Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1)
Page 21
“What about Megaira?” Alecto asked. “What did you do to her?” She continued to hold out hope that her sister had been coerced into cooperating, but had balked when Alecto was framed. Apparently thinking Graves had silenced Megaira, that she was hurt somewhere or even dead, was preferable to thinking she was a traitor.
But Nana shook her head sadly. At the same time, Graves laughed.
“I’m sure Mother saw Maggie at some of those same meetings.” Graves stood and put his hands in the pockets of his very expensive pants. He still didn’t look defeated. Now that the game was up, he looked glad to be taking some credit at last. “I was the voice of the operation. I excel at client-facing work. But she was the brains. This was her baby.” He gave Alecto a cold smile. “And she has a backup of the data. You won’t find her, and you won’t be able to stop her.”
Now that he had the floor, he took full advantage of the moment. He turned to the audience.
“What I am being accused of, what it seems they will try to punish me for, is progress. Innovation. It’s refusing to stand still and keep doing what we’ve always done in the same way we’ve always done it. All we were doing in that lab was experimenting. Researching. Learning. And we’re calling that a crime? Has our colony become so stagnant, so complacent in what we do, that we fear knowledge now?” He glowered for a second or two, then bellowed, “WHERE IS YOUR COURAGE?”
A few people started. Others hurled insults at him.
But to Thea’s horror, a few were nodding.
“Enough!” Alecto stood up. “You weren’t pursuing knowledge, you were pursuing mass destruction.”
“And you’re so involved in human politics now that you care who goes to war, and who is left standing?” Graves asked. “Perhaps you’ve been working too closely with them. Taken a bribe or two?”
It was ridiculous, as most of the things that came out of Graves’s mouth seemed to be. But he had too much charisma. He was too good at planting doubt. Thea willed Alecto to stop engaging him.
Alecto seemed to reach the same conclusion. “I’m not going to argue with you. The board will decide your fate.”
She turned away from Graves and stepped forward to look out over the audience, a compelling figure in her own right. When all eyes were on her she said, “We are creatures of vengeance. It does not suit us to be soft or hesitant. But even above that, we are creatures of justice. Everything we do, we must do with that in mind. I’m sure I need not clarify that selling a hex that could result in thousands of deaths—or more—to the highest bidder is not just.”
Most of them were nodding at Alecto now, but Thea heard somebody behind her mutter, “Just because it’s wrong to sell it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong to research it.”
Someone a few rows back said, more loudly, “Why should we be afraid to develop a weapon? We don’t have to use it, but having it makes us stronger. What if the humans turn on us one day?”
Thea glanced at Graves and saw a little smile on his face that she wanted to claw off. What was Alecto thinking? Why would she even open this conversation? She was playing right into his hands.
Thea stood up and turned to face the audience herself. “I think Cassius could tell you why it’s a bad idea. I saw the superhex in action. I know what it can do. It doesn’t make us stronger and it definitely doesn’t make us safer. It’s not something we want in our home. Some of you are parents. You want your kids living with a hex that nobody can resist and nobody can control?”
Most of the eyes she met were approving. Thea thought the dissenters were few. But she also didn’t think they were convinced.
“I’m not a tyrant,” Alecto said in a voice hard enough to belie the claim. “Nobody on this board is. If somebody wants to make a case that this is a moral, ethical, or in any way appropriate avenue of research, put a proposal on my desk and we’ll consider it.” She turned back to Graves. “In the meanwhile, what you did was illegal. Resources, including some valuable enchanted items, were misappropriated and destroyed. Furies were hurt. Hester is dead. You’ll have to answer for all of that.”
In the end, he only had to answer for most of it. The prevailing theory was that Hester had been unhinged by what she was doing, until she either became a liability or actually threatened to expose the whole scandal, and had to be dealt with. But there was no proof that Graves or anybody working for him had killed her. Officially, her murder remained unsolved.
Graves was found guilty of all the other crimes laid at his feet. The sentence was inevitable. Possibly thinking it made the board look more impartial, it was Langdon rather than Alecto who stood up the next morning and announced that Graves would have his wings removed at dawn the next day.
Graves sat upright in his chair, impeccably dressed as always, and showed no reaction at all. In the audience, a few people clapped. Most were silent. Even the people who’d been murmuring about the benefits of researching the superhex the day before didn’t speak up on Graves’s behalf.
But one person did. To Thea’s great surprise, Nana came forward.
“He’s been convicted in part because of me, and I can’t regret it,” she said. “There are consequences when a person does wrong, and it is our duty if it’s anybody’s to insist that justice be done.”
“But?” Alecto asked.
“But he’s still my boy,” Nana said with a shrug. “And I don’t want to see him hurt like that.”
“Nana, that’s not—”
“So I’d like you to consider,” Nana interrupted, “what he’s done for this colony. His many years of service. The great strides made in RDM when he was head of that department. A person could argue that his contributions have been just as great as his sins.”
Graves crossed his arms and nodded, but said nothing.
“It’s too late for him to retire with dignity, but that doesn’t mean he has to live out his days earthbound in total disgrace, either,” Nana said. “Give him some horrible work to do, it’s no more than he deserves. Clip his wings, even, so you know he can’t fly far. But don’t take them.”
The board left the room to discuss Nana’s plea, but they weren’t gone for long. Thea wasn’t surprised when Langdon stood and said, “I’m sorry, Nana. You know we trust your judgment. But we feel it would set a dangerous precedent to take your advice in this instance. Our decision stands.”
The dewinging was to take place in the bit of open field behind the Colony Center. Anyone who wanted to see that justice was done was welcome to come and watch.
The anticipation in the dining hall at dinner that night was palpable enough to put Thea off her food. Cora gave her brother an exasperated look as Nero speared one of Thea’s untouched pork chops with three claws and plopped it onto his own plate.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Cora asked.
Thea shrugged. “It’s just kind of savage, don’t you think? How excited people are to watch it? They’re talking about bringing picnic breakfasts!”
Cora raised an eyebrow at Thea. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for him. After everything he did to you?”
“No, not exactly.” Thea dragged her fork through her applesauce. “But compassion is a virtue, isn’t it?”
“Compassion, yes,” Nero agreed. “Indifference, no. And that’s what it would be, if we stood by and let anyone get away with a thing like this.”
Thea nodded only to end the conversation. She knew they wouldn’t understand. Maybe a part of her would always be human. Maybe they’d always see that part as weak.
When she left the dining hall, it was with no conscious idea of visiting Graves. But she found herself outside his residence, asking his guards if she could see him. Even as she walked inside, she wasn’t sure why she’d come.
But he didn’t ask. He greeted her with an offer of a chair and a glass of wine, as if she was an ordinary visitor and these were ordinary circumstances. Thea accepted the first, but not the second.
“Are you sure? They let me have a really excellent bottle. Actu
ally, they let me have two. I guess the health of my liver isn’t a priority.”
“It might not be too late, you know,” Thea said. “If you help them find Megaira, they might reconsider.”
Graves laughed. “And why would I do that?”
“To save your wings, obviously.”
“Do you really imagine I’m going to let them take my wings?”
Thea blinked at him. “And how do you intend to stop them? Are you actually admitting to an escape plan?”
“Megaira won’t strand me here. We’re family.”
“You and Alecto are family. Didn’t stop you from framing her.”
Graves’s pleasant mask dropped, and he looked only tired. “Go home, Thea,” he said. “You have no business here. I’m sure you’ve come to lecture me, or perhaps to gloat. But allow me to practice the virtue of honesty: I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
Thea sighed. “Remember when you told me you weren’t the bearded mentor in my story?”
He laughed again. “So now you want to be the bearded mentor in mine?”
Thea stood and shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to see if I could help you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Maybe because I want to hang on to my compassion. Maybe because I don’t think a soft heart always has to automatically mean weakness.” She went to the door, but hesitated with her hand on the knob and said, “Maybe just because I’m a better person than you.”
Graves said nothing as she walked out. To the guards outside Thea said, “He seems to think Megaira is going to come and break him out. Might want to keep an eye.”
The next morning, it seemed most of the colony had crowded into the field. The lucky few whose residences had views of the spot where Graves would be dewinged all seemed to be having parties. Shouts, laughter, and music came out of the open windows, mingling with the sound of the crowd below. It occurred to Thea that this was probably exactly what weekends had looked like when this was really a campus. They were acting like kids.
Cora and Nero were right: she had no reason to feel sorry for Graves. But it still made her sick.
Maybe in some weird way I’ve come full circle, she thought. Maybe I’ve gotten strong enough not to fear a little weakness.
Thea stood with Cora, Elon, and Nero at the edge of the crowd as the sun came up and Graves was led on foot to the spot where a fury dressed like a medieval executioner, right down to the black hood, waited.
Thea saw Graves’s face as he went by. It was gray, and had lost all the confidence of the night before. He looked like he hardly understood where he was.
He must really have believed that Megaira would come for him. But she’d betrayed him, just as Nana had betrayed him, in a way. Just as both Graves and Megaira had betrayed Alecto. For people who prized virtue, there sure seemed to be a lack of loyalty in that family.
The crowd hushed and closed in, many of them flying up to perch in trees or on top of buildings for a better look. Several people got in front of Thea and blocked her view.
She stayed where she was.
But there was nothing blocking her ears as Graves’s hideous screams burst over the campus, like thunder announcing a storm.
Thea got the job she wanted, as an Investigator for HRI. Life settled into a normal routine of background checks, research, and surveillance as she made recommendations on cases, and put together files for the Inflictors. It was mostly quiet work, and after the excitement of the past few months, that was just fine with Thea.
She heard Graves was working for Facilities as a gardener, wearing cheap, soil-stained clothes and bulky gloves every day. But she didn’t see him.
The day after Thanksgiving, Thea flew out to the center of the pond, and tossed her bells in.
When she got back to her residence, she closed the door and stood with her back against it, waiting. But the panic never came.
Maybe it just hadn’t sunk in yet. The bells are gone, she warned herself. For good. You can’t get them back. You have nothing to hide behind.
Who needs to hide? I’m a fucking purple dragon.
She had a lovely Christmas at Aunt Bridget’s farm. Cora, Elon, and Nero came with her, and the house seemed full of laughter for the first time since Uncle Gary died. Thea and Flannery were even civil with one another, for the most part.
Aunt Bridget commented on the latter, while she and Thea were in the kitchen washing up.
“Aunt Bridget,” answered Thea, “we never really got to talk. About what happened to Flannery.” She cleared her throat. “How I hurt her.”
Bridget waved a soapy hand, sending a spray of drops across the counter. “And I hope we never will. It’s never pleasant to take sides between my daughters.”
Thea ducked her head, scrubbing an imaginary spill on the counter, so Bridget wouldn’t see her eyes filling with tears. Even if it was Christmas, it wouldn’t do to get too sappy. She was a fury now, after all.
As if reading her thoughts, Aunt Bridget said, “The change suits you.”
“Yeah,” Thea said lightly. “I always did look good in purple.”
“It suits you outside and in. Did I notice you’re not limping anymore?”
“As a matter of fact, you did. The head physician gave me some tea once, but I didn’t trust him at the time so I never drank it. I found it a couple weeks ago, and figured since he wasn’t one of the crowd who wanted to forcefully experiment on me and then kill me, I might as well try it.” Thea shrugged. “You know, I’ll admit that when I started I was kind of hoping the transformation would turn me into some kind of superhero, make all my physical problems ago away. And I am stronger, and I can move pretty much silently.”
“And fly,” Aunt Bridget added.
“And fly,” Thea agreed. “But I guess it doesn’t rework your skeleton along with your blood. This is the next best thing, though. If I drink it every day, the soreness and the stiffness are hardly noticeable at all.”
When they rejoined the others in the living room, Flannery was sitting close beside Nero, whispering something to him. Much to Thea’s horror, they had seemed to hit it off.
Thea crouched beside Cora, who was sitting on the other side of the room, and said in a low voice, “You don’t think…” She nodded at the couch.
Cora snickered. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Maybe a fling, if it even gets that far—”
“—who doesn’t have a human fling somewhere in his past?” Elon interjected, then coughed and turned away when Cora glared at him.
“You definitely don’t have to worry that it would lead to anything,” Cora went on. “It happens occasionally, humans marrying into the colony, but to be honest with you, it’s considered kind of low class. Definitely beneath the head of RDM.”
Thea laughed at that. Nero definitely walked with a swagger since his promotion.
The Monday after New Year’s, Alecto called Thea into her office.
“I’m suspending you from your normal duties,” she said.
“What did I do now?” Thea squared her shoulders, ready for a fight, but Alecto waved her off.
“Calm down, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m having you head up an investigative team. You can pick two or three others to help you.”
“To do what?” Thea asked.
Alecto’s jaw tightened. “To find my sister.”
There had been no sign of Megaira, and no word on where she might be. Thea knew Alecto wanted to find her, for business reasons as well as personal. Graves had said Megaira had a backup of the superhex data, and nobody wanted that out there.
“I thought you’ve had people looking for her all along,” Thea said.
“I have. Security’s been looking into it. Technically it’s their jurisdiction, since she’s a fugitive from the colony. But to be honest with you, we haven’t had anyone leave like this in at least a generation, if not more. They’re not really equipped to handle it. I want real investigators.”
“Yeah, well, sorry about that, but you’ll just have to toughen up and deal with it.”
Thea bristled. “Why? What aren’t you telling me?”
Alecto moved behind her desk. “There have been some incidents. Megaira has been in contact with some Hexing House employees. Cora is trying to track down those communications, and she’ll work with you on this, but in the meanwhile, I’m not sure…” She coughed, as if the words were sticking in her throat. “That is, I need…”
She took what looked like a business card out of her top drawer.
“I trust you,” Alecto said finally, as she handed Thea the card.
Fury Unlimited, it read. Purveyors of Vengeance and Destruction.
“Vengeance that isn’t righteous, and destruction in place of justice?” Thea looked at Alecto. “What is this? Is she…”
“Flip it over,” Alecto said.
Thea did, and saw two words in the center, in bold black type:
Now recruiting!
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CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN