“My grades are good!” Alister blurted. He could see how irritated his parents were. His dad was pursing his lips, like he could barely restrain himself from shouting.
But right here, right now, they were deferring to Uncle Laird.
“School is about more than grades.”
“It is, which is why I’m doing this. I want to be a good practitioner.”
“You need to know how to study if you’re ever going to get a grasp on chronomancy.”
“I am,” Alister said, feeling more in control. “I’m studying harder than anyone. But I don’t want to ever have a desk job. I want to be a full time chronomancer. Hours upon hours of time in class is… it’s not what I want.”
“The quality of time you put into the timekeeper is important,” Laird said.
“Weren’t you just saying school was important?”
Alister’s father cut in, “Don’t be a smart alec.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m…”
There was a pause.
“What?” Laird asked.
“I’m… trying to be smart. That’s all.”
Laird leaned back in his seat. “So you think time spent in school is the best time for you to give up?”
Alister sensed a trap, but nodded all the same.
“Speak,” Laird said. “I want to know you’re not lying.”
“I do think so. Sir.”
“It would be one thing if you did it to put in the minimum, but Ainsley said you put in several times that. I checked with Old Will and Tim. There are logs.”
Ugh.
Laird spoke softly, “You had to know you’d get caught.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We check the books-”
“-Every year,” Alister finished.
“Yes. You’re aware, then.”
“I thought I’d be able to do it for another four months or so.”
“You picked the time you started this… operation, and you did it very deliberately, it seems. You knew when you’d finish. Putting nearly thirty hours a week into the well. Almost fifteen hundred hours, by the year’s end.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to need you to tell me why.”
Alister glanced –glared– at his cousin.
“Please leave us alone,” Laird said.
“But-” Ainsley said.
“Please,” Laird spoke.
All of the others began to leave.
Alister met his cousin’s eyes.
“Narc,” he said, under his breath.
“Stop, Ainsley,” Laird said.
Ainsley stopped in her tracks.
“Your family member, your cousin, just did what she did out of genuine worry for your well being. For the family’s sake, because she feared something very similar to the poisoning of the well I described earlier.”
Alister shrugged. “Sure.”
“I refuse to let you hold a grudge against her. Forgive her.”
“I… what?”
Laird looked imposing. Where Alister and Ainsley were still growing, taller than their peers, but not yet as big as their grown family members, Laird was tall and wide and sturdily built. Heavy eyebrows made his glare all the more ominous.
“Forgive your cousin.”
“But I can’t lie, and I don’t forgive her.”
“You’re going to try. Promise,” Laird ordered, “to try.”
“Alister,” Laird said, “What you’ve been doing, I don’t think you’d keep it secret from family unless it potentially hurt members of this family. If you can’t forgive your cousin for acting in your best interests, I can’t trust you to be a part of the Behaim circle.”
Meaning being forbidden from practicing. Or worse.
Alister swallowed.
Ainsley was taller than him, her shoulders broader. She looked so silly, dressed up like a kid from ten or fifteen years ago. Overalls.
But… she’d always had his back, before.
Most of the cousins had. Ainsley was just closest to him in age.
“I’ll try to look past this,” he said. “I don’t want this to end our friendship.”
Ainsley nodded, stiff. “Me either.”
“Go,” Laird said. “I’d like to have a word in private with Alister. I don’t think he’ll share if others are listening.”
Ainsley and the assorted adults left.
Laird stood, crossed his living room to the kitchen, and grabbed a beer. He checked the time, prompting Alister to look and see for himself.
“Five,” Laird said. “Good enough. Now talk, because if you don’t, I’m going to assume the worst.”
“Control,” Alister said.
“Control?”
“Of… the well. Kind of. I’m thinking, for all the generations before, you couldn’t get to be head of the family or member of the council without being here. Without paying your fair share. The guys in Ottawa and Montreal and Toronto, they don’t really have a shot at being head of the family, right? I don’t think it’s ever happened.”
Laird arched an eyebrow. “You want to supplant me?”
“No,” Alister said, dead serious. “I want to be next in line.”
Laird sat down, bottle of beer in hand. He took a drink, then leaned back once more. “What makes you think this works?”
“It makes sense. Some people don’t pay in as much. But… you pay in more, and you’re in charge of the family. I’m pretty sure Aimon paid a fair bit of time into the well, before you.”
“He did, but we didn’t do it for the reasons you did. We did it for the family.”
“I know. But I can do it for the family and I can do it for my own goals too. Even if it doesn’t work, if I give up a piece of myself, something has to fill the gap, right? Time is fundamental. Take some away, and it deals collateral damage. I’m not sure, but I think people around me lose time too. If I’m doing it in school, where I’m surrounded by other practitioners, and borrow a bit of power, a bit of spirit from everything around me.”
“Including Ainsley, and your other cousins.”
“What I take from them, I can give back,” Alister said. More serious, he said, “If I become great, I will give back. I believe that. But I’m also taking from the Duchamps. I can see it. Chipping away at them. I become a little more Other, giving something as precious as time away, and they… have to adjust. They’re adjusting because of me, and that gives me a certain kind of power, doesn’t it?”
“You imagine that you’re influencing things in a subtle way, doing what you’re doing. Incremental advantages for you, disadvantages for your enemies.”
“Yes.”
“You’re probably right,” Laird said. “You’re sacrificing your childhood for something else. Investing more.”
Alister didn’t dare respond. Everything hinged on this.
“You think the invested time will favor you because you’ve given more of yourself to it.”
“Yes.”
“Pretty cocky, for a boy who isn’t even in high school yet.”
“I’m smart,” Alister said. “I’m good. Better than Ainsley or Owen or Gavin. And Owen and Gavin-”
“Are older,” Laird said.