Reed walked with his hands in his pockets, following Timmons and Avery. They were bickering again. It was annoying. The two boys would have been friends if Timmons hadn't decided that Avery was weak and didn't deserve to be a knight. That decision was made on the first day they'd been paired up to learn the sword drills. Timmons, being more muscular and taller, had chosen to throw his weight around. Avery, unused to facing an actual opponent, had flinched.

Timmons was still unaware of the nightly tutoring Avery and Marx had been getting, even after a full week of it. The ramped-up training the ex-Guild knights were putting the squires through was exhausting. Even Reed was feeling it, despite being the source of most of the material.

Mostly, it was that they kept using him as the training dummy.

Lockton was lively, but quieter than an American city. It resembled downtown Whitsville, Tennessee, where he'd grown up. The place had been so small it wasn't on most maps, didn't have direct highway access, and only had one major chain grocery store. Back in the 00s, faulty GPS would route people through on their way to Memphis, but otherwise, the place was unremarkable and entirely forgettable.

In the sea of mostly white-folk, the small population of Hans stood out like polka dots. Oddly enough, Reed only ever saw adults in the market. The oldest kid he saw out on their own was at least ten. They were begging on the street.

Something else Reed had started to notice was that there were more Durrish folks looking to buy the poorer quality produce. One Durrish lady was fighting to keep her child from grabbing things while she purchased the half-rotted scraps from a vegetable vendor. The child was just trying to help and didn't understand, but Reed could see tensions were rising.

A City Guard was angling toward them.

Much as Reed wanted to help, he wasn't sure he could. Here, he was a minority. He was barely tolerated because he wore the uniform of a barely respected branch of the Palace Guard. They were called knights, but they were stuck standing around a garden. Reed had begun to realize that Durshand's organized fighting forces weren't under the central government's control. Each lord had their own knights; then there was the Hunter's Guild.

There weren't many Hunter's Guild members in Lockton. Anyone who was here was retired or just inactive. Admittedly, if Lockton got attacked by monsters, there were bigger problems at hand. But that there was a population of unclaimed paramilitary made Reed feel a bit... itchy.

Someone walking past Reed suddenly recoiled and grabbed their arm.

"You son of a bitch!" the man shouted. "How dare you push me!"

Reed stopped and looked at the man. "Waow," he drawled. "Thought this shit only happened in stories."

Others stopped to look.

"Hey! He didn't touch you," Avery objected, standing between Reed and the accusing man.

"Yeah," Timmons said. "You'd know if he touched you." At least the pair could put their differences aside when defending Reed.

Reed kept his hands in his pockets.

Suddenly stabbing a finger at Reed, the man raised his voice louder. "He stole my purse! Dirty mudrats are always pilfering things!" the Dur shouted, drawing more eyes. "And you two brats. You'll get in trouble for being with him!"

Regardless of whether he defended himself or not, Reed knew this wasn't going to be pretty. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he patted Avery and Timmons on the shoulders. "Stand down. Asshole here wants to pick a fight cause his dick's small."

His accuser choked, then went red-faced. "How dare you!"

A hand clamped down on the man's shoulder.

"That's enough." The voice rumbled. The man who owned it towered over all four of them, his craggy, scarred face set in a scowl. The man looked vaguely familiar. He twisted a cold gaze down at Reed. "I suppose you're Fish?"

Spotting the captain's tabs on the collar of the large city guardsman, Reed adjusted his attitude to polite. "Yes, sir. And you are?"

"Raccoon," the man said.

Reed's brows lifted. "Wow!" he said honestly. "Fancy meeting you!" He'd learned to read using Amber's book of Named Guild Members. Every year, a new edition was issued to the Guild Branches. Raccoon had gotten his name for being an expert survivalist. "Would love to have a drink with you sometime, if you don't mind."

"Hey!" the man in Raccoon's grip yelped. "What about my purse?" he demanded.

"You never had one, Rimmer," Raccoon rumbled and shoved the man aside. "Move along. You just got out of jail. I'll gladly put you back in if you keep making noise."

"What?" Rimmer gasped as he stumbled a few steps. Spinning to face them, he scowled. "What the fuck? This mudrat stole from me, and you're taking his side?"

"The mudrat in question is a Named Guildmember. And yes, I am taking his word over yours," Raccoon said blandly. He looked down at Reed. "A drink sounds good. Perhaps later. Good afternoon, Fish."

"You too, Sir," Reed nodded politely and returned his hands to his pockets.

Raccoon escorted Rimmer away, much to the man's loud protests.

Avery and Timmons turned to look at Reed, eyes wide.

"That. Was. Amazing!" they gasped in unison.

Reed shook his head and started walking again. They'd made enough of a scene. People were whispering and giving Reed the stink-eye. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he knew gossip when he saw it. Whether this would make his time in Lockton easier or harder, he didn't know. In any case, he didn't want to stand around in the market and get gawked at. He wanted whisky.

Avery dropped in beside Reed on his right. Timmons took his left, walking like a pair of bodyguards. "What we're looking for is gonna be in that shop," Timmons said, pointing.

The shop in question was the general store. They entered. Reed paused to let his eyes adjust to the shadows. Timmons powered through it, striding ahead several steps, and bumped into a woman. "Oop--Sorry ma'am."

The woman huffed. "I guess they let anything join the Palace Guard these days." She brushed past Reed.

Avery sighed. "That's getting old."

"Yep," Reed said and strode further in now that he could see. He wished he could get some sunglasses.

"I don't allow mudrats in my shop," a man at the back said gruffly.

"Really old," Avery reiterated grumpily as an aside to Reed. "This is Reed Owen, he's a squire of the Western Barracks."

"And a Named Guildmember," Timmons added proudly, as if it were his own accomplishment. "Captain Raccoon will vouch for him."

The store owner glowered. "I don't give a damn. Out."

Reed shrugged. He wasn't going to change Durshand in a day. He rolled back out onto the porch to lean against the wall beside the door. He could hear Avery and Timmons arguing inside. They suddenly leaned out the door.

"This one?" Timmons asked.

"Or this one?" Avery lifted his own item.

Looking between the two options, Reed chose Timmons'. He'd selected a piece of wire with a hook on the end. It looked like it was a replacement part for a lamp. Avery's was a file that was still a little too thick.

"I ain't selling it to you," the shopkeeper said.

"Jay! C'mon!"

"You two are up to no good with that mudrat!"

"Jay!"

"Get out. Before I call the Guard!"

Timmons and Avery were summarily ejected from the store.

Reed shook his head. "I mean, he ain't wrong. We're teenage boys. Troublemakin is what teenage boys do." He pushed off the wall.

"But without it, we can't get in," Avery complained as he followed Reed off the porch and back into the street.

"Sure we can," Reed said. "But we don't need to buy what we already got."

"We have it already?" Timmons asked.

"That little hook gave me an idea. There's probably something in the barracks storage we could use," Reed said.

***

Rimmer scowled as he watched that Hannish kid leave Jay's general store. He didn't know what was worse. The fact that the kid was clean, or that he was wearing an obviously stolen palace guard uniform, or that he'd looked Rimmer in the eyes...

Chewing some jerky he'd stolen from one of the street vendors, Rimmer stared as the three boys headed back toward the palace.

No. It was that Raccoon had taken the mudrat's side. That was what bothered him the most. Hannish were pests; no better than rodents slithering out of the sewers. They deserved no respect. They were barely above the sentience of dogs, fit only for raping and beating.

Pushing off the wall, Rimmer started walking, heading toward the town Temple, a plan forming.

Wiping the grin off his face as he entered the Temple, Rimmer headed into the back halls, making his way to his mother's office.

Matron Tundra set her glass of water aside as Rimmer entered her open door.

"Mom. A mudrat is impersonating a Western Barracks knight," Rimmer said.

The matron of the city Temple lowered her pen, folded her hands on her desk, and looked at him with a stern expression. She'd always looked at him like that; like he wasn't worth more than the dirt under her shoes.

Keeping his expression in check, Rimmer went for his next lie. "He stole my money, then Captain Raccoon threatened to put me in jail again for causing a scene. He let that mudrat walk off with my shang."

Tundra scowled now. Slowly, she pushed to her feet, the chair scraping across the floor with a startling noise. "I will take care of it," she said. "You should reflect on why you ended up in jail again today." She took a long, slow breath. "You know how much it pains me that you are constantly being apprehended."

"Raccoon just makes up things about me. He doesn't believe in Nyltia. He doesn't follow the Teachings any more than the mudrats do. He's just doing it to make you look bad," Rimmer said, knowing exactly what his mother did care about. She'd never wanted to be a mother, so Rimmer's existence was inconvenient for her most of the time. She only liked having him around when she needed a prop to make herself look like she cared about family.

"I will handle the heathen," Tundra said. "Go to the prayer room and repent for causing me trouble."

Rimmer knew when he needed to retreat and hastily hurried out of her office. He did not go to the basement rooms, though. Instead, he went to the kitchen to get something more to eat. He'd spent lunchtime in the jail cell and only managed to steal a handful of jerky.