Heavy Is the Crown- Chapter 6

Benjamin Godash had been a politician for over thirty years on the day Bowser hatched. He had begun his career with the kind of earnestness and doe-eyed optimism many younger men have when they first win an elected post. But the cruel realities of being a member of the Empire's hierarchy beat that out of him quickly, dragging that innocence into a dark alley to be stabbed and spit on with all the vitriol of the hateful and deceitful.

He'd developed his own code of ethics as a result, and chief among the rules of governance he lived by was this- if the other guy shows his hand, destroy him. This was more figurative than literal, but he'd applied both versions in his time. It went hand-in-hand with his philosophy of what politics boiled down to, a mantra he'd talked about with some of his closest advisors.

"First come smiles, then pretty lies. Last comes death, of ideas, or bodies, or both," he said to these men and women, who all seemed to take his words in stride. He knew they mostly feared him after that, and that was well enough.

Yet in all of his years dealing with the idle threats of lesser men, of people who did not understand their place in the Empire, none had disturbed him so much as Luther Entem. Entem represented the most dangerous kind of prole, one well-read and well-spoken enough to stir up genuine trouble without getting easily distracted. He was a lightning rod, and Godash feared that eventually, he would have to face a bolt directed from him.

But everything seemed to go as it should when the family was forced to march to the Seventh Magistrate territory. They wound up in Dregg, which he found fitting, and Godash focused his attentions elsewhere.

That had been well enough, until one of his spies in the Seventh reported that Entem had earned a spot working on the Great Road, a brick roadway spanning the whole of the Empire from north to souh. It had been under construction on and off for twenty years at that point, and the men in charge of it had always sought out the best builders to work on it.

Godash couldn't just send a request to have Entem fired, as the Great Road was outside of his control. But if the koopas in charge of it thought that a better job were lined up for one of their workmen, they wouldn't object. Thus, when he discovered the need for a crew foreman for Prince Nurik's dungeon renovation, he sent off a letter right away.

Getting Nurik to agree to it had been simple enough. Only a few details remained for the second step in dealing with Luther Entem. Godash made his way to Prince Nurik's once more, where the wheel of fate would be given yet another turn.

Luther hugged his wife and son, then bade them fare well for the day as he headed off for his first day on the job. Bowser waved until he could no longer see the back of the kart, then headed off down the street to play with some of his friends.

All of them, actually, and they only numbered three. Moxy and Trim, two green tribe koopas aged three and four, and Doko, a mutant goomba with human-like arms, served as the only social circle he knew beyond his parents. The youngest of the bunch, Bowser naturally felt protected and safe in their midst.

This despite tha fact that only Trim was taller than him, while Moxy clocked in at eye-level. Bowser found his friends down by a claptrap board shack in which Doko and his parents scratched out a meager existence, sitting in a loose semi-circle to the outer shack wall. Doko was shaking something in his hand, and he tossed two ruby red dice, letting them rebound off of the shack and land on a long piece of cardboard they'd laid out. It came up double-threes.

"I got six," said Doko, mouth pulling right in thought. "I'll keep it. Hey, Bowser!" He smiled at the young koopa, two oversized canines jutting up over his lip from his lower gum. "We're playing Three Roll High. You want in?"

"Um, sure," said Bowser timidly. He spoke quite fine most of the time, but for some reason, he always got nervous when playing a new game with his fellows. He couldn't say why, but he found a curious fear taking residence in his heart when in such circumstances. That fear had a doormat which read, 'They're Going to Laugh When You Lose'.

Doko handed him the dice, which were warm and slightly damp to the touch. "Okay, what you do is shake these a few times, then toss 'em against the wall so they bounce back an' roll on the cardboard. You count the dots, add 'em up, and say what you got. The highest roll wins the round. Everybody gets three rolls if they want, but once you set your roll, your turn's over. Did you get all that, bud?"

Bowser rolled the dice around in his large green hand. "Yes, I got it." He shook the dice as his friends chanted and jabbered at him, hooting and cajoling until he tossed the dice. They rebounded off the shack and landed just so in the center of the cardboard.

Snake eyes.

"Um, I'm assuming that's no good," Bowser said. He rolled again, came up with an eight total. "What's the highest right now," he asked.

"New round since you joined, so you," said Moxy. Bowser said he would 'lock in', and handed the dice off to Moxy. On and on this went, with Doko's mother listening in through a narrow gap between two boards to make sure the kids were safe. For the time being, the kids were all right.

Godash walked up and down the loading platform, seeking out the crates that would be sent to Prince Nurik's castle keep in the coming days. When he located them, he handed the warehouse foreman a sack filled with heavy coins and waved the little red shell koopa away. The foreman didn't as questions; in the Empire, questions usually just led down dark paths with festive names like Backstab Alley or Throat Cut Lane. Just for giggles, one might even be detoured down Poison in Your Lunch Street.

Godash carefully read the label sheets on the first few boxes, cursing himself for not keeping the foreman around long enough to locate the crates with the thwomps in them. He didn't have forever to do what needed doing there. At best, his bribe would buy him half the work shift, and there were scores of crates to check.

An idea struck him a minute later, and he quickly zipped off to the foreman's office, checking his desk top for any kind of inventory list. Locating it on a clipboard, he headed back out to the loading dock and hunted his way through to the needed crates.

Setting the clipboard aside and grabbing a crowbar, Godash pried open the first one he came to and set the tool aside. The thwomp within rapidly blinked, looking at him and, as came naturally to them, scowled. "Ho, what's this? Are we at the castle yet? Who are you, koopa?"

"My name is not your concern, thwomp," said Godash amiably enough. "Your purpose in life is to crush things, yes?"

"You know that. Everybody knows that," said the thwomp. "What do you want with me and my purpose?"

"Listen carefully, and I will tell you," said Godash.

Luther pulled next to the tent, grinning like a fool. He'd been working on Prince Nurik's dungeon for two months now, and most of the floor and ceiling remodeling was now done. His son was playing a pick-up game of soccer with his little crew of friends on the far side of the home, a sight which warmed Luther's heart. His boy had made great strides in socializing, and would probably be considered ready for schooling around the same time as his fellows.

Luther only worried about his rate of growth. Bowser now stood almost to Cass's chest height, taller than even his friend Trim now. The spikes on his shell needed weekly filing down, a task Bowser now took care of himself. His independence was a touch disheartening for Luther, but the koopa builder couldn't help feeling a little proud of the boy as well. Not yet two, and he'd already developed into a very bright kid.

A bright kid with a hell of a temper, he thought, flashing back in his mind to two weeks earlier. One of the other local boys, a yellow tribe whose family had fallen on troubled times, came and tried to snatch away the soccer ball Bowser and his friends played with routinely. Bowser had reacted by beating that boy into a swollen, bruise-riddled pulp. He might have done worse if Doko's mother hadn't heard the commotion and come on the run to investigate.

For the moment, though, Luther just watched as Bowser blocked another goal shot and laughed joyfully in the sun. He headed into the tent and breathed deep of good stew being cooked in a new add-on tent stitched to the home, one with an open canvas drop-wall. Cassandra had asked if he wanted to buy a more permanent home, but Luther had insisted they remain somewhat frugal. "Better to have that coin in case of a emergency," he'd said, and she agreed.

He headed out to the cook room and embraced his wife from behind. "Hey, honey," he said, enjoying the feel of her scaley palms on the backs of his hands as she returned the hug without turning.

"Dear," she said. "I'm making extra. Moxy and Trim's parents are joining us."

"What about Doko and his folks," Luther asked, dipping his finger in the pot to taste test. He hummed with cullinary delight.

"No, Doko and his parents have to go to their monthly clinic appointment. They'll be gone a couple of days."

"Hmm, shame. They're good folks. I'll go wash up," Luther said, heading to yet another tent extension, this one firmly secured on all sides but the interior entrance. He could hear Bowser and his friends goofing around through the canvas wall as he soaked in the tub, and smiled to himself. These are the moments I work for, he thought.

Ben Godash checked in via his plant in the work crews periodically, not wanting to spook the poor man, and not wanting him to let on to his coworkers that anything was amiss. However, it had been an agonizing wait before finally the trap layout was set to start, and he wanted to know exactly when the thwomps were going up.

Godash's spy was a red koopa named Bryce Holson, a slightly dimwitted fellow who had been stripped of his caste rank by trying to court the daughter of his local magistrate. Godash promised Holson a partial pardon and sponsorship to have his caste elevated to goomba-level if he kept tabs for him and said nothing about their partnership to anyone, ever.

Now the red shell sat at his small table, sipping old whiskey while Godash sat across from him in heavy black traveling robes and cloak, the hood up over his head, concealing his face from the nose up in shadow. "You sent me a message via P-wing letter. I assume it's something important?"

"Yup," said Bryce. He was one of the few men of his age who almost never lapsed into the 'old speech', which had recently gone out of favor among most citizens of the younger generation. "Thwomps start going in tomorrow."

"Speak true?" Bryce nodded, sipped his drink. "That is excellent, my friend. Now, what is your role in the work tomorrow?"

"Nothing," said Bryce flatly. "I don't intend to be there. I'm going to get magnificently drunk, and beg off of work in the morning when the train shows up." Godash stiffened visibly. "What?"

"Mr. Holson, don't you think that will look mildly suspicious, should something happen tomorrow? Say, an accident?"

"Nope," said Bryce with a grin. He threw back his head and downed the rest of his whiskey, then slowly poured himself more from the bottle on the table. "See, I'm not that clever, not like you, sir, but I know enough to know when I might need an alibi down the road. So, since we started the renovation, I've begged off twice for hangovers. This'll just be the push needed for them to label me an alcoholic, not a murderer."

"Who said anything about murder," Godash asked faux-innocently.

"Oh, come off it, sir. I know you intend to have someone offed. I just don't know who, and would rather not. Now, if you'll excuse me," Byrce said, raising his glass in a toast. "To labels!" He tossed back the shot and grimaced, pouring another.

Godash saw himself out of the ramshackle little cottage and to his borrowed kart, Turiya at the wheel as usual. The Hammer Brother drove away slowly, until they were clear of the outskirts, then pelted for the nearby Administrative Warp Zone. Nobody but Bryce Holson would ever suspect they'd even been there.

At least, not for some time.

Bowser was sitting quietly in the main room, reading, his mother knitting a new blanket, when the roar of a heavy-duty kart came down the road the following day around noon. The noise didn't bother them, until the brakes engaged with a squeal just outside of their home. Bowser looked up at his mom, one eyebrow raised. "Mother? Are we expecting company?"

Cass was up off of the couch just as a pair of yellow tribe Elite Guardsmen came quietly into the main tent, their hands clasped together before them, heads bent down slightly. Bowser saw his mother's mouth go slack, her knitting needles falling out of hands suddenly unable to hold onto them.

"Ma'am, son," said the taller, broader guard softly. "There's been an accident."

Bowser stood beside his mother, letting her press him tight against her side as she wept at the graveside. Almost everybody in the village of Dregg stood in attendance at the funeral, as well as many of Luther's coworkers and subordinates. Meechum stood at Bowser's left side, one hand kept firmly on his shoulder for comfort. He appreciated the effort, but its effect was dulled by the lone thought, My dad is dead.

Bowser had been in too deep a state of shock and despair to really grasp all of the details until a few years later. It boiled down to a malfunctioning thwomp, which had erroneously identified Luther as an intruder and, well, had then done what thwomps do. The thwomp had been carried off and tossed into a lava pit by enraged koopa workers.

Still numb to most of the world beyond his thoughts, Bowser barely registered the arrival of Prince Nurik to the proceedings. He didn't quite grasp, either, the offer the nobleman made to allow he and his mother to live at the castle, since the accident had occurred on his property. Cassandra accepted weakly, and only after initially refusing.
All Bowser could clearly remember about the week that followed was being told his closest friends and their families could also come stay at the castle with he and his mother. This had cheered him some, but otherwise he locked down, shutting all input out, living on a kind of auto-pilot.

It would be a long time before he came out of it.