Renegade
Wally Walstrom sat on a cold, hard bed with his back against a cold, stone wall in a cold, stone cell with cold iron bars blocking the view to the cold grey sky outside. He’d been in this cell for almost a week with nothing but the clothes he was taken in and a moth-eaten wool blanket to comfort and warm him. His meals consisted of cold gruel, made of something he didn’t want to think about, served to him in a beat up tin dish through a tiny slot in the door that didn’t even give him a glimpse of the owner of the hand that fed him.
Knowing his reputation as a thief and an escape artist, the beadle made sure to put him in the barest cell in the jail with the thickest door possible. To keep him from picking the lock and setting himself free, the so-called window (a slot near the top, also barred) was set too far from the lock for him to reach it with any sort of tool he would have been able to make up. That would be if there was anything in the cell to make anything up with anyway. He’d given up days ago on finding a way out. Not that it mattered now. His time there was ending soon, and he’d bet money it would end dangling from a rope.
He was going to die soon. His family wouldn’t come for him. His mother and siblings were too afraid of what his father would do if they bailed him out, and his father was too afraid of what Wally would do if he was free again—mostly who he would talk to. It was that bastard who threw him in here, and it was his money that kept him here. Wally’d tried to run, tried to escape, but he knew they’d catch up to him eventually. Even the most talented thief and the best con artist couldn’t escape the influence of his family. He knew too much about the game they were playing with politics and the people, and he refused to take any part in it. He had been and would always be a danger to their operations. They had found him, they had caught him, and they would do away with him.
He’d worked so hard and long at planning how and when to escape his father’s plans for him; plans of using him as a bartering tool to gain favor and status, just like every other well-to-do family was doing. He’d hated it. He’d hated being nothing more than a tool, a toy, and a bargaining chip to everyone around him. He’d had hopes, dreams, and desires; he’d had thoughts and opinions. He was his own person and he wanted to be counted as such.
He stood in the far corner, looking out of the little window. He heard the echo of shoes on flagstone and the clink of keys around a ring in the hall outside the cell. Those sounds have become so familiar in the past few days. He almost believed he could recognize which of the guards it was from the sound of the steps. He heard the guard come closer, pause outside his door, light a match (probably for a cigarette), then shuffle on down the hall, continuing his rounds. He’d be back in about ten minutes.
Wally moved to the bed. He needed a new perspective. From his perch at the edge of the bed he could still see the clouds out the tiny window, but they looked different somehow from this angle than in the corner. All he could do to pass the time was sleep or watch those clouds. Sleeping was out of the question; the bed was hard as a rock, the pillow itched his face and the blanket barely covered his middle. So he passed his time with pacing and thinking.
He thought about his family, his siblings with their lives all planned out and run by their father, not able to choose things or do things for themselves, living how they are told to live. He was glad he didn’t end up like that. Family doesn’t own you. Family is supposed to support you, help you learn to live your own life, give you the tools to survive in the real world. That’s not what his family did. He was glad he got out of it. He had run out on the night of his sister’s arranged marriage to some good-for-nothing son of nobility for more power. He remembered not liking the look on the man’s face. It was a look of boredom, of resignation, and of complacency. He remembered wanting to punch that man in that face to see if it would change at all. He doubted it would have even left a mark. The memory of the man burned a hole into his mind, setting every other memory of that day on fire. Disgust and disappointment settled in his stomach like a granite boulder. Disgust in the man that is now his kin, disappointment in his family for allowing the game to be played with them…. And disappointment in himself for being caught.
The jingle of keys going by his door brought him out of his reverie and back to the harsh reality. His ass was going numb. He hated this bed. It was as comfortable as a stone slab. Good thing he wouldn’t have to be here much longer. He didn’t want to spend another night in that icebox. He laid down and stared up at the rough ceiling. He listened to one of his neighbors crying about their own fate while another called out to the guard as he passed, hoping for some bit of conversation, but the guards were told not to talk too much to the inmates for fear of… Of what? Fear of compassion? Of getting to know the lives of the down-and-out? Wally didn’t know, but he didn’t care. He never tried to talk to the guards. They wouldn’t have been able to save him anyway. No one could, and he knew that. He was just biding his time until the hangman came to get him.
He remembered another time when he laid around, waiting for someone to come for him. He remembered Danny, a fellow thief in the guild who had found him in the street and shown him the ropes. Danny would become a sort of brother to him eventually, and they would be almost inseparable. After a bit of a brawl over some food that landed both of them in jail for the night, Danny got Wally’s story out of him and Wally listened to his story in return. They passed the time by asking questions and telling stories. They mocked the guards. They counted the bars in the window, the boards in the door, and the stones in the wall. They found many ways to amuse and interest themselves while waiting for someone to bail them out. “You don’t think the guild would let us die, do you?” Danny had asked him at one point. He hadn’t thought they would then, but he believed he was out of their reach now.
He stood up with a huff and paced around the cell. Just how long would he have to wait? What could be keeping them? Not that he really wanted to die, but he also didn’t like delaying the inevitable. He preferred to get unpleasant things over with so he could get on to better things. In this case, an afterlife, if there was one. With his father in charge of the church, he was sure to get a good seat, at least, even with all the things he had done. If someone like his father, whose crimes were much worse than thieving and being a nuisance, was able to get into Heaven, then so would Wally, wanted posters or not.
He remembered the first time he saw his name and face on a wanted poster in town. He and Danny had just grabbed some food for lunch—paid for this time—and were sitting in a corner inside the local tavern, a few tables away from the bulletin board where notices and community messages were posted. A man came in and showed a paper to the barkeep, who nodded, took the paper and put it up on the board. He and Danny watched the barkeep walk away and return to work before they went up and looked at the poster. It was a wanted poster with both Wally’s and Danny’s faces on it. The pictures were artistic renderings, seemingly based on descriptions given by people that had seen them on the job at one point or another. They weren’t very good, with some details not exactly right (Wally’s nose didn’t look like that at all, and Danny’s eyes didn’t slant so much), but there was still the possibility that they would be recognized so close to the posters that it sent a shiver of thrilling apprehension up his spine. They left the tavern and headed out into the crowded streets where they could hide amongst the nameless multitudes. Their reputations at this point were still not very well-known, their faces still unrecognized by most, their names still unrenowned. They were still able to hide without any difficulty, unlike it was now. Now he was in jail, and maybe Danny, too…
…What was Danny doing now, anyway? Did they catch him, too? And if so, had they carried out his sentence yet? Or would they hang both of them at the same time and make it a show? …Probably not. His father wasn’t concerned with Danny, so he probably got away. Even if he didn’t, his sentence wouldn’t be as hard as Wally’s was. He didn’t know everything Wally did, and therefore wasn’t a threat to his father’s reputation. That threat is why Wally’s father had hired people to find him and catch him. To his father, reputation and status was everything, and anything that could ruin it needed to be hushed. And hushed is what Wally would be.
Even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything but the steel of the sky, he moved over to look out the window and watch the clouds drift by in one solid mass. He thought about when he was caught a week ago. Wally had evaded the hired goons for as long as he could—several years, actually—but one cannot outrun the church; they have eyes and ears in every section of town and in every town he had gone to. He and Danny were gathering information for the guild about any up-and-coming events or new people, looking for new targets when Wally had spotted them in the crowd. Two men, burly and clothed in black, were watching them intently. He could have sworn he’d seen them before, and he only remembered when he saw two more men, one on each side of where he and Danny were stationed. He brought them to Danny’s attention as one nodded, apparently signaling to the others. Danny yelled, “Run!” and the two of them split up, heading in opposite directions, hoping not to get caught. Wally weaved through the crowd, ducking down alleyways and across busy streets in the hopes of outrunning the men. In the end, though, he had been arrested and brought to jail. Alone.
The clouds were boring him. He moved back to the bed and sat down again, back against the frigid stone. He was alone now, without friends or family, blood or otherwise. He closed his eyes, feeling the icy grip of despair creeping over him, more sobering than the stone at his back. He could feel his life seeping into that stone and disappearing, never to be felt again. No one was coming for him. No one could save him. He was doomed to another, completely different fate that his father had planned when the first had been thwarted. He hummed to himself, trying to pass the time, trying to amuse himself… Trying to distract himself. Oh mama, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law… Hang man is coming—
He stopped humming. He could hear two guards talking in low voices. One voice he knew as the usual guard, but the second, though somehow familiar, he couldn’t place. He heard the exchanging of keys and they clinked from one hand to another, then an opening and closing of a door as the previous guard left. It couldn’t yet be time for the change of shifts, could it? He couldn’t tell. He slowed his breathing and listened intently for any hint at what was going on. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. The gait of whoever it was didn’t sound like any other guard he knew. It was too springy, too energetic. Maybe a new recruit? The person stopped at his door. Wally held his breath, staring at the door expectantly. Maybe it was someone come to lead him to the gallows.
He heard the keys jingle-jangling as the guard slid the one for his cell into the lock. Just about anyone else would be praying for forgiveness and salvation by now, but Wally refused. He didn’t believe begging would get him anywhere better. He also was too proud to stoop to begging, no matter who he was aiming it at. His heart beat faster, trying to pump blood to his extremities faster than it could drain. He stared across the bed to the opposite wall, listening to the sound of the keys in the lock, the bolt sliding over, and the door creaking open.
“Hey, Wally, are you really just going to sit there?” asked Danny, who appeared in the doorway, hand still on the keys to keep them from making too much noise. “We need to hurry before the guard realizes I lied to him and comes back. Come on!” Wally shook his head and chuckled, all but jumping off the bed to follow Danny to freedom. He should have known this family wouldn’t let him down. They take care of their own. He shouldn’t have worried, shouldn’t have lost faith in them. As long as he was with them, Wally would never be alone. That was what family was supposed to be like, and Wally had finally found his own.