Great place to work, Alishia thought for the thousandth time. Opposite a slaughterhouse. Because that’s all it really was. She had once seen a man shoved from the Tumbling Window for stealing coins from a street trader to buy rotwine. His wife stood and watched as he fell, his knees popping, ankles breaking, ribs cracking inward and spearing his lungs. She squatted by his side as he gasped bloody bubbles into the heat of the noonday sun. Then she smiled and left him to die alone.

These were bad days indeed, and Alishia knew how lucky she was to be the librarian, in charge of one of the least-visited buildings in the city, unknown by most, usually ignored even if someone did recognize her. Perhaps people believed she would have them arrested for talking in her hallowed hall of books.

As she started down the street she realized how pleased she was to be out of the building. It was an alien feeling because she loved it in there, but today had been tainted by the activities of the weird old man, and she felt lighter of step and heart now that she was away. Even Noreela City—dark, dilapidated and sad—was welcoming in its own strange way. Perhaps she really had escaped some awful danger. Whatever the reason, she felt an unaccountable high, unhindered by the constraints of worry and stress.

A woman passed by, trailing a snake of children behind her, all of them painfully thin and pocked with weeping sores. The woman was a barrel of a person, rolling along with great strides. Her jowls almost touched her chest, which itself could have easily harbored a herd of tumblers beneath its mammoth overhang.

“Spare some tellans,” the woman croaked, “we’ve not eaten for a week.”

Alishia could see the truth of the statement in the children’s eyes, and the lie in the woman’s.

“I’ll give the kids tellans,” she said, reaching into her backpack.

“They’re my kids.”

“All of them?”

The woman refused to look away. No shame. “Some of them.”

“I’ll give the kids tellans,” Alishia said again, and the woman nudged her aside with one fleshy elbow and continued on her way. As the line passed her by, Alishia rustled in her bag. She gave the last child—a pale-faced, sad-eyed boy—a sprinkle of silver tellan pieces. He smiled his thanks but it did not reach his eyes.