Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods)

by Leone, Hudson

  The rest of the room was filled with elaborate peices of furniture. Noble series of shelves and cabinets pressed against the back of the room, no doubt filled with many important expensive things that were not supposed to be touched. A long table with sixteen or so green reptilian like chairs fit comfortably in the right hand side of the office, while the single largest fireplace I had ever seen sat to the left. The miniature forest fire contained in the marble hearth brought the enclosure up to an unbearable temperature, however the Caterwaul barely seemed to notice. If anything he looked a bit cold.

  Caterwaul Lorenzo sat in a large extravagant throne, with bulging armrests and a back that stood nearly as tall as I did. In front of him was a surprisingly clean and empty desk, that suggested he hadn’t done much work that day.

  He lifted his watery eyes disapprovingly as I stumbled to his side. “Take a seat,” he commanded, nodding to one of the two available chairs just in front of his desk. I cautiously placed myself on one of the understuffed reptilian armchairs and flinched slightly. It was far more uncomfortable and cold than I expected. As I sat perched on the edge of my seat, all of the insignificant little details of the room suddenly seemed to brighten immensely. I noticed the subtle way in which the Caterwaul swiped grapes and cheese from a nearby platter without offering me any. I could feel the presence of Umber expand and contract in my thoughts, and if I paid careful attention, I could even hear some painful seconds tick by as the Caterwaul slowly grinded the fruit skins between his teeth.

  Just when I thought he had finished eating, the Caterwaul rang a bell on his desk, causing two servants to spontaneously enter his office and swap the old platter for a new one. I could tell by the smell that it was another plate of cheese, however something was very peculiar about it. This cheese was bright red. It didn’t take me long to realize that it must have been flavoured with mage blood. I nearly retched on the spot, yet somehow still felt hungry, as if there was a distant part of me that wanted to eat the cheese.

  “C-Caterwaul sir?” I asked suddenly.

  “I didn’t ask you to talk,” he replied looking highly irritable. I sank back into my seat and muffled the rumblings of my stomach. Once the Caterwaul had consumed the contents of his plate, he dabbed his mouth lightly with a nearby cloth napkin, before tucking everything away and folding his arms.

  “You act as though you don’t know why your student, Jacob is the way he is,” he began softly. I didn’t know whether or not I should have spoken, so I folded my arms and tried to look as serious as possible. The Caterwaul didn’t seem to care one way or another. “It is trivial knowledge professor, that you offer the lower tier students more attention than the higher tiers. I want you to tell me why you do this.” My heart began to flutter within my chest, making the next few breaths exceptionally difficult.

  “It is my belief that by helping those in the lower tiers, I am making more higher tier trainees, who do not require as much attention,” I explained quietly.

  The Caterwaul averted his gaze as if I had suddenly vanished. It was nearly half a minute before he replied again.

  “The main value for the legion of the Grimlars as I’m sure you are well aware, is to create a self sufficient mage hunter. Aimlessly following a professor around all day will not teach this.”

  “So you’re suggesting that rather than giving them knowledge needed to survive, they should

  have that knowledge to begin with?”

  “THAT I AM,” Caterwaul Lorenzo thundered unexpectedly. He pounded his fist on the table and glared at me prudently. “Any more interruptions?”

  I quickly shook my head and quietly slumped back in my seat.

  “I understand your logic Wenchenberg,” he said while bringing his voice down. “For years I’ve had to deal with the anxiety of teaching a student only to have him slip through my fingers like sand in an abyss.” The Caterwaul clenched his fists revealing bright purple veins between his knuckles. “It’s depressing, degrading and most importantly, a damn waste of all of our times!” He raised both of his hands and seemed to consider his next words very carefully. “Let them be warriors, so long as they can be.”

  For a while, neither of us spoke. I sat quite still, trying not to digest the disgusting ethics of the Caterwaul. I wouldn’t admit that he was even a little bit right, despite the fact that I had been thinking the same sort of things in the previous month. “This boy, Jacob Ofpacis, proves to be the one exception to your obsession with lower tier students, all because he didn’t have a tier until quite recently.” Caterwaul Lorenzo stood up quickly and began to hobble about the room while muttering to himself. “The other professors tell me that he can read and honestly, I find that suspicious. You’ve been teaching him haven’t you?”

  “He’s trying to pry for information when the information he has isn’t even supported by proof!” Umber hissed into my left ear. “If you admit this to the Caterwaul, he’ll have a liable ground to assume that the professor helped you through the forest as well!”

  I clenched at the sleeves of my robe and tried not to quiver.

  “I’m sorry Caterwaul, but there is absolutely nothing to say that I have taught Jacob how to read,” I said, doing my best to echo Umber’s thoughts.

  The Caterwaul shriveled into a nasty snarl. “My dear ignorant Wenchenberg. I actually have two pieces of evidence that say you’ve taught Jacob how to read.” The wrinkled elder quietly reached into his desk and produced a hefty folder full of papers. Even from where I was sitting, I could see that this particular portfolio had my name on it. “The first thing I would like to bring to your attention Wenchenberg is an investigation of Jacob’s early life to see if he could read prior to entering the concentration camp.” My pupils widened slightly.

  “Jacob Ofpacis was the son of Dimitri Ofpacis, a scholar native to Zaphris and Jennifer Wayflower, an outcast Nomad who had travelled to the kingdom looking for good fortune.” The Caterwaul seemed to smirk slightly. “Oddly enough, neither seemed to find much of that.” I nodded in agreement despite having not heard the last sentence. It never crossed my mind that I would one day want to know who my parents were. I never really wondered about it, for I always had to divert my attention elsewhere. I never wondered because they didn’t seem to mean anything to me but a lazy daydream of a distant life. I always assumed it would be one of those things I found out as I got older. But here I was, posing as Professor Wenhenberg and I had accidentally found out exactly who they were in a little less than two sentences.

  In lots of ways I was disappointed. Those fleeting moments when I did wonder about who my parents were, I liked to fantasize that they were kings and queens from a far off country. I knew despite myself that these were simply silly delusions. Of course my mother would be a jobless wanderer. For every piece of royalty there would be at least ten thousand peasants behind them. But my father? As a scribe? Why in the world would an educated man want to court someone like my mother? It felt as though the room had been flipped ninety degrees. I blinked rapidly and gripped the side of my chair to keep the room from tilting any further. I had to know more.

  “Where was Jacob born?” I asked quietly. The Caterwaul studied me with an unreadable face, before flipping to another page in the folder and squinting.

  “A small property owned by the scholar in Calandia, the capital city,” he answered with a small disinterested snort.

  “And how?” I asked a little too suddenly. “How did the birth come to pass?” This time, it became apparent I may have overstepped my boundaries. Caterwaul Lorenzo frowned deeply and glared at me with an expression of unsettling curiosity. Despite anything that may have been going through his head, he slowly turned to another page and cleared his throat.

  “It was reported that Dimitri Ofpacis started to drink quite heavily after his career began to fall. One day, in a drunken state he left his spouse to live with the part-time prostitute, Jennifer Wayflower. The two of them fled to Calandia when it became apparent that Jennifer was preg
nant and shortly after, Dimitri lost his job. During an extensive childbirth, Jennifer died, leaving Dimitri with the child whom he named Jacob.” I clutched my stomach and licked my lips a little as I resisted the temptation to start retching. I struggled to focus my attention as Caterwaul Lorenzo continued.

  “Dimitri, plagued with devastation turned to a life of crime to protect his only son. For a good amount of time he managed to keep them both alive, however he was caught after about three years. Dimitri was executed, and Jacob was placed into the orphanage where for another seven years he lived until the Legion of the Grimlars took him in.” I prickled up in a cold sweat and began to pick at my arm hairs. The stabbing pain was a reassuring distraction.

  “You can think about this later,” Umber warned. “For the moment you are Wenchenberg, and Wenchenberg does not have any sort of emotional connection to Jacob’s family. I held back a trembling sigh and nodded inconspicuously before trying to force my gaze across the table to the Caterwaul.

  “You claim that... his father was a scribe?” The word ‘his’ caught in my throat as I had to physically restrain myself from saying ‘my father’. Caterwaul Lorenzo bobbed his head, and I began to twiddle my thumbs as I thought intently.

  “It’s entirely possible that Jacob could have learned to read while his father raised him.” I lied bluntly. The Caterwaul stared at me in dumbfound shock.

  “You mean to tell me Wenchenberg, that it would be possible for a three year old boy to learn the entirety of a written language in such a short period of time?” He snorted loudly and placed his hands behind his neck. “It’s likely that Jacob doesn’t even remember what his father looks like much less what he could have taught him during infancy.”

  “Stop blushing!” Umber demanded, noticing the sudden change of hue in my face. “Your professor wouldn’t turn red with a comment like that.” I slowly stroked my face in an attempt to cool down my flushed face, before looking facing forward again.

  “With all do respect it’s still a possibility,” I said quietly. The Caterwaul leaned forward and propped his thin toothpick elbows up onto his desk.

  “I hope the rest of your possibilities have a much greater ground for support than just this,” Caterwaul Lorenzo replied with an irritated growl.

  “Well, what about his time at the orphanage?” I responded quickly.

  “What about it?”

  “He could have learned to read from there.” The Caterwaul leaned in deeper and fixed his sharp dagger like gaze into the depths of my pupils. Unlike my last suggestion, this seemed to be a legitimate concern for him. Without bringing his neck down, he opened the folder and quietly thumbed through each individual page. He carefully extracted a tattered strip of paper that had been browned with age.

  “The orphanage Jacob was collected from was the Pothole Charitable Trust’s headquarters in Calandia. According to this report of the premises, there were no books of any kind which Jacob could have learned to read from, nor was there anyone capable enough to teach him how.” The Caterwaul smirked triumphantly and slowly sat back into his seat with glowing satisfaction in his eyes. For a while neither of us spoke.

  “May I?” I asked while weakly gesturing towards the papers. The Caterwaul shrugged, before effortlessly pushing the folder to my side of the desk. In front of me were now three papers to do with just the orphanage. One was the comment from one of the caretakers at the orphanage. One was a map of the orphanage as well as a few of the buildings surrounding it, and one was a form of some kind proving I had belonged to this orphanage. Out of curiosity alone, I picked up the comment and began to read.

  “Jacob Ofpacis is a rather noisy boy, who is always found exactly where no one wants him. He and his doppelganger, Preston Mubarak seem to have formed some kind of criminal tendencies and will often times sneak off together in the middle of the night to do who-knows-what.

  Strangely enough, even if he’s not with Preston, he will find a way to sneak off for hours at a time, returning in a strangely calm state of mind. In all honesty, the lack of commotion is so satisfying, the house staff deliberately turn the other way while Jacob squeezes his way out of the orphanage to do whatever he feels he needs to do. He always manages to find his way back anyways, so we’ve rarely had to go looking for him.

  When by himself, Jacob appears to be quiet and reserved, however the minute you place him with someone of his own age, he’ll begin to talk faster than most politicians. Often times, he will preoccupy himself with imaginary games or by inventing outrageous stories, all of which having nothing to do with the chores he constantly avoids.

  His thought process is wild and erratic. His euphoric highs and irritable tantrums have caused many days of distress among his housemasters, and most nights it seems like he is physically incapable of sleep. Twelve times we’ve had to isolate a room for Jacob to stay in, simply because of his overstimulation. It should be noted that Jacob’s inquisitive mind is often times incessant and absolutely beyond the point. His natural curiosity must be suppressed in order for him to succeed as a member of society, however I have confidence in Jacob’s inevitable change in maturity. As his housemaster, I wish him all the best for future years.

  An illegible signature stuck to the bottom of the page like a deep cut. I reread the page a second and third time before picking up the map of the premises and holding it up to eye level. I studied the map for a few seconds, before eventually deciding it was not worth my time. Just as I was about to put it to one side, Umber stopped me.

  “Look at the second paragraph from your comment and tell me what it was you did during the hours away from the orphanage.” I raised my gaze up to the place Umber had indicated and almost found myself smiling.

  “I found a bakery a couple kilometers away which I would nab cakes from.”

  “And is this bakery on the map of the area?” Umber asked while slowly swiveling on the spot. I checked the map.

  “No it’s not,” I thought to him. The spirit seemed to brighten up slightly.

  “Now take a look at what’s down the street from the orphanage.” As I lowered my attention to one of the side paths outside the orphanage, I gave a small inaudible gasp.

  “There’s a library there!” I realized suddenly.

  “And that means you have reliable evidence to say that you could have snuck off during this time to learn how to read,” Umber concluded brightly.

  For four seconds, I stared at him with utmost gratitude. The Caterwaul cleared his throat loudly. I immediately shook my head and glanced up, startled by the jarring reality that I was still in the office of the most dangerous man alive.

  “You seem to be awfully interested in my alcohol cabinet,” Caterwaul Lorenzo commented politely. “Have you perhaps run out of things to say, or are you merely anticipating a future with a lot of heavy drinking?”

  “Quite the contrary actually,” I said, twisting my lips up into a wry smile. “For in this specific article, we hear from one of Jacob’s caretakers that he would often run off for extended periods of time. This paper does not however specify what he did during this time. I grabbed the second piece of paper triumphantly, and proudly drew my fingers across it. “Now where would a young boy go for hours at a time without being found?” I asked rhetorically. “Surely he would go to a place where none of his caretakers would think to find him. Jacob probably thought his safest hideout was this nearby library, as you Caterwaul, claimed the caretakers couldn’t read and would therefore have no need to enter such a place.” I brought my fist down onto the table, which emitted a reassuring thump. “Jacob did have access to books and he did spend time with them, rendering your argument obsolete!”

  Immediately after I had uttered the last word, I noticed three very startling things, the first of these being that I had just been shouting at Caterwaul Lorenzo. Without any memory of doing so, I also found myself standing up with both hands pressed firmly into the table. The last and most terrifying thing was that the Caterwaul had also stood up
and was holding his hand in his pocket as if he was about to draw a knife. Much to my relief, he simply removed a golden watch which he eyed apprehensively.

  “It’s time for dinner,” He said blandly.

  Just as I was about to argue, Umber cut me off with a swift and startling movement.

  “He’s letting you go,” The spirit reminded me sternly. “Don’t blow this opportunity Jacob.” I sighed quietly and nodded to the Caterwaul. The two of us silently left together, and walked in unison for perhaps a minute or two before a large group of elder Grimlars joined up. Noticing this diversion as an opportunity to flee, I soundlessly hustled back the way I came without anyone noticing. I threw open the door of the Caterwaul’s office and frantically began to rummage through his cabinets. Aside from a large number of old looking bottles were a few tailcoats, large sets of extravagant hats and a rack holding twenty or so dangerous looking canes. I threw these containers shut and dashed over to the bookshelves to try and see if there was anything of importance there.