gets back." I remember what Alvar was babbling about the last morning he brought my bread. "So. Alvar left on a mission. One related to rising up against the humans?"

The startled look on her face reveals that my throw hit true.

"How did you-?" She breaks off and answers her own question. "Alvar told you, didn't he?"

I nod. He didn't tell me nearly enough, or I would have hit him harder and he might still be alive. I change the subject. Let her get comfortable with the idea that I know more than I do, then I will ask her more.

"What is that?" I point to the wall.

The girl speaks carefully, as though using unfamiliar language. "That is a painting."

"Who painted it?"

"Alvar." There was more to the dirty street rat than I thought. If only he had told me. But would it really have made a difference? Would I have seen in him what Nana Romina saw in me?

"How?"

"With wet colors. Ciana made the colors from all sorts of things and Alvar made the painting by putting the colors on the wall with bits of leather and gull feathers. It took him a long time." 

"What is it supposed to be?" I ask roughly. Alvar had never seen a meadow or a forest or a mountain range. I had never told him about them.

"That is us dancing in elvenhome. There is Alvar and Ciana and Landor and me. We are in a square where plants grow. Behind us are the trees we live in and behind them are mountains - huge piles of rock that rise into the sky. Landor saw it in a vision and he told Alvar how to paint it."

I am troubled. This makes no sense. Street rats having visions and painting landscapes of a far away land never seen. It reeks of forbidden magic. Did all of them have sorcerous tendencies like Enturi? Is that what brought them all together?

"No one paints in Elftown," I mutter to myself.