As Yikas had predicted, I soon learned what Bansabira’s business was.

Before the cramps from the rotting bread had passed, the man was back. In the milky light of dawn, he poked me in the ribs. I didn’t get up. Then, he kicked me for good, and I groaned.

“Up. Go out and earn your stay”.

I blinked and opened my mouth in a quiet gasp. The room was strange to me, but the open door showed me the uneven ground and burlap bags in the corners.

It took me a minute to understand where I was, and as the mental picture of my dead mother hit me again and threatened to make me break into sobs, I remembered it all.

Like creatures of the night scattering under an unexpected ray of sunlight, the other kids were crawling out of their makeshift nests for the night. As they scampered out in the waking street, they passed close enough to let me see them clearly. One dragged a deformed leg, leaning on his twisted ankle and a pair of tall crutches; another had a filthy rag covering his eye.

Bansabira grabbed me by the front of my ragged tunic and hauled me to my feet.

“Always looking as if you were about to cry, and skinny as a scarecrow”. Oddly, he seemed pleased. “You’ll do fine”.

“F-For what?” I asked. The fabric scratched my throat and I wanted to squirm to get free, but Bansabira’s hand was strong as a vice. I didn’t want him to kick me again.

“For work, you stupid thing!” He shoved me back and I fell sitting on the ground. “Now go out and look as pathetic as you can. If you don’t bring me back at least five coppers, I’ll snap your fingers. It always makes people sorry enough to part from their money”.

A moment later I was outside, and the door slammed shut behind me.

Alasha had stirred into life, and from the docks came the curses of the fishermen returning with their boon.

I looked around with my throat clenched and my arms about myself. I was shaking, although the day was warm enough.

“What are you doing there?”

Yikas popped from the stables, holding a withered, half eaten apple. It was covered in straw.

“I… don’t know”, I moaned. He chuckled and gave the apple another bite.

“Ah, rookies… it’s not that difficult, you see. You may start with begging”.

“I’ve never done it before! I never needed to!”

“Then count yourself lucky”. He chewed on a mouthful of apple and tossed me the core. “It’s all in picking the right spot”.

I took the apple core. There was little left to it, but hunger made me unfussy. I nibbled on the hard morsel and swallowed it, seeds and all. It tasted vaguely of stables.

“How you got here anyway?” he asked as we walked down the alleyway. In the sunlight it looked narrower and messier than I’d thought, with piles of rubbish along the walls and lines of still dirty clothing over our heads. A baby was crying weakly from one of the windows. Someone yelled. Someone else poured the content of a chamber pot a few feet behind us, and the smell added nothing to the overall stench.

“Bansabira found me”, I answered, walking around an iridescent puddle.

“I know that part, fish brain. It’s the same for us all. But before that?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I tried to speak, but my breath quickened and tears welled in my eyes.

“Of course, the same sad old story. Spare me the details, alright? And save that tearful face for the people at the market: it works well enough”. He clapped my shoulder and proceeded, unperturbable.

I wiped my nose on my arm and gulped.

“And you?” I asked softly.

“Can’t say. I’ve been in Alasha for as long as I can remember. I suppose my parents are dead, or didn’t want me, but I don’t care. I can take care of myself”, and he pointed at his bony chest with a grimy thumb.

“You don’t miss them?”

“No. Perhaps when I was little, but now? I’m too big to bawl my eyes out about a family I never met”. We emerged in the more populated city centre; the waters lay murky to the surrounding hills, blueish with cedars near the top and degrading to the dark green of myricae down the slopes. A bell rang somewhere in the belly of the city and I looked that way. An uneven expanse of roofs, their dark shingles mottled with the droppings of thousands of seagulls, terns and quarrelsome petrels mirrored the swamp and faded in the distance against the woods. In Atlantis, nature fights fiercely to gain its spaces, and it often wins. The remains of a marble temple up on the hills was proof of this: a cracked tympanon and a row of broken columns half swallowed by the green, like crooked teeth of a dead giant.

“Here”, Yikas said. I roused and turned to him. He was pointing at a niche in the wall of a large building, not as tall as the ones surrounding it, but sturdy and proudly sporting a dangling sign with a green fish and some words I couldn’t read. When the door opened to let a fat man out, I caught a whiff of roasted old fish. “It’s as good a spot as any”.

“How would you know?”

“The Green Mullet is always buzzing with customers. Some are too drunk to notice when you pickpocket them…”

I must have made some strangled noise of anguish, because Yikas laughed that rough laugh of his.

“Too soon? I’ll teach you, but don’t worry: sometimes when I’m sick and can’t move swiftly enough I come here and scrounge some money. Not much, but enough to keep Bansabira happy”.

The niche was clearly a popular spot for relieving customers’ exhausted bladders, and I watched disgusted at a demonstration of such a practice. But I couldn’t afford to be squeamish.

“He said he’ll break my fingers if I don’t bring back five coppers”, I said. I pushed my hair back and looked at Yikas. “I barely know how much five is!”

“How are you this ignorant?” He snorted and tilted his head to the niche. “Whatever, you’ll never get any if you don’t start…”

“Yikas, my fingers, do you understand? He can’t be serious!”

“Oh, he is”, he said nonchalantly. “A crippled child is more likely to get people to give them a handout”.

My face drained of blood and I felt chilled to the bone again.

“But… I… did Bansabira ever… hurt you?”

Yikas chuckled.

“A lash or two never killed anyone. He’s happy enough with me, and when he’s not, I’m too fast for him to catch me”. His light tone didn’t sooth my fears, and he noticed, because he sighed. “Shit, Ariadnh, you’re a pitiful thing for real. Here, let me…”

He rummaged through the folds of his short tunic, exposing his bony and scabby knees, and found a small leather pouch. It looked empty, but then he fished something out of it.

“Take this. It’s a start”.

In my palm, the greenish copper coin was warm, a small circle of metal with a smoothed surface.

“And you? Bansabira will break your fingers if he finds out!”

“Don’t worry, rookie, he doesn’t need to know, and he won’t. Now get to work, I’ll come see you later”. With a wink he backed away and disappeared into the crowd.

So my brilliant career as a beggar began.

Yikas helped me that first, dreadful day, and without him I don’t think I would’ve made it to the next morning. Or week, or year.

Bansabira ran the racket of beggars in Alasha. He took all the orphans he could find, all the kids with families too poor to care for them, and put them in every corner of the city with outstretched hands and pleading faces. Those who managed to grow older and keep all their limbs in one place sometimes moved to pickpocketing, a more dangerous but more rewarding profession. Few of us got to grow older, anyway. Those who didn’t die of some preventable disease--like water in their lungs in winter, or bleeding bowels from drinking the wrong water--were taken by malaria, malnutrition, parasites. I didn’t think Bansabira would actually kill any of his employees, but every now and then a boy or a girl disappeared with no apparent reason; days later, their body was found floating face down in the water. The local guards spent more time in the taverns than patrolling the streets, with their bronze weapons covered in dust, not the blood of their foes.

Apart from us, there weren’t many children in Alasha. No one in their right mind would’ve raised a family in such a place, where wolves roamed the outskirts of town at night, and wild boars devoured whatever they found. There was an archon, of course: every city-state in Atlantis has one. But I never met him, and his palace was as gloomy as its surroundings, just taller. As I learned later, other cities were better. Not much better, but not as bleak as Alasha.

In spite of myself, Alasha became my home, minus the sensation of feeling welcome, the warm food and the safety.