'Take them from me.'
The thought came unbidden into my mind.
'Let them die in their sleep, peacefully, painlessly. Let them never wake up to know what I've done. Let me never see the disappointment in their eyes.'
Tears blurred my vision, but I kept running, faster, harder.
It wasn't that I didn't love them—no, it was because I did.
If they perished in the night, it would be mercy.
If I perished, it would be justice.
But I wasn't granted either.
I was still alive. Still breathing. Still damned.
I needed coins.
Even a handful would be enough—enough to lessen this crime, to buy back a morsel of the dignity I had sold. And so, I did what every desperate fool did when he had nothing left to offer.
I ran to the one place every beggar feared to tread.
Al-Zagyr.
It was the city's cancer, the rotting wound festering at the furthest eastern point, just at the city walls.
Only the lowest of the low lingered there, the filth who had nothing left to lose.
