He took the photo out of his jacket's internal pocket, and turned it towards me, without releasing it. It was, indeed, our family photo. I had taken the photo with an old second-hand camera I bought with my first salary in Ashford. Getting my brothers to stay still while I took the photo had been difficult, but I managed to do that, mainly by bribing them with the promise of gifts (which I was going to give them anyway). I developed several copies, and I still had the original film, but that certainly doesn't mean I would give it for free.
"Ah, yes. The photo of your family. How do I know you are part of it? You aren't in the photo."
"Because I was the one taking it, obviously." He wasn't the first person who questioned whether I belonged to my family. I certainly didn't look much like mother, and I was the only dark arall when all my brothers were light. Still, that didn't give him the right to question me.
"And how do I know you didn't just take a photo of somebody else's family and are trying to extort me? You certainly aren't the first person who claimed my daughter is alive."
Well, if he really didn't believe me, it could make my life easier.
"OK," I said. "I confess. It's a fake. I was going to use it to become Billie's guardian and get all your money, but your outburst yesterday made me use it earlier. I'll offer you a deal. Give me the photo, and I will promise you not to tell anybody about what happened yesterday."
He glanced at the photo again, caressing the image with his fingers. For a man who claimed he didn't believe me, he was certainly attached to it.
"And what are you going to do with it, Miss Bedwen?"
"Well," I said, shrugging, "obviously, I'm going to destroy it. Wouldn't want proof of my scam reaching the police, or anything. Tell you what, I will even agree to sign a confidentiality agreement if a promise isn't enough."
He started laughing.
"Miss Bedwen," he said, between chuckles, "as a lawyer, and owner of a big firm, I've certainly met quite a few scammers. I know you aren't one. And this," he shook the photo in his hands, “is really a photo of my daughter. I've checked your scholarship application this morning," he then took a file out of a drawer, "and I checked your family background section. I can certainly see that your family includes a Sam, a Billie, and a Mikey. And your parents — Claire and Sean Bedwen. I can only assume your father changed names when he married — Sean is certainly not an Yllamese name. If this were a scam, it would be a very elaborate scam, done even before I moved here."
"If you believed me — why did you ask me that, then?" I asked. This was feeling more and more like a trap. He knew so much more about me than I did about him — and I wasn't any closer to learning what I needed to know.
"I wanted to see how you'd react. What you'd tell me to convince me."
Ah, so he wanted me to be a bigger idiot than I already was and just spill my guts and tell him everything he wanted, in exchange for nothing.
"You don't get it," I said. "It's not you who should be testing me, it's the other way around. You're the one who has to prove to me you deserve to be my grandpa. To come back to my family's life. We will certainly do fine without you and the mental magic that comes with you. I wouldn't want my mother to look like her brother."
That was it. I made my opinion of him clear. The battle lines were drawn. The ball was in his court.
He flinched.
"I see. Is that what you believe? Is that what Claire believes? That I did that to my own son?"
"Mother doesn't share her thoughts with me. She never mentioned you. But then, she didn't write to you, in all those years she was living in Caerland, even when they were desperately poor and living in a freezing dorm. And money seems to be the one thing you still have, even if you choose to live like this," I said, pointing around the room.
When I become rich, I will certainly have a fully furnished house. All the walls will be full of books, and alchemical gizmos. And I will have my own private lab, with all the proper security. And the house will be surrounded by a moat.
"If that is so, why did you tell me yesterday? Why did you approach me in the first place? Staying far from a dangerous mind mage would be the smart thing to do."
It would be, actually. The smart thing to do. But my upbringing doesn't make me smart. Karim certainly wasn’t smart.
"Well…" the real reason I decided to try to approach him was filial piety. My father would be very surprised, after all the efforts he made, that I actually kinda sorta did believe that you should make sure your ancestors are comfy and safe. The dead ones, with all those silly rituals. Those alive, by showing them respect and giving them gifts. But I couldn't tell him that, could I? Because then he would demand respect. And I'm not steeped into Yllamese culture that much. Just a tiny little bit.
"Well, I thought I may get to inherit from you. Become Billie's guardian, have part of it come to me, and to my brothers."
"So you're saying you knew before you approached me I was rich."
"Of course. Money is the only thing you have going for you. You weren't able to protect your family, after all, or mother wouldn't have ended working as a schoolteacher in the north, in an area where my brothers are the only light arall in the whole county."
Respect for ancestors was not something I believed in very strongly. If you gave them a chance, but they screwed it up, you take over. Save the bows and gifts for when they're dead and harmless. And grandpa screwed the pooch.
He nodded.
"I'll make sure I add you and the boys to my will. And Claire."
That was fast. But I still had questions that needed answering, and money wasn't going to solve all the issues. Weregild is not something you pay to family members. If the head of the family fails in protecting the family, there has to be a new head. That would be me, obviously.
"Not so fast," I said. "I need to know what happened to Billie first. Because if it wasn't you, whoever did it could do the same to my family."
"And what if it was me? How will you verify my story?"
"Well," I shrugged. "It's not like I'll let you get close to them, anyway. And if you ever go to Crow Hill, you'll stick out so much that you wouldn't be able to do anything. You'd need to convince me and mother that you did nothing bad before you'll get close to the boys. And we may be poor, but we certainly do have friends in Crow Hill."
He seemed to consider my answer.
"So you won't let me get close to them, even if I convince you it wasn't me? What's the point of telling you then?"
"You don't get reported to a Magic Committee as unstable."
He looked at me, drumming his fingers on the desk.
"OK, Miss Bedwen. I'll tell you what happened. Not because you are threatening me or anything. But because you have the right to know, as my granddaughter."
Well, finally. Spying and snooping wasn't really my thing. I liked to attack head-on, full march. When that didn't work, it usually frustrated me to no end. I took another sandwich, poured myself another cup of coffee, with lots of sugar, and sat comfortably in the chair, ready to listen.
"So what happened twenty-one years ago?"
11
Grandpa stared at the wall where grandma's portrait was. He didn't want to look at me, avoiding my eyes. As long as he told me what really happened, I didn't care. It's not like looking somebody into the eyes is a magical recipe against lying or something like that.
"Your grandmother was a beautiful woman. I fell in love immediately when I met her. She was studying in the newly formed Ecton Women's College, which was right across from the Inquisition College. Despite it being basically a school for women getting the MRS degree, your grandmother wanted no such things. She rejected my proposal — which I made despite my family's opposition because she was not arall. And don't roll your eyes, young lady — I know what you dark arall think about marrying other arall. But that's how things worked for people like me, back then."
This is one of the reasons why dark and light magicals never understand each other. Why wou
ld you want two magicals in a family? Besides the fact that it doesn't seem to create stronger mages, there are just too many compatibility issues. And as for dark and light arall marrying — well, that only ever works as a joke.
"Well, I must say, Grandma must have had very good taste, rejecting you and all that," I said. "Maybe not so good, seeing she eventually married you, but she showed some good sense at first. Why are you telling me all this, anyway? Although it sounds like a good story to tell your grandkids around the fireplace, I didn't ask how you guys met."
"You wanted to know what happened twenty-one years ago. But that problem started then, when I met your grandmother. It was the time of Reformation. The Inquisition still existed, but Parliament had just published the Reform Edict. And your grandmother, after finishing college, decided to do something about it and joined one of the reform movements. She became an apprentice for a lawyer who represented the Inquisition's victims. I joined her — because I wanted to stay close to her, and worried about her safety. Those were trying times. My family cut me off, and despite the cases we won, the money we spent on the investigations, expert witnesses, and the constant harassment our firm received, meant we lived in abject poverty. Even after we both passed the bar exam, the cases never brought much money. And we fought a lot over money — with our mentor, each other…"
"But then your grandmother got pregnant with Billie. Liberal as she was, I wasn't willing for my son to be born fatherless — so we married. And, as we needed the money, we left the firm and started our own. We didn't get many more cases at first or earn much money. But eventually, my family softened. They were happy to see Billie, and they saw the reforms as inevitable by then — the Inquisition had been disbanded. So they forwarded cases to us — not of Inquisitors, your grandmother would never have agreed to that. But of the many, many rich and connected who had benefitted from the Inquisition. Who had used mind control, maybe on convicts, for forced labor. She still didn't like it — but we needed the money, and she was pregnant with Claire. So I continued working for these people, helping them navigate the Reformation, helping them keep their fortunes and businesses. But not everybody was willing to change."
"So, you used what you knew to take their fortunes, then?" It's not like many fortunes didn't come from fishing in those murky waters. I just thought he came from old money, but then that just means that the fortune was made long ago, and the details of how it happened are unclear. It's hard to make a fortune cleanly.
He nodded.
"Yes, I bought some of the companies that went bankrupt — because they weren't willing to change their business model, because the compensations they had to pay the victims were too high, different reasons. I also represented their victims, sometimes."
"So, was it revenge for that? Somebody lost their fortune to you, and they went after your son?"
"No, that's not what happened. I kept the money and kept working. Our family was doing good. And then she died." He said, pointing at grandma's portrait. "A freak accident — or so I thought at the time."
"I was completely grief stricken. She was the love of my life, and now she was dead. The children were teenagers then and didn't take their mother's death too well. But I was too lost into my own feelings to notice. So I buried myself in work, sending them to boarding school. They only came during the summer, for a brief time, and spent the rest of the year in school. Your mother did well. Despite my neglect, she studied hard and entered university. She was angry at me, though. So angry, she went as far from home as she could, to study here, in Ashford."
"I know where my mother studied. She told me. It's one of the reasons why I'm here." So far, for all the ramblings, he hadn't told me anything important. What was the point of all of this? "What happened to Billie? Was he abused in boarding school or something?"
"No, that wasn't it. Billie, when he came back from boarding school, was a different boy. A young man, he didn't much care about studying, wasn't interesting in work, and spent too much time hanging with some of his boarding school buddies. I didn't pay too much attention, as I was feeling guilty over abandoning him, and I just kept giving him money. But then he got arrested."
"For what? Was it drugs?" A young, rich boy doing drugs, what could be more banal?
"No, that wasn't it. It was worse. Way worse. He was part of a violent political organization — the Learners. The Inquisition was called the Society of Learning before, you knew. They had planned to poison the hall where young dark arall were going through Initiation. Thankfully, they got caught before they could do anything about it, and Billie also got arrested. I was furious at him. To not just try to kill innocent people, but to disrespect his mother in this way — that was beyond the pale. But he was still my son, so I defended him and got him a sentence of home imprisonment. He didn't like it; sometimes I think he'd have preferred actual prison, where he could still talk to his buddies. But I kept him at home, despite his wishes, trying to get him back to his senses. I guess he found a way to communicate with his friends because I got threats, letters sent to me every day to stop, or else… There was even an attack on me, which I avoided because I checked my cab daily. But then they did the unforgivable — they attacked Claire. She survived, but she was angry and cut off relationship with us. She wanted nothing to do with me in the first place, and after that, she cut off Billie too. I was furious, so I stormed Billie's room, and confronted him."
"Is that when you used mind magic on him? You know, killing him would probably have been a better option. More humane." In Caerland, 'I gave you life, I can take it' is an acceptable defense for a jury. Mind magic, not so much.
He shuddered.
"Not everybody shares your ideas about what is more humane, Miss Bedwen… But no, I didn't use magic on him. He was shocked. He loved Claire. He may have hated me, but he loved her — so he broke off with them. And that's when he went mad. Turns out, the group had been slowly conditioning him with magic and drugs. Only his love for his sister allowed him to break off from them — they couldn't use the really strong magic, or I'd have detected it. But when they stopped dosing him, it became obvious. He became unhinged, losing memories, his mind fracturing. I spent a fortune on Healers, trying to cure him."
"And then we got news of your mother's death in that train robbery. Looking back, she probably decided to use that opportunity and run away. But then, I believed she was dead. The locomotive explosion certainly didn't leave any identifiable corpses — but she disappeared, so we assumed she had died. There were enough bits and pieces to think that her body could have been there, too. That just drove him over the edge. The only person he loved, the link to his mother, his sister, was gone. Most of his memories got deleted, as the aftereffects of what had happened. He spent fifteen years going through Healers, through different treatments. I buried myself in work, and my fortune only grew. But then, he got as good as he could ever get. There were no more treatments we could give him. He just needed to grow, to live an ordinary life. I sold my firm to my partners then; building a life in Ecton was too hard for me. I came to Ashford as a tribute to Claire, who had studied here, to see where she had spent the last few years of her life."
Typical light arall sentimentality.
"So, what did you do to them?" I asked.
He was startled.
"To whom?"
"To those who did that to your son, obviously. How did you destroy them? How did you avenge Billie? Or," I looked at him suspiciously, "did you come to Ashford to get closer to them?"
He didn't seem to understand it.
"What would be the point of vengeance, if it can't fix anything? It wouldn't bring Billie's mind back, or Claire to life. As for justice, that's what the police are for."
I sighed. Typical light arall. When it comes to lofty ideals like the perfect world, peace, Good, or other such abstract ideas, they'll enslave people for their own good, make them prisoners of their own mind, and take away their magic in ways that are more painful than the worst tort
ure. But when it comes to just punching somebody, or killing those who wronged you — they have to come up with some great justification before they do that.
"And did they? Catch those people?" I asked, fully expecting the answer I would get. It's not like I had high expectations of our government's ability.
"Well, the people who did it to Billie — they got arrested. And then it was made classified, as they didn't want to make it public."
I sighed. I would have to do that myself, too. But it's not like I could expect my Grandpa to actually be the head of the family. Yllamese upbringing or not, I didn't expect a light arall to be able to defend and bring justice to the family. Even if he is my elder.
"That's the government for you, in a nutshell. Not only will they not defend you, but they'll prevent you from defending yourself. And punish you when you do it."
He seemed confused.
"What do you mean by defend myself? There were no other attacks. Our family has been left alone — no point in attacking them and provoking a response."
It really seems he doesn't get it. Has he completely forgotten his family history? There's a reason nobody did that kind of thing to Inquisitor's families.
"Look," I said, "justice is an abstract concept invented to fool the masses. Vengeance is still necessary when your family is attacked. If any rando with silly ideas think they can attack the Bedwens, permanently incapacitate the heir to the family and discontinue the family line, and get away with it, there will be other cases. And I've got three brothers, and my parents, who have had enough in their life. Which is why we need to make sure our family is protected before we reveal them. You're safe as long as you have no heirs or family — they can always kill you and become Billie's guardians. But if you suddenly have heirs, if the family has issue, then it's not that easy anymore."
"But surely — the people who did that to Billie were questioned. They must have gotten all of them."
The Apprentice's Path: The Alchemist #1 Page 9
