Chapter Three

An Unbeknownst Calm

The principal was a portly man who glanced at each of them only twice before bending back over a thick ledger at his desk and proceeding with his work.

Michael, James and Carter sat twiddling their thumbs in his cramped office, doing their best to keep straight faces after the last witness had been dismissed.

The last half-hour had been filled with the testimonies of two dozen students all present in the lunch hall during the ‘incident’.

After the twentieth student in a row stated, “All I heard was the loud guy mumble something in bad taste. Must’ve gotten worked up and hurt himself,” the principal stopped inviting more students in.

The principal scribbled away in his book for some time when finally, Michael politely cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Sir? Are we free to leave?”

The man squinted up from his writings. He was a permanently exasperated kind of man, made up purely of frown lines and tired questions. “Twenty...” he said, shaking his head. “Twenty.”

Carter sat up straight, tidying his fine cloak. “Sir?”

The principal threw his pencil down and ran a hand through his receding hair. “By threat of death I couldn't get twenty students to do a set reading, so tell me, boys, how on Draendica you managed to orchestrate this little show without having the chance to speak to any of them?" He seemed sincere in his desperation.

Michael looked at the deeply tired nature of the man and went out on a limb. He knew, technically, they weren’t in the wrong, but admitting precisely what happened might jeopardise those who’d spoken blindly on their behalf. In reality he knew Dim-side kids simply hated racists and despite his highborn nature, they all liked Carter. “Sir? I imagine this has generated a great deal of paperwork for you, yes?”

Without looking, the headmaster placed his hand on a thick stack of parchment beside him and pushed it into view without breaking eye-contact. He started writing in his report. “That’s accurate.”

Michael nodded and leaned back in his chair. “So, how ‘bout this. Let’s say... there was a misunderstanding about the location of this fight?”

The principal stopped scribbling.

Michael narrowly contained his grin. “Maybe it happened just outside school boundaries instead. And those dutiful students who gave their reports of the event... let’s just say they were doing their civic duty and you, in case the guards decided to get involved, took down their statements, doing far more than you’re obligated to do. What say you about that?”

James and Carter glanced at one another then hesitantly to the headmaster.

The portly, tired man took a slow, deliberate breath and quietly closed the tome he’d been writing in. Without so much as glancing at them again, he said, “I believe the local guardhouse will be satisfied with the documentation I’ve recorded, gentlemen. Off to class.”

“Headmaster,” Michael bid him farewell, gesturing his friends to the door.

The three boys left the office quickly behind them and as soon as they fell out of earshot, Carter broke into a wide grin. “Sly dog.”

James chuckled quietly as they walked back into the main hallways, classes already bustling as they made their way toward Script. “You’ve got to teach me how you do that.”

“Do what?”

Carter rolled his eyes, practically skipping with relief.

James lightly checked the bruise on Michael’s cheekbone, already colouring between purple and yellow. “How you always know what to say.”

Michael shrugged with a small grin. “No one wants to do more work than they have to. Besides, Carter knows how to flirt, you know how to fight and I know how to talk. Doesn’t mean I won’t still go down on one knee for Miss Marlow, though...”

James cackled and Carter threw his arms around their shoulders. “How about we celebrate our victory instead of suffering that pastel-coloured goblin?”

James gave a strangled, “Please!”

Michael nodded and the three boys wasted no time escaping the school. They approached the gnarled iron gates under hot midday sun and strode through its widest gap in the bars. Cycles and cycles of students ditching class had bent them in such a way that the gate no longer actually opened, and ducking through had become its primary function.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

As they ambled down Burrow Street, a dusty, broken-stoned avenue, Carter asked quietly about James’ home life, glancing at the red bruising around his knuckles, unsure if it was related to the fight they’d been in earlier.

“They don’t do that anymore,” James said, lightly touching his skinned hands. “They’ve preferred the verbal sort for a while.”

Carter gritted his teeth and said, “My folks and I are going up to Ariaton to visit their friends for the week on Mynerday. You’re coming, right?”

James nodded, grateful for the opportunity. “We goin’ for the whole spell?”

Michael pretended he couldn’t hear them, idly feigning that he was lost in thought. This wasn’t a new occurrence. Every cresk they vanished for a spell or a la’ spell on some trip or other. Michael often wondered if they actually left Istol, or if Carter made up the excuse simply to be able to get James out of his house. Either way, Michael didn’t try to invite himself for fear of disrupting the idea or making James feel self-conscious.

They moved off the road and turned left onto River Place. The stacked apartments seemed to loom over them as they wandered in the autumn sun. Paint was peeling from the buildings and as many as half the windows were broken and boarded up. It was the same all across Dim-side.

The cobblestones beneath their feet were chalky and dull but Michael loved the way they rolled beneath the arches of his feet. Between the three of them, Michael was half-convinced they knew every piece of the city just by its smells and the refinery of the cobbles.

They moved past a collapsed housing block and kept their eyes down.

The unhoused folk within eyed them cautiously from the rubble, speaking quietly among themselves as they walked past.

Carter’s cloak fluttered behind him and he kept his head respectably low. A non-fatal mugging was a blessing somewhere like Dim-side. Murders were committed frequently and investigated only when they involved nobility. It was for this reason he’d left his well-worn but expensive cloak tied about his shoulders. A Mid-sider would’ve been shanked, stripped and left bleeding in the streets, but Bright-siders brought more trouble than they were worth, unless they were caught flicking gold Opems in the daylight then fair game was fair game.

They rounded another street corner on their right and a pair of market stalls wandered into view, run by two older merchant women.

As the boys approached, the rather squat tradeswoman with more gaps between her teeth than teeth themselves, shouted, “Boys! How on Enthall are ya’?”

Carter strode forward and flashed her a bright smile. “Better now, Almarie. How’s Andrew?”

James spoke in gentle tones with Nora, a taller, awfully thin woman with wiry, grey hair.

The boys haggled jokingly back and forward with them over sweets and pastries before overpaying all the same, despite their many protestations.

Michael stood behind a little as they bartered, looking out over the small forum. He watched other traders set up their stalls with different wares, trinkets and assorted knickknacks. He found his mind wandering when Almarie asked if he wanted anything and he idly placed two alley-coins on her stall and picked up a small pouch of chocolates.

“You okay, little one?” she asked, looking up at him from her stool.

Michael blinked and smiled. “’Course, ‘Marie. You guys have a good day alright? Don’t go confusing your Chips an’ Quarts,” he said teasingly, gesturing to the piles of each in front of her.

She scoffed in good humour and said, “Get back to class, smartarse.”

They said their farewells and the boys ambled back toward Marilon Heart Public School speaking idly about this and that.

As they went to go back through River Place, however, Carter stopped and shoved them back around the corner.

Michael frowned and peered around the corner to find two dozen or more Imperial guards flushing out the homeless from the collapsed housing block. Dressed almost completely in iron and steel with long dark cloaks, they were shrouded in the imperial colours, white, silver and blue. They forced the ragged people into the street and lined them up shoulder to shoulder, roughly shoving them into place.

James muttered, "What is it?"

Venom practically rolled of Michael's tongue as he said, "Iron Suits."

Many of them were openly wielding swords while others swung batons back and forth in boredom, seeming to enjoy the way the homeless would flinch.

“What on Draendica are those bastards doin’ Dim-side?” James asked in a panic.

Michael squinted against the light and muttered, “Looks like they’re searching the block for something.”

The guard captain, distinguishable only by the accenting on the breastplate and a face-guarded helmet as opposed to an open helm, strode out in front of the line-up. They walked slowly down the row looking each person over for a moment before moving on.

For the most part the unhoused folk were older, ranging from people in their fifties all the way up to their eighties, all tired-of-face and clad in stained rags. One stood out only slightly from the line-up, a shade too young to blend in.

The guard captain stopped at the younger woman, no older than the on-looking boys and glared for a long second. “Her.”

The surrounding guards seized her by the wrists and brought out a pair of shackles as she thrashed and shouted curses.

As they towed her down the street, she ripped one hand free and grabbed a baton from the holster of one of the Iron Suits. Before they could react she cracked the nearest in the face, sending them to the ground in a crumpled heap. Before she could make a second move, the others twisted her in a terrible position and chained her by the feet and hands.

The guard captain stared coldly as they bound and dragged her down the street, forcing a bag over her head. He looked over the group of trembling homeless and muttered in a low, passionless voice, “Concealing a rebel is a crime punishable by death.” He drew the crossbow slung over his back, aimed it lazily at the crowd and they screamed and darted back into the shadows of the collapsed building. He chuckled as they ran and fired a bolt into the shadows before turning and following his unit back up the street.

Michael trembled with rage and his friends hung their heads, muttering dark things beneath dark breaths.