The professor: part 3

A brief moment of civility

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Professor Simova of Fountain University is on the run. Lola’s new rebel friends need to intercept him before the Bruglian guard catches up. There’s a complication: Jyna, an old city guard friend of Lola’s, has been spotted…

The Wet Fish. Tupu.
3203. Late Frostfall.

A continual roar filled The Wet Fish’s converted hull, from beam to wooden beam, a cacophonous medley of music, shouting in unfamiliar languages, banging of fists on tables, smashing of glasses, the occasional wet squelch of a landed punch. Considering the somewhat desolate, damp, subsiding village in which it was located, the tavern was a beacon of energy. Clearly nobody wanted to spend time alone here, or in their own homes. Anyone passing through, travelling the river, wanted to keep their stay as brief and pleasant as possible, which invariably meant getting drunk.

Lola sidled over to the bar, feeling endlessly self-conscious but reminding herself that nobody cared; no eyes were on her, and everyone had their own agendas without worrying about a slight, nonthreatening human. Not for the first time, Lola wished there were a visualist on the team, capable of altering their appearances. If Jyna was here, chances were there were other Bruglian guards somewhere in the vicinity, also in plain clothes.

The bar stool next to Jyna was unoccupied, and was human-scale. Lola hopped onto it, sliding her legs under the bar and placing her arms out in front of her.

“Don’t turn around,” she said, not looking at or acknowledging Jyna. “Don’t look startled. Keep enjoying your drink.”

In her periphery, she saw Jyna jerk to attention, and turn her head ever so slightly before catching herself. “Lola,” she said in hushed tones, “what the fuck are you doing here?”

“OK, stay cool. I could ask the same of you.”

“I’m doing my job,” Jyna said through clearly gritted teeth, lifting her drink to her lips.

“You’re a long way from Bruglia.”

“You have to leave,” Jyna said, “right now. I’m not the only one here — we have guards all over town.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

They were interrupted by the barkeep, who slammed his palm down with a loud thud. “What can I be getting you?” he asked in heavily accented English, clearly spotting a tourist. Or perhaps English had been adopted as an intermediary language of convenience.

“Ale, something strong,” Lola said, trying to look like she belonged.

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head quizzically. “If you say so, blondie,” he said, turning away to the pumps.

“Trouble is what you’ll get,” Jyna said. “I should arrest you. If anyone else sees you, I’ll have to act or I’ll be arrested myself.”

Lola pulled her coat collar a little higher. “I’m being careful—”

“You’re here, aren’t you? That means you’re not being careful.”

“Why are you here?” Lola risked a sideways glance, wanting to see Jyna’s face at least once. It was a reminder of a simpler time, of what she’d given up when she’d escaped from Bruglia.

“It’s official business. You don’t need to know.”

“What’s the Bruglian city guard got to do with anything happening in Tupu? We’re hundreds of miles from Bruglian territory.”

“Why do you care? Stop talking to me, you need to leave. My squad commander will be checking in soon.”

Lola’s drink was delivered and she paid in coin. “Wow, that is strong,” she said, taking a sip. What the hell, it was worth the risk: “Are you hear for Simova?”

Jyna froze, her tankard halfway to her mouth. “How do you know about that?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Lola said. “You know he’s been falsely accused? Just like they did with me?”

“Do you even know what he’s been accused of?”

That brought Lola up short. She’d assumed it would be a baseless accusation of corruption, or of hoarding university finances, or of working with a rival city state or trading knowledge through the portals. But she didn’t know — that hadn’t been in the briefing. They’d been told to pick him up, but not precisely why he was on the run in the first place.

“You don’t know, do you?” Jyna shook her head slightly, subtle enough that nobody sat further away would notice. “He’d been taking advantage of the younger students. Male and female. For years. When it came out, he attacked one of the senior staff and ran.”

It was Lola’s turn to shake her head. “Sounds like bullshit. No, I know him, I‘ve spoken to him. Been to his lectures. That’s not him.”

The sound of a tired laugh from Jyna. “Whatever happened to believing the victim? Taking this kind of abuse seriously? That’s what you always told me, in your oh-so-patronising, Mid-Earther way.”

She had a point. More than one, in fact. “Right, but it’s also innocent until proven guilty. And I’ve seen Bruglian justice in action. It’s arrest and throw away the key, if the suspect is unfortunate enough to survive the arrest.”

“That’s unfair, and you know it.” Jyna sighed. “Point is, I know you. Knew you. I know you didn’t do what they said. This Simova, I don’t know him. I’ve heard of him. Heard of people like him. Powerful people, high up in the university, behaving badly. It wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“You have to trust me on this one—”

“No,” Jyna said, pushing her empty tankard across the bar. “That’s not how this works, Lola. And I’m not in charge of this assignment. I couldn’t call it off if I wanted to.” She paused, but spoke again before Lola could respond. “You still haven’t told me how you know about this. That Simova was on the move, and that he would be here.”

“I have contacts.”

“Bullshit,” Jyna said. “Before you left Bruglia you had nothing outside of the city. This is the princess, isn’t it?” Lola risked a glance, just in time to see Jyna’s eyes narrow. “No, it’s more than that,” the Bruglian guard said, her jaw set. “Are you in with the insurgency? Tell me you’re not.”

She already knew the answer, of course, or she wouldn’t have asked the question. Jyna had always been more clever than most of the city guards, and would have made a fine detective, if the concept had existed in Bruglia. Still, Lola wasn’t in a position to start explaining the whole story. “I can’t say. But I’m leaving with Simova.”

“Shit. I knew it. How did you fall in with that lot? They’re terrorists, you know that, right? You heard what they did in Blue Towers? What they did to the city council? They have cells everywhere. One city state at a time. They’re spreading chaos.”

Lola had heard of some of it, from Krystyan’s point of view. The situation on Palinor was too complex, too layered to ever get to the full truth. Lola smiled; a sad, resigned smile. “Don’t you wish we could have just lived normally?”

“Normal?” Jyna spat the word. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Lola said. “I wish things were simpler.”

“That’s not real life. You need to get out, Lola, of whatever you’ve got yourself into. It’s going to get you killed. You’d have been better off in a Bruglian jail.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Fine,” Jyna said. “But you’ve got about thirty seconds to get out of here.”

“Until what? You arrest me?”

Jyna leaned over the bar, her head lowering, then she took a deep breath. “Listen, if you’re with them, if you’re with the people going around blowing up markets and deposing elected leaders, then all bets are off. If it’s between you and some poor family trying to buy food for their table, then, Lola, you are going down.”

The conversation wasn’t going the way Lola had wanted. She was making matters worse. “I didn’t want any of this. Your comrades are the ones who chased me out of town. You’re the ones who blindly follow orders and believe everything you’re told.”

“You still have a choice of who you’re holed up with,” Jyna said, her voice coated in anger. “You’ve got choices. You can choose to leave Tupu right now.”

“I’ve got a job to do. It might help my friends back home. I need to see it through.”

“Then this might be the last time we talk. And I would not feel good about that.”

“This conversation,” Lola said, “is one more than I thought we’d have.”

“One too many,” Jyna said, turning on the stool and standing. “You should never have come here, Lola Styles.”

Photo by August Phlieger on Unsplash

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References & callbacks

Not too many callbacks this week — other than the ongoing Simova storyline. There is a mention of Blue Towers, a story from late-2023 that was the first full introduction to the rebel mages and Krystyan’s cell:

A distant rebellion

Updates & cool stuff

This week I popped up on

David McIlroy

’s podcast, discussing serial fiction. It’s a good listen:

111: Serial Fiction (with Simon K Jones)

There’s another podcast coming up with

John Ward

in a couple of weeks, which takes in a very different angle and was a lot of fun to do:

There’s a vibrancy to the newsletter fiction world that makes it an exciting space in which to write. I worked in and around the Wattpad scene for years without ever really feeling that I had a firm sense of the culture there — despite there being a massive readerbase, there was far less of an author community. In newsletterland, and Substack specifically, there are countless opportunities to meet new people and have fascinating conversations. Which, ultimately, helps all of us keep improving.

Author notes

I’ve wanted to do a slight riff on the diner scene from the film Heat for a while now. You know the one:

Heat came out in 1995, when I was 14. I didn’t see it on release, but I did see it in my mid-teens, and this scene in particular slightly broke my mind. Bear in mind, as a kid, the dramatic structure of this kind of story was through combat. The cop chasing the bad guy. A scene in which the cop and the bad guy were in the same scene would be either a shootout, a fist fight, or an interrogation in a jail cell. Heightened drama at every turn.

And then this scene comes along, and they go and have a coffee. A civilised conversation, albeit one laden with threats and foreboding — but also a regret, and an acknowledgement that in other lives they could well have been friends.

So this week’s chapter isn’t that. It’s not as a good, for starters. It has a very different setup. But the framing and the tone I wanted to feel similar. Note how the staging is very simple, and other than the barkeep there’s not much reference to what’s happening in the tavern. The focus is entirely on Lola and Jyna, as if the rest of the world has gone silent, and those two are the only ones left. Much like in Heat, where they never cut to a wide shot, or provide context to the diner: the camera remains fixed on De Niro and Pacino, in close-up, everything else a blurry background hum. These people are operating in a separate world.

Next week, it all kicks off.