—Ladies— Anya said, her voice rising slightly above the initial murmur —as our Lady Aelthra demands, the flow of healthy conversation heals the soul slowly. You are not obliged to speak, but you are always welcome to participate. Sharing joys and sorrows is like watering the communal garden: what one sows, another may reap— She paused, letting her words settle, and then looked around with an expectant smile. —Any news of the day? Anything floating in the air from the market or the washhouses?"

  The first voice to raise was that of Enara, the old washerwoman. Her voice, raspy from years of breathing steam and caustic soap, carried the authority of one who had heard the secrets of half the town's dirty laundry.

  —I heard from some acquaintances at the Lancer laundry...— she began, and every head turned toward her. In the refuge, rumors were a valuable currency. —...that the Mayor's daughter, Miss Eliza, ran away from home. With her personal manservant.

  There was a collective gasp, a mixture of scandal and fascination. Enara shook her head; her gnarled fingers toyed with the rim of her cup. —Girls no longer follow the Flow. Aelthra is not rebellion, but patience. Slow and steady, until everything follows as destiny commands. To break the chains life gives us... is to sow in stony ground.

  Pira, the dust collector —who seemed to absorb information just as her trade suggested— nodded solemnly. —A girl running away like that... with her position, and now the whole town with her father's name in their mouths, saying terrible things— Her gaze, usually lost in nothingness, became slightly more focused. —When I was collecting dust from the dusaut, I heard the other collectors. They said it was a punishment from Aelthra. For having raised taxes so high with promises of building a granary for times of scarcity... and after so many years, there is still no progress to be seen. Only the Mayor's mansion, growing larger and larger.

  Anya frowned, not with anger, but with the expression of one correcting a poor interpretation of a sacred text. —Our Lady does not punish, little ones— she said, her voice soft but firm. —She only channels the Flow. If a river rises and overflows, it does not do so to destroy, but because the water cycle demands it. Such is the destiny of people. Our pains have causes in our own decisions, or in those of the ones who rule us. And in Her loving grace, those turbulent waters will be carried, sooner or later, back to the light, harmonious sound of the river... once the winter of injustice has passed— She fell silent, letting the metaphor, so dear to the faithful of the Sap, settle in the room.

  The atmosphere, tense for a moment, relaxed. Conversations branched out like small currents. Nyssa, like a parrot trapped in time, mechanically repeated the price fluctuations she had heard: —Grains, three pence more... blue dye, down one crown... ash soap smells burnt, bad, bad...— Other women shared more mundane anecdotes, bits of daily life that shone like gems in the grayness of their existence: the story of a boy who fell into the estuary chasing a green anurhy and came out covered in mud and laughter; the time Tessa, before her accident, tried to pet a nimora at the market and received a tail-flick so soft yet disdainful that it left her feeling insulted for an hour. They laughed briefly, and for an instant the dining hall was filled with the rare and precious warmth of camaraderie.

  Until Pira, the silent collector of dust and, apparently, of the deepest whispers, spoke again. Her voice, low but clear, cut through the murmurs.

  —I heard something else. In the main market not the one here in the west, but the big one, near Town Hall Square— She paused, ensuring she had everyone's full attention. —The niece of Grand Duke Valerius of Solendra... had come down to the market in Lumenburg.

  An incredulous silence fell over the table. Lumenburg. The name sounded like a world away, a place of cobbled streets and stone buildings, far from the dirt alleys of Terracanto.

  —A high-born noble? In a market? Impossible— grunted Kaela the tanner, her skepticism etched into every line of her young, tired face.

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  —It’s true— Tessa blurted out with a stifled giggle. —I heard it too, from a muleteer bringing hides. He said he saw her step out of a closed carriage, with an escort.

  —No, ladies, that isn't the worst part— Pira continued, a nearly morbid glint in her eyes. —She didn't go to the covered galleries, nor to the stalls of the merchants with royal licenses. She went straight to the free trade of fabrics and dyes. There, where the guilds have no control the free merchants' zone— She crossed her arms, savoring the impact. —And she didn't go to buy. Contrary to what you might think. She stepped down from her luxury carriage, stood before one of the humblest shops, and began to walk among the stalls. Looking. Touching the fabrics with her silk gloves— She shook her head as if she still couldn't believe it. —Rumors say that after she disparaged the quality of a vendor's cloth, the man... looked at her wrongly. He said nothing. He just looked at her. With that exhaustion and hatred that only those who have nothing can feel toward those who have everything.

  The dining hall filled with a collective sound of stifled shock, a whisper of fascinated horror. They all knew. It was a tacit pact, an unwritten law that is more powerful than any decree: if you see a noble, you bow your head. You lower your gaze. You make yourself small. You let them step on you if necessary. You do not look them in the eye. Never.

  Pira lowered her voice even further, until it was almost a whisper that forced them all to lean in. —She raised her hand in the air... and her guards did it. Instantly. They beheaded the vendor in front of everyone. His blood spilled over the cobblestones; they say it stained a roll of raw linen— She sighed; the tale had left her pale. —And now they have nicknamed her... the Crimson Duchess. She of the blood-stained hands.

  A shiver ran down the table. The Crimson Duchess. The title sounded like a warning; a horror story mothers would tell disobedient children.

  Anya sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to come from the very foundations of the refuge. Her face, usually so full of practical warmth, darkened. —The Flow of the powerful— she said, her voice unusually grave —is often not the serene cycle of the Sap, but a torrent of blood and whim. A runaway river that sweeps away the small. That is why our refuge here, however small and precarious it may be, must be a haven. A place where no look is a death sentence, where no word, however clumsy, costs a head.

  Selena had been listening, her cup of tea cold between her hands. The words floated around her, but a new sensation—oppressive and hot—had begun to grow in her chest as Pira spoke. It wasn't just horror at the act itself. It was something deeper, more visceral. The absolute, arbitrary injustice of power. The idea that a life—a man who sold cloth, perhaps with children, with dreams, with the same fear and hunger as the women at this table—could be extinguished by a bad gesture, by a look, by the whim of someone who would never know the weight of dust in their lungs or the taste of yesterday’s hard bread.

  It was a prison, but not the one of her strange body. It was a larger, invisible prison, made of iron hierarchies, of fear carved into the bones of the poor, of the resigned acceptance that some lives were worth less than the mud on the sole of a noble's boot. The man of the earth who still struggled within her—his memories erased but his sense of justice perhaps intact—rebelled. Selena's mind worked overtime, searching through the void of memories and the shadows of her absent education for some framework to understand, to rationalize. She found none. She found only pure, elemental loathing.

  And then, before she could stop it, before the thought even fully formed into coherent words, the emotion—that cold, desperate rage—found a way out. It tore the words from her throat with a force that made her tremble. Her fists, without her realizing it, had clenched so tightly that her knuckles were white against the wood of the table.

  —There is no flow— she said, and her voice was not the timid whisper of a newcomer, nor the measured tone of a merchant’s daughter. It was a strange voice, laden with bitterness and a certainty that came from deep within, from a place that was not entirely of this world. —There is no flow that permits, that justifies, the death of the innocent. There is no sacred cycle that says the blood of a vendor is worth less than the mood of a duchess— She looked up, and her green eyes, usually full of confusion or caution, now burned with a flaming fire. —Humans... we are all the same. The same blood runs in our veins, red and hot. The same fear, the same pain. It doesn’t matter the surname, nor the robe, nor the title. We all have the right to be respected for who we are. Not for what we have, or for the name we carry!

  The last word echoed in the absolute silence that had fallen over the dining hall. Selena was shaking, not from fear now, but from a pure, liberated rage that jolted her entire body. She had said aloud what no one at that table —perhaps in all of Terracanto— dared even to think clearly. She had broken another taboo, one more dangerous than the act of writing.