by J M Thomas
“Aeron?”
He started a little. “Oh, ah, no.” Cracking his neck, Aeron leaned back in the chair. “Nah, Lessie, I’m afraid it’s just boring ol’ tradition ‘ere. Nuffink ta see.”
“Oh.” I narrowed my eyes.
He must’ve sensed that I was disappointed because he returned his elbows to the table and pointed at Hugo, who was busying himself arranging chairs beside a desk in the center of the room.
“Our robes is for showin’ which faction protects us, which flag we fly under, so it is. Now, ‘is robe—’e made a hash of both clothes. It’s got the ‘ood, which ‘e’s got down, and the sleeves of one of these, right?” Aeron pinched the fabric on his sleeve to demonstrate. “But the rest of it’s sewn up like one of the poncho fings the watchlin’s wear. ‘E’s pissed off both sides stitchin’ together ‘alf of each.”
“Not sewn up like!” Hugo straightened from his work, then put his hands on his hips. “Excuse me, this is a Watcher original, passed down in my family for generations! My great grandmother…”
“Yes, yes, as she did. Sewed a necro sigil in the middle of a watchling poncho.” Aeron ignored Hugo’s sputter of protest, turning his attention back to me.
A question burned a hole in my mind as I leaned forward, trying to find a comfortable way to sit. “So, does that make me neutral, too, since I’m under neither party’s flag of protection or whatever?”
“Nah, Lessie.” Aeron thumped his leather jacket on my shoulder with a smile. “You’re under mine.”
The door opened and another necro stepped in, also wearing a hood over his eyes, but he had a sigil draped over the outfit with a long chain. He came around to where we sat, then stood a little way off from our spot.
“Miss Celeste. Aeron.” Sian Arcsburg pulled his hood back, then gave each of us a terse nod. His eyes were sunken and his shoulders tense.
“It’s good to see you again, Arcs. Wha’gwan wid you lately?” Aeron asked, tipping his chair back on two legs.
“Soul-searching,” he said flatly, as if this was the kind of small talk necros made when they got together. “As much as I want to put this off on other things, I had an integrity breach. I betrayed a part of who I am.” He swallowed hard.
“And now you’re taking the effort to work it out!” I smiled at him in encouragement. “That’s what matters!”
“So my wife keeps telling me. I swear, it’s been eating at me worse than her.” He ran his hand through his hair, then the other one, as if the first one had done an inferior job of rearranging the follicles.
“She forgave me after one good, long talk. But you’re supposed to be a hundred percent clean and open with the one you love—how could I keep this part of what I do hidden? What kind of breach of trust have I incurred?” Sian pulled out a chair one level lower than us and sank into it sideways, a pleading look in his eyes.
“Look, we all got to put parts of ourselves in a little box on the shelf for awhile.” Aeron tapped his fingers on the table. “The world don’t like necros. You an’ me, we can ‘ave this conversation in ‘ere because we’re amongst bruvvers and kin, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye. Take the same words in a crowded restaurant, and we’d be all ‘ushed tones and whispers, yeah?”
Sian nodded, eyes wide. I got the feeling he was surprised Aeron was being cordial, but I wasn’t entirely sure what’d passed between them before.
“And ‘ow long you known this lady o’ yours?” Aeron inclined his head.
“Not quite two years.” A pained expression flitted across Sian’s face, his throat constricting around the words.
“Still unpackin’ in the new flat, mate! Wait and see what o’ you gets unpacked in five, ten years. ‘Ell, I’ve been in this flat I’ve been ‘olin’ up in goin’ on free years.” He held up three fingers to demonstrate. “And I still gots a stack of boxes behind my kitchen table, Lessie can tell you. I keep swearin’ I’ll just go toss ‘em in the bin. But nah, you’re gettin ‘elp unpackin’ is all, mate.”
Sian’s expression brightened a little as he nodded. “I suppose, then, I should thank you, Celeste. We will come through this thing all the better for our trouble. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
Aeron waved Sian on as the morose fellow rose again to help Hugo get things ready for the meeting. By then, a couple others had made their way in. Three necromancers talked amongst themselves, all of them wearing that same sigil I’d noticed Sian wearing.
“What’d you do?” Aeron asked me, his voice a whisper as he leaned in close.
“I may or may not have let it slip that he was a necromancer in front of his wife,” I whispered back, blushing a little. “I had no idea he’d been keeping it a secret.”
Aeron’s snort of laughter barely stayed low. He pulled his hood back up over his face, but it didn’t hide the snickering behind it. “‘At’s rich! Wish I coulda seen ‘is face!”
I shifted my legs in the hard chair, still trying to find a way to sit that didn’t send pain radiating through my side. “It was about like you saw just then, but his eyes were as big as dinner plates.”
Another necromancer, this one elderly and wizened, approached as Aeron’s shoulders hunched in barely-contained laughter. “Well, if it isn’t Lyons! What a surprise! What brings you here?”
“Murder trial,” Aeron deadpanned, stuffing his mirth behind a smirk.
“Ahaha, nice one.” The necromancer, who I didn’t recognize, nodded his head amiably until Aeron flashed the cuffs on his wrists. Then his smile vanished. “Oh,” he said simply, then cleared his throat and walked away. I hadn’t gotten a good look at that sigil still, and I debated asking Aeron not to scare the next one off so quickly.
Aeron looked all manner of pleased with himself as he rocked his chair back on two legs again, balancing it by carefully distributing his weight. Only his palms slapped flat on the table belied his nervousness.
I put my hand on his forearm. “Who was that guy?”
“A decent enough fellow who didn’t deserve aught, did ‘e? ‘E’s got ‘imself a pet ghost what talks to ‘im when ‘e takes ‘is blood sugar tests for diabetes, so ‘e joined the guild like it’s the bleedin’ rotary.” One side of his lip curled back.
I considered my next question for a moment. “Are all of you so open and frank?”
“S’posed to be, at least in ‘ere. ‘At was the original idea, ‘ave a place where the walls come down ‘an we is all ‘ere for each ovver.” Aeron’s expression twisted into a cruel smile. “If they ain’t in my absence, well, ‘at’s not my problem, is it?”
I scooted back in my chair, then regretted the pressure on my rib. I forced myself to bear a deeper breath, then returned to my shallow breathing and tried to get comfortable. It wasn’t happening.
The room was filling in at this point, but so far the only ones not in the same outfits as the others were Hugo, Aeron, and me. Aeron looked like everyone else, minus whatever emblem the rest of them wore.
“Did you forget your necklace, Aeron?” I asked. “Or does it not match your shoes?”
He let out a huff. “It’s a guild symbol, innit?” He didn’t seem to find it desirable to comment further on the subject, so I let it go with a shrug.
The wall I sensed around him whenever the subject of the guild and its membership only raised into hackles when Alena entered the room. Her charismatic glide from person to person, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, came to an abrupt halt when her gaze lit on Aeron.
He grew still, the unfriendly twist of his lips frozen in place.
Without acknowledging him or further pausing in her duties, she continued her rounds, conveniently excluding our little table. In fact, she seemed to be pretending we didn’t exist at all, though she most certainly made note of our presence.
As soon as the clock on the far wall struck six, as if a class bell had chimed, she excused herself from a conversation, taking her place at the front and center of the auditorium. Hugo sat behind her and Sian on he
r right. The seat on her left remained empty.
Alena raised her voice to carry across the room, needing no amplification to be understood plainly. “Alright, I call this meeting to order. We have several items on the docket to discuss tonight before the six-thirty joining of the watchling faction, who has requested a hearing concerning the upcoming prophecy I’m sure you all remember.”
She paused to shuffle her papers into a neat stack, then set them on the desk. “Which means, of course, we’ll likely get to none of them, as we must address the elephant in the room.” Her eyes narrowed. “Hello, Lyons. How did you manage to get in here, precisely?”
Aeron took his time righting his chair to all four legs, sliding it back, then rising. His palms slapped the table in front of him as he leaned forward. “‘Ugo.”
Hugo cleared his throat, also rising. “He openly and willingly confessed to illegal magic use.”
Alena sighed as if she was so over dealing with this. “Then remit him to London for his slap on the wrist, and get him out of our hair, Hugo! I’m sure he’ll be reassigned someplace else to be a thorn in their sides for the next five years.”
“It was murder, ma’am.” Hugo sounded as if he’d been scolded as he sat again.
Hugo’s words hit Alena like a slap in the face. “Aeron? My… our… that Aeron?” Her gaze skewered the fighter, taking turns looking like she was a betrayed rabbit caught in a trap and like she was ready to accuse him of a crime herself.
I could’ve heard a pin drop, the room was so silent.
Meanwhile, Aeron’s twist of a smile had broadened into a dark grin. “‘Ad to get it off my chest. Sorry if the timing is… inconvenient for you.”
Alena sank to her chair, eyeing her agenda as if Aeron had just set it on fire. “If there’s one thing you always had a talent for, Lyons, it was timing.” She sighed in resignation, then a spark lit behind her eyes. Leaning forward slowly, she asked, “And are there any witnesses to this crime? Any evidence that might be presented in this court of your peers?”
“There is.” All heads turned to see who it was who’d spoken. A narrow-built man tugged his hood down from behind. His hand clasped the woman’s beside him as he rose shakily to his feet. “Cornelius Ethan McGrady, ma’am, necromancers.” He nodded his head to encompass the room. “I saw everything.”
Chapter 26 – And Lovers Snap
“Alright, Doctor McGrady, could you describe for everyone here exactly what you saw?” Alena fixed Ethan with a lioness’ stare.
“Ahem, I, uh… I’m not sure how far back to begin…” he mumbled.
“And speak up, please.” Alena tapped the desk, her voice projecting effortlessly. “So there’s no mistake.”
Ethan cleared his throat again. “On the night in question, August the twenty-third of ten years ago, I had been asked by some high school senior classmates to join them for gaming. As such opportunities were rare, and hints were dropped that the girl I liked would also be present, I obliged like the eager idiot I was.”
“So, this wasn’t recent?” Alena scrunched her eyebrows at Aeron, then turned back to Ethan. “Alright. Go on.”
“The address I was provided was to a farmhouse. Inside, I found four highly-intoxicated boys, no parental supervision, and no female of interest. I quickly got the indication that I’d been set up, but by then, it was too late. They beat me severely, then dragged me out to the cemetery half a mile up the road in the pitch black of night, demanding I speak to the dead who lay there.”
Ethan blushed and looked down at his feet. “Of course, even if I did, they couldn’t hear. My ability is limited, and I’m not able to project the words the departed speak to me when I work. I suppose the boys wanted some show of ghosts for their trouble, or some reason to fuel their abuse further. They didn’t believe me when I relayed what I’d heard, calling me a liar and a filthy mag. Par for the course, I suppose.” His thumbs twiddled a bit, and Marla grabbed his hand. Reassured, he took another deep breath.
“Next, they tied me to one of the wooden posts of the fence surrounding the cow pasture next to the graveyard.” Ethan raised his gaze, swallowing hard. “They took their time scrounging the nearby wooded areas for timber, piling it around my feet while spouting nonsense about the correct way to deal with my kind.”
Everyone was leaning forward in shock at this point, except Aeron, who hadn’t budged from his spot looming over our little table. I recognized it as the same gesture he’d made the day I’d first seen him, an accusatory eyebrow raised at the world, palms splayed across Darrel’s desk.
He might not have control, but he was in complete command.
Ethan continued, his cheeks aflame. “I screamed as they lit the fire at my feet. I was fully convinced they intended to roast me alive, as they’d declared. Most of the wood was wet, and the fire’s slowness to catch was both torture and mercy. Then, a motorcycle’s roar came closer. Someone was coming, but it was only one man.” He glanced at Aeron. “They prepared to charge him as well, terrified of what the consequences might be if they were found committing murder, and assured they still possessed the upper hand.”
Alena cut in again. “And why are we only hearing about this now?”
Ethan nodded as if this was a perfectly fair question. “It has only come to my attention in the past week who it was who killed those boys and saved my life.”
“So, you didn’t know who he was back then?” She asked, “gotcha” written all over her face.
“I couldn’t see his features,” Ethan admitted. “He wore his helmet the entire time.”
Alena straightened, cocking her head to the side. “You couldn’t prove it was Lyons?”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “With all due respect, ma’am, he rained blood into the sky in reverse, called every spirit in that graveyard to fight on his behalf, then dispelled them all with a single slap of his palms to the ground, leaving no trace of his blood on the scene. The four boys were systematically slaughtered, the fire snuffed, then the dead banished. Who else do you know with this capability?”
She shook her head, cool and collected. “But you can’t prove it was him. You don’t know. It could have been someone else.”
“Darrel,” I whispered to Aeron, hoping the point of this was getting him exonerated, not convicted. I’d let him use the information however he saw fit.
He nodded, then spoke up. “If you needs confirmation, my cousin found the blood on my shirt from the wounds weeping after, then used it as blackmail for a decade, so ‘e did. Now I can write ‘im a kindly letter explainin’ that I’ve notified the proper auforities of my crime, and ‘e can’t make me ferry ‘is girlfriend around.” Aeron sent me a slow wink.
“Yes, I’m sure that was a terrible experience for you.” Sarcasm dripped from Alena’s lips. “Thank you, Ethan, for your moving story of clear defense and heroism. I’m certain no magic court would deliberate for more than ten seconds before absolving Lyons of wrongdoing. If we have further questions, we’ll follow up with you.” She turned her full ire on Aeron, leaning forward slowly, hands clasping in front of her. “What are you playing at, Lyons?”
“Oh, nuffink.” He spread his hands wide, his grin almost managing to look innocent. “I just fought I’d take your suggestion from all ‘ese years ago and sacrifice some o’ myself to ‘elp you out in your goals is all.”
Alena heaved an impatient sigh. “Forgive my rudeness, but you don’t give a fuck about my goals, Aeron. You didn’t then, and you sure as hell don’t now. So please, enlighten me and everyone else in this room as to what it is you hope to gain by making me extradite you to London right this damn minute, with the watchlings breathing down my neck?”
“Well…” He made a little circle on the table with his index finger. “I might ‘ave pissed off the watchlin’s a bit in a bar fight. London is ‘ome territory, so ‘eadin’ back there sounds good right about now. You can ‘ave me delivered, even.” There was a glint in his eyes as he said the last part.
&n
bsp; “I can, can I? Your generosity is astounding.” Suddenly, Alena looked like a lightning bolt had struck her. I wished the same lightning bolt would strike me, so I’d know what Aeron was doing and why.
“Oh. Oh, I see.” Alena seemed to be having a conversation with herself, the way her glance darted back and forth while everyone else held their breath for her proclamation. “Well, then, who am I to get in the way of London’s affairs? Orterios, please restrain Aeron in place until the conclusion of this meeting.”
Aeron sat back in his chair, looking downright smug as one of the necromancers produced a thin red cord and tied it around his shoulders and the back of the chair in one loop. This one wore a mask, as a few others did, under his hooded robe. Only his brown-skinned arms and vaguely-familiar cheap wristwatch showed as he worked.
I was terribly confused. This seemed more a ceremonial gesture than anything that would keep someone of Aeron’s strength in place for a moment if he didn’t want to be there. In fact, a toddler could break out of it.
As soon as the knot was tied, Orterios pricked his own finger with a tack and placed the drop in the center of the knot.
Aeron got very carefully still. “‘Ere is another matter,” he said slowly.
“Oh, by that do you mean your little shadow you’ve somehow convinced Hugo to allow into a secret guild meeting?” Alena asked, exasperation weighing her lips into a frown. “What’s the likelihood this cannot wait until next month?”
He shifted slowly in his seat. “It concerns your membership rosters. I believe ‘ey’re... overburdened.”
“Do get it over with, Lyons.” Alena shut her eyes. “My patience is running thin.”
“I believe ‘Ugo is in possession of a list taken from my pockets when he took me into custody.”
Hugo produced the list from his own pocket, then held it aloft.
“Now. When a member of a guild sworn to use magic to do no ‘arm, I know that doesn’t exactly mean no ‘arm in their ‘ole lives, for who could ask such a fing? We’ve all done ‘arm, whether intentionally, or by just the rottenness in our ‘earts comin’ out when we wasn’t lookin’.” He eyed Sian here, who ducked his head in a nod.
