Chương 5: Chapter 4 – Youthful Folly

"Passage is right. You're mad," said Ressa. Passage nodded. Torvin and Sable seemed intrigued. In fairness, all reasonable reactions. Bracken felt a little mad, standing there posing with one foot up on the table as he looked around at his crew.

"You go anywhere near those psychopaths and Cinder will melt the flesh off your bones just as soon as Pike finishes breaking them. Not worth it, Bracken."

"Fear not, Ressa. Madness and genius are but two faces of the same coin. What face it lands on won't matter when we spend it to purchase our glory!" Bracken clenched his fist as if seizing that glory from the air, struggling not to laugh at his own pantomime. He was only half joking. The longer he thought about it, the giddier he grew. Cinder and Pike were a pair of petty bullies. Cinder was a Caller.

If the man had an ounce of cleverness or real ambition, he'd be more than a low-ranking enforcer in a slumlord's gang, and Pike had been a halfwit even before he made a career out of being punched in the head. Bracken and the gang might not have the power to challenge either of them directly, but that wouldn't matter if they could steal from the pair without being caught.

"Are you being serious right now?" Torvin asked, placing his elbows on the table and leaning in. Faithful Torvin, ever the first to support Bracken's plans.

"Deadly," Bracken nodded.

"Deadly is right. We can't be messing with Tallow's men," Ressa shook her head.

"Hear him out," Sable challenged, tapping her fingers on the table the way she did when she was getting worked up about an idea. She wouldn't admit it yet, but she was in too.

"Cinder and Pike are powerful, yes. But they're also stupid, lazy, and arrogant." Bracken tallied up their sins on his fingers. The plan is simple. We follow them. Study their routines. Find out where they sleep and when. Couple of pricks like them, they run security for their betters. No one is watching out for them. I guarantee, if we spend a few days watching, we'll find a dozen ways to rob them blind.

Then, it'll just be a simple matter of choosing our moment, stealing the knuckles, and getting away without being seen. No one need ever be the wiser, least of all Tallow. There's only any danger if we get caught, so we just won't get caught."

"I've seen fishing nets with fewer holes in them than that plan," Ressa crossed her arms. Passage remained quiet beside her, the muscles in his jaw working as he chewed on the idea. Bracken loved his friends all dearly, but it was Passage whose blessing usually decided things.

"Passage, just think. We needn't even use the knuckles. We can just hold on to them, hide them in the temple. Then, next time Cinder and Pike come to throw their weight around, we'll have the option of fighting back. Honestly, we'd be doing the community a service, taking a dangerous weapon off the streets and out of the hands of a monster like Pike." Bracken saw the wheels turning behind Passage's eyes, the line of thinking finding purchase with his particular brand of nobility.

Passage forever played the straight man to Bracken's fool, but he was no less enamoured with stories of heroes nor immune to imagining himself one of them. And while he often tried to deny it, Passage had the blackest temper of the lot of them. He wouldn't pass up a chance to defend his father if Cinder decided to make a repeat visit. Which, of course, he would. Harrow wasn't one to back down either and there was zero chance he'd let Jasper's family starve on account of Tallow's bullying.

"You promise we'll just hide them? That we'll only use them to defend ourselves and only if we're attacked first?" Passage asked and Ressa threw up her hands in defeat. She knew as well as Bracken that just by asking, he'd as good as agreed.

"I promise," Bracken swore, offering Passage his hand. Passage grasped it with a nod.

"Alright then."

"Silk's black throne, we're all going to die," Ressa swore and shook her head, resting her hand on top of theirs. Whatever reservations she had, she'd never let them go off and do something so reckless without her.

"Honestly, we'd all best say a prayer to Silk. We'll need the Lady of Shadow's blessing if we're going to pull this off," Sable was next to put her hand in.

"Nonsense. We're the fucking Wyrms," Torvin joked, joining the rest of them.

"A spot of larceny is nothing for the likes of us." They cheered, laughed, and drank after that. The hours passed, the sting of the morning's events faded, and slowly the idea became less of a joke and more of a plan.

To say that the five of them were all from the Gutters was not quite true. Technically, just technically, Bracken lived on Glasshill. Very low down on Glasshill, he was always quick to point out, lest anyone think he wasn't every inch a lowborn delinquent like the rest of his friends. But he had been born on the right side of the Aelbridge, the third son of a minor merchant house. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Greymere was a minor colonial city constructed against all reason in the centre of a great black lake. The waters were stained obsidian by the abundance of peat in the surrounding land, and fog forever swirled over the frigid waters. The lower city, nowadays called the Gutters, had once been a thing of beauty – a set of city blocks intersected by canals and connected by ornate bridges. That time had passed long before Bracken was born. The city had begun to sink long ago.

The outermost blocks were now totally uninhabitable. Either way, it had resulted in the upper city, Glasshill, being constructed on higher ground; a more regal brother watching callously from above as the Gutters slowly drowned. Glasshill and the Gutters were connected by a single great bridge – the Aelbridge – that spanned the last and widest of the city's canals.

While it hadn't necessarily been designed as a moat to keep the poor out of the newer city, the folk on Glasshill tended to see it as more of a happy accident. It made for an easy way to guard the only entrance into the city proper, leading across towards a set of switchback stairs beside an elevator made by the arts of Stained with connections to the Planes of stone and sky. Glasshill was perched atop the cliffs that rose steeply from within the centre of the Stillwake's black waters.

Which is why, much to his chagrin, a very drunk Bracken found it impossible to sneak past his brother on the way home that night. Edrin was on guard duty, standing at the Glasshill end of the bridge alongside a fellow member of the watch. Each carried a spear, a horn, and a truncheon. The last was meant for people. The horn to call for help. The spear for things that needed killing. It didn't happen very often – creatures spat out of or twisted by the Planes rarely braved the lake's waters.

Edrin saw him coming a mile away. Nineteen, a head taller than Bracken, and at least according to Sable, far more handsome. Edrin wore a shit-eating grin from the moment he noticed Bracken coming, right up until he twirled his baton round and tapped it against Bracken's chest, pretending he didn't recognise his own younger brother.

"Awful late to be crossing the bridge, citizen," Edrin drawled. His friend laughed. A pack of youths similarly drunk and similarly bound for home chuckled at the display. They walked right on past undisturbed.

"What business have you up the hill?"

"Just thought I'd pop up, go on a bit of a crime spree. Nothing major. Touch of murder, smidge of pillaging, then back down for supper and bed, if it's all the same to you, officer," Bracken fired back, deadpan.

"You hearing this, Grant? Openly conspiring to wreak havoc on our fair city. We ought to search this scoundrel for low-Stains! No doubt he's an agent of the Maw itself. Quick, grab his arm, help me toss him in the lake!" Edrin made good on his threat, spinning Bracken about and slipping one arm under his shoulder to grip the back of his neck. Edrin's partner did the same, pinning Bracken's arms behind him while the two shoved him towards the edge of the bridge.

"Wait, wait, wait, Edrin! Stop!" Bracken yelled, real panic taking hold as he stumbled and slid towards the railing. Edrin was almost as mad as Bracken himself and there was a better than even chance that he'd make good on the threat. Bracken got his feet up on the railings, practically standing horizontal against the bridge side before Edrin finally relented, pulling him back with a chuckle.

"Planes, Bracken, you smell like a barroom floor the day after a piss up. Father will skin you alive when you get home. And is that a black eye? You been fighting again?" There was no judgement in the question. If anything, he sounded vaguely proud.

"No," Bracken said without meeting Edrin's eyes. Inwardly he cursed, he'd hoped the bell would've helped heal him up enough to hide that sort of evidence, but they mustn't have reached it in time that morning. Having a brother in the guard might get him some leeway in a few select instances but getting into a scrap with guards after running a scam on the hill wasn't one of them, even if Edrin would've been impressed with the details.

"Just a clumsy drunk not watching where he was walking."

"Going to want to work on that lie before you get home, I doubt father will believe it any more than I do."

"Noted, I'll climb in through the window and be gone again before he gets up in the morning. He'll never even see it."

"I doubt that" Edrin clicked his tongue.

"The old man is looking for you specifically. He was in a fine mood this morning. Got himself all worked up about things."

"Anything specific?" Bracken cringed, wondering what foul rumour – or true story, depending on how you looked at it – had gotten back to his father this time.

"Just the usual. You're a wastrel and a layabout. Head full of delusions, no appreciation for a hard day's work and so on and so forth. He was gearing up to have you help Lio with a shipment due sometime in a couple of weeks. He's got some contract with the Wardens, and the stress is making him just an absolute pleasure to be around. Don't say you weren't warned." The Wardens. That was unexpected. Garron Mercer mostly traded in luxuries – wines, spices, fabrics and the like for Glasshill's upmarket clientele.

Wardens would have little use for any of that. The Wardens were a smaller force than the common guard. Serving under the Empire-appointed magistrate directly, each member was Stained. They couldn't do their jobs if they weren't, after all, seeing as their purpose was to police the local Planestouched and, if need be, kill monsters. When a man like Cinder stepped out of line on the hill, it was the Wardens who were called. Bracken had lost count of how many times Edrin had sworn he'd join their number.

So far, he hadn't made the cut.

"Duly noted and happily ignored. Let Lio play the favoured son. I will wear his disappointment with pride," Bracken stuck his chin in the air. The effect was somewhat ruined by his already needing to look up at the other two men.

"Alright, well, don't say I didn't warn you," Edrin finally moved to let him pass, his partner doing the same.

"I appreciate it. Worry not, dear brother, when I tell the story of how my legend began, I'll be sure to include that it was your benevolent guidance that spared me from a life of bookkeeping and copper counting," Bracken offered a look of mock sincerity. The pair of them nodded firmly and then broke into smiles. Bracken sauntered past, mind already far ahead of him, wondering whether he shouldn't just find somewhere else to sleep for the night.

He'd rather not argue with his father while he was drunk – or hungover for that matter.

"Oh, and Bracken?" Edrin called after him. Bracken paused and turned back.

"Stop running bloody scams on the hill. You and your friends are not as subtle as you think." Bracken just grinned and waved, beginning the long climb up the stairs. Edrin was wrong. He and the others could be plenty subtle. A fact Tallow's men would soon find out firsthand.