Nina loved being in the salon, where purple smoke made everything blurry and pretty, where an enticing smell covered the wooden furniture and people filled the room with laughter song and dance. But this time there was no purple smoke nor pleasant smell, no one laughing, singing or dancing, no one tenderly looking at her and gently ruffling her hair as she changed the candles. In fact there was no one at all.

Gingerly, the little girl looked around the room, anxiously trying to find anything that might dispel the eerie unfamiliarity that the silence and emptiness of the room created.

"Mama?" she uneasily called, anxiousness slowly turning into fear as her shy voice went unanswered. She started to look around frantically, searching as she called for her mother again, louder.

"Mama?" And suddenly she was there, with her favourite pink dress and her meticulously dishevelled hair. Nina ran and buried her head in her mother's lap wiping stillborn tears in her bosom.

"Mama where were you? Why is no one here? Where are...?" She raised her head to look at her mom and froze mid-sentence.

"Mama what's wrong?" Her voice was now pressing, and afraid. As though they’d been here all along, people now filled the room. They were not laughing or singing or dancing however. Instead they were all silently looking at Nina with intense pity.

Some were people she knew: the brothel’s girls, the alchemist from the corner of the street, the snake-catcher who always sat to sell his baskets filled with river-snakes in the nearby alley, the baker’s apprentice who delivered bread to the Pink Haze every other morning. Others she didn’t know: dockers, musicians, craftsmen, jugglers, boatworkers and magicians. The performing and working men and women of Rhea who made up most of the brothel’s clients. Suddenly someone grabbed her arm from behind and dragged her away from her mother, towards the door.

"Mama! Help me! I don't wanna go! Help!" But her mother now had the same silent pitying gaze. She was pulled across the room as she shouted for anyone to help her, to save her and still they watched in silence. None moved and none shouted, only silence and pity answered her cries.

She felt like one of those caged animals her mother had taken her to see some time ago, those large scaled beasts that slumbered behind bars while mean kids threw rocks at them. Any of the adults present could have stopped them but instead they all sat there powerlessly with pity stuck on their faces. As though there was nothing they could do to stop it.

When she’d asked her mother why nobody stopped them she’d been told that one of the children had his face tattooed, marking him as the slave of some citizen or noble. She’d also been told that it meant any wrong done to the child was the same as a wrong done to his master and that if a worthless like them interfered with him they would get their hands plunged in embers at the temple of the Virtues for heresy.

She was thrown across the door and landed on the cold pavement of the nightly street. The door of the Pink Haze slammed shut before her. She quickly got up and reopened it but instead of the salon what she saw through the door was an avalanche of sharp steel. A torrent of knives, swords and sabres was violently flowing through the door frame, menacing to tear her frail body to pieces.

Terror overtook her completely and she ran, faster than she ever had. She ran and ran and ran through the dark empty streets. The wave of steel was rolling ever closer behind her, a deafening roar of metal upon metal growing impossibly loud as it swiftly caught up to her. She felt sharp pangs of pain as a couple of blades lapped at her ankles and the surprise and renewed terror that came with them made her lose her balance. She tripped and fell on the wet cobblestone. She turned around in a panic and let out a cry of terror as the deluge of sharpness fell upon her. Her cry was silenced however by the water that suddenly entered her lungs.

She hadn’t been torn to shreds but the cobblestone of the narrow streets and its small disparate buildings had disappeared. In their stead everything around her was now water. The surprise was quickly replaced by panic as she realised she was drowning. She summoned all the strength she had left and swam desperately towards the moonlit surface above her. But try as she might she was only sinking deeper and deeper towards the darkness below.

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A terrified shriek came out of Nina’s throat as she woke. She wasn’t underwater and there was no tide of steel raging through the streets. Instead a loud torrential rain was falling upon the cobblestone and a wet warmth soiled her clothes.

She’d fallen asleep sitting at the base of a wall in one of the numerous dark and narrow alleys of the Worthless Districts. She curled up to try and get out of the rain as much as possible and winced in pain. Her empty stomach was protesting her every movement.

She hadn’t eaten since… well she hadn’t eaten for two days. She’d tried the day before, she’d asked and begged for food or money for the whole day and she’d been met with apathy at best and irritation at worst. The Worthless Districts weren’t a gentle place and neither were the people living in them.

She grit her teeth and got up, doing her best to ignore the bursts of pain that accompanied every movement.

Nina grabbed a bundle of candles from the reserve, the ones in the salon only had a few minutes left in them. She needed to hurry or Doros would hit her again, once for every candle that she let burn out. She shivered at the thought and quickly ran up the stairs that lead to the main room of the Pink Haze.

She shook her head and focused on the pain in her belly to chase the memory away. Hungry, she was hungry, she needed food, don’t remember, focus on the hunger. She leaned on a nearby wall as she waited for the numbness in her legs to subside.

She arrived in the salon, where the purplish smoke that gave the Pink Haze its name filled the entire room. It wouldn’t stay that way for long though if she didn’t hurry to change the candles.

She quickly observed the room, looking for which of them were just about to go out and which ones would still burn for a few minutes. It was the end of the night so there weren’t many people still there. Most of the girls would already have brought a customer upstairs, mom had gone up hours ago with a woman who had grey hair. Only Brea and Chimene were left, laughing and drinking with a group of dockers. She’d changed the candle at their table earlier and one of them had smiled and given her an iron. "To buy candy." He’d said in a conspiratorial hush, then he had put his finger in front of his lips and ruffled her hair.

Cold, she was so cold, she used the biting sensation to once more push the memories away. She didn’t want to remember, not now, not ever. Feelings having returned to her legs, the young girl pushed her body forward. She felt weak, weaker than she’d ever been but she needed to move.

She walked aimlessly under the pouring rain, cold, hungry and clueless as to where to go or even where she was. A group of monks of Order passed by hurriedly on the other side of the street, their simple red robes and their puma masks doing little to protect them from the rain.

She briefly looked at them as they went and flinched at the sight of their bludgeons before quickly lowering her eyes. They pressed on hurriedly, their red robes quickly disappearing in one of the many narrow side alleys that connected the larger streets of the Districts. Nina turned in the opposite direction, she’d had the opportunity to see them in action over the last two days of living on the streets of the Districts.

The monks in the service of the most prominent of the Empire’s Three Virtues were tasked with ensuring that Order reigned everywhere in the Empire. Which in practice meant that they handled every public disturbance by barging in as suddenly as possible in as large a number as possible and hitting anything that moved until nothing did, then beating everything that had stopped moving and finally taking anything that could still move back to the Temple of the Virtues to burn their sins onto their skin with searing embers or hot iron.

When she’d gotten caught up in one of these beatings the day before she’d crumpled down in a ball on the ground, covering her head with her hands. She’d taken two hits in the tail end of things and she’d had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself from screaming. She knew from experience that screaming during a beating only lead to a longer beating.

She’d waited for a long time after they had stopped before she had dared to raise her head to see if they were gone. People alongside her were struggling to get up, some cringing and swearing in pain as they struggled with broken bones, a tiny few helping the worst off to get up, and two laying lifeless on the cobbled street, never to get up again.

She’d sat on the side of the street, watching them in morbid fascination for hours until a group of monks of Growth had picked them up. They’d joined another body on their cart, they’d be carried back to the Temple where they’d be cleansed of their sins in the flames of a funeral pyre, moving on to join the Virtues in the afterlife. It was a reality she hadn’t known back when she’d, when she’d...

The two smokers under the stairs were almost out, after those she’d need to refill the one by the door and after that she’d have a bit of time before the spare ones needed their candles to be changed. She grabbed three of the pink rods of wax from her bundle and hurried towards the stairs.

Nina grabbed an empty chair and set it against the wall, climbing onto the seat to reach the first of the metallic lanterns. She opened its latch with practised ease, lit one of the new candles with the flame of the short stub of wax that remained inside before blowing it out. She waited a few seconds before carefully grabbing its base and removing it from its metallic stand, replacing it with the newly lit candle.

She eyed the liquid wax pooling at the bottom and noted that she’d have to clean the smokers out when she’d wake up in the afternoon. Doros would have to pick up a new batch of enchanted candles from the alchemist in a couple of days anyway and turning in the magical residue would lower their price, if only by a little. She put down the burnt out candle on the ground while she took care of the second smoker, careful not to bump her head on the stairs above. The dockers left as she did, joyfully bidding goodnight to the girls before closing the door behind them.

The two women cleaned up a little before saying goodnight to Nina as she now ran about the room to extinguish the candles in order to preserve them for the next night, a little miffed at having to snuff out flames she'd just lit.

Once that was done and the salon was plunged in obscurity she’d taken the extra candles back to the reserve before sneaking in her mother’s room and laying down onto the pile of blankets that served as her bedding in the corner of the room to fall asleep.

As she let sleep take her she vaguely remembered her mother telling her she had to sleep in the kitchen if she had a guest in the room, but the kitchen was so drafty and her mother’s room so warm.

"Cold, hungry, cold, hungry." She repeated the two words in her mind as though they were a mantra as she passed from one alley to another, chasing away her remembrance as she desperately searched for food or shelter.

Finally, upon turning into one of the wider streets of the Districts, she happened upon a couple of food stalls. There must have been two dozen people trying with little success to squeeze under the small cover of the wooden caravans to take shelter from the rain. Most of them just ended up drenched anyway by the multitude of tiny waterfalls that formed on the edges of the wooden panel.

She approached and quickly squeezed in, her tiny frame letting her slip between the small crowd with ease. She made her way to the front where the wagon opened to a man whose grey hair was pulled back by a towel, giving way to a face that showed the first signs of old age. Nina was too small to see what he was cooking behind the counter but she could smell the promise of a warm meal and it was enough for her guts to give her a painful reminder of how hungry she was.

"Hum, excuse me." she tried to get the cook’s attention but the ambient chatter of the people eating or waiting for their meal drowned her voice. Nobody paid attention to her so she tried raising her voice.

"Excuse me mister I’m hungry." The cook didn’t hear her, the woman closest to the counter however, did. She turned from the stall and grabbed her by the collar of her drenched linen dress, roughly pulling her away from it. Nina stumbled backwards, lightly bumping into someone’s leg.

"Hey, don’t cut in line brat!" Nina looked up to meet the woman’s eyes and instantly regretted it. She knew that angry irritation in her gaze all too well and it made the girl flinch hard in remembrance.

It was the same look Doros would have when she messed up and let the candles burn out. The same look he would have when she had annoyed a customer. That mix of annoyance and rage that always meant you were in for a lashing, a verbal one if you were lucky, a stick-based one if you weren’t.

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She felt her breath quicken and her legs start to tremble. Her first instinct was to run away but her stomach tightened, bringing the sharp pangs of hunger to the fore of her mind. The pain dulled the fear, slowly drowning it in waves of primal need.

"Please, I’m really hungry!" A few people around them had stopped eating or conversing to watch them now and Nina felt her face redden as she plead to the woman.

"Oh really? Well so am I and I waited half an hour for my food so I’m not gonna let some broke street kid cut in in front of me. Can you even pay for your food?" Nina looked down at her feet. The pale skin of her face now red as an apple.

"Thought so, go beg somewhere else, no one here has anything to give you." She raised her head as the muscular woman turned away and the ever sharper pangs of pain in her stomach pushed her to plead.

"Please, I-" Her head was thrown to the side as pain exploded in her cheek, tears welled up in her eyes as a sharp burning sensation lingered in the side of her face.

"When a grown up tells you to do something you shut up and you do as you’re told, now fuck off before I get really pissed."

She was woken up by a loud cry of surprise. She sleepily opened her eyes and vaguely distinguished a silhouette sitting upon her mother’s bed, looking at her. She rubbed her eyes as she sat as well, clearing her vision. The woman with grey hair who’d slept with her mother was looking down at her with bewilderment.

"Who the fuck are you? What is a kid doing here?" Her expression had mellowed a little upon noticing she was a child, but surprise still raised her brow as she questioned Nina. "I think you might have gotten the wrong room when you went to bed little miss."

"No I- um, this is my mother’s room."

"Your mother’s…" The woman briefly gazed at Nina's mom who was waking up as well. "Oh. And you’re allowed to sleep in here when she, uh, goes to sleep with someone?"

Her mother was looking at her now, laid on the side with her elbow propping up her upper body, she answered the question in Nina’s place.

"No she is not, Nina what have I told you about sleeping here when I have guests?" Her voice sounded a little odd, as though she was more worried than reproachful. She anxiously looked towards the door before bringing her gaze back to Nina who answered her meekly, unsettled by her mother’s unusual behaviour. Usually when her mother found Nina in her room while a guest was with her she would get angry at her, sometimes she would even get so angry that she spanked Nina a few times.

"But mama, the kitchen is so cold." Nina was getting nervous as well now, she didn’t know what had her mother on edge but it was getting to her as well.

"I don’t care, what are you going to do if Doros finds out you’ve bothered a guest again?"

The door to the room slammed open loudly, making all three girls jump. Doros entered the room briskly, eyes reddened and narrowed by lack of sleep."What’s happening?" He glanced about the room and his gaze fell upon Nina. She saw his jaw clench and she flinched as the look crept up in his eyes. But then it was gone, he breathed out and his jaw unclenched. Nina relaxed a little, he didn’t look angry any more, just exhausted.

"You again?" The exasperation in his voice was palpable, he turned to Nina’s mother before continuing. "I told you Tica, that it was her last chance." He then turned to her mother’s guest. "I am very sorry dear guest, this little rat won’t be bothering you any more, nor anyone else for that matter." So saying he walked up to Nina.

"No, uh that's fine." The woman looked from one person to another completely confused by the unusual situation. She was interrupted by a pained yelp when Nina barely had the time to process the pain inflicted by Doros's forceful grip before he violently pulled her up on her feet.

"Doros wait! Please, give her another chance I beg you! She’s just a child she can’t get by on her own just yet! Give her one more year, no one more month. Just give me one month to prepare her! Please!" He paused and Nina pulled as hard as she could to get her arm out of his vice-like grip, to no avail as he turned to answer her mother, his grip tightening even more as he gave her a tired look of exasperation.

"That’s what you say every time Tica, I agreed to be patient last time when she spilled wine on a northerner’s girl and I had to spend the entire evening apologising to stop him from breaking her in half. I also agreed the time before that when I was forced to hand over a full WEEK of our earnings to the admiralty because she’d set fire to the clothes of one of their slaves. And the time before that, and the time before and the time before. I have been more than patient with your brat Tica. I am done feeding her for free and cleaning up after her constant fuck ups."

"You- You can’t do this to her! She wont last three day on her own in the streets!"

"Well if that’s the case maybe I should throw you out as well so you can take care of her? In the first place, if you'd raised her properly instead of cajoling her we wouldn't even be having this conversation!" That shut her mother up, and had the exact opposite effect on Nina who now realised it wasn’t yet another beating that she was in for. For a second, in sheer incredulity, she stopped struggling against the owner’s grip entirely.

"You’re throwing me out? In the street?" Suddenly her arm was pulled towards the door so hard that she lost her balance, only saved from falling face first onto the wooden floor by Doros’s hand holding onto her wrist. He sighed exasperatedly and looked down at her slumped form with contempt.

"Yes, you idiotic child, this is the last time you bother a guest under my roof!" He was getting angry now, she could see it on his face. The exhaustion was slowly leaving his traits as he tugged hard on her arm to get her up. She winced in pain, repressing a small cry as she did. She felt her stomach twist and turn as fear mounted in her.

"When can I come back?" Her voice was trembling and small, barely audible as her question rasped against the growing lump in her throat. It seemed to only fan the flames of Doros’ s growing anger

"Are you deaf you stupid brat? When I said this was the last time I meant it, you are NEVER coming back here." His words felt like a bucketful of cold water. Her entire body felt cold, as though ice was suddenly coursing through her veins. Panic started taking over, she frantically tried to regain her balance digging in her heels, pulling back on her grabbed wrist as hard as she could. Her eyes filled with tears and her heart started beating so loudly it filled her ears and mind. A sharp pain erupted in her chest and for a second she thought her heart would burst and she would die then and there. She could barely hear her own tiny voice as she blurted out a plea through the tears.

"I’m sorry! I don’t want to leave! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!" Her heels caught on the dent in the floor that stopped the door separating the room from the long balcony overlooking the salon along which the room was. She pushed against it as if her life depended on it and an intense pain shot up her arm as Doros’s next pull failed to propel her further out of the room. He stopped, turned around and slapped her.

"Hey brat" Nina was driven out of her memories by the angry woman’s loud voice. "Did you go deaf suddenly? I told you to get the fuck out of here. Stop standing there and leave already." Nina lowered her head, gazing at her naked feet to try and make herself as small and harmless as she could. Tears welled up in her eyes, she’d done it again! She’d messed up and had to leave so she turned away and the woman turned back to the cook who was finishing up her meal.

Wait a second, she hadn’t messed up! What had she done wrong that meant she had to leave? Sure she’d cut in line but she’d already been punished for that! She’d been slapped and shouted at!

Come to think of it, it WAS the same as back then! All those mess ups she’d done she’d already been punished for! When she’d accidentally set fire to that cloak she’d been deprived of food for two whole days, not to mention the beating! She’d been in so much pain she could barely move for days!

And all the other times too, she’d had to go missing a meal or covered in bruises each and every time she had messed up! She stopped in her movement, a different heat now flushed her face and her tears had stopped running, her fist had clenched so hard that it hurt and she had to force herself to relax her hands a little. All these grown ups throwing her aside, doing whatever they wanted, bossing her around just because they were taller, stronger.

And all those other grown ups, watching from the side with pity or mockery in their eyes like it wasn’t happening right in front of them, as her mother had. All of them, treating her as though she was an animal on display, as though this was some sort of street performance. She hated them, all of them and she hated that she couldn’t do anything to change it. Couldn’t she?

"It’s not fair." The words escaped her mouth in an almost growl before she’d even thought them. The woman regretfully turned away from her food that the cook had just deposited on the small counter in front of her. She exhaled angrily out of her nose as she looked down at the defiant child in front of her.

"What now? Didn’t I just tell you to fuck off? Why are you still here?"

"It’s not fair! Why do I have to leave? I haven’t done anything wrong! You leave! You’re rude, you’re loud, you’re mean and you’re ugly!" A few people around them snickered. The woman’s pupils widened with fury but this time Nina didn’t feel scared.

When the hand came down hard and fast she raised her arms to protect her face. The hit knocked her off her feet and she grabbed the arm out of reflex. Instinctively she pulled on the arm, raising herself up slightly, her feet completely off of the ground. Her head reached the woman’s wrist and she bit. As hard as she could. The woman shouted and grabbed her by the hair, tearing her off of her arm and throwing her straight into the bottom of the cart. The wood shook a little. It took Nina a second to regain her ability to think straight as she laid flat on her butt, her back against the wooden wall of the wagon. The cook shouted:

"Hey! Cool it you fucking lunatic!" The woman tore her wild, furious gaze away from Nina to look above her, at the cook who’d just addressed her and a small hope blossomed in the girl’s dazed mind. Had someone just cared? Was someone about to help? To come to her rescue?

"That little shit bit me!"

"Then throw the damn kid on the ground not on my wagon! I don’t give a shit if you want to give every street rat in the District a lesson, don’t break my stuff doing it!" Oh, right, figures. As disappointment pierced through the veil of pain and adrenaline, Nina became aware of two things. One, her back hurt, a lot. Not enough to stop her from moving but enough to make her wince every time she did move. Two, something warm was in her lap.

"She was about to bite a piece of my arm off! What else was I supposed to do! I was stopping her from bothering you in the first place you ungrateful fuck!" Nina looked down as the two grown ups shouted at each other. It was food! Large sliced bits of apple and boiled riversnake meat spilled out of the hollowed out half loaf of bread containing them onto her belly.

"Oh thank you sooo much, it’s soo difficult to turn away broke kids. With help like that I don’t even need competition. You know what, take your fucking money, you’ll get no food from me!"

"What? Fuck you! I’ve been waiting for half an hour in the fucking rain for that stupid kebab and I’m not.. Wait where is it?" Nina gazed up from the kebab in her lap, meeting the eyes of the woman as she finally noticed that her meal was not on the food wagon’s counter any more. "Don’t you dare you little shit or I swear I will..." Nina didn’t wait for her to finish, she grabbed the food and ran, slipping between the legs of the small crowd as fast as she could and then running away under the rain.

She heard the woman cry out "Thief! Thief! Someone stop her!" But she knew no one would.

They would watch with pity, amusement or a bit of both but they wouldn’t move. As they hadn’t moved when the rude woman had slapped her. As Chimene and Megara hadn’t moved from their seat when Doros had thrown her through the kitchen’s exit.

They wouldn’t say anything either just like the young man who delivered bread to the Haze every morning hadn’t said anything when Doros had pulled out his knife and threatened to slit her throat with it if she ever came back in. They would only watch, like her mother had watched when he dragged Nina out of her room as she plead for her not to leave her alone.

She ran, clutching the snake and apple kebab in her hands, crooked forward to protect it from the rain. She ran haphazardly, turning from alleys to side streets without direction. After what felt like hours but probably was only a few minutes, she deemed herself safe from pursuit and sat under a small flight of stone stairs.

The adrenaline of the confrontation finally went away, leaving her wincing at the harsh pain lancing up her back with even the most minute of movements. She ate then, scarfing down the snake and apple kebab into her starving maw. It still took her a few minutes to eat it all, it was a hearty meal after all and eating too fast would hurt after starving for two days. That she knew from experience too.

She reflected on the encounter as she munched down on the last bits of soft bread. She should be feeling bad, she knew it. Stealing was wrong and she’d been rude and even hurt someone.

But she remembered when people had snickered when she’d insulted the woman. The laughs she’d heard as she slipped away through the crowd. She remembered and she felt good, proud even.

She remembered and she thought about why people like the woman or Doros abused people like they did, and she understood. Because they could, because it felt good to lower people below you, to stand above them in the eyes of others.

She thought about the woman, watching her run away with the meal she’d paid for as she shoved through the crowded patrons in a futile attempt to catch up to her. She thought about how the woman must have looked, shouting powerlessly at her small back as everyone around her pitied or mocked her. She thought about it, and she felt good.