He's On The Fence

The door to Sir Dorian's Lair — Do Not Enter — was a perfectly ordinary wooden door that someone had installed in a rock face and hung a sign on.

The sign had a second line underneath Do Not Enter that read, in smaller but equally careful lettering: This Means You.

Someone wanted to be thorough.

The peon knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more.

A slot opened at eye level.

A pair of eyes looked through it.

The eyes were, and there was no other way to put it, at a height that suggested their owner was not a tall person.

"Password," said a voice from behind the door. It was trying to be intimidating. It had the register of someone who had practiced being intimidating and was still in the early stages.

“Dorian Is The Bestest. Oh wait — crap I said it out loud again.”

The slot closed.

Several locks disengaged, one by one, with the theatrical timing of someone who had installed them specifically to be dramatic about it.

The door opened.

The lair was — actually fairly impressive for what it was. Shelving units lined the walls, stocked with glass bottles in various states of completion. Brewing equipment occupied one corner, complex and carefully maintained. Maps covered a central table, annotated in small, precise handwriting. A throne-adjacent chair sat at the head of it, occupied by someone who had clearly thought very hard about how to present themselves.

Sir Dorian was twelve years old.

He was wearing a cape.

It had a collar.

He was approximately my height, which is to say not very tall, which meant his attempt at an imposing seated posture required some effort to maintain. He had the kind of face that under any other circumstances would have been described as round and earnest, currently doing everything it could to project menace and landing somewhere around mildly put out.

He looked at us.

We looked at him.

"...You're children," Shunya said.

"I am Sir Dorian," Sir Dorian said, with great dignity. "And you are trespassers."

"Your peon let us in," Cogginballs said.

Sir Dorian looked at the peon.

The peon looked at the floor.

"Guards," Sir Dorian said. "Seize them."

Two guards stepped forward from the corners of the room. They were large. They were real guards, which raised several questions about Sir Dorian's hiring process and budget.

They took two steps toward us.

I reached into the air beside me.

Gumdrop, go.

The pink spiked mace materialized in my hand.

The guards stopped.

They looked at Gumdrop.

They looked at me.

They looked at each other.

They stepped back.

Sir Dorian's composure flickered. "I said seize—"

"They're not going to," Cogginballs said pleasantly. "Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that thing. It's bright pink and it's enormous and those two facts combined make it more alarming, not less." He strolled past the guards as if they were furniture and hopped onto Sir Dorian's central table, scattering several maps. "Now. Let's have a conversation."

Sir Dorian drew himself up. "I don't negotiate with—"

"We ain't negotiating," Cogginballs said. He sat down and began grooming his left ear with the energy of someone who had nowhere else to be. "I'm gonna talk. You're gonna to listen. And then you're gonna to tell me something true, because I can tell when people aren't telling me something true and I find it very tiresome." He fixed Sir Dorian with a look. "You're twelve."

"I'm thirteen in—"

"Twelve, says me, the talking cat. You've been poisoning a city's water supply. You hired staff. You built infrastructure. You made a placard." He gestured at the door.

“That's an unusual amount of effort for someone your age. Why?"

Sir Dorian's composure, which had been holding on with some effort, developed a crack.

"Nobody," he said, "will buy my potions."

Silence.

"...Go on," Cogginballs said.

The crack widened.

"I've been working on them for two years," Sir Dorian said, and the voice that had been trying to be imposing was now just a voice. "Two years of research and formulation and testing and they work, they actually work, I have documented proof, and nobody will buy them because they say I'm too young and I don't have a guild license and my parents—" he stopped.

"Your parents," Cogginballs said.

"My parents want me to fence," Sir Dorian said, with the specific controlled anguish of someone who had been having this argument for a long time and was very tired of it. "They say alchemy is a hobby. They've enrolled me in three different fencing academies. I've been expelled from all of them because I was doing alchemy in the equipment room." He looked at his hands. "I thought if I could demonstrate a large-scale application. Prove that I could affect an entire city's infrastructure. Then someone would have to take me seriously."

Shunya, from behind me, exhaled very slowly through his nose.

I lowered Gumdrop.

"You poisoned people," I said. Gently. But directly.

"The concentration wasn't lethal," Sir Dorian said, quickly. "I calculated it. It was enough to cause illness, not — I wasn't trying to — I just needed people to notice that the water quality had changed, and then when I revealed the solution—"

"You were going to swoop in and fix it," I said.

"With my potion," he said. "Which works. I have proof!"

He produced a folder. It was thick. It was organized. It had tabs.

I looked at the folder. Looked at Sir Dorian. Then I looked at the cape.

This was a twelve year old who had built an underground lair, hired staff, engineered a city-scale problem, prepared a solution, and documented everything because he wanted his parents to let him do chemistry instead of fencing.

I had a complicated feeling about this that I was going to need some time to process.

Cogginballs, meanwhile, had picked up the documentation folder and was leafing through it.

"Why the hell does a kid like you know this stuff? These work for some reason unbeknownst to me," he said.

"They do work," Sir Dorian said, with wounded dignity.

"The water purification formula specifically." Cogginballs set it down. "Coulda fooled me. But nobody does that, and if they do, they usually don't live to retell it to a bard that retells it poorly to others."

Sir Dorian blinked. This was apparently not the direction he had expected the conversation to go.

"Right," he said, quietly.

"Your parents fence?" I asked.

"My father was Grand Exhibition champion. Twice." His voice had gone flat in the way voices go flat when something has been a source of pain for a long time. "He says alchemy is what people do when they can't hold a sword. He says I'm wasting my potential. He says—" He stopped again. "He says a lot of things."

Shunya hadn't said anything in a while. I glanced at him. He was watching Sir Dorian with an expression I couldn't fully read. Something quiet and a little tired.

"Okay," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"Here's what's going to happen," I said. "We're going to shut down the saltshakers. We're going to take the machinery as evidence. We're going to notify the Aqueductors." I looked at Sir Dorian. "And then we're going to talk to your parents."

Sir Dorian went very still. "...What?"

"This isn't a prison situation," I said. "You're twelve. You made a catastrophically bad decision in service of a goal that isn't unreasonable. Those are different problems with different solutions."

"My father is going to—"

"Your father," I said, "is going to sit in a room with you and a witness form and a documented alchemy portfolio and figure out that his kid is actually quite gifted. That's what's going to happen."

Sir Dorian looked at me for a long moment.

"You can't guarantee that," he said.

"No," I said. "But I can be there when it happens. And I'm very hard to ignore when I'm in a room. So I've been told. Maybe. Sorta." I backpedaled.

I felt Shunya roll his eyes at me.

The guards, who had been standing very still since Gumdrop appeared, exchanged a glance.

The peon, from the doorway, nodded slightly, in the manner of someone who had decided this was going better than expected.

Cogginballs picked up one of the bottled potions, examined it, and set it down carefully. "For what it's worth," he said, "and I want to be very clear that this is an objective assessment and not in any way a compliment, your methodology is not bad. For a small, maniacal weirdo."

Sir Dorian looked at Cogginballs.

"...Thank you," he said, uncertainly.

"Don't mention it," Cogginballs said. "Seriously. Don't."

The saltshakers were shut down. The machinery was catalogued. Froy was notified via a runner the peon volunteered to be, apparently relieved to have a task that didn't involve poisoning anything.

Froy's boss arrived with Kingsmen guards within the hour, which was faster than I expected and suggested they'd been waiting for exactly this kind of development.

The Kingsmen looked at Sir Dorian.

Sir Dorian looked at the Kingsmen.

"We'll be taking him into custody," the senior guard said.

"You won't," I said.

The guard looked at me.

I looked back at him with the specific expression I use when I have decided how something is going to go and am waiting for everyone else to catch up.

"He's twelve," I said. "He poisoned the water supply as a misguided proof of concept for an alchemy portfolio he's been building for two years because his parents won't let him pursue the thing he's actually good at." I paused. "This is a family problem that got very out of hand. Imprisonment doesn't fix the family problem."

"He caused significant public health—"

"Which has been reversed," I said. "By us. Who are fixing to file a very thorough report." I held up a witness form. "What you need to do is facilitate a conversation between Sir Dorian and his parents in a formal enough context that everyone understands the situation is serious. That's different from imprisonment."

The guard considered this.

He looked at Sir Dorian.

Sir Dorian, to his credit, was standing very straight and not crying, which I suspected was costing him something.

"...A formal court hearing," the guard said. "Family in attendance. Deputy Guildmaster present in lieu of Wolfgang. The works."

"Perfect," I said.

The noble court hearing was, as these things go, fairly efficient.

Sir Dorian's father was a large man with the posture of someone who had spent decades being told he held himself well. He sat across from his son with the expression of a man who had been called in from something important and was maintaining his composure out of social obligation.

His mother looked like she had been expecting this call for some time and was mostly relieved it hadn't been worse.

Sir Dorian presented his documentation folder.

His father looked at it for a long time.

The room was very quiet.

"This is two years of work," his father said finally.

"Yes," Sir Dorian said.

"You did this while being expelled from three fencing academies."

"Yes."

Another long silence.

"The water purification formula," his father said. "Did you test this?"

"Documented on page fourteen."

His father turned to page fourteen.

The room stayed quiet.

I watched Sir Dorian's father read page fourteen.

I also watched something shift in his face that he was trying not to show and not entirely succeeding.

"You're going to have to answer for what you did," his father said. "Formally. There will be consequences."

"I know," Sir Dorian said.

"And you will not," his father said, carefully, "be returning to a fencing academy."

Sir Dorian went very still.

"There's an alchemy apprenticeship program through the Guild," his father said. "I'm told it's competitive. I'm told the entry assessment is significant." He closed the folder. "I expect you to pass it."

Sir Dorian's composure, which had survived guards and Cogginballs and a formal court hearing, didn't survive that.

He held it together for about four seconds.

Then he didn't.

His mother put an arm around him. His father sat there with the expression of a man recalibrating something he should have recalibrated some time ago and knowing it.

I looked at my witness form.

Marked it resolved.

Too much paperwork if you ask me but sometimes quests go awry.

‘Sometimes’ is a bit generous actually.

Cogginballs, from his position on my shoulder, watched the family scene with the expression of someone watching something they had firmly decided not to have feelings about.

"Right," he said, quietly. "Good."

Shunya stood beside me, hands in his pockets.

"Is it always like this?" he said.

"Like what?"

"This. The quest being the small part."

I thought about it.

"Usually," I said.

He nodded slowly, like that was an answer he was going to need to sit with for a while.

I tried not to think about Dorian's future and reputation on the walk home.

That might be something I'll have to revisit sometime soon.

We arrived home and as everyone got comfy in their sleeping arrangements, I lay in bed motionless as I counted all of my breaths.

Tomorrow was job reset day.

My favourite day.

We'll see what's in store a moon and a bit later.