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The Bridge of Bones (Riel and Trouble's Story)
🕑 Added 2021-12-29 23:45:25 +0000 UTC[EXTREME CONTENT WARNING: This story is an attempt at a police procedural murder mystery, and contains all of the elements included in that genre, including extensive discussion and investigation of murder and death. In particular, this story involves the implied kidnapping, physical beating, and violent murder of an adolescent, as well as dealing with the corruption surrounding wealth and privilege, psychological manipulation and interrogation, and implications of bullying and physical abuse. Please protect yourself and read only at your own risk!]
Part III: Skeletons in the Closet
Part IV: Darkness in the Blood
Riel returns to the Shepherds’ compound in the blackest of moods, flinging his winter gloves onto his desk with uncharacteristic fury. What a rotten day this has turned out to be, he thinks. Hunting down a Mage killer in a city as vast as Haven was already going to be difficult enough. But bringing in an ugly reminder of his own past in the form of Edric Alden—an Inquisitor,for heaven’s sake!—and then adding an argument with Trouble just seems unfair.
However, he’s never been one to give himself over to self-pity, so he throws himself into his work without any time to dwell on it. First he needs the records on Vaughn Sulia: his genealogical charts, bloodlines, family marriages, anything that can be found in the registries about his noble house. If there’s a tint of Mage blood in there, any gap in the lineages, Riel will find it. And even if he can’t—there’s always the possibility that Vaughn is adopted, or an illegitimate child, the product of an affair. They’re aristocrats: nothing is out of the realm of possibility, not with that bunch.
Then he needs all of the records he can find on Edric Alden and his movements over the past decade. Riel is still cursing himself for ever losing track of that cockroach. Riel may have bested him once, but he is well aware of Edric’s aptitude for cruelty, his utter sadism and pleasure in exerting his power over others; his dangerous unpredictability and unstable moods. Edric is a threat: and it’s not just the Inquisitor’s medallion, the backing of his whole Order, who would be just as happy to see the Shepherds fail. It’s not even that he bears a personal grudge against Riel. Edric is hateful, and hate is easy to manipulate—but he is also frightfully cunning, in his own way. When Riel described him to Trouble, he painted him as an arrogant bully, a rich blowhard like any other. But there’s more to Edric Alden than that; Riel simply hadn’t wanted to admit it, hadn’t wanted to show exactly how alarmed he was. Edric Alden possesses a cold and ruthless intelligence, a patience and a chilling ability to outwait his opponents while secretly searching for the chinks in their armor, the weaknesses in their defenses. In school, he could meekly take any punishment, bear up any humiliation, all while working in the background to destroy his enemies utterly. How long has he been biding his time, pacing out Riel, evaluating him from afar—all while waiting for the day that Riel would forget him?
No way to say for sure. Riel can’t stand that.
He strangles the unnerved feeling in his chest and forges on, knowing he’s at the disadvantage here, playing catchup. Aerin has departed to attend some meeting in Caprona on his behalf, so it’s whatever recruits he can find that he dispatches to gather the necessary paperwork: Merchants Guild records, the Consortium archives, the registries in Whitestone. One day he will have to apply his mind towards developing a way to collate all of this information into one place, for ease of access—but today is not that day. His mind is thrumming with nervous energy, with all of the things he has to do. His bones feel as if they have been lined with gunpowder. Shery brings him pot after pot of hot black khav.
It’s only when the sun is low and sullen and orange in the sky that he looks up and realizes he hasn’t had a thing to eat all day—and he’s been flipping through paperwork for three or four hours. For a moment, he contemplates simply pushing through it—but that the last time that happened, Lavinet and Briony hadn’t let him hear the end of it, squawking and bullying and badgering him into eating a meal. He recalls there’d been some veiled threat of getting Trouble to put him in a headlock if they ever caught him doing it again.
That memory brings back the black clouds and sour anger of his earlier mood, and his mouth twists.
Exactly on cue, Shery pokes her head in through his office door, having disappeared somewhere without his realizing. Somehow, without even remembering when he’d done it, he’s requisitioned her into helping him with his investigation. She sets down a tray of finger sandwiches—cucumber on soft buttered bread, little triangles of smoked ham and thin apple and cold brie—and says in a soft, insistent voice, “I’ve never known you to faint, but if you do, you’ll set your progress back even further. So please eat.”
Riel doesn’t believe in any gods, but if he did, he’d know that they must have shaped Shery Acquell in their likeness. He nods curtly and begins to eat. Shery sits across from his desk and nibbles on her own dish of sugared grapes and cream.
They sit in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts, before Shery finally says, “Where is Trouble?”
Riel looks up at her, then sighs, trying to remember what he’s already told her. Lords, had he been so uncouth as to simply fling papers at her and rap out that she needed to find some discrepancy in a random boy’s lineage? He makes a mental note to replenish her tea stocks or buy her a dress as thanks. He says, keeping his voice even: “We were in the midst of our investigation when we were interrupted by… an old enemy of mine.”
Shery nods, sitting up a little straighter and folding her hands in her lap. “This Edric Alden?”
Riel inclines his head. “Yes. I knew him in university, and we had some… adversarial dealings. Now he is an Inquisitor.” In clipped tones, he reviews the entire day’s events with her, all the way up to his explosive argument with Trouble, how the blond sniper had flung himself out of his coach into traffic. Like a petulant child throwing a tantrum! Next he’d be issuing a threat not to come home until Riel apologized—which would never happen.
“And now he’s wasting his time, staking out that corner and waiting for some Mage vagabond who doesn’t exist,” Riel finishes with some contempt. “While we are busy doing the real work that will conclude this investigation.”
Shery says nothing for a while, absorbing this. Riel knows that many believe her to be simple, this unassuming, small-statured quartermaster with her large eyes and soft voice. But Shery’s mind is quick and clever—and she is quiet only because she takes her time thinking things over before she speaks. Most people are too impatient to wait for that, dismissing her simply as too shy to voice her thoughts, but Riel respects her deliberation. Far too many people talk, react, launch into motion on blind bold instinct, without thinking about it. Again the image of a fierce-eyed blond sharpshooter arises in his mind.
Finally Shery says, thoughtfully and without judgment: “But doesn’t Trouble think the same of you? That you’re wasting your time trying to prove that Vaugn Sulia is Mage-blooded, or connected to Mages, while he’s out following what he believes is a tangible lead? He could just as easily say that you”—here she blushes; they are friends, but she still struggles with honesty, even with him—“are wasting your time going over paperwork, reading, while a killer is running around out there. And you think he is wasting his time chasing down a false lead.” She fidgets, but her blue, blue eyes look at him from behind her spectacles. “You both believe the same things about each other.”
Riel waves a dismissive hand. “Our beliefs about each other are immaterial,” he says, though he feels a pinprick of awareness that she’s right. “The issue boils down to one insurmountable thing: our partnership, our working styles—even the ways we think—are fundamentally incompatible. He is a man of…” Of ill temper, he wants to say, of fury and impulsiveness and violence; of passion and honesty and instinct and idiocy—but he thinks Shery would look at him chidingly for that, so he finishes, “He is a man of action, and I am a man of analysis, of strategy. We do not go together.”
If he were cliché enough, he’d liken them to fire and ice—Trouble’s leaping furor, Riel’s cold calculation—and how, when the two forces met, they’d extinguish each other, boil and steam away to nothing. Better if he’d been paired with someone more like himself, Riel thinks. Blade always approaches things with a keen, perspicacious clarity; and Tallys is as patient as Riel is—she’snot liable to go charging in to things headlong. Even Halek would have been more suitable: he at least knows when to defer to Riel, when to trust in his lead. The only person more disastrous would have been Chase—and even he isn’t as stubborn or hard-headed as Trouble.
But Shery only says mildly, “I would think you’d need both, to be an effective team. Action and analysis. If you only have one, things might move too slowly, or the culprits could get away. If you only have the other, you could land yourself in a heap of trouble.”
Riel only huffs lightly; he doesn’t have a counterargument for something so—so obvious, so reductive. After a moment, he merely says, “Have you found anything in Vaughn Sulia’s files?”
Shery sighs and shakes her head. “Not a thing. I think I’ve gone back at least sixteen generations and not found anything to indicate that he could have any hint of Diminished ancestry: every marriage, every alliance, has always been to another pureblooded noble house.” She bites her lip and glances at Riel. “I’ll keep working backwards, but…”
But what are the odds that magic so far back could manifest in a boy strongly enough that he could kill someone else in the present day? She doesn’t have to give voice to the thought; Riel has been thinking the same thing. But he is sure Vaughn Sulia has something to do with all of this. There’d been… such a strange blankness in the boy’s eyes when they were interviewing him. As if he were reciting things by rote, as if he were repeating things he’d heard without assigning any emotion to them. And then the look of gloating malice on his face afterwards, of contempt and hatred and desire for utter destruction. Others might have been fooled, but Riel—as attuned as he is to the body language of the people around him—saw it as clearly as seeing a lighthouse on a wine-dark coast. Vaughn was like Edric, only different. There was a volatility there, a hidden streak of cruelty and wickedness boiling beneath the blankness. The only difference was that Vaughn had more of the loathing and lust for power and less of the patience, though he could playact like Edric could, too. It must be a kind of sickness in that family, Riel thinks—ironic, given how thoroughly he has been combing their bloodlines. Has to be some kind of shared psychosis, a yellow-gray thread of madness running through them both, brewing and seething like an infection. Again, that idea of fire and ice: Vaughn Sulia, with that impatient, arrogant propensity for violence, Edric Alden with that cold and pitiless desire to subjugate anyone he could.
But he needs proof. He’s been dividing his time between tracking Edric’s movements (peppered as they are throughout troop reports from the military installation in Stroud), any potential criminal history of Vaughn’s (nothing so far), and any other records that might prove useful to their investigation (patrol reports from the night of Calum’s murder, potential empty spaces or warehouses that might match Raven’s visions). But even he can tell he isn’t getting anywhere.
So. Trouble is out following his dead ends like a dog chasing his own tail, and not likely to cooperate or contribute much further. He and Shery can’t find anything in the paperwork. The others are away on their own missions. So what can he do next?
“There has to be a weakness,” Riel says aloud, making Shery look up from her notes. If Edric can do it—if he can wait patiently in the shadows, picking and unraveling the threads of his enemies’ defenses until he can create a gaping hole, a backdoor to slip in through with a poised knife—Riel must, too. He feels that cool, detached clarity settle over him; the heat and urgency and fear in his bones fades a little. He mustn’t rush, he thinks. He must go over things as carefully and thoroughly as he did the first time, when he first defeated Edric, banished him to some miserable and forgotten corner of the Continent. He must play the game at his own pace—not his opponent’s.
“A weakness in Vaughn Sulia’s story?” Shery asks doubtfully. “Or in his character?”
Riel drums his fingers thoughtfully on his desk. “Either.”
Her brow furrows. “His family is wealthy and powerful, and after today, they’ve probably been warned not to talk to you,” she says slowly. “You’ve already gone through his bloodlines, visited his school, and interrogated Vaughn himself. What other weakness could there be?”
Riel smiles, the ghoulish, pointed, vampiric smile accentuated by the perpetual shadows under his eyes that makes people shiver, and he fastens the gold buttons of his suit like a soldier donning his armor. “Where most people’s weaknesses lie,” he says pleasantly. “In their friends.”
#
In the end, it takes Riel until nightfall to gather the necessary information and suspects. First he tracks down the weaselly headmaster at St. Ambrose’s and bullies him into giving the names of Vaughn Sulia’s little gang members, under threat of massive donation losses in the coming school year—an important time for the academy, as it will be celebrating its two-hundredth-year anniversary and will be seeking funds for substantial renovations and commemorative gatherings. Out of the list the headmaster provides, he selects two of the boys he thinks he recalls standing behind Vaughn, laughing with the rest but also looking a bit anxious and troubled; he remembers one twisting his ring around and around on his finger until being quelled by Vaughn with a single look. Normally Riel wouldn’t select minions who were so obviously cowed and afraid of their leader—but because these two are brothers, he thinks they stand a stronger chance of drawing strength and companionship from each other, which means they might not be as desperately fanatic in their loyalty to Vaughn as the others. He hopes he’s guessed right.
The boys’ names are Adair and Warrick. Warrick is the older one by a year, and Riel immediately notices how he carries himself with a tight, arrogant, smirking air, clearly in imitation of Vaughn. The younger one, Adair, seems more uneasy; he’s slimmer and shorter in build, and if Riel guesses correctly, he was folded into the group by dint of association with his brother, but is not necessarily respected, especially by the older boys. He’d even go so far to say that Adair was likely the closest in age to Calum—and while they might not have been close, they both would have been the butt of the joke, the underdogs of the group. Adair would have an easier time of putting himself in Calum’s shoes, in his perspective. Riel can use that.
He keeps them in separate rooms: he finds this is always an excellent strategy for rooting out lies, when he gives the conspirators no time to confer with each other. It is easier to gain entry to their home than it was with Trouble in tow; Riel’s luxurious coach, fine clothes, and well-bred mien get him through the front door with no trouble, and the boys’ family is of such low noble standing that the rank of merchant leader carries far more weight with them than with a Sylver or a Sulia: he might be one of their most significant guests of the season. Another reason why he chose these two particular boys. And although Adair and Warrick recognize him as “that Shepherd from earlier today,” the calm insinuation that he is merely working on their behalf, going around and clearing their names of all guilt and blame so that “the nasty business of the murder” doesn’t besmirch their family’s reputation is all he needs to allay their parents’ concerns. They look at him, at his slim Norm features and expensive outfit, and they trust him. Someone like him could not possibly be working against them; he seems like a reasonable and civil man who looks out for the interests of the rich and powerful, because he is clearly one of them himself. They cannot conceive of otherwise.
If only they knew what a fox they let into their henhouse, Riel thinks as he sits down across from Adair, the younger one. And he’ll be so quick and tidy that they won’t even realize how much he’s devoured by the time he leaves. He won’t leave any blood behind.
“I’ll endeavor to keep this brief, Adair,” Riel says, crossing his leg over one knee and flicking open his notepad. “I simply need to establish a few details so that we can dismiss you and your brother from the scope of our investigation, and we won’t need to bother you again.”
The boy—probably fourteen or fifteen—sits on the edge of the loveseat across from him and simply stares. At Riel’s expectant glance, however, he slowly nods, like an entranced cobra bobbing its head along to the tune of a pipe. Good. He’s open to being pressured.
“Where were you on the night of the murder?” Riel asks. Direct, rapid-fire questions, delivered in an almost lazy tone, as if this is all very standard and routine and boring.
Adair blinks rapidly. “M-murder—when was that?”
“The fifteenth. Three nights ago.”
A pause. “I was here. At home.”
“What were you doing?”
“I dined with my family. Warrick and I practiced chess. My mother—” He flushes at this, but continues: “My mother read us a few pages from her book. She likes to do that, and we let her. Then I did my schoolwork and went to bed.”
Riel makes a show of scribbling confidently down in his notepad, as if he believes every word that is being said. “And your brother was here all night as well?”
“Yes. We all were.”
Here, the gentle priming, the insinuation that Vaughn could be under suspicion. “Do you know where Vaughn Sulia was that night?”
The boy gapes at him for a moment, his expression utterly blank. Then his spine stiffens, and he says, his voice high and nervous: “No. Why would I?”
“You are Vaughn’s close friend, so I’m told,” Riel says, keeping his voice gentle. “I thought you would know his whereabouts.” A significant, weighted pause. “I am trying to visualize where everyone was that night; that’s all.” Nudging Adair towards fear and suspicion, but delicately enough that the boy won’t completely shut down.
Adair blinks again. “We—he doesn’t tell me much,” he says after a moment, almost tripping over the words. “We’re—we’re friends, of course. But he talks more to the older boys. I don’t know much about… I don’t know much. I expect he must have been at home, same as the rest of us. I think he said that.”
His voice is thrumming with tight nervousness; he’s lying, but it’s not a rehearsed lie, not something he was told to say. Riel’s question caught him off-guard, so he’s only scrambling to give the answer he thinks he should, without knowing for certain. Riel makes another note in his pad. “Who would you say Vaughn’s closest friends are? Among the older boys? Is Warrick one of them?”
For a moment, Adair’s expression changes from the stunned, wide-eyed look to one of brief scorn. “He would say he is.”
Aha. “But you know better?”
“He likes to put on airs,” Adair says, more at home badmouthing his brother than he is with anything else. There isn’t anything truly malicious behind it—it’s the usual adolescent complaints, typical brotherly rivalry, little squabbling jealousies rearing their heads—and Riel keeps his expression neutral, free of judgment or reprimand. “He thinks he’s one of Vaughn’s ‘lieutenants.’ And he thinks he knows everything. But sometimes he says things about Vaughn, behind his back. And Vaughn says things about him. They’re not as close as he likes to make out.”
Riel makes a humming sound, as if only mildly interested in this information, but more out of politeness than anything. “What things does he say about Vaughn?”
“That Vaughn is stupid. That he doesn’t have any self-control. That he’s like an animal, and if you wave a red flag in front of him, he has to charge it. That it’s easy to goad him into doing things, even if he thinks he’s in charge.”
Interesting—but nothing that points him towards Vaughn Sulia being involved in the murder. “Have you noticed anything strange going on with Calum lately?” Riel asks. “Or with Vaughn?”
Adair looks down at his hands for a moment, clearly parsing something out, evaluating whether there could be any harm in divulging it. Finally he says, “They’ve been spending more time together, I guess.”
“I imagine that means Vaughn must be devastated to hear of Calum’s death,” Riel says, keeping his voice very calm.
Adair lowers his eyes. “I suppose.”
“They were cousins, weren’t they?” He says it like he’s forgotten, giving Adair a sense of control, of value.
The boy looks up and nods. “Yes, cousins. But Vaughn never talked to him until last year. His father forced him to, on behalf of Calum’s father, who wanted him to make more friends. At first Vaughn was angry about it—he hates being told what to do—but then he calmed down. Calum’s been with us ever since.”
“That’s kind of Vaughn,” Riel remarks conversationally. “To take his younger cousin under his wing. I suppose he did that with you, too. He looks after you.”
Adair stares steadfastly down at his polished leather shoes. “Ye-es,” he says in a stilted voice. “That’s true. No one messes with us if Vaughn’s around. Not even our teachers.”
Heavy in his tone is the implication that there’s a price to pay for Vaughn’s ‘protection’—that even if no one else ‘messes’ with them, that doesn’t mean Vaughn doesn’t, either. Riel says, “You said Vaughn and Calum had been spending more time together than usual. Do you mean at school?”
Adair hesitates, opens his mouth, and then closes it again. The look in his eyes tells Riel that he’s realized he’s mistepped. Riel says gently, “I am investigating Calum’s murder, Adair. I have absolutely no interest in anything beyond that: I won’t get you or anyone else in trouble for little things, vandalism or theft or anything like that. Frankly, I simply don’t care about it or have the time. My only concern is understanding Calum’s frame of mind and finding his killer.” He pauses, letting Adair take this in. “Could it be that Calum and Vaughn did something together?” he offers. “Something that might have angered someone, caused them to target Calum in revenge? Some prank or fight, perhaps?”
“Nothing as serious as all that,” Adair blurts finally, with some relief. Minutely, his shoulders relax. “Well—none of it’s a crime, or anything, so you won’t get anyone into trouble?”
“You have my word,” Riel says, sitting back with a leisurely air.
Adair fidgets, then nods. “Well, the big thing is that Vaughn started taking Calum out. He does that, Vaughn—sneaks out of his family’s manor and walks around Ashtown at night. Mostly he likes to watch the fights down by the docks, but other times he just walks. There are gambling dens, and barroom fights, and ladies of the night… things you could never see here in Whitestone. Vaughn calls it ‘taking in the sights.’” He pauses. “Sometimes he takes Janec or Whitten. Once he took Warrick, but Warrick got sick or fainted at the blood, or something, and Vaughn never took him again. And then he started taking Calum. Warrick was so angry about it.”
Angry enough to kill? Riel thinks—but he needs to go one step at a time, explore where his own instincts are pointing, first. He can feel his heart beating a little faster, but he leashes it tightly, forces it to steady back to its slow predator’s rhythm. He remains utterly relaxed. “Did Calum’s parents know that he was taking in the sights with Vaughn?”
Adair shakes his head vigorously. “No. Calum would slip out at night when all of the servants had gone to sleep.” Then, as if suddenly realizing something, he adds hastily, “But I don’t think they did it the night he—disappeared. Vaughn was at home. I’m pretty sure.”
“Of course,” Riel says silkily. “Perhaps Calum snuck out on his own, then—he already knew how to do it. Perhaps he went down to Ashtown by himself.”
Adair blanches, as if the possibility had never occurred to him. “Do you think?”
“It’s a possibility,” Riel says in a mild voice. “And perhaps that was when he ran into his killer.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose that makes sense.”
“Vaughn mentioned that Calum had become acquaintanced with a Mage beggar, earlier,” Riel begins. “Did you ever see or meet that man?”
Adair’s eyes widen minutely. “No,” he says in a half-horrified whisper, as if Riel had told him a ghost story. “Never.” Then his brow furrows. “But—didn’t Vaughn say that was a secret? So… of course I wouldn’t know about that.”
Naïve little thing, Riel thinks dispassionately. So unsure of what he’s supposed to say, so fearful of making a mistake. But he is at least telling him the truth. At least most of it. “And you’re sure you were at home on that night?” he presses again, keeping his tone familiar and comfortable, a confidant rather than an interrogator. “As well as your brother?”
The truth is stamped on Adair’s face as clearly as if it had been written in ink. “Yes,” he says firmly. “I’m absolutely sure.”
Riel leaves him sitting there in the games parlor and goes to visit with the brother, Warrick, who is slouched at his ease in a reading room, watching the firelight dance in the hearth. Riel assesses this older boy with a glance, the casual way he fingers a loose thread on his armrest, affecting a panther lazing around on a branch. A boy who prides himself on his intelligence and maturity, Riel thinks, and his ability to remain cool under pressure. Though he fainted when Vaughn took him to the fights. So not quite the story he tells other people. Still, he can exploit this. Flattery and not fear.
He drops into the seat across from Warrick and says, in a very weary tone, as if confiding in a peer and an equal: “It is a hard thing, investigating the murder of one so young.”
Warrick’s eyes flick up, and he says almost dismissively, “You must see things like that all the time. You’re a Shepherd, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Riel confesses, “though I’m not entirely sure I have the stomach for it.”
“I would,” Warrick says confidently. “I can shoot and even skin my own deer.”
“Impressive,” Riel says, raising his eyebrows. “But it’s not only nerves that count in this job, you know. You need intelligence and wit.”
“I’ve got that in spades,” Warrick returns, smirking a little. “My grades are good, and my teachers say I’m monstrously clever. And I read a lot of detective novels.” He eyes Riel for a moment. “I bet I’d be able to help you find clues, if I got to look at the crime scene. Most criminals lack intelligence. They make mistakes.”
“You know quite a lot,” Riel acknowledges in an admiring tone,. “Perhaps you would make for a good Shepherd, after all. Or even a Vice Guard. Are you considering pursuing a career in that field?”
The teenager makes a little scoffing sound. “No. I do think I’d make a good soldier. I’ve got a good head and a knack for tactics. I’m always the top of my class in military history and maneuvers. But Mother says she’d rather die than see one of her sons join the military. And a Vice Guard would be less dangerous, but it also seems dull.”
“Well, you’ve certainly given it a lot of thought for a boy your age,” Riel comments approvingly. Then he flicks open his notepad, as if remembering where they are and why they’re here, and he says, “I don’t want to keep you long. I’m simply clearing the names and whereabouts of Calum’s friends so we can focus our investigation on our actual leads.”
Warrick inclines his head, as if he’s a magnanimous host, a master of his house telling his guest, Go on.
“Where were you on the night of the murder?” Riel asks.
“I was out,” Warrick says instantly. “With Vaughn.”
Lie, Riel thinks. He says it too smoothly, too quickly, maintains eye contact too forcibly. He has rehearsed this. Vaughn told him to say it. His lieutenant, indeed.
“Where were you and Vaughn?” he asks, his voice perfectly neutral.
“In Ashtown,” he says. “We were watching a card game, then a street match, and then we had some food from one of those… what do you call them, the things on the roadside? Stalls. Street food.” Then he adds: “There were other people there, too. Whitten, Janec. They’ll tell you the same thing.”
“That’s good to know,” Riel comments, scribbling down a note to himself to buy another notepad. He pauses for a moment, as if considering whether to say this next part. “Your brother tells me you’re afraid of Vaughn. He’s not threatening you to say that you were with him that night, is he?”
The smirk fades by a few molars. “What, Vaughn? No—we were really together.”
“But you are afraid of him?”
“No,” Warrick says, a little impatiently. “He’s harmless. It’s easy to control him. Sometimes he gets worked up, or his temper flares, but I always step in, tell him to back off. He usually listens to me.”
“Vaughn Sulia strikes me as a difficult person to control,” Riel says, arching his brow. “How do you manage that?”
The boy leans forward, elbows on his knees, eager to divulge a strategy that paints him in a flattering light. He’s confident again, Riel notes. Thinks he’s found his footing. Thinks he was momentarily off-balance, but he’s recovered nicely, he’s going to outsmart Riel. As if he could ever.
“It’s easy,” Warrick says in conspiratorial tones. “The key is to let him think he’s in control. He hates being told what to do, being made to look like he’s beneath you, like you’ve got the best of him. So you have to let him think he’s the one holding the reins, and then it’s very easy to point him in the direction you want. So long as you act like it’s his idea.”
“Very clever,” Riel murmurs. “How did you ever discover such a strategy? Not many others could.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Warrick says again, smugly. “It’s all he talks about: control and power. He’s obsessed with it. Always saying things like how you have to ‘assert control’ and ‘perfect your power.’ That’s why he likes to watch the fights in Ashtown. He wants to learn techniques from the fighters, understand how he can make himself above everyone else, prove that he’s the strongest. So long as you reinforce that—‘yes, Vaughn, you’re above us’—then he’ll usually go along with whatever you suggest.”
“Does he ever practice these techniques on you?” Riel asks. “The ones he learns from the matches?”
Warrick makes a face. “No. He respects me too much. But sometimes he’ll make the smaller boys fight him. He despises weakness. It makes him sick. So he wants to toughen them up, make them worthy of associating with him. Otherwise they don’t deserve to be in the gang.” He pauses. “I don’t need to prove that. I’m one of his best friends.”
“But someone like your brother,” Riel offers. Or Calum—but that would rouse Warrick’s suspicions again, so he refrains.
Warrick shrugs. “Sometimes. But I never let it get too far. He doesn’t hold back, Vaughn, even against the smaller ones. If you let him go without stopping, he gets too excited—he might sprain something or break an arm. He says getting hurt is worth the price of developing his skills, increasing his potential. He even says something like, ‘Who’s to judge the price of transcendence?’” He shrugs again. “But like I said—so long as I’m around, he’s tame. I’d never let him hurt Adair.”
But who stopped him from hurting Calum? Riel thinks. And transcendence—where would a thug like Vaughn Sulia have learned such a concept? But even through the thin veil of his disgust, he feels that undercurrent of satisfaction, even excitement. He’s getting somewhere.
“So you say you’re not afraid of Vaughn,” he says to Warrick. “That he can’t make you do anything you wouldn’t want to do.”
“That’s right,” the boy says.
“And you say that you were with him on the night that Calum was killed.”
The smile flickers, then returns, fastened on more firmly than before. “Yes.”
“So if you’re not afraid of him, you can’t be feeding me an alibi he coerced you into,” Riel says conversationally. “And you also say that you’re always the one controlling him, directing him, pulling the strings. So if he did have something to do with Calum’s death, it would be reasonable of me to assume that you did, too. And that perhaps you are the mastermind concocting these lies, and not Vaughn.”
Warrick stares at him for a moment; then his neck reddens, and he begins angrily, “No—”
“Because your brother swears that you were here that night,” Riel continues, his gaze piercing Warrick to the bone. “And yet you swear that you were out with Vaughn. I suppose that’s the trouble with inner circles and divided ranks, isn’t it—if you’re going to stick to a lie, you’d better be sure that even the underlings like your brother know about it, instead of keeping him boxed out so you can assume the sacred position of trust and honor.”
“Adair—Adair doesn’t know anything,” Warrick exclaims, flushed and furious. “He barely remembers how to tie his own shoes!”
“And your mother?” Riel asks mockingly. “Will you proclaim her ill if she recalls reading you a passage from her favorite book? And perhaps I’ll pay a visit to Whitten and Janec, after all. Whitten has a young sister, I believe. Will it be a figment of her imagination, too, if she remembers Whitten kissing her goodnight? How about Janec’s father, the reputed memoirist? He’d remember where his son was that night, surely.” He points one long pale finger at Warrick, and the boy pales as if the Dark Watcher has arrived to claim his soul, drawing back the bowstring that will pierce his spirit and drag it back down to the underworld. “You said it yourself, Warrick: Vaughn lacks intelligence, and stupid criminals make mistakes. And he’s certainly made his fair share of mistakes. You can’t even imagine the wealth of evidence he left behind.” Oh, yes, the boy can imagine it, all right: Riel can see it in his face, his low opinion of Vaughn inserting all kinds of nightmarish scenarios in his head. Time to deliver the killing blow.
“I just have to determine one thing,” Riel says. “Did you help him? Because either you were with him that night, as you say, and you’re both implicated—because I know he was busy murdering Calum, so if you were with him, you’re a killer, too, or you made him do it. You are always the one pulling the strings, after all. Or you weren’t with him, and you’re lying to me. Which is it?”
#
In the end, Warrick spills his heart out, as frantically as if he needs to bleed out a poison. No, he confesses, he was not with Vaughn that night. Yes, Vaughn instructed him and two others to say that they were with him. No, no one knows where he actually was. Yes, it does seem suspicious that Vaughn and Calum often snuck out at night together; that Vaughn often frequented Ashtown, which was where Calum’s body was found; that Vaughn resented his cousin, whom he perceived as weak, for forcing his way into their group when Vaughn hated being told what to do. That he made it a habit to beat up the younger boys as a way of developing his skills and growing stronger. That he thought very little of them because of their weakness, and believed no price was too high for the sake of perfecting his power.
They are disposable to him, Riel thinks as he steps out onto the driveway of the boys’ estate: they are mere tools and punching bags that he can use and discard in his pursuit of strength and superiority. ‘Transcendence,’ he called it.
Riel has the little vermin, he just knows it. Even his body knows it; the air is crisper out here, his vision sharper, the cold of the night bracing rather than tiresome. He has him. Vaughn Sulia murdered his cousin Calum. It all fits. The only thing that he’s stuck on is the presence of magic on Calum’s body—but he’ll find a way to explain that, it’s a detail, immaterial. He’s got the little maniac. And he solved it all on his own. He didn’t need Trouble, after all. So much for their partnership.
Then he hears the clatter of his carriage approaching, and he looks up—and he is surprised, genuinely surprised, to find that it’s not his own coach drawing up the paved driveway, but something more ramshackle. One of those coaches-for-hire, he realizes, sometimes used to traverse the city by people too poor to afford their own vehicles but wealthy enough to pay a driver fare. He wonders idly why such a person would be paying this noble family a visit so late in the evening. He’s sure they’ve had enough excitement for the day—maybe for a lifetime, if the shaken look on Warrick’s face was anything to go by.
Then the carriage door swings open, and Riel finds himself startled once again. The passenger inside has long, wispy pale hair, large blue eyes, a soft and gentle face twisted into a look of fear and alarm. Shery.His heart begins to drum inside his chest again, and this time he does not quiet it. Something is wrong. Shery rarely leaves the compound, and never at night. And she is afraid of horses, prefers to walk, so the fact that she hailed and hired a coach means—
“Riel,” the quartermaster pants, half-falling out of the carriage; he has to catch her arm and steady her, but instead of concentrating on finding her balance, she pushes an armful of papers at him. “This came—after you left—the papers we requested—”
A glance at the seal and embossment at the top of the first parchment tells him that they’re Inquisitor reports—the paperwork he requested on Edric Alden. Riel is surprised that they sent them over so swiftly; he expected weeks, if not months, of stonewalling, stubborn refusals to cooperate. The Inquisitors never comply with Shepherd requests, and vice-versa; and if they suspected him of looking into one of their own, they should have closed ranks. Perhaps Edric is not popular even among the Autarch’s dogs. Good to know.
But Shery is upset, and she could not have rushed all the way here merely to inform him that these papers had arrived. Riel flicks through the first report—and then he feels the earth fall away from his feet.
“It can’t be,” he says, his voice flat and wooden with disbelief.
Shery is trying to catch her breath; it sounds as if she ran the whole length of Haven to reach him. “When Trouble and the Captain found that Equalist hideout last year,” she rasps. “Edric Alden was one of the Inquisitors who first responded to the scene. He was put in charge of –”
“Of transporting the remaining Equalist artifacts,” Riel finishes, his eyes flying over the rest of the report. “He was given responsibility over all their tools and failed experiments—the ones they used to imbue ordinary Norm test subjects with magic.”
He lifts his eyes to Shery’s wide, frightened ones. “Where is Trouble?” It’s so airless he can hardly hear himself say it.
Shery looks like she’s going to faint. “He hasn’t come back,” she whispers.
Riel turns and hurls himself into her coach. “Damn!”
Comments
Lena Nguyen
Thank you so much! <3
Elleree
*gasp* 😱 That was my genuine response! Go help Trouble, Riel. This was superb as always, Lena.
