“Did Zoly come back!?”

  “What!” Nate almost fell from his bed, jolted awake by Uric yet again barging through the door.

  He had fell asleep with a book over his chest and the lamp was still burning. He winced; lamp oil wasn’t cheap.

  “Well!? Did he?!”

  “No… sorry…” Nate lifted the lamp, feeling for the liquid inside. “Must have nodded off for an hour or two… Was I so invested in my read I forgot to turn the lamp off…?”

  “Nate! This is no time to worry about that! Zoly and poor little Laura have been kidnaped!”

  “Calm down, sheeesh! Let’s go bit by bit; did mother Dana agreed with my assessment?”

  “Your what?!”

  “Does Dana agree with me?” he repeated patiently, “We were robbed by urchins instead of a hungry monster?”

  “… Y-yes but…”

  “But?”

  “I went to tell her what you said. Mother Dana pulled me to one side, told me she believed me but asked me not to tell the other kids.”

  “She wasn’t surprise, was she?”

  “N-no… What’s going on?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Probably that nun Amanda scream her longs off when she found the mess in her pantry and that’s how the ‘wild monster theory’ came to be. Is only natural, what with all the recent events. When the mothers organized the children to look for the missing orphans’ you guys leaped to your own conclusions. Then, not clarifying seems like something of a habit for these nuns, though in this case I think they just don’t want the younger children to dwell too much in what happened.”

  “And you can know all that without leaving your room?!” Uric stared at Nate, mystified.

  “Just educated guesses.” The kid shrugged uncomfortably.

  “I was thinking it earlier, but you are smart…! Is it a skill…? No what am I saying, you already have cleaning…”

  “Seriously! You’ll rather believe I have a skill than give me credit!? Just how low is your opinion of me, kid?”

  “That’s not Important right now! Do you have a plan to save them?!”

  “A what?! Why?! Let the cops- I mean, let the constables handle it.”

  “But they could die!”

  “Come on! No one is gonna get kill for some oats.” Nate squinted at a fidgety Uric, “No one is gonna get kill for some oats, right?”

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  “Uhm… Stealing from a temple is punishable by dead…” the chubby kid looked at his feet, almost as if he personally was ashamed of the law.

  “Well, fuck. That, changes things. The brat and the pipsqueak might be in real trouble if it’s their lives or the criminals… But what can we do about it?”

  They kept silence, watching the floor morosely.

  “I know!” Uric suddenly perked up, “Lets tell his brother!”

  “Who?”

  “Oh! Right! You wouldn’t know! The guy that saved you two from that monster was actually Zoly’s brother; he is a patrician! An heir of the Doppelsoldners! He will jump to help when he heard his little brother had been kidnapped!”

  “Oh… Yes… Right… I wouldn’t no.” Nate deadpan, “But wouldn’t the guy know already? You know, he is important and all, he surely is well informed.”

  “You believe me?! Just like that?!”

  “I-I am an open-minded person, alright! Now answer my question!”

  “I don’t think he knows,” Uric said throwing the other kid a weird look, “They are pretending they don’t know each other. It would be weird if a patrician kept an eye on an unknown orphan.”

  “Well, then let’s do that. Just tell Dana and let the nuns…”

  “No! We can’t blow Zoly’s cover…! He has dangerous enemies! We can’t involve the mothers either! They might get themselves killed!”

  A sinical part of Nate wanted to point out that if the brat’s enemies were so dangerous, then two kids like them definitely would get themselves killed…

  “I am not a kid!” he screamed out of the blue, “I might not be able to rustle down a fucking half-saw-beast, but I am not a helpless child!”

  “What?! W-why…” a scared Uric stuttered.

  “Nothing, champ! Don’t pay attention to me! You said you have a plan to tell her brother? What do you propose?” Nate said through clenched teeth.

  “A-ah, right! I thought that you could tell him.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes! You can say that you want to thank him for saving his life, and pass on the message while you are at it.”

  “Huh… I’ll be damned. That’s clever. You sure you aren’t the one hiding a Smarts skill?”

  “Does that mean you will do it?!”

  “Yeah, I don’t see why not. I just gotta go talk to some guy! Any functional person can do that! I’ll ask Dana tomorrow for permission.”

  “B-but…”

  “Uric,” he interrupted, “I know you are worried, but no one would buy the story of me wanting to thank him if I appeared alone at the doorstep of this knight guy in the middle of the night. And besides, there is no chance in hell I am sneaking off again. Not after what happened to me, and not now that I know there are monsters on the loose.”

  “You are right… you can’t… What was I thinking…?”

  Nate saw the chubby boy’s slumped shoulders, and sighed.

  “Look, kid, I promise I’ll do what I can tomorrow for our missing friend. I am worry too! Trust me, if my leg was able to hold me, I would be scrubbing every cranny on the floor with a tooth brush!”

  “Why would you…?”an odd Uric started.

  “It’s how I handle stress, ok! But is not important.” Nate blurted, “What is important is that I am worry too, but we did what we could for now; you told mother Dana my suspicions and we have a plan. Now we need to calm down and… I don’t know, rest? Read a book? Look, I am no good with these things. Just take my word for it and try to chill.”

  Nate follow his own advice and plucked the history manual from the pile near his bed, gave it a couple pats to dislodge any clinging dust – he had opened the book not hours ago but better safe than sorry, and started reading again.

  “You called the brat’s brother a Doppelsoldner, right?”

  “Yes…” doing a visible effort to calm down, Uric blinked at him, taking a sit in his bed, “I can’t believe you, Nate. Zoly always says I like books way too much, but you’ve been at it the whole day! And now you are reading by lamplight. Aren’t your eyes tired…? How can you even focus on reading with all these mess?”

  Nate’s eyes widened in realization.

  *DING*

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  “Uricov,” Nate smiled at the kid, “you are my favorite person here. Let no one tell you otherwise.”