When they arrived back at the dorm, they found a revolution taking place.
“Revolution! Revolution!” chanted the boys. “Time for the punishment officer to meet his doom!”
Fie found the other squires attempting to break down the door to the room of the boy who had set Fie on her quest. The role of punishment officer was supposed to change every month, but it appeared this current officer’s term was about to be cut short, thanks to the revolution occurring in the wake of his tyranny. Thanks to the harsh punishments meted out to all those who dared speak about Bruce M’chouchouteman, the SMSWDBIUL faction’s days were at an end.
“Dammit!” the officer swore. “The barricade won’t hold much longer! When will Heath come? I know he’ll rescue me from this mess.”
Meanwhile, Fie and her friends tiptoed around the ensuing revolution and huddled in Queen’s room. Arms crossed over her chest, Fie said, “It’s hard to believe Bruce M’chouchouteman would be such a villain.”
“It’s too soon to say for certain,” said Slad. “Sure, maybe he sprayed the kid in lemon juice, but someone else could have stolen the necklace.”
“Slad, that makes no sense.”
Slad wanted so dearly to believe in the mystery man’s innocence, but no one else in their little crew was willing to leap on board that same train. Still, it was hard to believe that Bruce M’chouchouteman was a thief. Even when he had been nothing more than an urban legend, the stories about him were so exciting that this came as quite a shock. No one wanted to even discuss the possibility.
“Maybe there’s been some mistake,” Slad argued gamely. “I mean, this is Bruce M’chouchouteman we’re talking about. He’s one of the three greatest legends of our time. There has to be some explanation for this.”
Fie sighed and nodded. “You have a point. I think this calls for more investigation.”
“Heath!” Slad cried, turning to her with shining eyes.
Once the squires agreed to reconvene later for another search, the group dispersed, save for Fie and Queen. She looked over at him as he sprawled face down on the bed, his mood sour. “I guess I should make it up to him,” she said.
Queen seemed so perfectly content the next morning it was as though nothing had ever happened; Remie suspected Fie had performed nothing less than devilry to accomplish this.
✦ ✦ ✦
The boys needed to forge another permission slip for their second investigation, so Fie set out to the guardroom only to find Garuge being subjected to a grisly interrogation.
“What’s going on?” she cried.
“L-Lad...” Garuge croaked out weakly.
The captain stood next to him, arms folded. “We found that he’s been forging official knight documents, and when asked to explain himself, he refuses to answer.”
Someone had found out about the permission slip. But how? The workmanship had looked perfect to Fie.
As if reading her thoughts, Captain Yore picked up a teacup and said, “I always have those on permission slip duty spill a few drops of tea on the form in a certain place corresponding to the time and date. The gate guards did not know of this, but when I checked later, I found the forged paper mixed in with other, legitimate documents.”
Fie gulped. “That stain is on purpose?” She and Garuge had seen those stains before, but naturally, neither knew they were intentional.
“We have other tricks as well. And funnily enough,” Captain Yore continued, “the man who accepted that forged document said the one he received it from happened to be a particularly short squire.”
His glare bored holes into Fie. Oh crap. Garuge may not have talked, but the proverbial beans had been spilled anyway. She gulped, fumbling for some kind of excuse, before her eyes landed on one of the papers in the captain’s arms.
“C-Captain,” she cried, “what is that?”
It was a map of the neighborhood in which Fie had been the night before, with several locations marked with X’s.
“Oh, this?” he said. “This neighborhood has suffered from a recent string of robberies, but we haven’t been able to catch the culprit yet. Every witness has only been able to give us vague testimonies. We think it’s all the same robber, but we can’t be sure.”
The X’s were very close to the places where people had claimed to see Bruce M’chouchouteman. There were a few discrepancies, but perhaps those places had simply been left out or the teenage victims had lied.
“Why do you ask, Heath?” Captain Yore asked.
He was only asking politely, but she blurted out, “Captain, I was the one who asked Garuge to forge a permission slip for me!”
Captain Yore jolted. “Lad!” cried Garuge.
Fie looked straight into Yore’s eyes as she declared, “I had no choice but to ask him to do that because I needed to leave the castle last night. And, Captain, I also need to leave again tonight! It’s important!”
Bruce M’chouchouteman really was a thief, and she knew it’d be headline news if he was captured and arrested. She could see it now—Masked Man of Mystery Turns to Crime. She’d be the most popular girl in Wienne! This was her one chance to make it big! She wanted to be big or at least well known. This was her simple wish as a girl who had grown up a social outcast, the girl who had been overlooked as the king’s second wife. She gave Captain Yore the biggest puppy-dog eyes in existence; the Captain chuckled.
“I see,” he said. “Okay. I’ll give you permission, and I won’t ask why. But only just this once.”
He picked up a piece of paper on the table and quickly signed his name on it. It was a legitimate permission slip.
“Yay!” Fie cried.
Garuge chuckled. “You did it, lad!” The captain smiled to see her joy.
“Thank you both!” she cried, and dashed out of the guardroom. Now, she vowed, she was going to make it big for the both of them.
Moments after she ran out, Crow stepped in and stared, bemused, at the odd sight of Roy standing with his arms folded and a pleased grin on his face while Garuge was strung up on a crucifix next to him.
“What in the world is going on in here?” he asked. With his eyes, he telepathically shot Roy the question, Are you good?
“Heath’s growing up fast,” Roy said. “And he has a good eye. I’m sure he’ll be a wonderful knight before long.”
“Uh...huh.” Crow said. Half the time when Roy looked like this, Fie had just hoodwinked him somehow. Crow had a very bad feeling about this.