"Name, boy?" The magistrate peered down at me through smudged spectacles, his nose wrinkling from the strain of his concentration.
I wondered what he saw through those smeared lenses — short cropped dark hair, a dirty face with too large eyes, a strong chin and ears that stuck out a bit. Yes. Yes, I could see how he would mistake me for a boy.
"Name?" he snaps again, impatiently, and I realize I never answered.
I shuffle nervously, the manacles around my ankles clattering against the floor in a way that makes me cringe. "Um, Emery, sir, I —" I begin.
"You've been a rather busy young fellow, haven't you?" The magistrate peers down at the scroll on his lectern, twiddling the quill in his hand absentmindedly as he read down whatever list of sins was enscribed there. "Pickpocketing, assaulting a constable —"
"I —" I try again, my heart beginning to sink down into my belly like a stone sinking into the sludge of the Bastille River, "That—"
"Overturned a Silk Merchant's cart, destroyed the Baker's stand, and freed a butcher's cage of live chickens --- all on Silby's Row and on the same day." The bushy white eyebrows edged higher and higher as he read. "Good gods, boy. What were you thinking?"
"I was —"
"You weren't thinking," the magistrate confirmed, nodding, finally lifting his rhumy eyes to study me once more. He squinted, blinked, and squinted again. "How old are you, boy?" he asked with a sigh, dipping his quill agressively in his pot of ink.
"I am —"
"Fifteen? Sixteen?"
"No —"
"What is your full name? Have you, a full name?"
"Emery Blansby —" I rush out, before he can cut me off again.
He harumphs, and the quill makes soft scratching sounds as he pens my name on the scroll.
I swallow dryly, and try again. "I —"
"They want you hang, you know?" he stabs his quill into his ink pot with a raised brow at me, his lips turned down in disapproval of my actions. "All that damage, and all; no way to pay for it."
Spots dance in my vision, my jaw snaps shut. My throat tightens.
There is a bit of silence as the words hang there. The question that had left me tossing and turning throughtout the night in my cell finally out in the open.
Can't slip out of this one, Em. I could almost hear my brother Jaq's whispered disapproval. The memory of him sharing the same fate shimmered behind my eyelids. I could still see it so clearly. A dreary sky. The gallows. A boy swinging in the breeze kicked up from an oncoming storm, carrying with it the stink of the filthy river and filthier city. What a right mess, Jaq tsks in my mind. Right stuck. Luck's done run out.
The magistrate sighs, and the sound rips through the heavy silence like a whip. He drums his fingers on his lecturn, his jowls shaking as he reached for his quill, snatching it up from the inkpot and scribbling furiously on the parchment before stamping a seal furiously on the document with a bang that made me jump.
"Emery Blansby, I sentence you to 10 years of indenturement in the Moiran Isles. Should you survive, you will be a free boy," he pauses, peering through his spectacles at me as he lifts the paperweights from the edges of the scroll. "Free man," he corrects.
"Sir," I hedge.
He lifts his bushy eyebrows at me, and waits.
"I believe you've made a mistake—" the words dried up in my throat as he blinked through his smudged spectacles at me. "The Morian Isles are bespelled." I continue, clearing my throat awkwardly. "No human has crossed that sea in a millenia, milord. Elvish barrier, and all. Do you by chance, mean another set of islands?" Like, I thought, pinching myself as I waited in dread, picturing the worst of the worst, the Rendelian Isles, or the Pyxish Isles, where Tarisan mainland prisons sent their overflow criminals to inhabit the harshest penal colonies on this side of the world. I would die in less than day, and from worser causes than hanging by my neck until dead.
"Good gods, boy, how long were in you in the dungeons?" he tsks at me disapprovingly.
"By my count, sir, two weeks —"
He shuffles from his bench, the cushion he'd been crushing beneath his bulk tumbling to the floor as he stood. " The Elvish Barrier fell, boy. One of our own Tarisan ships found its way through that storm ridden sea and sailed right up on the western Morian shore. It is an unknown and unspoiled region free for the picking. Our king is enlisting adventurers to colonize it," he finally takes his spectacles off and begins to clean them on the edge of his adminstrative robes. "And you, my lucky boy, will be on one of the first ships out if I can help it. If you're a good lad and obey your new master, you may even live to tell about it someday."
I stare at him blankly.
He smiles, and pops his freshly cleaned spectacles back on his face before waggling his fat finger at me. "No more pickpocketing for you. You'll learn to earn your keep now. Send the next one in," He waves one of the guards over to take me away and I shuffle mindlessly from the court room.
"A grand adventure," I hear him muttering as he sets a new scroll upon his lecturn, slamming down the paperweights to hold it in place as another prisoner is shuffled past me. "A grand adventure."
