3

Trying not to dwell on it, Mick stopped by the Sunny Café in town and ordered himself a cooked breakfast. He took his seat at his favorite table, one right by the window that looked out onto Coiner’s Way. Then, his resolution cracking, he allowed himself a few moments of dwelling after all. And why not? Today had been a disappointment. It was upsetting, even, that the head of the guards commission didn’t seem to care.

Letting himself feel his upset rather than bottling it up didn’t have him instantly dancing for joy, but he knew that long term, it was much better than holding it in. What it did do in the immediate moment, however, was to let him focus on something else. He turned this new clarity toward the view from the window.

Outside the café, none of the stores on Coiner’s Way were trading yet. Easterly trading laws meant they had to wait until ten o’clock before they could open on Sundays, and it was only a hair past nine right now. Most of the merchants on the Way spat feathers about the trading laws, and for good reason. Almost every Sunday– especially on nice, sunny ones like today – saw flocks of hikers arrive in town, ready to take on one of the routes nearby.

“It’d be a crime in itself, Mick, if I have to miss out on serving them all breakfast. It should be my busy period, but I can’t take a damned coin from folks,” Spruce Wilkinson complained to him in the tavern one evening, over a glass of King’s Lament.

Mick had thought about it. He actually agreed with Spruce here. Laws were laws. Sure they were. But who exactly were the trading laws helping? Not the hikers, who couldn’t even buy a cup of tea before their walk. Not Spruce Wilkinson and the other fine traders on Coiner’s Way.

He decided that he was going to help out his friend, and this quest took him to Sunhampton library where, predictably, the head librarian, Chester, wasn’t around. Spenny Hold, who had earned his librarian’s token studying under Chester, usually ran things.

Spenny was a nice lad, and he was happy to point Mick to the reference and history sections. The only problem was that he kept getting his name wrong. Always called him Bill. Mick had no idea why, and he was long past bothering to correct him. It made no difference.

After a quick search, he grabbed a handful of books and took them over to a window on the east side of the library, which looked down onto Coiner’s Way. There was a desk and chair there, which he always liked to sit at. In fact, he loved it. He loved the library, not just because everything here was free, but because what could be nicer than sitting at the desk by the window, a book in front of him, Coiner’s Way down below?

No place in Easterly could ever be more important to his heart than his hometown. He loved everything about it, including all the people in it. At least, in theory. He loved them as a collective. Individually, there were some folks who he didn’t get along with, of course there were. But as a matter of principle he held dear the town and everything and everyone in it. Why else would he act as their head of guards for a salary that was only a hair above volunteering? The coins that dribbled his way didn’t even cover all the expenses involved in guarding a town, which was why Mick had to be so thrifty. So, a place where it was quiet, the view was lovely, and not a single thing inside it cost a coin? How could Mick not love the town library?

“Cheers, Spenny,” he said, as he left.

“Have a good day, Bill.”

The next day, Mick told Spruce Wilkinson, “These trading laws. They brought ‘em in back when the Church of Yellow Henry was more popular than beer and sweet rolls, to make sure workers and shoppers had time to go to Sunday Yellow Rites.”

“You don’t say?”

“I do.”

“But those days are past, Mick. There’s umpteen different churches these days. You’re telling me I should miss out on trade because of one of them?”

Mick had already thought about this. “I’m not telling you anything, my friend. I didn’t make the laws. But I will tell you this: you can’t break the law, Spruce. Not under my watch. Maybe, though, you could serve up breakfast for free on Sunday mornings. There’s not a single line in the trading laws that forbid that.”

Spruce had almost fainted when he heard that. “For free?”

“Aye. Serve the hikers their breakfasts for free, but give ‘em a token that they have to redeem before they leave Sunhampton later on. And how do they redeem it?”

“Ah. By paying me.”

“Exactly,” said Mick. “The gold would be changing hands hours later, when it’s allowed to.”

“What if they just jump on a commuter cart and leave?” asked Spruce.

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“Why would they do that, when the head of Sunhampton’s guards is here, wearing his badge and watching ‘em order their sausages?”

“You’ll be here every Sunday morning?” said Spruce.

“Sure I will. What time do the hikers normally get to town?”

Spruce put his hands on his hips as he thought. The pan next to him, which had seven sausages in it, spat oil on his apron. “They trickle in. I’d say most of ‘em step off their carts between seven and nine. They like to start early, those hikers.”

“Well, then,” said Mick. “I’ll be here at seven sharp, eating the free breakfast you’ve made me, reading my books. I’ll make sure they see me. Nobody will take advantage of my pal, not under my watch. Just you make sure you’ve got my breakfast ready. Sausages, bacon, mushrooms, toast, beans…am I forgetting something?”

Martha Peters, who was sitting at a corner table drinking coffee and picking at a syrup-covered waffle, said, “Grilled tomatoes.”

“That’s right. Thanks, Martha.”

And so Mick ate a cooked breakfast at the Sunny Café every Sunday, in part to help his pal, and also because it was free. A guy in his position, he had to watch every coin. He and Ma didn’t need to pay rent on their little house on Hilda’s Hill Road – she had owned it outright since his dad’s life insurance paid out. But there were still other things to buy in this long-running con game they called life. For Mick, his biggest expenses came with being head of the town guards.

Right now, the guard budget was fluid. Only, the fluid in question had gone down the plughole. Everything he needed in order to guard Sunhampton had to come out of his own coin purse, and it wasn’t as if his pockets were so full that coins were spilling out. He’d never earned a class token of his own and he’d never gone to a fancy college. Opportunities for well-paying jobs were like puddles in a desert for a guy like him.

He was good at saving coin, though. He always found little ways to do it, and he actually enjoyed that side of things because it meant learning new skills. When the left armpit of his winter coat frayed away, for instance, he learned how to sew. When water started leaking in through the kitchen roof, Mick climbed up onto it and figured out that a couple of slates needed replacing, and that it was within his capabilities, meagre as they were, to do it.

“Here you go, Micky,” said Spruce, placing a full plate in front of him. “The Mick Mulroon Special.”

Five eggs, three rashers of bacon, three sausages, mushrooms, beans, and two grilled tomatoes. Enough to set a person up for the day. Mick wouldn’t even need to buy lunch. For tea, he and Ma were going to have their third helping of the beef casserole he’d cooked on Friday. He was a big believer in batch cooking. He’d bought an artificed pan from Lewis Cooper so he could make five helpings worth of food in one go, along with artificed containers to store them in. It had set him back a few coins, for sure, but the lad’s rates were fair, and the expense had already paid for itself.

After tucking into his breakfast, Mick spent half an hour letting his food settle, while making notes about all the hikers who Spruce served breakfast for and gave tokens to. He jotted every detail down in his notepad. Details were important for a guard. You never knew what you might have to remember about a person.

The only thing was you couldn’t breathe without someone charging you a copper coin for the privilege these days, and notepads were one of the many things in life that were expensive. Hard to believe, but it was true. Especially for a notepad connoisseur like Mick.

Paisley Porter, for instance, only sold luxury notepads that were handcrafted by Jessie Condorphil, who lived in a house way outside of town. These were pricey notepads that Jessie made from scrap paper that she collected and then pulped by leaving them in a huge bathtub in her back yard overnight. Depending on where she reclaimed the paper from, she would make different notebook collections. For instance, when a ranger’s office near Full Striding were relocating, they had a bunch of maps to get rid of. Jessie took them and turned them into notepads.

But that wasn’t all. Jessie was a fully classed notewright, and she could weave effects into her notepads in the same way artificers like Lewis and Jack Cooper sometimes did. The pads from the rangers’ maps supposedly directed you places if you wrote your destination in them. She had all kinds of stuff like that, but Mick had never been able to afford to shop in her store.

Joe Phillips, who owned the general store, had less expensive tastes in his stock. He sold cheap, simple notepads that were coin-purse friendly, but even his prices kept going up and up. He was a crafty one, old Joe. He’d add a few coppers onto the cost of everything that sold well in his store, let the dust settle for a few weeks, then increase them again. Soon, Mick was going to have to remortgage his house just to shop there.

He sometimes wondered about saving up to get a notepad from Jessie Condorphil someday, or maybe even an artificed notepad from Lewis Cooper. A pad that looked normal, but had maybe ten thousand pages in it. A pad like that was Mick’s dream. A pad like that could almost last a guy a lifetime. Right now, though, he couldn’t spare the coin.

This meant he needed to make the most of what he could afford. So, Mick had learned how to read and write in shorthand to make the most of his notepads. It took a while but he did it, and now, he could write in a few lines what used to take up a full page.

“Finished with that, Mick?” said Spruce, nodding at his plate which had one sole baked bean on it.

“Delicious as ever,” he replied. “Think I’ll be heading off now. Things seem to be slowing.”

“Appreciate it.”

“And I appreciate the breakfast. See you in the King’s Head later?”

“Looking forward to it.”

Mick didn’t feel guilty about the system that he and Spruce had made to get around the trading laws. They weren’t breaking a single law, after all. Not even in spirit. Besides, he didn’t want to enforce laws just for the sake of them. He wanted to be a town guard to improve the town, not subtract from it.

Did that mean he was free to enforce the laws he wanted to and ignore the rest? Of course not. No way. If he’d caught Spruce serving breakfasts and taking coins before ten o’clock on a Sunday, he’d have written him up, friend or not. All the same, he sometimes felt conflicted about their arrangement. When he did, he asked himself two questions, and forced himself to answer honestly.

Have I broken any laws, or helped anyone else do it?

No, I haven’t.

Have I made Sunhampton a better place, even if only by a tiny margin?

I reckon I have.