Sweat drips from the windows. I dig my cleaver between the haunch of the bird and its body, and with a sharp cleft, separate them. I pluck clots of blood and feather from my fur day and night. I am surrounded by trickling, the wet snap of bone, distant cries of livestock at the slaughter. The air is heavy with shit, blood and sulphur. Every part of me hates this place.

I was conceived amongst the boughs of flesh, brought into the world a naked pup on the cutting room floor. The fluid and blood of my birth intermingled with every other body dragged across those planks, an effluent, a stench which has always followed me. I played amongst the bleached bone-piles, carved them into darts and dolls. I have always lived here, but I will not die in this place. The one dignity you cannot strip from me is how I shall die.

Tseil was born in the slaughterhouses, the trade of the Kegarrh. Once low in the city's hierarchy, the invention of the flesh-battery placed the Kegarrh in a place of precarious power. But the work of the abattoir takes a great toil on the beastfolk who work there. Tseil is a young man intent on ending this misery, the way it has always worked: slaughter.