008

“Hello there, old human! How does the day find you?” said the male incani.

“The day found him unlucky for sure, brother,” said the woman incani.

Erick had walked the mostly-straight road heading out from the sewerhouse to the courthouse. In hindsight, he should have taken a different street. Jane probably didn’t walk this way. She would have known better. Erick should have known better too, but everyone he’d met so far had been friendly. Everyone except for the incani. He’d forgotten about them.

So now he was flanked by two horned purple people, each with knives, while a third watched from a porch. It was almost exactly the same situation as before, but this time Erick was their only target.

He slipped into the most welcoming version of himself and rolled with the situation. “The day finds me well. How are you, young whippersnapper?” Erick tried to walk forward, but the man stepped into his path. Erick tried to step the other way, but the man stepped into Erick’s path again. Erick stopped trying to get around the incani. “Are you asking me for a dance, or do you do this to all the old men you meet?”

The man smiled wide. “You’ve learned the language rather quickly.”

“It’s a miracle!” said the woman. “That makes this much simpler.”

“Oh?” Erick gave them their prompts to move the encounter along, “What’s so simple about ‘this’?”

“I’m glad you asked!” The man stepped back, bowing. He stood straight, a smile cracking open his fang-filled mouth. “Since you’re new in town and you’re probably looking for friends—”

“With friends like you, there’s no need for enemies.”

The man’s smile widened.

A sharp pressure touched Erick’s lower back.

And then the pressure was gone, the woman had withdrawn her knife and stepped away. A single drop of blood dripped from the first inch of her blade. The smile that blossomed on her face was filled with pure, malicious joy, but it was quickly schooled into a half-crazed smirk.

“He stumbled into your knife rather deeply there, sister.”

“All I did was hold it! He did that all himself!”

“It’s okay. No one would be so excitable as to be upset over such a small tap.”

“But he’s already made so many mistakes, brother.”

“He has, hasn’t he.” The man stared at Erick. “You’re not welcome in Spur, pink piggy, but if you choose to stay, there is a way to make yourself welcome.” He stepped to the side, saying, “We’ll talk later, I’m sure. You can either come back here tomorrow, or we can come calling on you at the sewerhouse. Or we could just talk to your daughter. Either works for our purposes.”

Two spells hit him in quick succession.

And then the air thickened, twisting into a heat mirage. Blood vanished into the breeze flowing through the street. Erick almost touched the place where he had been stabbed, but this was not like any situation he had ever been in before. He didn’t want to move too fast.

The man said, “You’re free to go.”

The woman called out, “See you later, pink piggy!”

Erick stepped forward. He walked past the man, and kept going.

He went straight to the courthouse.

– – – –

Normally, Erick would not seek help from the law over a casual gang encounter. As he had never been an officer on any planet, involving the law had always led to an escalation of hostilities that made solving the systemic problems of any community more difficult. So he wasn’t going to the courthouse to snitch.

That’s what he told himself, anyway.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing at the courthouse, but he would find out soon enough.

The redscale guard from the other day was on duty, sitting behind his desk. Today was a busy day compared to the last time he was here. Two dragonpeople in suits walked across the center globe room, while another dragonperson spoke to Redscale at the desk, her bright yellow scales the color of the sun. Erick waited his turn with Redscale, but as a moment turned into a minute, Erick realized that the guard’s talk didn’t seem like courthouse business. It was a casual conversation.

And it wasn’t ending.

Erick took a step closer. Redscale eyed him, but continued to talk to Yellowscale.

Erick took another step closer. Yellowscale eyed him.

“Excuse you.” Redscale said, “What are you doing?”

“I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. But I’d like to know what the usual response is to a person being stabbed on the street.”

“Not even three days and it’s Quiet War shit already.” Redscale sighed deeply. “Do you have any evidence?”

“Of course he doesn’t, Taro.” Yellowscale said, “Let me guess. Two incani flanked you while you were alone.”

Erick had thought his mugging a usual mugging, but in light of the Quiet War that the black and white Registrar had spoken of, and now this dude’s mention of it…

Erick did not want to be involved in a war, at all. Hopefully Jane hadn’t run into anything too awful out there. These people didn’t seem to be too worked up over hearing that something had happened to him, so maybe she was fine?

… She was probably fine. She could take care of herself. But Erick needed visual confirmation to be sure she was fine. He wasn’t that worried. She could take care of herself, couldn’t she?

Try not to worry. Try not to worry.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that series of events.” Erick asked, “But what would the response be if I did file a report? … are there reports to file? Complaints to be made? What usually happens in cases like this? I’m not making a report.”

“You’re not… actually filing a report?” Redscale perked up. “No street fight yet.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Did they actually harm you? I’m Hera.” Yellowscale, Hera, offered her hand. “Sorry about your poor welcome to Spur.”

Erick shook her hand. “Erick. And there’s no evidence of harm done aside from a hole in my shirt.”

“So no fight happened,” Redscale stressed. “Just to be clear.”

The guard looked both relieved and happy. That was odd.

Hera admonished, “Oh, Taro.” She said to Erick, “Don’t mind him. He has a bet going. Anyway, you seem like a nice enough human, but you’re obviously uninformed, so let me explain some background to you: The Mayor wants all the races to come back to Spur but the humans never returned after the Great Purge. Thus, there are some hundred year old laws that prevent any non-human from purchasing land in the human district. The incani routinely harass every human that looks like they might become a part of Spur. Their goal is to get a human to buy a building and then sell it to any other non-humans. The incani used to force the human to sell to them, specifically, but the Mayor was exiling whole incani families for that nonsense. With this new scam, everyone except the humans benefit from putting property on the open market, so the Mayor is reluctantly forced to accept the outcomes of this scam.”

“It’s a mostly academic fight,” said Redscale, Taro. “Spur is underpopulated anyway. The Incani just don’t like that there’s space set aside for any humans who want some.”

Something didn’t add up. Erick said, “But wasn’t the Great Purge a hundred years ago?” They should have been able to work a scam like this to conclusion long ago.