I was sure.
I pushed myself up to sit beside her on the bed. She just laid there, staring up at the ceiling, breathing hard. “I haven’t had it that good in years,” she whispered.
Veronica Lee.
Spent.
Long-limbed.
Gorgeous.
I gazed into her dark, slanted eyes and gave her a satisfied bit of canine grin. “I’ll bet.”
“Have you?” She didn’t have any breasts really. Especially with the way she was lying on her back. But hard little nipples and what she did have were thick with goose bumps, all the way to her toes.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes became questioning, just a little annoyed at the fact I wouldn’t play the game with her. “Valentine Ward that good? Seems too closed off from what I remember.”
You shouldn’t even know her, Veronica.
“Nah, not her,” I said, “I care about her. Hard to do what we did to someone you care about.”
The way her expression lost itself for a moment when she realized I said I didn’t care about her, that I’d just used her. Sure she had used me too, but . . . how dare I, right? Only wouldn’t Veronica Lee know it was just sex? What did she have to be hurt about? Seeing that expression, I was more than sure.
“Keep it up and I’ll make you do it again,” she threatened me.
My grin grew, more than threatening. I cherished the next words as each one slowly left my lips. “Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
.
.
.
“Isabel.”
Her dark, slanted, stolen eyes widened in shock.
Got ya.
I punched her in the face.
Session 52
I predictably used my second day of teacher’s free time for larceny.
Pocket and Jesus came with.
Jesus loves stealing shit.
Fuck your commandments, Dad, you can’t tell me what to do!
You don’t know me!
Raj did not come with; he used his free time for its intended purpose of getting ready for the next day’s assignment. I really feel for some of the Intras that got the goody-goodies as teachers. You know Hope and Welf’s classes are gonna be traumatized by the experience for the rest of their lives. And Miranda? Her class already had a pop quiz on the fucking syllabus. Being in charge brings the sadist out in that girl. Bet she likes whips and chains too.
Eww, what a mental image: firecrotch pubes sneaking out from underneath black latex panties.
I’m gagging here.
[CLICK]
Right, now that I’ve lost my lunch, we were at my larceny, weren’t we, kiddies?
Not hardcore larceny. Wasn’t like I was blackjacking whores before they can get back to their pimps or stealing old ladies’ government-issued catfood checks . . . but I was stealing from a lady: THE LADY.
Who else would have a copy of every yearbook the Asylum has ever produced? And like Ceinwyn would dare to destroy the Lady’s copy, right? I got you now, Auntie Badass!
“This better be good, I really don’t want to get expelled,” Pocket said.
“What, Raj ain’t here, so now you’re the voice of reason?”
Pocket gave me a grin worthy of the most honest Boy Scout on the planet. “The original voice of reason during Single, who told you stealing the Staff of Rebirth was a bad idea if I seem to recall events how they correctly transpired.”
“They never caught me,” I mumbled sullenly over one of my failures being used against me.
“Only because you gave it back.”
“Can’t prove I did that either,” I mumbled some more.
Pocket went immediately to a bookshelf on the first floor of the place, which was stacked with old-style hardcovers sans dust jackets. “Which year was it?”
“Don’t bother with those. That’s just literature shit, the goods will be upstairs.”
A wild Jesus suddenly appeared, coming back into the living room from the kitchen. He chowed down on a brownie. “So . . . the Lady puts way too much weed in her baked goods.”
“Oh great, now Jesus is high,” Pocket complained.
“See . . . it’s just not as funny if you pronounce it like you’re supposed to.”
“This is your fault if he turns out to be the paranoid type,” Pocket informed me.
“I didn’t make him eat it. Besides, he was a street rat, what’s weed against crack, right? If he couldn’t handle his shit then he’d be dead by now.”
Jesus finished the brownie, sitting down at a rocker and staring off into space. “Some strong shit . . .” he said to the invisible bunnies. “You think she laces it with hydro-anima to make the weed stronger?”
Pocket glared at me for once. “Don’t call Jesus a crack-whore, dude, it’s not cool. I’ll go find the yearbooks upstairs; you make sure he doesn’t go back for seconds.”
“1990 to 1994,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, Miss Dale probably already destroyed these too,” he grumbled, walking up the stairs.
“It’s our last hope.”
“Your last hope to find some spank-bank material?” Pocket called down.
“You saying that I’m so perverted I’d find some pictures of Miss Dale as a teenager just to masturbate free of the maternal issues in our relationship? That’s some Greek Drama shit, Pocket.”
He leaned over the railing. “But accurate, yes?”
“Shut up and find the yearbooks,” I growled.
I sat down across from Jesus.
Yup, he was very stoned.
“I didn’t take you for such a pussy with the pot, man,” I told him.
“Been smoking it since I was ten,” he admitted, “before the Asylum at least. Weed and cheap cigarettes, knew if I went in for anything harder I’d be dead in a month. Either to the drug itself or the cartel guys I’d be stealing the drug from.”
“How the hell did Miss Dale find you anyway?”
“Got caught stealing a car.”
“Cops didn’t just kill you?”
“Guess I looked young enough and hard enough they pitied me; so no, they just locked me up.”
Jesus must be seriously high; he’d never tell me this shit if he was even a little sober. Lord and Savior was more closed off than I was about things. Before these fucking tapes at least. I forget why I’m doing it now, talking to a recorder. All the shit I’ve told you, kiddies . . . wonder why anyone would care. Wonder why Ceinwyn cares?
Same reason I wanted to see her as a teenager at the Asylum, I suppose? I’d let Pocket think it was the other thing, I had a reputation to uphold after all, but wasn’t for the spank-bank. Even I ain’t that damaged-beyond-all-repair. I wanted to see the pictures because . . . I gave a shit. Somehow, Ceinwyn Dale was the only parental figure in my life. One I didn’t understand but a sliver of. That sliver was more than most got, but not enough. Understanding Ceinwyn felt important. One day I figured my future would depend on me understanding her. Maybe the pictures would help.
“How many times they rape you in jail?” I asked. Jesus and I always got heinous with the crude details in our stories.
“Beat me plenty, earned a few of these scars those last days, but fought enough they knew they’d piss blood if they tried to bend me over. Besides, after the first night they were scared shitless of me, thought I was possessed with demons, that’s how Miss Dale found me.”
“Bite a man’s throat out?”
“I wish. Some of them deserved it, but no. My pack showed up, stood vigil outside the jail behind my cell. Howling, growling, wouldn’t leave for nothing. They even attacked one of the guards who tried to scare them away.”
“So Recruiters hear the story, come searching, and they find you.”
Jesus nodded. “Miss Dale struts in like she owns all of Mexico, eyes lock on me and she knows. ‘I’ll bail you out and buy you lunch if you promise not to run away from me. You can even bring your dogs.’ I tried to run away the second her hea
d turned, but she chained me to the table with a piece of air. After that I knew I had to learn about the Mancy. Had to give up my pack. I wonder if they’re still out there sometimes . . . probably not. Life’s hard on strays.”
Jesus frowned, like he finally realized how much he’d been talking.
“That’s some strong shit,” I finally agree with his assessment.
He nodded. Then eventually, “What you say we steal some and convince Welf to eat it before our Ultra class?”
I almost cried tears of joy. “You’re my only friend who would come up with such a great idea . . . and to it I say: What Would Jesus Do?”
[CLICK]
Free time, lunch, and wacky hi-jinks accomplished, I faced up again to the fact that Plutarch existed, that he was my only teacher at present, and that I should go to his house to learn his rules for our student-master relationship.
Why couldn’t he just be a little tiny Asian guy? Why I have to get the badass, cranky, tortured warrior as my teacher? He had an eyepatch. That’s Badass 101. Plus all them scars. That’s a hell of a lot of fighting to get them scars. Knew he was tight with Fines Samson, best friends and all, but fuck me had the guy been in some shit in his day.
One of these days, I thought, I really need to sit down and get a full retelling of the Counter-Culture War. Like all the rest of the bullshit we got taught, pretty sure we weren’t getting the full story on how rough things were. Nah, it’s just a wonderful world, man. Ain’t no wars, just learning the Mancy and having kids and those kids learning the Mancy. Just go about your job, enjoy your life; let the Learning Council and ESLED and the Recruiters handle all the things go bump in the night.
I could’ve handled some of the condescension from Plutarch. He was right. I didn’t know shit and Plutarch knew everything I could hope to learn. But the ‘junior’ bullshit and him not coming to the classroom? That was disrespectful. King Henry Price is many things, but he ain’t a fucking nobody.
I was his only student in five years. I was First Tier. Say what you will about the bullshit of Fate and how unfair the Mancy is, but I wasn’t that little shit fresh to the Asylum. Guess I’ve developed some pride in myself over the last four years. I blame Val and Ceinwyn for it. Too much pride and you end up with Welf, I don’t ever want to be like him, but too little pride . . . Plutarch was trying to control me. Trying to put me in a place he had set up for me.
Couldn’t allow that.
Won’t be no cog.
Even a golden, Guild of Artificers cog.
Had to defy him.
When 12PM rolled around and I was supposed to have my first full day with him as my teacher . . . I said fuck it and headed to the Library instead.
Make me spend a day searching for your ass? Now you can spend a day searching for mine.
I had stolen Artificer books from my abandoned classroom, three yearbooks, and a whole new Ultra Student Wing at the Library too. Best get searching, Pappy.
If you can work up the courage to leave your house.
‘Scars scare you children’ my beautiful plump ass.
The Ultra Student Wing of the Library was predictably broken up into fourteen subsections. One for general Mancy info and one each for the disciplines. I again had to give my name and show off my student ID number to get inside of the wing—this time to a library assistant—but once inside there was no further division to break through.
Not only did I have full access to Ultra information on the Mancy as a whole and Geomancy in particular, but to every anima-type. Or at least the level of access that the Learning Council has decided Pents, Hexs, and Heps should be able to handle. The Library also had a sub-library for full-time teachers and another—based on nothing but rumor—restricted subsection far enough underground that it connected directly to the ESLED and Recruiter offices. Never seen either of them in my life, so no idea what’s in them.
Graduate student is as high as the Asylum ever rated King Henry Price.
I spent a couple hours in the Mancy subsection and another couple hours in the Artificer subsection. They weren’t huge like the Entry, where you could almost fit the entire student body if you packed them tight enough, but each subsection had eight to ten rows of bookshelves. Each row had a small area at the end where a desk waited for you to fill it with study materials.
There was no digital database of books either, not even a Dewey Decimal System. The Mancy subsection had seen some love and care, by Worms like Miranda and Raj who took it upon themselves to order the books every other week by title or page count or whatever-the-fuck was their fancy. The Artificer subsection, however, was a pure mess.
Sex in mud kind of mess.
Yes, I can speak from personal experience.
Them hillbilly girls are freaky.
Right next to the pigs, baby.
Oink, fucking oink.
. . . What?
At least it’s been dusted. Maybe I can ask Raj to order it . . . or Miranda . . . maybe I can play matchmaker and get them in the room at the same damn time. Raj claimed he was over the girl, but pretty clear that crush had only developed into a pit of pure despair. Now that the guy knows what he’s doing after Naomi’s attentions, maybe Miranda will feel something . . . maybe it will even last for longer than a minute.
I focused on trying to find the oldest books, hoping some crumb in them might have managed to sneak through all the usual whitewashing you found in the modern standardized stuff. The Guild of Artificers has existed since the 1600s, but its real rise to complete dominance came in 1920 along with the rest of the new world order following World War 1.
Asylum and the other schools around the globe, the Rejuvenation Society, the Guild of Artificers . . . nothing can kill magic quicker than bureaucracy. Don’t know if I can say the old way was better—would’ve had me training with Plutarch as an apprentice since I found out I could use anima and I don’t think I would’ve liked that—but this government as teacher shit they got going now makes the earthquake in me uncomfortable.
They’ve taught me a lot in four years, don’t get me wrong.
Never have to worry about ending up like Mom. Know how to do a hundred or so conjurations, some of them pretty violent. But I worry about what they’re not telling me. Hope I’ll learn some of it in the next three years, steal a little bit from these books too. Still . . . I wonder: what secrets haven’t I guessed at? What secrets within secrets can’t I see?
Maybe it’s not my business.
Maybe I should be a good little mancer.
Maybe eventually they’ll just tell me.
Ceinwyn knows, right? Lady has to know, she was alive when all that shit in the 20s got set up. So one day . . . I’ll know. If they tell me. I hope.
I spent my entire first year at the place being a rebellious little shit, so maybe it’s predictable that I go back to rebelling when confronted with a change in situation. But I also finished second out of a graduating class of four-hundred kids. I could do the good boy routine and I could win at it.
What’s that saying about history repeating itself that the Internet claims Albert Einstein said but is bullshit like all the rest?
Most of all I wonder about that. Will I rebel for the rest of my life? Will I eventually always give in to the system too?
I’ll have to give in to Plutarch eventually. I just needed to find an equilibrium between us that wasn’t around me being a complete toady for whatever Plutarch wanted me to do, however he wanted me to do it. That junior shit like I’m a child. Never liked people thinking I’m a child, even old scarred up bastards with a missing eye and two teeth.
But he had all the knowledge.
Asylum always has all the knowledge.
Just like the first time around, I’d have to give in. Gonna have to play the game and play it good to get at them juicy infos. But Plutarch needed to learn I’d only accept certain strings and I’d never accept them cheaply and they’d always chafe, so best not pull that string too tight.
O
r I’ll rip the scab off no matter how much it bleeds.
[CLICK]
With the oldest book in the Artificer subsection in my backpack—a 1892 copy titled The Art of Artifice: From Stonehenge to Michelangelo—I walked out of the Ultra Student Wing.
The library assistant on duty didn’t even bother to check me for the stolen goods. One of the great things about Worm-types is that they never even consider breaking the rules to the extremes that I regularly accomplish. Been stealing and replacing books at the Library for years now. Long as you’re quick about reading them and returning them, they don’t even know it’s been taken, just assume it’s misplaced.
And there’s no paper-trail on what I’ve been reading.
Bad enough the Asylum knows every time I take a shit, don’t need them knowing I’m reading about conjurations for encouraging the fruits of trees to grow while doing it. Figure nothing gets me to shit like eating a mango, might as well read about growing them while I’m at it.
It’s the Circle of Life.
Or something.
I guessed that Plutarch would take a few hours to work up the courage to come looking for me. Even if he was a hermit, he was a geomancer same as me: I slapped him in the face by not coming back to class, so he’ll come. He’d head for the Artificer classroom, with its dust and cobwebs and its backroom filled with metals and gems and empty vials. Then he’d make for the subsection I just vacated. I had to be elsewhere by then, without the librarians or assistants catching sight of me. That would send Plutarch on the hunt across the campus.
I popped a door only workers were supposed to use with a simple manipulation of geo-anima and quickly hurried through it and out the other side, down a long hallway that led out to the part of the Library housing the auditorium. Like I’ve told you plenty of times, kiddies: Asylum buildings are BIG.
If you’re easily lost then make yourself a map.
Also, keep watch for all the hidden rooms. One day you might want to have sex in them.
Hadn’t ever had sex in the auditorium, personally . . . but I’m sure someone has.
I plopped down on a seat at the back, expecting a couple hours of silence before I’d have to move again.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 22