18

After Mick left the meeting room and exited the station by the yard and headed out onto the street, he bumped into Sergeant Nichols, who was just leaving after his shift. Kneeling down, Nichols was unlocking the chain from his bicycle parked out front. He waved at Mick, who wasn’t much in the mood for talking.

“Oh. Won’t ask how it went, then,” said Nichols.

There was one thing in the world Mick didn’t want to be, and that was a self-pitying guy. Not to say he wasn’t allowed to feel disappointment – he’d worked hard for this. But he just didn’t see the use for wallowing. No, all he wanted right now was to get the commuter cart home, see Ma, and then go for a beer with Lee, Spruce, and Nell and spend a pleasant evening insulting Full Striding.

“Let’s just say Inspector Longwaite and I won’t be getting to know each other.”

“You know,” said Nichols, “I failed the exam first time. I was nineteen back then. Could barely grow a beard. Two years dragged like a ball of iron on a chain, but here’s the thing: time’s gonna pass regardless. Come back here in a couple of years, and see how you get on. Maybe I’ll even be chief inspector by then, eh? I’ll put a word in for you.”

It was easier to wait a couple of years when you were nineteen, Mick thought. When you had all the time in the world, and things like middle age and getting old were just mirages shimmering on the horizon.

Mick was on the wrong end of the seesaw. If he waited two years and failed again, then he’d be a fella in his forties, still no class to his name. Nothing wrong with not earning tokens, of course. Plenty of people didn’t. But he had told himself he wanted it, that was the thing. The things you reached for, the prizes you set your mind on getting, those were the ones that hurt when they collapsed. Turned out, Mick had built his ambitions on quicksand.

Oh, this wasn’t good. He was getting dangerously close to wallowing, and Mulroons didn’t wallow. Remember Flo Anderson, he reminded himself. She was testament to the fact it didn’t matter even a jot how gray your hair was when you started something. Just that you started. That perked him up a little.

Cheer up, head back to ‘hampton, have a beer. That’s what I’ll do. Figure things out in the morning.

Lill caught up to him just as he was cutting through Saxon Square to get to the commuter station. She was holding a black box made from felt in her hand. Her blank sleuth class tokens would be inside it, no doubt. Reaching Mick, she stuffed the box in her pocket. Wasting no time, she got right into it.

“Look, let’s go have a word with my mum,” she said. “I’m not saying there’s been a mix up, but if there has been, she can tell us.”

“Maybe it’s time to stop grasping at straws.”

“Just five minutes, that’s all,” said Lill. “Come speak to Mum. Even if there’s no mistake, she might be able to recommend something. I don’t know, maybe there’s another training program somewhere, or a way you won’t have to wait two years. You know bureaucracy – there’s a million ways around it if you just know how. Speak to her for a few minutes. What can it hurt?”

Mick glanced at his watch. It was cutting it fine for the commuter cart. It used to be that a cart would run four times per day from Sunhampton to Striding, but like with everything, budget cuts had forced a rethink. Nowadays, the weekday carts were planned around people commuting here for work. During the run up to Yulthor, when the shopping season was at its peak, they put on an extra evening cart, but that was a while away. If he missed this next cart, he was going to have to stay in Striding one whole extra night.

This little chat will cost me forty gold at the Hand and Cuff. Not to mention I’ll have to have dinner. Throw another twenty in for that.

“Sorry. I ‘preciate you trying, but you’ve got to know when to stop mending the cart and just get a new one.”

“You’re really going to just go?” said Lill.

He couldn’t help but think that Lill was trying to assuage her own guilt just a little. Maybe because she knew she was getting on the program no matter what. A day earlier, that would really have annoyed him, but then he’d made the mistake of getting to know her. She was nice, she had brains to spare, and if there was something about Striding guard regulations she didn’t know, then the regulators didn’t know either. It wasn’t her fault her Ma worked here, was it? By assuming she got on the program through her connections, Mick was doing her a disservice.

He’d had his fill of the city, no doubting that. He was sick of its big streets and the number of people crowding them. Sunhampton was calling to him. But given that he didn’t plan on coming back here for a while, ought he not at least speak to Lill’s mother?

“All right,” he said.

Lill put her arm around his shoulder and guided him back toward the guard station. “That’s the spirit!”

Inspector Brenda Glass was in her office on the third floor, sitting behind her desk. When Lill guided him there and he read the name on the door, he thought there must be a mistake. Glass was Lill’s ma? Wasn’t Lill’s surname Gill?

Then again, mistaking your own mother’s identity was hardly the kind of slip up you expect a person to make. Clearly Lill knew who her own mother was. But what was with the different surnames? And didn’t Lill live in Lundy? There was no way Glass commuted all the way here from Lundy every day.

It seemed pointless, but he nevertheless tried to do some deducing. The different surname thing was explainable. Families didn’t come in a one-size-fits-all package. Maybe she was Lill’s step mother. Maybe Lill’s dad’s surname was Gill, her mother’s maiden name was Glass. Divorce was hardly unheard of. Perhaps Lill did live in Lundy, while Brenda Glass lived here in Striding. See, he told himself. That wasn’t so difficult to work out. Most things were simple once you peeled back the layers.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Besides, surnames and towns meant nothing. What was important here was that Lill’s mother was the head of the damned station. He reckoned he ought to be annoyed with her. She wasn’t just one of the recruits who’d been assured a place on the program – she was the worst of the lot. Her mother was the one who decided everything!

Then again, what right did he have to be angry? He didn’t know her. They’d shared a cod and fried potatoes, and she’d saved him a seat in the examination room. That was the extent of it. Mick didn’t like being angry at the best of times, especially not with folks he’d never see again and who owed him nothing.

No, he was done being irritated. Lill was a nice lady, clearly a capable would-be sleuth. Whether her mother was the chief inspector or one of the saints themselves, it didn’t matter. She’d gotten on the program, and she deserved it.

“Lillian,” said Brenda Glass, clearly surprised to see her daughter in her office, and even more surprised that Mick was with her. “Mr. Mulroon.”

Lill took a seat in front of her mother’s desk. “My client would like to chat about his examination results.”

“Your client…” Glass gave a long, deep sigh. “Lillian, I don’t have time for this.”

“We just wondered if maybe there’d been a mistake, Mother. That’s all. Couldn’t you just check?”

Inspector Glass eyed Mick as if questioning whether he wanted to back up Lill’s statement. Truth was, now that they were in Glass’s office, the whole thing felt silly.

He rose from his chair. “I need to be heading back. Might just make the commuter cart, if I run.”

Rather than just accepting his goodbyes and ridding herself of the interruption, Glass surprised Mick by saying, “I know how this looks, Mr. Mulroon. I want you to know that every candidate was marked fairly.”

“I’m sure they were.”

“My Questioning skill tree is master-ranked, Mr. Mulroon. Do you really not think I can detect sarcasm when I hear it?”

Mick was caught between getting into it right here, or just heading back home. His stubborn, argumentative side won out.

“It looks mighty suspicious that your own daughter is in the group that you were assessing. That’s just a fact. I happen to think Lill got in on merit, but you can see how it looks.”

Lill didn’t say anything to this, but a glance at her was enough for Mick to register a look of hurt. He inwardly winced, knowing some things were best left unsaid.

“I didn’t even so much as glance at Ms. Gill’s examination results. Inspector Kenwright handled her marking to avoid such a conflict.”

“What about everyone else? What about the lad who couldn’t even finish a lap around the track? Ben…Ben something. You’re telling me that everyone out there got into the program on merit?”

“This is beginning to sound like sour grapes, Mr. Mulroon, and the only time I like sour grapes is in a good chutney. I can sympathize with your disappointment, but this wasn’t a fix. There’s no conspiracy here. Full Striding hires the best for its sleuth training program, and the inspectors and I decide who meets this criteria fairly.”

“Some of the folks in that room were-”

“Mr. Mulroon,” said Glass, leaning forward. Authority projected out of her, more so than before. He wondered if she was using some kind of skill tree ability. More and more, this situation was beginning to take the feel of an interrogation room, with Glass at one side of the desk and him at another.

She continued, “Laying the blame at nepotism’s door is an easy way to avoid personal responsibility. Your scores weren’t bad. Not at all. But as I said, we hire only the best candidates.”

“You hire half of every intake group. I never went to college, but by definition, half of a group can’t all be the best.”

“Depends on your definition of best,” said Lill. “If you take best to mean ‘the better half’ of a group, then…”

“Well, yeah. I’ll grant you that,” replied Mick.

Inspector Glass said, “You’re throwing stones at the moon, Mick. I sympathize with you, but take a few days to reflect on your own performance and I promise you’ll feel differently.”

She half got him doubting himself now. Could there be something to it? When his name hadn’t been called, he had instantly dismissed the idea that his own performance might be responsible. Maybe Glass was right; it was much easier to blame an unfair system than yourself.

Then again, systems were unfair. Nobody in Easterly could deny that. It was just a fact of things. It wasn’t like he was spouting wild theories here. He wasn’t claiming to have seen werewolves in Full Moon forest, or hinting that Striding’s mayor was a lizard person.

Something in Glass’s expression stuck out to him then. He couldn’t pinpoint it. Not exactly. Her eyes, perhaps. He thought maybe he could read something in them, some kind of hesitancy.

That was all he needed in order to decide to take a risk. “I want my scores to be reviewed. There must be some kind of examination review board, no? I want mine rechecked and compared to the rest of the greeners.”

Glass said nothing, just looked down at her desk and tapped her pen against it. Lifting her head, she glanced at the door and then at Mick. “You were in the top half of the group. Top third, actually.”

“Then I was right. This place is as crooked as a Perentee cobble.”

Glass gave a sigh that sounded to Mick like some internal dam had burst open. “The fact is, Mr. Mulroon, we barely have the budget to buy new notepads. Every single recruit we accept into the sleuth program must have an inspector assigned to them as a mentor, and you can only imagine how much that costs. Every hour an inspector spends training a recruit is an hour they aren’t doing their actual work. Then we must factor in the cost of getting skill tree tokens made…”

“The folks whose parents offer a donation, then. Take it they got accepted?”

“Not all of them,” said Glass. “Before you get any ideas, it’s in our guard charter that we can recruit this way. There’s a copy in the archive room. If you insist on taking this further, I’ll even issue you a visitor’s pass so you can read our regulations yourself.”

“Why are you telling me this, if it’s all above board and there’s nothing I can do?”

“I know this must stick in your craw, but-”

“What’s a craw, anyway?” said Lill.

Glass continued, “Lillian brought you here, and that must count for something. It’s only fair that you know how well you scored. If only we had an inspector free to assign to you as a mentor, we would love to have you on the program. Alas, not everything works the way it should.”

“Wait,” said Lill. “So if Mick can find an inspector to agree to mentor him, he can still be on the program, right?”

Inspector Glass gave her daughter a shut up look, but nevertheless, she nodded. “We have a few blank tokens still available.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. Come on, Mick.”

Outside the station, Mick checked his watch and saw that he’d missed the commuter cart. One more evening in Striding it was, then. And it seemed he’d be spending most of it with Lill, from the way she was talking about going to see some inspector or other who she knew as a family friend.

Mick couldn’t help feeling bad, though. There was something they needed to address before they took another step.

“Sorry if I was an ass in there,” he said. “Didn’t mean to imply you didn’t earn your place. You deserved one more than me if scores are anything to go by. I’m sure plenty of the others did, too. Maybe I am just talking sour grapes.”

“I get it. I’d be frustrated too.”

“Let me buy you a drink later to say sorry.”

“Deal,” replied Lill.

“So, who’s this family friend we’re going to go and see?”