Young Writers Society

Everyone was digging into their food like… well, like starving crows. (note - the people present are in a group known as the Crows.) Two of them were done, though – the Cobham twins.

Of course.

Max had brought along her axe. Not the wooden one she used in training, but an honest-to-goodness medieval weapon. Flustered and wanting some distraction from James, Josephine spoke.

“Max?”

“Aye?” the woman said, her hand pausing in the middle of polishing the handle.

“Where did you get this axe?”

“Stole it from a museum,” Max replied. “Back when we was…” she glanced at her brother. “Seventeen?”

Mark nodded. “Aye, when we were still with The Rat. The British Museum.”

Josephine’s ears perked up. “The Rat? You worked for him? Why were you at this museum?”

“Yeah,” Max said. “From when we were ten ‘till six years ago, when we turned twenty.”

“Think we were at that museum t’ just steal money for him,” Mark popped in.

“An’ then we got busted.”

“Jus’ like you,” Mark added, with a mock sad frown. Josephine felt like slapping him again, but there was no need. Max did it for her. Though it was less of a slap and more of a hard punch on the shoulder.

“Ow.”

“Drop it already,” Max growled, and he relented, sulking. His sister continued. “We went in without swords or anythin’, ‘cause it was th’ middle of the day. Was just us and some other of The Rat’s people. We were like his…” She trailed off there, trying to find the right word. “Killers-in-training. There was us, an’ Deverling-”

“Deverling?” James said, suddenly jumping into the conversation. “Thomas Deverling?”

Max nodded. “Aye, yeah. Us an’ him an’ some other guys.” She paused for another interruption, some question to be asked. James stayed silent and Josephine did the same, both of them intent on the conversation.

Mark took up the mantle. “At the museum, we got busted. And we didn’t have any weapons, so everyone jus’ ran - exceptin’ Thomas, me, an’ her,” said Mark, indicating his sister. “Th’ museum was showing these medieval swords and stuff on display.”

“I got this,” said Max, holding up her axe.

“I didn’ get anything, cause-”

“’Cause you were too fuckin’ stupid to think of gettin’ anything,” Max interrupted.

“No, cause I was waitin’ for one of ‘em to come so I could grab his sabre!”

“Yeah, right, you fuckin’ pussy-”

“Cmere!”

James spoke up before they could begin pummelling each other. “Did Thomas get a seax?”

Max frowned, stopping with her hand in Mark’s hair. “How’d yer know…?”

“What’s a seax?” Josephine said.

“He showed it to me,” James spoke to the two of them. “It’s like a knife-sized sword. Always wondered where he got it.”

“Gotcha,” Max said. She released Mark and he growled, rubbing his scalp. “Anyway, yeah, I grabbed my axe and Thomas got his seax an’ we fought our way out.”

Max stopped talking and looked around the table.

“Is that it?” Josephine asked, disappointed at the anticlimactic ending.

“Yer such a shit storyteller, sis,” Mark said. “Y’forgot the part where I saved your ass.”

“I saved yours too, shit-for-brains.”

“An’ Thomas,” Mark said, “Thomas saved us both. Forgot t’ mention that too.”

Josephine was forming a picture in her head of the mysterious Thomas Deverling. From what the Cobham twins were saying, he sounded like a hero. “Who is this Thomas?” she asked.

They all looked at her. Richard – she’d almost forgotten that he was there – answered. “The Rat’s right hand man.”

The Rat… He is the Crows’ eyes and ears. Surveillance.

She had so many questions – but James had more, and spoke before Josephine could.

“What happened? During that fight in the museum?”

“Told you. We fought our way out,” said Max.

“He wants details, you fuckin’ donkey.” Mark dodged his sister’s half-hearted punch, picked up his spoon, then stood up like an actor in some play. The spoon became an imaginary sabre in his right hand, staring forward at an invisible enemy. “Max had her axe an’ Thomas had his seax an’ I’d taken my sword off the first guy who ran in.” He lunged forward and Josephine saw his pretend sabre slice through the air. Mark imitated the sound of blood flying. “Second guy.” Another sound effect. “Third guy. There were so many guards in that museum I couldn’t really see what Tilly was doin’…”

Max stood up with her axe and Mark grinned at her. She grinned back, swung her axe – for a terrible split second Josephine was afraid Max would hit her brother – then the blade went whistling behind him, carving a hole through an unseen man at his back. “Guy behind you,” she said, and Mark responded by shoving her down, stabbing another one in the air behind her.

“Guy behind you.”

Josephine watched, awed, as the two performed what was almost a dance, Mark with his imaginary sabre and Max with her real axe. They spun and sliced and pivoted and parried. They were two people standing before a table of just three, but she could see every enemy they slew, every strike they deflected.

Then Mark stepped onto the bench. Josephine called out in surprise and quickly moved her bowl out of the way as the man positioned himself, facing another invisible opponent. This one was apparently tougher than the rest – Mark ducked and lunged and leaped back, making the whole table shake. Crows further down seemed to be split on how to respond – half were cheering and whooping, the others were telling the man to get down.

Richard was on the side of the latter. “Alright, that’s enough – get down, you bloody mad cunt!”

Laughter followed the bearded man’s words and Mark obeyed, finishing off the air with a thrust to the throat and jumping down.

Josephine clapped and the rest of the table followed. Mark gave a theatrical bow to his adoring crowd. Max rolled her eyes and sat down first.

Josephine waited for the noise to die down before speaking. “What about Thomas?” she asked.

“What about him?” Max replied, already helping herself to a second serving of soup.

Josephine realised she was probably going to give a mundane answer if she asked about the museum. “With… The Rat? How come he is still with them and you are not?”

Max shrugged and looked at Mark.

He obliged. “Thomas,” he said as his sister went right back to eating, “Thomas was the one who got t’ be The Rat’s pet. Th’ rest of us got killed, or by The Rat’s words, didn’t have the guts for the job.”

“Thomas told me he tortured and blackmailed people,” James muttered to her. She nodded slightly to acknowledge him, keeping her eyes on Mark, taking in everything he said.

“He’s two years younger than us, if I’m rememberin’ right. Creepy guy. Didn’t talk much.”

“What did you do for The Rat? Besides robbing museums?”

“He’d give us these names an’ locations an’ we’d have to go kill whoever was there.”

“That is it? Nothing else?”

“Yup.”

“What… what kind of people did you have to kill?”

Mark sat back in his seat, thinking. “A whole bunch. There was farmers an’ random street people, but then once we had to bust into a rich guy’s place.”

Strange to be killing people when he’s supposed to be only surveillance.

Josephine was about to ask another question when Nathaniel Ainsworth’s voice stopped her: “Time to hit things, boys! Get up!”