Bacchuspaw lay with his paws tucked under his chest, his eyes half-closed from where he was dozing a little behind Rigidpaw’s shoulder; his head was still up, and he was listening — because his great burden was that he was always attentive, always aware — but he was clearly disinterested in what the other Mother was saying, in the grand, pointless show of tutelage he was making. He had no qualms about brainwashing the kits, was fully aware, even if some of the other Mothers weren’t, that that was what they were doing — if Puzzlemaker asked him to do something, he’d be snide about it, because he was put out and irritated, but he’d do it and feel no regret about the path they were setting the fledglings’ paws on. He’d fix the kits’ bayonets and smooth their curls and march them off to holy war, and then he’d sigh and smile and say ‘well, that’s that!’ and turn away, and all the names would be forgotten in favour of the next batch. He was the perfect, self-invested, careless lackey — not in devotion, but in the ability to follow through; hauled before an inquiry into war crimes, he’d look out over the interrogators with those hooded eyes and that tired smile, and put his mouth to the microphone, and say I was only doing my job; and then he’d sit back and smile just as lazily, so tauntingly unbothered by his part in evil, like he was coaxing them to condemn him, while the crowd flew into an indignant uproar, while their voices rose like hateful thunder. This current disinterest, however, was a little more harmless than usual, a little more placid. He didn’t want there to be a lesson, but he accepted that one was going to be held — and that acceptance, when usually he railed against every single little thing asked of him by MoonCan, was gentle in itself. For once, because of whatever had put him into an uncommonly good mood, he might not be so nightmarish in class.

Tilting his head back, he parted his jaws in a wide, gaping yawn, his teeth glinting in the half-light, and then snapped them shut with a little clack, licking his lips like a predator lounging after a bloody meal. He looked out over the fledglings with that comfortably fatigued smile and then looked up to Rigidpaw. The other Mother’s cheerful tenderness with the kits was a source of unending amusement for him; he snapped at all the other Mothers, mocked them when they treated their wards like they were such meek little babes — but he never snapped at Rigidpaw. Really, he encouraged him, mockingly cruel, like a rich boy who coaxed another student who was really a little simple with such false, sadistic warmth. He was so kind; and so Bacchuspaw’s severity became equally kind. Fancy calling them little ones; fancy telling them to find their little spots with such a soft purr in his voice. If war struck, he’d be the first to have his head mounted on a pike, and Bacchuspaw would walk past and pat him on the cheek and say good thing you were so sweet to the fledglings, and, laughing, walk off. This wasn’t to say he didn’t like him — everyone liked Rigidpaw. He was gentle. Bacchuspaw just knew the world would eat him raw, and that made it all terribly funny to him. He’d always be the one to sit on the back pew of his best friend’s funeral and laugh loudly, arms outstretched on the top of the backrest and the programme tucked in his suit pocket, because really, he didn’t understand why everyone was so sad — they’d lived, and now they were dead.

“Oh, good,” he commented with a perfectly genuine smile from where he lay at Rigidpaw’s shoulder, voice still thick with his yawn as his golden eyes roamed from kit to kit. “The world would positively end if we went one night without talking about the Lunar Code. Imagine — we might actually have room for personalities.” As far as quips went, it was very benign; he was clearly happy for the class to continue, though the level of help he’d be was debatable. His tail-tip flicked idly, splayed out behind him with no consideration for anyone else, like he were the sole occupant of the room; if this were a normal nursery, kits would have been playing with the twitching tail, bundling over it and into his fur. In here, not one dared; they’d all had his paws make their ears ring at some point or another. One would end up with hearing damage some day.