I opened the bag and had a piece.
Fuck was I hungry!
Still shared a piece with Poug.
Manners, bitches, even I got some.
“This is far tastier than shaghead goat,” was his only comment.
A world without steaks. Even a world without good cheese. Or fucking milk . . . keeps a body strong! Plus, where would we be without all those funny cow commercials? Netflix like any sensible person, that’s where!
Poug took a squirt of liquid from a leather waterskin, handing it over to reciprocate my gesture. I dripped some into my mouth. My eyes watered. It tasted like fermented sriracha sauce mixed with honey. “That’s different,” I managed to cough. “Val would like it . . .”
“If you see her again, tell her I have thought of her hair often.”
“Sounds a little stalkerish, man.”
“You are simply jealous of the smiles I put on her face, King of Dirt.”
“Find a Sawaephim gal, she’s mine. Or at least she will be when I work up the courage to tell her I love her . . . even then it’s fifty-fifty, but I’m still gonna try one day, so stay out of it.”
“Templars of the Great One are sadly not allowed to take a wife,” Poug explained, “and my people are far more discreet and hidden with our mating habits than yours are. Surely there are no . . . moving pictures of it happening. Coupling before marriage is even punished by polite society.”
“We used to be that way . . . some still are. Just very much not me.” I had a thought. “You’ve had sex, right?”
“Of course!”
“Good . . . met a five-hundred-year-old Vamp who never had sex. Still the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen mushroom trees.”
“Only with priestesses of course,” Poug corrected, “they are also prohibited from marriage . . . instead they couple with any who will pay.”
“We don’t call those women priestesses, but maybe we should,” I muttered, searching about in the dust and darkness for a backpack. Eventually I found it. Inside was a change of clothes and a pair of hiking boots. And a ski-mask that T-Bone forced me to put in there, him and his Prime Directive, whatever fucking geeky shit it is.
“You mean whores!” Poug shouted in understanding, nodding happily. “We have those too. Priestesses are very different. Much more expensive. Many more lovers . . . insatiable . . .”
As I stepped out of the hollow boulder, the last forty-minutes of my pool flew back behind me to rip away earlier anima braces I’d placed to keep it intact. There was a loud crack as the whole thing crumbled in on itself, creating a small pile of sharp, gray stones.
“Every time it seems a miracle,” Poug muttered.
“Talking about me or what you do with your priestesses?” I teased him.
He only glowered and made no comeback. “What now, King of Dirt?”
“Head back to where I came in, follow directions in this backpack, see if it leads me where I want, and if it does I go back to my room for the night and get a few hours sleep before Watson and his golems take me to meet my new friends.”
“Friends are good, King of Dirt.”
“These friends like to murder people.”
“That is less good, but I am sure you will prevail.”
“Nice to have a sidekick who believes in me for once, Poug.”
“ . . . What is a sidekick?”
Session 66
Told you a lot of fun stories over the years, haven’t I, kiddies?
All kinds of stories. Not just the broader kinds you expect even. Got in deep into that fine genre ass. Told you a sports story, a horror camp out, even a cross country road trip. Shit, I even did some romance with the wedding and we can all agree I ain’t a romance kind of guy. Put my ugly ass on a book cover and no one would ever buy that shit.
Yeah, lots of stories.
No matter how different those stories been or how much I complain to this tape recorder . . . no matter how much I complain about Ceinwyn forcing me to keep going or about Plutarch for coming up with the idea . . . had some fun remembering it all. Even the break-ups. Even all the times I got kicked in the balls. Even talking about Mom dying. Can’t call that fun but there was a lot of catharsis in the telling. Can even look forward at the stories I’ll still be telling ya and there’ll be some fun in those, I promise. Especially the legendary Winter War of our last year. Can’t miss out on that one, can we?
I’m looking forward to it.
But this one . . .
Haven’t wanted to tell this one.
Dreading it for awhile.
Wanted to forget it.
See . . . this is the story of a million little mistakes. Whole bunch of people at fault. Whole system failed. Story about people could’ve done something a long time ago not able to pull the trigger cuz doing something might have been even more horrible than what ended up happening. Story about people might have figured it out, but they were blinded by jealousy, by anima personalizations, by rivalry and greed and hate and all them emotions makes this world the shithole it is.
All of us looking the wrong way.
All of us getting in each other’s way.
Mistake after mistake after . . .
Story of failure.
Story of three dead kids and their murderer.
Splat.
Yank.
Crush.
Don’t worry, kiddies, I’ll still make you laugh some.
Promise.
Haven’t you heard?
Even death can’t change King Henry Price.
He’s a legend.
Burned down the Mound.
Poisoned half the school with laxative.
Snuck in a busload of strippers.
Even solved some murders once.
So they say . . .
[CLICK]
Leonardo Sarducci.
Also known as Victim Number Splat.
Authority higher than graduate students took over the scene.
Chunk of the Learning Council showed up.
Even the Lady.
Now it was us graduate students who got pushed out to join the other students on the sidelines. Down the totem pole we went. Or the human centipede chain. Depends on how crass you want to get with your metaphors. Me, I was feeling particularly crass. Feeling . . . feeling far too much for my liking. Better when I don’t feel. Better for the people around me when it’s all nice and repressed.
Leo is dead.
Leonardo Sarducci.
Leo . . . just . . . fucking dead.
Splat.
Bloody. Pink and red on white colors. Pointing at Welf like the douchebag showoff necromancer was the one responsible.
Catherine Hayes smiling. Know that smile. It’s the smile after the cut. After blood had been spilt. Same smile looked down on Vicky Welf’s beaten form in that bathroom stall. Same smile when she gave me that scar over my eyebrow. Same smile looked so much like Ceinwyn’s . . . but dark and hurt and spiteful. Smile of the abandoned and discarded. Smile of the weak striking back no matter who gets in her way.
She had a part in this.
Somehow.
Had to.
Wanted her to.
But if it’s Catherine’s play then why does Leo think Welf did it? a single spike of doubt broke through my rage.
Doubt.
No fun.
Ran the morning around in my head. Hangover didn’t help. Only grudgingly being awake didn’t help either. Had I heard the fall? How long was Leo lying there? Only minutes or was it hours? Can’t have been hours, can it? Fifteen minutes max, no way someone survives that fall for longer. So Welf runs out while Hope is sleeping off the grunting and humping? Pushes Leo somehow, runs back in, wakes her up to leave his room and then he checks on his handiwork knowing exactly what the screaming was about?
No.
Didn’t make any sense.
Welf was shocked when Leo pointed at him. Plus, he was almost naked when he opened his door to check on me and
Hope arguing. That means we needed to add in getting clothed and then unclothed into the scenario.
Doesn’t add up.
Not Welf. Douchebag, yes. Killer, no.
But how does Catherine pull it off and convince Leo it’s Welf who pushed him?
Fuck if I knew.
Wanted it to be her. Needed it to be her. So how? How would you do it?
Mentimancer.
Some of those among the Blackjacks. Could’ve forced a fake memory on Leo somehow.
Maybe. Or maybe I talked with Athir last night, so now I’m freaking out about it.
Seemed a contradiction to clear Welf based on the complexity it would require for him to do it, all while pinning it on Catherine with something as conspiracy fodder as mentimancers screwing with a dying man’s memories. There’s normal complexity and then there’s Mancy complexity, ain’t the same league.
“You should take a quick shower and change your clothes,” Val whispered to me politely. She stood next to me in the crowd, all silent and supportive in our tribulation. I glanced over from my place in La La Land only to see her concerned expression. A slight shiver ran down her tall frame, but she made no complaint about being out in the cold morning air. No idea if it was even 6AM yet, though the sun was slowly arriving.
“Offer you my tux coat, but there’s throw up on it,” I tried to get her to laugh.
She didn’t laugh, but she did reach out and throw an arm around my shoulders. “Thanks for trying, King Henry.”
Like I mentioned, Miranda had a significant months-long relationship with Leo not long back, so she was up in her room balling her pale green eyes out. Least half of Class ’08 was too. Either individually or in groups. Feels like a group of mourners should have a name, like a flock or a murder or a herd, but I don’t know it if it exists. The only ‘08er that had been allowed near him was Sabine. Miss Strange had a bunch of hydromancers chain some anima into Leo to try to keep him alive or bring him back from the edge or . . . I don’t know.
It hadn’t worked.
Now all the hydromancers and Miss Strange were gone, returned to the Infirmary where she was likely giving them a lesson about carrying on in the face of adversity. Or she’s just throwing oranges at people to make herself feel better . . .
Leo was still there.
Right where he died.
Hadn’t even covered him yet.
Mordecai Root had instantly taken charge of the investigation. Root ain’t a cover-the-body-out-of-respect kind of guy. Even his Constructs were present. Generally, they freaked out the student body and he often kept them inside his house or his Bonegrinder classroom, but now there were six of them out and about, working at blocking off the area with tape, both around Leo and up on the balcony railing.
Emotions? Worthless things. Solving the puzzle, restoring order, now that’s important. Far more important. Even as repressed as I am, I know this is fucked up.
No one argued with the Constructs. Not that you could, since they didn’t talk. Instead they only pointed out where you weren’t supposed to be, shoving people if they didn’t move quickly enough.
Six at once.
Root was some kind of prodigy in that way. Master of controlling a vast number of Constructs. Some thought he was actually a better Bonegrinder than Moira von Welf. Just don’t tell her or her son that. Or he’ll give you a long explanation on quantity versus quality and something about the art of it all . . . the art of dead bodies.
Likes him some dead bodies, does Heinrich von Welf.
Still . . . not a killer.
At least not the pushing-someone-over-the-railing kind of killer. Could see him going berserker to protect his family, or even go all cold—wiping whole lineages of mundanes out with a ledger’s single notation, but not like this. Too hot, too bloody, too personal.
The Learning Council watched from the other side of the taped off area. Only the Lady was inside, troubled with the scene, but not interrupting Root, who went about glancing over the scene for evidence. Serious juxtaposition between those two.
The Lady, old and rounded, covered in a dress, a sweater, and a shawl. She even had a knitted cap over her head, pulled down so her ears wouldn’t get cold. Few times had she looked older than with a student dead not ten feet away from her. Everything about her sagged, especially her expression. Like I said, she dealt with a suicide a year, but rarely one this public or from a student so popular. Surely not one that had an air beyond mere suicide, but of foul play.
Foul play fouler than my mouth.
Mordecai Root, on the other hand, was at his peak. He was in his forties I’m pretty sure, went to the Asylum same year as Welf’s dad and Boris Hunting, so a little ahead of Ceinwyn. Enough so it caused a minor scandal when people found out Frederick got Mama Welf pregnant while she was still a student. Root was short and slight, with black hair parted in perfect conformity. A company man, a pencil pusher, a prude. As far away from my personality as you get. He knelt down over Leo’s body with the energetic stillness of a racehorse waiting for the starting bell. Root got off on outsmarting people, on cracking puzzles no one else could, so of course the possibility of solving a murder excited him. He acted exactly the same when I may or may not have stolen a certain ceremonial staff when I was a Single. Don’t think he ever forgave me for outsmarting him.
Or if not outsmarting him, then at least dumblucking him.
Pocket and Jesus finally made their way down the stairs, coming over to join Val and me. Raj was apparently snoring his drunk ass off in his apartment, according to Val, who went to pull him out of his bush sometime after she helped Athir clean my puke off. None of us have gotten any sleep. At least Pocket and Jesus had found the time to change into their colors. Val had thrown on some pyromancer pants, but still wore her geeky, oversized nightshirt.
She wasn’t the only one in the crowd who was half and half, including the Learning Council. Wolfgang von Welf had on track shorts, with a bare chest, only covered by an open hoodie; guess he’d been caught out during an early morning run. Earlene Van Houten, the Forestplanter teacher, looked like she’d waked and baked. Noelle Clarke was fully clothed, a nice change from her naked lightning runs anytime a storm swept through the Asylum. Others were no shows. No Ceinwyn as of yet, though she had been at the wedding. No Russell Quilt . . . off on his honeymoon. No sign of Moira von Welf, but then she wasn’t a teacher and wasn’t always at the school, just worked for the Learning Council somehow.
Fifth year and still no one has bothered to explain to us how our own government works. Not worried about that at all, no I’m not. Think the NSA spying on your dick pics is bad? Try not even knowing your own constitution.
Mancers are secretive about that stuff, secretive about a lot of stuff. Leo was dead, twenty-year-old student, yet there would be no police investigation. FBI, NSA, CIA, ATF not a one of them would get involved. His parents would hear from the Lady about what had happened and then Root would investigate. Not even ESLED, since they couldn’t investigate the school itself. Not sure if that’s a nice separation of powers or an organization making itself unaccountable.
Root, it would be all Root. Writ of Investigatory Special Powers issued by the Dean, not the Head of the Learning Council, even though they’re the same person. Fucking farce and the body ain’t even . . . well, guess it was pretty cold when I touched his hand. As far as the mundane world was concerned, Leo would either have died from a traffic accident or some other official reason palpable to his parents. Leo’s parents are mancers too, so they understood the need of it all. Don’t know if I would be so understanding if it was one of me and mine . . . but then, no one knows Mom committed suicide by cancer, do they? So maybe I’m just as full of shit as all the rest of them aristocrats run this place.
No idea what the Learning Council does if it’s some First Generation mancer who dies. Guess if it’s suicide, it’s just suicide . . . same as a normal kid. Send the body, send condolences. Send a regulated ESLED mentimancer to screw
with some memories? Not sure. Mancers don’t like talking about mindfucking mundanes or if it really happens or not.
Don’t like talking about mentimancers at all. Like if they can make someone jump off a balcony, seeing phantoms that don’t exist . . .
“Didn’t think he was the type, El Rey,” Jesus commented from the opposite side of Val.
“Don’t think he was either, Lord and Savior,” I whispered back.
“Got blood on you, dude . . . along with a whole bunch of other nasty stuff,” Pocket pointed out with less tact than Val had. “Should go—”
“I’m not taking a fucking shower,” I snapped back at him.
“King Henry—” Val tried, before I interrupted her too.
“No. No calming down,” I growled in fury. “You three don’t get it. You weren’t with him. You didn’t see.”
“See what?” Pocket asked with his hands raised to signal I should at least drop it all down a notch or two from my current eleven.
Couldn’t. Too pissed. Even slipped out of Val’s embrace for maybe the second time in my life so I could point a finger in Pocket’s face. “Leo didn’t jump!” I yelled. “Leo was fucking murdered!”
Gasps rang out from all around me.
Oh yeah.
I’m in public.
With the Learning Council listening to my outburst.
The Lady tapped her tennis-ball tipped cane on the ground twice to get my attention. She shook her cap-covered head at me.
Not the place or the time, Mr. Price, her expression said all that needed to be said.
My foul mouth closed reluctantly, but my dirt eyes trembled with threat. Don’t you dare cover this up. Learning Council is smart, don’t I know it, but they have their blind-spots. Like caring more that Catherine Hayes might tell the truth about who her daddy is than protecting the student body from her.
“Mr. Price’s usual lack of decorum has reminded me of my own,” Mordecai Root declared, finally standing up from inspecting Leo’s corpse. As always Root’s voice was oddly impersonal, sedated. “If you are not a witness, return to your room immediately. If you are a witness, or know a witness who has since departed, give the name to Number Seventeen and it will reserve your spot for later questioning.”
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 13
