The Hub was in an uproar the likes of which she had seldom seen. She remembered when years ago, during the Bleeding, the agitation in the streets and hovels threatened to turn into full-blown chaos. But it had never gone that far. The Chainkeepers were always around to stifle it. It hadn't even been rebellion. It had just been a mass confusion. No one in the Hub harbored sedition. They just couldn't.

There were days when it seemed inconceivable to her that anyone could think to escape. Why? What good could it bring? They would just be chased and killed, or killed in another way they couldn't even imagine. She hadn't always been like that, but the memory of times when she felt and thought and acted differently was fading and she didn't trust her memories anymore. Not when the present was so overwhelming and the lessons it taught were much clearer than what the past could summon up.

She left the side street as a group of Leashed ran back into the city. They had been watching a small army leave under the cover of dust storm. It had been a marvel to some of them, but after it had passed it was just a reminder of their hopelessness. If the Chainkeepers could do such things, it just went to show that some greater power favored them. No dust storm had come to cloak the rebels who had trickled out of the city and into the plains years before. No dust storm had brought them back in anger to free their brethren. Their fights were with the Chainkeepers over lands or food or wealth. They seemed to have forgotten where they had come from.

She finally reached her destination. Inside the hovel, a blind man coughed into a bowl. The darkness inside was a precious gift after the heat of the outside, but the company, though at no fault of their own, didn't do much to lift her spirits. There was another one, a boy, sitting in the dark. He was mute or had never cared to talk. Maybe he had realized something the others didn't know. That words weren't much help to anyone.

"Cough it all up," she said. "You need to clear your lungs. Light up the fire again, kid. Help him inhale the steam."

The kid got up slowly and blew into the coals. The ash disappeared, replaced by a red ember, and after a while, the water in the pot started to boil again. The old man inhaled and then coughed up abruptly into the bowl. She wanted to be alone, but couldn't manage to do so. A hovel was a hovel, not a house, and she had no claim to it except for her daily use of a broom to keep it mostly refuse-free. She felt as little attachment to the place as she did to the other frequent occupants. The boy worked in the fields with her, so he had followed her once and stuck to her as a goat to its mother. The old man had been working right until the end, when he went blind and couldn't work the fields anymore. Now she brought him reeds from the riverbank so he could tie them into complicated knots and weave baskets out of them. Then she went out and exchanged them for food at the Chainkeepers' house of wares. They always needed more baskets to haul food from one place to the other. She shared that with the old man to keep him alive and took a bite for herself whenever she could. She did it out of pity, not kindness. If the man had refused to do even that small task, she would have left the hovel and let him die on his own. No one in her place would have done otherwise. No one she knew would do as much as she was already doing, and most would do far less.

She sat down in the darkness and fell half asleep. The day's work had tired her. Even if her calluses kept the pain away, working in the fields was always tiresome. Muscles ached, bones creaked, but most of all, the exhaustion was in her head. The heat and the boredom were enough to make some people turn crazy. Every fortnight, someone struck another person with a shovel, beat them into pieces, or strangled them. It was strange. Some people bore the same crux for years and then turned into killers without warning. As if an accounting had been done and they had reached a certain amount of... whatever it was. Self-hate, hatred for others, irritation. Something bubbled inside them, like water left on the stove for too long, heated and left to grow cold and inflamed again, but always balancing out just a tiny bit hotter, until it started boiling one day and you half-expected it though it seemed it would never come. She was feeling like water dangerously approaching its boiling point. But for now she just felt exhausted.

At some point in the night, she woke up. Someone was sitting just inside the hovel, next to the curtain that covered the entrance. Whomever the intruder was, he had the sense not to go near her. She always slept with a bone dagger in her hand, in case someone got lusty and forgot himself. She couldn't throw him out if he had decided to sleep there, but beyond the Chainkeepers' laws there were manners and ways which the Leashed followed to avoid conflict. One was that you didn't set foot inside a hovel you didn't dwell in before asking permission from the current occupants. She didn't think this man would have bothered with that even if he hadn't found them all asleep.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The stranger wore a hood, which was highly unusual. The Chainkeepers wanted to be able to see the leashes around their necks clearly, so anything that covered them up was forbidden and downright dangerous to be caught wearing. And going out at night was punishable too unless you were on a night detail or were just moving from one adjoining hovel to another.

Here's a dangerous man. But is he a troublemaker or just stupid enough to endanger those around him?

She rose slowly but rustled her tunic so the stranger would notice. He didn't move or acknowledge her, but she saw he was awake because the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest stopped for a second. She approached with her dagger out of sight but close at hand in her sleeves. She knelt a few paces away and whispered over the crackling of the coals.

"Why did you come here? Go back to your own hovel and take off that hood, before they punish all of us because of you."

The stranger turned his face toward her, but even with the light of the fire flooding him, it remained under the shadow of the hood. Only his mouth was clearly visible, and his lips moved slowly but strangely seductively.

"I came for you, woman."

She clutched her bone dagger tighter and held it up in front of her so the man could see.

"I'm not any man's plaything. Go away. There are willing or weak women everywhere else, but not here. It will cost you dearly."

The man smiled, but in a way she hadn't seen in a lifetime. It seemed slow and deliberate, not the product of cynicism or cruelty, but something else instead.

"I didn't come for you in that sense, woman. I'm sorry that your life has led you to think that way of everyone you meet."

"Not everyone. Just men."

"I'm not sure I still qualify as one."

"Are you a eunuch?"

"In a way. Not in the usual ghastly way, though."

"I've never met a man whose parts didn't boss him around."

"Well, then, hello there," he said with a smile. "You're also something new to me."

"What?"

"A woman with balls."

She smiled unwittingly and managed to repress it fast.

"There are more of us than ballsy men. Most of them, you just kick them in the groin and they fall and don't want to get back up. With us, we hurt just as much but we get on living."

"Yes, it's a marvel. Women are a wonder to me."

The stranger raised a knee and rested his arms on it. He seemed unduly relaxed, but she didn't trust that demeanor either. Some men could uncoil like a snake and attack from what just a moment ago seemed a calm and quiet disposition.

"So why did you come? To talk with a stranger?" she asked.

"No. You're not a complete stranger to me. I know the part of you that makes you special."

"I'm pretty sure you don't know that part, mister. If you had known it, I'd recognize your face. I haven't had that many."

"Your mind just goes back to all of that, but I know it's just a defense posture. You know what really makes you special, and it ain't the space between your legs."

She frowned, unsure of where the man was getting at. She wished just for a moment that he was just another would-be rapist and she could deal with him the usual way. As it was, the situation was more unsettling and unfamiliar.

"So what makes me 'special' in your opinion? And how do you know about it if we've never met?"

"Oh, I've been around. You just haven't acknowledged me, but I've been around. I've watched you. I know of your kindness."

"What kindness? I just try to scrape by like everyone else. There's no misguided weeper in me."

"You underestimate yourself, and you underestimate many more like you. You're special, but you're not the only special one. Kindness is more prevalent than you think, even amid all this tyranny and cruelty."

"First I'm special, then I'm not? Funny way to try to get me in the sack."

"I already told you I won't and am not able to do any of that to you. I just came to talk to you."

"Talk me into something, you mean."

"In a way. But no goat was ever convinced of climbing a mountain by mere words. Actions are more effective. So I'll show you, and the next time we talk, you'll be sure of who I am... and who you are, too."

"I'm sure of both accounts now. You're crazy and I'm the same sane person I've always been."

"Maybe. You'll find out. Watch out for the ripples, and think about them. There are always ripples whenever you do something, whether it's violence or kindness. They ripple in different ways, one is abrupt, the other subtle. But a ripple in one shore turns into a wave that breaks into distant lands."

"You're one crazy son of a whore."

"That's just you denying words you understand deep within. Think of them. And watch out for the ripples of your actions. Then you'll know of what I speak."

He got up slowly but gracefully and ducked under the hovel's entrance. He left, and she sat back down with the dagger in her hands. She looked at it, and it seemed useless to her now.