“Anything significantly out of one’s cultural comfort zone, is often mindlessly judged as perversion.”

-Unknown Ystin philosopher

A month ago, Earl got the first report of a chicken thief loose in Remington. At first, he put it down to youthful shenanigans. But with more reports coming in and each theft moving up Ganja river, it no longer fit the image of an Agalian crime. That was just petty vandalism. If he had a half-crone piece for every time he'd ridden out, only to find out the culprit was the farm's own boy and his friends, he could've retired years ago. Something about growing up on a farmstead turned the young criminal mind to wrecking shite.

Earl got up to fetch his marshal's tool. Keeping up with upkeep was an endless task. He wasn't much bothered about the sword, it was so blunt now it was more like a metal stick anyway. In his twenty years as marshal, he'd never used the blade as anything more than a threat. The leather whip was a different matter. And he spent a lot of time rubbing it with thick beeswax to keep it from cracking.

After sending a message to Krite — the only town in the Benelli district — he learnt the thefts had started there. The reply spat the fact that M.C ignored these crimes right in Earl's face. It said, 'why would I bother with something that's heading to Remington anyways?' So, Earl'd made a mental note to punch their marshal in the nose the next time he saw him.

"I'm sure he's still nursing his grudge," Earl growled, "but he could've put it away long enough to give me a heads-up."

The two marshals had history. M.C Benelli was the opposition candidate that'd been pulled out of the woodwork after he became the Stagna law-man. When things hadn't gone M.C's way, it'd led to the new district that he without even a speck of modesty named after himself.

After learning how his counterpart had done nothing. Earl felt obliged to investigate, but there wasn't much to find. The only thing that got his blood pumping was what he couldn't find. Tracks. He'd never had the knack for tracking. Still, following drunk teenagers, to where their hangovers were waiting in ambush, was never a problem.

In this case, there wasn't a trace. Meaning it wasn't any of his usual suspects. Earl was both intrigued and annoyed. Because no tracks also meant his so-called colleague had an excuse for not looking into the thefts.

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"Not that he needs an excuse, about as sharp as a marble, that one."

Even so, these crimes, at worst, amounted to a few missing meals. If it hadn't been for the incident with Geraldine, he too might've called it quits. The nice old lady lived alone in a remote part of Remington. She'd been on a nightly excursion to the outhouse, when she'd been knocked over. Since the knocker-over scampered off — leaving behind a slightly confused chicken — Earl'd presumed their bump in the night was an accident.

That was not the explanation Geraldine preferred. She kept repeating it'd been some sort of p-word. Earl couldn't understand what she meant, but she was clearly upset. It'd taken a lot of coaxing to get her to whisper it to him. With unease, she spelt out the word p-e-r-v-e-r-t into his ear, as if saying the whole word might summon the offender. As soon as she'd finished, Earl knew that pervert spelt trouble.

As rumours aren't impeded by any natural laws about speed. It made it back to Stagna before him, and the story of the p-word got larger with every mouth it passed. It was too good for anyone to be concerned with a little annoyance like the truth. It also made a lot of people scared of their own shadows. Some wouldn't even walk across the square unaccompanied after dusk.

Geraldine's description was no help, a tall figure whose face she'd never seen. Not that it would've mattered. No Agalian could've done this and not left a single track. That made Earl nervous. So, he'd done everything he could think of to find some tracks. And still not come up with more than a few blades of grass out of place. Not exactly proof of anything.

The rumours were putting a stinking heap of pressure on Agalaland's only judge. And Bres Cedent happily shovelled the heap downstream, where it splatted onto Earl's more capable shoulders. Besides his unsuccessful comb-overs, the judge's most fundamental characteristic was laziness. If work was the bed he'd sleep on the floor. Even so, he wasn't a fool. To lull the public back into the illusion of safety, he'd announced that Earl was close to an arrest.

In a regular case Bres wouldn't have gotten involved until it escalated into a more serious offence. It was a balance that'd worked for a long time. The marshals got on with the job of keeping the peace, and the judge stayed in the courthouse. The essence of their marshal law.

It'd been that way ever since Bench Cedent, Bres' ancestor, turned the Stagna oak into the hanging tree. None of the long line of Cedent judges had ever been interested in keeping the peace. Only in handing out punishment after the fact. Because of that, they never cared whether the marshals cooperated with each other. Not as long as they brought lucrative cases to the court.

Earl told no one but Charlene about the non-existent tracks. Because he was worried someone else might figure out it shifted suspicion towards the Nontie. A p-word rumour was bad, but a Nontie p-word? If it got out, it wouldn't be long before he was cutting down the first innocent. Strung up a tree for having suspiciously long hair.