Vicky Welf so out of sorts that even manners had deserted her. What the hell happened while I was in Plutarch’s hole?
.
.
.
I really need to watch out with how I describe this situation to people or else there’ll be some serious misunderstanding . . .
Someone visualizes me fucking an eighty-year-old black guy in the ass and they might die.
Did you die, kiddies?
Like I’m that lucky.
“Wasn’t available yesterday,” I explained to Vicky. “Should’ve been, but I wasn’t. Plutarch kind of . . . locked me up. Took all day to get out of there and then I was . . . covered in sweat and needed a shower. Fell asleep on my feet after that. Here now if you need me though.”
Never been good at apologizing, even when it ain’t my fault.
Vicky swallowed her cantaloupe slowly. She even took a sip of orange juice to buy a few extra seconds to think. “It’s fine, it’s not your fault then,” she eventually said.
I blinked. “What?”
“And I’m sorry too,” she said delicately, “about the . . . the spectro-poster. I’ll take it down if the teachers haven’t already.”
I blinked again. Did my Stone Cold Steve Austin impression again too, “What?”
Vicky studied the ceiling. “I thought . . . I thought the opportunity to get Brother hurt was too much for you to pass up and that you were the one who put the photo where he could see it.”
“First of all, Vicky Welf, when ain’t I ever kept a promise I made to you?” I asked, getting just a little bit angry myself.
“I said I’m sorry, King Henry!” She sipped some more orange juice, still not meeting my gaze. “I’ve never been beaten up in the bathroom before or then interrogated about it before or even had Slush used on a wound before. I’m frazzled.”
“I forgive you—” I started.
“Also, you did promise not to sleep with any of my friends and I’m pretty sure you’ve broken that one,” she interrupted.
I faked a gasp. “I would never sleep with Makayla . . . or . . . or with Genesis?”
“Was that a question?” Vicky asked, glancing at both her friends.
I swiftly distracted her with my second point. “What spectro-poster?”
It was outside the main door of the Cafeteria where everyone would see it as they headed to class. Like neon, but without a single tube, just glowing lights floating in the air, blasting colors as long as the spectro-anima powering them lasted. King Henry Price, School Gigolo, it said on top. Low Rates for Such A Tiny Package (Not Just My Height), it said at the bottom. Between them was a cartoon version of me with my coat and undershirt off, flexing my muscles.
Genesis and Makayla had stayed behind to eat their breakfasts, but Vicky blushed at the sight of it. “I’m frazzled,” she said as way of yet another apology. “Do you hate me now?”
“Hate you? I’ve never been prouder of you! I might have to start hiring you for some of my plays now . . .”
“That is the kind of talk that made me think you gave the photo to Brother,” Vicky pointed out.
“About that . . .”
“Whoever it was, someone took a picture of me while I was still . . . before you found me. Or just after. They taped it on Brother’s door so he saw it yesterday morning.” Vicky sighed. “He reacted predictably.”
The male students streaming by on either side of us kept giving me a thumbs-up. The girls snickered and laughed. “How’d you know what I look like without my shirt on?” I mused aloud.
Vicky glared at me, still not back to her usual sunshine and sparkles. “Genesis had some pointers. So did Makayla. Really, am I the only girl at this school you haven’t bedded?”
Maybe I banged both of them . . .
Man-whore, I know!
There’s even a sign about it now!
“Nah. There’s plenty. Big club really. Miranda. Isabel. Catherine Hayes.”
“Eww.”
“Commenting on which girl?”
“Catherine, of course! Miranda’s very helpful in the Library when you need to find a book and she gave me the recipe for her blueberry muffins when she didn’t have to and they’re amazing!”
“Wait . . . Miranda bakes? Does everyone bake at this school and I just don’t know about it? Some kind of baking cabal running things behind my back?”
“And Isabel is very sweet in her own way. She taught me how to dribble a basketball you know, not a very feminine thing to do for a young lady Welf, so my tutors never taught me.”
That was Vicky Welf Speak for ‘she’s just a little special, but it’s not her fault the poor thing.’
“What did your brother do then? Inform the Royal Guard and Scotland Yard and all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men couldn’t put Catherine Hayes together again?”
“He confronted me about the photo.”
“I feel like I’m about to get involved in this tale despite the fact I spent the day buried in the dirt.”
Vicky’s mouth stopped halfway open. “Plutarch gave you the Penance of Dirt on your third day? What did you do to him?!?”
“I tried to punch him. So what I usually do to people. Ain’t no reason to bury a person in the ground . . .”
Vicky shook her head at me. “Really, King Henry, you and first impressions.”
“Did okay by you.”
Some light finally showed through a Vicky Welf smile. “Only because you taught me so many new words.”
“How is it you know about the Dirty Pendant thing anyway?”
She got on her haughty Welf face as she ticked down branches of her family tree. “My great grandfather was Guild Master of the Guild of Artificers you know. He was very old even before I was born, but I still remember when he would visit and some of the other Guild members would accompany him.”
“I thought he was Dean before the Lady?”
“That was his father. My great great grandfather.”
“You have too much family, Vick.”
“Now you know how much pressure brother is always under.”
“Yeah, those douchebags get dangerous when they get too full.”
Vicky slapped me on the shoulder. “Shush with that.”
We stared at the spectro-poster some more.
“Will it go away?” I asked.
“Eventually . . . in a few hours or so. If I don’t touch it up now and again . . .”
“Small cock joke though, really?”
“I was frazzled.”
“What did Welf do?”
“He has a name.”
“Nah, pretty sure he’s just an amalgamation of your family lines burst into being. Like an anima concentration, only for Old Mancy families.”
Vicky glanced away from her handiwork, noting her class as they piled out of the Cafeteria with the other students. Catherine Hayes wasn’t present. Which was suspicious. “He questioned me about what happened and I told him the truth. I imagine that he will eventually work up the courage to thank you for providing me assistance in my time of need. In a week or so. Maybe a month. Probably a month. Or two if you happen to call him a ‘douchebag’ or a ‘fucktard’ between then and now.”
“I look forward to that so much,” I said, “that I’ll be sure to call him names as often as I can.”
Vicky slapped my shoulder again. “Then he went to Mr. Root about it.”
“And here comes the joy.”
“Root took it to the Lady. He doesn’t like the Three Queens.”
“Broken clock and all that.”
“I think he wants them expelled.”
“Yeah, he’s like that.” I didn’t have the heart to tell Vicky that meant execution or a long stay in the Pit when it concerned an Ultra student. Root . . . well, that was right up his alley. Law and Order that guy, and not those happy fun Jerry Orbach seasons either.
“Tell me the Lady calmed things down.”
“She would have, but Catherine admitte
d to doing it.”
. . . What?
“She said it was corporal punishment. That student-advisors are allowed to do so, it’s in the school bylaws,” Vicky explained. “They never removed the law and so she claimed it was perfectly fair to beat me, King Henry! They had to bring out the law books to read through them, all the while Catherine is sitting there smirking. I don’t like the way she looks at us . . . she hates us and I don’t understand why!”
“So she got away with it?” I asked, my own temper rising.
“No . . .” Vicky shook her head. “When it seemed she might get away with it, she came up with her own punishment for ‘being too forceful in her methods’ and agreed to spend forty-eight hours in the Holding Room.”
My whole body started tingling and not in one of the fun ways I usually like to happen. Nah. This was in the Oh-Fuck-is-That-a-Bear? kind of way. “She wanted to be in the Holding Room.”
“Why?” Vicky asked the obvious.
I thought about it. “It’s the best alibi the Asylum can give a person.”
“Why would she need an alibi?” Vicky asked.
Good question.
I didn’t like the answer I came up with.
“Go to your class, stay with them!” I ordered.
“I am not a little girl—”
I met her eyes. Those bright blue eyes that gave her a handsome face instead of a severe one. She’d never be beautiful, but those eyes would make her desired once she found the right guy. He’d gaze into them and he’d adore them. He would dream about them. “Victoria von Welf,” I said, “I need to go save your brother from his own stupidity. To do that I need to know you ain’t an open target. Get to da choppa for me, okay?”
“Fine!”
I ran back toward the Cafeteria, searching either for a teacher, Welf, or the pack of Blackjacks about to ruin his day. “And stop painting half-naked pictures of me!” I called over my shoulder. “People will talk!”
Session 156
The Tsar caught up to me before I could even signal Pocket to stop chatting with JoJo. There’s a group that could share some terrifying information about me between the pair of them . . .
“He was nine the first time I caught him masturbating.”
“Yeah, well, I caught him masturbating nine days in a row.”
“King Henry, stop!” the Tsar called after me.
“Kind of busy getting ready to do the whole gathering-a-posse thing, Igor, can I slot whatever grifting you want to do to me for a later time? Maybe after I have a fake werebull head on a stick?”
“There’s no reason for you to say such things about me! I’ve always dealt true with you, even with Anne’s gun in my face!”
I turned on him and got up in said face just like I had with the other Weres. “I saved your cock getting gnawed off by a nervous stripper, I kept Annie B from kicking you around, I even told JoJo you wanted to talk to her, and what thanks did I get from you? You encouraged my friends to compete in this shitshow, you gave them free tickets even, all the while hoping they’d bring me along with them and why? What does me being here get you?”
He shrugged a massive pair of shoulders. “I thought you would enjoy it?”
“Bullshit.”
“And maybe I hoped you might distract Vega enough for me to be able to run the event the way I want.”
I glanced past him as the semi-circle broke up, finding their guards and guests before they started going their separate ways. JoJo said something to Vega about Pocket and Pocket received the politician’s smile and a handshake. I couldn’t read lips, but something was probably said about keeping me out of trouble and something else about sending his apologies to Welf at a later time.
“Last time we talked, you asked me about the Curator, Igor. Were you smart or were you greedy? Maybe he asked you to slip one of his men into the event? Maybe you did it. Maybe it’s all blown up in your face and you’re about to apologize to me? If you do apologize now instead of me finding out later . . . well, I promise I’ll just beat the shit out of you for being stupid and I won’t even tell Vega or the Learning Council about it.”
Igor cursed in Russian. Not cyka so I was left in the dark. “I was stupid, but not that stupid. He wanted information, that was all. But perhaps it was more than that, no? Perhaps he did slip his agent into my event while I was busy getting him that information. I have to admit to be properly distracted these last few months preparing all this extravagance.”
“What information?”
Igor waved it away.
“What information? It’s the Curator, he don’t get the loose-lips-sink-ships bullshit.”
It pained him, but he still talked. “Legends. Copies of old mancer documents they keep locked up in vaults to not create conspiracy theories. Worker’s Council of United Elementalism isn’t as good at keeping said vaults locked up as your Institution, so I had contacts who could get some of what he wanted, but . . . it was nothing to worry about. Nothing real.”
As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, my stomach felt sick. “World-Breakers?”
Igor’s eyes squinted at me. “I don’t like that you were able to guess that so easily.”
“I knew it,” I whispered to myself more than Igor. Of course Paine wants one for himself after what I did to him. He’ll either steal mine or try to make his own one day. Then it will be real easy for his depopulation plan to go into effect. “What about the name ‘Maximus’? Anything about that?”
“Never heard of it. Just the other thing . . . World-Breakers.”
“Did you make copies?”
Igor smiled smugly. “Very friendly now, aren’t you?”
I studied. Crooked Russian information broker. Talk about a bad stereotype. Worse than T-Bone’s big black wang. “I don’t trust you, Igor, and I don’t know what game you’re playing with me and Vega, but I don’t think you knew this would happen either. I pushed and you reacted the way I thought you would. Plus, there’s the way you fought with both Vega and Castillo . . . you want this event to go the way you planned it. What the Curator did to Jason wasn’t in the plan. So yeah, I’m friendly enough and I’ll forget all about it if you mail me a copy of what you found.”
He nodded. “It can be arranged . . . our slate of favors can again be even if that’s what you wish.”
I put a hand out for him to shake, which he did.
“You know one of them will be trying to kill you now, yes? After you threatened them like that . . . it might be more than half,” Igor pointed out to me.
“They already would’ve with the way Vega threw me out there as his secret poppy weapon.”
Igor snorted. “You are very smart for your age, but you are still thinking like a mancer and not like a shapeshifter. He did the opposite. He claimed you as his in front of them. Working on behalf of his Nation. An attack on you would be an attack on him.”
“That’s ass backwards!”
“I never claimed we were any saner than you mancers, just different.”
I thought about it. “This is all assuming Vega doesn’t want to kill me himself.”
Igor snorted again. “A dangerous assumption to make for the both of us, I think. But don’t worry, you get used to living with a death threat over your head. You even get drunk enough and you’ll sleep through the night.”
“Right, well . . .” I glanced over his shoulder again, noticed Pocket approaching as Vega headed for the exit with JoJo on his arm. The ever present Sharp trailed behind them. “You’re forgiven and we’re even. Now I got to go do the posse thing.”
Igor laughed at me, pulling a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “I think you’ll want to read this and I think you now owe me another favor, King Henry. I was handed this paper by a very pretty woman not long after the accident. It was very frantic with the guards, competitors, and fans rushing about. I was distracted, heading to confront the werebull. By the time I thought to seize her she was gone in the crowd. Did the muddled mind of old age save my li
fe, do you think?”
He handed the note over and I recognized the handwriting as Hope Hunting’s fine, exact cursive.
Fuck me, Igor, you held out the best for last, didn’t you?
“Very tall, almost whitish blond hair? Blue dress ripped in a few places?”
“Jeans and a green blouse too small on her, now that I think about it. But yes to the rest. She’s our Curator spy then? Very beautiful to be a spy—in my day they were all grumpy, bearded men who smelled of liquor. That James Bond is pure British bullshit!”
Isabel. Can even write like them, but can’t fuck like them.
I read it, noticing that the Tsar had already broken it open. “It’s a trap,” he stated.
“I wish,” I admitted, “be quick and easy to handle it if it’s a trap . . . but not with the Curator. Take all that’s happening. Clockwork, that’s how he thinks. Do illegal tests on Sapa, use him to kill Jackson to embarrass the Weres once this is all found out. Plus, Jackson is a Recruiter and the Curator had proven more than once that he doesn’t like them at all . . . so it’s a hit on the Asylum. Hide a spy near Heinrich Welf. On his parents more than him, but why?”
“More complex than you admitted to the others then,” Igor grunted.
“Always complex,” I whispered to myself, fingering the note. “Always ten goals at once. A massive end goal, but reaching in every direction to try to claw your way towards it. Not insane as much as too sane.”
Are you talking about Paine or yourself? Same end goal set to the both of us by Ceinwyn. Paine saw the bigger picture, the more brutal answer. Depopulate the globe, bring Anima Madness to acceptable levels that the Recruiters can deal with. Me . . . it’s personal for me. Don’t care about making sure people don’t get missed, just want to save those who do get missed.
But what do World-Breakers have to do with it?
What does Project Cassandra or being a Maximus like Moira von Welf have to do with it?
What did I unleash when I showed him what a World-Breaker could do?
What are we both heading towards?
What’s the game?
And what does he do now that I broke this part of the game board?
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 38