The Chronicle of the Worthy Son

Violations

Able was famished after the long morning. His nerves had kept him going this long, but now that things were calmer, he was succumbing to faintness and exhaustion.

So despite the cost, he found a restaurant to sit and have a full meal. While he ate, he put Lark from his mind and returned his focus to the details of the conflict. The food revitalized him enough that he went up to the municipal campus instead of back to the inn to sleep.

The grounds seemed almost a different place just from the presence of so many enforcers hustling around. This change was to be expected, as was that the first enforcer to notice Able would accost him.

"I'm sorry, sir." The enforcer took him by the elbow and started pulling him off his path to the Records building. "Please stand with the others."

"The others?" Able stopped in his tracks but resisted the urge to pull his arm away. "What do you mean?"

The enforcer pulled more insistently. "I'm sorry, but this area is off-limits. Please stand with the other employees while we conduct our investigation."

Okay, so being mistaken for a municipal employee was actually useful. He still didn't like this man pulling his arm but swallowed that down and allowed himself to be led over near the run-down barracks. A number of the real employees idled here with arms folded around themselves or in pockets. Able looked around the faces for someone he knew...and they were all "brown" faces. All Larbant. He swallowed a lump in his throat and sidled up to Faith.

"What's going on?" he whispered.

"The treasury was broken into last night." She sighed tiredly, and she was holding herself so tightly that she trembled upon inhaling.

"Does anyone know what was taken?" He looked around to see everyone shrugging in response. "Well, when was the theft discovered?"

"About three hours ago," said one of the clerks. "I'd been hearing strange noises, and I followed them through the halls until I realized someone was banging on the vault door from the inside. When they got it open, it was our guards that were inside—the dead night shift. They'd been drugged or poisoned or something, and only half of them had even regained their senses yet."

"Hm, let me guess," Able said, "the morning shift got up and when they couldn't find the dead night shift, they assumed they'd been called down to help with the barricade instead of considering that they might be, well, dead?"

The man nodded, then shook his head with a sigh. "The mess we're in now."

Able also shook his head, perhaps in dismay or admiration—he wasn't sure. His roommate and the men he had met up with last night, Able hadn't beaten them to the north square because that wasn't where they had gone, was it? Lark had said the Resistance wouldn't get involved with the barricade situation as a rescue operation; Able had even assumed this was insider information. Yet it had completely slipped his mind. He'd spent the whole day asking what had happened when he should have been asking why.

If he'd only given things a little bit more thought and not been so timid...well, what, he might have caught the thieves in the act? They might have caught him? Better to be a step behind than within a sword's reach. He was in a good place with his collected evidence and theory about it. Best now to let the professionals handle this situation and wait to learn what they'd found.

"You again?" barked Tanner.

Able jumped—he had not heard his approach—before taking a breath and turning to face him. "Me still, actually." He forced what he hoped was a harmless smile, as Tanner's good mood was long gone. "Still following the story."