“I need a baseline for what you’re capable of, Junior. That’s what this test is for. You don’t want me focusing on teaching you mineral formation when you’re dreadful at it, do you?”
“I already told you what I want to know from you: how to make artifacts.” We were still snippy and fighting with each other, but it was all half-hearted on my side. All I could think about was showing up Catherine somehow. Punching her wouldn’t work, that was clear. My signature move lacks utility for this kind of situation. Turning Mary or Teresa or even the Blackjacks against her would take all year, if it could even be done.
I needed something quicker. Something I could do in a few days. I had a bit of time, time while Catherine planned how to embarrass Welf another way. She probably had a diary full of them titled “My Mysterious Revenge on the Welf Lineage.”
Plutarch pointed at the iron and I turned it into a middle finger with all four accompanying buddies, though they weren’t as detailed as I would’ve liked with only a single pool to work with. Plutarch nodded in appreciation and said, “Again.”
Boring. Five minutes of my life disappearing into tiny manipulations of the various elements earth represented in the Mancy. All for a baseline. Even for a baseline that seemed to be impressing Plutarch, it was boring as shit.
I brooded. I didn’t even know what had happened with Hope’s all female gank squad. What did they do to Mary and Teresa when they found them? Strip them and run them through the Cafeteria? Tie them up and leave them in a janitor closet? Just tell them to back off? Have the most awesome lesbian orgy of all time and I WASN’T AROUND TO TAPE IT?!?!?!?
Steel was easier than iron, gold tougher, sand too fine for my taste, and gems have never been my thing. The minutes of pooling kept stacking up and getting harder for me to hit my five-minute mark. We’d been at it for about an hour when Plutarch finally snapped at me, “What the hell is the matter with you, Junior?”
I snarled at the lump of glass, the very last piece of earth I’d have to manipulate. Despite my promises, Plutarch seemed doubtful I’d succeed at it. Or hopeful, the rat bastard. “Spies didn’t tell you everything?”
“They aren’t mentimancers, they can’t see into your mind. Also . . . they’re not the most versed at the English language. Mostly they draw and I guess.” Plutarch shrugged at the whole process. “Does it have to do with the girl in the Holding Room? That your girlfriend I always hear about?”
I squinted at him. “You know all the students at the Asylum, but you’ve never actually seen any of the names the fairies report on, have you?”
“An imperfect system,” Plutarch stated.
“Maybe you should leave your house more.”
“I’d miss Murder, She Wrote.”
“That wasn’t Val,” I muttered, “that was Catherine Hayes.”
Plutarch paused in some bit of note taking. “The one who bullied the girl you saved the other day?”
“Vicky Welf. Apparently you knew her great grandfather.”
“I did. I think you would call him a ‘douchebag.’”
“Nice to know it’s genetic . . .”
“And you warned Catherine Hayes not to do it again?” Plutarch asked.
“I tried to understand her and reason with her and yeah, I told her I’d defend anyone she bullied, even the damn janitors.” My snarl at the lump of glass grew. “I’m tired of her shit. Papercutting people just to see them flinch . . .”
Plutarch put down his folder and pen carefully so I couldn’t see his notes. “Seems rather noble for you.”
“Yeah . . . totally in my usual stupidity level though.”
“It’s not your fight, Junior. Your fight is to learn how to create an artifact.”
“If you ever teach me,” I growled. This pool was almost six-minutes long and it still wasn’t at the five-minute standard. I felt exhausted. Who pools for over an hour straight like this back to back? I’d pooled more since Plutarch found me in the Holding Room than I did most days as a Quad.
“I will, Junior.” Plutarch glanced at his folder, at the last remaining lump of glass, and then shook his head like he was surprised. “You’re important to me, to us—the school and the Guild—you’re the future.”
“Talks nice to me when he wants me to do something his way,” I mumbled. Almost there and I’m putting that piece of glass where the sun don’t shine, Pappy.
“I know what it’s like to be a teenager—”
I snorted.
“—but you can’t risk yourself for other people like this.”
“I SHOULDN’T EVEN FUCKING HAVE TO!” I erupted, surprising the both of us. I didn’t stop. “You should handle it. Miss Dale should handle it. The Lady should handle it. Someone should handle it. Catherine Hayes is trying to embarrass Heinrich Fucking Von Fucking Welf, your Old Mancy Golden Boy, in such a way that he leaves the Asylum in shame. She already got a girl to commit fucking suicide! Every time I get bullshit about how you guys would have to kill the Three Queens or lock them up and . . . you know what? Fucking do it! Fucking lock them up! Fucking kill them before they hurt anyone else!”
I was tired and exhausted from both the Queens and from Plutarch, I’d just pooled a shit-ton of anima and most of all: I was frustrated that Catherine seemed invincible. None of my usual threats could work and she was good enough at the game that even if I drugged her with testosterone and she grew hair on her chest or something stupid, she’d catch me at it and I’d be the one in trouble. That’s how she did it. The aeromancer way. Disappear and cut, disappear and cut, impossible to catch.
I pushed myself up from the table, the burst of emotion enough to find my pool and threw the anima into the glass. I put my hands near it, threading anima from each finger, pulling and maneuvering them through the glass like an invisible Cat’s Cradle. When I had it just right I released the anima and suddenly that lump of glass morphed into a miniature dragon, exactly like the statue in Plutarch’s backyard.
“There! Done! Can I go now?”
Plutarch stared at the tiny dragon without answering. Eventually he let out a long breath through his nose, like he had just accepted something momentous. Putting up with my ass for three years probably. He reached out and picked up the dragon. Apparently testicular ebola was spreading through the faculty, cuz he had it too judging by the expression that blossomed over his face.
“Go sit on the couch,” he ordered again, though this time with a softer voice. “I’ll get us some beer.”
.
.
.
Free beer?
[CLICK]
Free beer!!!
And in walks the Lady.
Now I have the testicular ebola.
Well, the Lady doesn’t so much walk as scuttle, but still . . . who has testicular ebola?
This guy!
We kind of stared at each other. Me with a beer at my lips very much practicing the art of underage drinking and her pointing her four-pronged cane at me with those four rubber tennis-balls aimed right at my face.
The tennis-balls did not have testicular ebola.
“I remind you he’s the adult here,” I sold out Plutarch and finally took another swig of beer. “He’s the one plying me with booze for the upcoming statutory anal rapeage.”
“Maudette,” Plutarch greeted the old bag, not unkindly. “Glad you could join us for this conversation.”
The Lady sniffed through a nose filled with twisted white hairs that were trying to escape the corpse they currently inhabited. “You should have called me then, Paul. Your phone still works, even if it is a rotary.”
“I needed to test my newest pupil’s elemental metrics,” Plutarch gave as explanation.
To my surprise, the Lady didn’t seem to mind the booze at all. Bigger fish to fry or dragons to slay or strokes to avoid. She sat down in a rocker across from the couch, carefully checking to make sure she didn’t sit on her tits. Once she was down on her boney ass, she let out a sigh of relief. “You found him t
hen.”
“You knew that yesterday.”
“When you didn’t come to my door this morning begging me to send out Wolfgang with his pack, yes. Of course, I was distracted by the issue with the Welf girl being assaulted and didn’t have the time to come to yell at the pair of you fools until right this instant. Moira von Welf . . . I cried in my tea when I found out she convinced Frederick to marry her. Of course, he didn’t have any choice, not after she was pregnant. Now there was a scandal. Fighting off all the other parents and their sudden surge of old-fashioned religious values, making special accommodations for Moira to have a house of her own with a nanny and even a wet nurse for little Heinrich.
“Welfs . . . still causing me trouble,” she finished, her old eyes on me at the end. “Especially with you lighting all these fires.”
“I didn’t start shit,” I rebutted. “Pappy threw me in the dirt while I was in the process of fixing it. Now I’m just batting cleanup.”
“The Three Queens,” the Lady said.
“He wants to know why we won’t imprison or euthanize them, Maudette,” Plutarch grumbled. “Hence the alcohol, since I’ve never figured it out myself.”
The Lady crackled with laughter. “Thank the stars you never had to give anyone ‘the Talk,’ Paul. How did he test then?”
“I don’t think it would be a good idea—”
“It’s impossible to inflate King Henry’s opinion of himself; it’s at capacity, I assure you.”
“That hurt my feels,” I grumbled before downing what remained in my bottle.
Plutarch left the room for a moment, returning with his manila folder. He handed it to the Lady and me another beer.
“I know you’re treating me like a two-year-old after her binky and I don’t care,” I told him as I popped open the top with a small burst of geo-anima.
Free beer!!!
The Lady leafed through the folder, eyebrows rising as she read. “I’ll be dipped in horse-shit,” she pronounced once she finished.
“Strongest I’ve ever taught,” Plutarch agreed.
“By quite a margin.”
“All that about getting a house for Moira von Welf,” I said, frowning as I tried to work out the details, “you saying she was still a student when she had Welf?”
The Lady stared at me.
“Ain’t that impossible?”
“Do the math,” Plutarch suggested.
I did the math and then started laughing.
The Lady sat down Plutarch’s folder, rolling her eyes at me. “Mr. Welf was born here. Victoria was not. Summer break and winter holidays, she almost stalked him from mancer gathering to mancer gathering. Frederick never could keep his hands off younger women.”
I kept laughing. “It’s so good!” I wheezed, “but no, really, go back to me having a huge geomancer cock.”
“You show high levels of control, you have talents in glass, steel, iron, and dirt, with above average pooling speed, and a pooling endurance beyond your age,” Plutarch summarized the report, even if he never did let me read the damn thing. “You’re very special. Too special to be as reckless as you are. Leave your fellow students to Maudette and the other teachers; focus on learning what it takes to be an Artificer.”
“Hey, I don’t want to do anything with the Three Queens,” I pointed out. “They’re the ones that keep causing troubles.”
“Yes, King Henry is an angel, Paul,” the Lady drawled with another roll of her eyes.
“If his name is Paul then how’d he become Plutarch?” I asked to satisfy some more curiosity. Free beer! I thought again and took another swig.
The Lady smiled and Plutarch sighed, so I knew it was good.
“Not as complicated as imagined and toga parties were involved,” the Lady hinted but didn’t expound. “As for the Three Queens . . . Ceinwyn told me she already had this conversation with you.”
“She did.”
“And you understood the stakes involved,” the Lady led me.
“I lived with the world being fucked up, with the only way to fix it being even more fucked up. Then Teresa tried to burn Val. Then Catherine papercuts Miranda. Then they put a beating on a nice, friendly girl like Vicky Welf. Then I have a talk with Catherine about power dynamics in mancer society . . . what’s a guy to do with the big badass geomancer cock he’s got, but to wave it around a little and mark his territory?”
Both the Lady and Plutarch blinked.
“Was there a point to that beside self glorification?” the Lady eventually asked.
“The Three Queens are coming for the Welfs.”
“Now the Welfs know and now the faculty knows and measures will be taken to protect them and to remind Catherine, Teresa, and Mary of the possible punishments if they’re caught or deemed responsible,” the Lady lined out, step by step.
“That’s not enough,” I snapped. “A message needs to be sent.”
“It has been,” the Lady said.
“The Holding Room? She likes it in there.”
“We know that; it also calms her down,” the Lady pointed out to me.
“Then lock her up for good.”
“Based on what she might do?”
“Because she’s fucking evil!”
The Lady smiled over that like it was only a comment someone younger than her would make. “Many mancers are fucking evil. She had a very troubled childhood, more troubled than your own. Teresa and Mary’s weren’t much better. You know them as the Three Queens, but I remember them when they arrived and . . . do you remember what you were like when you arrived, King Henry?”
I took an emergency swig to buy time. “Yeah, so?”
“Do you think they’re any different?”
“They’re worse than I am now, worse now than I was then.”
“Perhaps, but there’s been improvement. Mary’s excited about joining the Rejuvenation Society next year. Teresa has thoughts of ESLED, though I doubt she’ll pass the psych-evaluations. Catherine . . . Catherine is as gifted an aeromancer as any we’ve ever taught at the Asylum . . . expect for Ceinwyn. Catherine Hayes can be whatever or whoever she wants to be when she graduates. It would be a pity to throw that all away for something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“She wants some payback on the Welfs for whatever reason she wants it,” I growled.
Another mysterious smile. “That we won’t give her. But we will see her graduate and given a chance. We also won’t take her away from her family. She has one of those, King Henry. Just like you, even if it’s not perfect, it’s still there. Would you have wanted me to do as Mordecai desired and sent you to the Artificial Prison until you confessed the location of the Staff that first year? Would you have wanted me to make that call to your mother?”
I glared.
Low blow into the fuckballs.
“I thought not. Still . . . you make a good point about the dangers of Catherine getting the best of Catherine and doing something foolish. We’ll be taking her Sundays away from her as a safeguard, which she can spend in the Holding Room. I doubt she’ll have expected that severity from me for her little run-in with Victoria, but she needs the reminder . . . and it should limit her time to conspire. It will also keep Mary and Teresa away from her influence, won’t it? They’re better when they’re split up. That’s our hope, after they graduate. Those two will be given extra responsibilities, I think. We’ll bury them in paperwork, the Institution way!”
And if that’s not enough? I asked myself. They have family. So what? Hitler had family! Don’t mean you should repeat a Chamberlin with the Three Queens! Yes, I just went Godwin! I got nothing else!
I’m fucking pissed!
Rawr!
“Let it go,” the Lady added. “You don’t have the traits of a protector, King Henry. Focus on your studies. Trust in Mr. Welf to protect both himself and his sister. Perhaps even the other way around? Let us not discount Victoria Welf, after all. Besides, even if you tried to be everywhere at every moment—there’s only
one of you—and according to Paul’s notes you’re not the type of geomancer who should ever play with fairies . . .”
Session 158
Bloody.
Bruised.
Drugged up.
Not the condition you want to be in when making life altering decisions, but . . . oh well!
Mancers who just barely survive a wereviper attack can’t be choosers!
The monk mojo juice got worse by the step. The adrenaline of needing to fight and kill Rojas thinned out in my bloodstream, but whatever venom they stuck me with stayed thick and heavy.
Lights flared, surfaces seemed to shift from one end of the color spectrum to the other. Had a hell of a headache too. Lip and nose were bloody, face was bruised good, hands were straight up bleeding with wounds that I tried not to think of as stigmata. Despite it all, I managed to stagger into an empty elevator.
Inside, I hoped that without the water and lights that maybe the rainbows would stop flashing.
They didn’t.
Rainbow ain’t even the right word. Oil ain’t even the right word either.
Too many colors that had nothing to do with the primaries. Too many colors that reminded me of the Asylum, students flocking around in groups of commie uniforms. Too much rainbow in the lights. Too much blue in the water. Too much yellow and baby blue in the power lines. Too much brown just about everywhere, calling to me. I breathed in flashes of wispy white vapors then watched as my soul leaked out one exhalation at a time.
My dagger started talking to me.
Not in danger now, Dirt King, but your aura still fluctuates erratically, it said in the same metal cacophony that the GOB had.
Leaning against the elevator control panel, I tried to decide on a floor to head towards.
What floor was I even on?
My dagger kept talking, You see what you should not see. You hear what you should not hear. This is most disturbing.
Someone opened up the elevator door, took a peek at me, and then ran screaming down the hallway.
I spat out some blood. It glowed with white and red shadows.
The dagger tried to get my attention again, I am not large enough or concentrated enough to sacrifice myself and bring you back to center, Dirt King. I do not know what to do to help you.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 46