by Chloe Garner
“If she is taking the advice of counsel who believes that she should come to us in a state of fear, then she is very much misled, and more a fool than I took her for,” Merck said.
“It is a fool who comes to be surrounded by those in a position of superior power who does not anticipate and plan for conflict,” Ethan answered. “My father once told me that.”
There was a murmur, and Valerie stood straight, not looking at Ethan.
“Does the young woman thus strike away the hand of friendship?” Mrs. MacMillan asked.
“No,” Ethan said. “But rather she accepts it on the condition that it not prove to be a fallible friendship.”
Another murmur.
She didn’t want to be friends with these people.
Did that matter?
“We have questions that are of urgent importance,” Merck said. “And through no fault or agency of her own, Valerie Blake has come to be the custodian of their answers.”
“The terms of the summons were not entirely clear on the nature of those questions,” Ethan answered. “Valerie needs to know specifically which questions are of urgent importance before she can act on them.”
“Where are Grant and Susan Blake?” someone else demanded.
“I don’t know,” Valerie answered. Ethan gave her a very quick head twitch that indicated it had been the right answer.
Merck looked over at the man who had spoken and gave him a hard frown.
This was not a unified body.
Valerie needed to remember that.
“You spent time with them,” Merck said.
“She was under the impression that her father was dead, when she enrolled at the School of Magic Survival,” Ethan said. “And she witnessed an agent of the Council directing her mother into service for the Council, at her last moment before that same agent dropped her on the front doorstep of the School of Magic Survival with no concern for Valerie’s preparation for attending that school.”
“I don’t see how any of that pertains to the statement,” Merck said.
“Oh,” Ethan answered. “I thought that we were just saying things that everyone already knew, but pretended they didn’t.”
Laughter.
Someone actually laughed.
“Please explain to us the circumstances under which you spent time with Susan Blake and Grant Blake,” Merck said.
“Trying,” Valerie answered.
The corner of Ethan’s mouth went up.
“So you have seen your father?” Mrs. MacMillan asked.
Had she overstepped? Ethan had said everybody already knew.
“Yes.”
“Where were you, when you spent time with him?” Merck asked.
“I don’t know,” Valerie said.
Ethan glanced at her, and she shrugged.
“I don’t. I don’t pay attention to road signs while someone else is driving, and there was a lot of driving around.”
He frowned, impressed, then turned forward again.
“We have a report from Lady Harrington that you were at a beachside residence in Mississippi very recently,” Merck said. “Is that a residence that belongs to either of your parents?”
“I don’t know,” Valerie said. “They never told me who owned any of the places we went.”
“So you were with them simultaneously?” Merck asked. Valerie bit her tongue, but Ethan nodded.
“Yes,” she said.
“Why did you go with them?” Mrs. MacMillan asked.
“They’re her parents,” Ethan answered. “Why would she not go with them?”
“She was enrolled at school,” Merck said. “She missed classes during her absence. Lady Harrington would have been within her rights to suspend or expel her for such unpermitted absence.”
“Many students leave school during the school year at the request of their parents or guardians,” Ethan said. “Are you summoning all of them?”
“Why did they take you out of school?” Merck asked.
“That would be a question to ask them,” Ethan said.
“What did they tell you about their reasons for taking you out of school?” Merck asked.
Ethan paused, then looked back at her once more.
“They told me that they had other things they wanted me to learn about,” Valerie said.
“Such as?” Mrs. MacMillan asked.
“Is it any business of the Council what her family bonding time looks like?” Ethan asked. “Does the Council believe that it is more qualified to make parenting decisions than parents?”
“It does when the Council believes that a student may have been exposed to seditious concepts by parents who are actively undermining the authority and interests of the Council and the magic community at large,” Merck said.
“Are you making an accusation or simply giving an example?” Ethan asked.
He was brutal.
“I am trying to ascertain whether or not the Council has reasons to fear that Valerie Blake has been influenced by unsavory and disloyal elements to such a degree that we should intervene on her behalf.”
That.
Alarm bells went off, at that.
She needed her mom to remain her guardian of record, because her mom had sent her to school. If the Council managed to get some kind of custody or guardianship or whatever word they liked to describe it, they could move her wherever they wanted.
And she might never see her parents again.
No.
No, she wasn’t going to do that.
They couldn’t hold her.
Especially not wearing all the stuff she was wearing right now.
Between active casts and the things she was capable of with the rest of it?
She let herself feel powerful for a moment as Ethan answered.
“Those are serious charges to bring against parents in absentia,” Ethan said. “But I do not see what they have to do with summoning Valerie. Surely she can’t tell you reliably whether her parents have influenced her seditiously, both because she does not have enough exposure to our community to understand what is or is not seditious and also because she is not a reliable witness in the event that her parents have influenced her. Surely she would try to conceal it if she were presently not loyal to the Council.”
Genius.
He got her out of lying by saying that she would lie, if she was trying to hide something.
She tried not to look grateful as Merck and Mrs. MacMillan consulted together quietly.
“What were the nature of the conversations you have had with your parents when you most recently saw them?” Merck asked.
“My dad thinks I’m not willing to eat enough kinds of things, and that I should eat even when I’m not hungry,” Valerie said. “And my mom isn’t so sure about me being involved with Ethan Trent, romantically.”
He looked back at her, wide-eyed, and she twisted her mouth to the side.
It was true.
“What did they have to say about the Council?” Merck asked.
“Do you really want to ask someone who does not know the political sensitivities of such a thing to reveal confidential information given to her by two of the Council’s most embedded spies?” Ethan asked quickly. He’d been anticipating this. “She can’t possibly be expected to know what is appropriate to say in open Council versus what should be reserved for more a secure context.”
“Are you suggesting that the Council is compromised, Ethan?” Merck asked.
Once more, Valerie had thought everyone knew that.
“I am suggesting that it is not the cautious nature of the Council to put such information at risk,” Ethan said.
“Valerie Blake,” Merck said, taking a new breath. “We have condemning evidence that you have met in person with Gemma Alexander and that you have attended classes at Von Lauv Academy.”
She really, really wanted to know who had told them that.
Really.
“Those are things that I can’t talk about,” Val
erie said. “People’s lives might be in danger.”
“By withholding that information from the Council, many lives may be at stake,” Merck said.
“You don’t have the context nor the experience to sort the critical secrets from the mundane,” Mrs. MacMillan said. “I know that you are at a stage of life where you mistrust many of the adults in your life - we have all experienced it - but you must understand that the confidence you have now is entirely misplaced. You do not have the grasp of the situation that the Council does, and if you fail to disclose something critical, it may be that we are unable to thwart a major attack that we would have been able to, otherwise.”
She knew.
She knew that Mrs. MacMillan was trying to play on her guilt to make her insecure.
But it worked.
What if she was misunderstanding?
What if she was just flat wrong?
What if her parents were bad or confused or if all of it was an elaborate sham to convince them of one thing when another was true?
How sure was she?
“I don’t know how to find my parents,” she said. “I don’t know how to find Gemma, and she hates me, anyway, so… I think relationship is too strong a word for that. And I went to Von Lauv Academy for one day.”
“Von Lauv Academy is a hotbed for wrong-headed conceptualization of magic,” Merck said. “Even being there for a single day, a lot of very convenient ideas can take root, perceptions that wrong isn’t wrong, dark isn’t dark, and that compromise can be okay if enough people agree on it.”
Was it?
Was it just rejecting the light/dark theory of magic because she didn’t like the way it turned out, for her? That she wasn’t as light as she thought she was, and that she liked the idea of not being simply not-light, but a third, alternate category?
Sasha had taken a shine to it immediately, and Valerie trusted Sasha’s academic credentials, but what if it was just about perception? What if it made Sasha feel better, and that made it seem like it made more sense?
No.
No.
She’d seen it with her own eyes, the way that the three-branch paradigm made everything make more sense.
“That isn’t a question,” Ethan said. “You asked about her relationship to the school and to Ms. Alexander, and I believe she’s answered both of those.”
This was still going somewhere, Valerie realized as she considered the list of terms. They hadn’t discussed the Coxes yet, nor the Council’s ‘advice’ about what was going to happen next. This was laying a groundwork for something.
For them to call her a spy or a traitor and try to kick her out of magic school and stash her away somewhere and try to use her against her mother.
“Martha Cox was a spy on your family for a great many years,” Merck Trent said after a pause. “It was she who informed us where you were, when the time came to recall her to action. Are you aware of this?”
“I think so,” Valerie said.
Ethan gave her a bracing look, but said nothing.
“And her son, Hanson Cox, was a close friend to you, a young man that she undoubtedly used to gain access to your family in order to further her mission to gather intelligence on yourself and Susan Blake,” Merck said. “Is that correct?”
“Are you asking if they were friends, or if she knows that his own mother used him as a pawn for the Council?” Ethan asked.
“They were friends, were they not?” Merck asked.
“Yes,” Valerie said. “He was my best friend, growing up.”
“And yet, despite this betrayal, reports indicate that you still remain friends with him, and that Martha Cox was there to help you when you were in danger, during your ill-considered excursion away from school.”
“She was hunting us on your behalf,” Valerie said.
“All the same, your repaired relations with both of them beg questions,” Merck said.
“If you’re about to accuse her of being a double-agent because she forgave her best friend for the way his mother used him as a child, I’m going to laugh,” Ethan said.
“It is intriguing how easily she let it past,” Mrs. MacMillan said. “As though she already knew, or as though she has more important things at play than personal feelings.”
Valerie turned her head to look at Ethan, who actually tip his head back to laugh.
“She’s alone in the world,” he said. “Her mother abandoned her to stay away from you, her father was dead, and the magic community rejected her at school for being untutored. Her best friend in the world shows up, and hey, look, he’s a part of the community as well, and you’re going to pretend to be shocked that she would jump at the opportunity to have something familiar in her life? Your attempt to box her in and paint her a traitor is transparent.”
“Is his mother also meritous of such forgiveness?” Merck asked.
“I didn’t forgive Mrs. Cox,” Valerie said. “She stalked us and found us the same time the Superiors did, and we were just stuck in the same house.”
There was a shuffle, and Valerie wondered if she’d spoken too quickly, if she shouldn’t have let Ethan answer.
He spoke evenly.
“You are going to try to make her work on your behalf out of fear that otherwise you’ll brand her a traitor or a spy or something else. She is a student, and she should neither be working on your behalf nor be expected - at the default - of having the savvy necessary to work through the intrigue of the system at play around her. She is exactly what she seems, and while she had multiple people in her life who are complex players in your war game, she herself is not. Everything that you are attempting to attach to her has failed, because it all lacks legitimacy. She has not done anything meriting interest, much less suspicion.”
There was another shuffle, and Merck Trent stood.
“We do not intend to force her into a position of working for us out of fear. Such arrangements seldom work, because as soon as the fear is removed, the agent turns. We seek those who would pledge loyalty free and clear, because they see that we are in the right. As we hope Miss Blake does, because she has witnessed the evil of this war. That the Superiors would attempt to kill civilians simply because they do not have magic? She of all people should be sympathetic to the civilians, having lived amongst them exclusively for so long, and having been one, for all intents and purposes, until very recently.
“But while we do intend to have her align her interests with ours out of her own empathy and spirit of justice, we at the same time cannot permit the opportunities that she represents to slip through our fingers. In the event that Susan Blake or Grant Blake make contact with her again, we must insist that she inform a member of the Council immediately.”
“How would I do that?” Valerie asked. “I don’t have a cell phone and they don’t work on campus. I don’t have a phone number for any of you.”
“We can see that you would be issued a cell phone with the numbers of several of the Council secretaries listed in it, and we would require of you that you use it at your earliest opportunity to inform us that your parents have made contact.”
“I don’t pack for these things,” Valerie said. “It doesn’t work like that. I don’t know when they might get in touch with me, if they ever would. The last time, it was because I was in danger at my Council-sponsored school, where…”
She cut herself off.
Did she dare go there?
Ethan saw her logic immediately.
“May we remind the Council what the source of the danger to Valerie Blake was, at the School of Magic Survival?”
“We have dealt with the situation and it is no longer relevant to this conversation,” Merck said.
“So long as no one else tries to let demons in to kill me, I have no idea when or if I’ll see my parents again,” Valerie said. Mrs. MacMillan put a hand out, easing forward in her seat, two stories above Valerie.
“So if we put out a false rumor that you were in danger, you’re saying they migh
t materialize,” the woman said.
Valerie could have punched herself.
“Is that worth it, to the Council? To risk another black eye in the view of the magic community, regardless of how brief a duration it might last, allowing them to think that you cannot defend your own schools, your own children?” Ethan asked. “It doesn’t matter how quickly you recant, you must expect the magic community to retain the sense that there are repeated failings at play here.”
He was good.
Valerie’s feet felt hot.
It was something that had been creeping up on her for minutes, and she’d just now noticed it. She was unsettled, having a hard time standing still as she looked up at the Council and their minions, and all she wanted to do was leave. To make it be over so she could leave.
She pulled her arm in the sleeve of her robe and let her fingers walk down the sets of magic ingredients there, finding something that had the right potential to it and crushing it between her fingers. It turned wet, soupy, and she rubbed it until it covered her entire palm, a quenching sort of a cast, then she put her hand back out of her sleeve and took Ethan’s hand, which now stuck to hers.
He squeezed it and let her hand drop with a sticky ungluing feeling.
The heat was gone.
They were trying to pressure Valerie into a fast decision, an ill-considered decision.
This entire room full of adults, every member of the Council, if she remembered Shack’s number correctly, completely concerned with whether or not they could make her do something.
With the sharp cracking sensation of breaking a stick across her knee, Valerie realized that that simply wasn’t going to happen.
“No,” she said, drawing attention from Merck and Mrs. MacMillan as they’d been discussing something privately. Valerie shook her head and took a step forward to stand even with Ethan.
“No,” she said again. “I don’t know your politics or your complications or your… stuff. Yeah. That’s true. And that’s why I choose to keep my mouth shut and watch. I’m not going to report to anyone about anything unless I’m sure I have to, based on what I’m seeing in that moment. I won’t make you a promise. I do want what’s right. I care about what’s right. But there are so many things I don’t know. I need to learn them before I really know what I want to tell anyone.”
