On the lowest terrace of the Great Silt Plaza. There, the cut stone floor met the dark margin of the drainage drain tubes, sat a young refugee guard named Han.
He was nineteen years old, his frame lean and starved, dressed in a mismatched cuirass of boiled leather and rusted iron scales that he had scavenged from a dead sect soldier during the siege of the upper gates in Season 16. In his right hand he gripped a heavy, notched butcher’s cleaver, its blade darkened by dried blood that had never been properly washed away. His knuckles were raw, his teeth grinding together in a nonstop, silent tremor of guilt and paranoia. The cold air from the lower bilge drain tubes whispered past his shins, carrying the sharp, metal stench of iron scale and stale sewage.
Two weeks ago, during the bread riots in the dark bilges of Entry hall 080, Han had used that cleaver to kill an old weaver who was trying to steal a handful of dried pea flour for his starving granddaughter. The memory of the old man’s wet, gasping breath and the sound of the cleaver biting into bone had lived behind Han’s eyelids ever since. That painful poison kept him awake watch after watch, his eyes darting into the shadows, expecting the dead to crawl from the water to drag him into the deep pit. Every footstep on the terrace sounded like a headsman approaching.
