She was an Ultra.
Winddancer.
A strong one.
The strongest since Ceinwyn Dale, that’s what people in the know whisper.
Don’t like that at all about her. Don’t like she just gets away with it all since she’s strong and special and just . . . fuck her. A little hypocritical of me since I get the same breaks due to being an Artificer. But there’s lines, man. Even a damaged-beyond-all-repair kid like King Henry Price knows there’s lines. You don’t beat someone just for the hell of it. Got to have a reason for it. Even if it’s a shitty reason like the crap I came up with to protect Welf by sending him to the Infirmary.
Time that takes me to come up with the society-acceptable reason is the only thing keeps me from being a real monster.
Catherine said ‘fuck it’ to reasons a long time ago.
She was powerful, she was beautiful, she was a sociopath. The world, even the mancer world, ain’t designed to deal with those three facts of life joining together. She accepts the world’s punishments, whatever futile half-measures they were, and cuts right through them to her goal.
We’re a lot alike . . . except for the whole beautiful part.
Funny to think it might be me being five-foot-eight if I’m lucky, my scarred cheek, my broken nose, and my dirt eyes that kept me from being a true monster. She thinks she’s the god damned Morningstar, I don’t even like being a king of dirt. Petty thug, ma’am, ain’t ever claimed to be more.
Petty thug dealing with the Devil.
Catherine was reading a book when the door opened. A Game of Thrones, why do I get the feeling she’s using it as a How To guide? Another one of those intellectually active women the Asylum likes to produce. Stealing books to read about the Mancy or spending hours with comics is one thing, ain’t ever read any literature that Jethro Smith didn’t force into me during Languages.
I studied her for a second with my usual first glance I gave to every woman I came into contact with, be it the first time or the hundredth. Fucking hot, no doubt about it. Willowy, with long limbs and a thin waist. Just enough hip for there to be a curve, same with her chest. Gorgeous face, long honey blond hair. She looked peaceful, even pleasant, enjoying the words she read—despite the fact she’d just orchestrated an attempt at . . . whatever she attempted.
I still wasn’t sure on that.
Big problem with Catherine Hayes is that she’s so good at faking it, at winning your affection. But the minute she doesn’t need you or you displease her . . . I’m sorry, but I’m leaving and I’m taking your balls with me. I have a collection. If you want to see them again then come on by sometime and I’ll point out which ones are yours.
The door shut behind me and she finally looked up. For just a moment there was something agitated in her green eyes, followed by consideration on what my arrival in the Holding Room could mean. Carefully, she marked her page and put down her book. All her attention came to bear on me as I crossed the sphere, down and then up to the other side where she sat.
I chose a spot two beds down from her.
“Thought you might like some company,” I said through a mouth that showed canines.
“How considerate of you,” she said, giving away nothing.
There’s something detached about Catherine’s voice. About the way she speaks. Like she’s far away and the words just barely reach you, then in a flash they’re right up in your face, slashing away with an exact precision.
“Knocked Welf out again,” I supplied further, “put him in the Infirmary. Just can’t help myself.”
“If you really wanted him hurt more than you wanted to inflict the hurting, you would have left him where he was,” she retorted.
“There’s taking someone down a peg and then there’s cutting off their legs at the knees . . . and then there’s picking on his kindhearted sister. That was your mistake, involving me in the play.”
Her hand reached out like she meant to feel the breeze in her finger tips, but there was nothing there. Outside of an air-grate at the top of the room, the Holding Room is sterile. They even check your pockets and pat you down before you enter. Anything that could be used for anima-conjuration is removed, even if there is no anima inside of the Holding Room. No chances. At all. Except for clothes. If I did find some way to beat the system then I suppose I could turn my zipper into the world’s smallest knife. Wonder if Pocket can manipulate cotton, it comes from a plant, right? Cuz if he can make girls’ clothes fall off at will, our friendship is gonna get even stronger.
Catherine pulled her hand back in. “I love this room. Everyone else fears it and yet . . . it’s so peaceful. No current to catch your eye, no anima to confuse you, no need to worry if your calculations are your own, or the power within you controlling your actions. I always have to read the currents and when I’m busy with them . . . my calculations become flawed.”
“Yup, I fucked it all up for you.”
“Why?” she asked plainly.
“Not worried they’re listening in?”
“No cameras, no bugs, I’ve checked many times . . . even the schematics for the room,” Catherine informed me.
My eyes showed some monster, my teeth itched to rip her head off. “Not worried you’re all alone with me and there’s no anima to back you up in here?”
It wasn’t just monster, but also pure spite that showed in Catherine’s return gaze. “Go ahead. Rip my colors off, King Henry. Put your hands around my throat; see if you can choke the wind out of my lungs. Manhandle me; get every thrust in until you’ve spent everything you have to give. I’ll enjoy every one of them. I’ll scratch at your eyes; I’ll bite at your neck. At the end of your rage you’ll be nothing more than an obstacle that I’ve bypassed and I’ll have every bit of leverage on you I’ll ever need. You would be expelled and sent to the Pit and no one will be left to save Heinrich von Welf or your precious Vicky.”
“ . . . That sounds like a bad idea I’m thinking . . .”
“Or . . . perhaps I’d keep you. Think about what a Blackjack you’d make. The fearsome Foul Mouth siding with the Three Queens. The entire school would quake with terror; they would scuttle around us like vermin, especially Heinrich von Welf. He wouldn’t sneer down at us then, no matter our low births.”
I grunted at that nightmare. “We both know that if I did anything to you in this room, if I even . . . slap you upside the head to try to straighten out that fucked up brain of yours—much less the pure horror show of imagination you just spouted—that you’ll kill me.”
She smiled at me, friendly. “I very much would . . . eventually.”
“One of the many reasons I’m just leaving this to words. I might not have morals, but I still got a soul, Kitty Cat.”
“Is that why you saved him?” she repeated.
“What did I save him from?”
“An embarrassment he would never be able to walk away from.”
“Not a beating then.”
“No. Beatings are just tools to get the pieces in place. The only way you get someone to expel themselves or to kill themselves is to make them want it all to end. A beating won’t do that.”
I nodded. “You really are the top queen, ain’t you? Made both Mary and Teresa want to give in, did you?”
“We share many strengths and faults, the three of us,” Catherine admitted. “But . . . it comes back to you being here, I suppose. I was always this way, always will be this way, even in this room. They’re only allowed to even approach my zenith due to the Mancy. It skews gender politics and societal norms, doesn’t it? More than half of the Learning Council is made up of women. The Dean is a woman. Head of Recruiting, also a woman . . . and likely to be the next Dean after that . . . the horrible bitch.
“Mary and Teresa only exist in this world where women know no man can overpower them. Where they can burn their eyes out or drown them even if they’re in the Sahara. Put here in the Holding Room with you they would bribe you with treasure or throw themselves at yo
u to distract you or point out how big and bad the Blackjacks are . . . all the old tricks, but . . . you would have all the power based on a fluke of chromosomes and testosterone.
“I know this because this is the room where I beat them. Where I made them want to give up and follow along behind me instead of snipping at my every plan. They showed their bellies and I gave them a pat on each head and whispered into their ears about how much fun the three of us would have together.
“I won. The Holding Room is my Gettysburg, my Hastings, my Waterloo, and you think I fear you on this hallow ground?
“Never.”
All through the speech she leaned closer and closer towards me, until I almost expected her to attack me, but now she straightened up her posture. She also smiled at me. It was so similar to another aeromancer I knew that it made me uncomfortable. “I don’t need anima. I’m a queen from B.C. to A.D. All I have to do is show you my fangs and you know that this bitch bites back, don’t you?”
Am I supposed to be impressed? I think I’m a little impressed.
I couldn’t help but visualize a bunch of Germans standing around in 1935 nodding at each other, agreeing, ‘He’s a crazy son-of-a-bitch and his art sucks, but he sure is good at yelling!’
You’re just horny from the Valentine breakup. Show Catherine you don’t need fangs to hurt her, have some fun with Naomi, and you’ll be back to your old self.
Plus . . . she called Ceinwyn a bitch.
Only fourteen-year-old-me gets to do that!
“Why’d I do it?” I asked myself this time, repeating her original question. “I don’t like bullies, but mostly . . . everything that’s bad about Welf—that viewing people as only pieces shit, thinking of them as who their father was or how many generations of mancer they can count backwards or their grade or what they can offer you—you’re worse.
“I got a lot of flaws. Whole heaps of ‘em. But I’ve always been good at viewing people as people. Fucked up, not perfect, sure. Cheat on their girlfriend, gamble, hate their own child, like reading Twilight, yeah, all that. But I view them as people. I see what they are and I don’t flinch away from it. If I like them enough, then I even revel in their faults with them . . . revel in the faults of society as a whole even. Make a sexist joke, say something stereotypical about races—just bury myself in shit to remind everyone that it’s coming out of their own asshole too.
“Inside of all that flowing shit I’m sifting through, I occasionally find a good person, a golden nugget of something special. Vicky Welf is one of those. You took her trust in you, that the Asylum invested in you as a student-advisor, and you crushed her. You smeared her in shit like all the rest. You beat her and cut her. So . . . this bitch bit back.”
She thought about it for a time. Again her hand reached out, found no currents, and returned to her lap. “I’m chastised I suppose,” she finally said. “I’ll leave Vicky alone. But her brother . . . her brother pays.”
“For thinking he’s better than you?”
Catherine’s green eyes went hard, saw nothing but memory. “For the sins of his father and his mother.”
“Do tell.”
“Never.”
I considered it. Why fight for Welf? Let Welf and Jason and Hope handle Catherine. Vicky’s my friend, not them. I’d defend a lot of people in my class, but Welf? It would hurt Vicky if he got expelled. But she’d survive it, right? And Welf was a Welf, as he happily reminded everyone, he’d be fine. There would be tutors, maybe even his mother. If the shame didn’t kill him. That would really hurt Vicky. Hurt Vicky about as much as . . .
It must have been the room that made the thought rise up to the top: as much as Mom dying hurt me. As much as JoJo and Susan running away hurt me.
Why Vicky have to be so likeable? Pocket too . . . Val, Raj. Why they all so likeable? So likeable they even like me. Why couldn’t there be more cold-heart bitches like Hope in my life? Or annoying know-it-alls like Miranda?
Miranda . . . annoying know-it-all. But not too bad when she doesn’t think she has to prove herself to those around her.
Miranda . . . the girl Catherine has been tormenting with papercuts for days.
Because.
Because why not?
Got to have a reason.
‘Because why not?’ makes you a bully.
Don’t like bullies.
Sometimes . . . simple logic is the best in a complicated situation.
“No deal,” I said.
“I’ll crush you too then,” Catherine casually informed me.
“And I’ll crush back.”
“Back to punching are we?” she mocked me.
“No. Fuck with me or mine . . . know what? Change that up. I’m feeling magnanimous to the Asylum, so I’ll include every single student here. No . . . know what? The janitors and the Cafeteria ladies? We’ll include them too. You even think about hurting anyone this year? I’ll make you pay. I’ll hurt you where it counts.
“I’ll make you want to kill yourself.”
Again, Catherine only smiled. Again, too recognizable for comfort. The Cheshire Cat grin. How’s it going, Alice? What will you do next? Which way will you jump? But this smile . . . this smile didn’t wait to see where you would jump. This smile made you jump where it wanted you to.
Fifty stories to the sidewalk.
[CLICK]
“Sit down in the chair and don’t move until I order you to, Junior.”
“It wasn’t—”
“And don’t talk either. You talk and I might bury you in the dirt again.”
One of your parents ever catch you having sex?
Did without that one myself. Not out of any subtlety. Ain’t a subtle person now and fourteen-year-old-me? Well, you’ve met him, kiddies. His luck and my luck of avoiding that fiasco just has to do with me not being around my parents. Mom and her ‘Bad Days,’ Dad with his work schedule. Not like I even had sex in my house. Was always at Sally’s when her mom was gone.
Then . . . well, I got shipped off to the Asylum, didn’t I?
I imagine that other me, the one who never went to the Asylum, the eighteen-year-old never graduated high-school, who knocked up Sally junior year—no biggie, she took care of it and he starting stealing condoms—I think that guy got caught in the act a few times. I wonder if his mom is still alive. Wonder what he does for a living. Probably steals cars. Getting ‘lucky’ finding unlocked ones. Keeps seeing messages in the dirt though. Thinks he might be going crazy.
That fucker? He got caught in the act, not me. But Plutarch bursting his way into the Holding Room and finding me and Catherine Hayes sniping at each other? Felt exactly how I imagine it would feel. Know our faces looked a lot like how Dad and JoJo’s did when he’d catch her.
Girl wanted to get caught far as I’m concerned.
Wanted a reason to run.
Wanted a reason to hurt Old Man Price for his inability to save Mom.
For his inability to protect her from that pain.
Now that I’ve graduated, I should track JoJo down. Know I should. Hire a private detective or two with all the money Ceinwyn has fronted me. But I haven’t. Scared what I’ll find, I think.
But enough of my fucked up family.
Let’s focus on my mentor.
Who busted me out of the Holding Room way quicker than I wanted to be busted out. Figured I’d have until Jethro Smith manned up enough to tell the Lady about everything that happened, but nope: Plutarch’s little fairy spies watched from down below.
Didn’t do enough, I thought, now at his big kitchen table. Didn’t get through to her. She’s just added me to the equation. I needed to do something. Catherine looked at me like she looked at Teresa or Mary or . . . anyone who wasn’t Catherine, I guess. That’s a megalomaniac for you. Least I focus on other people and put ‘em on a pedestal that probably only exists in my mind, right?
First Rule of Being a Mancer: keep your crazy manageable.
Megalomania?
Too much
work!
“Pool anima,” Plutarch ordered as he returned from his second floor, a metal box in his scarred hands.
I did so, still sulking over being caught in the act.
Need a play—a hot route—an emergency to get her attention.
What if she went right back at Vicky?
What if she went after Val?
I’ll kill her and go to the Pit and die a happy prisoner, that’s what will happen!
If Val doesn’t go Boomworm on Catherine’s ass in the first place. Stop panicking and focus on a solution, Price.
Plutarch sat his box on the table. He went about carefully pulling samples out of it. Piece of granite. Bit of dirt. Piece of iron, of steel, and of gold. Few types of gems and minerals and a clump of glass. All of it went on the table in a neat row.
“Shouldn’t I be teaching my History class at the moment?” I asked.
Plutarch glowered at me, lining up the objects left to right in front of me. “Administration will have already assigned a substitute.”
“Except no one bothered to inform anyone in charge that I was ever in the Holding Room,” I pointed out.
“Maudette might not have concentrations at her side, but I assure you she knows more than anyone about what is happening in this school. I also assure you that she has already sent out a search party for that idiot punk rocker responsible for this situation. If he’s smart then he’s already made it to Reno.” Back into the box Plutarch went, coming out with a pen and a manila folder. “Have a pool?”
“Sure.”
“An exact one?”
“Feels right. Ain’t this Russell Quilt’s job? And didn’t I pass the Ultra test four years ago? You’re just fucking with me right? More punishment?”
“Manipulate the dirt as much as you can before your pool runs out,” Plutarch ordered some more without missing a beat.
I did so, making the dirt form the words ‘fuck’ and ‘you’ and most of ‘Pappy’ before it wore off.
Plutarch’s white eyebrows rose on his face as he marked down some numbers. “Pool again.”
I did, still bitching, “I mean, ain’t this about you teaching me? So far you haven’t taught me anything but how to get dirt out of my ass crack.”
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 45