Inside there was just enough light coming in through a small window to make out a quantity of household objects all made from living leaves and vines—chairs, a table, bowls, and even a candlestick; otherwise the little hut was empty. Renie clenched her fists in fear and frustration. She could actually see the church tower through the window, festooned with vines like a maypole, but although it was only a few dozen meters away it might as well have been a thousand. The ground between their temporary refuge and the tower was full of the pale things.

"I'll think of something," Renie declared. "Don't give up. I'll get us out of here."

The little Stone Girl took a deep, shaky breath. "Y–you w–w–will?"

"I promise," Renie said firmly, even as she hugged herself to still the trembling. What else could she say?

Three empty squeeze bottles of Mountain Rose lay on the floor in front of him like bleached bones. Long Joseph contemplated them with a feeling only a small distance from despair.

Knew it was going to happen, he chided himself. Drink it a drop at a time, still going to finish some day. . . .

And the hell of it was that there was absolutely nothing he could do. At the moment when he most needed a supply of the healing, warming liquid, with men that wanted to kill both him and his daughter just a short distance above him, after he had been trapped for weeks in a cement tomb under a mountain with no company but boring, disapproving Jeremiah Dako—and adding Del Ray Chiume to the mix hadn't helped much—now of all times he had nothing to drink.

He wiped his hand roughly across his mouth. He knew he wasn't a drunk. He knew drunks, saw them all the time, men who could barely stand, men swaying outside the shebeens with old, dried piss stains on their pants and breath that smelled like paint thinner, men with eyes like ghosts' eyes. That wasn't him. But he also knew he could dearly use some comfort. It wasn't so much that he wanted a drink, not the taste, not even the little glow of satisfaction when the first few swallows made their way into the belly. But it felt like his entire body was a little loose and ill-fitting all over, his skeleton not quite sitting right in his meat, his skin the wrong size.

Joseph grunted and stood up. What was the point, anyway? Even if Renie came back, stepped out of her electrical bathtub like that what-was-his-name, that Lazarus man from the Bible, healthy and happy and proud of her papa, they still weren't going to get out of this mountain alive. Not with four killers up there, cruel hard men determined to dig them out like an anteater on a termite nest.

Joseph took a few stiff steps over to the bank of monitors. The men upstairs had not finished fanning out the smoke, but the atmosphere up there was much clearer. They would be getting back to work soon, chipping out the rest of the concrete floor. Then what—grenades? Flaming petrol dumped down on top of them, so they burned like rats? He counted the shapes in the murk. Yes, four. So at least they had killed one of them with Sellars' bonfire. But that would only mean the rest would be even nastier when the time came.

Nastier? You must be joking, man. This would never have been one of those simple Pinetown shake-outs after too many beers, fists and boards and maybe a knife just before people started running away, not even the bad kind with the young men and their guns, that terrible noise like a stick dragged along a fence and people stopping, faces slack, knowing something bad had just happened. . . . No, this was always going to be something far worse.

The itch was bad now, a need to move, to get out, to run as fast as he could under open sky. Maybe they could find another way out, a heating duct like he had found before. They would have to take Renie and the little man out of those bathtubs, those wired-up coffins, but surely whatever they were doing in there was not more important than their lives.

Then do what? Run across the mountains while those men come after in their big truck all armored up like a tank?

He smacked his hand down on the console and turned away. All he wanted was to pour something down his throat. Was that too much to ask for a man condemned to die? Even in Westville Prison they gave the poor bugger a last meal before they killed him, didn't they, a beer or a little wine?

Joseph stood, flexing his fingers. Surely in all this big place, there must have been someone who liked a drink, who kept a bottle hid while he was on duty—just one bottle that got left behind when everyone moved out. He looked to the alcove where Jeremiah was discussing supplies with Del Ray, the glow of the light spilling out onto the cement floor that ringed the large chamber. They didn't need Joseph. They didn't even like him, a man of his hands, a man who didn't put on airs so he could work for rich Boers. If it weren't for his daughter, he would say the hell with them both and find himself an air shaft out.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth again and, without really thinking about it—because if he thought he would know it was hopeless and foolish, that he had searched the whole place from top to bottom a half-dozen times—wandered off to look for that bottle of beer some faceless soldier or technician had stashed away for the long hours of the watch.

No—wine, he thought. If he was dreaming a hopeless dream, why not make it perfect? A whole bottle of something good, something with kick. Not even opened. He hid it away there, then the orders came and they all had to go. He saluted his anonymous benefactor. You did not know, but you put it away for Joseph Sulaweyo. In his hour of need, like they say.

His skin prickled. The filing cabinet lay on its side against the wall of the service closet, as wonderful as a treasure chest from a pirate story.

In a fit of nervous energy brought on by fear and frustration, he had unstacked a pile of folding chairs he had passed many times, working at it with no more hope than when he had once more opened cabinets and drawers already searched a dozen times in the last month—but to his astonishment, he had discovered the tipped cabinet hidden beneath the chairs. Now he hardly dared move for fear it would vanish.

Probably just full with papers, a small, sensible voice told him. Or spiders. If they are full with anything at all.

Nevertheless his palms were sweaty and it took him some moments to realize that it wasn't merely his slippery grip on the handles that kept the drawers from opening. Don't work lying down, he realized. Thing needs to be standing up.

It was a huge, cumbersome cabinet, the kind meant to survive fires and other disasters. As his muscles protested at the strain he was putting on them, he thought for a moment of calling Jeremiah for help, but could imagine no believable excuse for wanting to get the cabinet upright. At last, with much grunting and swearing, he dragged the top end off the ground. He got it as high as his waist before his back would not take any more, then had to squat and let the full weight of the thing rest on his thighs while he prepared himself to heave it the rest of the way. It felt like it was full of rocks. He thought he could feel his ankle bones grinding down into powder from supporting it, but the solid heft of it gave him hope—there had to be something in it.

Joseph braced himself and lifted again, grimacing as the corners dug into his forearms, pulling it up until he could slide his whole body under the top end and really put his back and shoulders into the job. It tottered for a moment—he had a sour picture of lying underneath it with his back broken while Jeremiah and Del Ray chatted on, unaware, a hundred meters away—before he managed to rise from his crouch and shove it almost upright. It caught the edge of a heating vent screen in the cement wall and stuck. Back quivering and arms trembling, sweat running in his eyes, Joseph shoved until the bolts holding the screen tore loose and it clattered to the ground, allowing the filing cabinet to slide past and thump down square on its bottom.