Draken’s every muscle aches and his heart is a swirl of confusion.

He drags himself out of bed, the events of the previous day lingering like a bad dream. He wants to forget it, the fire, the girl, the whole damn affair.

“I didn’t even know her name.”

He throws the sheets aside and looks for his pants. Just as he’s pulling them up, his door swings open.

“Nice package.” Veronica says, pushing her way into the room.

“Why,why,why are you in my room?”

Draken’s cheeks burn red as the woman sits on his bed, staring impatiently.

“I’ve been waiting around for almost an hour,” she says.

“I’m not dressed!” He yells.

She shrugs. “So what if I see your cock, it’s not as if I said it’s small, it’s very nice.”

“Stop talking,” Draken pleads. “Please just stop!”

Draken buttons his pants and quickly pulls on a shirt. Veronica shakes her head.

“Take those off,” she says,

“What?” Before he can register what’s happening she’s grabbed him by the shoulders and thrown him to the bed. The hot embarrassment he’s feeling turns to a lusty fire.

“Ugh, I'm not seducing you, idiot. That’s not what’s happening here,” Veronica says.

“B..b..but, I..I.. I thought,” Draken stammers.

“I know what you thought, you were practically screaming it at me.” She rolls her eyes as she leaves him laying in his own mortification and opens the closet. She rummages through it, tossing various garments haphazardly to the floor.

“Hood’s last apprentice had terrible taste in clothes. None of these are suitable for a courtroom.”

“Whatever they said I did, I didn’t do it!” Draken shouts, almost as a reflex.

Veronica looks at him with a wry smile.

“You probably did,” she laughs. “But you’re not being brought up on charges this time. You’ll be doing some work at the courthouse starting today. I’m sure I mentioned this to you.”

A memory of Veronica trying to explain something to him crosses his mind. She was doing some kind of stretching exercises at the time and wearing a very short robe with nothing underneath. Her words were the last thing on his mind as he leered at her, salivating at the mouth.

“I know you were staring at me during my stretches but I thought I could at least trust you to pay attention,” she says. “I wish I could just fuck you and get it out of your system but the rules are pretty damn clear on that score. It’s gotta stay strictly platonic, even if age was not a factor, which it totally is, buddy.”

Seeing that they are both alone in the room and he’s already half naked and hard as a rock, Draken takes a shot anyway.

“Rules are meant to be broken, nobody has to know.”

Veronica continues to riffle through the closet, looking for something suitable for him to wear.

“You’ve got no idea how messy that sort of thing gets,” she says. “I’d rather eat nails than get involved with a student, no matter how convenient having a trained boy toy might seem.”

She pulls out an awful ruffled scarlet jerkin and matching cloak.

“This is what I’m looking for.”

“Really?” Draken asks, dismayed. It’s not the sort of outfit he’d want to be caught dead in.

“It’s the right colors and the right cut for a court mage. There’s something of an informal uniform that we have to wear.” She throws a pair of black leather pants at him. “Those will also work.”

“I need a minute,” Draken says, shifting uncomfortably.

“Really, you want to do that now?” Veronica rolls her eyes.

“Just get out!” Draken shouts, turning bright red. “You barge in here, eyeing my junk and talking about sex… I need a fucking minute!”

***

Feeling less tense and dressed in a ridiculous looking getup, Draken meets Veronica at the bottom of the stairs.

“That didn’t take long,” she snickers.

“Let’s just go,” Draken grumbles.

She hands him a black, buckled hat.

“Put that on, so that you’ll look like a proper witch.”

The hat rests loose on his head, wobbling as he walks. He fumbles with it absently as they turn up the steep sloped road. He figures out that the buckle serves a practical purpose and tightens it to fit his head. The road is hardly straight, it twists and turns around the city in order to connect with every district’s guardhouse and leads directly to the courthouse where the city magistrates dispense what they call justice. Draken spits, he hates this fucking road. No criminal in his right mind likes to walk it. Why tempt fate or dig up bad memories of friends being led up this road in chains?

It’s a narrow claustrophobic street. Meant to be that way so guards can’t be surrounded in the event of an ambush. Windowless buildings on either side and few public access points for the same reason. Large faded murals depicting grim scenes decorate these towering walls for miles.

“Let’s not go this way,” Draken says. Because of its winding circuitous nature and grim authoritarian atmosphere, Penatance Road is avoided by most people and for people like Draken is anathema itself.

Veronica clicks her tongue at him.

“We’re acting agents of the court, we have to take the official path and be seen.” She says.

Draken grits his teeth and slowly keeps walking. He keeps telling himself that he isn’t going to be whipped but years of knowing as only a thief knows that his luck will one day run out and he’ll find himself walking this very road to face the lash that has been patiently waiting for him is a hard thing to shrug off.

This feels like too much, his hands shake and his stomach twists with every step on these thrice cursed cobblestones.

The sound of slow marching approaches from behind.

“I didn’t do it!” A fat man is led in chains, flanked on either side by two guardsmen and marched doubletime.

“I have important friends, I won’t be treated this way!” The prisoner sweats profusely as he tries to keep pace. Draken smirks in satisfaction at the man's strife.

“I take it, you know him?” Veronica asks. The boy shrugs, suppressing a giggle.

“That’s Willy The Whale, he’s a fence known mostly for bullying and cheating kids. He’ll offer you peanuts and then beat you if you try to negotiate.” He rubs his jaw, recalling one particularly nasty punch.

“Why deal with him at all?” Veronica asks.

“If you don’t know what you have or what you’ve got is too hot to handle, he’s one of the only guys in town to deal with. Or he was, now I guess he’s out of business.” Draken says with a shrug. “Most fences are real cautious about what they buy so as not to end up like fat boy over there.”

Willie starts squealing like a pig.

“Eeooooo! I’m cramping, let me rest for pity’s sake!” The fat man shouts, grabbing his side for emphasis.

The guard slows their pace and Draken scoffs. They’re a lot nicer than he’d be in their place. Especially with such an oily tub of lard for a prisoner. Something about the look in that fat bastard’s eye doesn’t sit right. There’s a weird feeling in the air.

Draken checks the rooftops and spots a low figure in the shadows.

“Shit,” he mutters. The road has widened out into a plaza as they come upon an abandoned guardhouse. Those old time guards must have done their training out here before the new model buildings with the courtyards went up a hundred years ago. So far as Draken can tell, these crumbling ruins are good for nothing but maybe the storage of surplus material and providing an ideal stage for an ambush.

“Never thought I'd have to turn snitch.” Draken mutters as he jogs up to the four guardsmen.

“You guys are real morons!”

“Master mage?” The guard salutes, Draken won’t ever get used to that. ”Have you some issue with how we handle our prisoner?”

The words are polite enough but carry with them an undercurrent of hostility. This guy doesn’t like being told how to do his job.

“Look at this rich fuck,” Draken says, indicating the Fence’s fine clothes and the gaudy rings adorning his manacled hands. Guys like him are all flash and perfume, no class.

“You don’t think a guy like this has the gold and the sheer fucking hubris to hire an archer to pick you off?”

“What?”The guard looks skeptically at Willy, his suspicions woken but not fast enough. Drake knows the killer in the shadows will be taking his aim and once the arrows start to fly this old time training plaza will become an old fashioned killbox.

“Move dumbfuck!” Draken shouts.

He and the guards start running just as an arrow hits pavement.

A strangled cry and a bone cracking thud punctuate Veronica’s unseen actions.

“This is why we take the Penatance Road.” Veronica says, stepping over the assassin’s corpse. “There’s always some fool who thinks he’s being clever and hires thugs to kill the guardsman escort.”

“You,” Willy gasps as he takes a look at Draken. “Crowe, you rotten snitch!”

Draken punches the man hard enough that the sound of the impact echoes.

“I ain’t no fuckin snitch! That fucker would have skewered me the same as anyone else. No witnesses, ain't that right you fat piece of shit?” Draken prepares to hit him again but his arm is caught in a cold metal grip of a gauntlet.

“We’ll handle things from here, master mage.” The guard curtly bows.

“I ought to let the boy have you but I don’t want to cheat the hangman of your fat carcass.” The guardsman barks. The fatman cringes as he’s kicked in the rear. “Triple time, move!”

“Hangman?” Draken asks, jogging to keep up and working up a lite sweat himself. “If you don’t mind my asking, what did the whale do to earn himself a necktie party?”

The guard spits in disgust, his massive loogie splashing onto the prisoner’s fancy shoes.

“This bloated puke killed a kid, beat him to death right in his shop.”

“Lies!” Willies shouts. “I’m being framed, I’d never harm a child I...”

Draken’s dark, strangling glare tells Willie to shut up.

“Do you have a name?” He asks the guard, coldly half expecting him to misunderstand and introduce himself.

“The victim you mean?” The guard replies, pleasantly surprising Draken as he quickly pulls a piece of parchment from his satchel.

“Looks like an urchin who was known to go by Eddie Snags,” the guard’s brows furrow under the shadow of his helmet. “At least nobody will miss him.”

“I’ll miss him.” Draken says curtly before staring Willie in the eyes. “See to it that this worthless cocksucker hangs or i’ll kill him myself.”

The murderer stumbles as he shrinks back from the boy’s hot stare. He’s pulled up before he falls and shoved forward without a word.

“No need to dirty your hands on this filth, master mage.” The guardsman delivers another kick before remembering the parchment in his hand and tucking it away. “We’ve enough witnesses to prove this swine has beaten dozens of boys within an inch of their young lives. I expect the magistrate will show no mercy.”

“This is a travesty, a frame up!” The Whale shouts, doubling down on the pretense of innocence.

Having silently caught up to Draken and the Guards, Veronica leans in close to Willie. Close enough that he can smell the faint scent of her perfume. Close enough that he can feel her breath on the back of his neck.

“We can’t abide frame ups. You should know that you have the right to call a witch to determine the truth of witness testimony. Would you like to claim your right and expose the whole truth?”

Veronica looks at the fatman expectantly, noticing the extra dozen or so beads of sweat on his forehead and the new shade of white on his clammy skin. As he turns away speechless, she snorts.

“That’s what I thought. Take your chances with mundane justice, you may hang but at least you’ll keep your darkest secrets buried.” She laughs as she slows her pace, signalling her apprentice to do the same. The guardsmen keep marching and soon vanish around a corner with their prisoner.

Puffs of dirt explode in the air as Draken kicks several clods to pieces. Somewhere in his mind’s eye he sees a cheerful face he’ll never see again. Not a close friend but decent, a kind and unblemished soul far better than him.

“Eddie was good people, damn it.”