He slept, but when he awoke it was in a different place. He had returned from his punishment in the plains and was back in the Hub. He had barely survived it this time. One more day and he would have surrendered to thirst and famine, if not for the man he had met in the desert. He had rekindled a fire in him, one that had dwindled since his birth and flared just often enough to get him into trouble. It wasn't the first punishment he had endured. He had felt chains and whips across his back, and the torqs that chained him buried into his neck until they were too small and had to be replaced. He could count his age in his flesh. I'm fourteen neck-marks and ten lashes old. I'm too rebellious to train and too useful to kill. So they'll just keep punishing me until I give up and die.

The old man he had been Leashed to in his last job had put those words in his head. The man had wondered aloud why the Chainkeepers didn't just kill them both. He had wondered that for a long time, he claimed. They hate us. Why don't they get rid of us? He had been repeating the same thing over and over. But he was an old man. He should have figured out the answer a lot sooner, Senn thought. But it had been for Senn's benefit. The old man had driven him mad with that question for weeks until he started changing his tune, and the answer to that question came in uninterrupted barrages, for hours on end. We're too useful to kill. So they'll work us to death instead.

It was such an obvious thing to anyone in the Hub. But even so, Senn had never heard those words spoken aloud. Old women around the fires tried to put on a brave face around the younger ones and mumbled nonsense when asked innocently why the world was what it was. The middle-aged men were too tired to speak most times, and the old ones were too beaten down to even speak. They just worked mechanically until their muscles and bones didn't allow them to go on, and then sipped their broth in silence until they fell asleep sitting down. None of them had admitted out loud what his partner had told him under the unrelenting sun. That this was it, all of it, there was nothing 'afterward', no reward for all their hard, constant work. Maybe asking yourself that question and answering it was what drove some men mad and compelled them to walk toward the plains, to die like a stray, blind goat.

But to Senn, having that point driven into his head so many times had been like an awakening. He had started rebelling in subtle ways, and then some overt ones until his punishments came and went like dust spirits and instead of hurting him, they reinforced his thoughts and gave him fuel for his small ember. And now another voice had blown over him and set his fire ablaze again. He had made him want to be stronger, but he had just asked the question, not given him an answer. That, he would have to find out for himself.

It was still dark in the hovel, and only an old woman stirred inside. Senn hadn't slept there before. It was the first place he had found upon returning from his exile in the plains, and he had huddled in a corner. Someone had thrown an old woolen blanket over him while he slept. It had to have been one of the older women. Some crone bereft of children, or who had lost them along the way. There was no one younger than him in there, and it was not unusual for some older women to feel protective, in small ways and with no words spoken. He muttered his thanks to the darkness, and the old woman by the entrance seemed to nod. She could have heard him or not, but Senn felt better for saying it. They were a wonder, words... how unimportant they were, when most things could be said without them, but still, they held so much power...

He wrapped the blanket closer around his body, trying to keep the dawn's chill from his bones. He made himself a cocoon, and thoughts long abandoned started to join their strands until something seemed ready to hatch. But the light broke through the burlap entrance and tore him out of his reverie. A man was standing there. A Chainkeeper.

Senn could tell by the man's outline. None of the Leashed could have such a powerful complexion. Constant hunger tends to turn you into a weakling, something easier to push around, not too light to get carried away by the wind but not that far from it.

'Get up!' yelled the man. In unison, the huddled forms of the hovel's dwellers sat up, and then the youngest of them rose completely, letting their blankets fall to the ground. It would be cold outside still, but none were allowed to wear anything that kept the chill at bay. By midmorning, the sun would be punishing them anyway, even when the chill winds still blew from the east.

Senn got up like the rest of them, though he didn't hurry. There were enough of them in front that he could take his time to walk out of the hovel. The Chainkeeper at the entrance was nothing more than muscle, barely above an ox in its understanding of the world. They were tough just as the sun or the wind or the rain were tough on you. But the dangerous one was the other one. Outside, the Counter stood with a wooden board in his hands. He held an implement that Senn had seen every day in his life, something with which he somehow kept count of who was where and with whom, who would go out to the flooded fields and who would go to the pens or the mines. Such a simple thing, Senn thought, telling people where to go and how to die. More words, with power over life and death.

The Counter stood and watched each of them walk out of the hovel. He approached each one of them and, tilting their heads backward as he would a dog or a goat, took notice of the glyphs in the Leashed's torqs and moved his implement over the board. Every day of his life. When Senn had returned the previous night from his punishment in the deserted plains, a Counter was waiting near the Hub's edge, sitting on a wool-covered chair, waiting for the strays like him to come back and make a mark in his board. Some of them didn't return. Some died on the spot, finally surrendering, while others kept walking until the desert took them in the end. Those who came back did so with downcast eyes and trembling up to their bones. The night chills and the thirst did that. Some died a few days later, from coughing fits or fevers. Senn didn't, and no one was surprised by it. Young men usually made it. But they didn't know why he had survived, only how.

When the Counter approached Senn and tilted his head back, Senn couldn't suppress his thoughts, and the man read into his eyes. He frowned at his defiance and was about to raise his other hand to slap him when another Leashed caught his eye. From the next hovel, a girl was emerging with tears in her eyes and messy hair. The Counter ran to her side, and the girl leaned on him. She must be too horrified to know what she's doing. Why is she doing that? The Counter predictably pushed the girl aside, and she fell to her knees. The man approached her again, and keeping her at arm's length, he grabbed her by the torq and looked at her glyphs while she sobbed and yelled intermittently. He rose and scribbled on his board, forgetting about the girl. She was still sobbing on the spot and oblivious to the orders he had given her as he walked away. The burly Chainkeeper was looking at her and would walk up to her and hit her if she didn't get going. His eyes spoke of his intentions. The Counter had forgotten about Senn and hadn't even given him a task for the day. He had the chance to hide somewhere and avoid working for the rest of the day. A once in a lifetime chance to rest from his ordeal. He would be the stupidest boy if he didn't take it.

He rushed by the girl's side and grabbed her arm, whipping her into an upright position. He had her walking at a brisk pace before the Chainkeeper had been able to start moving toward her.

"Stop your whining or it'll be worse," he whispered. "He'll hit you until you have more than just one reason to cry."

The girl kept crying anyway. Senn had heard the Counter's orders for the girl and half-led, half-dragged her in that direction. She had duties in the pens for the day. She was to feed the goats and oxen and the baby lizards in the artificial pond. Dragging filth around all day. But it was lighter than sowing grain or harvesting rice. At least she would work in the shade for a while, and the animals made for better company than the dust. At least Senn saw it that way, for he rarely got assigned to pen duty anymore. Since he had been big enough to stand the heat, he had been on the rice detail. But the girl didn't see her task for the day as a boon, a rare gift. She was still crying, clutching Senn's arm and then letting go of him, horrified by something only she could see. Luckily, no Chainkeeper noticed them scuffling as they walked toward the pens. These were very large, almost an entire town made of squawking, bleating, and manure. Senn led her inside the first building, a storage place for the grain and feed. The grain itself wasn't as highly guarded as the animals, though. The Chainkeepers turned a blind eye to some of the grain-snatching, if only because they couldn't be bothered to hit every single robber, especially because they didn't repent and would do the same thing a while later, with their skin still red from the beatings. The hunger was like that. But stealing an animal or killing them to eat them was punishable by death. The meat was for the Chainkeepers. The grain and the rice, for the animals and the Leashed. In the same way, you could steal food from another Leashed and not be punished. But if you killed one, you were killing the Chainkeepers' property, and they were tough on those who trespassed upon their rights.

As he walked by, still dragging the sobbing girl, Senn grabbed a fistful of rice and dropped it into his pocket right in front of a guard, letting the girl's frame and obnoxiousness obscure his actions. She can at least be useful for that. He then grabbed a basket, filled it with grain, and put it into the girl's hands. He looked at her and nodded, prompting her to do her task. The girl didn't stir. He snorted and grabbed another basket for himself and filled it. He walked over to the door and pushed it open with his feet. It led to the dumbbirds pen, so he went ahead and walked into the cacophony of squawking that always occurred whenever you approached the stupid beasts. They were big, half a goat high, and stupid as rocks. They only knew two things: making noise and making shit. He threw some grain toward a corner of the wooden pen and the wingless creatures flocked in that direction, trampling each other. The trick to avoiding them butchering each other was to disperse them by throwing the food constantly in different directions. So he did just that, and the throng turned into smaller clumps of jumping, noisy flesh.

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The girl started sobbing again. Now that he thought about it, she hadn't stopped at any point.

"What is your problem?" he asked her. "Stop it! You'll get whipped and you'll get me whipped too."

The girl stopped crying long enough to look into his eyes for the first time. She had small, slanted eyes, though her eyelids were puffy and red and made it seem as if she were older.

"I can't stop," she said. "If you had been there..."

"What do I have to do with anything? I just used you to get away from work. It won't happen again."

"You helped me, but you were too late."

"I just got you out of the way of that oxen-headed 'keeper. That's it."

"If you had been there..." she said and started sobbing again.

"Stop it. I can't stand the wailing."

"I'm sorry."

"But you were sobbing before the Chainkeeper tried to hit you. Why?"

The girl didn't answer and dropped her head. Senn couldn't figure it out, so he focused on her clothes instead. Her torn, filthy clothes. There were some things he didn't understand about girls, but he was at a stage where he was old enough to wonder, and notice little details. Her skin was showing under her shirt, and the pants fitted her awkwardly. But if he had noticed the bumps on her chest and her upper legs, another man, maybe older than him and wiser to the ways of lust, couldn't help noticing them too. He probably had, and the girl hadn't been able to stop him. In a hovel at night, no one cared if you sobbed, thrashed around in your sleep, or stopped breathing. No one would lose any sleep over a girl trapped under a bigger man's weight and her muffled screams.

Senn could imagine all this because he had seen it before, or rather, heard it and then elaborated the entire story in his mind while huddled in his blanket. The first time he had been afraid someone would come for him too. That feeling went away after the third or fourth time, and at some point after that, he had wandered into his fantasies and transformed the muted thumping into other, more pleasurable beatings. Now faced with someone who could have been the object of both his nighttime lustings and his daytime ogling, he felt strangely ashamed. You have done nothing wrong, he told himself, as he did when he stole or lied. He had never been ashamed of something he hadn't done. It was unsettling.

A dumbbird pecked his ankle and he kicked him aside. He looked both ways after doing that, suddenly aware that he could be killed for it. A guard was standing on the other side of the fence, but he seemed bored and was looking the other way and chewing something. Senn turned back toward the girl.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

The girl looked at him again and Senn blushed. She was looking at him in a way that he had never been looked at. As if she expected something of him. He thought he had to say or do something else, but it wasn't like it was with the Chainkeepers. He knew how to grovel or plead to appease them, but he had never had to find words to calm a girl. He had heard some women whispering to their children in the night, telling them lies about how things wouldn't be so bad the next morning. Senn couldn't stomach those words and neither could he utter them, knowing what he knew, little as it was, about the world. All he could say was:

"Maybe I can... get you something? Look for someone to help you. I know a woman who's not so bad, she sometimes even..."

The girl started sobbing again.

What did I do now? I should just stop altogether and get away from her. She's trouble.

But Senn's feet wouldn't budge. Maybe the dumbbird had paralyzed him.

"Listen," he said, "Stop crying. Crying never helped anyone, did it? Did it stop whatever happened to you from happening? Will it stop it the next time? Will it make the Chainkeepers less of a twisted turd? The answer is no, in short. But I can do something for you now, whatever you need. If it helps you feel better for a while, I'll do it, all right? But please, stop crying."

Miraculously, the girl did stop crying. She looked at him as if what she had expected from him had been fulfilled, and then some more.

Is this all it takes? Just some words? Or do I have to go through with it? I may even be able to...

He focused on what the girl was saying, because she had started to speak without him noticing. Then she threw herself at him, and he dodged by reflex, falling against the fence. She fell on top of him and clutched his chest. He was about to push her away, but then he noticed she was shivering. He stood there, letting her wrap her arms around him, and couldn't muster one single thought. It was a strange feeling, which brought him back to some point earlier in his life in which he had felt like that. Was that even possible? He didn't remember feeling that his legs and arms would melt away under the sun, that his heart would beat through his chest and fall at his feet.

The world turned upside down suddenly, and for a second he thought his heart had really fallen off, until he landed on the floor and the girl landed on top of him. Then he saw the Chainkeeper's extended arm over the fence. He had punched him and almost taken his head clean off. His neck hurt badly, and the girl was looking at him strangely. Does she care? She dragged him up and made him sit. The Chainkeeper was staring at him, fuming. But he didn't seem to want to bother to go over the fence. He had to be in charge of the next pen, and a Chainkeeper knew to stick to his assignment. If they went away quickly, they might avoid further punishment.

"Go," the girl said.

"What about you?" Senn asked.

"I have to stay. I can't help it. You can. Run, if you can."

Senn thought she might start crying again, so he stood up and dashed away before she did. He didn't look back, and when he remembered he hadn't said goodbye, he was well on his way to the fields, to hide out for the rest of the day. He lay down on the rice field, away from the workers and the Chainkeepers. His head was barely above water, but he didn't care. His neck still ached, but the water helped ease it somewhat. The rest of him still felt awkward, and the warm water reminded him of the girl's touch. The whole thing was strange, something that wasn't supposed to happen to anyone. He knew adults had needs occasionally, but this was a different thing entirely. What use could it be to feel that way? He was distracted, and if he had had to work that day, he would have been so distracted he would have been whipped thrice already. He looked through his outstretched hand. The sunlight went through it, lighting his skin red. Am I becoming like water? But it was just an illusion of light and shadows, a trick on his mind. What was not an illusion was the kingsmetal leash around his neck. It wouldn't rust or decay like the common metal tools they used. It would never go away. When he became too thick for it, he would be given a new, wider one. But they wouldn't take this one off until they put the new one over it. That drove the message home. He would never be free of it. He would never be free, at all. No matter his hubris when he had talked to the strange apparition in the plains. He knew, deep in his heart, that no grandstanding would get him out of it, just like it hadn't helped the many others who came before and the ones who would come after him. Is an illusion of being free better than the truth? He had played that game that day, trying to make believe for a while that he could go where he wished if only he could find the right crack in the works. But the day was coming to a close. When he huddled for warmth in the hovel and dreamt his nightmares, would the next day be delayed? No, it would come along all the same, and he wouldn't find a crack next time. He would keep wishing for a day in which he could go and find that girl, and the next time his arms would hold her instead of hanging uselessly at his sides. And the memory would fade, and he would resent it, just like he did the small, insignificant memories he had managed to keep from his earlier years when he was too small to work. A word of comfort, a soothing touch on his cheek. He hated it now. Hated it because he couldn't hold on to the past, couldn't make it come back. His mother, if that was the word, was long gone. He didn't even know if she was alive or dead. They had just taken her away, and if she lived, he hoped she had forgotten about him too. For if the mere memory pained him so that he grew to hate her, her memories would be much greater and unbearable.

When the sun became orange-hued, he got up. He covered his arms and legs in mud and painted a smudge on his forehead. A hundred paces away, a Chainkeeper was walking as if he hadn't a care in the world, swinging a chain with a ball at the end with no effort at all. The metal ball swished right off the surface of the water, sprinkling the dusk with little drops that reflected the sunlight behind them. It was beautiful. How could it be so? Did the 'keeper know what he was doing? Did he like what he saw, the sound of the water and the feeling of wetness against his face as the drops hit him? Or was he oblivious to it? The thought scared Senn in more ways than he could confess to. If the other man was capable of recognizing beauty, as he did, then that was one less difference between them. His cruelty stood not far away from Senn's own. Senn's kindness, like he had shown the girl in the pens, wasn't unique and limited to him. If a Chainkeeper was capable of creating beauty and seeing it for what it was, then Senn had to be capable of doing the same things he hated them for.

The realization struck him as if the metal ball had swung right into his face. He had always thought there was an inextricable otherness in the Chainkeepers. As if they were a feature of the landscape, an elemental force thrust upon him like the sun and the chill night winds. He had forgotten they were men, or had to be, anyway. They had seemed invincible. But they were men. Only men, under the fear of ages that covered them. The sun could burn them, the water drown them, a rock bust their skulls. They were capable of great cruelty. They were good at it. They had learned how to do it, somehow. They had been shaped that way just as Senn had been shaped to bear the weight of a boot upon his back. He was just fourteen neck-marks old. Like a young sapling, he could still be shaped in other ways, take another form. Grow into something even the Chainkeepers would fear.