A note, scribbled in haste from an elegant hand

Money is Hanging is different than here in our lovely Rune and costs are lower than in Fort Orinica

Penny - 1

Copper - 5

Silver - 20

Gold - 50

Crown Royal - if you see one, tell your father! These are for the Noble houses only and must be kept near court. Price is too high to buy anything but a title (with enough left to buy the kingdom afterwards)

A tavern meal should cost no more than a five copper, six with meat. Do not tip more than a copper, even if they ask for silver.

Only run down houses in bad neighborhoods are priced in silver. Do not rent. Buy in the upper levels, good houses there. Cost gold.

Be safe. Do not let them scam you!

If you see your father, give him my best

Love forever and onwards

- Mom

—

Mooni woke to a room that was loud.

An intake room. Pup Lily’s intake room to be precise.

She sighed in relief. It was cold comfort to wake up in a jail, slumped across the arm of a wooden bench, with her hands and feet bound together and again to a ring implanted in the wall above her head, but thieves steal comfort like everything else; wherever they can.

She peered out through her lashes. The Pup Lily intake room was empty of suspects save for her. That was not the only difference.

Intake was completed in the front room of the Pup Lily Jail, an expanse of seaweed colored tile floor that contained two rows of guard desks and chairs. A serviceable room; the carved wood grooved with wear and too heavy to be used as a weapon, the walls lined with benches, the little windows spotting around the perimeter of the high beamed ceiling.

Behind the desks, doors led into the offices of higher ranking guards, interrogation rooms and, then, on deeper into a dim hallway lined on either side with two long cells. One side was used as overflow storage.

Mooni had spent countless hours here, waiting for the always sweaty guard Larn to scribble down her details. Name, which he already knew long before the Court of Justice had given her a new one. Address, which she didn't have. And petty details. Then off to a cell, with straw on the floor, a wool blanket and a window that took in the breeze but kept out the rain.

Safe a place as any. Tooth Robert kept his distance - it was a Court sanctioned jail which cowled even the likes of him- and the cook made a decent seafood chowder.

There was also the trick bar in the cell they always used. The one she had worked on for a summer loosening. Her way of checking out when she was done with her vacation. Larn never seemed to mind.

The noise was coming from a huddle of guards, on the far side of the room. They stood arguing over the desk between them. One pointed a finger at her.

Mooni asked her body to move and soreness answered.

Changes brought new dangers. Mooni forced herself to sit up, turned on her thieving mind and begin to make mental tallies.

It too clean, too bright from freshly painted whitewash. New desks and chairs. The handles on the office doors gleamed with polish. There was a lack of sand strewn on the floor.

It was as if an immense hand had taken a cloth and wiped the old Pup Lily away. All this cost money. This Pup Lily stank of new gold. The question was why.

Pup Lily was a dock jail, low security with lax staff who drank at dock taverns in the evening, shoulder to shoulder with the people they released in the morning.

Moving up, on the wall, was the biggest difference of all.

A large portrait now hung over the wall of offices in an ornate frame. It depicted a man with tawny hair combed back and a hard jaw pushed forward. A worm of thought burrowed into Mooni’s mind.

He posed with one hand tucked into a red velvet greatcoat, studded with buttons and medals, shoulders capped in flouncy epaulettes. His white trousered leg stuck out to one side imperially onto a rock that looked much like a open mouthed face. His eyes bore down on the room in judgment. His mouth was set in a determined line.

Mooni shifted on the wooded bench, the manacle jangled against itself loud even as the guards argued.

A room of strangers and Larn no where to be found.

Mooni shifted her weight and let her long braid fall forward across her now sullied dress. She checked to make sure it was secure. Blood had run from her nose onto the front, staining the faded indigo a headache burgundy. She smoothed her hem over her scabbed knees.

The room hushed as a door from the office near them open from a forceful hand. Anger rolled out in the form of a man.

“Bring it.” He said to the closest guard.

He walked stilted in hard leather boots, tight laced to his knee over white breeches. A Fort Orinica style.

The guards splintered, shuffling amongst themselves until a decision was reached. The loser walked over to Mooni.

“Please.” He said in a lowered voice as he moved to undo the manacle that bound her to the wall. “I’ve family up in Red Fin so please.” The rest remained unsaid. Don’t cast your eye of misfortune on me.

“Who is this guy?” Mooni said.

“A Sergeant, up from the Fort. He got here about a week ago. Yells mostly.”

“A name?”

“Sergeant Turdell. Don't know his first name. Last person to ask him has been on mucking-the-outhouse duty for days.”

The chain came free from the wall and Mooni rose without assistance. She nodded to him and he stepped away.

“Where’s Larn?” she said, voice still low.

“Been moved. New guys comin in, old guys movin out. They even have a wizard now, believe it or not. Say if there’s magic trouble again he can put them down-” His voice trailed. “No offense intended, Mooni, nothing by it.”

He walked with her across the room to the interrogation door.

Mooni dipped her head in thanks as the guard opened the door. She didn’t look back to see if he made the sign of the sun over his head to protect himself or dipped it in greeting, bidding her well.

Sergeant Turdell was pacing the inside of the room. He held the stolen purse out as he commanded.

“Sit.”

Mooni slid into the chair intended for the accused, one of two chairs, facing each other across a metal table in an otherwise empty room.

——

Edwin was outside the door but they wouldn’t let him in.

“I was called for specifically to assist with intake.”

“Sorry Sir. Sergeant’s orders. No one to be admitted until he’s had a crack at her.” Said a guard. The vowels rolled around in his mouth before spilling out.

Edwin had not heard that soft Fort Orinica accent in years. It would have been nostalgic, comforting even, if he wasn’t being purposefully stalled.

“I have orders - “

“As does the Sergeant.”

Edwin tapped his staff on the floor twice, let the swirl of metals gleam at him. The guard flinched but didn’t move.

That was Fort Orinica for you, more afraid of disobeying an order from above than being melted into a puddle of goo, or whatever it is they thought wizards were capable of doing when angered. Edwin thought.

Doc Huxel came out from the hall that led to the cells with his bulky doctor bag.

“A patient?” He asked the room in general then focused to the door which no one was allowed to enter.

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“Sorry Sir.”

“Sorry? Why? Has she died?”

“No sir.”

“Well then, there is nothing to be sorry about. Out of the way, my boy, I’ll see to it. She’s beat up, I hear, and bleeding. Maybe concussed. That’s not like her.”

He was a head shorter, even without a hunch earned from years of bending over the injuries of others. His wiry white hair was kept long and braided back, then capped with a linen kerchief as all good doctors did. His eyes, pale and sharp, were magnified by the thick glass spectacles that perched on the end of a sun splotched nose.

The man guarding the door did not move.

Doc Huxel regarded Edwin then turned his attention to the problem with a parental glare.

“Not moving then?” Doc Huxel said.

“He won’t let us in.” Edwin said.

“Got orders.”

“Do you now?” Doc Huxel said. “From whom?”

“The Sergeant.”

“Been here barely a week and he runs this place now does he? I’ve been here thirty years. I am in charge of the health of all those who get brought in. There is a patient in there and you will let me to her.”

Doc Huxel set his bag down like a guillotine It was a sturdy bag, built for the use of generations, and based on the scuffs, it had already passed through a share of hands.

“You’re a wizard, I gather. What with the stick and all.”

Edwin affirmed he was.

“Can you, I don't know - he wiggled his fingers - magic him?”

“Unfortunately that’s not how it works. I can’t just make him do what I bid, not my spell set. An offensive spell could be used, of course, but that’s only for combat. And indoors like this, there would be building damage.”

Edwin paused meaningfully. The guard gulped.

He continued. “I do have a few spells that could remove him as an obstacle for sure, but, well, he wouldn't be a living person anymore. Not even person-shaped.”

“A shame.”

A bead of sweat betrayed the stoic expression of it’s bearer and slid down into the starched collar and down his spine.

This wizard could do it to. He’d seen a wizard once, at the castle, in the Fort. Sunny day and the wizard lifted their staff and made the entire court dance a jig until some passed out from the heat. Wizards. Never liked them after that. The guard thought.

“And you lot?” Doc Huxel turned his magnifying glass of displeasure on the guards behind him. “I’ll have to give you all a check up later. Seems your spines have disappeared over night.”

“Sir, that’s not fair. It’s orders you see.” They said together.

A voice raised to a high demand behind the door. A moment later the sound of a hand striking flesh. There was no cry, just silence that left its fingerprints on the room.

“Bah!”

“Enough!”

Edwin changed the grip on his staff. A string of words formed, cracking like a flag high in the wind. He must temper it, he thought, blunt the killing edge. The flag shifted to delicate lace curtains, wafting in the breeze from an open window.

His hand grew warm against his staff, the other he placed on Doc Huxel’s shoulder.

Edwin did not need to say the spell out loud.

The words were in his mind. In the part that wasn’t his. Stretching back across mountains and through the Great Forests, over the plains, flat and dead, over the Desert, with its humming heart. An unbroken link to a past where the words first sprang into existence and intertwined with flesh.

He did speak them though. A bouquet of words, held together with intention, presented all at once in his voice that rippled over itself.

A casual ear would hear a single sound.

It his simplest spell. Harmless. Defensive.

AROUND and OUT

And the man did both, at the same time, much to Edwin’s relief.

The man was pushed, out and away, into the center of the room, as swiftly as if he had never been standing there. His face was pale as his knees crumpled under him, mouth slack, mind reeling as it tried to comprehend the fundamental shift from one moment to the next. Red patches formed on his face where the magic had touched him.

Doc Huxel had a lifetime of moving through wrong moments to find the right one. He took his chance. Bag back in hand he opened the door and entered the room, Edwin at his shoulder, leaving the rest behind.

—

A breath before.

“This.” Sergeant Turdell dropped the stolen purse on the table. “Explain.”

The Fort Orinica accent did nothing to soften his tone.

“Lifted it, in Red Fin.” Mooni answered.

She sat with her hands under the table, legs still, face cast down. The picture of a beaten little thief, someone not worth shouting at. With her bruises, the effect was effortless.

“You admit your crimes.”

“I stole it, yes.”

“And the others?” He said, the words grinding like sand that eroded a mountains. Mooni wondered how he had any teeth left.

“I’ve committed no other crime” Today.

“Hands out. Now.”

Guilty. He wanted to see her guilt. Many people carried it, a sign to others of past Court judgments. A lost finger, or worse, an eye. The worst was the ears, the tongue, the feet. Thankfully, those were rare. Most of the time, for serious crimes, the person was marched to the gallows and that was that.

The older Saut dwellers had told Mooni of a time when punishment had been all fines and community service. The old Baron had changed that. He promised to clean up the town, little did everyone know he meant to bloody it.

Then a year ago, after the incident that gave Mooni her name, fire struck the manor. For all his wealth, he couldn’t pay off the flames and it had taken him and half the building. No one mourned.

Now, there wasn’t a tavern anywhere in Hanging where every patron had all their fingers. They all carried the message, dulled to normalcy from years of repetition. The new Baron continued the same work, some cousin, she’d heard muttered around the markets, a distance tie to the old Baron who had inherited the mantel.

Sergeant grunted in irritation and rose, his chair falling behind him. He made a grab for her hands. Her left hand caught the underside of the table as she resisted on reflex. He stood over her, across the table, as he pinned them down.

“Just as I thought.” He said as held her by the wrists.

He put his pinky against her missing one. His fingernail pressed into her scar. Mooni knew what he wanted to see. She let herself wince, down to her toes. She added a tremble for good measure.

“Now then - he retrieved his chair and sat back down - it will explain this.” He gestured to the purse again, just out of hands reach.

“I told you. I lifted it off a servant.”

“No. And you know how I know that’s a lie?”

He reached into the purse and withdrew the coins. All silvers and gold, the score of a lifetime if she had kept it.

I shouldn't have got caught. That money is enough to buy a house and a year of fancy dinners, or a ticket on a nice boat to take me south if it ever came to that. She thought.

Mooni imagined pushing Tooth Robert down the stairs. For a man that ran a gambling hall, bad luck seemed to follow him and anyone he touched. It should hurt his business so he could feel it, the bad luck he cast onto others, to even the great balance sheet of the world.

Sergeant reached his hand into the purse and produced the last coin. He placed it on the table between them.

Heavy and old, thicker than two gold pieces stacked together, bearing the face of a ruler Mooni didn’t recognize. A crown blazed on his head as if the sun rose behind him.

The three sat staring at each other.

It was a puzzle piece that didn’t fit the picture. Too far removed in time and importance for a Hanging interrogation room, no matter how newly refurbished. There was no coin that bore a resemblance, even the gold next to it receded into obscurity.

Mooni ticked through her history. Her memory settled on a story, told to her by an old friend, about a castle in the south, covered in banners and finery, with an army all in matching plated armor. Back to a time when Hanging was little more than a cliff, some stubborn nesting birds and a row of shoreline fishing huts.

The last king of the Dragon coast, who waged a war against the sky and lost.

Which meant this could only be - her brain stuttered to a halt as dread unfurled petals of poison in her throat.

“That is a crown royal.”

“An honest answer. And they told me that Dead Maw Mooni couldn’t tell lie from truth. It will be the highlight of my report.”

“No, not possible. That doesn't, I mean, those aren’t real. It’s some made up ceremonial custom from the south. A storyteller tale meant to draw a crowd.”

Mooni molded her fear into indignation. She raised her defense to meet him, hands drawn together. Her eyes burned, she told herself it was anger.

“This can’t be right.”

“What isn’t right is that you have the luxury of breath after what you pulled last year. I read the report. What you did, the magic you unleashed on this simple backwater town.”

“I don't know anything about magic.”

“How did you do it?”

“I would never do that. I didn't do what they said.”

“Got someone else to do it for you then, eh? Struck a deal with a monster you met up in those bone marshes? Sell you blood to buy an item of sorcery so you could have revenge on the town you hated?”

“Hanging has flaws but it doesn't deserve-”

“I’m going to make sure you hang, Dead Maw. This town doesn’t need scum like you bringing down trouble.” Sergeant Turdell said through his teeth.

“N-no.” Mooni croaked.

Mooni shook in her chair and hated herself for her weakness.

Turdell had worked himself into froth. He moved around the room, his arms swinging wildly as if his hands felt the hangman’s rope in them already. If she had been stronger she would have struck him, had she been faster she would have fled.

Of all the stories that she hugged around herself, she loved the ones of transformation most. To shed skin and fly on the winds, to drink from the ocean and become one of its creatures. Mooni wanted to be anywhere else but here, in this room, with his grinding words smoothing her to nothing but a thief and a liar.

A betrayer.

“The Baron was right to send me here, clean out the guts and make this a proper place of justice. I’m going to start with you, Dead Maw. Now tell me, again, where did you get this?”

“I don't know.” Mooni said. Her words fell into the dark at the edges of the room and sunk. Truth had failed, there were only lies left.

Sergeant Turdell raised his hand and slapped her.

Mooni let her head settle hard against the metal table and thought of home.

—

She was younger, not much by years, but her heart had yet to be sundered and she wore her worry light as a summer jacket.

Mooni waded through the brackish pools left from the ocean that spilled into Stink Marsh. A name given out of love by those who paddled little boats across it’s water at high tide, and explored the sea caves at low tide.

Water, warm against her ankles from the sun. Her skirt hem was damp and clung to her legs as she explored.

Movement in a pool caught her eye. She reached down and when she drew back, in her hands, she held living sunshine. Fragile and indomitable.

She sung as she carried it, back to its home in the waves, where it would live without fear.

—

Edwin looked from the bruised girl to the Sergeant and back again. He was very still. His staff hummed in his hand. It knew what it wanted, he might even agree, but there were rules and he would use them.

Doc Huxel placed a gentle hand on her back and sat his great bag on the table, separating them.

“My patient needs treatment, if you would be so kind.”

“I am not finished here.”

Edwin stepped beside him.

“Yes. You are.”

Sergeant regarded them with the same respect a gardener holds for an ant colony found living amongst his rolling vines of squash.

“The Baron will hear of this.”

“Do what you must, I’ll the same.” Said the Doc.

“Send my compliments. And while you’re at it, the window in my office is stuck open. Ask him to fix that too will you?” Said Edwin, leaning onto his staff.

Once the Sergeant was out of the room, only then did Doc Huxel kneel to see her face. He wiped it with a cloth, his brow creased at the fresh blood from her lip.

“I know you don’t like it,” he murmured to her. “But we need to patch you quickly. The tonic isn’t addictive, not in small doses. It’s not harmful to take a little.”

Mooni nodded her head and groaned.

“Haste, yes.” Doc Huxel rose and turned to Edwin. “We will use your office. Come, help me with her arms.”

The two worked on either side of her to pull her from the room, down the hall to his office.

—

A few days from that moment, with bruises receded and Hanging behind her, Mooni let her hand fall into the green-blue waters of the ocean.

The boat skimmed close enough to touch as she laid her body along the sunny wooden deck. Her fingertips relaxed along the surface, feeling the cold and the warmth together. Wind pulled the sails towards their destination.

She was alone on the deck. A rarity with eight people on vessel built to sleep four. In the quiet only an expanse of open space can give, she let herself sing again.