Naial woke up feeling something she hadn't felt in a long time. She had barely slept, what with her ordeal during curfew and her long conversation with her new host. But Marsh was no ordinary man either. He had listened to her ramblings and seemed to want to believe her, or rather, in her. She told him about the hooded man, about the old man and the young child, about another young child and another young man long gone. She told him what she had known of the Riots, their slow gestation, and the outbreak, to which she had been a close witness. She told him about the long period of darkness that enveloped her afterward and her inevitable climb back. How she had found it impossible for some reason to become a Husk, or to choose to die. There was still a shard driven deep within her, an arrowhead or a broken chainlink, something that kept her alive even while hurting her. She knew there was a word for that, one rarely used.

As she lay on her back watching the fire die out, she practiced the shapes against the last embers. The world was awakening, and the Hub would be, if not alive, at least moving with its usual silent bustle, punctuated by a shout or a whipping here or there, long before the ashes cooled.

She found the sign, or at least she thought she did. The previous night, she had wondered at the death sign. But the one for hope seemed its mirror image, a thumb rising out of the last knuckle. It couldn't be deliberate, as the language had changed many times. She was sure of that, somehow. Life and death had shaped the gestures just as they had turned one into the other on occasion. She realized, though the thought faded a few heartbeats later, that there was magic in it, a causation that defied the cynicism of repercussions that surrounded her.

Marsh woke up and, without looking at her, blew on the coals to rekindle the fire. He threw some more water from a carafe on the small cauldron that had held the previous night's dinner, attempting to heat some soup for breakfast. Naial's belly rumbled, and the man heard it and glanced her way. He didn't say anything, but when his companion stirred and asked him who the woman was, he made a few small signs Naial didn't quite catch, and the other man started to pour the soup into their two matching bowls. Naial feigned to sleep, but when Marsh's partner approached her and attempted to rummage through her small sack, she whipped out her hand and caught his. The man –who was younger than Marsh judging by his sparse stubble and mostly unmarked skin– made the "calm" sign with a steady hand and made it clear to her with his eyes that he wanted nothing from her. He looked meaningfully at her sack, and tentatively brought out Naial's bowl. Stretching back toward the cauldron, he filled her bowl with what was left of the soup, scraping the last of the cereal along with the soup.

She nodded thankfully when the young man extended the bowl back at her, but felt it warranted more.

"Thank you," she said, looking into his eyes and then at Marsh, who sat against the hovel's wall sipping his breakfast and peeking out of the burlap curtain.

The young man shrugged and looked away, but she saw a slight blush come to his cheeks. He slipped one finger slowly beneath his iron leash, which was expectedly tight.

"You should get it expanded. You're still growing, aren't you?" she asked him.

"My shoulders are getting broader," he said, flexing his neck one way and the other. "The fields, you know."

"We should head out. The Counter will be here any time now," said Marsh.

Naial slurped her soup and stood up. The other man did the same, and Marsh got up last despite his previous words.

"Can I come back here?" she asked before the Counter sent them away. Marsh would get light work in the pens or somesuch until he had to go back to the mines. His partner would go to the fields, and Naial would go where the Counter sent her. She didn't care either way. But she wanted to stay there, she realized. With them.

Marsh and his partner looked at each other and shrugged.

"I told her it would be okay, Talid," said Marsh. "But she's dangerous, I think," he added with a smile.

"Yes, she seems positively killer. All right, she can stay, if she doesn't mind us."

With that, Naial calmed down. She wouldn't need to pass through the same ordeal that night or wait like a vulture for someone to die so she could get her own hovel. When the Counter came, she bowed and went through the motions, though her mind wandered to other plains.

* * *

"Marsh, Talid... this is Challa," said Naial upon entering the hovel that night. "I met her today. She's quiet but she's trustworthy."

"How do you know?" asked Marsh. "Nevermind. Why is she here? No, wait, I do mind. How do you know she's trustworthy?"

Naial smiled.

"I asked her if she would hold my head underwater, just for a few seconds. Long enough to drown."

"I gather she didn't do it," said Talid.

"Actually, she did," said Naial. "She held me a long time. But then she lifted my head and slapped me hard. See the mark? Do you know what she said after that? That clinched it for me. She asked if I needed something else because that was the one thing she couldn't finish."

"I don't get it," said Marsh.

Talid smiled.

"A weird way to find out who to trust," he said. "Marsh told me about your long conversation last night. Did you talk to her too in this same way?"

"Yes. Challa and I talked all through our long day together."

They stopped talking for a while to eat their meager supper. It was already dark outside, and Marsh looked worried.

"So? What is it you intend to do, Naial? What are you trying to get us into?"

Naial shrugged.

"I guess it's not something that no one's thought of. But I realized last night that if I could just find a few good people to accompany me, then we could make a difference."

"A difference in what?" asked Talid.

"It's hard to put it into words. But each of you must have had kindness in your lives, even if they were small pebbles in a lake. A hand giving you a bowl of food, a hand to help you up after a beating... I just thought: why do we let those moments be so small? why do we never think of making them last?"

"That's easy, girl," said Marsh. "Because the Chainkeepers would flay us."

"I haven't been a girl for a long time, Marsh," she said with a smile. "But I've thought long and hard all of today, and I couldn't remember one time in my whole life in which I've been punished for helping someone. Even just a short time ago, when they... took... someone close to me, they didn't punish me for trying to help him. They just care about the work. As long as everyone's productive and no one steals or tries to help someone avoid work, they don't care. They never got into our hovels to see if we share our food. They don't care that the small children don't work until they can walk, and they don't care they can't make up their weight in food by working. They know they have to allow it to an extent. And they have to know some of us are capable of helping others in small ways."

"But they don't let someone work instead of another who's sick. They make him work anyway until he's dead or close to it."

"But they don't stop you if you carry just a little bit more weight than the other person so he won't struggle as much. They don't know or care if you share a bit of your food. They don't care if we share our hovels with those who have been cast out of another."

"I guess not," said Talid. "But that's not that common, and it won't change things much."

"Won't it? What if we could convince everyone of doing those small things? Don't you think our lives would be much better? We just need to figure out the rest of the things our keepers don't care much about, and make our people care about them."

"A lofty thing you mean to do," said Marsh. "The four of us here are hardly everyone. Even if each of us finds someone else willing to listen, someone who's not already a Husk, it would take us the rest of our lives."

"We damn well better get started, then," said Naial. "In any case, it won't be very long, will it?"

Challa smiled, and then Talid imitated her. Marsh shook his head repeatedly, but eventually stopped and just shrugged. It's good enough for the time being, thought Naial.

* * *

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It took them a long time to get two more people to join. Marsh was back at the mines, and Talid and Challa stayed with Naial. Living in the same place granted them the chance to be assigned to the same tasks every other day, and they used that time well, approaching other workers and trying the sign language with them. One out of four replied, and even then it took a few days for them to trust them enough and shake loose the fear of being caught doing something wrong. But the language was long out of sight of the Chainkeepers, so they didn't recognize even the most overt cues.

By the time Marsh came back, there were six of them in the hovel. Marsh came into the hovel aided by another man. He was pale and looking sicklier. His chest was sunken and he had a dirty cloth tied around his forehead. Naial thought he must have been wounded. Talid rushed to support him and the man who had helped Marsh get in had to crouch low to get through the entrance. It was a tall man. He didn't have much for clothes. His boots were barely held together by straps and his clothes were stained as if he had been out in the plains for a long time. His hands and bare arms were tanned but still reddish. He had to have avoided the sun during the worst hours for a long while, before being exposed thoroughly in recent times. He didn't look like a miner. He looked strong, though his cheeks were a bit sunken and even his bushy beard couldn't hide it. He kept struggling with his Leash, as if he was somewhat choked by it. A vein throbbed in his forehead and his eyes were red with dust from the road.

By focusing on each of those details, Naial missed seeing the man behind them. Marsh was eating and so was the stranger by the time Naial stood up. Her entire body was shaking, a cold sweat was rising in her neck and spine and she felt she would pass out right then and there and throw up.

It can't be, she thought.

"You son of a bitch," she said.

Her skin started to feel hotter. Tears were coming forth to her eyes, but she held them back. Her anger was dazzling, burning white. There was no one else around and she wouldn't have cared even if the Forever King walked into their hovel.

You were dead, she thought.

"What are you doing here? You forsake us long ago," she said.

The man she had once loved couldn't face her. All his height and strength and years gone by couldn't make him face her. He struggled with his thoughts like a confused child and couldn't open his mouth. He just closed his eyes and fists. His veins bulged. He looked exactly like the boy she had met in her previous life. A lost, angry boy.

It is him, she thought. Please, let it be him.

"Why did you come here? Why torture me again?"

The man she had once loved opened his eyes and stared at her. Beyond the years, they were the same pleading eyes. She gasped.

The winged death didn't take you. He has brought you back to me.

"You have no right, you hear me? No right to show your face again!" she yelled as she walked up to him and threw her bowl of food at him. The silence that followed was punctuated by the pleadings and hushes of the previous moments. There was no insult, no affront as bad as what she had done. The bowl had struck the man in the forehead. Most of the soup had fallen in the path between them, but a smudge of it covered his hair and mixed with the grit and blood. The man looked shocked. He touched his head and stared at the bloodstain on his hand as if he didn't understand how that could have happened. Then he did something else. He grabbed a bone shard and before anyone could react, slashed his forearm with it. Marsh lunged at him before the blood started welling up and pulled the weapon free. The newcomer seemed even more surprised than before. He kept staring at his wound. Then he touched his Leash again, and his strayed gaze was gone. He looked at Naial again.

"I have wounded you," he said. "I just didn't know how much."

Senn was conscious of the people around them, of Talid patching his wound with a mostly clean cloth, of Marsh fiddling with his arrowhead, and of the others who had slunk back from the confrontation. But he was talking to Naial as if they were alone.

Thank you, Hunter, for bringing me back to her. Thank you for keeping her alive.

He realized a long time afterward that was the moment he started believing in his new god utterly and completely. All traces of his worship of the Lord of Greed had evaporated, for he knew the only thing that could have kept both of them going was their will to live, in a hopeless and blind attempt, however much denied, of meeting again.

"I've come back for you," he said, and quickly added, "For all of you. I left long ago, but I shouldn't have turned my back so quickly. I should have done more. I've come to rectify that."

Naial seemed stricken by his words and she had to sit down, helped by one of the other women. She looked older and tired, but she still had that ember burning inside. She had just flared, and that had to have been the first time in a long while. It was too much for her. It was almost too much for him, too.

"Who are you, truly?" asked Marsh. Senn had joined him on the road back from the mines. The road was unguarded, for there was nowhere to flee but the plains, and the promise of death was enough to keep almost everyone walking. Senn had caught up to him as Marsh and ten other men sat around the fire in the night, resting from their long march. It was a two-day trip from the mines to the Hub, but the exercise and the air helped the men after too long in the darkness. They didn't complain. Senn approached and told them a story of being released just after them, but missing their parting by a few hours. They didn't ask. Marsh had motioned for him to sit at his side and they spoke for long hours. Senn had told him he had no place to go to, for the women he had been shacking up with had turned to another man for protection, so Marsh invited him back to his hovel. Senn had been surprised at his kindness, but now he understood. Naial hadn't changed that much. She was still able to convince men they were better than they previously believed. After all this time, Senn was still very much the man she had forced him to be.

"I'm the one who got away," he told Marsh. "I'm the one who started the Riots, the one who led a third of the Leashed out of the Hub and into the Plains."

The people around him were exchanging glances. He saw that they didn't believe him, except for Naial, who wasn't looking at him.

"It all happened. They can't have erased the memory from your heads. We didn't die. It happened. We ran away and became free men. Do you know what that is?"

"Dreams. Imaginary things. Nothing else," said Talid.

"Don't speak of those things with spite. They are the only things you can truly own."

"Did a dream make you free?" asked one of the other men near the back of the hovel, one whose name Senn had already forgotten.

"No. I set myself free and then helped others do likewise. I didn't dream of being free. I dreamt of setting someone else free."

"Who?" asked the same man. He quickly realized the others had understood something he didn't, and didn't press the point.

"I have trusted you with this. You could turn me over in a blink and I would be flayed, or worse. If they found out I'm in their midst, they would use all the tortures they've been saving up for me since I set fire to the Hub. They would give the betrayer food for a day, but nothing else. The only freedom they'll give either of them is the release of death. And if you're thinking of betraying that trust, you can ask me and I'll give you the same release."

He looked at them one by one, and everyone slinked back except for Marsh and Talid.

"Or," he said, "you can believe what I'm telling you is true. In the end, you will die as all men and women do, but with the chance of being free before death takes you. It's quite a bargain, I think."

The people in the hovel looked at each other. A crazy man was talking, they seemed to want to say, and they had to have heard a lot of men like him. More deranged, or out of trance, but equally disconnected from their reality. What could they do with those words he uttered? They could not feed off them, nor would they lend them shelter in the cold or protect them from the Chainkeepers. What use, words?

He thought then that his ploy would fail. Naial wouldn't even look at him and the others would forsake him just as he had done with them. None had known him before the Riots, but hushed talks around the fires would have told of men like him, if not of him in particular. For the youngest there, he would be a legend, not something that could happen in their world. A man apart, not someone who could arise from their same much-toiled mud. He would find no footing there. He had to flee again.

No, he told himself. How can you even consider that? You walked all the way here and you're not walking back out there alone. Not without them... her.

"Look," he started saying.

"Listen, man," said Marsh. "This..." he shook his head, "is madness. Naial spun us a nice tale of being good to each other and that may even turn out to be true. We may yet make a difference in this wretched hole. But this is like a kid wanting to fly after starting to crawl. This is not only beyond our ken, but it's also beyond anyone's."

"Not beyond mine. Not beyond a lot of your people."

"But..."

"No. Get that thought out of your head and put this one in: we were men just like you. Just as afraid, just as likely to be killed. If not for a moment of hot-bloodedness, they would still be here. Sitting with you, around this fire. Cowering."

Senn had clenched his hands while speaking. He expected the other man to try to hit him. Maybe then he would be able to assert himself over these people. But Marsh didn't stir. His blood no longer ran hot, after the mines. He just stared at Senn, taking the measure of him. He would make his decision later.

"What would you have us do, then," spoke Talid. "What can the handful of us do?"

"I don't know yet," said Senn. "But I have some experience raising trouble. I think I can find some to stir."

* * *

Naial woke up. She had fallen asleep out of exhaustion at some point. She had stopped listening to their chatter. She was drawn inward and Challa hadn't been able to shake her out of it. So she had slept and dreamt of nothing. But now that relief was over. She was awake, and in front of her, across the dwindling fire, was him. She couldn't believe it. She hadn't even thought of him in a long time. She had dared to hope only for a short time after he was gone. She had imagined him dead in the plains, eaten by canids, taken by the winged death, or scorched by the sun. She had had nightmares until her memories of him had faded up to the point she couldn't remember his face, voice, or manner. And then the nightmares stopped. She thought it was because she had come to terms with his death. But maybe it was because he had found safety and she no longer had to fear for him.

What things had he gone through in all those years? She couldn't imagine it. She couldn't imagine life outside of the Hub. She couldn't imagine anything worse, but it had to be so. Still... he looked full of life, even with those sunken cheeks and the ravages of age. He seemed so much like his old self, while she felt like a bag of leather left out in the sun for too long. Old, lifeless, useless. She had felt so alive the last few days. Now she felt like in all the years in between. Powerless.

For some reason, she decided to crawl among the sleeping bodies. She disentangled herself from Challa's arms. She had been holding on to her like a child. There was pain there not unlike her own, she realized.

She was by Senn's side before knowing why she was doing it. He was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, folded arms showing the improvised bandage on his arm. He was resting uneasily. She sidled closer to him. She watched him closely, but he didn't seem to notice her. He didn't look like a man who slept deeply. She lifted her knife anyway. She brought her shaking hand near his neck. She held it there. She held her breath, and Senn seemed for a second to be holding his. It was only an illusion, for he exhaled abruptly after a second. She gasped. She thought he was feigning to sleep but he wasn't. She pulled her knife closer, almost touching his neck with its tip. He breathed in and his beard brushed against the cold metal. She could have her revenge. She could stop him from bringing her down again into a black hole. She was just about to do something, for the first time in a long while. And now he sauntered in like a hero meant to pull her away from her life. Only he would fail again, or abandon her and leave her in shambles again.

She could do it. For once in her life, she wasn't powerless to change her fate.

She could.