February 2nd, 2012 — 4:10 PM
The Rustlantern — Kitchen Corridor
Perspective: Edren Hearst
The kitchen smelled like broth, wood smoke, and bad decisions.
I followed the smell of all three until I found the man — broad-shouldered, flat-faced, wiping down a prep counter with a rag that had long since made peace with the concept of being dirty.
He looked up.
He looked at my coat.
He didn't seem impressed.
Good. I wasn't here to impress anyone.
"You." I pointed. "You're his brother."
The man said nothing for a moment. He looked at the ceiling in the way a person looks at something they can't actually appeal to but have run out of better options.
Then he nodded.
"That boy out there," I said, "is a 12-year-old dishwasher with attitude, bad manners, no prospects, no magic, and the behavior of a god-digging fool."
The man across from me opened his mouth.
I wasn't done.
"He looks like he combs his hair with a fork. He ordered food in the middle of a serious conversation about my niece's future and called it good planning." I set my hands flat on the counter. "And you — a grown man, operating a public establishment — are telling me that person is your brother."
The man behind the counter said nothing.
He had the expression of someone who had chosen not to argue with the rain.
"How," I said, very carefully, "do you allow this."
He set down the rag.
He looked at the counter for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
"It's my misfortune," he said.
I stared at him.
"Your—"
"My name is Cliff Hanger."
I replayed the words.
Cliff.
Hanger.
"Your name," I said, "is Cliff Hanger."
"Yes."
"Your parents—"
"Were not kind people."
I cleared my throat. Twice. With great effort.
"Right." I straightened my coat. "Regardless. You are presumably a man of some standing — you own a business, you are taller than the boy by what I estimate is 40 centimeters, and you do not appear to share a single physical trait with him. So I ask again." I looked at him directly. "Why do you have a beggar for a brother?"
Cliff Hanger looked at me for a long moment.
He leaned back against the wall.
"You want to understand," he said, "you have to see it yourself."
"See what?"
"The beginning." He crossed his arms. "Let's look at the flashback together."
---
[Flashback — 2 Weeks Ago]
The Rustlantern — Main Counter
Perspective: Cliff Hanger
Telling this story physically hurts me.
I want you to know that before I tell it.
It was a normal Wednesday. The courtyard crowd was the usual — a few adventurers, a merchant waiting out a rain delay, the Gorvin brothers eating their fourth meal of the day which is their business and not mine.
And then this kid walked in.
He was small. He had a school bag, a stack of books, and what appeared to be half a mechanical engine held together with copper wire and hope. He sat at the corner table. He put everything down with the seriousness of a man arriving at his office.
He opened the book.
"What'll you have."
"Lemon juice."
It was 3 copper. I brought it. He didn't look up from the book.
He stayed for 4 hours.
He left at exactly 6 PM without ordering anything else and without saying goodbye.
Fine... Some people like lemon juice and quiet corners. This is a tavern. It's allowed.
The next day, same thing. 3 PM. Lemon juice. Books. Mechanical parts this time — he'd laid them out across the table in a grid, sorted by size, and was cross-referencing them with something he was writing in the margin of his Engineering manual.
He stayed 5 hours.
On the third day, I noticed it.
He poured himself the lemon juice.
He drank half.
He poured water in.
He drank half again.
He poured more water in.
I watched this cycle happen 3 more times. By the end, that glass contained approximately 2% lemon juice and 98% a philosophical question about what juice even is.
He drank it like it was normal.
You haven't paid for 3 of those... You know that. You're doing this on purpose.
See, the Rustlantern has a rule — you can sit as long as you have a drink in front of you. The rule exists for paying customers who need somewhere warm and quiet. This child had discovered the rule, reverse-engineered it, and was now exploiting it with what I can only describe as professional precision.
He was also eating my electricity bills every time he connected one of those parts to a wire and sparked it on the table.
On the 4th day, he ordered a lemon, beet, and pine needle juice.
I don't stock pine needles.
He showed me where there was a pine tree in the courtyard and asked if I could extract a few.
I did it.
A week later, he'd been coming every day. The corner table was his table. My regulars had started sitting elsewhere because the mechanical parts had spread outward and the Engineering manuals had started stacking. One of the Gorvin brothers called it the Research Corner.
The Research Corner. In my tavern.
On that particular day — the day everything went wrong — I came over to speak to him. Because enough was enough. Because this child had consumed 11 lemon juices across 9 days and paid for exactly 3 of them. Because he was now using my side table to dry what appeared to be a copper coil he'd been soaking in something acidic.
I walked over.
I stood next to the table.
He looked like he hadn't slept properly. He looked like someone who had come a long way to sit in a corner and try to figure something out, and the lemon juice was the least of what he was trying to stretch.
I meant to say: You owe me 8 coppers and I'm going to need you to leave if you can't pay.
What came out instead was:
"Hey. How are you, son?"
The entire corner table went very still.
Very, very still.
The kid did not look up immediately. He went still the way things go still when a sound has arrived that they do not know how to process.
Then, slowly — and I mean slowly, the way a water wheel turns — his head rotated.
He looked up at me.
He looked at me for exactly 3 seconds.
Then he closed the book.
He stood up.
He stared at me.
Then he looked down at the bench.
And kicked it.
He looked back at me.
His eyes were — I want to be accurate here — doing something I had not anticipated. They were shining. Not wet yet. But close. The specific kind of close that makes a grown man's instincts scream abort, reverse, do not engage.
"What," he said, very quietly, "did you just say."
I should have corrected myself.
I should have said nothing, forget it, pay your 8 coppers.
"How are you, son," I said, because apparently I have no survival instincts.
The music started.
I don't know where it came from. I genuinely don't. But somewhere, faintly, from somewhere in the direction of the canal — the melancholy scrape of a street fiddle.
Sad background music.
The kid's face crumpled..
And then—
"WAHHHHHHH."
The entire courtyard went quiet.
"WAHHH—"
The Gorvin brothers put down their spoons.
"—AHHHHHH—"
The adventurer in the corner stopped mid-card-game.
"WAHHHHHH—"
This child — this 12-year-old who had been sitting in my tavern for 9 days reading Engineering manuals with the expression of someone who had never once needed anything from anyone — was standing at the corner table crying at a volume I was not prepared for.
The tears were real. I want to note that. Genuinely real.
"I NEVER—" He pressed the back of his hand to his face. A shuddering breath. "I never had a father figure. Not once. In my entire life." He looked at the ceiling. Something about the angle made it theatrical and also somehow completely sincere at the same time.
"If I ever had a father — he would have told me to die in the corner. He would have said I was a disappointment. He would have said the fact that I exist is a waste of oxygen."
The fiddle got slightly louder.
"But you—" He looked at me. The tears were doing something impressive on his face — not messy, somehow.
"You called me son. You asked how I was. Not if I paid. Not if I was in the way. Just—" His voice cracked, genuinely, on the last word. "—how I was."
A very long pause.
"From today," he said, straightening, "you are my big brother."
I opened my mouth.
He walked toward me.
He pointed at me — one finger, very close to my nose — and then his arms went sideways and he hugged me.
He hugged me the way a person hugs something they hadn't known they needed to hold onto.
I stood there.
"Please stop crying," I said.
He cried harder.
The Gorvin brothers started clapping.
I don't know why they clapped. It made things worse.
He cried for about 4 more minutes.
I patted his back three times. As one does.
And that is how I became his brother.
[Back to Present]
I leaned against the wall.
"He's sentimental," I said. "I know that now. I wanted to help a poor kid. I had good intentions." I looked at Edren directly. "And he has been absolutely destroying my life ever since."
Edren was staring at me.
"Every day he comes back. Sometimes it's the juice — different combinations, whatever he's testing. Sometimes he's engineering something and my kitchen becomes a parts facility. One time he needed to test a water-pressure mechanism and my sink was involved and I won't say more about that." I paused.
"He's borrowed money from me 4 times and returned it exactly zero times, with a note explaining why he'd need 3 more years to repay it due to current 'logistically inefficient' circumstances."
"He's been here—"
"Every day. Eating for free, practically. Charging parts on my electricity. Using my regular customers as test subjects for whatever engineering theory he's currently—" I stopped. "He has also, at various points, turned this establishment into a juice shop, a library, a research facility, a bank, and once, briefly, a recording studio, though I have chosen not to speak about that."
I looked at the ceiling.
"I am 37 years old. I am unmarried. And this child is killing me."
Perspective: Edren Hearst
I looked at Cliff Hanger for a long moment.
He is a bigger scammer than I thought.
Kaiser Everhart — dishwasher, debt-holder, owner of a school bag that contained more mechanical parts than books — had somehow conned this man into a brotherhood using strategic emotional warfare and what appeared to be weaponized vulnerability.
This was a more sophisticated operation than I had initially given him credit for.
I disliked that I was impressed.
"And you," Cliff said, looking at me with the patient eyes of someone who had accepted his fate, "who are you, if I might ask? Another unfortunate soul who has met him?"
"He's made himself my niece's boyfriend," I said. "And is apparently planning a wedding."
Cliff stared at me.
Then, slowly, his face did something.
It started at the corners of his mouth.
"Ahaha—"
He put a hand over his face.
"—ahahaha—"
"This is not funny—"
"AHAHAHA—" He leaned back against the counter. "He found a rich girl! A rich girl! A man with no electricity budget and a lemon water extended universe found a rich girl and is planning a wedding—" He was laughing fully now. Loud. Unrestrained. The laugh of a man who had been in pain for weeks and had finally found someone whose pain was worse.
"Your niece! He picked your niece! What is she, nobility? Is there a title involved? Are there factories? There are factories, aren't there—"
"There are 9 factories," I said flatly.
The laughter escalated.
"AHAHAHAHA—"
"This is not—"
"Sir, my life is finished," Cliff said, pressing both hands to his face. "My life is done. I became his brother and now I am the brother-in-law of a man who drinks 2% lemon juice and is marrying into nobility. AHAHAHAHA."
I looked at him for a long moment.
This man was useless.
"Pull yourself together," I said. "You're coming with me."
"What? Why?"
"Moral support." I turned toward the door. "I'm going to tell that boy that this ends today. I would like a witness."
"A witness."
"In case he does something theatrical."
Cliff was quiet for exactly one second.
"...Yeah, he'll do something theatrical," he said. "I'll get my coat."
---
The Courtyard — 2 Minutes Later
Perspective: Edren Hearst
We walked back through the courtyard door together.
The adventurers had rearranged themselves slightly. Someone had lit one of the lanterns even though it was only 5 PM, which gave the whole space the ambiance of a place where things happen that you tell stories about later.
Scarlet was at the table.
Kaiser was at the table.
Kaiser was pouring water into his lemon juice.
He was doing it with the focused efficiency of someone who had practiced this many times and had a system.
Of course he was.
I sat down.
Cliff sat down beside me, still visibly recovering.
Kaiser looked up.
"Father-in-law," he said. "Welcome back."
Cliff Hanger made a sound behind his hand.
"AHA—" He muffled it. Barely.
"Right." I put my hands flat on the table. "I have spoken to your brother. I have heard more than I needed to hear. And I am now going to be very clear with you." I looked at him directly. "I have the resources — personally, and through professional contacts — to call 30 men to this location within the hour. Disciplined men. Men who have been paid to deliver messages of a specific kind." I held his gaze. "I am not going to do that. Because I am a man of ethics and principle. But I want you to understand that I could."
Kaiser nodded.
Thoughtfully.
"That is a reasonable position," he said.
"I—"
"And I respect it."
"Don't—"
"The principle-based restraint, specifically. Very admirable."
My left temple began its familiar protest.
"I am going to call them," I said. I reached into my coat. I produced my phone. I looked at the signal indicator.
No signal.
Of course there was no signal. We were in the Lower East Quarter. The mana grid here was older than the signaling infrastructure.
Kaiser watched me look at the screen.
"No problem," he said.
He reached into his bag.
He produced a phone.
I looked at it.
It was — I want to be precise — not a phone in any conventional sense of the word. It was rectangular, in the way that a brick is rectangular. It was assembled from what appeared to be copper sheeting, a small glass lens held in place with wire, and three components I could not identify. A string — an actual pull-string, like something on a mechanical lamp — was attached to the left side.
Scarlet looked at it.
"What," she said slowly, "is that."
"Phone," Kaiser said.
"That's not a—"
"Built it myself."
Cliff leaned over to look.
Something moved across his face that was between professional horror and old fondness.
Kaiser took hold of the string.
He pulled it.
CRRRREEEEEK.
The sound of old hinges. The sound of a door that hadn't been opened in thirty years. The sound of something waking up that probably should have been left asleep.
Nothing happened.
Kaiser pulled it again.
CRRRREEEEEK.
A slight vibration. The glass lens flickered.
Third pull.
CRRRREEEEK—KUNK.
The table shook. A small tremor. The lemon juice rippled.
Fourth pull.
BRRRRRMMMMM.
The phone started.
Not quietly. Not subtly. It started the way a mill starts — the grinding, metal-on-metal, industrial bass of something built for function and entirely unconcerned with the concept of silence. The table vibrated. The lemon juice vibrated. I felt it in my molars.
GRRRMMM—KACKA-KACKA-KACKA—BRRRRMMMM.
The adventurers at the other tables looked over.
"What in the—" one of them started.
KACKA-KACKA-KACKA—BWOOOOMMMM—KACKA.
"What is that," I said. "What is that."
"It's starting up," Kaiser said, watching it with the calm patience of a man waiting for a kettle.
"It sounds like a factory."
"Most phones run on electricity." He set the still-vibrating, still-grinding, still-KACKA-KACKA-ing device on the table. "I don't know electrical engineering yet. So I built it on diesel."
There was a pause.
"Your phone," I said, "runs on diesel."
"It runs well."
"It sounds like a—"
BWOOOOMMMM—KACKA-KACKA-KACKA—GRRRMMM.
"—mill—"
"Signal's coming up," Kaiser said.
KACKA-KACKA-BWOOOOM.
Cliff had both hands over his mouth.
Scarlet had put her face in her hands.
The adventurer with the tower shield had moved his chair approximately 1 meter further away, just in case.
BRRRRMMMM—KACKA-KACKA—
And then — from somewhere above the table — a knife fell.
It landed point-first in the wood between the lemon juice and my right hand.
Perfectly vertical.
Quivering.
We all looked at it.
There was a very long silence.
"Last week," Kaiser said, with the calm of someone referencing a weather forecast, "there was a murder here."
Nobody moved.
"That's probably the killer."
He stood up.
He grabbed Scarlet's arm.
"Let's run."
And he ran.
Scarlet ran because he was pulling her arm and she had no choice in the matter.
I ran because — and I want to state clearly that this was a dignified, rational assessment of the available information — there was a knife in the table and a boy who knew the local murder history and I was a man of principle, not a man of marble.
Cliff Hanger ran because everyone else was running.
The adventurers watched the four of us exit the courtyard at different speeds and with different amounts of composure, and then turned back to their cards.
The diesel phone was still going on the table.
KACKA-KACKA-KACKA-BWOOOOMMMM.
The Lower East Quarter Market
Perspective: Edren Hearst
I never ran from problems.
I manage trade flows across three provinces.
Today, I ran.
I ran past a fruit stand. I ran over a discarded crate. I ran behind a boy who was still holding my niece's hand with the grip of a man who had decided he was keeping it.
We reached a cluster of narrow, canvas-covered market stalls. It smelled like spices and wet stone.
Kaiser stopped near a barrel of dried fish.
"Father-in-law!" he yelled, waving his free arm. "Come here!"
I stopped. I braced my hands on my knees. I took a breath that cost me a great deal of dignity.
Cliff Hanger stopped next to me, wheezing in a way that suggested his physical condition was mostly theoretical.
"You!" I pointed a finger at Kaiser, trying to keep my breathing even.
"You set up a family meeting. A formal discussion of marriage prospects. In a location where people get murdered!"
"The rent was free." he said.
"A knife fell from the sky!"
"Gravity," he said, "is unpredictable." He looked at Scarlet. "Are you alright, my beloved? Your hand is very soft. It's like holding a wealthy lottery ticket."
Scarlet's face was doing something spectacular. It was red. It was beyond red. It was a color that usually required a severe fever.
"I—" she stuttered, pulling at her hand. Not very hard. "Please—you can—let go now."
"I could never let go of my rich future," Kaiser said smoothly. He tightened his grip. "And you're shaking. Don't worry. I'll protect you from the sky knives."
"I am going to have a stroke," Cliff Hanger muttered. "I'm going to die right here next to the fish."
I straightened up. My temple was throbbing. A deep, rhythmic pulse.
"Let go of her hand," I said, taking a step forward. "Let go of it this instant, or else—"
BOOOM.
The sound came from two streets over. Not a small sound. The specific, concussive heavy sound of a physical explosion, followed by the clatter of falling brick.
Kaiser blinked.
"Father-in-law," he said. "It must be them!"
He turned and bolted down the alley.
He pulled Scarlet with him.
"Who is them!" I yelled, already running again.
I ran next to Cliff. The alley was dark, lined with trash and stacked crates.
"This is your fault," I said, dodging a discarded cart wheel. "You raised this child."
"I have known him for two weeks!" Cliff yelled back, ducking under a clothesline. "I sell cheap soup! I didn't ask for this! My bad luck! My bad, bad life!"
"He is going to kill us," I said. "He is going to marry into my family and then he is going to get us killed in an alleyway."
"At least you have riches!" Cliff gasped. "I just have a tavern! He's going to inherit the tavern!"
A hand shot out from behind a stack of wooden crates.
It grabbed my coat.
I was pulled backward into the shadows.
Cliff stumbled in right after me, pulled by his collar.
We were behind a large, overgrown bush wedged between two stone walls. Kaiser was crouched there, holding Scarlet behind him.
I adjusted my coat. It was ruined. The Elvian wool was now intimately acquainted with a Vaelcrest garbage pile.
"Father-in-law," Kaiser whispered, looking at me with absolute sincerity. "I love your girl. I really do. Every second we spend running for our lives, I'm falling in love deeper."
I stared at him.
"She is the light of my dark alleyway," he continued. "The diesel to my phone. If we die today, I want you to know I would have been a great husband. I would have spent her inheritance very responsibly. I would have built a golden statue of you in the courtyard."
"Let her go," I hissed, my chest heaving. "Scarlet, let go of him."
Scarlet was looking at her boots. She was holding onto Kaiser's sleeve with her free hand. She was the color of a fresh tomato.
"Uncle—" she managed, her voice squeaking. "I—he's just—it's..."
"It's true love." Kaiser corrected.
"Are we fine here?" Cliff Hanger whispered, pressing himself flat against the brick. "Is it safe? Tell me it's safe."
"Absolutely, brother," Kaiser said.
"YO! WE FOUND HIM!"
The scream echoed down the alleyway.
Kaiser paused.
"Oh my god..." he said flatly.
We all turned.
A man was standing at the entrance to the alley.
He was old, but he was built like a siege engine. Thick, corded muscle under a leather vest, arms covered in scars, holding a heavy iron pipe. Behind him, filtering into the alley, were more men. Six. Eight. Twelve.
28 men. All of them carrying blunt instruments, chains, or blades.
The old muscular man pointed the pipe at our bush.
"Kaiser Everhart!" he growled. The sound felt like gravel in a blender. "Today you're going to pay for conning us."
I looked at the men. I looked at the weapons.
I looked at the 12-year-old boy next to me.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"It turns out," Kaiser said, brushing a leaf off his shoulder, "that all those coordinated attacks? They've been on me."
I closed my eyes.
"Father-in-law. Brother." Kaiser looked at us. "You two better run. Because they move their fists much more than their mouths."
Before I could process the words, Kaiser turned.
He scooped Scarlet up.
Bridal style.
"Eek!" Scarlet shrieked, her legs kicking.
Kaiser didn't hesitate. He launched himself out of the bushes and sprinted down the opposite end of the alley, carrying my niece like she weighed nothing at all.
I stepped out of the bush. I straightened my posture. I tapped into centuries of aristocratic Elvian dignity. These were street thugs. They simply needed to be spoken to with authority.
"Excuse me." I said, projecting my voice with perfect eloquence. "We—"
A dagger buried itself in the brick wall three inches from my ear.
Cliff grabbed my collar and yanked me backward outside the bush.
"RUN!" Cliff screamed.
I realized, with terrifying clarity, that the boy had not been kidding.
We ran.
28 men roared and charged down the alley.
It was not a dignified chase.
I am an Elf of the High Courts. I slipped on a rotten cabbage. I collided with Cliff, who rebounded off a fruit stand, sending apples rolling across the cobblestones. The thugs behind us slipped on the apples. Someone yelled. A chain whipped past my shoulder and shattered a clay pot hanging above a door.
This kid... I thought, my lungs burning as I jumped over a stray cat. This kid is going to bring doom to my life. He is a walking curse.
I ducked under a low-hanging sign. Cliff vaulted a stray dog. A heavy boot crashed into the wall behind me.
"Over here!"
I looked up.
At the end of a dead-end street, Kaiser was standing by a high brick wall. He had already put Scarlet on the top of it. He was pointing at us, waving frantically.
"This way!" he yelled.
We didn't think. We just followed the pointing finger. We banked hard right, instead of staying in the open area, sprinting into the dead-end toward the wall.
I reached the brick. I looked up. It was three meters high.
Kaiser scrambled up the side using a stack of crates I hadn't noticed. He reached the top next to Scarlet.
He looked down at us.
"Good luck, father-in-law! Big-Brother!"
He jumped down the other side.
He was gone.
I stood there.
Cliff stood there.
We both slowly turned around.
28 muscular, heavily armed men blocked the only exit to the street.
The old man cracked his knuckles.
I raised both hands.
Cliff raised both hands.
"I have never seen that boy before in my life," I said.
"I don't even know his name," Cliff said.
The old man did not look convinced. He made a gesture with two fingers.
28 arms moved.
I closed my eyes. I prepared to meet my ancestors. I hoped they would not ask me how I died, because 'abandoned in an alley by a 12-year-old dishwasher' was not going to play well in the afterlife.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack-thwack-thwack.
I waited for the pain.
It didn't come.
I opened my eyes.
A dagger was buried in the brick half an inch from my nose. Two throwing axes had pinned the sleeves of my Elvian coat to the wall. Three more knives formed a perfect, terrifying outline around my ribcage.
I glanced sideways. Cliff Hanger was pinned in exactly the same way, a rusty cleaver lodged between his fingers. Neither of us could move.
The old man walked forward. He stopped just out of arm's reach.
"What's your relationship to the kid?"
"He's a thief!" Cliff said immediately. "He stole from my tavern! I was just chasing him!"
"I thought he was a pickpocketer," I added, keeping my voice very steady. "I was merely assisting this man in his pursuit."
One of the thugs in the back spat on the cobblestones.
"Boss, cut these two to pieces. They were talking to him. They're his acquaintances."
"Wait," I said. "I can pay you. I possess immense wealth. I can draft a promissory note—"
"I'll give you free soup for a year!" Cliff yelled. "Just don't stab my face!"
"I have political connections in the Elvian Kingdom. If you let us go, you will be well compensated."
"I have a tavern! It's not a great tavern but it has free food!"
"Please," I said, abandoning the last shred of my dignity. "Just take the coat. Take my wallet and let us leave."
The old man leaned closer.
"We don't want your money."
I stared at the dagger next to my nose.
I should have taken combat lessons.
I own shipping lanes. I own timber concessions. I employ hundreds of people. And none of it mattered because I had spent thirty years learning how to read ledgers instead of learning how to punch someone in the throat. I was going to die pinned to a wall like a frightened prey.
Cliff's head dropped forward.
"I'm his big brother." he whispered.
The alley went dead quiet.
The old man stared at Cliff.
Then, the old man's shoulders started shaking.
"Ahahah."
He threw his head back.
"AHAHAH HAHAHAH!"
The laughter rolled through the alley. The thugs joined in. The sound bounced off the brick walls, loud, ugly, and filled with immense, genuine joy.
The old man stepped forward and pulled the cleaver out from between Cliff's fingers. He pulled the knives away. He freed him.
Cliff slumped against the wall. He looked at the old man.
"He's going to milk you dry."
The laughter got louder.
I looked at the axes pinning my sleeves. I looked at the old man.
"I'm his father-in-law." I said.
The alley exploded.
One of the thugs actually fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. Two others leaned against each other, gasping for air.
The old man wiped a tear from his eye. He walked over to me. He pulled the axes out of my sleeves. He pulled the dagger from next to my nose.
He leaned in.
He kissed me on the cheek.
"You're the unluckiest man in the world." the old man said gently.
I didn't say anything.
"We've been hunting that kid for two months." the old man said, tossing his pipe over his shoulder.
"Two months. Do you know why?"
I shook my head.
"He sold us a map to a hidden mana-vein that turned out to be the city sewage line. He sold us 'ancient Dwarvian relics' that were just painted gears from a broken clock. He offered to fix our vault lock and changed the code so we had to pay him to open it. He sold us insurance against 'unforeseen fires' three days before our warehouse mysteriously burned down."
The old man sighed.
"He took us for 400 gold. We've been hunting him like madmen. But looking at you two..." He smiled. It was a terrifying smile. "He is going to scam and take absolutely everything from you."
He patted my shoulder.
"If I were you, I would not be here. There are 24 gangs looking for him across Asura. Together, he owes the underworld a total of 7,000 gold. And when they can't find him, they are going to hunt you two first."
Cliff made a small, pathetic sound.
"We're searching for another three months." the old man said, turning to his men. "But I'm satisfied. Seeing your unfortunate faces... I don't even need the money anymore. I can wake up every morning and laugh, remembering there are pathetic fools like you two in the world."
He gestured to the ground, where a few of their knives had fallen.
"Take those." the old man said. "You can either run away, or use them to end it right here. Because you'll never survive what that kid brings."
They turned. They walked out of the alley. They were still laughing when they turned the corner.
Cliff stared at the knives on the ground.
"My life is ruined." he said.
He turned. He ran. He didn't look back.
I stood alone in the alley. My coat was torn. My dignity was gone. My future son-in-law was the most wanted criminal in the lower districts.
My pocket vibrated.
I reached in. I pulled out my phone.
It was my wife.
I answered it.
"Edren!" her voice came through, crisp and clear. "Are you with Scarlet? Did you tell her she's coming home?"
I looked at the brick wall. I looked at the garbage on the ground. I realized, with absolute certainty, that if I stayed in this city for another twenty minutes, I was going to be dismembered by 24 different criminal syndicates.
"I can't stay." I said.
"What? Edren, what are you talking about?"
"I will come back to take Scarlet. In four months."
"Four months? Why four months? Edren, what is going on over there?"
"The gangs—" I caught myself. I swallowed hard. "It's bad here. The environment. It's not safe. I have to come back."
There was a pause on the line.
"Then come back quickly," my wife said, her voice dropping into worry. "Tell Scarlet to be careful until you bring her back."
"Yes," I said quickly. "Yes. I will."
I hung up the phone.
I looked at the top of the wall where Kaiser had disappeared.
I turned and ran toward the nearest carriage station, leaving the city of Asura as fast as my Elvian legs could carry me.
---
February 2nd, 2012 — 9:01 PM
Asura Academy — Starlight Lake Park
Perspective: Scarlet Hearst
The lake had no jokes about any of it.
It just reflected the stars and stayed still, which was more than I could say for my own hands.
I was sitting on the stone bench nearest the water. Kaiser was beside me. Not close — the appropriate distance between two classmates who had, over the course of one afternoon, accidentally implied they were getting married.
I looked at my hand.
He held it for two hours.
I was aware that this was a factual statement and not an emotional one. I was aware of that. The skin at the back of my hand looked exactly the same as it always did, which was good, because that meant nothing had changed, and nothing had changed.
He didn't loosen his grip once.
I pressed both palms flat against my thighs.
Not even when I pulled.
Not even when uncle—
Stop.
I was 14 years old, and I had made one catastrophic mistake already in my life, and I was very committed to not making a second one, and the second mistake would be doing what my hands were apparently interested in doing, which was remembering what it felt like to have someone hold them without asking permission.
"My uncle left." I said.
"Yeah?"
"He's coming back. In a few months, he said."
"Nice." Kaiser said.
He said it the way Kaiser said everything — flat, brief, with a tone that somehow managed to communicate that he'd heard the information, filed it, and was already three steps ahead of it.
I looked at the lake.
"Kaiser."
"Mm."
"I need to say something."
"Okay."
I took a breath.
I'd rehearsed this, approximately, in the three minutes before he'd sat down. It was important to say it clearly and not stutter and not get flustered and not—
"I can't be with you."
He didn't say anything. I kept going.
"I know today was—and you were trying to help, and I'm grateful, I really am, but I need you to understand that I can't—" I pressed on before my voice could wobble.
"Love isn't something I want to stumble into. I want it to feel chosen. I want to know the person. I want to be sure." I looked at my hands again. "And I don't know you well enough to feel that. It wouldn't be fair to you."
Still nothing.
"And if I let myself—if I let today mean something, I'd be making the same mistake I've already made once, and I'm not going to do that again." I exhaled. "I'm sorry. I can't date you. I can't marry you. I don't love you."
A beat.
"I want to know you better. As a person. If you want that. And I'm grateful that you—I mean, I should say thank you for—"
"You can calm down." Kaiser said.
I stopped.
"I wasn't in love with you either." He said it without edge, without cruelty. Just—plainly.
"I wasn't flirting. I was buying time."
I blinked. "What?"
He looked out at the water.
"Your uncle arrived already angry. His mind was set. If I tried to argue with him rationally, you'd lose — he's older, more established, and he came here specifically to win that conversation."
He turned over a small stone with his shoe.
"The only situation I could change was what he left believing. If he leaves thinking Asura Academy is a place full of broke, violent dishwashers with no social grace or future prospects, he's going to want to come back. To check on you. To make sure you're safe. Which means he's not taking you home today."
I stared at him.
"The knife in the table was coincidence." he added. "The running was just the situation. But the rest—" he paused. "I needed him to leave without a resolution. Unresolved things get checked on. That was the goal."
"You..." I processed this. "You gave yourself a terrible impression on purpose."
"I made him think you were surrounded by chaos so he'd want to come back and monitor the situation rather than extract you from it immediately." He looked at me. "Next time he comes, you show him what you've built here. Your grades. Your magic. Whatever you've proven to yourself by then. You win him over with evidence. Not with arguments."
"And when he comes back?"
"I tell him I'm not your boyfriend. I made a mistake. Very tragic. He calms down." Kaiser shrugged, one shoulder. "He needs 4 months to be angry. Then 4 months to see you're fine. That's roughly your window."
The lake moved slightly, just the wind.
"Thank you." I said quietly. "You really helped me."
He didn't say anything to that. He looked at the water like the water was more interesting.
"Kaiser."
"Mm."
"Do you do things like this for Elfie?"
"Always."
"Always?"
"Because she doesn't need it. Elfie can do whatever she wants." He said it without looking up. "The sky is the limit. And if she falls, I'll catch her. That's all."
Something about the way he said that's all made it sound like the opposite of small.
"She means a lot to you." I said.
I wasn't sure why I said it. It was obvious.
"She's my best friend."
"Just—your best friend?"
He turned and looked at me with the expression he used when someone had said something that required a brief, clinical reclassification.
"She's my first friend." he said. "My only one from before. Everyone else was just someone standing nearby."
I looked at the water.
"Really?" My voice came out more careful than I intended. "In your childhood. There was no one else? No one who saw you?"
"No."
"Nobody who cared."
"No." He turned the stone over with his shoe again.
"She's the one and only. Others were strangers I didn't think about."
The stone landed in the grass.
Others were strangers I didn't think about.
My hands were very still in my lap.
My elf ears lay flat against my hair, pressed there by something I wasn't ready to name, not here, not in front of the lake and the stars and someone who had just said the most devastating thing he'd ever said to me completely without knowing it.
"Oh?" I said.
"Mm."
I stood up. I brushed my skirt down with both hands. The stars reflected in the water didn't move.
"Thank you, Kaiser." My voice was steady. Good. "Really. For today."
"Yeah."
"Do you want to walk back to the dorms?"
"I'm heading to the bakery." He stood, lifting his bag. "Elfie wanted cake. I said I'd get it."
"Oh." I smiled. It was a real smile. I made sure of it.
"Okay. Good night, then."
"Night."
He walked one way.
I walked the other.
The path curved around the lake, the stone cold under my shoes. The lanterns along the bank cast their low, amber light across the surface of the water, and the stars hung still above the academy rooftops, and I walked alone the way I always walked alone, which was quietly, with my hands folded, with my ears flat, with the expression of someone who was fine.
---
There was a story my aunt used to tell me, before I was old enough to understand what it meant.
She said it was an old tale — older than Elves, older than the stars' naming. A story from when the world was still being decided.
She called it The Myth of Aeverin and Ashlynn.
Aeverin was born cold and dark, a dying spark drifting in the void of the winter fields. He had no light of his own, shivering in the freezing empty, desperately needing someone to breathe life into his cold bones and show him the warmth he had never known.
Ashlynn was a daughter of the stars. She found him shivering in the dark. She shared her starlight with him, breathing her own fire into his chest to steady his. She gave him her heart. They sat beneath the nascent sky and made vows to one another.
They swore the Vow of the Hearth, promising they would never let the cold touch them again, sharing the same flame. They swore the Vow of the Horizon, promising that no matter how far Aeverin walked or how high he climbed, he would never look to another star for guidance. And they swore the Vow of the Name, promising that she would always be the only one who truly knew the secret shape of his fire.
For a long time, they were close. But Aeverin grew reckless. He did things that broke that trust, stepping too close to the dark, fracturing the bond they had built. Still, Ashlynn clung to him. She stayed, hoping he would remember what they were, hoping the love of their shared years and the sacred vows they made meant something.
But then, Aeverin saw Evera.
She was another star, younger and brighter, cast in a blinding, dazzling warmth that made Ashlynn's quiet light seem dim. Aeverin forgot his vows. He broke the Vow of the Horizon, turning his gaze away from the one who had saved him.
He left Ashlynn behind, abandoning her in the very cold fields where she had first found him. He ran to Evera, finding safety and love in her blinding light, wrapping himself in her warmth as if Ashlynn had never existed. To him, the vows they had made, the heart she had given him, and the years they had shared were nothing.
She didn't beg. She didn't cry out.
She simply watched him bask in Evera's light, and the silence in her turned into something else.
Years passed, and Aeverin lived in his new warmth, convinced he had outrun the dark. He forgot the girl who had saved him. He forgot her name, breaking the final vow they had sworn.
But stars do not fade. They wait.
And the night came when the sky opened, and Ashlynn ascended to godhood.
She did not leave him to his joy. She did not forgive.
From her throne of cold starlight, she looked down at the boy who had cast her away, and she withdrew the light she had lent him. She stripped the warmth from his bones, leaving his flame to flicker, decay, and turn to ash in the freezing dark.
He suffered in the end, shivering under a sky that no longer recognized him, paying the price for the trust he had broken.
His selfish sin was not leaving.
It was forgetting her.
He paid the price with his life.
---
The lanterns along Starlight Lake cast their amber light across the stone path. I walked slowly, my hands folded in front of me, my ears flat, my expression soft and ordinary and fine.
She stripped the warmth from his bones.
The water reflected the stars above.
He suffered in the end.
I kept walking.
The night was very quiet.
Paying the price for his sins.