Lucius had a growth spurt after I threw him off the cliff. It was part of the healing process. Every cell in his body was stimulated by the damage. Had I been able to feed him enough, he might have added a full head of height to himself from the ordeal. Sadly, it was nothing but an additional to fingers or so, but at his age that was a marvel nearly as great as the return of his missing arm.

The flesh was pink and raw, like a newborn’s. The skin rubbery soft, the tendons weaker than expected. He could lift it up and wiggle his fingers and put on clothes, but he could not fasten a button with it. Remarkably, that did little to dampen the joy he had as he bounded down the streets and back again. The development of strength, lacking after so long missing the limb, was of utmost importance for him, but he could hardly get past the spectacle of having ten fingers once more.

My first order of business was fattening my coin purse once more, which was reasonably done at the time. I had a stipend as a royal engineer, as well as lucrative investments in the many merchant guilds of Vassermark. While it took me the better part of a day to prove my identity and squeeze out of those misers some coin, it can also be said that it only took me a day to arrange our travel expenses without so much as a single coin of debt accrued.

Afterwards, I found him staring out the window of our inn room. He had a wistful gaze west to the mountains, to the fires and the mines. His mind had at once gone to the miserable thorp of miners that had spawned him. “Will we be gone long?” he asked.

“I should think so. A very long time. Things are quite settled here for the time being. It’s a peaceful place, Jarnmark, by and large. Out of the way, you know?”

Slumped on the windowsill and half listening to cart drivers and fish mongers, Lucius asked, “How big is the world, anyways?”

I could see this was going to be a long conversation, so I took a seat. Ezra was already busy getting us tickets to the north, so I enthused the boy. “Smaller than it used to be, but still takes a good number of years to travel across. Of course, that depends on how great a hurry you’re in. A determined ship captain could go all the way from Titanrest in the north to the temples of Aillesterra in two moon cycles, but the rest of the journey would be hard going through the mountains. We aren’t going to all those places, not yet.”

“Are the other places better?”

“In some ways, in other ways no. I hope you won’t be too homesick. People tend to always be particular about the place they were born. They like the holidays they grew up with. They like the deserts they got as children and they like their own subtleties of privacy and community. The things you take for granted stick with you the most, even if every people in every place has their own particulars that are merely a bit different.”

“Shouldn’t you be talking about what an adventure it will be?”

“Lucius, the adventure has only just begun! What’s more, I don’t think you have the time to wonder about what dragons you’ll fight, and princesses you’ll woo.”

He turned and scrunched up his face at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said with a devilish smile. “The first thing you need to worry about is studying. I’m going to take that little head of yours and stuff it full of math and poetry and history and science. I’m going to pack the ideas into your skull till it bursts, until you’re drunk on the ideas of your betters and weiding them like a sword in combat. I’m going to make you learn until you’re more exhausted than hauling iron ore out of a mountain for a week!”

He frowned, somehow sensing the effort I would demand of him despite not an honest day’s schooling in his whole life. Everything he knew had been picked up here and there, from lectures and harangues. He had been taught by his parents, by the temples, by the actors in Wilhelm’s troupe. All at random, and typically focused on skills. How to fetch water and cook a stew. How to fish and what he could eat of what he caught. How to control his expression to act in a play. These things had come with the sort of rambling wisdom of old people, and enough had stuck that he knew how to read and how to count and so on. This gave him an idea of what more there was to know.

“And then what?” he asked

“And then–”

Ezra threw open the door. I had never been in the habit of bolting it, no matter how common cutpurses were. With how little I sleep, it hardly matters. She didn’t care about that though, and ran in to say, “There’s to be a hanging!”

Lucius didn’t even blink. I thought perhaps he should have been more interested in the spectacle, but he had seen plenty before. I scowled at Ezra and asked, “You didn’t get distracted did–”

“We have passage aboard the Andalusian Crest two days from now,” she said, holding out a little scrap of paper torn down the middle as a receipt. “They say it’s a knight they’re hanging for treason.”

Lucius frowned. “The Ashe Family is?”

“Yes, can we go see? It’s about to happen. The whole place is a crowd.”

I clicked my tongue at her and shook my head. “Haven't you seen enough men die?”

Ezra rolled her eyes and groaned. “But this is an execution, a hanging! It’s different. Totally different from thieves and highwaymen and pirates and stuff getting stabbed. This is intentional.”

I huffed back at her and took a moment to compose my thoughts. I wanted to give her some wisdom about idolizing the power of the state. I wanted to break this notion that there is something special just because a government body does it. She was my student, she should have known better than to play along with such childish notions as worshiping the state. I didn’t want to be too hard on her however, because even adults fall victim to the folly, and lately some had been speaking about this mad notion of a “civil contract” that formed the authority of the state.

Before I could tell her as such, Lucius asked, “Did you hear the name?”

Ezra frowned, twisting her lips in a most child-like pout as she searched the tops of her eyelids for the answer. “Patrick from Lees? But I’ve never heard of a place called–”

“Patrocles?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

The young boy bolted from the room so fast he nearly left an apparition behind himself. Out the room, through the hall, down the stairs, to the street he went. After his growth spurt, we had yet to even get him proper clothes, which made him look all the more shabby as he pushed into the mill of people. Men scowled at him and shoved him out of their way. He stumbled through horse pies. He barreled into more bodies and carts than he could count as he crossed the port city to get to the execution grounds.

The Ashe Family had a plaza outside the walls of their palace. One of those subtle, military requirements that old cities have. While it was dressed up with statues and a fountain, the purpose was the entwining of the major roads such that troops could be marshaled and marched in any direction they might be needed. The cobblestone therefore also provided plenty of space for the free people of Jarnmark to gather and listen as their murderous thrall read out the charges.

Lucius had to dive into the crowd like he was pushing through new growth forest, squeezing between trunks and branches till he could almost get his head into the air and hear what was being said.

“-- and found guilty of the following crimes. Assault of Edvin Ashe, first born son and prince of the Ashe Family. Dereliction of duties with respect to the protection of the realm, when he abandoned his post. Conspiracy to aid in the escape of another known fugitive of the law. And, lastly, the profaning of the symbol of Saphira during his interrogation. For these crimes, the sentence is hanging by the neck until dead.”

The crowd was quick to murmur about the knight as they marched him out on the gallows. Many people knew him, mostly as the dark shadow behind Edvin. To hear that he had assaulted the boy caused rumors to run wild. It also made people press closer until their shoulders formed layer upon layer of walls around the gallows that Lucius tried to push through. Everyone wanted a look at his face, to see if he was afraid, or sorrowful, repentant, or perhaps spiteful.

He faced the crowd like a soldier staring down an enemy shieldwall. Narrow eyes, tight jaw, steady breathing. He didn’t even flinch as a priestess dabbed him with holy water to mark him as one of Saphira’s, irregardless of his blasphemy.

I had to grab Lucius by the scruff of his shirt and pull him back before he charged out to do something about it.

“Let go!”

“And what are you going to do? You’re a child.”

“I have to stop them. He saved me!”

I swung him around and stooped low. “And what power do you have to stop them? Are you going to jump up there and tell them they’re wrong?”

“Y–...” Even he could tell the idea seemed silly. “I saved those girls. They owe me!”

“Girls? The children of the Ashe family? You mean the ones watching this man be put to death?” I asked, and forced him to look at the elevated viewing booth that had been constructed to the side of the gallows. It was a simple thing. It might even had reused the trappings of the viewing box from the arena, the same chairs and draperies and bowls of fruits to snack upon.

Half of the Ashe family sat as witness to the act, but it was Irina’s husband who stood at the front. Peter Ashe, father of Edvin Ashe, stood with his hands on the flimsy bannister, glaring down at Patrocles. Curly red hair flopping in the wind, he kept his family behind him, making a wall of himself between the lethal organ of state and the girls that Lucius had saved.

He held up a hand for attention as the executioner readed a dark, woolen hood. “If I may take a moment,” Peter said, granting unto himself the privilege of attention. “I take very seriously the use of supreme punishment, capital execution. This is not an action taken lightly, to deprive a servant of their life. Other places deprive criminals of their freedoms, they enslave them. We think ourselves above that, but still… gallows, as you can see. That’s for a very important reason, because some actions undermine the very structure of society. They take a pickaxe to the foundation of civilization, and no house can stand like that. Striking at my son, when charged with his protection no less! Is like setting fire to the timber supports of a mine. So, I have to be maximally serious in response to it. Just a few weeks ago, my daughter and niece were assaulted by rogues in the forest… we put their remains in gibbets outside the city gates. You all understood why we did that. Now, you see we don’t make exceptions even for people we know.”

Lucius forced his mouth open, against all the strain his jaw could force. “But Patrocles did nothing wrong! I saved those girls, he saved me. Why don’t they speak up!”

Again, I had to jerk him back, keep him from rushing forward. “Because they don’t have power either. You want to do something? You need to change all of Vassermark, all of the world! You need power, which you don’t have an ounce of right now. Charge out, and you’ll be hanged too. If you want justice for that man, you first need to get the power to manifest it.”

He spun on me. “And how am I suppose dto do that?”

“By learning! By growing up. By working for me,” I said, holding his gaze with mine.

He considered it, imagined in his head the possibilities that would open up before him over the years. He thought about the godling most of all, and that I was the one to kill it. Then–

The rope jerked. The crowd sucked in their breath. Lucius spun about and watched as the knight, the former sword tutor of the Ashe family, danced at the end of his rope.