“But if you just waited then you wouldn’t be you, would you? Even then I don’t think you would be one of the good students who nods through the lectures. Or be one who on trying to pool for half-an-hour or trying to split a pool with anima flying all about out of control sees our reasoning. You would jump in and master it all and then ‘because we said so’ wouldn’t even be enough for you. You would want even more . . . questions only answered when you sit on the Learning Council, perhaps even questions only the Dean has answers to.”
“Good thing I gave up then, cuz that shit is never happening. Council Member Price . . . fuck my life. Having to live at the Asylum . . . double fuck my life.”
No comment from Plutarch on the issue. “So . . . that’s what you fought about; a title with a hidden meaning that might be far duller than you imagine it to be, just like most information is at this school. You really should forgive her, Junior.”
“I’ve started to, I think—”
“You should do more than that. Those laws are as old as the school, as the government . . . you didn’t ask the Dale girl for some little trinket, you asked her to throw away everything she’s worked towards for her entire life. If she had told you even the little tricks and it was found out—and of course you wouldn’t keep your mouth shut, so it would be found out—she would be stripped of her position on the Learning Council.”
“Over something so fucking little that you tell us when we’re thirty-three anyway?” King Henry couldn’t believe it.
“Stripped,” Plutarch repeated. “The Recruiters handed over to another person, with no chance for her to replace Maudette when the time comes either. You asked her to give up everything for you and as much as she cares for you, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice all the way to the bone. Not just her dreams but Maudette’s as well, maybe others. Then you threw a fit over it like a spoiled child.”
“I said I’m getting over it, not that I am over it; don’t push it, Pappy. Besides, if that’s the truth, she could have told me, but no, it was more I’m saving your life because you’re too young crap. More jerking me around.”
“Aeromancers will be aeromancers. Even so, you should apologize to her,” Plutarch decided.
“You’re pushing it.”
Plutarch reluctantly let the matter drop, pouring more coffee in their cups. Plutarch never gave up an argument he was winning, that he did so showed his interest in why his student had returned. “When you called, you said you wanted to ask some questions of me. If it’s not about the Mancy as a whole then what’s this dinner party all about? My spies, as you call them, mentioned you had a fellow concentration with you . . . one that they’re very respectful of, that they haven’t tried to attack like they would an outsider from so afar. You have my curiosity, Junior.”
Time for Plan Fluff Plutarch’s Hairy Black Nuts followed by Plan Mega Bullshit, King Henry thought before putting down his coffee cup and opening the backpack he had brought with him. He left the clumps and plates of metals at the bottom of the pack, instead removing a thick portfolio folder. “We’ll get to my little problem, but first I want you to have these.”
Plutarch opened the folder to slip free a couple pages of design documents, plus a single list of anima conversion formulas to show they were sound. “Static Defense Ring Mk IV,” he mumbled. “That’s your bestseller, isn’t it?”
King Henry nodded. “And all the rest, even the ones I haven’t tried to sell. At the bottom you’ll find an essay of what I’ve figured out about using anima cores to hold natural equivalents, another about miniaturization and manipulating metal to quickly build structures with geo-anima, and a third about what little I’ve figured out about Anima Madness.”
Again Plutarch’s poker face, but he hid emotion far worse than he hid answers. Just a twitch in his cheek where he fought back the pride. “Do you want me to read through them and give you a peer review?”
This time King Henry shook his head. “I want you to keep them and . . . if something happens to me then give them to the Guild.”
Plutarch’s mouth opened. “Junior . . .”
“You’re always saying I shouldn’t risk myself and that I’m too important. Well . . . I’m gonna keep risking myself, okay? But this is my insurance if something does happen. I’ll make up another portfolio every few months and keep doing it as long as I’m at risk . . . just in case. I’ll never like your Guild telling me what to do, Pappy, but I don’t want it all to be a waste.”
Putting the papers back into the folder, Plutarch snapped it shut. “Okay then. I’ll keep them safe . . . no one comes here but Maudette and Fines really . . . new students in a couple years, but you know how well I handle keeping them on point and out of my things.”
Considering this, King Henry said, “Don’t put it in the safe you have hidden behind the painting of the adobe hut then.”
Plutarch’s eye glinted. “Oh, that’s just there for you to find.”
Huh. “There’s another?”
“Of course. Did you like the pictures from back in the day?”
“Was sort of disappointed everyone was clothed.”
Plutarch chuckled. “Even toga parties didn’t get as wild as you do, Junior.”
“There’s something else . . .”
“Before you satisfy my curiosity about the anima concentration in your pocket?”
“Yeah . . . if . . . if something happens to me then either Pocket or Jesus, or maybe even my business partner Tyson Bonnie will come to you with two artifacts. You need to keep them safe or give them to someone who can keep them safe . . . from the Vamps, but from the Curator especially.”
“Of course I will, but . . . what are you planning that you’re this worried you might die, Junior? You giving me this insurance means something to me, but even it isn’t worth you alive and well.”
King Henry gave an I-don’t-give-a-crap shrug. “Just planning for now, not sure what . . . but I’m planning to win . . . to do that I have to risk what Ceinwyn wouldn’t for me, have to risk everything. Means I might die . . . so first plan is to prepare for that. You have my insurance, Tyson knows to get you the artifacts . . . there’s my insurance. First plan a success, how about that? Might even survive the big one coming up if things keep this smooth.”
“Is your concentration part of this big plan?”
“Might be, not sure. Just want to get him out of my table for now . . . do right by him and get him a home, ya know?”
Plutarch’s white eyebrows rose. “You came all this way and played up all those dramatics just to ask me for one of my statues?”
King Henry finally brought out Mini’s cube and sat it on the table between then. “Remember your manners.”
Greetings, Toymaker.
Plan Fluff Plutarch’s Hairy Black Nuts successful, here came Plan Mega Bullshit up to the plate. “There’s this massive fairy I know about. Keeps meddling with me. You remember me getting out of your punishment when we first met and you flipped out about it? Same fairy. Tell him that I want nothing to do with him, but he’s big enough he gets to have his say occasionally, ya know?
“Not quite sure why Meteyos is so interested in me,” he told the truth, but was only the truth because he didn’t know exactly what a Maximus was or if he was one, “or why a fairy would give a shit about a mancer. When I first ran into the Curator, I made a deal with this Meteyos to travel to where the Curator was and then when I was about to die, the fairy yanked me away and spat me back out half dead at the Asylum. Shit, you probably felt some of it.”
“Enough that I ran to find Maudette,” Plutarch recalled, “only to hear about you lying unconscious in Valentine Ward’s house.”
“With a fairy guarding it from outsiders,” King Henry added.
“I tried to send my spies to tear it to pieces.” Plutarch’s single eye glared at the steel cube. “It’s one of the few times I’ve been refused, despite my housing and care of them for near on fifty years. Many of them would die without my aid an
d yet they put that above me.”
“He’s called Mini.”
“They don’t have names like we do,” Plutarch said.
“This one does.”
“It’s not a dog, Junior.”
Far smarter than a dog.
“Also, Meteyos has a name,” King Henry pointed out.
The Great One has many names.
Plutarch made a sound at the back of his throat that was the sound equivalent of being kicked in the balls. “If they are thousands of years old, they have names. No anima concentration controlled by a human has a name . . . or even the intelligence to understand names . . . we’re symbols and ideas to them based on what we’ve done in life and our aura in the Mancy.”
Toymaker, was Mini’s comment.
Again the ball kicked sound.
King of Dirt.
Plutarch would’ve sprayed coffee across the room if he had taken another drink of it just then. As it was, he still kept very carefully away from that title and the massive nuclear bomb that it represented. “I tried to teach you about fairies years ago and you spurned me for your artifacts. I tell you to stay away from them and you make deals with one. Now you bring me a legend we thought extinct and you have it stored in a steel cube!”
“Legend . . . legend how?”
Plutarch ignored him. “What have you been feeding it?”
“Just, ya know . . . spare anima . . . I keep him in a steel table . . . he seems to like it and doesn’t complain so . . . ya know . . . as long as it’s not floating on the top of the fish bowl you’re doing okay I figure.”
If Plutarch knew what a headdesk was, he would’ve performed one. “Junior . . . sometimes . . . I just . . . you are . . . why?”
Not like King Henry could tell Plutarch that Mini fed off of excess anima created by a World-Breaker, could he? “He seems fine,” he dumbly added instead.
“Yes . . . but what you’re doing is against the law.”
“Who’s law?”
“The Guild’s bylaws on ownership and care for concentrations.”
“Not in the Guild.”
“Per your deal that the Dale girl made with the Learning Council, the Guild can still call you to account for your actions,” Plutarch reminded him.
King Henry needed no reminding on this fact however. Or on the Guild’s bylaws for that matter, but better if Pappy keeps on thinking I didn’t spend a week going through those bylaws the moment I knew the Guild would be my enemy. “They can do that if they want. We also all know that Massey is such a cocksucker that he’ll do it sooner or later too, so I’ve started thinking we might as well get it out of the way.”
“You really want to visit the Pit so badly, Junior? I assure you it’s not as nice as the Holding Room.”
King Henry showed some canines, not giving anything away. “Come on now, might not be so bad. What part is illegal about what I’m doing, anyway? You have personal concentrations, right? So what if I have one.”
“Mine are domesticated, yours is wild. Mine are housed in statues designed to keep them fed and safe and controlled, yours is living in a table. Mine are of minimal intelligence and rated as fifty to twenty-year-old concentrates, capable of being tasked to ferry messages or conduct passive observations, yours attacked the Dean of the Institution the moment it concentrated intelligence. Mine were taught a variant of Morse Code, yours writes English . . . where anyone can read it. Do you see the difference, Junior?” Plutarch ended on a growl.
“Can’t help but notice that there wasn’t a whole lot of illegal in that rant, Pappy, just a lot of not-the-way-things-are-done prudish bullshit I’ve never followed.”
Plutarch just glared.
“See, ain’t illegal cuz I’m not Guild, right? You can admit that I have all of you over a barrel, it’s okay, promise I won’t put it into one of your spare holes, just lord it over you that I could.”
“You don’t know what you’re playing with,” Plutarch growled some more, the ‘like always’ silent but still present.
“I don’t,” King Henry agreed, “which is why I brought Mini to a Master Golem Crafter so that Master Golem Crafter could tell me how to take care of Mini and maybe even teach me how to make Mini a home.”
Plutarch took a deep breath to calm down.
“See, you can be pissed off and tell me not to play with the toy, or you can make sure the toy doesn’t bite any of the neighbor children because you know I’m playing with the toy no matter what you say about it. Choice is yours.”
Great One has asked me to protect the Dirt King, please help me, Toymaker.
“Also, it’s two against one,” King Henry added.
“It’s not supposed to have a vote, that’s the point!” Plutarch growled.
King Henry’s only answer was a shrug, waiting.
Plutarch stared at the steel cube for a while before pacing back and forth in the kitchen, finally leaving the room. King Henry could hear mumbling of some sort from the other part of the house. Some of it sounded like profanity. He had the exact same reaction when I showed him I’d gone and made the Cold Cuffs under his nose. Stayed pissed at me for an hour before walking back in and congratulating me as a Journeyman in Artifice.
When Plutarch came back in, it was twenty minutes later and King Henry was eating some three-day-old red velvet cake he’d stolen from the fridge. Plutarch pointed towards his back door. “First thing first, Junior, you need to understand that those I have outside are trained purebred dogs and what you have on that table is a wild . . . dinosaur!”
Well at least he didn’t call Mini a dragon. “I always liked the stegosaurs as a kid.”
Shaking his head, Plutarch picked up the cube, eyeing the fairy inside of it. “Surely I trained you enough for you to notice how concentrated it is, yes?”
“Sure,” King Henry mumbled around his cake.
“That’s because it wasn’t naturally or even artificially accumulated,” Plutarch explained, “it was spawned from another, much more ancient fairy. Given that you keep using the name, I can only assume it’s this Meteyos, whoever that is.”
We both know who and what Meteyos is, Pappy, but let’s keep throwing the bullshit at each other. “Sounds about right given when Mini showed up.”
“So, it’s small, but it’s made of sterner stuff than the others.” Plutarch squinted. “It’s also well fed, so somehow you’ve been doing a decent job at keeping it from losing its potency. Meteyos plucked out one of the deepest, thickest pieces of himself and sent it after you to protect you. There are legends of ancient fairies that can do this, but today they’re as scoffed at as mentions of elves or hobbits.”
“Or dragons,” King Henry poked the white elephant.
Plutarch looked at him, trying to decide if it was happenstance or not.
“What?” King Henry said through a mouthful of cake.
A sigh escaped Plutarch along with another shake of his bald, scarred-up head. “Adding to everything from legend and what I’m sensing in front of my eyes and all of the circumstantial evidence, you don’t have a ‘fairy’ here. You have an Elemental.”
King Henry spat out some cake. “He’s called himself a fairy, I’m pretty sure.”
“It likely doesn’t know better.”
“Okay, so what the fuck is an Elemental?”
“They’re firmer, more solid . . . they can slide through their element without worrying about losing all of themselves. They don’t sit and feast in one place but like to travel and transfer from object to object and be about,” Plutarch explained, managing to describe Mini’s personality exactly in doing so. “As a geo-elemental it would properly be classed as a gnome.”
King Henry couldn’t help but laugh.
“It’s not funny, Junior.”
King Henry grinned for all he was worth, which wasn’t much. “Hey, how many bylaws are there about personally owning a gnome?”
Plutarch made that ball-kick sound again.
“Oh, what a fucking loop
hole, right? No rules on gnomes!”
“It’s the only reason I’m helping you even a little bit.”
“Also because you actually care about me, right?”
“Junior, I might be seventy years beyond your age—” Plutarch started.
“—but I can still kick your little ass and throw you out of this house,” King Henry finished.
Furious silence.
“Can you put his cube on the table before you throw it out of a window?”
Plutarch reluctantly did so.
“Did you hold out on me, Mini?” King Henry asked.
I did not know, Dirt King.
“Well . . . can’t say I can blame you, being as I don’t know what I am too,” King Henry did some of his own grumbling before turning back to Plutarch. “So as a gnome, does that change anything when it comes to taking care of him?”
“If anything, it’s more likely to survive your care this way,” Plutarch admitted. “Still, I should give you a spare statue just in case.”
“Teach a man to fish . . .” King Henry led.
Plutarch eyed him, being it was Plutarch he also eyepatched him as well. “You think you can learn how to craft a feeding statue in a weekend?”
King Henry finally dropped his bomb. “I’m not interested in feeding statues, Toymaker.”
Plutarch sucked in breath through the hole of his missing teeth. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s not illegal,” King Henry pointed out.
“Massey might overlook you keeping a fairy in a feeding statue—”
“Gnome,” King Henry corrected.
“—we aren’t going to tell him it’s a gnome! Don’t be stupid and obstinate like when we first met! I’m not even telling you it’s my way or the highway this time; I’m meeting you halfway, Junior!”
“The Curator has golems.”
“Hitler liked art, what do I give a shit?”
King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes) Page 17
