He left his mother’s house for the dusty street, or the thoroughfare that passed for the street. Way back when the Inner Circle elite had grown sick of the eyesore of humanity that built up on the city’s fringes, someone in charge had ordered stone houses and streets to be built, but no one had thought to add any more buildings as the population grew. When people ran out of housing space, they built their own, lean-to shacks that were little more than glorified tents, and houses like his mother’s, built from second hand building materials. The streets suffered the same degree of neglect. No one cleaned or maintained them. Whatever paving had ever been present had been covered in layers of yellow desert sand. Street sellers occupying the sides swept their own little square every day, heapin
