After the old man's disappearance, the little boy left Naial too. She had looked for him that day but he ran away after getting his arm patched up. She saw him again and again in the coming days, at one fire or another, until she found him a few days in a row in the same hovel. She had approached him and another woman's stare kept her at bay. He had found someone new to care for him, whose sight didn't remind him of his punishment and how she had failed to protect him. Children were resilient, but the poor boy would run out of skirts to hide behind at some point, and then he would be in real trouble. He would have been better off completely on his own. That way, he would have learned to be wary of the Chainkeepers.

She had left her hovel the night after they took the old man. She had dreamt of him and heard his ghost speak to her in murmurs from the other side of the fire. She knew she would lose her mind if she remained. Fortunately, the next day a group of women saw her entering on her own and decided they would have her place. They had been holed up with men and decided they no longer cared for their attentions, so they chased her out and settled in quickly. She wandered the Hub for the entire night without finding a place to stay until she finally gave up. She sat against a mud-caked wall where a fireplace had been set near it on the inside, so it remained warm and gave her some respite from the night chills. She held her few belongings against her chest and sank her head against her knees. Nothing stirred in the darkness except for a few torches doing rounds. She hoped no Chainkeeper accosted her, but she couldn't do anything to avoid it if it happened. Just as she hadn't been able to stop any of it. Ever.

She realized she was sobbing when her hands felt cold and wet. She was, for the first time in a long while, truly alone. Her ersatz friends were long gone. Some of the girls she had grown up with had been sent to the Fort, others, to the other corners of the Hub. A few of them had died and she couldn't be sure of the others. She had never felt close to them, though, or to anyone else in the intervening years until that little boy had clung to her. He had to have been an orphan, or her natural mother would have kept him close somehow. She hadn't been able to do even that.

"Why do you cry?"

The voice startled her and her body started shaking. She felt she should run but couldn't muster the will to do it. She looked up. A man in a hood stood before her. She didn't recognize him at first, but she did when he spoke again. She grew alert and stood still, attempting to hear any approaching sounds. But the man's voice seemed to glide on the night wind toward her.

"Why do you cry?" he asked again and she knew him for the man she had met in her hovel some days before.

She wiped her eyes with the inside of her shirt and then averted her gaze.

"Go away."

"It's a simple enough question. Answer it and you'll get rid of me."

"Well, then, I'm crying because of you."

The hooded man crouched in front of her, but the distant torches couldn't light his face. She recoiled but looked intensely at the spot his eyes were supposed to be.

"How so?" he asked. "I'm intrigued."

His voice held no hint of a threat. She knew what threats sounded like, or at least she hoped she did and she wasn't misreading him.

"You... you spoke folly, and you made me believe some things could change. I would have been better off on my own. I should have taken your words as a sign and cut it all off. I should have known."

"Life has taught you better, hasn't it?"

"It damn well should have. I paid for my forgetfulness."

"It would seem to me it was others who paid for it, in any case. Though what your crime is, I can't tell."

"You made me think about it. I didn't even know I cared. I could ignore things and take them on as they came, but you made me realize why I was doing it, and that made it all much worse."

"I know. But it's a good thing."

She gasped and felt her blood rise.

"Not what happened, not that," he said. "I meant it's good that you felt that way. It means you can still be saved."

She guffawed. "Saved from what? And are you the one to save me? Hah!"

"Are you so hopeless, Naial?"

She froze, her blood thinning and her face paling.

"I never told you my name."

The man didn't reply. He could have been laughing at her and she would never know.

"How did you know what happened?" she asked.

Now she was sure the man was making fun of her.

"Answer me. Or I'll scream and you'll be caught. You can't be outside and accosting women."

It seemed to her his silhouette shifted as if he were looking around for signs of the guards' torches.

"Scream? As if that would avail you. They never came that one time, did they? When you needed help, no one cared. No, that's not right, is it? Someone did come. But then he went away like all of them do given enough time. Do you think he'll come if you shout loud enough? Because no one else will."

She didn't have the will or strength to make her threat count or to run away from him. She still didn't feel he was threatening her. He was trying to say something to her, but hearing whatever it was seemed to her to be an even bigger threat. Words had hurt her deeper than lashings. Still...

"Say whatever you came to say and go. I don't fear you. I have to try to sleep and you won't convince me of anything else. Go preach your misguided beliefs to someone else. There are hovels where they'll give you a bite to eat if you tell them a nice story to help them pass the time."

"Maybe I'll do that," he said. "But it seems I was wrong, after all. Someone's heard you and is coming for you. Do you care to stay and find out if it's the one you're waiting for?"

She looked around and didn't have to strain to see the torchlight coming toward her. She struggled to her feet leaning against the wall. The man was no longer there. He had sneaked away. She expected him to make some noise the approaching guard could hear so he would let her be, but she heard nothing and couldn't afford to stay still in the path of the torch. She rose to a crouch and slipped around the hovel. Her heart was beating fast and almost jumped out of her chest when she nearly ran into another guard on the opposite side.

He didn't notice her because he was lighting a new torch and fumbling with the coal he carried in an iron brazier attached to the torch's long handle. She had been saved by the small, almost imperceptible red dot of the coal being rekindled. Otherwise, the man was in darkness, but he was already raising the brazier to the torch's end, an iron cage containing a mixture of manure and wool. She would be trapped between the light of the two torches, but she couldn't run away or she'd be heard. She had already expended her share of luck with the guard's distraction, but she knew from experience it wouldn't hold up. She slithered away with trembling feet and turned back to the space between the two hovels. She couldn't remain there, though. She would be caught between the guards and if one moved, she wouldn't have a way out. She needed to make a run for it before the farthest guard approached. She just had to hope the torch's glare blinded the guard to the more distant objects, like a woman sprinting for her life.

She dashed for it, turning around the hovel and sticking to the walls. Most of them were bunched together, but a few were broken up by small alleys. She ran into one of them and stopped at the next crossroad to look both ways. Two torches were approaching from both sides and would converge upon her position in a matter of seconds. There were too many guards that night. Maybe that had always been so, but she hadn't been out of curfew for a long time. She cursed the hooded man and her fate but had no choice but to slink back to the other road. The guard there was still approaching and seemed to move faster. She stumbled against a reed pile and barely muffled her cry. Her knee hurt where she had bumped it, but she bit her lip and climbed on the pile. From there, she could see above the flat, low roofs of the hovels to better assess her situation.

She was plowed, plucked like a dead dumbbird, trapped like a rabid canid. There were too many lights around. She would never zigzag her way around them. She had to find a hovel to lie in.

She climbed down with a grimace and an insistent voice in her head. Be quick, be smart. Don't let them get you!

She lunged for the first hovel she saw, but as soon as she put her head in the entrance two hungry-looking men turned toward her. She slinked back before they could get a good look at her. If she went in, she would face rape or worse. They could turn her over to the Chainkeepers for breaking curfew and still have their way with her. You need a safer place, girl. Except she wasn't a girl anymore, nor could she run like one. She skipped over to the next hovel, but the entrance was shut. She had done that once, too, sewn the leather flaps together to keep intruders out and cutting it open in the morning so the Chainkeepers wouldn't notice. Except sometimes they did and the punishment was worse than the protection it granted. She didn't have time to struggle against it. She moved on. She spoke in a hush near the next sewn entrance but didn't have time to wait for a reply. She feared it anyway since some people would just shout at her and draw unwanted attention to make sure she would get caught before intruding upon them. She cursed herself for having done exactly that once. It was all coming around to her. She had to be guilty of something, to have to endure so much. It was all her fault, in a way. If she hadn't given him a reason to run away... everything had been harder since then, the beatings, the disappearances, the number of torches in the night. She had contributed to her own predicament, in ways she could never have foreseen. But was she innocent because she hadn't known?

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She kept whispering at the entrances, but no one stirred and the torchlight behind her grew nearer. Two other torches to each side seemed to be coming nearer too, but in the darkness, she couldn't judge the distance well. It was too dark. The stars weren't helping her today. She wouldn't make it. And why try? She would be found in the end. What was another beating, one more lashing? Just a day's worth of pain, or two. More days feeling hungry if she could not work, and more weakness. Maybe she would die this time. She found the thought compelling, in a real way. She had often wanted to lie still and wait for whatever came to her, even death. But now she could taste it and she couldn't gather the strength to fear it. Maybe it was the only road left to her. To quit a useless struggle.

You are not alone, said a voice in her head.

But she was. She was helplessly, utterly alone. She could die in peace knowing no one would miss her. The tears came back to her, and she could no longer suppress them nor muffle her sobs. Some guard would find her soon. The lights seemed to be moving faster anyway. All she could do was wait for them there.

"Come in, bitch. You'll get yourself splattered on my wall."

The whisper had seemed to come from her mind, but it didn't. She heard the last words through the muddy wall of the hovel.

"Quit your whining and come in. If you don't do it quickly, I'll shout and you'll be worse off."

She had no choice but to hold her tears back and crawl on all fours toward the hovel's entrance, just around the bend. She huddled next to it, unsure of what to do. Then an arm whipped out and dragged her in. She lifted her hands to protect her face and kicked out. She connected and fell against the wall. But she was inside, at least, and on the opposite end of her savior-captor. She wiped her tears away.

"Stupid feisty bitch. I'm trying to help. Now hush."

She huddled against the wall, away from the fire. If someone came in, she didn't want them to notice her and see her glistening face and sweaty clothes. A guard wouldn't care, not if he found her inside, but if he had an inkling she had been running around at night, things would get equally bad. Even if they hadn't heard her, they may have heard the hooded man in his getaway. She had no way to be sure of anything.

She tried not to focus on the man across from her, or the other man sleeping on his side next to him. He hadn't woken up, and she was momentarily afraid until she saw his chest rise and fall. She looked away from them, toward the entrance. She didn't want to catch the other man's eyes. She had practiced her dead stare for many years. You couldn't just look down and away. Some men found that enticing, or it angered them. She had to ignore them just enough but still acknowledge their presence, the fact they could overpower her, but showing them she could hold her head high and that maybe there was more to her than met the eye. Like the hidden knives or poisoned nails some women carried. She only had a small knife, but she hoped she didn't have to use it. Apart from her lack of strength, she found she lacked the will to raise it. Let him not test me, she told herself.

She focused instead on the sounds: the crackle of the dried dung logs splitting in the fire, the slow breathing of the sleeping man, the somewhat more audible one of the sitting man. But she wanted to hear the outside sounds: the approaching footsteps, the shouting, the torches, and the grating of chains. Rather, she wanted not to hear them, but only because they weren't there. She didn't want the ignorance of the caged animal who can't foresee its death. If something came, she wanted to be aware of it, not to be distracted by less imminent dangers.

But no sounds came, and she grew certain it wasn't because she couldn't hear it. No one was coming for her. She was safe, for now.

"It's all right," said the man sitting across from her. "If someone was coming, they would already have found you. And me."

Naial was startled but quickly regained her poise. She exhaled: it seemed she had been holding her breath for hours. She breathed in again and spoke in a hush.

"Don't act like you wouldn't have given me away as soon as you heard a chain rattling in the doorway."

"I wouldn't have. I don't want their attention."

"You would have gotten it anyway," she said.

The man smiled and closed his eyes.

"And let them know there were just the two of us before you got here?"

She stared at him, meeting his gaze and holding it there. The man wasn't lying. He would face a worse fate than that of a curfew-breaker if he was found. She wanted to look at the sleeping man but didn't dare to offend the man who had saved her by appearing too curious. Everyone had their miseries, there in the Hub, and it didn't do any good to pry.

"Thank you, then," she said.

"I'd like to think you would have done the same. Would you?"

She paused before answering but knew she was not lying when she spoke.

"I would have. Even before this. But I don't know anyone else who would. No one did, for many rows."

"There may be more than we think who would do the same. But we'll never know. It won't do to test our luck by running around in the night and tempting fate just to find out who's a good person."

Naial smiled, despite herself. She had to begrudgingly admit she might have misjudged the man. She couldn't fault herself for doing so, but now she looked at him and saw him differently. His unkempt beard was just scruffy enough, being well-trimmed at the edges. His blood-shot eyes could be attributed to the acrid smoke ascending from the dung logs, or to lack of sleep. Maybe he was one of those that worked the mines, now on a one-lash rest leave from the ten-lash period they usually worked. His grip had been strong, and his hands looked strong enough. His bare chest, though, looked a little sunken. If he was one of the miners, then he wasn't to stay above ground much longer. A few more tours and he would stay down there forever. She had seen many like him, and even if they came back, their lungs never recovered. The man had to know that. Maybe that was why he had risked helping her.

"You can stay here for the night," he said. "He won't mind, either. He's a deep sleeper."

"Is he a tunnel man too?" she asked, gaze down. She sidled nearer to the fire and extended her palms outward, to regain her warmth.

"No. He's spared from that. I... I took his place when he was called up."

She froze and slowly turned her eyes back toward him. He was looking straight at her, unashamed, with no regrets.

"That was very brave... and very stupid."

"They're the same thing hereabouts, ain't it? But I couldn't suffer him to go. He wouldn't have lasted a week down there."

"How long have you been doing it?"

"What would be the point of counting it? But if I had a lashing for every day down there, my whole body would be an uninterrupted scar, and then some more."

"You can't keep it up forever."

"No," he said, and the tilt of his head cast a deep shadow over his eyes. "No, I won't. But that has earned us both more time together. Can you wish for anything more?"

She didn't reply. She didn't want to think about wishes or about a time when she hadn't been alone.

"It's not hard at all," he said, picking up the conversation after realizing she wouldn't answer. "You would think it was, don't you? Toiling day after day in darkness. But it would have been the same or worse if I had been left alone. If he had died, then all my days would be dark. Now... every ten or twelve of them, I get one or two off for rest, and that makes the previous days bearable."

"You make it sound as if you're lucky. But the price for that rest is steep."

"I'll pay it, then, eventually. For now, resting seems to be enough to cleanse the iron from our pores and keep us from asphyxiating, as they claim. They're more careful with us than with the other Leashed, you know? They need us more, and not everyone can be a useful miner."

"And is there no way out for you?"

"No. I wouldn't want the other options."

"You could always try to run away."

The man looked at her with his eyes wide open. She had dared say too much. They never spoke of those who had escaped years back. To some, they remained a mystery or a legend. Not to Naial, and certainly, by his look, not to this man. He had to have seen them or known them. But speaking of them aloud could be dangerous. Even without anyone overhearing, Naial had heard often of people who spoke of such impossibilities –even if the very whispers of rumors had to be vague– and then disappeared. She didn't know if the Chainkeepers themselves somehow knew of it, or if they were sold out by their cohabitants for some future leniency or food.

"That is impossible. I won't have those words uttered here."

Then don't, she said with a tentative hand sign.

The man smiled feebly.

"We don't use that very often in the mines," he gestured in reply. "It's been a while since I've had a hand conversation."

The signs came slowly, then faster as his fingers remembered the signs. The Leashed-talk had grown over an endless age, used by plains workers to communicate over short distances without calling the attention of the Chainkeepers. Each sign was distilled and perfected over countless generations, in an evolutionary race for the simplest, shortest, and therefore less conspicuous gesture. It wasn't an option: too many men and women had had their hands cut off by the Chainkeepers that found them using them to communicate. By the time Naial had learned it, it had become so simplified that it could be confused with regular movements of the body. It had grown to be about more than just hands and fingers. It used the snapping of ligaments as punctuation and certain head movements as telltale signs of the initiation of a theme or subject. When the Leashed were alone, it gathered speed as all attempts at hiding it fell away, but as soon as there were prying eyes, the extended language came into play, and two workers could have an entire –though painfully slow– conversation right in front of their guards. That had peaked during the Riots of the past, and then, when the rebels' heads had decorated rows upon rows of hovels, the language had gone underground again. Some people refused to use it entirely and tried to forget it and avoid even the smallest glimpse of recognition their faces showed when seeing other Leashed using them. Naial had used it sparingly, only when great need arose. This wasn't one of those times, but the sense of release that came with using it again in confidence and privacy was satiating.

"I'm looking for people to trust," she gestured. "But I don't know how to start."

"What do you want them for?" asked the man, struggling with the 'want' sign.

"I don't know yet. But I want to find them all the same."

"Why? I won't risk what little peace I've gained," he gestured and then opened his mouth again to speak. "Tell me."

"I've met someone," she gestured. "He may be crazy, but he reminds me of someone I knew long ago. And he made me think I'm not as powerless as I thought. Or... well, I am powerless. But we are not. Do you understand?"

"I understand you," he said aloud, but Naial showed him the silence sign and he sighed and resumed his hand signs. "You speak revolt, or rather, death."

"Death is the only thing we can own."

She froze when she finished her sentence, and then she redid the death sign. It was shaped like a claw drawn inward, the thumb rising between the next two fingers and toward the body. It resembled a man struggling out of his chains.