— but that explains this sinking feeling.”
Fyryx weighed his words and glared. “What?! Are you wisecracking me, smart aleck?”
“Who me, sire?” The kid shook his head. “It’s a case of mistaken identity. God’s honest truth, chief justice, I swear. No one I know calls me smart or Alec. In fact, my school mates just voted me class clown and most likely to play dumb.”
“Go figure. I can’t see why,” sneered Fyryx.
“Double-dare me,” Treygyn pleaded. “Cross my heart and hope to die!”
“Tempted as I am, double-crosser, I have confessions to get from you first. To start, the reason for your treason…”
“Huh?”
“Why you turned runaway, runt.”
Treygyn Yin looked to be thinking — and quick.
“Um, well, you know, it’s like…”
“Spit it out, turncoat. It’s not a mute court.”
“But…”
“Do you deny turning tail on your people and betraying our treasured Keep?”
“Uh…”
Treygyn seemed hard-pressed to respond. Then his face lit up, as if from a brainstorm.
“Honestly, master and commander, you and your Guard were my sole inspiration.”
Fyryx was now the tongue-tied one.
“See, I was just following in the footsteps of your recent scouting mission… yeah… only in a different direction.”
The red son of Hurx was about to explode. A matter of time till he’d go supernova.
“No better role model than you, ruler. Not to mention your merry pikesmen…”
Tempers flared as the sun went crimson. A record heat wave had set in.
“Do you expect me to buy such lies? Slander. Blasphemy. Contempt. Your insolence knows no bounds!” snarled Fyryx.
“And I’m to assume, worm, that shoe is yours too?”
“You took the words right out of my mouth sheriff. Didn’t know you were a prophet as well. Swell!”
“Oh I foresee something alright traitor — your fellow travelers all laid low. Each felonious punk de-feeted. Lost in limbo. Down by law. They might as well suffer the same fate as you.
“I want names, addresses. Who are they?”
Treygyn squirmed like a cornered rug rat. “Nobody sir. I acted alone. Strictly a one-man show, no kidding. Solo. Just me and my really big shoe…”
Fyryx reacted with mocking applause. He clapped slowly, “Bravo. An epic performance. Though you and I both know it’s staged, don’t we truant. Admit to this fiction, that footwear to boot.”
Treygyn let out a long, pained sigh. Otherwise he did not answer.
“And so rests the offender’s defense,” judge Fyryx announced in a monotone drone. “Or such as it was — a slipshod fraud, one sham of a scam just cobbled together.”
His eyes took a cold look into the distance. He pondered a moment and then went on.
“Yet this little feat has left too many questions. We must track down big foot. Our quest’s just begun…”
All of a sudden the sun was obscured as a black flock of vultures passed dead overhead. They circled around and spiraled down then spelled out a text message in midair.
“This kid is road kill… so… if you’re done grilling…”
“I’m not through with him yet, treasured buzzards.” Fyryx shooed the prey birds away.
“I want him to watch this next inquisition. It might improve his memory. But if he won’t talk, well we’ll just try his friends…
“Prepare the witness stand!”
A tower of tortoises, stacked three high, entered court from the tent’s antechamber and plodded across the dusty floor. The trio appeared to be family — papa, mama, and baby atop. But even the smallest was huge, a colossus.
Everyone waited while they made their way. And waited… and waited… impatiently. Bylo groused loudest of them all.
“Shake a leg, slow pokes. Hurry it up! Be quicker to make you turtle soup.”
The mockatoo had a big smirk on his beak. “Hey waiter, awk! There’s a hare on my plate!”
Meanwhile Ho-man pulled out his notebook and drew a few extra tall runes with his quill. He turned from the crowd and flashed it at the baffled stranger like a billboard. John Cap mouthed the words, still puzzled. “Syland snappies,” the letters read.
Then the clerk had a second thought and posted a follow-up message. “They bite.”
“Naturally,” muttered the mighty outsider. “Who knew this was such a zoo.”
The tortoises came to an unsudden stop just on the outskirts of center court. They looked sleepy, fatigued from their trek.
Fyryx faced Ho-man. He meant business.
“Court clerk, read me the witness list — but starting from the bottom first.”
“Yes sir.” Ho-man flipped his script.
“Last and least on the list is… bookman Dustum followed by Ferrous the forger.”
“Excellent. Hold there. Call them both.”
Ho-man spotted their faces at the back. They looked surprised. He beckoned.
“If you would, gentlemen. Take the stand.”
Each man approached but reluctantly, wary. They reached the tri-tortoise platform and stopped.
“Up you go fellows,” encouraged the clerk.
“Quick.”
Resistance was futile. Both witnesses knew it. Ferrous, the handy village woodsmith, offered his big work-worn mitts to the other, a well-seasoned scholar with white-peppered hair. That chap squinted back through his salt crystal spectacles — pale, on the frail side, and nervous.
“Yes, please…”
And they climbed. A turtle at a time. The cold-blooded reptiles nipped at their heels.
“Watch yer step teacher.”
“Oh thank you good smithy.”
The pair clambered onto the tip-top turtle’s back and did their best balancing act. It was all they could do just to stand and not slide off the crest of its slick, shiny shell.
They rode the colorful hull like a surfboard. Two hanging ten on an exoskeleton.
“Oof! I’m too old for this.”
“Hold on professor.”
Soft-hearted Ho-man stood ready below and held solid ground on the off chance they fell. But he had his own hard deadline looming under the thumb of you-know-who. A slip-up and he’d catch hell as well.
His fine feathered friend reminded him with a peck on the head and a curse-like cluck. “Oath for both! Get swearing! Go clerrrk yourself…”
“Ouch!”
He heeded Freebird’s tweet with a grimace. “Men — hand on heart and repeat after me please…
“I pledge my treasure, my honor and blood to the Semperor. May he judge my soul.”
Woodsmith and schoolmaster echoed him word for word, and yet lacking conviction. Or more likely fearing it.
Fyryx was watching and listening closely. He raised an eyebrow at their tone. He frowned at their lack of eye-eye contact.
“Yo, clerk! Time for more of your legwork.”
“Aye sir,” the ad hoc footman answered. “Being in shoe business is my dream.”
John Cap, all but ignored in the background, rolled his dreamy eyes. Freebird groaned.
Nobody else seemed to get the joke.
Ho-man pulled the moccasin from a wide pouch pocket at his side. “Bookman, woodsmith — if you’ll doff your stockings a sec… Yes, just your right tootsies if you’d be so kind.”
Ferrous kicked off his ironwood shoe, a boxy black work boot he’d fashioned himself. It had been hiding a clubfoot inside. A rare, squarish stub that he’d been born with.
“Oops! Bless you craftsman,” blushed the clerk.
He looked to the bookman to bare his sole.
The educator’s feet were wrapped in leather-strapped balm leaves, known for healing. Dustum winced at the prospect of stripping them down to expose his pigeon toes.
“Fungal infection. Ingrowns and corns. Not to mention the blisters and bunions.”
Ho-ma
n oohed. “Those legs are plagued! My sympathies…” He put the shoe away.
The clerk shrugged at Fyryx. “Still no sale today sir.”
Boss Hurx bristled with disappointment. “Poor excuse for a peddler, you are. Watch me. I don’t take no for an answer.”
He lit into the teetering tutor.
“Bookman Phyneas Dustum, is it?”
“Phyleas.”
“Phyleas. Yes, of course.”
Fyryx narrowed his beady eyes, cocking his head back with half a grin.
“I take it this brat is a student of yours?”
“That’s correct Treasuror, six years running — ever since bookwoman Netty passed on.”
“And how did she die? Refresh my memory.”
“Old age, dozing, during a quill class. There in her chair while her tots practiced runes.”
The judge snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”
“Like lightning.”
“Out of the blue?”
“Truly.”
“Funny though, that you don’t find it suspicious…” The red justice clutched at his chin for effect. “But then you profited from her death. Inheriting pupils, their tuition.”
“Are you implying…”
“Oh tut-tut, teacher! I’m merely trying to learn the truth.”
The heat of the moment and the sun had started to take a toll on Dustum. He went weak-kneed and leaned on Ferrous, who propped up the dizzy dean.
Fyryx, for his part, was just warming up.
“Now, for the record, bibliophile — tell the court what you know about your disciple, this scamp, defendant Yin…” He gave a vague wave toward the hanging lad. Ho-man held his quill at the ready.
Dustum stuttered and sputtered a moment, stalling for time while he measured his words.
“Oh dearie me, oh dearie me… what’s there to say about young master Treygyn?” He hemmed and he hawed and he dragged his sore feet. “Hmmm…”
“I hope you’re getting this down,” jeered Fyryx, in the direction of the clerk. “So seldom do we hear such wisdom.”
In fact