“Pardon me?” I said, for I had been thinking about the wheelbarrow again.

“I was asking,” repeated deMauve in a testy manner, “how you felt about all the injuries?”

“It would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t introduced my priority queuing system,” I replied, feeling impulsive.

“We’ll get around to your queuing presently,” barked Gamboge, who had been glaring at me dangerously since the moment I walked in, “and remember where you are.”

“Violet,” deMauve continued as he turned to his daughter, “do you have anything you’d like to say?”

“The girls’ team was merely acting in self-defense,” replied Violet innocently. “The boys’ team went completely loco—it was all we could do to avoid extreme injury.”

“We will take that into account,” said her father, “but witnesses attest to both teams fighting after the whistle had blown—and your team did almost as much damage as Russett’s.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t be the boys-versus-girls match if we didn’t shatter a few shinbones and hand out a concussion or two.”

“That’s as may be,” said Prefect Sally Gamboge, who had been perusing the Rulebook to more fully understand the regulations regarding on-pitch violence, “but only as long as the ball is in play. As soon as you ignored Daisy’s whistle, you became personally responsible for your teams.”

“We are especially disappointed with you, Violet,” added Yewberry. “Russett here is clearly an irresponsible, oafish hub-dweller . You should have known better.”

I saw her fume quietly to herself. Both Violet and I knew who was really to blame, but the Rules were the rules, and Courtland was pretty much untouchable. We’d just have to take what they were handing out. I hadn’t fully understood why Jane had joined in the melee, but then I’d realized: Whereas Courtland had caused trouble to punish me, Jane had caused mayhem to get at the prefects. The incident would affect their end-of-yearreportand, more important, their Peace Dividend from Head Office. A year without any aggression could be worth ten thousand bonus merits, split on a sliding scale between the prefects and the village.

Turquoise asked us both to wait outside for a moment, and we stood, bowed contritely and trooped out.

“Pea brain,” said Violet as soon as the door was closed. “I am so going to make you pay for this.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Ban me from the orchestra?”

“For starters,” she said, annoyed that I had thought of it first. “But I shall also instruct my many close personal friends not to cooperate with your chair census. Your stay here will be an empty, hollow experience without my kind patronage. And,” she added, “I am scrubbing you as a friend. I expect you are devastated.”

“I can think of at least eighty-seven worse things,” I told her, “beginning with yellowless custard.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and made a petulant harrumph noise. The door opened, and Mrs.

Gamboge told us we could return. We filed back in and sat when instructed.

“Do you have anything to say before we prescribe punishment, Master Russett?” asked deMauve.

“No excuses, sir,” I murmured. “I will endeavor to improve myself.”

“Miss deMauve?”

“It’s a plot to discredit me,” she blurted, pointing a finger at me. “I’m not a bad person. Everyone wants to be my friend. I would never have done anything that—” But even her father had had enough. He put up a hand to silence her.

“Violet deMauve,” he said, “we are deeply disappointed that you failed to control your team as soon as the game had ended. As a respected Purple, you are expected to be an example to others. However, we have also taken into consideration your abundant good works for the community and the pleas for leniency on your behalf by many worthy members of the Collective. You will be fined . . . one hundred merits.”

Violet looked shocked. I think she thought she’d get off without a scratch, and in many ways, she had.

She must have had twice as many merits as I did, and would doubtless have many opportunities to earn more. Still, dishing out a hundred wasn’t so bad—I’d still have enough for residency.

“Edward Russett,” said deMauve in the sort of voice one generally uses for announcing the onset of the Mildew, “we hold you chiefly responsible for this farrago. Your poor judgment, failure to properly control your team and inadequate leadership skills have led to the worst case of on-pitch violence this village has ever seen. You are fined . . . two hundred merits.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was bad, but I had almost thirteen hundred merits, so two hundred still left me eleven hundred—enough for residency. I would still be able to get married, one of the perks afforded those who prove themselves Worthy.

We should have been dismissed then, but we weren’t.

“In addition,” said Sally Gamboge, “we find your meddling with the gracious clarity of the queue lines here in East Carmine severely disturbing. The Rules often work in mysterious ways, and impetuous acts that seem to offer short-term benefit sometimes have unforeseen consequences that bring only disunity.”

“Luckily for you,” added deMauve, “you applied for a Standard Variable application, and according to the Rules, we cannot demerit you.”

I may have smiled at this, which was probably a mistake.

“But now,” said Yewberry, “we come to the most serious of the charges laid against you.”

I looked at the prefects in turn. I couldn’t think of anything that I had done that wasn’t somehow deniable or difficult to prove. The prefects could be harsh, but they had to be fair and respect due process. If they didn’t, I could make a complaint to the mutual auditor in the next village, and the prefects could be up for a demeriting themselves.

“I regret to inform you,” continued Yewberry in a sarcastic manner, “that the Last Rabbit has died. Not of old age, as was predicted, but by choking—on a large dandelion leaf.”

“That’s too bad,” I said in a quiet voice, attempting to fill the unnatural silence that had descended on the room. Then I understood, and my heart fell. “When did it die?”

“The day before you got here,” intoned deMauve gravely. “If you had visited the rabbit as you’d claimed, you would have found that out for yourself.”

“You lied to us!” cried Violet. “All that talk of its being furry and the teeth and the little white tail—well! I am so disappointed.”

“We are all disappointed,” said deMauve, “and quite frankly, Edward, your father shares our disappointment. You have boasted of your rabbit connection all around the village and even spoken of it to the juniors during teaching—which is a hideous breach of trust that I hope I never live to see repeated.”

I hung my head, for it was all true. I had lied. But the crunch came with a copy of the telegram I had sent to my best friend, Fenton, listing the rabbit’s bogus Taxa number. Lying was one thing, but Fraudulent Gain was quite another. I was in very serious trouble.

“Do you deny these charges?” asked deMauve.

I couldn’t, and said so. In respect of this, I was fined an eye-watering six hundred merits, bringing my total loss to eight hundred. In any less well-merited individual, it would have been Reboot. That wasn’t going to happen to me, as I still had just under five hundred left. But crucially, I’d have to be up to the thousand-merit threshold again before I could even consider asking Constance to be my wife, and even with extra Useful Work and no hiccups, it would still take me the best part of three years. And Constance wasn’t a “waiting” kind of girl. Worse, I had been hoping a positive Ishihara would have her father sending me an Open Return; I needed to get out of here more than ever.