Sergeant Nash didn’t consider himself much of a city official.

Sure, he’d made Sergeant after serving for about 15 years with the city guard – a job that mainly entailed rounding up drunkards, beating thieves, and the occasional raid on a warehouse in the name of the Lord of the city – some of those warehouses occasionally contained actual contraband, rather than the wares of a poor merchant who got on the Lord’s bad side that day.

All of those jobs were, without exception, performed with as much numerical superiority as possible, making foundation for the common saying; “City Guard’s like cockroaches – for each one you see, there are 10 more behind the corner – and both show up where shit piles high”.

And yet, as a Sergeant of the Guard, and a Veteran, Nash had several duties – one of which was the processing of prisoner intake at the Guardhouse cells.

Thieves, unruly drunks who just didn’t listen, and the occasional streaker all lined the walls, conveniently shackled with just enough slack to go to the bathroom bucket at the far end of the cell. Of course, one of the prisoners – usually the one who pissed off Nash the most that week – would be emptying the buckets.

So when three of his men came back with a scrawny orphan with his head lulling from side to side, the same way you’d see someone who went unconscious quickly and abruptly, Nash knew he’d be busy with the fresh meat for the next half-hour.

Just long enough to interrupt his break.

Nash immediately hated the kid.

No one messed with HIS break , damn it.

But he had a solution for that little problem.

Nash fixed his expertly honed glare of bored annoyance at Grit - the older, bigger, and least annoying of his three flunkies.

“Out with it, what’d the little bastard do to earn a fist sammich?”

Chuckling, Bert – the youngest of the three and thus, automatically the most annoying – grabbed a fistful of the teen’s brown hair and lifted up his face.

“We caught the moron lifting fruit off of one of the traders on Market Street, decided to bolt. John got ‘im good though, ain’tcha John?” he said, tapping the third member of the troupe on the shoulder.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

John simply grunted affirmatively.

Nash liked John - he kept it simple.

“A thief you say? In our city? Not on my watch – probably some sort of vagrant who thought he’d rip off one of our own from their own hard labor. The Bright One frowns on these kind of things – but I recon we can help him, can’t we boys?” He asked them, his voice dripping with false concern.

Grit piped up – “Sure can boss, we got them scrolls after all!”

“That we do. Now where did I put those damn things...”

After a minute of shuffling, Nash found a scroll tied with a simple leather bind behind a pile of documents he meant to read after his break. Unfurling the Scroll of Indenture revealed a complex pattern that suddenly became readable in perfect Common write, as Nash directed his meager mana at the thing.

As he uttered the words of power, strings of sticky grey smoke wafted from the scroll, ensnaring the teen’s neck and binding it with chains of pollution.

Once done, the ritual left a faint band of discolored skin around the teen-turned-indentured servant, marking him as such.

“That’ll teach him to steal from our people – now toss him in the drunkard pit and let him rot until the Toad comes around.”

“Sure thing boss”, said Grit, who hoisted the teen on a shoulder, then descended into the holding cells of the Guardhouse.

“Good riddance – now where was I…” snorted Nash, digging back into his pile of documents, left abandoned thanks to the new arrival.

“Ah, there we go.”

The Sergeant pulled a small hide-bound booklet from the pile of documents – the lieutenant commanding this particular guard station had two hobbies after all; brown-nosing the Captain of the Guard and paperwork.

Digging out a stick of charcoal, Nash took care with jutting down the details of the latest intake at the bottom of the chart that was already half full.

Damn booklet was already half full and it was barely two months old.

The alchemical paper appeared to have sucked in the charcoal trail, binding it to the fibers; “Prisoner 11359 – theft – young adult – male – year 1407 – thridday of 7th month – indentured indefinitely”.

Nash jotted his signature - a simple scribble on top of his name – next to the record of intake.

Indefinite indenture was uncommon for theft, but as a Sergeant and a Veteran, Nash had a few privileges – one of which was the ability to make summary judgment on minor cases.

Sure, if the boy could muster the balls to do so, he could appeal to the lieutenant and rescind the sentence, but the man was just as likely to trade indenture for military service – which was basically a delayed execution thanks to the Undead Front.

It also didn’t help the boy’s case that every indenture gave a cut from the payment to the Lord’s estate towards the Guard station making the indenture. That same cut that was usually reserved towards maintenance on the Guard house, and bonuses for the hard working honest guardsmen, of course.

Nash finished scribbling in the record booklet, set it aside, and grabbed his forgotten sandwich.

“Good thing the Toad comes around every fourthday, or else we’d be stuck with the brat for a week!”