I've always been small for my age, not necessarily short but impish, with little legs and longer arms. It’s not for lack of trying. I eat all that the orphanage is willing to serve and then some, snatching sour dates from naive vendor's stalls, or bargaining for overcooked leftovers in late-night pubs. Stone's Throw usually has something for us, especially on the quiet nights after a tavern brawl. When I have to fight my size becomes an annoying setback. But now, as I'm racing around the fish market, my head at everyone's breast-bone, I have the advantage.

Diving through the crowd. Doubling back to scamper within a group of slaves, and then off onto the half-cobbled side-streets. I can hear yelling, but it's nothing more than the vendor’s shouts.

I left my stolen knife between the priest's ribs. Somehow it didn’t seem like a good idea to try and remove it—what with the spewing blood and all—and anyway it's a completely indistinguishable, unmarked, commonplace dagger. Actually I'm not sure if it really counts as a dagger. Regardless, not my problem anymore, just another knife the cooks have accidentally misplaced.

Rounding the last corner at Crowsfoot, I dart onto Darry Lane, a sickly street even at high-noon on this sunny day. Guards avoid it if they can. Not because it’s dangerous (although it certainly is) but because of the sewage. In the richer districts of Samark, where the nobles and merchants reside, they have a sort of drainage system. Not here. In the slums everyone just throws what they don't need towards the nearest road. And once it falls into the street, sooner or later thanks to wind, rain, kicks, and gravity, any useless refuse funnels down into Darry Lane.

Not sure what that says about my murderous crew.

"Were we followed?" I ask heaving, hands on my knees. Really more of a raspy outpouring of semi-meaningful breaths rather than a coherent question.

"..."

The girl with the scar doesn’t talk much. Perhaps it has something to do with that scar, a valley which contours her right cheek, starting—or more likely ending—near her ear, dipping down towards her jaw, and then smoothing curving back into her upturned nose. I don't know how she got it. We asked her when she first joined the orphanage, only to receive a blank wide-eyed response. The same response we’re getting now.

"Speak or I’ll hit you."

That's the boy with the black hair for you. If we're generous he could be termed reductionist, with a talent for getting what he needs, but without the social nuance necessary to conceal those needs from the people around him. I've known him as long as I can remember. We hated each other for an entire summer, when we led our rival groups into mock battles along the orphanage corridors. By the end of the summer we had become inseparable friends.

"Did you see guards tailing us? Or anyone else that chased after me or him?" I've got my hands behind my head now, exhaling deeply like I was taught. The words come more quickly.

"...no," said the girl with the scar.

I lean back against the wall, sweeping my gaze up from the trash-filled Darry Lane and into the azure sunshine. It will take some time before my left leg stops shaking.

----------------------------------------

We returned to the Orphanage of St. Alodia at intervals, first the girl with the scar, then the boy with black hair, and finally me. I'd washed off the charcoal and mud used to obscure my features at the seaside, and now I was dripping seawater across the wooden floorboards. Father Victor wasn't going to be happy. Of course, he'd be much less happy if he found out the reason why. Priests have this annoying habit of sticking up for (and then deifying) their murdered brethren.

I want to start out by saying the orphanage isn't purely evil. It's provided for my friends and I for many years—since I was four, according to the church's records—without becoming overbearing. Occasionally we're sheltered, fed, and taught. More often we're free to play when we want and eat what we can, scavenging the city of Samark for whatever else we need. Unlike most I can add and halfway use an abacus, I can write and find the berries that produce ink, and I can list every back-alley across the district. All of this is thanks to St. Alodia's benevolent upbringing.

The evil lies in the names, or lack thereof.

No one is born with a name. And no one can give a name to someone who hasn't earned one; the sound pauses muffled in your throat, to eventually emerge with an unnatural air, coated by a grating feeling of alien wrongness. I'm not sure how best to explain it, but you innately know that the name is false. We can't call the boy with the black hair anything. He’s just "him" or "boy." Just like we can’t call the girl with a scar by a proper name: only "she" or "girl." To get the attention of another child you need to make eye contact, hit them, or just begin talking and hope they listen. We’re all used to it by now.

I'm not sure if Father Victor explained naming to us, or if we were born knowing. But it definitely wasn't Father Victor who told us about the slaves. The unnamed. No, that started—like all true things in the orphanage—with a rumor.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Aren't you worried what will happen if you don't become named?"

"You're pretty old not to have a real name..."

"You'll never get a name."

The boy with the black hair and I were twelve when we realized something was wrong. Several of the neighborhood kids suddenly had names, while the others were fast working towards earning their own. They were all bickering about it, who would get their name the fastest, and whose parent's name had the most honor. Father Victor didn't answer our questions.

"How do we earn a name?"

"When do orphans become named?"

It was the older children at St. Alodia's who ultimately removed our ignorance. Looking back, I’m not so sure that kindness motivated their actions, or if they wanted others to share in the same misery. It seemed like the knowledge empowered them.

"Orphan's can’t earn names. They purposely don't teach us any trade or occupation, so that we never receive the honor or freedom. Don't you remember the kids older than us? Haven't you seen them by the docks?"

We told them we'd already known all of that for years, and that they were idiots beyond idiots. I think the boy with the black hair hit one of them in the stomach. They laughed, a sort of mechanical half-laugh that condescended to our games, and then continued.

"If you don't have a name by the time you turn fifteen, you automatically become a slave by law. And then the church sells you."

That was when I understood why the orphanage had so many donations and so few rules. I knew why Father Victor would look away in shame, mumbling scriptures every time we asked after our names. I would not be taught a profession within the house of the gods.

----------------------------------------

We have to wait until nightfall before we slip out again. Darkness comes late to Samark in the summer, long after the church bells toll the end of the working day, when the sails are taken down and the rudders are stowed away. It's the sounds that tell us when night has arrived. The sound is born from the festival grounds, where they fight men and dogs against dogs, men, and dogs and men. It swells up into the pleasure district, where the drunkards gladly lose whatever kopecks they have left, chasing women that have already forgotten them. After stopping along the ill-lit theatre streets, it finally crescendos into our orphanage, where the priests chant monotonously into the heavens, synchronizing with the high-tide waves that collapse along the dirty shore. We depart unnoticed amid the night’s sounds.

Of course we tried to leave Samark after hearing our fate. Twice, actually. The first time the guards demanded our names at the city gate, and neither the boy with the black hair nor I could respond. The second time we tried to stowaway in an outbound cargo ship, along with the girl with a scar. We were caught barely after we boarded, hardly the first unnamed to attempt that particular escape. They said they would kill us the third time. And then they smiled as they shepherded us back to the orphanage, where Father Victor stammered something crossing an apology and an excuse.

Tonight, however, we're not trying to escape. Tonight we'll be named.

Hermes told us to meet him beneath the pier of the Ambassador, a western-style Carrack that landed in Samark only last week. The city's rising sound is lessened down by the sea, where the unceasing waves serve as our clock, reverberating against the underside of the creaking pier. When we arrived, Hermes wasn't to be seen.

"Do you think it was a trick? To get us to assassinate the priest for free?"

Mind you, the boy with the black hair posed the same question last night. It's a fair concern, but one that I thought we'd addressed. As did the girl with a scar.

"...so what…"

"She's right. Even if it is a trap, it's worth the risk. It's possible that Hermes was lying, and we won't get our names, but if we don't try then we will never know for sure. Let's take our chances.”

The boy with the black hair spun away from us, wary of a stray shadow gliding along the waves. "He seemed like a liar. We should be ready to fight. To assassinate him!"

"I heard that, twerp."

Now we all pivoted back to the beach, looking up the sand and stone and into the eyes of a man. A tall man, lanky but muscular, sauntering down to the waterline.

"Good evening, Hermes," I said as I bowed.