Michael

Michael inspected the enemy augmenter as Eydis approached him slowly. He had talked very confidently with the man to try to get him to give up but in truth, he was concerned about the fight. The previous knight had been bested and Yon looked like he didn't take much damage himself except for a couple of swallow cuts. His lack of a visible weapon still confused Michael, so he asked Geron, "Where is his weapon?"

Geron was seemingly dragged out of his thoughts by the question and blinked a couple of times to refocus, then he explained, "That man is a brawler, a kind of augmenter that doesn't fight with weapons but with their body. It is common with strong augmenters born in poor parts of society as they can't afford weapons that can withstand their strength. Once they earn money with their power, most won't bother to learn a weapon and just add brass knuckles and arm guards to better fight against armed opponents."

Michael couldn't see any brass knuckles on the man, but he had the arm guards. "Will Eydis win?" Geron didn't take his eyes off the two adversaries, when he answered, "I don't know, she is strong but Brawlers are difficult to fight against." Michael nodded and turned his attention back to the fight.

Eydis stood still for a moment before she dashed at the man, both of her weapons in hand. She had still 5 meters between them when Yon smiled and said, "Let's play, little girl." The grin was instantly wiped from his face as Eydis flung her axe at him in full sprint.

He gritted his teeth and ducked to the side, dodging the missile but losing his balance. Eydis took advantage of that and swung her sword at his shoulder, trying to sever or at least injure his arm. Yon moved his arm to block the sword, Eydis still moving toward him with her momentum, and swung his right fist at her face.

"She needs to keep her advantage of reach, why is she getting so close," Geron growled while this exchange took place.

With the fist approaching her face, threatening a rather abrupt end of the fight, Eydis yanked her head to the left avoiding the attack and dropped her sword. Her hands moved with inhuman speed and suddenly Yon's right arm was in her grasp. With a fluent move, she turned a little and flung the small man over her shoulder, crashing him into the ground hard.

Michael could hear him gasp as he impacted into the dirt. Geron said baffled, "Is she a brawler?"

Eydis followed up the throw with a kick in the direction of Yon's head, but the man rolled out of reach fast enough to avoid it. He jumped back on his feet, but it cost him enough time that Eydis was upon him again punching at his face again and again, Yon only barely being able to block much less regain his balance. He tried to counter-attack and managed to score a hit on Eydis's arm, but she ignored it and kept attacking.

Michael marveled at her aggressive fighting style. He had seen it before in the training ring when she beat up the young knights, but she was not holding back in this fight at all.

Yon was on the defense until he inevitably stumbled over one of the injured and fell. This time Eydis was not recovering from a move and jumped on him before he even reached the ground. His head bounced up from the impact and was met with a fist slamming it back down. Dazed, Yon tried to get his hands up, but Eydis had pinned them with her knees.

She pummeled him for a good twenty seconds until he finally lost consciousness, displaying the hardiness of an augmenter. She rose from her defeated enemy and scoffed as she turned toward her stunned onlookers.

"Damn," Geron said. Michael was similarly flashed but where it was more of a feeling of pity for her victim from Geron, Michael was simply impressed by how efficiently she had beaten him. He shook off his thoughts and ordered the watchmen to advance into the house. Some gathered the wounded and dead, while screams could be heard from inside the house as the watchmen broke down doors and chased the inhabitants.

Michael stepped over to Eydis, mostly to get out of the way of the working watchmen, and said, "That was quite impressive." She looked at him with a satisfied smile and signed, "Quite refreshing as well, but it would have been more interesting if he wasn't tired and low on mana already."

"Why did he fight then?" Michael frowned as Eydis shrugged. "Where did you learn to fight like that, without weapons I mean?"

She wiped her bloodied knuckles with on her sleeve until Michael gave her a handkerchief, which she gratefully took. "There weren't any girls close to my age that wanted to learn to fight in my village so I had to fight with the boys, and they didn't pull their punches," she finally explained after she had cleaned her hands and could sign again.

"What did she say," Geron asked, Michael had suggested that he should also learn the sign language but he hadn't shown much interest in it so he had given up on that for now. He relayed her answer to the knight, and he nodded. "It was a good tactic in the end. Most brawlers are used to fight against armed opponents where the brawler wins once he gets close. No knight worth his salt would ever give up his reach advantage to slug it out in hand-to-hand combat because they will always have less experience in it. So, I am pretty sure he didn't even know what hit him."

Michael smiled. Geron normally had a cold attitude towards the barbarian girl, not paying her much mind, and Michael was happy to hear the respect in his voice.

With their work done here, they returned to the barracks to get an update on how the whole operation had panned out. The walk back to the barracks was long, it took nearly half an hour, and when they got there, they were greeted by a pair of knights stationed at the gate. They were not part of the four knights that Geron had recruited.

Michael and his companions entered the building where they were met by knight commander Godfrey Pyke standing in the center of the garrison yard next to Commander Johnson. They were looking at a map of the city rolled out on the table that had been placed there and it looked like Commander Johnson was explaining what was happening in town.

When Michael entered the open space, Commander Godfrey raised his head, his expression one of pure ice. Michael couldn't resist the urge to try to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. With a voice that mirrored his facial expression the giant of a man spoke, "Lord Michael, we got your message, and the individuals in question have been either arrested or called in for questioning." Even though the whole sentence was positive he could feel a silent irritation hanging onto every word.

"I am very grateful for your help, Sir," Michael said quietly. Commander Johnson looked at him with pity but did nothing to interject in the conversation.

"Your father has sent me here to find out exactly what is going on in his town and bring you both back to him to explain your actions after it is somewhat concluded." Michael wanted to run away, to hide, it was as if the anger of the man and the prospect of his father's possible wrath had chased away any maturity and personality change, he had experienced in the last one and a half years and left behind only the scared boy.

He breathed in deeply, this is not you anymore, he centered himself and fixed his posture. With as much respect as possible in his voice, he answered, "Of course, Sir. I will carry the consequences of my action whatever they might be."

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- A couple of hours later in the audience hall of the Castle of Reen -

The audience hall was in chaos, with nobles yelling at prominent citizens, and knights arguing with each other, in the middle of it were Michael and Commander Johnson, both silent as a grave. The highchair of Lord Rowan was empty and none of the council had arrived yet.

Michael sighed, this situation was exactly why he had made his move in secrecy, no one could agree, and, in the end, someone would have spilled the beans prematurely. It was frustrating hearing them argue about the damage to the town's image and the economy when most of them had never seen the poor parts of town in person, much less the fear in the eyes of its inhabitants.

"This will have consequences!" One noble yelled at a trader, who replied with a heavy accent, "Ye, it will, you pompous arsehole. We will see how yer like it when you can't get yer fancy dresses anymore!"

Michael had lost track of how they even got to this point from the current situation, but he had already heard that the nobility and merchants went for each other's throats at any possible moment.

The door behind the podium opened and through came the council headed by Viscount Sygnus Telp followed by Lord Rowan. Michael tried to discern his father's feelings from his face, but it was a mask of neutrality right now. The people present stopped their fighting when Sir Godfrey pounded his sheathed sword on the ground and turned toward their lord.

He sat on the highchair for a minute in silence until he let his gaze wander over his subjects and said with a calm and collected voice, "This morning, shortly after sunrise, the town watch conducted a series of raids on targets connected with a large bribery ring in town. This happened on my orders and was organized by Commander Johnson with my son Michael as representative of the house. The operation is currently still ongoing but mostly in the clean-up phase. Multiple individuals have been arrested in connection to this, most importantly the head of the ring, Fredrick Lokenson, best known as the owner of the Red Lady, has been arrested. The trial of those involved will commence in the next couple of days and will be held publicly. Questions?"

Michael was stunned, he had expected to be publicly questioned and reprimanded or something like that, but he never thought his father would simply take the responsibility for the whole thing without so much of a word exchanged between them.

A merchant stepped forward and bowed before Lord Rowan before stating his question, "The market was closed the whole day and some of my wares have been damaged by the watch while searching my wagon, will we be compensated for damages and missed trading opportunities?"

"You will be compensated for property damaged by the operation but there won't be any for lost trading opportunities."

"Milord!" A noble this time, Michael recognized him as the corpulent man who had protested loudly in the Red Lady, "How will you justify the actions of your watchmen against the nobles of your realm? I was brutally pushed to the ground and searched as if I were some commoner rat!"

Lord Rowan's eyes narrowed as the man spoke, but Michael could hear multiple supporting voices out of the nobility. "If you hadn't been at the brothel, you wouldn't have had any problems, would you?" A couple of chuckles went through the crowd as the noble got red, likely because of anger and not embarrassment though.

"I cannot accept my honor being trampled like this, I demand the watch to officially apologize," the man said with a raised voice but not yelling.

"I would suggest you be more careful in the future with your choices then," Lord Rowan growled and cut off any further complaint. "I forgot to mention something, it had slipped my mind." He held out his hand and a servant brought him the red bribe ledger. He held it up for everyone to see and said, "The most important evidence we have is this complete ledger of everyone that Fredrick ever bribed, for safety reasons concerning this important piece of evidence it will not be exposed to the public but kept save unless it is needed."

A ripple went through the audience. The message was clear even if it wasn't directly spoken, "Accept what happened or we will persecute every merchant, noble, and knight that is in here." Even though the number of high-class people in the book was low, no one knew how many were in there except those who had read it, and they wouldn't want to risk the social and economic backlash of an extensive persecution. With the threat hanging over their heads, the meeting was very short, with just a couple of questions being asked. At the end of the meeting, Lord Rowan called on Michael to follow him into his study. Michael sat down while his father stood in front of his sword on the wall, his back turned toward Michael.

"You did good work," he said without turning around. "Tha...", Michael started, he was stopped in his tracks as his father turned around his expression hard and anger twinkling in his eyes. "But that doesn't excuse what you have done. You hid your intentions from me to get my support, you overstepped your authority by taking the savage out of her cell and you brought chaos into my town, all without even thinking of consulting with me." He got louder and louder but always stopped one step short of yelling. "You brought danger upon yourself and could have destabilized the whole town if not the region if your operation had failed and the nobles intervened. What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? Didn't you say you wanted to work for the benefit of the lord and the realm? This looks more like trying to gain personal glory to me."

He looked at Michael with fire in his eyes. Michael could hear his heart beating in his chest, he felt hot and a weird pressure on his whole body, he wanted to say something, but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn't hold eye contact with his father and adverted his gaze.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself? Where is the confidence that you needed to pull something like this? I don't understand it, why would you not come to me first? Explain it to me!" Father sounded confused by this point, his questions not only out of anger but out of a real desire to understand what went through his son's head.

This was the moment Michael needed to lay out everything and hope his father understood his reasoning, but his voice didn't obey him, and his eyes started to get wet. Lord Rowan sighed and fell into his chair. He rubbed the flanks of his nose up to his eyes and said, "Take your time, I will wait."

A minute passed as Michael breathed slowly, trying to regain his composure, and then he said with a shaky voice, "I didn't do it for myself, I did it because of the same reason you said. I thought that if I told you, you would have to talk it through with the nobles and that they would attempt to intervene. With me doing it without notice they had no time to react and now have to just deal with it. I also never planned on going for any noble or other prominent person, leaving you the decision, while I cleaned up the cause of the problem. I just wanted the people to not have that look of fear in their eyes anymore, to not see the children of a grieving smith fall into despair. Have you seen them, Father? The look of panic that the people in the lower town have when the watch approaches?" His voice broke with the last sentence, but he forced it to continue, nonetheless.

His father's expression softened as Michael spoke, but he didn't interrupt him.

"I wanted to solve a problem without creating a new one and this seemed like the best idea for me. I will admit that I was concerned that you would forbid me from going through with it or take the task away from me. You have believed in and supported me since I woke up and I wanted to show you that I am useful. I did everything possible to prevent anyone from finding out beforehand. I am sorry that I hid it from you and that I overstepped my bounds. Eydis was extremely useful, she helped us identify another hideout and beat an enemy augmenter that had taken out one of the knights."

Michael gasped a little as he had spoken without stopping to breathe. His father sighed and shook his head, "The worst thing a councilor or retainer can do is leave his lord in the dark. If anyone had asked me what was going on I would have had nothing to say. If I had a better solution to the problem, I would have never had the chance to voice it. And most importantly have you asked yourself what would have happened if I had known about the bribery ring and a long-term plan in place?"

Michael froze while looking at his father, he had not, and the thought had not even occurred to him. He continued, "What if there was someone behind Fredrick, pulling the strings and now I lost any chance of catching them? You were lucky this time but if you pull something like this in a war, many lives could be lost, your siblings, me, or the whole kingdom. Don't ever leave me in the dark about something like this again, do you understand me?"

Michael nodded, tears welling in his eyes again, he messed up, in his arrogance of being smarter and more mature than his peers, beating the twins at their own game, and starting to turn around the opinions of many. How could he have been so dumb? His father trusted him, and he could have ruined everything. Rammed a knife right in the back of all his plans because he thought he knew better. He was dragged out of his sinister thoughts when his father knelt in front of him and said, "I am glad you are alright and I am proud of what you have accomplished, it is a great service to the people and to me. Just do what you do best, learn from it, and let me guide you the next time you do something dangerous like this, okay?"

Michael had never heard his father speak so softly before and he finally broke down crying and threw himself at his father who embraced him with strong arms. He whispered with a joking tone, "This stays between us, I have a reputation to uphold."

Michael chuckled between sobs.