TW FOR RACIST LANGUAGE/CONNOTATIONS

Both of them were silent for a long time as they stared into the trees, the weight of their earlier conversation heavy in the air. He should have let him finish, should have tried to explain himself better, but he was far too curious about what was in the trees. Regret joined the tension between them, but he didn't dare address it.

Spencer took a step towards the trees but Vincent put a hand on his arm to stop him. "We need to stay here. What are they going to think if they come back out and we're gone?" he asked.

"I thought you weren't the kind of person to care about authority, Vince," he snapped and shook his hand away. He stomped towards the trees, fists clenched tightly at his sides. It was strange to watch. Of the both of them, it was usually Vincent storming away in a huff, far too angry for his own good. It wasn't supposed to be Spencer, but that was his fault.

With a sigh, he glanced back at the horses for a second before he followed. There were people everywhere who could keep an eye on them for the few minutes they would be in the trees. Charlotte and the others would be in the mine for a long time if they were lucky, more than enough time to have a look and get back before anyone noticed they were gone.

Spencer was already halfway to the tree line by the time he started across the grassy field. The trees spread across the hills the mine ran down into, continuing into the distance. They cut off at the town, a sharp line sliced through them. It was an odd contrast to the dirty mine and ugly warehouse that he was walking away from, clean and peaceful.

He hurried to catch up to Spencer and the pair walked in tense silence towards the trees. Vincent still wasn't sure what he had seen. It had looked like fabric, painted with the familiar patterns of a native tribe's art, but he could have been seeing things. Nicholas had said that some of the towns lived near tribes, but surely they weren't so close.

Vincent knew them to be nomadic people who never stayed in one place for very long, but maybe not all of them were. Or maybe the arrival of people from Nuran had forced them to stay and watch what was happening. He could never know for sure, he didn't know their language and no one ever bothered to learn it.

Once upon a time, things might have been good with the natives. He had no way to know for certain, but he'd heard whisperings of it from older folks, people who had arrived forty years ago. That they hadn't known anyone else was there when they landed and tried to be respectful, but as the colonies grew, so did the anger of the native people. They'd started it, according to everyone he'd talked to, but Vincent couldn't exactly blame them.

Spencer spared a glance at him when they reached the tree line, as if he were surprised to see him there. Vincent was the one to point it out, he wasn't just going to stand by and not find out what was going on, no matter what Spencer thought. Whatever it was he had seen was harder to spot once they were closer and he stopped for a second to scour the leaves.

"There," Spencer said, pointing through the branches and scrub. He stepped through the bushes before Vincent could find what he was pointing at, leaving him to stumble along behind.

What they were looking for wasn't too far away, but by the time Spencer stopped, he could barely see the mine through the trees behind them. A whispered curse ahead of him made him freeze, dread flooding his veins. He should have known what he would see when he followed Spencer away from the horses, but it still made him sick to his stomach.

The tents that had been set up, made from dark fabric to camouflage with Ilsania's terrain, had been torn down a long time ago, left to flap in the spring breeze and get caught on branches. Trapped against a tree was the piece of tan canvas Vincent had seen from the mine, long rips cut through the swirling red paint. The long-dead remains of a fire sat in the middle of it all, the wood and rocks scattered among the dirt.

That wasn't the worst of it. The stench made him gag, and the vireen he had smoked that morning only made it worse. It was new, unfamiliar, but he still somehow knew what it was. The bodies were hidden under the collapsed tents and behind bushes, but he could still see the dark reddish-brown of dried blood staining them.

It was disgusting. There couldn't have been more than ten people living in the little space, they probably weren't even staying that long, but for whatever reason, the people of Victoria River had murdered them. Hopefully, some had escaped, but he would never know for sure, all he could see was death and destruction.

He'd known about the things that happened out in the outskirts of Nuran's colonies, but had never seen it for himself. Who would want to? For the last seven years, he'd been able to avoid seeing it, but like everyone else, he knew about it and did nothing. Focusing on himself was easier than thinking about it, especially if he never saw it.

"Spencer..." Vincent whispered, not sure what he was supposed to do or say.

"What the fuck?" Spencer replied, hissing it into the suffocating air around them. "What the actual fuck?"

How long ago had it happened? It could have been days or weeks, it was hard to tell without seeing the bodies, and Vincent wasn't going to go and look. They hadn't even been buried, just killed and stashed under their tents as if that would do. Murdered like animals.

There were telltale signs that it was a home, a place where a family or two had been raised. Tools lay scattered, bowls and what looked like children's toys lay in the dirt, stained an awful red. Stepping any further into the camp felt wrong like he was walking on someone's grave, so he kept himself planted next to the trees, next to a sick-looking Spencer.

The smell was getting too much and while a part of him begged to find something he could use to dig graves, he was scared of what he would find if he moved the destroyed tents. His body threatened to expel the food he had eaten that morning, but he held it back as best he could, stumbling backwards on shaking legs.

His mind supplied him with awful thoughts that he couldn't push away. Some of them could have been children and the townsfolk wouldn't have cared. His own experiences had been peaceful, helpful; they'd done nothing to him that would ever allow for murder, and yet, it had happened in Victoria River. It happened everywhere, all the time, and he had been deliberately oblivious to it.

It would happen again in the north. Charlotte had signed for it before they left at Nicholas's pressuring. How many times had it happened? All because they were in the way of buildings and mines and farmland. How hard would it be to offer peace, to allow them to live the way they always had before Nuran decided to ship people over? One look at the tangle of fabric and blood before told him that peace was apparently too hard.

Vincent slipped on something hidden in the grass and used the trunk of a tree to keep himself up. Stuck in the dirt and stained dark brown, were the casings of bullets. They hadn't even given them a chance. The native tribes or clans or whatever they called themselves didn't have guns, only spears. They were like fish in a barrel, unable to defend themselves from people who couldn't care less.

Spencer knelt in front of him to pick up a couple of the casings, his eyes wide with an emotion Vincent couldn't read. "Fucking disgusting," he spat, his hand clenching so tightly around them that his knuckles turned white. "We should get out of here."

"You don't want to bury them?" Vincent asked. It wasn't fair that they had been left out in the air to rot.

The other man stood and stared over his shoulder at what they had found. "I don't know how much there is left to bury," he replied, a hand on his stomach as if he were about to be sick. "I want to know what the fuck is going on, Vince. I knew that this happened, but I... I've never seen it."

All he could do was nod, his throat closing up. Together, they took the first few steps away from the ruined camp, but Vincent's eyes were still locked on it, even as he tripped over the roots of trees. A part of him longed to stay, find something to dig with and do what was right, but Spencer wasn't the only one who wanted to know what was going on.

It was obvious, in a way. They'd used the excuse of land to kill the natives, but it wasn't in the way of the mine, they shouldn't have been a problem. With a painful ache in his stomach, he walked back across the grassy field until he reached Sparks, who nudged him with her head again soothingly.

With shaking hands, he pulled his flask from the bag on her side and took a large swig of water. It barely helped, but it was something. "Here," he said to Spencer, handing the flask to him. Even once they were back at the mine, the stench of the bodies wouldn't leave his nostrils. It was like a bad dream, sticking to him.

Spencer still held the casings, fiddling with them as they waited by the horses for Charlotte to return. The longer they waited, the more he wanted to find a shovel and head back into the trees. But the sick feeling in his stomach and the idea of actually doing it stopped him. He might be a bushranger, a robber and a killer, but he had never left a body there to rot like the people of Victoria River did.

He glared at every person who passed, but none of them paid much attention to him. Spencer eventually handed his flask back, completely empty, and sat down on the grass next to Sparks. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, it had been since they left for New Feridian together, but he didn't want to ask. The silence was suffocating, but it was better than talking about what they had just seen.

With the trees in the distance taunting him, he waited for what felt like hours before someone he recognised came walking out of the mine. Charlotte's once pretty green dress was stained dark with dirt and she looked uncomfortable as she ran a handkerchief down her face, but Vincent couldn't find it in himself to care.

Nicholas wasn't far behind her, looking equally as uncomfortable, but there was something proud in his eyes, something cruel. Vincent didn't get a chance to figure out what it was before Spencer stood and moved past him, shoving him lightly with his shoulder as he passed.

He couldn't stop him from cornering the Governor, who stared up at him with wide eyes. "Did you know about the tribe camp in the trees?" he asked, his voice booming. "About how they were massacred?"

"What are you talking about?" she replied, shock pulling at her features.

Vincent moved fast, stopping next to Spencer and blurting out the words before he could. It would look better for them if it wasn't someone like Spencer who revealed it. "I saw it in the trees and went to investigate. A whole camp, shot," he said, nudging Spencer in the arm. He opened his fist, revealing the stained metal of the casings. "Why?"

But Charlotte wasn't the one who answered. "Why did you leave your post?" Nicholas demanded, stepping past the Governor to tower over Vincent. It wasn't hard to be taller than him, but it still wasn't as intimidating as Nicholas liked to think.

"Nicholas, stop," Charlotte said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's their job to investigate anything they find suspicious. Why is there a destroyed camp in the trees? I didn't permit this town to do any such thing."

Bristling, Nicholas took a step back. "It was in the requests you gave me to sign, ma'am. They were being attacked. If you want this mine to run at its full capacity, then threats need to be dealt with," he explained.

"Attacked?" Spencer cried, pointing into the trees. "There were maybe ten people there, what threat could they possibly have held? They weren't even buried!"

"We did what was necessary," the man in the back said. He was the mayor, the man who had requested the massacre in the first place, and there was sick pride in his eyes.

Vincent ignored him, focusing only on Nicholas and Charlotte, the latter of whom was looking more and more confused with every second that passed. "Anything to do with the natives and it comes straight to me, Nicholas, you know that," she exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest. "I understand why it was done, but next time-"

"You gave that request to me. I was under the assumption that you had already looked through it," Nicholas replied, raising an eyebrow at her.

Guilt made her face pale and Vincent's stomach ached at the realisation that it had been her negligence that had gotten people killed. She might have signed the request anyway, if her earlier actions were anything to go by, but she hadn't read it and passed it on to someone who hated the natives far more than she did. Once again, she had gotten people killed for nothing more than her own gain and Vincent hated her for it.

When he killed, it was for survival. Two police officers, shot dead because they'd almost caught him, that was all. When he robbed, he might injure people, again for his own safety, but he never killed a civilian, never killed someone a little more innocent than himself. There wasn't any point to that kind of brutality.

Charlotte caught the look on their faces and swallowed. She sighed and rubbed her face with the handkerchief again. "Look, I know what it must look like, but if I want Morgot to run the way it should, some things are necessary," she said to Vincent and Spencer, her eyes wide with hope. "From what Nicholas has told me of places like this, the native tribes are ferocious and will not stop. They're coming after me now too."

But were they? It hadn't been that long since he was hired, but he'd expected to be facing a lot more danger than he was. There hadn't been a single sign of anyone trying to attack the Governor while they were in New Feridian or on the road. The only sign of the natives was what he had just witnessed.

"I don't agree with them not being buried though," she said and turned towards the mayor. "Send some men out to bury them. I don't care how long it has been or how long it takes, it's basic respect. You killed them, you clean it up."

For the first time since he had met her, Charlotte finally looked like a Governor. There was disapproval written into the lines on her face, but not aimed at the killing of native peoples, but at the fact that they had been left there. It wasn't the reaction Vincent had expected, but faced with it, he couldn't see it going any other way. She might have the facade of a kind older woman, but she was not one.

With her distracted, Nicholas stepped forward again, eyes locked on the two rangers. "Leave your post again and I will convince Governor Thompson to have you both hung, understand?" he hissed. "You're lucky you're allowed to be here. It's only because we're desperate, but I will not have you two making a mess of things, you hear?

"And as for you, Mister Bowers, I thought you assured me that your... background wouldn't become an issue. Were you lying to me? Because there will be some serious consequences if that is the case."

Vincent let out a growl, his hand instinctively reaching for the serrated knife in his belt. He knew better than to use it, but his fingers itched nonetheless. Spencer stood stock still, glaring at the older man in disgust. "It's not an issue, I wasn't lying," he said through clenched teeth.

"I should hope not," Nicholas replied as the Governor turned back towards them. "Don't give me an excuse to get rid of you. Not even Governor Thompson would be kind to the likes of you."

Charlotte said something then, but Vincent wasn't listening. He was watching Spencer, who strode back towards his horse, his chest heaving. If only he hadn't said what he had before they found the camp, then he could check in on him without seeming like a hypocrite. With his mask on, Spencer had been confident, but hidden. No one had thought to mess with him. But without it, he was just another boy with a native mother in a country that didn't want him.

It wasn't fair.