Boris blinked. "Organize the villages into militias? That is a wonderful plan, m'lord. But…"
"What is it?"
"It's just that..." Boris lowered his eyes. "You have never taken such an interest in our lands."
"Land is all," I said, knowing that somewhere Ura was trying to listen—although he could only hear Boris' part of the conversation and wouldn’t understand it anyway.
"Then I hope this trend will continue," said Boris. "You are most wise and benevolent."
He bowed and exited the way he came.
“He seemed satisfied with your judgment. What did you tell him?” Ura asked, reappearing in his ogre form behind the throne.
I summarized my conversation with Boris for Ura. I knew I couldn’t leave out any details, even though Ura would not be pleased with my edict.
"Impressive," said Ura. "You just started a military revolution in the villages."
"I did what I could to resolve their problem," I said. "You didn't have to put me on the throne."
"Indeed I did not. Fortunately, I can easily remove you from it." Ura plucked me off the throne and shoved me back in my cage, a little roughly. "Impersonate me again and I will remove you from your skin."
I swallowed hard and appropriately cowered. But the seed had been planted.
Ura could turn into anything. Including a rat.
And the peasants, with a little explanation, wouldn't know the difference.
* * *
I had another dream, but this one was more of a nightmare.
I was with Piper again. It was his big day. We had saved up our guilders, using his magic in our scams. We paid the entrance exam fee. It was the day of Piper's wizard exam.
"Are you nervous?" I asked, nervous myself.
"Nope!" Piper strutted, but it was clear to me he was anxious. He compensated by being more aggressive than usual. Since Piper was already aggressive by nature, his attitude now verged on the comical.
"Are you sure they're just going to let you take the exam?"
Piper smirked. "Why not? We paid th' fee. S'all that counts, right?"
"I guess..." I wasn't entirely convinced that a pick-pocketing street urchin could just stride into the halls of Venefigrex and take an exam.
But we were on the steps of the Royal Hall of Magic and robed students streamed past us in nervous groups of three and four. They came in with spell books under their arms, wands at their hips, pouches full of spell components and of course their hats—pointed and cockeyed, feathered and brimmed.
They all looked ridiculous in my opinion.
Piper still looked like Piper. He had aged since my last dream and had grown several inches, but he was tall rather than strong, and more gawkish than intimidating. But he was still nimble as a grasshopper.
I couldn't follow Piper any further into the school. Suddenly, our worlds seemed very far apart.
On one side of the crumbling steps was my dirty, ragged existence; further up the steps turned to smooth marble. Past those steps was the wide world of wizarding and Piper's new future. I knew that it was a future without me.
Unfortunately, Piper didn't get that far. He didn't get one step onto the Royal Hall when two large men grabbed him. They both wore broad-brimmed hats...and one of them was Spindle, whom we’d swindled with Piper's music.
Piper smiled up at them. "Somethin' wrong guv?"
The other stepped around Piper and moved towards me. I backed up, almost stumbling down the steps.
"You are barred from entering the Hall of Wizardry," said Spindle. He was deadly serious.
Piper's features shifted from calm amusement to shock. "But I paid th' fee!"
Spindle lifted Piper by his collar and, with a mighty heave, tossed him at me. Piper was bigger than me, so when he hit, he hit hard. I struggled for balance, but I was already precariously perched. Then I tripped over something. I could never prove it, but I suspected the man behind me had stuck his leg out.
Piper and I both bounced down the steps, barely avoiding serious injury by bouncing off each other. A rain of guilders clattered down the steps after us. "Here's your fee back," sneered the man.
Bloody and bruised, Piper struggled to his feet. "I...I don't understand...we paid the fee," he said quietly. He kept saying it. "We paid the fee."
"But not to me, dear boy." Black stepped out from the hustle and bustle in front of the academy. "It seems we've had some illegal wizardry being practiced. Wizardry without a license."
Two of our former comrades grabbed us by our collars and dragged us back to Black's house. Black kicked open the door and the boys pushed us into the room. It was all there, the soup, the fire, the wooden ladle, the knife...
"You ratted us out!" I snarled at Black with a surprising boost of confidence.
"Ratted YOU out?" roared Black. "You been nippin' on the side! You thought I wouldn't find out? You're lucky the schoolmaster didn't throw you in prison or worse, turn you into a frog! I bribed those guards to have you turned over to me. And it's a good thing too, given that you were practicing magic without a license." He snapped Piper's pipe from the strap around his neck. "You won't be needin' this anymore."
Black threw the pipe out the door. They whistled a mournful wail as they flew through the air. Then the pipes, along with Piper's dreams, bounced down the steps and shattered on the street outside Black's hovel.
"You work for ME, dear boy," snarled Black, slamming Piper against the wall. "And none other. I clothed you, I fed you—you're part of MY gang. And this is how you repay me? You will work for me until the day you die. And if you try this again, that day will be a lot sooner than you think." He slammed Piper against the wall again. "Do you hear me?"
Piper, the light in his eyes dead, didn't look up at Black. "Yes, sir."
"And you!" Black turned to me. "I expected better from you."
I didn't say anything. I was shaking with rage, my hands balled into fists. With one of the boys pinning me against the wall, it was all the resistance I could muster.
"You're lucky you're my best nipper." Black shoved me, hard, and the boys half-dragged me the rest of the way out of the room. "So you'll do what you do best, double shifts, for the rest of the month."
I looked over my shoulder at Piper. "What is he going to do to him?" I squeaked to one of my companions.
Piper sat, limp, in the corner, the shadow of Black looming over him. Black was stirring the soup with the wooden spoon, glaring at the boy. He lifted and held the spoon in a manner that could only be described as threatening.
"Worry more about yourself," said one of the boys.
Then the door closed and I couldn't see Piper any longer.
* * *
I woke up in a panic. Lycus bustled in, running some errand for Ura.
"Lycus!" I whispered in his mind. "Come here!"
Lycus hopped over to me, a smile on his face. "What's up Scrap?"
"Do you remember working for Black?"
Lycus nodded.
"Do you miss working for him?"
A frown twisted Lycus' normally cheerful features. "Not at all. Working for Black was dangerous. And if you got caught skimming..." he shuddered. "There's what happened to Piper."
A cold knot formed in my stomach. "What happened to Piper?"
"Don't know," said Lycus. "Piper never spoke about it. But he couldn't walk for a week after that. In fact, he still walks with a limp, I think."
"I think I made a mistake," I said. "I don't think the boys should have gone back to Black."
Lycus shrugged. "It was their choice. He may not be a nice man, but he's the only parent we ever knew. I can't blame them for going back."
"But you didn't."
Lycus grinned. "You wonder why I'm always cheery? I'll tell you why: Ura may be a tough master, but he's fair. Long as we follow his rules, Ura takes good care of me. And he needs me. Black is always recruiting new boys when the others get too old. Here, I'm a rare commodity." He looked proudly at Ura's crest
on his chest—a yellow symbol that looked like a galleon cresting an ocean wave.
"I think I'm starting to see things your way," I said. "But we've got to get the boys back."
"Back?" Lycus leaned in towards the cage. "I would stop talk like that right now. You're not allowed to leave."
"Why not? What value am I?"
Lycus rocked on his heels. "What? Surely you know?"
"Know what?"
"Ura needs you. Haven't you noticed? These days he doesn't even pay attention to the peasants. He leaves it to you."
It was true. I had been working on fortifying the crop rotations. "I did notice he seems to care more about meeting dignitaries," I said nonchalantly.
Ura made it a point of meeting the King of Drakungheist and even sent envoys to Calximus to explore legitimate status with the Kingdom. He had become more focused on the appearance of power than actually wielding it, more concerned about the trappings than how he got them. I had to be careful talking to Lycus—his loyalties clearly lay with his master.
"But aren't you worried that your friends are in danger?"
"Danger?" Lycus laughed. "I know you've told me we were in that portal for years, but I doubt they're in danger." He shrugged. "Still, they made their choice. I'm not worried and if you're smart you won't worry either."
"But I DO worry. Those were my friends. And I don't think Black's changed in ten years."
"I doubt it too," said Lycus. "But it doesn't matter anymore." He skipped away, resuming his errand. "You're here to stay."
"And what if I don't want to stay here anymore?" I called after Lycus.
I caught his response from across the room. "Then Ura will probably eat you."
* * *
Ura was off again, on important meetings with important people and leaving me to handle the day-to-day operations of his fiefdom.
The peasants had stopped asking if I was the Margrave himself, and just to be safe, began calling me "m'lord." It wasn't long before I started thinking of the place as my fiefdom.
I decided to test my boundaries. I couldn't stay in the castle any longer, knowing the kids, my former comrades at arms in thievery, were at the mercy of the turf war between Piper and Black. I wasn't sure either of them was a good choice as a guardian.
I waited for a pause between sessions with the peasants and then darted for the door. The distance for a rat versus the distance for a human was considerable. I ran as fast as I could.
One huge blue toe slammed in front of me. It was Ura.
Of course it was Ura. He was never around, but he chose the one day I ran for the exit to show up!
"Going somewhere?" Ura boomed down at me.
Standing at his foot, he was titanic in comparison to my one foot height. I ran around him. A moment later a wildcat's paw slammed down, stunning me. A second later another paw batted me sideways. The wind was knocked out of me.
I had made it as far as the antechamber. Or to put it another way, I hadn't made it very far at all.
Ura was back in own form. Huge fingernails plucked me up off the ground. "Did you think you could just run out of here?"
"That was the idea," I said.
He tossed me forcefully back in my cage. The wind whistled through the bars as he lifted it to his face. "You seem to have misunderstood the gravity of your situation. You are treated like a welcome guest here. But you are too valuable to let leave. There, I said it. Are you happy now? I need you to stay."
"And if I don't want to?"
"Oh, you have no choice." The ogre's features loomed closer. "Lest you are tempted to test my patience again, let me tell you a little secret..." I could see his glistening yellow fangs. "Would you like to know how I transform into different people and animals?"
I swallowed hard. "No?"
"I eat them," he said with no hint of sarcasm.
"How is that possible? I saw Switch, he was alive!"
"Oh yes. But he was missing a bit of his tail. I don't have to eat the entire creature. Sometimes I just take a bite."
No wonder why Switch was acting so odd!
"Sometimes, I take more than a bite." The ogre licked his blue lips. I cowered. It wasn't an act. "Don't try that again," said Ura, once again his pleasant self.
"I won't."
"You won't what?"
The words burned like acid in my mouth, but I said them to preserve my life. "I won't try it again...m'lord."
"Good," said Ura. "I'm sorry we had to end our little charade, but perhaps it's better that you adjust to the reality of your situation. After all, Lycus certainly has."
As if on cue, Lycus skipped into the room. "You rang, m'lord?"
Lycus didn't understand Ura's language, but he knew when his name was mentioned.
"Take Mr. Scrap back to the throne room. But keep his cage locked. He can handle business from inside it."
I glumly translated.
* * *
I was having a lot of dreams.
The next time I saw Piper, he walked with a limp. Did I remember that? Or had Lycus planted the thought in my mind?
I really didn't get much of a chance to talk with him. True to his threat, Black put me on begging duty. I picked pockets when I could, but those times were increasingly rare.
I had to go after foreigners, and that was always a gamble since I only knew that they were from another city...I couldn’t tell how adept they were at catching thieves, or if they even knew about thieves at all.
After a particularly grueling day of begging, I finally worked up the courage to visit Piper.
It was against the rules of course; but it was the only way I was going to be able to talk with him.
Piper had dark circles under his eyes. He was quiet, kept to himself. He had stopped talking to the other boys and he barely talked to me.
One thing that was curious was that Piper didn't have his pipe. It was the first thing I blurted out when I saw him.
There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. "He won't let me have one," said Piper, clearly indicating between us who the lurking threat was: Black. "Except on special jobs."
"Special jobs?" I asked. "What kind of special jobs?"
"You shouldn't be here," said Piper. "If Black found out..."
"I don't care what Black thinks," I said. "I was worried about you. Are you all right?"
Piper shrugged. "I get by."
"But he won't let you have a pipe?"
He shook his head. "Only for those jobs."
"Do I not want to know?"
"You remember that nobleman? Who was pushing for a private militia after we nicked his special ring last month?"
I nodded my head. The nobleman had taken the theft personally and committed himself to rooting out the slums of Stromgate. He was ready to rip the place apart to find the ring.
"He died with the ring back on his finger."
"So?" It wasn't unusual for people who crossed Black to die. When the need arose, he called on his friend Trygon in the Assassins' Guild.
"It's how he died. He was killed a by scorpion poison."
"The assassins used poison?"
"No," Piper said with a dark smirk I didn't like. "The assassin used scorpions. Thousands of them."
I shrunk back from him. "You...killed him?"
Piper whistled. "I didn't say that."
I fidgeted. "I brought a gift, but now I'm not so sure I should give it to you."
He chuckled. "You mean this?" There was a box in his hand.
I grinned back at him. "Glad to see you haven't lost your touch."
Piper popped open the box with one hand. His eyes lit up. "Where did you get this?"
"I nicked it off someone," I said conspiratorially. "Some wandering monk from Chapor."
They were bamboo reed pipes. Piper lifted it to his lips and tried a few experimental notes. The music, even those few notes, was sparsely beautiful.
"Do you like it?"
Piper smiled at me, just like the old days. "I love
it," he said. "And I know who I'm going to play it for first."
* * *
I woke up with the sound of that pipe still haunting my mind.
There was something staring at me. I could feel it.
I looked out of my cage. I could see an open window. It was night, but the moon was full. With my rat vision, I couldn't see very far beyond the window. But I could smell it. And what I smelled was big and angry.
I paced in my cage. There wasn't much I could do. I certainly couldn't run away; there was nowhere to run to!
There was a low rumbling growl. The thing was pacing outside the window. I caught a glimpse of tufted ears that narrowed to points.
Was it one of the goblins? Impossible. Heave, even at his heaviest, was not nearly as large as the thing I smelled outside my window.
It was pacing in frustration. Tentatively, I tried to talk to it. If it had a mind, I would be able to sense it. I reached out...
And found nothing. It was gone. Or was never there to begin with.
I closed my eyes. The extremely lucid dreams were having an effect on me.
It was also entirely possible that Ura was terrorizing me. After all, he had appeared as Eureka first. The cursed ogre had tricked me on at least one occasion by posing as Switch.
Suddenly the growling was much closer. I sat bolt upright. It was a jet-black panther, easily eight feet long from nose to tail. It slunk low to the ground, creeping with one paw in front of the other. And it was creeping towards me.
I shouted, but no one could hear me. My mindspeech didn't echo, didn't pierce walls, didn't bounce off anything because there were no sounds to be heard.
"HAAAAAALP!" I shouted for help anyway. "There's a giant cat in my room!"
The panther didn't react. I trained my thoughts on it, but it wasn't there, it wasn't something I could focus on. It was like expecting a chair to be beneath you when you sit down, only it's not there and in the intervening moment your body thinks it's sitting...until you hit the ground.
The cat came closer. Suddenly, it stopped short. It shrieked, howling in frustration as a magical field glittered in front of me.
Of course! If I was as valuable to Ura as Lycus said, he was protecting his property.
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