An hour later, Laurence was returning to the gang headquarters in Spring Street. Despite everything that happened, he made a healthy habit of not taking the same route back to the base, often doubling back to make sure no one was following him. Eventually he ended up in an area, just three streets away from the base, called the promenade. The promenade was littered with statues in various states of disfigurement and decay, with ivy covering ones further back in the street to the point of near complete obscurity. This was one of Laurence’s favourite places in the entirety of Spirit, there were so many unanswered questions here.

To Laurence, each statue represented a question, not just ‘what were you’, or ‘was that really what you looked like?’. Instead, he wondered why there were statues of these people, and what the statues represented to the people who made them.

He would walk through the promenade, admiring as he strolled, but he always stopped at a single statue. It was obviously the newest statue there, and consisted of a man and a woman, in each other's arms. The man was tall and strong, wearing some sort of ceremonial gear, perhaps of an army. The woman was the reverse. It was not to say that she did not look strong, but rather that she was petite, graceful and lithe. He was the earth, and she was the sky to the world that was this statue. The heroic aura of the two together made Laurence want to understand the statue more than ever.

Every time the boy stared at the statue, he would feel a flash of recognition. The flash would quickly pass, but it left a yearning in him that he could not shift. He wanted to know who these people really were. There was a plaque below the statue with the words “Creole and Grace, The lady hath no greater design.” but the phrase meant nothing to Laurence. He knew neither of them from stories, and even their names were comparatively uncommon. In the end, he sighed and moved on. Perhaps one day he would meet Luke again, and he could ask him.

In the end, he could do nothing about these statues without more information, and so decided to head home. It took him ten more minutes, just to make sure he was not followed, before he reached one of the several entrances to the gang tunnels. Knocking on the door in an odd pattern, Laurence expected to wait for a minute or so before he was vetted and let in, but instead the eye slot slid open and a pair of steel-blue eyes peeked out.

Looking Laurence over once, the door creaked into life as it too slid open. Inside the door stood Jim, wearing a grin so wide his mouth seemed to cut his head in half. The older boy ushered Laurence inside, then closed the door quietly. The members of Spring Street were always conscientious about the location of their base, as they had a lot of powerful rivals who would enjoy ransacking their home ground, if given the chance.

“Welcome back! How did you get out? I saw the poster of yours in the main hall after word of you being caught spread around. Thirteen counts of larceny is not something people usually walk away from,” Jim said, spitting each sentence out as soon as the previous finished. “Your reward was up to 20 gold shards!”

“Wow!” Laurence said. “What's the rank of the reward then?”

“Sixth highest in gang history. Though you're only behind the Masked Man in current gang members.”

“I overtook Orwell?” Laurence’s eyes went wide and his jaw dropped. Earlier that day, he had only been tenth on the list of current members. Now only the mysterious leader of the Spring Street Bashers was ahead of him in value. The Masked Man was a character that only Orwell and Nae had actually met. He was a reclusive master thief who used Spring Street as his base of operations. Supposedly if a gang member got enough merits then they would be allowed to meet the leader, but in all other situations he was only ever seen by the Night and Day Masters of the gang.

Laurence could not help but feel both good and bad about his bounty. For one, the bounty was now moot; thanks to his healing of Bertrand’s men, he was no longer wanted, and so no longer had a price on his head. For another, he knew what his perceived worth was. Unfortunately he was also slightly ashamed. The fact that he was wanted for thirteen crimes meant that he had been identified for all thirteen. There was a saying that went around the gang every so often; the best thief is one that no one has ever heard of. Laurence was annoyed that in the hundred plus missions in the last six months at least a tenth of them he had been discovered over. It was embarrassing.

He decided not to dwell on the embarrassment and instead went to the mess hall to celebrate his release. He sat with his friends and gossipped about the situation he had gotten in. When people heard that he had escaped by making himself indispensible to the bobbies, people throughout the hall were stunned by the boy. Every so often he would do something that made it seem like he was just another member of the gang, but then occasionally he would do something that would blow their expectations out of the water. Laurence was a true enigma to the gang.

Across the room, Damien stared at Laurence’s back. The man had long since healed from the wounds he had received from the boy, but he had not healed his hatred. The better Laurence did, the more he despised him, despite the fact that he had no one to blame but himself for his current predicament. After Laurence had defeated him, his place within the gang had dropped considerably. He still had sway over a large amount of the members, but Laurence stood in their eyes as a paragon of strength, while he was a relic of the past. He had spent four whole months dealing with the stares of the people in the gang, taunting him, tormenting him about the fact that he simply was not as strong as a nine year old. He had even punched one of his detractors, nearly killing the boy in question, but it did not ease up. He was considered emotionally weak, and that he could not allow.

Over the four months that he had been at full strength, he had followed Laurence’s team and spent his time reporting where they would show up, often allowing them to be caught with their trousers down by a few bobbies. When that failed to work, he spent his time trying to garner support from the other people who had been crossed by Laurence, but no one else really hated him. Everyone else respected his strength. Everyone else respected his skill. It made Damien sick to hear it.

After days of deliberation about what he was going to do, he saw his last plan had not only failed, but made Laurence have more of a name for himself than before. He growled in anger at the sight, crushing the mug in his hand. Brushing off the splinters than were now slightly embedded in his skin, he stood up and walked out of the mess hall. Desperate times called for desperate measures.