I got about thirty minutes of it, reading about Stonehenge and Michelangelo and everything in-between. It was a pretty disappointing book. Stiff, boring, very stone oriented. A tiny paragraph on dimension matrix conjurations showed promise, but didn’t go into detail. Not like I’m good enough with stone to do that kind of detail anyway.
Thirty minutes before my silence was interrupted.
Not by Plutarch.
By a girl crying.
No one ever closed the auditorium doors during the day and the acoustics carried the noise of the hallway right to my ears. Still a muffled sound, through a door. I listened, sliding the book into my backpack, ready to move for whatever reason.
There are, on average, eight-hundred teenage girls at the Asylum, so . . . crying ain’t exactly an unheard experience. Eight-hundred teenage boys with hearts ready to be broken too, for that matter. No reason to get sexist about things, is there, kiddies?
Heh.
But this, this was a teenage girl crying. Grew up with two of them. Knew the sound. JoJo never took breakups well and well, being JoJo she always dated bastards who were quick to throw her to the side once they got what they wanted from her. Sometimes I think it’s good JoJo took off before I got old enough to try my hand at beating the shit out of the guys. Any excuse for a fight, right?
I was hoping for one that day in the auditorium.
I always am.
But some days it’s worse.
Some days . . .
All them frustrations with strings and hidden knowledge building up inside of me. Fighting has always been the easiest outlet for my repressed emotions. Couldn’t fight a teacher though. Even King Henry Price wouldn’t go that far. Not even Mordecai Root when he hounded me in Single after that stupid stolen staff. Not even Delores Dingle when she taught us trigonometry . . . cuz fuck that shit.
Can’t fight teachers.
Line you can’t cross.
End up in the Holding Room at best, expelled at worst.
But maybe . . . just maybe . . . I can find another fight.
I heard a door open and slam shut. A pair of guys chuckled along to another girl’s comments. I felt my blood boil at the sound. Bathrooms back there were notorious for being Three Queen territory. I could attest. I could also place the laugh.
Catherine Hayes.
Princeps Tyrannus Landica herself.
I turned around the corner and into the hallway just in time to catch sight of her sashaying away with a pair of Blackjacks in tow. Nice ass for an evil bitch . . . not so big, but damn is that thing tight, some part of me thought. Probably Prince Henry. Guy just never learns.
My penis, my curiosity, my anger, and my mouth, all fighting for which one gets to kill me off first.
Could’ve followed her. Could’ve confronted her. Three-to-one, I’ve risked those odds plenty of times in my life. But another sob from the girls’ bathroom stopped me cold. I hovered outside. The little blue chick on the door stared down at me, judging me harshly for thinking about breaking the You-Shall-Not-Pass barrier between the sexes when it comes to bathrooms. You might see a cooter, little boy!
I took the middle ground for once; I knocked on the door. “Anyone in there?”
The sobbing stopped.
“Bitch took off, you’re safe for now. If you’re scared, I can . . . walk you to your class or something.”
Three Queens turning me into a white knighting asshole.
Still no answer, so I pushed the door open and went inside. Same bathroom I’d been hauled to by the Blackjacks during the Bi Winter War. Same window Teresa Garcia smoked her smuggled cigarettes out of. Same sinks that Mary O’Connell dry humped. Same hand dryer that Catherine Hayes piddled.
I studied the bathroom, leaning down to see a pair of legs in a stall and a bunch of toilet paper crumbled around them. “You hear me in there?” I asked.
No answer.
“Ain’t a Blackjack, if that’s what you’re thinking. Ain’t a trick.”
A single sob, but no words.
I stood outside the stall, weighing my opinions. “You’ve probably heard of me, the Foul Mouth? Ain’t one to brag or nothing, but I do have a rep. Know it ain’t all heroic, but I promise I won’t bite. Just need you to talk to me so I know what the problem is.”
“Go away,” a small voice whined.
I frowned at it. Wasn’t one of the girls in my class, but I recognized the voice. Just not the tone. Tone was all wrong, so wrong I couldn’t place it on the first try. “Hey, who’s in there?”
“Go away, King Henry,” the girl repeated. “And don’t tell Brother.”
My expression turned from a frown into that of pure earthquake fury in a blink. I smashed open the stall with my shoulder. It hurts more than you’d think from how easy television shows make it out to be. Even so, I barely noticed it. The girl was disheveled, but not indecent. Like she’d been roughed up, but not . . . something worse. The toilet paper around her was red and she held a piece of it to the outside of her wrist. What little makeup she wore ran down her cheeks. Her white colors were ripped in a few places, rainbow fringe untouched. Someone had even torn out a hunk of her bright blond hair.
Fuck me, I thought, ready to break every piece of metal in the room.
Vicky Welf.
“What did they do?” I growled deep enough to do a full on Batman impression.
“Nothing too bad . . . it’s okay,” Vicky whispered.
“Did they . . .” I started to say but stopped. Thinking about what I would have to do if Vicky said ‘yes.’
“No!” Vicky screeched at me. “No . . . they punched me and kicked me and shoved me, but . . . not that.”
I calmed down a little. Just a little though. Instead of murdering Catherine Hayes, I just wanted to break every bone in her body. “What happened to your wrist?”
“She cut me . . . with an aero-blade,” Vicky sniveled, still holding the bloody toilet paper against it. “Just the outside, not a vein. But, she said she could if she wanted. And . . . no one would know.”
“Vick . . . you need to see Miss Strange, you need Slush.”
“No . . .” she whispered. “If brother finds out he’ll try to protect me and that is exactly what the Queens want. Their next move will be planned around it.”
“That what Catherine said?”
Vicky snorted, finally getting over her tears at least. “I’m a Welf; I think I can notice a manipulation so crass as this one.”
“Guess I forgot with all them smiles and sunshine,” I teased her.
I got a very sad smile for my efforts. “I stood up to her yesterday. First hour of the year, as soon as she made her speech about how she expected us to be perfect students and to not question her orders under any circumstances, that she would accept nothing less than complete obedience,” Vicky explained. “So I . . . was quite condescending, not just for me, but for the whole class . . . still, I got very carried away.”
I nodded. “The Welf flowed through you.”
“I told her she wasn’t even of blue blood much less a real queen, just an advisor to be ignored if we wished it, that we were all Ultras, and . . .”
The words stopped as she studied her wrist again.
“And?” I prompted.
“This afternoon she told me that Administration wanted me for a question on the Lighthouse Club forms. I’m club secretary now, so . . . Two Blackjacks were waiting in the Park. They gagged me and dragged me here. They didn’t touch me, didn’t even threaten me. They just made me wait in this stall until Catherine came and then . . . she nodded and they turned into wild beasts. She said ‘enough’ after a minute or so. I think it was only that long. They made sure not to hit my face, just my stomach and shoulders and . . . why are people mean like that, King Henry? I never . . . I never saw meanness until I came to school. I read about it, but . . . Mother is strict but never mean.”
Sometimes I forget how closed off Vicky’s childhood was. Other than dinner guests or pa
rty guests she barely had contact with her peers. No friends as such, not like she had now. She had Welf . . . who could be cruel, but never to his family. Never to his friends even. Just to me.
Ain’t I lucky?
“Lots of reasons,” I decided after awhile. “Those guys do it so they’re not the target. Long as it ain’t them it’s enough. Simple survival shit. And if they enjoy it a little, guess it can’t be all bad then, can it?”
Vicky shuddered. “After I was all bruised then Catherine informed me that I wasn’t to talk to her again this entire year or . . . she would cut the other side of my wrist. That she was just waiting for an excuse to kill a Welf before the year was out and I would do fine if Brother didn’t present himself forthwith. You see, we can’t tell him or . . . he can’t find out about this.”
“Vick . . . your brother and me like to prank each other and we . . . okay, so we hate each other’s guts mostly, but even we stop at the Three Queens. I gotta tell him. You need to tell him. Know you don’t got a whole lot of experience in this field, but keeping it secret don’t work with bullies.”
“You didn’t see her eyes,” was all Vicky said, staring off at nothing.
Of course I have. Every day in the mirror. Just mine are dirt and Catherine’s are the gale. I glanced across the bathroom; saw the earthquake staring back at me. Kill ‘em all. Break everything. Take everything away from each Blackjack down the line and then when you’re finished with them work your way up the Queens, one by one. Teresa to Mary to Catherine. Make them beg for it to stop.
I let out a deep breath, trying to calm down. Good at breaking things. Not so good at putting things back together. Vick needed put back together. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who had never been hit outside of the Winter War before. Didn’t have a mean bone in her body. One of the nicest, sweetest girls I’ve ever met.
What Catherine Hayes had done was like kicking a Carebear or killing a unicorn or . . . one of those horrible acts of callousness so cruel that it even makes a cynic like King Henry Price shake his head at how fucked up some humans are.
Need to deal with the Three Queens. Time has come to do it. Catherine cutting on Miranda and Vick, Teresa trying to burn Val, fuck knows what Mary O’Connell is trying to do with her students’ pee-holes. Needs to be a reckoning. Teachers won’t do it then Ultra Class ’09 will.
But first . . .
“You need Slush on that cut,” I told Vicky.
“It’s not so bad,” she whispered.
“You really don’t want Welf to know?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Alright, then you need to do exactly what I tell you to do to have a shot at it.”
“Miss Strange will tell Brother,” Vicky complained.
“No Miss Strange. First, we’re picking up all the bloody toilet paper. Then we’ll go to the Infirmary and I’ll distract Miss Strange while you steal some Slush,” I ordered.
Vicky’s face lost its color and it wasn’t from the blood loss. “If I get caught—”
“You won’t get caught; I’ll walk you through it.”
“It’s not very badly cut—”
“Vicky,” I said sternly, “the only thing keeping me from hauling you out of this room with your ass over my shoulder, straight to your brother, is this plan. You might want to stop arguing against every point I make and be a good trooper.”
Her blue eyes went wide, but she nodded.
“After we have the Slush we’ll go to Sabine, she’s cool and she’s a student-helper so she’ll apply the Slush for you. While you’re safe with her, I go back into your dorm and get you a new pair of colors for you to change into. Then I walk you back to your class and I take all the blame from your teacher. Got it?”
“Thank you so much, King Henry,” she said like I’m some golden boy hero and not just a ruthless bastard placating her until I could extract some vengeance on her behalf.
I made her stand up and walk out of the stall as I gathered up the bloody toilet paper.
Every piece made the pile larger and larger.
Reckoning. Vengeance. Choose your word, Catherine Hayes.
I’m tired of your shit, you bullying bitch.
[CLICK]
After a long day putting Vicky Welf back together without too many people finding out about it—though I’m pretty sure the secret wouldn’t keep as long as Vicky hoped it would—I returned to my apartment for the night. Even without me telling Welf personally . . . it was the Asylum after all: gossip ran the place. It would get out. Strange would put two and two together and tell Ceinwyn I’d stolen some Slush. Some janitor would report on the blood I couldn’t quite clean all the way up. Even with Slush, Vicky’s new scar would be a curiosity, along with her disappearance for the day and her being seen sneaking around with me.
Wouldn’t be the first time there’d been rumors about the two of us playing around. Welf would hear them, come running to defend his sister’s honor or some other aristocratic Old Mancy bullshit that made me hate the douchebag. Should tell him. Handling the Queens on your own . . . its risky.
But I promised Vicky.
Promises ain’t something I’m known for keeping, but I do try on occasion. When they’re made to the few good people in my life at least. Vicky. Pocket. Val.
I’d never tried a play against the Queens. Welf, Eriksons, Leo Sarducci, plenty of kids. But the Queens . . . you stayed away from them. Stakes were high. Make a play against them and you needed to accept that someone close to you would end up bloody. Someone’s already bloody.
Needed to deal with them.
Embarrass them.
Break their mirage of invincibility Theban-style. Well . . . maybe not Theban-style. Don’t exactly have the Sacred Band at my back. Fucking Asylum, putting all the education in my brain so I can make that joke. I tried to think up a comic reference instead. Break them down like I got a pair of kryptonite gauntlets, Dark Knight Returns-style.
There we go.
The world is back in balance.
Exhausted, I opened my apartment door and stepped inside.
Huh.
Somewhere in all the drama I’d forgotten about Plutarch.
But he hadn’t forgotten about me.
He sat at my couch, watching my TV, drinking my coffee, eating my bacon and potatoes. Someone’s been sleeping in my bed and he’s still there!
“Want me to go get my girlfriend and you can fuck her too?” I asked him, already tired of whatever shit he would be selling before I’d even heard a word.
“Gossip says she dumped you when you pushed too hard for the goods,” Plutarch said in a friendly tone that suggested we were bunkmates at college instead of a master and pupil fighting over where the power equilibrium in our relationship would end up.
I stared at him, not accepting the amount of shit being thrown at me today. Why can’t anything at this place ever be simple? This bastard on one side, Three Queens on the other, still have to worry about Welf at my back.
Should just tell Welf about Vicky, I rebutted myself. Let two of your problems handle themselves. Focus all your energy on Plutarch.
Would’ve been the easy thing to do. The smart thing to do too. Yet . . . But you love punching bullies in the face and ain’t bigger bullies on the planet than the Three Queens. Winter War was a taste. Since then it’d been nice and snippy but no real action. Expected reprisal all the rest of Bi and got nothing. Tri and Quad came and went with nothing more violent than the occasional Blackjack overstepping himself.
Rest of the school suffered on occasion. But no expulsions. No suicides. No serious injuries that couldn’t be explained away like a tiny papercut or a bit of singed hair or some poor bastard holding his crotch cuz he got pee-hole tricked.
Now here we were, second day of the Queens’ last year at the Asylum, and Vicky Welf ended up beaten and bruised in a bathroom stall. Wish it was just over you talking back to her, Vick, really do. But it wasn’t. Was a play. Game was afoot. Gong had sounded. M
ay the odds be forever in your favor. All that shit. Know a game is being played, just don’t know what the name is, what the prize is, or how we’re keeping score.
Be nice if I could put my fucked-up-beyond-all-repair mind on the case.
Only . . . fucking Plutarch got to wave his droopy, old wang in my face.
Look at it, Junior!
White pubes!
More veins than skin!
So must all men fall!
Plutarch kept talking, content with my silent rage, “Pyromancers . . . never understood the attraction to them. Too emotional for a geomancer. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve heard almost hyperbolic praise about your Valentine Ward. The Dale girl never shuts up about her and well, she did beat you to the top of the class, didn’t she, Junior?”
I went to my sink and poured a glass of water to buy some time.
Water, been a whole day of water. Water cleaning up blood. Water washing Vicky’s face. Hydro-anima knitting skin. We get hurt, we always go to water for help. I took a gulp. Didn’t help. “She deserved it. She’s better than me,” I eventually whispered, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. Guess that don’t make me much of a perfect stoic geomancer.
“Now you’re sizing up a floromancer girl,” Plutarch stated like I’d picked a spice from a rack to flavor our dinner with. “Good for some fun, but never a serious choice for a geomancer. All those roots get under our skin.”
He knew about Naomi. How the hell did he know about Naomi? That was before I even met him. No way rumors on our potential date got out by now, especially since Naomi wouldn’t spread rumors about herself. “Suppose you always liked cold bitch cryomancers, Pappy?”
Plutarch sucked on the gap in his teeth like I’d offended him. “Don’t they teach anything about Anima Personalization at this school anymore?”
I shrugged. “More of a guideline really.”
“Cryomancers will never sexualize a geomancer. It doesn’t happen. Just like a male aeromancer or a female mentimancer being born.”
“Explains why Hope Hunting finds me so repellant I suppose,” I looked on the bright side of things.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 23