He dreamt of knives in the dark and firebrands. He stirred and thought he saw a glint of steel. But it was no knife. It was a Leash that, while dulled, had a polished spot upon which a ray of light was reflecting into Senn's eyes. He tried to lift his hand to cover his eyes but his arm was numb. A wound?

He looked down and saw a head resting on his shoulder. Naial's head. Aye, it is a wound. He lifted his free arm and brought the palm of his hand over her hair. He didn't feel he had the right to touch her. He hadn't avoided her blow the night before because he thought she did have that right over him. He had left. He had thought she was dead and then the anger had overtaken him and when he finally realized he could have been wrong and she could still be alive, he was on the other side of the plains, embarked on a new life and a role he hadn't asked for but which he had to take responsibility. He had asked for freedom and was given it. He had a price to pay. And the Lord of Greed had been very good in those early times. He had supported him, spurred him on, and cajoled him when necessary. At that time, he wasn't incarnated yet. Senn wasn't his Herald yet. They were all just learning to play the game back then. The lure of the game had been enough to blind him to his heart's longing. It had effectively been replaced by the hunger. For many years it had sustained him. But when it had finally left him, when the hunger no longer kept him going, all the old regrets and the longing had come back. What if she's still alive? That was the unspoken question that had led him onward, the thing the Hunter had latched on to make him keep going. When all the superfluous things he had acquired over the years had been lost to him, the only thing that remained with him was the blind will to live and the tenuous thread that still tethered him to the girl he had loved.

He watched her sleep for a while. She was a fitful sleeper like he remembered. But it could be the only thing she had in common with the Naial of the past. They both had to become different people. She couldn't be the same, not after all this time. He feared that thought, for it could mean that he might be the same scared boy he had been before. As much as he wanted to turn back the winds of time, he didn't want to go back to being that powerless.

That reminded him... why hadn't his power worked the night before? Naial had been able to hurt him and surprised him. He thought he had gained a good measure of control over his new power. But when he willfully tried to hurt himself to check if it was still there, his arrowhead had pierced his skin. Have you abandoned me too, Hunter? How fickle were the gods. Not unlike men, but you could almost always rely on someone to do what was in his best interest to do. Gods didn't even have that, in Senn's opinion. When time and lives were playthings, what stopped them from doing anything at all?

Maybe I'm missing something, he thought. The Hunter will come to me if he needs me. Just like my old God did. Until then, I'd better be careful. There may be other powers at play in the Hub.

Maybe the Forever King's power prevented his own. Maybe a God's grace couldn't penetrate another's place of strength. The things he knew and the things he ignored were farther away than the stars. In his mind, he went back to the old days as he stroked Naial's hair. He tried to find a way in which things might have turned out otherwise. If not better, at least in a way in which they could have been together. He couldn't. In every scenario, one of them was killed, or both.

Damn him. Damn that god for taking me away from her.

He knew that was only partly right. The Lord of Greed had only fueled the fire in him. It would have taken much longer but he would have acted out, and rebelled in some way that could have hurt them both. At least in the Lord of Greed's path, she had been safe and he had been content in his ignorance. If only it could have turned out slightly different. If she had been able to come away with him, if she had taken the child...

She stirred and he froze. He kept his hand still so as not to wake her, but then he saw she was still in deep sleep so he rested it on her side. When she awoke, would she be the fragile, reedy girl he had gone to sleep with ages ago? Or would she be the tough, crazed woman whose hovel he had walked into the previous night? In any case, he would find out soon. The sun's rays were getting stronger and a part of his arm where they were hitting was already hot. The people would stir, the Counters would come, and the work would start. He hoped he wouldn't be found out. There was a good amount of anonymity in the way the Chainkeepers managed the Hub. They didn't care about specific people, they cared about work quotas. That's why everyone could come and go as pleased from one hovel to the other as long as they did it in daylight. There was nowhere to run or anyone to turn to that would make any difference. They were just a mass of people to be put in containers and moved about, like water in a set of buckets. Except water could splash or leak from them. The last splash in the Hub had been half of Senn's life ago. The people would barely remember those days, buried underneath ages of boredom and toil and hopelessness.

The people. He hadn't thought of them that way for too long. They had been the Leashed. They were the cowards, the weak, the ones who wouldn't follow his God when he called out to them for freedom. Some of those weak-willed ones had been carried in the turmoil of the Riots and had died under the sun of the plains, or had sunk even lower and become Husks, just barely above a dumbbird in their instinct for survival. Senn had seen them too often. He had rescued some of them from their exiles in the plains near the Hub, or stolen them from Chainkeeper exploration parties, from the same men who were looking for him and his Lordstown. And one by one, they had all turned out to be a disappointment. None of them had ever risen to be free men. The fear, the tyranny, was ingrained too deep for any promise or show of freedom to change it. They would remain Leashed even when their Leashes were taken out and replaced by free men's torqs. They needed fear to wake up, to work, and even to eat. And so they had remained Leashed in spirit and deed, for the people of Lordstown that harbored them worked them almost as hard as the worst Chainkeeper. Except there were no more chains or whips or the threat of becoming canid food. For all of them, it had been enough. And to Senn that had been the most soul-wrecking realization: that everything he had done and that no matter how much he kept on fighting, they would never change their ways. They would never be free because the very idea had been wrenched from them and it could never be replaced. That, he realized now, was what had made him not care anymore. He hadn't cared for a long time. He viewed those people as failures, as a reminder of his inability to change the fabric of the world, and as such he hated them and ignored them as much as he could.

You used their dead bodies as a bridge. You trod upon them as if you were a god.

It was his conscience, not an outside thought. He had done that. He had thought of them as beasts, as dead people that due to some miracle of nature still walked upright. And they were not that different from the people in the hovel he now rested in, except that they, against all reason and what one could hope, still retained some humanity. Enough to shelter a weary traveler. For that was all he was. Old and tired.

Naial was awake. He realized it when her breath changed its rhythm. She looked up. He looked down at her but his eyes were clouded. He saw her through the years, not as she was now. He didn't care to dispel that effect. She was looking at him as if she was surprised. Maybe she didn't remember walking up to him and snuggling in his arms.

"You came over," he said.

The words came out as if he was laying the guilt at her feet. He grimaced. He didn't mean that.

"I know," she said. "I was mistaken, then. I must have walked in the dark to the wrong man."

"So you were looking for another? A younger man, maybe?"

"Yes," she said. "A younger man. But he's no longer here, it seems."

He caught her words too late and didn't manage to reply. A voice outside yelled for the Count and they all got up. He did so out of imitation and memories. He felt stupid. The Counter was still a long way away. They had time to drink the broth and stretch before heading off to work. They would get a few minutes to wash and go to the waste wells if they were fast on their way there. He had almost forgotten how hard, how life-sapping it all was. Almost.

He felt his anger rise as he heard the Counter's voice approaching. He hadn't known the memories would be so powerful, the anger so skin-deep. He had thought he had worked past all that. He knew now that there was no getting past it. There was only forgetting for a while and a hurtful remembrance.

"Keep calm," she said, "or you'll get us all killed. They can't even suspect who you are. Keep calm. We'll plan something, later."

Despite her soft words, his fists still shook. The old anger was rushing back as the voices outside grew nearer. He couldn't control it. It was all coming back to him.

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They took him. They took them both from me.

He felt his heart beat faster than it ought to. He would die before bowing down to those men again. But then it subsided. She put her hands around his and pried each finger free, opening his fists and intertwining her fingers in his. She had learned to do that long ago.

"Just this once," she whispered. "Forget everything. Bow down and walk away. You're not the same man."

"I am."

"No. You're worse and you have to be better."

Those words were what finally broke his will. He relaxed his muscles and she let go of him. He couldn't avoid the consequences. He had to take care of these others and that meant enduring it all. He wasn't free to do as he wished.

Your death is not your own, said the voice of the Hunter, or so he thought. He sighed and straightened up. He had never been free.

The Counter arrived and Marsh and the others went out in single file to receive him. To wait inside was to invite pain. They were inspected and things were written on the boards the Counter carried. Their Leashes were reviewed in an off-hand manner. Senn took a shallow breath. He had hoped it would be so. The Leash he had taken from the dead, dried man on the side of the mine road was old. If they cared to look at the numbers, they might find out something strange. But it wasn't rusted or cracked. He had taken it out from the dead body in one piece. It had been so easy. It had always been so, it's just that no one ever truly tried. He had put it on and immediately felt the weight of the years behind it. He tore at it now, but it didn't budge. It was always easier to put it on than take it off, anyway.

He was given his orders without a second look. He had been assigned to the canid pens along with Challa. He looked around. Naial was already going somewhere else and Talid and Marsh were going in yet another direction. Aimless but steady. Challa motioned to him to get going. The Counter was glancing their way and they couldn't linger or they'd be in trouble. A Chainkeeper was about to turn around. Senn walked away. Challa was already a few steps ahead of him.

"Where are the others going?" he asked. "I didn't hear."

"Pay more attention, then," she said. "Or you won't survive long."

He wanted to talk back to her, tell her how he knew just as much about hardship as her, or more. But one look at her face and he saw it wasn't true. She was a little younger than him, but she had lived there her whole life. He had no right to presume to have suffered as much.

They walked at a brisk pace but the Hub seemed endless. It had to have grown outward in the years since his departure, since the hovels weren't crowded at all. It was even tidier than Lordstown. The hovels were far enough apart and the alleys were free of clutter. The small gutters that took the waste to the main channels and the waste wells didn't overflow. The air stank but not as much as the Lordstown market on a hot day. Were they improvements, or had it been like that before? Waste and disease bred each other, and Senn had learned that from ruling over Lordstown. But he hadn't done much about either and here the Chainkeepers seemed to have a better grasp of those concepts than him. He felt lightheaded and walked in a daze for a few moments, trying to find out if he had missed anything else. If there were other ways in which the tyrants had done a better job than him. He soon found some.

A little girl was tugging at a Leash. She had been tied to her mother, who was sitting outside their hovel. The girl couldn't be older than five markings. She was thin and looked sick. Or so he thought, but a lot of people looked like that in the Hub. He couldn't tell. But her mother was sick, of that there was no doubt. She was pale as a cloud in the desert. Her Leash hung loosely from her neck as if she had lost most of her weight. The child kept pulling, but the woman wouldn't move. Her eyelids fluttered for a second and then stilled. She could be dead or barely alive, but there was no difference. No one would help. The people walked in front and around the pair but no one stopped. He knew from experience the Chainkeepers wouldn't do anything. If someone was still able to work, they would sometimes patch them up. But it was a dreadful calculation that moved them. If it was more effort than what could be obtained from their work in the short term, they wouldn't bother. They would just wait for them to die and then get rid of the bodies. In their minds, it would be a reminder and a powerful image to keep others in line and looking away. He knew their minds for he had become used to thinking like that. His stomach turned at those thoughts. In Lordstown, no one would have looked away. They would have gotten help or a knife across the throat for their belongings. Was it better? What difference was there?

He walked past them and didn't look back. The same shame filled him that had to have filled the other passersby, at least at first. A dozen more spectacles like that and he would be desensitized to them. It was just like killing, only slower and with cleaner hands. But the stain in the soul was too much alike.

He saw other things on his way to the canid pens. Challa looked at him in puzzlement. His thoughts had to be readily visible on his face. It was a wonder the Chainkeepers didn't stop him on sight. He half wished they did. He would find out if his power was failing one way or another. At least the stain of the killing would overshadow the shame of impotence.

"Don't get caught up in all of it. You're new here," said Challa.

"Not new. But it's been a long time."

"You're lucky and unlucky."

He fell a step behind her.

"Why do you say that?"

"You've been lucky to have been away from it all. Unlucky to be back. Lucky to still feel something. Unlucky, too, because of it. I prefer the calm."

He fell back in step with her.

"Luck had nothing to do with any of it. But I thought you were one of the few who cared about these things. That's why you're around Naial, isn't it?"

She didn't answer. They had reached the canid pens. Two Chainkeepers stood outside and watched their approach with slanted eyes. They were talking among themselves in hushed tones all along, but they didn't seem distracted by it. A Chainkeeper never seemed to be more than a second away from bursting out in anger.

Senn looked around in awe. He had never been in that place. It was a very different construction than the dumbbird pens or any of the hovels, or even the Lord of Greed's Fortress. It was a closed, three-story sun-bleached building built out of dried mud and covered in small window holes out of which spilled the barkings of the animals within. The terrible noises were amplified by the echoing chambers into which Senn and Challa were ushered along with two dozen other Leashed. It was dark inside, for the holes were more apt to let the noise out than the light in. The walls were lined with cages and the floor was covered with reeds. The stench was unbearable. The smell of excrement and rotten meat was so ingrained in the floors and the air that no amount of washing would drive it away entirely. Even so, the Counter that received them put half of them to cleaning duties, shoveling dung, scrubbing the floors, and replacing the reeds. The rest of them were on feeding duty. It seemed like an easier task unless one knew the animals closely. Senn did because they had stolen a few of the mount-sized ones during the riots and had had to fight the smaller ones that roamed the plains in small packs. He had bred them and in time raised his own mounts for battle. But they hadn't reached the same size or ferociousness as these, as a result of who knew how many generations of selective breeding. The tallest ones' heads stood higher than the tallest men, and their fangs made them more dangerous than any sword or arrow in battle. The Chainkeepers had used some of them during the battle of the Stormcloud, but most of them had to have been left behind for use in patrols around the Hub. The ones he had killed in the mountains had been the medium-sized kind, but dangerous enough. He shuddered at the thought of them running free in the Hub, or in Lordstown for that matter.

Challa and he were on the feeding detail. It was dangerous work, for the bigger beasts jumped at them at the smell of the meat and made the cages and even the walls rattle. The meat was indistinct and had a pungent smell. No man would be hungry or desperate enough to chow that down, but the Chainkeepers inside the building watched over them as if they were rabid canids themselves.

In the middle of the building was a medium-sized pit, two men's heights deep. The younger canid pups lived there. They barked in shrill tones and fought incessantly, but Senn knew they were just as dangerous as the medium-sized beasts. A dozen of the pups could swarm a man and kill him in a few heartbeats.

Challa kept close to him, elbowing him to move along or to stay back from a particularly tough animal. But Senn's mind was racing all around the place. He shot glances at the guards and the other workers continuously. Challa had to elbow him in the kidney to get him to stop.

"Stop it!" she said, hissing. "You'll get us noticed."

Senn understood those words, understood her tone and the risk of it all. But that was on just one level. In another, he was looking straight at a Chainkeeper who had just come into the building, dragging a woman. She was beaten and tired, so much so that she wouldn't even shriek. Her body resisted out of sheer instinct, but her voice, as well as her will, seemed to be gone. She looked ahead and her gaze fell upon Senn, and then moved on. She hadn't seen anything in him that gave her hope. She didn't even bother after that. She bowed her head as the Chainkeeper tugged at the chain tied to her leash. Like a canid, thought Senn. Except they always fight you. They never stop doing so.

He turned his back on her. Just another husk, another Leashed that couldn't find the strength to work, much less resist. How would he get them to rise?

A shriek was followed by a cacophony that filled his ears. He turned just as Challa grabbed his arm. He looked down. She was using all her strength, and both hands, to hold him. He looked at her with a frown for just a moment, then his attention turned back to the noise. It was coming from the pit. The Chainkeeper was holding the leashed woman over it, suspended by the chain he bore, using a hook that dangled from the ceiling on a long chain as a pulley. He had lifted her up and was now slowly letting go of his chain. The canids at the bottom of the pit were the ones making the deafening noise. The first shriek had to have been the woman. Now, she was so scared and petrified her eyes were closed, even as the leash choked her. She wasn't resisting the asphyxia, not even by reflex. Maybe if she let it, she would faint due to lack of air and wouldn't feel anything. If she resisted, she could only hope to be conscious long enough to feel every bite and clawing.

Senn read all this as if her mind was open bare to him. It's what any other leashed, nay, anyone else, would think. Even him.

He looked back at Challa. He could feel his heart beating normally, his hands steady but gentle as he removed her hold on him.

"It's all right," he said. "Everything will be all right. You tell her."

She was too slow to react. She could only look in astonishment as Senn dashed forward and jumped into the pit.