Rasheika's Trial

The year 3003, city-state of Ferndale

Tom leaped into the trees a half second before his rulers came to stand right beneath them. He climbed higher, like a monkey, with them staring up at him. It was easy for Tom to climb trees, he’d practiced a lot at one time, he had also practiced dropping dramatically from trees at the same time. The fact that he had felt this was an important life skill to learn had most of the town deciding that he was a nut case who had no business in the government. Especially not in as important a position as the official head of the spies, as far as most people of the world knew Ferndale didn’t exist and Tom and his spies were their only eyes and ears to the rest of the world. It was a very sensitive position, placed in the hands of someone who saw the whole world as a game.

Ferndale was in an interesting position as a city. They were technically just a group of kids playing around in a government school run by the underground cities. That would have been the end of the story if they had allowed it to be but they had decided to break ties with the school after a school wide, though bloodless, war. No one had died but it had still been overly complicated and not something that Ferndale wanted to get involved with again. Instead they had taken advantage of their distance from the rest of the school and hidden position to allow the world to forget them. That had been easy enough with the children of the school graduating every two years; all of the children in the school who had last seen them had already graduating. Ferndale was quickly turning into a legend in the school, something you told the new kids about. Ferndale however was still bustling, as busy as ever, with its population older, and more independent, then the population of the rest of the school.

“Adrian Bleeker, get out of that tree,” Kerma, queen of Ferndale, shouted up at Tom, who flinched at the use of his real name. Adrian as far as he was concerned was the name of a poet, not the name of a doer of daring deeds. Kerma would of course do the talking, Frendral the king of Ferndale, two years her senior at fifteen, wasn’t a talkative type.

“What are you, my mother?” Tom shouted back, he was the same age as Frendral and found it humiliating to be lectured by a girl so much smaller then he was.

“Do you really think you can hide up in a tree until we forget about this?” Kerma demanded. Tom knew it was too much to ask but he had hoped to hide until they had cooled off a bit. He hadn’t been quick enough though, they had seen him go up the tree as they ran after him, and now he was cornered. It was better to come down and take the lecture then become the laughing stock of the city for being treed by his rulers. Besides, he strongly suspected that Frendral would come up for him if he had to; Frendral wasn’t someone that Tom wanted to tangle with. Before Frendral had retired to come to Ferndale he had led the school’s only group of bandits. Tom dropped from the tree with a sigh, ready to get an earful from both leaders.

Frendral and Kerma had the decency to bring Tom into Frendral’s house before exploding. The business they had to lecture him on was of a sensitive nature and he was a government official, he had the right to some privacy while they yelled at him. They even waited until he sat down, across the table from the two of them.

“Now let’s go over this slow, just so you can’t claim you didn’t know any better,” Kerma said with biting sarcasm. “First of all, who is Rasheika?” Tom looked back at her boldly, he made a point to never look repentant, not that he ever really was. The only thing he regretted at the moment was that this wasn’t going to be a fast yelling at. Kerma was obviously going to make this as painful an ordeal as pulling teeth.

“She’s a girl I’m supposed to keep an eye on, to make sure she doesn’t cause any more trouble,” Tom said, hoping that this was what Kerma wanted to hear.

“And why would we be worried that she might cause trouble, what kind of trouble does she cause?” Kerma asked, her voice going sickly patient, like she was talking to a three year old.

“She tried to take over the school once, so she isn’t supposed to be allowed to do anything in politics anymore. If you listen to her she meant to go on to take over the underground cities after taking over the school,” Tom knew why they were angry with him so he tried to give them the answers that would speed things up.

“So you know all of this,” Kerma said scathingly. Tom had to resist the urge to point out just as scathingly that he had lived through the deeds that he was talking about while Kerma hadn’t come to the school yet. He had been among the leaders who had stopped Rasheika’s school takeover and had been one of the people at her trial when they had decided she could go free, with some limitations. It was moments like this that Tom had problems with his new queen, elected only because she was the only person willing to work with the difficult and antisocial Frendral. Tom actually respected Frendral, he was strong and had experience behind him. Tom couldn’t help but think of Kerma as the timid hotel manager he had first known her as.

“Tell us about Rasheika and The Mound,” Frendral ordered, speaking for the first time in the proceedings. Tom wondered if his rebellious thoughts had shown on his face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tom said shrugging casually. Then he caught the look on Frendral’s face and realized that this wasn’t the time to play his usual games. The rulers gave Tom a lot of leeway because of the deal had had made with the original queens of the city several years before. He had been declared an independent unit that didn’t answer to anyone, though with the polite understanding that he would answer to them, or else. That same understanding now carried on through Frendral and Tom knew he was pushing it.

“Alright, so Rasheika got involved in politics again,” Tom admitted. “She gathered up some forces, even I don’t know how she convinced them to join her, and made her base in The Mound.” Tom hated The Mound; it was a fort, looking about as its name suggested, a half underground mound of stones with maze like passageways and no air circulation. It had been built by Rasheika’s forces during the school wide war that had been her first attempt at world domination, the students of the school still hadn’t figured out construction yet really at that point.

“Why did she do it? You know she’s going to have to be put on trial again and I don’t like her chances much,” Kerma said. It was an awkward place for her, she was one of Rasheika’s few friends and now she was going to have to preside over her friend’s trial.

“I think it was mostly nostalgia,” Tom said. “Why else would she go with The Mound? I mean the place was a dump even when it was first built, defensible yes, but she could have built a lot better in no time. Instead she decided to settle into The Mound, just like old days.”

To be continued...