Education

Law in Blackmire was not justice. It was not order. It was a performance. A grim, farcical play where everyone knew their role—the powerful dictated, the enforcers obeyed, and the weak paid the price.

There were courts, yes. Judges in black robes. Juries who pretended to listen. But the law in Blackmire had long been sold, its bones hollowed out by the very men who pretended to uphold it. There was no such thing as innocence here—only those who could afford to be guilty.

The High Court of Blackmire was a relic of a time when law might have meant something. Its grand, domed halls sat in the wealthiest district of the Internal City, a monument to fairness built atop a foundation of rot. The judges wore powdered wigs, their benches carved from old oak, their verdicts as rigid as the iron bars they condemned men to.

But the truth?

The High Court was a colosseum, no different from the silent markets in the alleys below.

Sentences could be bartered. Punishments could be adjusted—for the right price. A man with no coin could be guilty before he ever entered the room, while a merchant prince with bloodied hands could walk free with nothing more than a fine.

And then there was the Bureau of Contracts, an office hidden behind the facade of legal decorum. This was where the real legal battles were fought—not with swords, not with bullets, but with paper.

Debt contracts. The city's true noose. Sign once, and a man might never see freedom again.

Then there were Indenture agreements. A kinder name for lifelong servitude.

Trade monopolies. Designed not to regulate, but to crush competition beneath a lawful veneer.

Men didn't win cases in Blackmire. They won bargains.

Justice did not walk the streets of Blackmire. But the Watch did.

The Blackmire City Watch was the largest force of enforcers in the city, clad in black uniforms with silver badges that meant nothing. Their jurisdiction? Wherever their masters told them to go.

In the slums? They were tyrants. Quick with batons, quicker with bribes. In the Inner City? They were errand boys for the banks, the merchant-lords, the bureaucrats who had long since twisted the law into their own personal arsenal. In the courts? They dragged in the poor, the desperate, the accused—so the show could go on, so the city could pretend it had law.

But beneath the official Watch, beneath the uniformed guards who walked their predictable patrols, lay something far worse.

The Private Enforcers.

Mercenary lawmen, paid not to uphold justice, but to enforce the will of whoever held their purse strings. These were the men who settled disputes not with trials, but with blades. Who knocked on doors in the dead of night, and when those doors opened, the people behind them were never seen again.

Some wore badges. Some didn't. It made no difference.

To be imprisoned in Blackmire was to disappear.

The city had many dungeons, many cells. But none were more feared than Hollowgate—the prison that sat in the blackened depths of the Internal City, its towers leaning like gravestones, its cells filled with those who had failed to bribe the right man.

No one left Hollowgate the same. Some never left at all.

For the right price, a man could buy a softer cell, a kinder guard, a meal that wasn't laced with slow poison. For the wrong price, or for no price at all, a man could be thrown into the Deep Cells, where the air was damp and cold, where the only company was the sound of rats gnawing on something that still breathed.

Some prisoners were sold. Others were forgotten on purpose.

And then there were the unmarked graves outside the walls, where men who once had names became nothing more than bones in the dirt.

In the end, Blackmire had one law.

The law of power.

The only true law.

Justice was an illusion, the courts a stage, the prisons a warning.

The only thing that mattered was who held the coin, who held the blade, and who had the will to use both.

Because in Blackmire, a signature could kill a man faster than a bullet.

"Wouldn't the gangs have issues with mercenaries?" the boy asked a man, that sat opposite him. The man grinned.

"They do. That's why even in this cold, you will feel the heat of blood. But you don't need to worry about them, they are much fairer than the judiciary system," the man chuckled. He took a sip, and called the waitress. 

The woman seemed like she hadn't slept for the past week but the dark charm she had was highlighted by her dark circles. The man smiled. 

"You take requests, darling?" he asked. His eyes softened. 

"Nothing other than your food. As long as you are ready to order, Sir. Yet." She chuckled.

The boy didn't bother looking at the scene, merely gulping down at his milk. His eyes unfocused as he thought of everything he had been told. 

The man slipped a fifty scrips note from his coat. 

"It's yours." He said.

Her eyes, though at him, were trying their hardest not to look over. 

"Just check who the man in white coat and pomade hair meets here," He said.

She looked hesitant but there was no room for selflessness for the hungry. 

Her gaze locked at the money and she closed in to whisper," It will be done." 

With that, she turned and moved away from their table. The man's eyes did not leave her gait. Then he turned to the boy who choked on his milk that moment. 

"What was it about, Veyne?" the boy asked.

"Just curious about an old friend." Veyne answered.

It had been a week since the man Winston Veyne took him under his wing. Lior couldn't understand anything in the beginning, after all, he never had a formal education. Veyne wasn't annoyed, rather Lior felt he got more interested. He did not know if it was good or bad. But Veyne had his ways.

Ways that never revealed themselves too early, that unraveled only when it was too late to resist them. Lior was starting to learn that much.

The man across from him smirked, swirling the last of his drink before setting it down with a quiet clink. "You've got a sharp mind, kid. Even if you don't know what to do with it yet." His grin flickered, an ember catching the wind. "But don't worry—I do."

Lior wiped the milk from his lips, staring at him. It wasn't a compliment. Not really.

Veyne leaned back, stretching out his arms as if they were in some cozy parlor instead of a dingy, dim-lit tavern where half the patrons carried knives they weren't afraid to use. "Tell me something, Lior." His voice lowered, casual but coaxing. "When you walk through Blackmire, what do you see?"

Lior hesitated, brows furrowing. "Depends where."

Veyne grinned. "Exactly."

He reached for his coat, tossing a few extra scrips onto the table. "Come on. We're going for a walk."

Lior followed him out, stepping into the smog-heavy night where gas lamps burned weakly against the dark. The streets whispered with the sounds of Blackmire—shouts from the docks, laughter from gambling dens, the occasional distant crack of something that might have been a gunshot or just a door slamming too hard.

As they walked, Veyne kept speaking, that same lilt in his voice, as if he was spinning a story only he knew the ending to.

"You see, kid, this city's got rules. Not laws. Rules. Laws are for places where men pretend to be decent." He gestured to the murk of the skyline, where towering buildings loomed like watching giants. "But rules? Rules are made by those with the power to break them. And in Blackmire, power shifts like sand in a storm."

They reached a narrow bridge overlooking a canal, its waters black as tar. On the other side, Lior saw the silhouettes of men huddled beneath a streetlamp, passing something between them—money, knives, information.

Veyne nodded toward them. "Those are the little players. The ones who scrape and scurry, hoping they can grab something before the real beasts notice." His voice lowered, his grin sharpening. "But we're not here for them."

He turned his gaze toward the horizon, where the Inner City's spires rose above the haze, their stained-glass windows catching flickers of firelight.

"By the time I'm done with you, kid…" He exhaled, his breath curling in the cold air. "The past's little monster will be stared at by the devil himself."

Lior gripped the rail of the bridge, fingers pressing into rusted iron. His chest felt tight—not with fear, but with something heavier. Something pulling him forward.

A question lingered on his tongue.

But he already knew Veyne wouldn't answer it straight.

Veyne exhaled, leaning back into his chair with the lazy confidence of a man who had never heard the word "no" and didn't care to start now. His fingers drummed against the table, absent-mindedly, as if already weaving another scheme before this one had even finished.

"You see, boy," he said, tilting his head toward Lior, "people think power is about force. About fear. About how many bodies you can stack before someone kneels." His grin widened, but it never touched his eyes. "That's what fools believe. Brutes. Children who were never taught how the world really works."

Lior swallowed his last mouthful of milk and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, watching. Listening.

Veyne tapped a single finger against the table.

"Real power," he continued, "is when you get what you want and they think it was their idea in the first place."

The waitress had barely made it three steps away before a man, dressed in somber grays, crossed her path. He said something—something low, something pressing. Her face didn't change, but Lior saw the shift. The moment of hesitation.

"Watch," Veyne murmured.

The waitress nodded at the man, then carried on toward the kitchen, her stride tight, careful. The man in gray lingered for a heartbeat before turning and slipping out the door, unnoticed by everyone but Veyne.

"That's the thing about information," Veyne said, swirling his drink. "It's alive. It moves, it breathes, it changes hands faster than a whore's kiss in the Drowned District." He took a sip, smirking as he set the glass down. "And it never truly belongs to the one who speaks it. Only to the one who knows what to do with it."

Lior frowned. "So the man in the white coat—"

"Will know someone's been watching him," Veyne finished. "He won't know who, won't know why, but he will know." He laced his fingers together, resting his chin on them. "Now, tell me, boy, what does that mean?"

Lior hesitated.

"It means…" He thought hard, tried to string the pieces together as quickly as Veyne did. "It means you… made a move before he even knew he was playing."

Veyne chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. "There's hope for you yet." He pushed himself up from his chair, tossing a few coins onto the table as he shrugged on his coat.

"Come along, Lior," he said. "Tonight, I'll show you how a true ruler operates. And by the time we're done, you'll understand what it really means to take whatever you want."

The boy hesitated for only a moment before following.

After all, this was the reason why he had made the choice.