Abe set his cup down and drew a steadying breath. “Well, Mr. Ebensworth, this is the first I’ve heard about it. And,” he couldn’t believe he was just going to lay it out like this, but something about being severely beaten by monsters had given Abe a shot of courage when it came to talking to feeble old men. “To tell you the truth, I was hoping to stay on here in a more permanent capacity.”
Apparently candor bred candor. “Well, my dear boy, that’s simply impossible.”
Abe blinked.
“After your involvement in the business with Merryanna Richards, lad, it simply won’t do.” Mr. Ebensworth couldn’t look Abe in the eye. “Nothing personal, you know? Just that I can’t have someone representing me who... ahem... failed to prevent a loss to so upstanding a family, you understand...?”
“It wasn’t really my–”
“I know.” Mr. Ebensworth said quietly and sadly. He still didn’t look Abe in the eye, choosing instead to scrutinize the inside of his tea cup. “I had your things taken over to the courthouse. Your uncle’s expecting you at the first of the week.”
Abe sat for a moment as if to confirm that Mr. Ebensworth was through with him and then left the room. Mr. Ebensworth never looked up.
Sure enough, he found the small desk where he sat sometimes had been stripped of the few personal items he’d accumulated. His cup and sweater and extra umbrella were long gone. He would have kicked the desk if he hadn’t been struggling to stand already.
Abe had only been back at work for a few days, and even with the time off his wounds were still fresh enough that the walk to and from the office was agony. The rest of the week he had spent almost all day recovering sufficiently from his walk in to work to be able to walk home. It was just past lunch time now, however, and though he really wasn’t up for it, Abe deemed it better to hobble painfully home with the aid of his cane than to consider hanging around after his dismissal.
As he walked home he found himself so distracted by his internal monologue that he was oblivious to the pain every time he stepped on his hurt ankle. The cane swung forward beside his leg automatically, planting on the ground to take weight off his still-swollen joint without him thinking about it. Abe was replaying the conversation with Mr. Ebensworth in his head, admonishing himself for not demanding more of an explanation. Or for not standing up more fully for himself. It’s not as if I actually killed her, he could have said. And futhermore, sir, it’s not as if anyone, yourself included, anticipated the sort of conflict that presented itself. If you had, obviously you wouldn’t have sent a clerk on the errand in the first place. And every time Abe came back to that point, he recognized that not dismissing him would have compromised Ebensworth and Associates irredeemably. Because if the fault was with Mr. Ebensworth for not anticipating the threat, well... then why would anyone ever hire the firm for anything?
No, clearly it was better to let the temporary clerk take the blame, because he’s going to be a judge anyway, right? Except that Abe didn’t want to be a judge. He wanted to be Roods. And more than that he wanted to find out why the cute girl he’d been getting to know had to die.
When he finally got home, Abe grabbed an apple from the stand in the entryway and skulked up to his room. Once there he double latched the door and tossed the apple on the bed and then began the slow process of removing his weapons. He’d never even carried a knife before his little adventure, but now he had a small revolver he carried in his pocket, a knife sheathed at his hip, another on his ankle, and a telescoping stick of black metal tucked into his waistband. He left his cane leaning against the dresser and laid his weapons out on top, carrying his long thin knife with him to the bed. He sat down, sweaty and in pain and exhausted. He gripped the knife with one hand while he scooped up the apple and learned to his disappointment that it was wax.
Abe tossed the decorative fruit into the air and flicked his wrist. The apple was pinned to the headboard with the tip of the blade buried an inch deep in the wood when Abe laid down to sleep, the long light handle still quivering in the dim afternoon light when he nodded off to unpleasant dreams of trains.
Chapter Thirteen: A bold new direction in life
1.
Abe opened the door to his closet and a fist shot out from the shadows so fast and so hard he couldn’t see it coming. Crying out with shock and pain his feet left the ground briefly as the force of the blow sent him sprawling backwards against the side of the bed, and he pulled the blankets down on top of him as he reached up desperate to grab anything to help him stand.
He pushed the bedclothes off of him and raised his hand to his stinging lip, pulling it away bloody. Abe scrambled to his feet with the help of the bed, lurching backwards across the mattress oblivious to the pain exploding through his ankle. He slid his hand under the pillow, but the knife he knew was there, the blade he had gripped as he fell asleep every night since Underton, was gone.
Without even thinking about it he looked to the dresser, where all of his weapons were laid out, neat and clean and shiny and dangerous... and utterly useless. He saw the eyes of his assailant looking the same way and he cursed himself for his obviousness. It was only then that he became aware of who the assailant was emerging from his closet and removing the black cloth from his – HER face to reveal...
“Merry?”
She shrugged and smiled as if to say of course it’s Merry, and then walked over to the dresser, flexing her fingers that were bruised from his face. She picked up his cane and made a noncommittal little noise as she spun it like a baton in her hand and then tossed it onto the mattress beside him. She did a similar sort of trick with his long thin knife and then tossed it as well, the weapon landing blade-down, handle just a foot from Abe’s hand. He blinked in confusion.
“I want this to be fair... or as fair as it can be,” she said, and her voice was too deep.
Abe grabbed the knife. “Merry?”
She bit her bottom lip and shook her head in a teasing denial, her hair falling loose around her face, and when it settled back she was completely different. Brown and hard-planed and emotionless. The Woodsman rushed at Abe, seeming to grow as he did to the size he’d been in the tunnel, replacing Merry completely in the few strides it took him to close the distance.
Fear seized Abe as the Woodsman rushed him, and he suddenly felt every lingering ache from the last time they’d met. He remembered how useless he’d been against this creature before, and though it was fear of being similarly overmatched that had him carrying so many weapons, he felt as inadequate now as he had then. Worse, if anything. The creature bearing down on him looked unscathed from their run-in, the burns faded to nothing, and Abe felt like a loose confederation of bruises united only by terror.
His newly-honed instincts, however, paid off, as he raised his knife against the charging creature. The blade sank in a few inches. Abe exulted.
Then Abe panicked.
The newly-honed instincts were, it turned out, mostly crap. The knife snapped off in the wooden torso of the Woodsman and Abe was still clutching the handle when the dense wooden fist crashed into his face. He slid up the bed towards the headboard, pulling the sheets with him until the fiend seized his ankle.
“You failed,” the Woodsman said with utter dispassion and raised his other hand once more. The fingers on his hand were pale brown and had faint rings visible as he closed them to form a fist. “Merry and Begonia are dead because of you,” he – it said. He cocked his arm back and his thin brown lips split into a cruel smile.
Before the blow landed Abe screamed, and he woke grasping the hilt of his knife. In his sleep he had stabbed it deep into his headboard and was clutching it desperately. He was damp with sweat. It was nearly the same dream, but escalating. Getting more violent.
He rocked the knife back and forth a few times to dislodge it from the wood. “Maybe don’t sleep with a knife next time,” he said under his breath as he pulled it loose. The tip was bent and Abe wondered if he could fix it himself. He had the savage thought that
the hook on the tip would make it a much more damaging weapon, and when he observed that it still fit in the sheathe without being straightened he decided he was okay with leaving the tip of the blade bent.
It was still dark outside, but the idea of trying to go back to sleep was completely without appeal. Abe was sure he would lay awake for hours, and if he did manage to reclaim sleep it would come hand in hand with nightmares. Instead, he decided to spend his time shaving, dressing, hobbling around his room and making himself presentable for his first day as his uncle’s clerk.
By the time he left he was cleaned and dressed and looked, probably like he gave a damn. He had all his weapons on him beneath a new jacket that still hung loose on his shoulders even over top of all the knives and guns and sticks. He straightened the lapel as he locked the door behind him, admonishing himself to eat more even if he didn’t feel like it. A man can’t defend himself if he’s too weak to lift his knife.
It was still dim outside despite the laborious and time-intensive process of preparing for the day, and Abe felt no need to rush as he made his way down the deserted streets. Or mostly deserted. For whole blocks he had the sensation that he was being followed. Before Underton, Abe would have spun around immediately, but now he resisted the urge to look, tried to be more surreptitious...
He attempted to use the reflections in windows to his advantage, but whoever it was, she stayed back too far for that to work. He tried to glance as he turned a corner, never letting his head turn, his eyes darting hard to the periphery, but there was no one there to be seen. He could even swear that he picked up the scent of perfume as the wind came up from behind him, seeming too close for his pursuer to not be within range of his hand, and yet when this olfactory clue forced him to spin with his cane held out to try and hook his follower and a triumphant, “I have you!” on his lips, he found himself nearly toppling over as his cane swung unobstructed and nearly spun him in a circle.
Of course there was no one there.
And even though no one had seen his ridiculous, paranoid strike, Abe was still blushing as he walked the last half-block to the courthouse.
2.
“As I’m sure you know, Abnerssen, I have something of a reputation. Tough but fair is what they say about me.” Abe had actually heard his mother say that about her brother, his uncle, Voloram Finche, but he had never heard anyone else phrase it quite that way. Hardass he’d heard. Also psychotic, merciless, cruel, and something or other about flagrant abuse of judicial authority.
As soon as Abe had walked into the office through the opulent sitting room (all of this being known as the judge’s chambers) his uncle Judge Voloram Finche had gotten to his feet from behind his desk and started speaking. He was dressed in a plain, dirty shirt with no collar and a pair of pants tied with a length of rope. He did not look judicial in the least, but he spoke as if he were on a stage before thousands.
And aside from the occasional inclusion of Abe’s full name, there was no real indication that the judge wasn’t addressing a crowd. Not even volume. “As such,” he went on, “I expect when you are serving as my clerk that you bear in mind the greatest responsibility with which we who must uphold the laws are entrusted.” Here he paused, and it wasn’t until Abe opened his mouth to guess what this responsibility was that he realized the pause was dramatic.
“Not to protect the innocent, no! This is a sacred trust indeed, but it is not the responsibility with which you are to be entrusted. Not to see the righteous punishment of the will of the people bestowed upon the guilty, no!”
Abe was going to guess that one. Judge Finche was considered a stern judge, never shying from the imposition of the harshest penalties. He was as often given to sometimes inexplicable findings of innocence, however... at least they seemed inexplicable until he explained, in the same grandiose, theatrical style he was currently employing and that he used to order in restaurants, his reasoning. It was usually dense and circuitous logic, but everyone agreed that he was a sage and intelligent man. Indeed, he was legendary for his intelligence, his oratory, and for the long careful deliberation he gave to every case. He never deliberated on any ruling for less than a half a day, and had been known to spend weeks in his chambers, carefully weighing the decision before him.
“No, my young nephew... your greatest responsibility, your most sacred trust, is to never, ever, let anyone through that door,” he pointed to the door behind Abe, “while I’m ‘deliberating’.” Judge Finche had, as he said the word deliberating, made the closest approximation to air quotes a human could make using only his eyebrows.
Abe learned why that afternoon.
The judge’s chambers were divided into three rooms: a small alcove that separated the courtroom from the chambers proper on one end and the judge’s private office on the other, a large, comfortable room with its own fireplace and couch as well as the massive desk behind which the judge stood to deliver his speech upon Abe’s arrival. In between was the room where Abe was to work, a smallish office dominated by heaps of unorganized files and a bunch of old filing cabinets that, one would assume from the stacks of papers all around, were purely for show. It was here that he was to organize and stand vigil during deliberations, at least until he could be properly sworn in and thereby allowed to enter the courtroom.
After the morning’s trial, Judge Finche strode into the small office and closed the door behind him. “Now,” he said as he pulled his robe over his head and tossed it on the floor, clearly expecting Abe to pick it up, “to deliberate.” The judge was still wearing the same ill-fitting and soiled clothing that he’d been wearing before, but with the robe on he looked perfectly respectable. Without the robe he could easily pass for a homeless person. He walked past the small desk where Abe sat and went into his office. Abe was unsure if he should follow and was glad for his hesitation a moment later when a dart launched through the open door.
Abe’s eyes traced the trajectory of the dart and found it sticking out of a dartboard on the wall between two filing cabinets. The board was different from any he’d ever seen before. It had only a single red circle in the middle, about twice the size of a normal bullseye, and around that nothing but white. The dart was very close to the exact center of the red circle.
“Red?” Judge Finche asked, yelling, from inside his office.
Abe pulled the dart from the board and walked slowly to back toward the judge’s office. he leaned in, supporting himself on the door frame, and peered inside. The judge was laying down on the couch with a small pillow held over his eyes. “Yes, sir. Red.”
The judge did not remove the pillow. “Guilty, then. Complicated case, though... I ought to, eh... deliberate for about three hours, I think.” He finally lifted the pillow enough to glance at the clock. “I’m not to be disturbed, Abnerssen. Come wake me up about four, eh?”
Before Abe could respond Judge Finche put the pillow back down over his eyes. Abe thought he heard snoring before he’d even closed the door.
3.
Abe ran his fingers over the cork of the dartboard as he peered at it, hoping the disproportionately high number of tiny holes in the red part didn’t mean what he thought it meant. His uncle had always seemed like a pillar: upright and proper and standing tall. He had been dreading working for him, but the dread had been based on an idea that seemed miles away from the slovenly slumberer in the next room. Apparently his uncle wasn’t going to be exacting or demand hard work and unyielding morals from his nephew, no... he just wanted someone he could trust to cover for him while he gambled with other people’s lives.
Abe traced the tip of his finger over the red part of the dartboard and realized it wasn’t exactly a fair gamble either. There were far more holes in the red part – the guilty part – of the dart board than the white... Clearly Judge Finche was a very good dart player (and an abysmal judge).
Abe felt conflicted about the revelation. He was relieved, on the one hand, that he wouldn't be asked to work very hard. He had been under th
e impression for years that his uncle was a stern taskmaster who would be demanding unceasing and difficult labor from the moment he arrived to the moment he left, and it was nice to know that he wasn't going to working his fingers to the bone for the sake of his uncle’s all-consuming crusade for justice. But still, there as a small part of Abe, hidden way back in the bit of his brain where he concealed things from himself, that felt a bit disappointed in the truth.
Though he had never really agreed with his uncle, he had at least thought he was a man of conviction. That belief was dead now, but the disappointment went deeper than that. Part of Abe was looking forward to the distraction and exhaustion of the job. Surely he would finally be too tired to wonder about what had happened in Underton... about the death of Merry and why he had been allowed to simply walk (hobble) away.
It had only gotten worse since the wedding, and he had hoped that setting Roods on the trail would have freed him from concern. And yet the dreams persisted and he could swear he was being followed just a few hours ago... The prospect of legal briefs and filing and all the rest of it wasn't exactly welcome, but the distraction these tasks could provide certainly was.
And then there was the other distraction currently pressing in on Abe. The undeniable, irresistible yearning that was slowly overwhelming even the most painful memories on which he dwelt... he was really hungry.
With a glance back toward the closed door he decided that he really didn't care very much if he failed in his duty to guard his uncle the fraud's naptime. It was unlikely than anyone would come and disturb the renowned hanging judge, and if they did Abe figured the man deserved to be found out. The fear he'd had of his uncle's wrath just a few hours ago had completely evaporated. He took a moment to find a file that seemed interesting and went slowly out of the office on a quest for soup.
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