The New Dynasty

The Hearing

The sword, the staff, and the arrow. These are the weapons of the dragon.

Three stand on either side of the entrance, each frozen with their gilded blade out, and ready. They could be statues if their black, velvet cloaks weren't swaying gently, curling and un-curling in the wind. Even their clothes move in unison. 

They're shaped like men, but dragons aren't entirely human. It's an obvious fact that everyone's aware of, but no one discusses. The heat emanating from their bodies isn't human. The way that they move—with a strut so fluid that it's almost as if they're gliding—definitely isn't human. Their deep black hoods conceal their faces entirely, if they even have faces. When he was little, Russell had nightmares of them pulling their hoods back.

Now he looks at each shimmering bow, and wonders which arrow struck him last night.

The iron knocker on the door is twice the size of his head. James knocks in a unique rhythm: Taptap...tap...tap. Both doors slowly creak open and Russell takes a deep breath, preparing himself for what's inside. 

It's a long, dark corridor. Impossibly long; it could be the length of Central Road, or longer. A trail of blood-red glass tiles form a path up the center to another set of double doors at the end. The hall is eerily symmetrical, with thick stone pillars running along each side. By the dim gaslight Russell can see doors along the length of each wall, and he imagines that there's a prisoner behind each one, being tortured slowly, or worse. But the chamber is silent. 

"Walk." The lawman behind them orders.

Russell clings tighter to Pop's arm and limps along. Every step creates another shot of pain through his leg.

Stacey strides a few paces ahead of them, just behind James. His brows are furrowed, his expression serious. I wonder what he's thinking. Or rather, what he's plotting. Pop told him not to say a word, but Russell knows his brother much better than that.

James leads them to a door on the far left side of the hallway, and it opens to a chamber that's only just bigger than the carriage they rode in. Another gas light flickers weakly, coating the room in an orange glow. The other lawman disappears, and Stacey and Russell sit down on the short bench running along the wall.

"Shouldn't be long." James says. He looks to each one of them, and Russell can swear that the corners of his lips turn up. He's never liked James, but the boy is several times more insufferable in a lawman's uniform.

"ENTER NOW, CAMILLE SHAY!" a voice suddenly thunders from the other side.

"Of course there's a Shay here." Pop says. 

The Shay's are the most notorious of the Backland "degenerates". There are dozens of them, from young to old, and they're widely known throughout Middlebridge for their frequent and reckless criminal escapades. If a bag of grain suddenly disappears from someone's back doorstep, or a house is broken into while someone's away, it can almost always be traced back to a Shay. At least a third of them are already imprisoned.

"It's a woman." Stacy says, incredulous. 

"The Shay's are all the same," Pop replies, "Man, woman, and child. Nothing but troublemakers and thieves with no respect or concept of personal property—"

"They're starving, literally. If your children were hungry, you'd probably steal too."

"I would never—"

"Can we please not do this right now?" Russell asks. Once again, he has to play peacemaker between his father and brother. They'd had the Shay argument a thousand times, and neither of them ever got any closer to convincing the other of their point-of-view. Stacey sympathizes with the Shay's because they're impoverished, and Pop thinks they deserve everything that comes to them. They'd argue back and forth about it forever if Russell or Charmaine isn't there to put an end to it.