Shortly before dawn, the narrow streets of the Overlord Mercy were starting to fill with people. Soon the Southern Gate would be unlocked and caravans from afar, gathered in the long line next to the entrance, would take the main road to the inn district near Grand Market. The docks would start brimming with life, accepting merchants that reached the city by the waterside, heeding the guidance of the River God. Dozens of small local shops, decorated with sunroofs and curtains sewn from the heavy, earth-colored fabric – an array of deep yellows, reds, and bronzes - would open. Streets would fill with the multitude of human ethnicities from all over Azuria as well as the near human and nonhuman guests, like goat-legged satyrs, four-armed and blue-skinned vedans, somber lithoids, or short, stocky imps – that, despite the name, had nothing to do with daemons and were always surrounded by their automata. The lowermost circle of the city was the main trade hub as well as a living space, inhabited mostly by merchants and tradespeople.

If one left the Grand Market going east and followed the streets long enough, one would find themselves in a darker area that fed on the trade district like the mold feeds on bread. Here, the inhabitants did not pursue any honest craft, and even the laundresses and tinkers that worked for the gangs, shady inns, and brothels weren’t above petty thievery. There was a saying that if you stopped in the Bottoms and tossed a mango up, it would come back as a pit. The only things the Bottoms had in abundance were clay and musushu dung, so the locals built their houses with one and heated with another. Crooked, sun-baked adobes crowded in rows, close enough to run along rooftops – if someone disregarded the neighbors, because rooftops were used as a living space as well. The mornings were already becoming chilly and so thick fog hung in the air, composed mostly of domestic smoke.

If one continued further east, nearing the junkyard’s border, the houses gradually became darker and the streets punctuated with ruins. There was a hierarchy even in the Bottoms, based mostly on violence and a complicated network of kinship, favors, and grudges. Those of Unsagga origin weren’t always at the bottom of the Bottoms – a great personal effort and strength could overshadow the ancestry, and indeed, a few gang leaders were of full or mixed beast-eyed blood – but it wasn’t easy, to rise above their station. There were laws that forbade them to be licensed craftsmen, to own land, to pursue education, or to get any clerical job, and this list wasn’t exhaustive. Of course, the Bottoms never cared about the laws, or education, or clerkships. However, if the Unsagga were deprived of citizen rights, it was a good reason to despise them even more. It is the nature of the thing – some oppressed people tend to seek out those worse off, so they can oppress someone too.

In the pre-dawn grayness, a small silhouette slipped from one shadow to another, cautious not to meet any slumbering drunkards or bored patrols, either gangsters or guards. She was shivering a bit, as it was still chilly. Soon the Great Sun, Utu, would rise, and within an hourglass or two, the air would heat up enough for her to sweat.

Nua wasn’t planning to stay out for that long.

Since she made it out of the junkyard, Anki stayed silent. It was probably for the best since she didn’t have the strength to talk. She wasn’t entirely sure how she got here without falling asleep in the street. Perhaps hunger and pain kept her up. Once she had left the danger, she started - at last - paying attention to her injuries, and while they were all minor, she was feeling them throbbing all at once.

Finally, she found the house. Once, it was a two-storied, twin town adobe, but half of it crumbled years ago after an earthquake. The former inner yard was now exposed to the street. Hala sealed off most of the entrances to the yard, though she kept one as a kitchen door. It was, in fact, a thick woven mat, and not the wooden door that the houses in the wealthier districts sported. Any thief could get inside.

None would, though – Hala was useful enough as a tinker to gain some protection - except for the ones that lived here.

Nua slipped inside, then went straight to her place near the stove, to bury herself in a pile of ragged blankets she kept between the fireplace and the large amphora that stored water. Almost all kids slept on mats in a common room upstairs, but she wasn’t a kid anymore. As one of the three lucky – or unlucky ones, depending on how you chose to look at it – that stayed with Hala after reaching near adulthood, she had privileges.

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She searched for a while behind the amphora. Nua had a habit of storing leftover food whenever she was sated. Hala had often scolded her for it because it attracted pests, but stopping her was impossible. She was doing it without thinking. She would eat a flatbread, then tuck away a small piece of crust. Or eat a baked tuber and hide the peels. They didn’t get moldy in the arid air. Over time, a small garbage mound of stone-hard crumbs would accumulate until they reached the state of decay that would prompt Hala to toss them and deliver a lecture. Now, Nua needed something to eat, and cooking tubers or preparing gruel was out of the question. So she took a handful of crumbs, packed her mouth, then curled up on the rags and fell asleep with blissful abandon.

She woke to the delicious smell of bubbling gruel and voices of children speaking and arguing one over another. She stretched and slowly opened her eyes to see a familiar, stout figure looking at her with a frown. Auntie Hala was old. Not, like, terribly old – Nua remembered her going all grey over the years. But old enough to use that word.

She wasn’t kindness incarnate. She could be harsh if necessary, and if a kid really misbehaved, they would get a good old-fashioned spanking in the Bottom’s style. Another course of action had never occurred neither to Nua nor, most likely, to Hala herself. She would never use a belt, though, and she did not hit hard. In Nua’s world, she was a perfect parent.

Now that Nua was an adult, she did not get spanked. Still, she could sense that Hala was angry. She couldn’t quite figure out why. Last night, she had the most insane dream ever. She remembered amazing and terrifying stuff she didn’t even know existed before. Most likely, she had concluded, she planned to visit the junkyard, then went asleep while waiting for the guards to get distracted and dreamt up the following events. Then she came back before dawn. Yes, that was most likely.

Otherwise, her world was turned upside down and would never be the same again.

“I was waiting for you to wake up”, said Hala. “You had me worried sick, girl.”

“I’m all right, auntie.”

“Show me your hands.

Nua sat on her palms.

“Too late. I see you. You were in the junkyard again, weren’t you?” Hala raised her voice. “You could get yourself killed!”

“I didn’t go very far.”

“Nua, the word is on the street that three scrap collectors went out two days ago and did not come back. They’re people like us, they didn’t go all the way in! And yesterday, there was an explosion right in the center. Cassia told me at the water pump. There’s still smoke in the sky and River God knows what monster caused it!”

“Auntie…”

“Come here, you dumb girl.” Instead of more shouting, Hala picked her up and hugged her, and only then Nua realized how worried auntie was. “Gods! What did you do to your hands?”

“They’re a bit scratched…”

“Your shirt’s all stained with blood!”

“Not mine”, said Nua, and caught the look of horror on Hala’s face. “It was a rat. A big, nasty rat, and he died.”

“Auntie Hala”, said one of the boys, “Nua stinks.”

“Yeah”, a girl joined. “Nua, you stink very much! It’s not nice to stink in the kitchen.”

Hala sighed.

“Nua, go to the pump and wash yourself.”

“But…” her stomach grumbled.

Auntie’s voice mellowed out.

“I’ll save a bowl for you. Set the example for children, would you.”

“All right, all right.” Nua freed herself from Hala’s bulky arms. Her adopted aunt frowned again.

“What’s that clunking in your pockets?”

With great hesitation, afraid of what she would find, Nua reached into the deep, thieving pockets of her pants. Then, a spool of copper wire gleamed in the sunlight. And another. And another.

In the sudden silence, one could hear a fly buzzing.

“They look almost new,” Hala whispered.

“I found them… erm… in the rat’s nest.”

That didn’t sound believable at all. Worse even, in the bottomless depths of her pockets, Nua touched an oblong, smooth glass shape. This one, she didn’t dare to show at all.

The lamp.

She totally forgot to leave it in the goliath.

At least it wasn’t glowing through her pants, right?

“Silly girl”, Hala said. “Your life is worth more than some copper wire! Listen to me, I don’t want you to risk that much never, ever again. Got it?”

“…yes.”

“We will talk later. And you, kids”, she turned back to the bench where the children were sitting. “Not a word about it. Mouths zipped!”

They all nodded. The youngest of Hala’s adopted bunch was six and even he understood the danger.

Nua handed the spools to Auntie.

“Sell it or what”, she mumbled. “Can’t do it myself.”

Then she ran off to the yard, to clean herself by the pump. She was trying to steady her breath. All of it, the whole insane dream, really happened. Was it all true? It couldn’t be. She couldn’t host an ancient king in her head. So far, he hasn’t spoken even once.

“I must say, this is a rather charming bunch.”, she heard all of a sudden. Her heart skipped a beat. “Not quite the living arrangements I’m used to, but I guess I do not have the right to complain. Listen up. While you were sleeping, I performed an etheric inspection of your body and I have arrived at an interesting conclusion.”