"You know, I beat up guys twice your size," Burke said, clutching his ribs. The bandages under his shirt made it impossible to take deep breaths, but that was intentional - the Butcher had broken four of his ribs, and he had been damn lucky that none of them had punctured his lung.

The boy opposite of him snorted. "Looks more like they beat the crap out of you."

"That knife belongs to me," Burke growled.

Pero grinned a toothy smile. "Finders keepers."

"Only if you plucked it from my dead body," Burke said without much heat. He still felt as if a herd of cattle had stampeded over him. Galen had stitched him up alright, and he managed to pour his teas into the gutter without any of the others realizing it; but he wasn't up to his game yet, and that was a shame, because they were standing in front of the gates of yet another shelter, and this time, Zana hadn't returned after five minutes. Chances were that these apes would finally take the gutter kids under their wings, which would be a relief, but at the same time, it meant that the time to get his knife back was running out.

"I can still pluck it from your dead body," Pero sneered. "You're no match for anyone right now, even Dadi could fight you. Pathetic." He leaned back and began to demonstratively clean his fingernails with Burke's knife.

"I knocked out the Butcher," Burke pointed out. "You come back to me when you done something like it, then we can talk."

Pero scoffed. "I'm not dumb enough to let myself get caught by Asar's goons. Anyone who lets that ox Tulko drag him into a cage deserves to lose his knife!"

Burke licked his lips. "I killed Tulko, too."

That got Pero's attention. He stopped abusing Burke's knife and squinted at him. "You did? How'd you pull that off?"

"Stabbed my fingers in his eyes." Burke unconsciously wiped his hand at his shirt, as if the goo was still sticking to them. "Got him suitably distracted to rip the knife from his belt and ram it through his heart."

"Neat," Pero said approvingly. "Why didn't you run away then?"

"I didn't fancy a bullet in my skull," Burke said dryly. He liked the little guy somehow, even if he didn't budge when it came to giving back the damn knife. Reminded him a bit of himself, at that age. Except that he didn't have a bunch of younger kids to care for then. Young Pete only had himself to worry about, and he'd had his hands full enough with that...

He forced his thoughts back to the more recent past. One advantage of being beaten to a pulp for the entertainment of the damn monkeys was that he didn't have to help with delousing those street rats. Zana and Al - and Galen, the poor bastard - had had their hands full with that, and afterwards, Zana had to scrutinize Galen's fur for the rest of the evening, because he'd insisted that he felt the buggers crawling all over him. She hadn't found anything, and concluded that it was just his nerves, but Galen had continued to scratch himself compulsively for the next two days. It would've been funny if it hadn't been so infectious.

"Good news!"

Burke flinched at the sudden interruption of his thoughts. Zana was standing at the other side of the tailboard, peeking inside.

"The shelter is willing to take you in - yes, all of you," she added to Pero. The last two shelters had been so full that they had only been willing to take some of the children, an option that Pero had vetoed.

"I'm afraid, though, that they don't allow weapons inside their premises," Zana added, and Burke was proud of his poker face as a pouting Pero slapped the knife into his hand.

Despite his defeat, the boy lingered for a moment after he had helped Zana to lift the rest of the children from the wagon. "I've been thinking," he began, then broke off with a sigh and stared at his feet.

"Yeah?" Burke said after a moment.

Pero kicked at a pebble. "Yeah. About joining the free humans. In the mountains." He gestured towards the gate of the shelter. "They're just gonna train us to be good servants in there. Good for the apes. But the apes are bastards." He glanced at Burke as if he wasn't sure if he'd get a cuff upside the head for that insolence.

Burke raked a hand through his hair and threw a quick glance to the head of the wagon, where Al and Galen were engrossed in a murmured conversation. No help from that front.

"Damn right, most apes are bastards," he agreed. No use denying it - the kid had survived the streets of Etissa, and had enough first-hand experience with the monkeys under his belt.

"But joining those mountain men won't do you any good," he added, and hated himself for it. "The ones we met were starving. Not sure if they'll make it over the winter, to be honest. It would be just like in Etissa, only with less garbage cans to raid."

Jesus, was he really telling the kid to put a slave collar around his own neck?

"If you really wanna join them, wait until spring," he said at last, not daring to look into Pero's eyes. "And use that time to get stronger, and to... to think about what you wanna do with that freedom. 'Cause it's nothing more than a nice idea if you don't put it to use, y'know?"

He cuffed Pero upside the head. "Now move - your gang's waiting for you. Bet it's all pretty scary for them in there."

Yeah, off you go, before I spout any more bullshit, he thought as he watched the boy trot towards the entrance. Let's just hope you forget everything I said before spring comes around.

Especially the stuff about freedom.

Zana had entered the shelter about twenty minutes ago, by Virdon's estimation, and hadn't come back yet, and by now, the silence between him and Galen felt suffocating - heavy with words that were crowding in his chest and throat, making it difficult to breathe.

But what could he say? Nothing of what was on his mind could cross his lips. The mere thought brought the heat back to his face, made his fingers twitch and his knees tremble. He couldn't... he just couldn't...

"I never went hunting with my father," Galen said suddenly. "I always felt sorry for the rabbits, and the... and the deer. But I ate them all the same."

Virdon didn't know what to say to that.

"I shot Asar," Galen continued, with a hint of awe in his voice. "I, I didn't kill him. But I shot him. And it was so... so easy." He shook his head. "I don't know if I like who I've become."

Silence settled once more between them. In the back of the wagon, Virdon could hear Burke debating with Pero.

"I had a high opinion of myself, once," Galen murmured. "And a correspondingly low opinion of my fellow apes. After what I witnessed in that distillery, I can't say my opinion about my fellow apes has improved." He cleared his throat and stared fixedly at Tala's croupe.

"But I hadn't appreciated before how quickly one can make a, a grave mistake," he added, even more quietly. "Even without wanting to, we... we can hurt the people around us deeply. Irrevocably. And no amount of regret will make them... how they were before. I'd thought that couldn't happen to me. That's why I was so furious after Zana lost her baby. I couldn't forgive you, even after Zana had forgiven you."

"So Ramor was my punishment then?"

The words had tumbled off Virdon's tongue before he could keep them in, before he could think twice about saying anything, think of something better to say, something more... noncommittal.

Galen turned his head to gape at him. "No! Mothers, no, never! Cesar, Alan... no, I, I was talking about myself, how I thought I was above making mistakes like that. Like your mistake. And I wasn't! I, I..."

He lowered his voice to a murmur again. "I gave you into the hands of an ape who hurt you. Who, uh, violated you. When it's my responsibility to take good care of you. That's... that's what I'd been talking about. I didn't do that to punish you, Alan. I made a terrible, terrible mistake. One that I can't make right again. If the Mothers wanted to teach me a lesson, I wish they wouldn't have used you for it. You didn't deserve that. Nobody does."

A mistake. A mistake had happened, and Virdon had gotten caught up in it, for two - or three? More? - days. Days and nights he'd never forget.

And now the words did force their way out, even though he didn't want to. "The worst thing..." His tongue felt thick and woolen in his mouth.

He tried again. "The worst thing is to think... to know... that children will be born from... from me. Children who..." He swallowed. "Who'll never know anything but servitude. My children." There was a tightness in his throat now that made it difficult to continue, a pressure behind his eyes. "And I'll never have a chance to make that right. I'll never know... and I'll never get to teach them... what it means to be a human. Not a slave. Not a... a beast of burden, or a pet, or a prestige object."

He drew a deep breath. "After losing my children back home, this feels like a cruel joke."

Galen put a hand on his arm; but before he could say anything, Zana rounded the wagon and smiled up to them. "They took all of them! I'm so relieved... for their sake, I mean," she added hastily. "It's a very nice shelter, they showed me everything. Help me up, Galen, dear."

Galen reached down to lend her his arm, and Virdon silently retreated into the wagon to cede the passenger seat to her.

To his surprise, Zana followed him into the wagon and put a hand on his shoulder. "Alan, dear," she said. "Do you remember what I said to you back at the inn, when we were waiting for Galen?"

He nodded, not sure where this was going.

Zana's eyes were piercing, but her voice was gentle. "Whenever you're ready." She held his gaze for another moment, then turned around and climbed back on the passenger's seat.

Galen glanced worriedly at him over his shoulder, then looked straight ahead and flicked the lines. Virdon slowly made his way to his bedroll. He didn't feel like sewing tool belts today.

"What was that about?"

Burke was playing with his knife, throwing it in the air and catching it at the hilt again. His eyes were riveted at the knife, but Virdon wasn't fooled.

"Nothing," he said tersely, and drew the blanket around his shoulders.

"Sure," Burke muttered, but he didn't probe. Burke had his own demons that he didn't want to share. Virdon had never really understood why his friend wouldn't talk about his nightmares. Not until now.

He listened to the rain drumming on the canopy above. It was a soothing sound in its monotony.

It was the loneliest sound of all.