Chapter 4
The grimy wall felt like the cold, hard truth of the world holding them up. There was no lower to sink. The three of them sat in a silence so complete it seemed to swallow the distant sounds of the market. Davins stared at his dirty, worn-out shoes. Mavins clenched and unclenched his fists, the strength in them feeling useless. Maurice leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes closed as if he could calculate a solution from the darkness behind his eyelids.
The shame was a physical weight, heavier than any sack of grain. They had been insulted by a cheat like Sam and a miser like Mr. Abudu, and the worst part was that, in their moment of deepest desperation, they had found themselves wanting. They weren't even capable rebels; they were failed ones.
"What is left?" Maurice finally whispered, giving voice to the question haunting them all.
Davins, the dreamer, lifted his head. His eyes, usually full of schemes, were clear for the first time. They were stripped of illusion.
"This," he said, his voice rough but firm. "This is what's left." He gestured to the three of them, sitting in the filth of the alley. "We have been trying to get things from the world. A job from a foreman. Charity from a merchant. A handout from a thief. We have been begging, in one way or another."
He pushed himself to his feet, a new, grim determination squaring his shoulders.
"We have been looking for someone to give us something. But no one will. So we stop asking."
Mavins looked up, confused. "So we just lie down and die?"
"No," Davins said, a spark finally returning to his gaze. "We stop looking for what we can get. We start looking for what we can make."
Maurice opened his eyes, intrigued. "Make with what? We have nothing."
"We have us," Davins stated, the idea solidifying as he spoke. "Mavins, you have strength. Maurice, you have a mind for numbers. I... I can talk to people. We've been selling our strength in pieces for coins. But what if we put all our pieces together and build something that is ours?"
The idea hung in the air, fragile but tangible.
"What?" Mavins asked, his frustration ebbing into curiosity.
"Remember the old well in the village?" Davins said. "The one that is collapsed? The women have to walk two miles to the river. What if we cleared it? We wouldn't ask for payment first. We would go to the village elders and say, 'We will clear the well and make it usable. If we succeed, you pay us what you think our work is worth. If we fail, you owe us nothing.'"
Maurice sat up straight, the thinker's engine whirring to life. "It's a risk. But it's a calculated one. Our only cost is our labor, which we are not selling to anyone else anyway."
"And if they say yes," Mavins added, a slow smile spreading across his face, "I know I can move those stones."
For the first time that day, the hollow emptiness in their stomachs was joined by something else—a flicker of purpose. It wasn't food, but it was fuel. They had been defeated as beggars and failed as thieves. But they had not yet tried to be builders.
Pushing themselves off the grimy wall, they walked out of the alley. They didn't look back at Mr. Abudu's shop. Their eyes were fixed ahead, on the long, dusty road that led away from the town, toward a problem they could solve with their own hands, their own minds, and their unbreakable partnership. They had nothing to lose, and for the first time, that felt like a strength.