The master stared at the wreckage, picking up a clock face here, kicking over a charred beam there. He sighed. It had all been going so well! For the first time the guild money charts were up to scratch, the education rate was close to the Assassin's and they had been getting more graduates than they had done in ages! It was just too good to be true. Finally, he found it. Lying a little to the side of the worst of the rubble and hidden under the stones that used to be the archway was a tiny safe, the size of one of the cobbles it was lying on. He grunted as he twisted the slightly fused knob and finally took out a tiny money pouch, an ivory clock a bit larger than a dollar coin and a knife. He slotted all of these in the pockets of his boots and made his way to where the apprentices were making stories of how they saved such a person who was in fact, saving another person at the time.
They fell silent as he approached.
-"How's young Fabien?" he asked.
A young, spotty-faced boy answered immediately:
"Sir, fine, sir. I pulled him the window before the big fire-ball sir. He was unconscious sir."
"Really? Well, well, there's a thing and where is he?" Gruddle's face was poker-blank.
"Over there sir," came the pmply-faced youth pointing to the other side of the wreckage.
Gruddle nodded and picked his way towards where he'd been pointed. Fabien was crouched on a small piece of rock looking at wreckage, crying softly.
Gruddle watched him for a while and then sat down beside him. The apprentice looked up smartly, hastily wiping his eyes.
"Now then young Fabien," the master's voice had lost all it's previous harshness, "you seem a bit out of sorts."
Fabien sighed and reached for the plank he'd been staring at. He swiftly pulled it up adn replaced, just enough time for the master to see the dead body of Kevin Googe.
"I see," he said, "good friend of yours?"
Fabien nodded mutely.
The master sighed.
"Fabien," he began, "where were you when the explosion started?"
"In the cellar sir," he muttered thickly.
The master nodded, "And you came up to my office, why?"
"Regulations, sir."
The master nodded again. It was true, Rule 32b of the Guild had been: Should A Student Put The Master At Risk, He Must Take Him Out Of It. Seeing as in the Guild, they had a single student policy, each student counted as all students, therefore all students had to obey this rule, no matter who actually started the trouble.
"No other student came to my aide, Fabien," said the master after a while.
"No, sir."
"Yet you did."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell me Fabien," said Gruddle after a while, "and tell me truthfully, why did you save me?"
"Regulations sir."
Gruddle nodded, "I see."