Great bronze gongs resound the sixth and final prayer of the day, and briefly, the bodies stop falling. All across White Lightning City those of faith cease their activities, or pretend to, and bow their heads to observe the silent twilight peace of the Great Dragon of No, That Who Is Not. In this observance the city grows quiet, work ceases, and all are made peers, shit-scraping khareka and spoiled-rotten chbab alike. In theory.

You watch impassively as another khareka corpse is lifted from the bridge above you and unceremoniously dumped into the gore-slick stormdrain. It hits the ground with an echoing crack, neck snapping back at an obtuse angle, sliding down the pipe toward the filthy harbor. With the corpse's neck stretched, it almost seems to be in graceful repose, like some bird or twigbug. It could be almost artful, if it weren't for the ghastly contorting of its face. It clawed its own eyes out as the Red Fever took it. Imagine that. A khareka finding grace in death.

Your addled mind catches on the absurdity of it, siezing up. A gurgling rasp works its way out of your throat, and you smile. Imagine that! To live in misery, to be consigned to death for your caste--and then to find yourself close to artful for one uncanny, horrible moment, at the end of a ridiculous, horrible life. If you're lucky, you'll get that too.

The rictus laugh shakes your ill, feeble, tiny body like a tree in monsoon season, and you sink to your knees, vomiting. Blood, some bile--but not much of either. Your stomach is so very empty. You cry, but no tears come out--there is no more water to fuel them. Just the death, and the laughter. You laugh and you laugh and then when the laughing stops all that remains is a hollow anger. You will die this day before your eighth summer in the slums, with nobody to mourn you and no one to remember your existence.

You turn from the corpses and walk away. You see your fate every time you close your eyes; there is no reason to stare at it with eyes open, too.
---
Time and distance mean nothing. Eventually, you arrived in the district of Grand Port, the beating heart of the great city. You are so hungry, so tired, so weak and so sick. You walk as if through a dream, every step under crushing pressure and against great resistance. Against the haze of exhaustion the hollow anger burns, hotter and brighter. You do not have new energy. But now, you have renewed hate and rage. And in those you have a clarity of purpose.

You don't know when you saw them, or which you saw first. Maybe it was the man, wearing simple robes, clean and of high quality, walking with thick-soled boots. Maybe it was the girl, gawking warily at her lessers, with fat cheeks full of color and life. You don't know who they are. But you know what they are. You know that you hate them, hate them more than anything in this world, and will hate them for this lifetime and all other lifetimes until the Great Dragon of No is all that remains, and swallows itself to bring perfect peaceful oblivion.

Soon you shall die, and before that, you shall do one thing in this world. The broken glass glitters in your hand, and you breathe as deeply as your pained chest allows. Slowly, you approach.

You don't know what gave you away. Perhaps it was your breathing, too shallow and irregular to speak of good intent. Perhaps it was your fist, white-knuckled over the jagged glass. Perhaps it was your eyes, dark, sunken, and full of murder. Whatever it was, a handspan away from the man's neck, the world tumbles and you fall, hard, to the dusty ground, the glass spiraling away.

The girl crouches on your chest, hissing, holding a knife to your throat.

"That," speaks the old man, brushing off his shoulders, "was rude."

You thrash, limbs bucking as you try to escape, but her grip and weight are too much. Weak as you are, you cannot escape. You spite, bare your teeth, and try to bite the girl. She punches you in the nose and stars explode behind your eyes.

When your sense return, you hear a sharp, rebuking, "Masumi!"

"He [i]spit at me[/i]." The girl on your chest, presumably Masumi, pouts. It just makes you hate her more.

"I don't care." The man's voice is mild, as if entirely unconcerned by the attempt on his life. He looks around and makes a gesture with his hand. You realize that people are staring--were staring, having now been instructed to look away by the old chbab--at the scene. He stares at you and you flush under his gaze.

Eventually, he speaks again, in that same light tone. "Get off him, Masumi."

"Roshi-chbab, please-"

"[i]Off[/i]."

Masumi blanches at the sudden sharp tone, and scrabbles to her feet. She backs up quickly and eyes you like a wild animal, ready to attack. But all the fight is gone out of you, and the strength from the earlier rage is too. Despair and exhaustion pour into you like the ocean rushing to fill a teacup. You tried to hurt a chbab. Merely offending one would be grounds for execution, from a worthless khareka like you. This is it, then. You close your eyes, and wait for him to strike you down.

The strike does not come. Instead, Roshi says, "I'm impressed. Were I inebriated or without my loyal daughter, you might have actually cut me, even though you are clearly one sleep away from death. I applaud your hatred, little one. What is your name?"

You open your eyes in bewilderment. You try and stare at the chbab, but you can't focus your gaze. You speak for the first time in days: "No name worth speaking of."

"Do you live here?" He gestures with a long, thin hand to the docks. Are you a wharf child? Are you khareka? Are you a rat, an insect? Do you live?

You shake your head. "It is no life worth speaking of."

"Then I ask of you, little one. Would you die here?" He throws his arms wide, as if he could hold the stink of fish, tar, sweat and piss and illness in his two hands. As if he did not already know the answer he asked of the child dying in front of him.

You spit blood, and wheeze in answer, with the last of your energy, "It would be no death worth speaking of."

"Mmm. Hmmmm. No, no it would not be."

You think about how it felt, to be willing to kill. Graceful corpses, sick cracks, sharp laughter. You hear Roshi's voice, deep and thoughtful:

"I believe we've found you a brother, Masumi."

And then there is nothing but the feeling and the dark.

When you were going to kill. It made you feel something. What? Why?