“If you don’t have any more arguments,” Johannes said, “Perhaps you should stand back. We can finish this discussion and deal without your input. But you can’t filibuster our decision without actually saying something. Not in a civilized process.”
“I’m not sure,” Alister said. “The suspicions about your familiar’s motives might be a bit much, but… I’m wondering if we should bring him here to say his piece. If only to reassure us.”
“He might complicate things,” the High Drunk said.
“He might,” Alister conceded. I’d expected a rebuttal, a counterpoint. He didn’t give one. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t sure.
I made eye contact with Rose. Willing her to somehow express or transmit her thoughts to me. To share what she might know of grandmother or the larger plan.
Assumptions. Thinking that enemies were going to stay enemies was dangerous.
But if I turned it around, looking at Rose, knowing that I’d once considered her a lonely ally when I had so many enemies, was the opposite true?
Grandmother. The Lawyers.
Ostensibly allies, or at least willing to cooperate. In practice? Was Grandmother subverting them?
If I banished all assumptions, dismissed the obvious as a ploy, a trick to keep the lawyers pacified…
All power had a price. Practice was akin to a currency, and we were in so, so much debt.
We could work for lifetimes, and possibly never be rid of it all.
In the beginning I’d wondered, very briefly, why we couldn’t game the system to get rid of the debt. Spread it out among countless children, stagger it out, or figure out other means of breaking it down.
The lawyers were keeping us in this position.
Just desperate enough that we might take their deal, take an out, join their firm.
Putting ourselves in a position where we were contributing to a greater cosmic decline.
Was Grandmother working against that? Was Rose?
How?
By looking like they were cooperating on the surface level, but…
But. That was the key thought.
“I suppose silence is as good an answer as any,” Johannes said. “Only speculation. If everyone else-”
“Rose,” I interrupted him. “I think I’m starting to get it.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
But I was only on the brink of putting it together. The others were on the brink of making the deal.
It was a good thing fear wasn’t an emotion I really experienced anymore. Panic could easily have taken hold of me, dashed the thoughts from my head.
How did one deal with an impossible amount of debt, when the debtors were striving to claim the funds?
Declare bankruptcy.
We, the children, were the assets.
Except bankruptcy didn’t work. Didn’t make sense.
My eyes didn’t leave Rose’s.
“Rose? We can do this without your permission, but I’d really rather not,” Johannes spoke, his voice calm.
Rose didn’t glance away from me.
“Rose?” he tried, again.
Not bankruptcy, but something simpler. Something older.
Controlled failure?
“What gender is Kathryn’s child?” I asked.
“Male,” Rose said, without a moment’s hesitation.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Johannes asked.
I saw Rose’s expression change, just a fraction.
Everything, I thought, and I knew Rose was thinking something very similar.
Her chin rose. Confidence? Something else, maybe.
“Alister,” Rose said, still not breaking eye contact. “A word? In private?”
“You’re delaying,” Johannes said, exasperated.
“As you said, there’s no rush,” Rose said.
Alister glanced at Johannes, shrugged, then headed to Rose’s side. The pair of them stepped past the people collected at the doorway and headed down into the hallway.
Buying me time?
I did what I could to use it.
Grandmother wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t a good person. She had sacrificed us, she’d set us up for failure.
But she’d done it with purpose. A game of something like chess, giving up set pieces in a set order, to play a long game and hide the fact that she was intentionally losing.
Molly, the sacrificial pawn. Rightly angry about it. Too easily broken or swayed, perhaps. Thrown to the wolves without time to prepare, absorbing the initial assault, forcing enemies to show their hands.
Rusty was second. The division into Blake and Rose serving multiple purposes. Intended to do just what it had, warning us, forcing us to confront the new reality immediately. Catch the enemies by surprise. Positioning us with the warrior buying time, while the true heir found her footing.
But… there was something more to it.
If Rose won, earned her survival, secured her position in this world, how was that a win for Grandmother?
Very simple. Something the lawyers couldn’t act on until it was far too late. If Rose carried on her position, kept going as the Thorburn heir, marrying Alister, settling into Jacob’s Bell, or leaving the house to fall and moving elsewhere with her new husband as leader of the junior council… time could pass.
Until no heir was produced.
One individual, cut in twain. One given the desire, but not the ability. The other left with the ability, but all of the trauma that would discourage the desire.
To the point of turning down the offer from the girl he loved, for a three-way.
I couldn’t guess what had been arranged for if we failed, if we died. Kathryn was next. And Kathryn had a little boy. Again, not an heir.
Would Kathryn be cut in two, by the same sort of deal? Or was the expectation, from the evaluation we’d been subjected to, that Kathryn would die or fail by some other measure?
Maybe the line of thinking was that Kathryn and Ellie would fail in a similar way to how Molly had. Maybe, as she’d prepared other individuals with knowledge of how to deal with demons, she’d anticipated that they would destroy themselves, attacking Laird or Alister or someone and having the demon rebuffed, sent back to the summoner. A demon, ready at hand, that was capable of bypassing the typical defenses.
Leaving the impulsive, stubborn, aggressive Kathryn and Ellie ill prepared for the rebound.
Rose probably knew the particulars. She’d studied up, read between lines.
Rose would have, much as I was doing in this moment, come to the conclusion that she agreed with grandmother. That we could let the debt rest with one individual, who couldn’t produce an heir.
There was more to it, I was sure.
Grandmother had had a plan, and she’d deemed that plan worth working with a demon, worth sacrificing one child.
Weighing the odds, she might well have thought that clearing the slate, in whole or in large part, even committing those wrongs to do it, was worth the many, many Thorburns who might die further down the road, or deal with demons as many of her predecessors had.
Damning herself in the process.
A full minute passed, after my thoughts came to rest.
Rose and Alister re-entered the room.
She and Alister both glanced at me, side-long, as she returned. A fractional glance.
I gave her a quick nod.
I gestured toward Evan, who had come to rest on Ty’s shoulder. Talking to Tiff, Ty and Alexis in whispers and murmurs.
Evan flew to me.
“Some might say that calling your familiar in the middle of a meeting is like drawing your sword,” Johannes commented.