“No!” Root snapped. “He is a student. He has yet to earn the right to address this body. I did not bring him inside so he could countermand me. I brought him in so you could see he needs punished.”
“Mordecai does have a good point,” the Lady told me. “You weren’t given a Writ, King Henry, and spying on my personal residence . . . we’ll have to think of some punishment for you later. In your interest of continuing to dispel rumors, however, I don’t see the harm in us indulging your conspiracy theory for a few moments.”
Root practically whined in indignation.
The Lady nodded at him in that soothing grandmotherly way she could affect if she desired it. “Which you will then easily prove false; won’t you, Mordecai?”
That calmed him down somewhat, although his stiff posture still made the man look as inhuman as his own Constructs. “Of course. With ease. Once he has started, you will see yourself how little standing there is for the idea.”
With a placating expression, the Lady nodded at me. “Go on then, King Henry, have your say. We’re listening with open ears. Except for Fines . . . who I’m also punishing later . . .”
“And know that just because you believe in this theory,” Miss Yukimura added a solemn voice to the moment, “it does not mean we also will.”
“Bit of warning,” Wolfgang von Welf finally said something, “this needs to be the highlight of your detective career, kid. Don’t want to get mixed up with this lot anymore than you have to. Know I don’t . . .”
“I’m sure your students would also prefer if you were teaching a class right now,” Mama Welf practically pushed him out of the door.
Wolfgang only laughed harshly. “What would I be if I wasn’t available to help my favorite nephew when he’s so in need?”
“Rubbing your scent on a tree or marking your territory won’t help in this situation, by all means, consider yourself availed,” she shot back heatedly.
Wolfgang’s grin reminded me a bit of my own, only his canines were even larger and his hair scragglier than mine had even been when I had the okie cut as a fourteen-year-old. “See what I mean, kid? No thanks to be had, no matter what you do for these types.”
Didn’t repeat the story for you kiddies the third time, sure as shit ain’t repeating it for you the fourth time either. Suffice to say, I gave my spiel about what I witnessed to the one-third or one-fourth or the one-hundredth of the Learning Council present to hear it. Never have been told how big the governing mancer body was or how the votes go down or any of that shit. Makes a fellow wonder what they’re hiding, but I haven’t cracked that mystery to this day, so I wasn’t thinking about it much back then.
Thinking about a dead Leo Sarducci.
Victim Number Splat.
And a locked up Heinrich Welf.
About the truths as I knew them.
Screaming. Hope. Welf. Seeing Leo. Falcon Smith and Makayla. The finger point.
The whole spiel.
Except this time, I had to admit some other truths after spending half the day looking into things. “At first I thought maybe some mentimancer faked the memory. I don’t know now. Or at least . . . none of it makes sense. I get that Leo might have used some cryo-anima that screwed with the time of death, but even then . . . listen, Welf ain’t the guy. Hope wasn’t lying about him being with her. I’ll remember the shock on his face at that finger point for the rest of my life. Don’t know why Leo was mistaken, don’t know if it was a mentimancer, don’t know a lot, but I know enough to know all the evidence you think you have against him is conflicted at best.”
Speaking of the rest of my life, might be the only time for the rest of my life that Moira von Welf liked what I had to say. “Release my son at once,” she told the Lady, just barely keeping it from being an order.
Knitting needles worked in almost silence.
“There’s his safety to consider—” Ceinwyn started.
“Release my son at once,” Mama Welf did order this time around.
More knitting. Fuck me was that sweater ugly. “You’re oddly silent after such a strenuous defense of your beliefs concerning young Mr. Welf being our lead suspect, Mordecai,” she eventually pretended Mama Welf had said nothing at all.
Root smiled. He’s not a total robot, does take a certain degree of pleasure out of life. Crushing his opponents for one. At the moment, I was his opponent. “Go on, Mr. Price,” Root got gracious and Napoleonic when it came to his enemy. “Tell them the rest of it. Don’t stall halfway through.”
“Whatever I think about who’s really responsible, it don’t have anything to do with what I saw—”
“Tell them,” Root repeated.
Walk over the spike filled pit.
Nothing bad will happen to you.
Glanced at the Lady, hoping to see some of that leniency again, but there was none. Cleared my throat. Still none. “Well, my first reaction—being Welf was framed for something and being what happened earlier this year—although now that I think about it, we kind of kept half of it away from you all and handled it ourselves as students . . . so . . . our bad.”
Ceinwyn’s smile twitched as she glanced sideways at the Lady. “The eternal problem of youths becoming adults, they start thinking they can fix their problems without your advice.”
The Lady finally put down her needles with a sigh. “You believe Catherine Hayes is involved again?”
Gave her a shrug that knew so little it couldn’t be sure if it didn’t give a crap or not. “Yeah. Her. Attacked Leo. Got a mentimancer to convince him it was Welf did the deed.”
A few people in the room knew of Catherine’s connection to Welf, even if they didn’t know I knew, but Root wasn’t one of them apparently. “As you see, preposterous!” he cried. Pointed a finger at me like I was some freak-show oddity. “Catherine Hayes killing Mr. Sarducci just to frame Mr. Welf for it. All over your classes having a bit of a tiff earlier in the year? Because you beat them during the Winter War? Murder? A conspiracy? Do I really even need to expend cerebral prowess rebutting how absurd this idea is?”
Ceinwyn and the Lady shared a strained glance that spoke about buried secrets digging themselves up.
Mama Welf, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at anything. Nothing except for her memories. Memories filled with threats aimed at an adolescent girl who looked a tad too much like Moira Welf’s own golden boy. Especially if you knew what to look for, especially if you looked past the cover created by another mother’s astonishing beauty, whoever the woman had been.
“As you already mentioned, Mordecai,” Ceinwyn eventually said, “you still investigated the claim just to be sure. So what did you find?”
Root frowned at both her and the Lady for a moment, shocked that they even seemed interested. Frustrated, he said, “No menti-anima was found on the body to begin with.”
“Never said I was one-hundred percent on the mentimancer thing,” I interrupted him, “just that it’s what I would’ve done.”
“No aero-anima either, if that is your next assumption,” Root gave a derisive snort. “Cryo-anima and hydro-anima, as expected. Elementalism was not used to commit the crime. A number of male students in Class ’07 do only have each other as alibis, but for Miss Hayes, Miss O’Connell, and Miss Garcia, a number of students saw them the night before and a security feed outside the gymnasium caught them sitting together until after the murder took place. Indeed, if they wouldn’t have entered their dorms on the other side of the building, they might have been the ones to find Mr. Sarducci instead of Miss Smart.”
“Of course they’d have an alibi!” I shouted at him. “Last time she had Vicky beaten and admitted to it just so she could be in the Holding Room, where no one would think she was responsible for the real attack on Welf the next day!”
“And she should have been expelled then,” Mama Welf agreed with me. Wait, what? “You should have expelled her. Sent her to the Cleansing Sphere even. A year or two without anima might put the girl in her place.�
�
“No, I shouldn’t have,” the Lady reminded her while giving no reassurance at all, only the harshness of an ancient life lived hard and long, “as you well know, the girl is a very special case. Also, Moira, along with failing to expel Catherine, your own son will not be released quite yet . . . for his own safety, as Ceinwyn rightly pointed out.”
“The evidence—” Moira tried.
“Is spotty,” the Lady agreed and again with that hard look stopped all argument. “Spotty all around. A victim who thinks he knows his attacker, an attacker that would have needed such guile to pull it off, and little motive for all.”
“The boys were arguing, I have tape of it,” Root reminded us all.
“Yes, yes, I suppose there will have to be some questioning of Mr. Welf, but only if his mother is present I think,” the Lady kept trying to find a middle ground through the eye of the storm, “and even if you don’t believe what King Henry believes, start checking the stranger possibilities, Mordecai . . . and our stranger students perhaps. Something must have slipped through the cracks while we were all love-drunk from the wedding.”
Root turned to me, dead eyes extra-crispy cold. “Of course. I do look into all claims, no matter how farfetched and childish.”
Root’s face taunted me. Had the kind of smile I like punching off. Didn’t punch, but did say something very stupid. “Catherine has plenty of motive.”
“Stop digging your hole, geomancer, and admit I have the right of it,” Root taunted me some more.
“You don’t know shit!”
“I know more than you ever will, Mr. Price. I am a Theory Director, I am a member of the Learning Council. I am one of the preeminent Bonegrinders on the—”
“All them words and you still don’t know she’s Frederick Welf’s fucking bastard daughter, do you?“
Silence.
Right.
“And . . . and I was supposed to keep that a secret,” I muttered. Felt like I’d pulled my pants down, spread my cheeks, and gave the Learning Council a goatse. Everyone get in here!
“You bitch!” Mama Welf yelled at Ceinwyn, rising out of her chair to point a violent finger. Behind her, her Construct took a fighting stance. “You told him? I’ve thought low of you before, Ceinwyn, but this is—”
Let’s just say that about five conversations started up at once. Root was mad at the Lady for keeping this evidence away from him. Wolfgang was mad at Moira for Welfish reasons, guy might have his own wolf pack, but he’s still Old Mancy at heart. The Lady thought Ceinwyn told me about it. Ceinwyn thought the Lady told me about it. Moira was mad at just about everyone. Miss Yukimura looked like she wanted to be elsewhere even more than I did.
Fines Samson . . . Fines Samson snored through it all.
What a BAMF.
See, this is why I don’t like secrets. Even when they ain’t mine to tell. Especially when they ain’t mine to tell. I’m bad at this shit. My mouth likes to be foul, not silent. Likes to talk the talk and walk the walk. Someone pushes on me and I hit them with the goods. Just like I hit Root with the goods.
Nothing good about what I just unleashed.
Not Pandora’s Box, but close enough. Not even sure who this particular box belonged to. Was it the Lady’s for keeping it hush all these years? Ceinwyn’s for being so fastidious with her potential recruits that she went back and double-checked on Catherine? Maybe Mama Welf, good candidate there since she threw a ten-year-old in jail, had a guy put a gun to her head, and then sentenced the girl to death by insanity all for the crime of daring to be born.
Or Catherine herself . . . could’ve just buried it all and moved on. Be Catherine Hayes. Graduate First in the Class, lead her Winter War team, go on and be some awesome Winddancer doing whatever it is Winddancers do. Let it all go. Just live her life. Easy. So they say. Never have been on Kitty Cat’s side of things, but part of me does understand her motivations. Part of me asked if I wouldn’t have done the same damn thing. If I had me a daddy abandoned me and a wicked step-mother try to kill me. Lucky for me I got the more common family issues, no place for that hidden parentage bastard-of-the-king crap. Another place, another time, people would call Catherine the hero of the story. Not so different from Snow White or any of those prince-fuckers in the fairy tales, is it?
No fairy tale about this shit.
Sure as shit wasn’t a Prince Charming gonna make it all right either.
Had us an Old Crone in the Lady, trying to calm everything down right now, get all the yelling and accusations to stop flying. Had Ceinwyn, guess she does have some prophecies about her, don’t she? Last True Dale and all that shit. Last True Dale had her ageless eyes locked on me, trying to figure out how I knew Catherine’s secret. Got a wolfman, got an ice princess if you count Miss Yukimura, although Hope works a whole lot better for that motif, even if she’s never sang a song or made a snowman in her perfect, genetically-modified life.
No Prince Charming. Not me, that’s for sure. More like a cave troll, maybe one of those short stumpy dwarves Snow White’s always gangbanging. Root sure as shit ain’t. Necromancer with an army of zombies at his call, what kind of hero that make? When I thought heroes, all I thought of was maybe Pocket or Val. Good people who can make peace. Good people always do the right thing even if it costs them.
Wasn’t one of those in Catherine Hayes’ life.
Was one in this story.
This tragedy of a million little mistakes. Plenty of them happening in that room. The hero . . . hero wasn’t in that room. Hero didn’t know about the box or who made it or anything that was going on. He just knew who the murderer was and eventually he’d decide to stop it.
For now it was just me.
Didn’t own the box either, but I do know I opened it. For just a split second.
What came out of it, that flurry of motion among the Learning Councils’ best, made me realize why it had been sealed shut. Made me realize what a good idea it would be to never open it again. As for breaking it open and telling the rest of the world . . . guess you say that’s a very bad idea . . .
“Catherine told me!” I yelled to get them all to shut up. Such a set of eyes looking at me. Ageless eyes. All knowing eyes. Eyes dead to emotion. The eyes of a predator. Eyes filled with kindness. Eyes . . . that craved power, craved station, craved the world. Moira von Welf has dark eyes. Not the eyes I think of when I think Welf, but then she married into the family. No idea what she was before, but wrong looks or not, she might be more Welf than either her son or her husband. Easily more Welf than her daughter.
Those eyes hated me for opening that box, for threatening her station, for threatening . . . what? Scandal? Had some fun before he got married, who cares? Or was it worse than that? Was it that if recognized—and why not recognize a bastard since it’s Current Year and all that, right?—Catherine would be the eldest child? Still a girl, not the heir apparent, but worthy of a piece of the action surely.
That worth doing everything short of killing a little girl who’s just looking for her real daddy?
“My sisters ran away from home, but . . . Vicky filled in,” I went back to the beginning of the year since for all intents and purposes, the stories are connected. Got yourself a Two Parter, kiddies, and to think I didn’t even put in a cliff hanger. Don’t worry, someone will be dangling off a cliff before this is all over, promise. “When Catherine did all that, hurt her, I stepped up. Put myself between Catherine and Vick. Put an end to it before she could also hurt Welf too. After all that died down, your son, me, all my classmates decided we’d stand between the Three Queens and the rest of the school. Didn’t tell the faculty, but figured you knew. Probably liked it even, since it was status quo, no-one-getting-hurt-too-bad shit and that’s very Asylum, ain’t it?
“But I needed something that would get Catherine’s attention. Had an idea to screw up their rep, since that would piss me off. Contacted the girls they got ‘expelled,’ their families, looked into them for the first time. Noticed she was t
all and blond and . . . it’s in the mannerisms more than in the looks, ain’t it? That weight, that responsibility Welf seems to bear. Big sis got the same thing going, especially it comes to slights.
“Had a talk with her. Heard it all,” I stopped just short of accusing Mama Welf for what she did. “The gun, the threat, paying off the recruiter, the deal she made with Miss Dale and the Lady. Think Catherine has plenty of motive, don’t you?”
Instead of answering me, Mama Welf turned to the Lady. “This is all your fault.”
The Lady nodded, cackling a little bit. “Yes, I’ll take the blame, Moira. My soft heart you always complain about. Making a deal to keep a child sane. Protecting her from you. How dare I?”
“She attacked my daughter and still you protected her. She tried to harm my son and still you protect her. A bastard. Not a kind girl. Not a decent girl. A half-mad spiteful mongrel! Do you think I just threw her in the gutter without my reasons? Reasons that had nothing to do with pride or any of the other motivations you’ll assume for me? I put her in a hotel, kept her there for three days while I searched out her claims. I found out all about the abuse, the adoption, the dead model of a mother overdosed in some penthouse.
“I spent a whole day with her, watching her, weighing her,” Moira defended her actions all those years ago. “I saw what she was then. I knew she’d become exactly what she became. She was already along the path back then but now she’s ever so close to the edge, isn’t she? Anima Madness. You should put her down like you do all the others, but no, not this one, because you feel sorry for her. Because you hate me for seeing this future all too clearly.”
The Lady took it all, unflinching before the accusations. “Catherine Hayes is troubled, I admit. But so gifted, Moira. Surely you see the skill and the strength in her along with all the rest.”
“She just killed a boy!” Mama Welf shrieked.
“Her alibi—” Root tried to get in.
“Fuck your alibi, Mordecai!” Mama Welf told him.
Ceinwyn glanced at me from across the circle of chairs. “This is why we don’t talk about things like this, King Henry.”
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 33
