PART TWO: FLAME
CHAPTER ELEVEN: A CRACKING CEREMENT
Autumn, 2000
Agnes
The one-year-old boy slept in his hand me down crib in the upstairs room of the Gentle House, and Agnes stood at its edge, watching over him, trying to get a handle on her grief. Diana was dead. Agnes should’ve been grieving for the others as well. Matthew was gone too, his life snuffed out at the age of twenty-five, and every single other member of the Schwan family, from the eldest and most conservative, down to the youngest child.
All except this one, who now slept fitfully, unaware that his mother would never touch him again.
And it was Diana for which Agnes knew she would grieve without ceasing, till the end of her days. Young Jason Tucker as well, who’d barely taken the pin when they all died… but Diana most of all. Little Sparrow, had I not prepared you to guard the Prince, perhaps you never would’ve fallen in love with him. Guides above, when he freed you of your oath you should’ve run as far away from it all as you could. Instead, you married him, and now you are gone.
And with her, she’d taken Agnes’s retirement. The twilight years of her life would now be spent watching over this child and his broken uncle, continuing to fulfill the vow she’d thought she was finally done with. She took a breath, glancing at the cribs where the other children slept. All of this was before accounting for the effect this charge would have on her other vows of obligation to the other children. Children to whom her retirement had already been dedicated. In devotion. In atonement for years doing wrongs in the service of more than one Prince.
It was all in ruins, now. Agnes the Green might have avoided death by the fire that had killed her one-time Lieges, but it had burned her world down all the same.
Gabe shifted in his sleep. He was too young to be sure, but at a glance, Agnes saw more of his mother in his face than his father, though the boy had his father’s dark blue eyes. He somehow had the Schwan look, all the same. It was amazing how a child could resemble both parents at once, taking after one while still echoing another in every glance. Agnes took a deep breath, reaching down to adjust the small blanket over his legs, and murmured “when you’re old enough, you will call me Baba as well.”
Then turning, she picked up the baby monitor and closed the door to the bedroom, walking softly down the stairs. John was in the kitchen, seated at the table near the window. Her husband was younger by a few years, his softness the balm on her rage and his good sense the calming influence on her impulsive nature. John was careful and kind where Agnes was stern, and right now he was sitting across from Michael Schwan, who Agnes wanted nothing more than to punch through the nearest window. It had been two years since she’d seen the younger Schwan son, and Guides, how the proud had fallen. He was half-slumped over the table, unshaven and unshowered, one hand wrapped around the base of a half-empty coffee mug, the other around a near-empty liquor bottle. John turned to look at her as Agnes entered the room, and he held up a hand to forestall her rage. “He got into the liquor cabinet. The coffee is helping.”
Agnes felt her lip curl and her vision reddened. “Boy,” she addressed her late Liege’s brother. “How dare you get drunk in my house without permission.”
Michael stirred, his bloodshot eyes turning towards her. One hand raised from the table and pointed at her, all the weight of his imperious stupidity dripping from his voice. “I—” he started “—am the regent of House Schwan, and I’ll get drunk where I fucking please.”
“Agnes,” John started.
Agnes stalked across the room, snatched the bottle out of Michael’s hand and snarled “I should brain you with this. Stupid, arrogant, toilet full of shit!”
“Don’t presume to talk to me like that,” Michael growled in response, gesturing around the room. “I’ll sober up when I’m good and ready and not a moment sooner.”
Agnes looked at her husband. “Do it.”
John’s eyebrows raised. “He’s not going to like it.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Agnes held the bottle in her hands. “The dumb boy did this to himself.”
“What’re you talking about?” Michael slurred. John grabbed his arm whip-crack fast and he suddenly put two and two together. “Oh no, no, no, no, no, don’t you dare—”
John’s eyes flashed as he used his Mender’s gifts and pulled every ounce of alcohol from Michael’s system. The dark-haired man went rigid, and his eyes rolled back in his skull as he experienced a day’s worth of hangover compressed into a handful of seconds. His hands gripped the sides of his head and he let out a painful gasp before wheeling on John and yelling “Ow. OW! What the hell?”
“My house, my booze, you lightweight.” Agnes deadpanned. “Drink yourself stupid without permission again and I’ll take it back again.”
Michael stared at her with the deepest bitterness she’d ever seen on his face, then—after a long moment, his expression softened slightly. “Fine. It doesn’t matter anyway. Any of it.” His fist clenched against the wood grain of the table.
Agnes turned towards the pot on the stove and grabbed a bowl from the cupboard. She dunked it, grabbed a spoon, and unceremoniously deposited it in front of her student. “Your mother coddled you,” she said. “Your father devalued you. You turned elsewhere for validation while clinging to the ways of your family to measure your worth.”
Michael looked up at her slowly.
“I have my own way,” she said. “You know it well. Now stop being stupid—you’ve barely had food since you got here. Eat this borscht or I will force-feed it to you.” Her accent slipped out, more pronounced. Michael opened his mouth to object, and she said “Now.”
After a quiet, dejected moment, she saw the ghost of a smile appear on his face. “You know I hate borscht.”
“You’ll like it less when I am pouring it down your throat while John holds your mouth open.”
He finally started eating, and Agnes waited a few moments before broaching the next, difficult subject. “We must do something about the boy’s powers. If he’s truly a Conduit, he is not safe to have around the other children.”
Michael looked up at her. “Absolutely out of the question. Gabe is fine.”
“Did you not pay attention his mother’s entire pregnancy?” Agnes snapped. “I was kept informed. He nearly killed her when he was born. His body generates aether at inhuman levels and draws it to him whenever magic is used in his presence. Michael, children like him rarely survive to be born, and they often kill their mothers in the womb… and if it’s not contained it could kill the other children. My children.” She folded her arms across her chest. “We may have to consider suppression.”
Michael was silent for a long moment. She watched pride and fear and grief war across his proud features. “You expect the Prince of House Schwan, last scion of the direct line of Lohengrin and Percival, to grow up powerless?”
Agnes’s anger swelled. “I expect him to grow up not knowing he is a Prince at all.”
Michael’s teeth set. “Are you out of your Guides-damned mind?”
“Michael,” John said quietly. “He is going to grow up alongside outsider children. Think of them. What it would mean to have a Royal in their midst, held above them, their whole lives, before even the fact that he might accidentally kill them. Ask yourself, is that truly best for your nephew?”
“There are generations of tradition, of history, that he has to know,” Michael protested. “To become who he needs to be, to—”
“—be like you?” John asked quietly. The air hung heavy with the statement. Michael shut his mouth. “Look at yourself,” John said. “Barely keeping a temper in check. Ravaged with grief. With pride. Think of your father. You have a chance to give Gabe a childhood spared from all of that. A childhood spent learning earnest work and love for his fellows. A childhood free from the burdens you carry.”
“And when the truth comes out?” Michael asked. “You say you’re sparing them all. I say you’re kicking the can down the road.”
“Which buys us precious time to figure out what to do when the time comes,” Agnes said. “There’s a ritual we can use, normally reserved for Council prisoners, that will—”
“You want my nephew to grow up suppressed by a prison ritual?” Michael was out of his seat now.
“No,” Agnes said. “All of us.”
Michael’s mouth hung open.
“We will give up our magic,” Agnes said, “and live like mortals, and thus evade the eyes of the Council. The children will grow up without knowledge of any of this,” she paused, “of what we have done.”
“… You want me to live like a mortal?” Michael said.
Agnes looked him dead in the eyes, thought about her oath, of the upending of her twilight years, and all the hell Michael had brought to her doorstep… then she thought of the children sleeping upstairs. Of Roberta and Lina, of Aaron and Cody. And Gabe, who hadn’t asked for any of what would fall upon him someday. She couldn’t spare him that. But she could buy him time. She could buy them all time. She thought of Diana. At the last, she thought about the younger man in front of her, who had lost so much, whom she had tried to make into more than what he’d become.
I won’t let you ruin him, she thought. I’ll let him have your love, but not your pride, dammit. That you will swallow, or you’ll have no place beneath my roof.
Agnes held Michael’s eyes with her own, and she asked, “Do you want your sanctuary here to be peaceful, or not?”
Autumn, 2013
Aaron still wasn’t awake, though the magic that had put him this way seemed to sustain him. Agnes brushed brown hair out of the boy’s face, then walked across the hall to the bedroom she shared with John. How many times had they run through her door, flinging it open when they were children only to jump onto the bed with Agnes and her husband, waking them up with an awkward roughness that delighted both? How many times had she thought about her good fortune, to experience such kindness and love this late in her years?
John hadn’t gotten up yet today, and looking at him where he lay, the dread of the inevitable briefly threatened to overwhelm her. The cancer was moving faster, devouring him from the inside out. The magic of the Cerement suppressed his powers, preventing it from being accelerated by their use, but the most it could do was slow the illness down, and now it was eating up the life-force that sustained the magic keeping him alive. His eyes opened, disrupting her thoughts, and he said “You’re slipping. Normally I can’t hear you coming, and here you are tromping around like an elephant.” Merlin walked past Agnes, hopped up on the bed and flopped onto his back, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as John scratched his belly. “Yeah, yeah, you can still have working knees,” the old man grunted at the dog. “Rub it in.”
“We’ve been to the circle twice,” she sighed. “I’m not sure what’s worse; that I don’t know what triggered it, or how Gabe found it.”
“The latter is my fault,” John said, pushing himself up into a sitting position with a cough. “The circle is the only place on the property outside the Cerement, but so long as it held steady, his Sixth Sense wouldn’t have been able to detect it.”
“Blame is pointless,” Agnes said, sitting beside him and looking him up and down. “You need to eat. You look sick as death.”
“I am sick,” John snorted. “If I wasn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Merlin looked up and licked his arm.
“Michael intended to tell the boy the truth when he turned sixteen,” Agnes grunted. “At most we had two more years anyway. Guides willing, we might still.”
“They will come again. We feel it.” The memory of the stone’s warning rose in her mind, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. Was that why you left, Michael? Did some long-dormant magic of your house warn you that they were returning?
If so, why the fuck hadn’t he told her before bolting out the door and leaving her with this mess? Merlin let out a small whimper and John went back to patting the dog’s chest.
“The Guides have been gone for generations,” he put his wrinkled other hand over hers. “I don’t think we can count on a last-minute save from above.” He coughed again and sighed. “With my health failing, the Cerement is coming down soon. As is, it’s barely doing the work of keeping us hidden. The children can use their magic now. You know that. Our only hope is vested in them not knowing yet.”
He looked out the window at where the grass rippled in the wind. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks, and it wasn’t yet cold enough for the grass to stop growing. One of a hundred things around the Gentle House that had stopped getting done since recent events.
“We should have an idea of their powers and strength,” John said. “The responsible thing to do is to tell them the truth and start their training. They’ll all be holding fire in their hands soon enough.”
“If I do that,” Agnes made a frustrated noise, “I’m in violation of my oath to House Schwan.”
John looked resentfully out the window. “These are extenuating circumstances, beloved. I think he would understand.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” she answered. “The Schwans loved their pride as much as their chivalry, and he’ll hang himself with his. Guides, but I tried to pull him away from that flaw, but his father and brother’s ghosts will chase him until the end of his days. Living in service of their memory will destroy him.”
John ran an irritated hand through his thinning hair. “We should at least have a sense of what to expect. Once they start learning to put forth their Will, there won’t be any stopping it.”
Agnes walked to the window, scanning the yard for any sign of the kids. She felt Merlin’s eyes follow her. “Roberta and Aaron are Physics,” she said. “I have no doubt of that. They have the personality, the temperament. The skillset.” She folded her arms across her chest. “We know Lina is a Seer, and a powerful one. Cody is a Mender. His knack for fixing things—and people—and his drive to do so is unlike anyone I’ve seen before.”
She hesitated. “Gabe is a Conduit,” she said at length. “And that he was born with that birth defect is… unfortunate. They almost never live this long, and who fucking knows what happens when one does. Maybe he’s old enough to control whatever it is he has. To mitigate the damage to others.” She sighed. “Clearly his body was able to store up enough aether over the course of all that time suppressed, and maybe he needs less now… but I don’t know.”
“Perhaps suppressing his powers caused the usual effects to work in reverse,” John mused. “Do you think that the others may all have ended up with Aspects because they grew up in proximity to a living battery? Is it possible that even suppressed, his powers influenced the others?”
“It’s possible,” she admitted. “I assumed his abilities were fully shut off, but maybe his gifts are like Lina’s. Perhaps they can’t be buried. Perhaps that’s why he had such brutal headaches as a child… and it would explain why teaching him the Schwan’s ancestral sword style mended them. It fed him somehow. Or maybe being able to focus on something rigorously just helped. I don’t know, but Michael believed that when he came into it all, knowing his family’s secrets might help him control it.”
She shook her head, the next course of action becoming inevitable, even if doing it came with great risk. “Michael’s been out of contact for over a week, now,” Agnes said. “And I need information.” Looking at her husband with great trepidation, she said “I need you to hold down the fort. It won’t be for very long. I just need to have a sense of what’s going on out there. Something’s very wrong.”
“The Ones who are Nothing,” the stone spirit’s voice echoed in her memory. “Soon.”
“Can you do it?” She asked.
John smiled and slowly shifted his legs out of bed. Merlin jumped down to the floor and positioned himself near the old man, looking steadily up at him. He idly licked John’s hand. “I’m dying, beloved, not dead,” John said. “I can keep an eye on a passel of children for a few hours. As much as a day, even. Have you talked to the Stones?”
“They were unhelpful as always.” Agnes sighed. She didn’t like this—leaving felt like walking away from a brushfire, but unless she got a sense of what was going on out there, she couldn’t possibly begin to fight it. “Alright,” she said. “Time to go, then.” She leaned in and kissed his forehead. “Don’t push yourself, dearest one.”
They said their farewells, and then she was grabbing her coat and descending the stairs. At the bottom she paused for a moment, looking around. For just a second, she’d thought heard a creaking of the floorboards, as if someone was scurrying away. Closing her eyes, Agnes reached out with her Sixth Sense, a sinking feeling in her chest at how well it worked, but she felt nothing. The Cerement was barely functional, now. Soon they would be exposed.
Agnes threw on her long coat and headed out to her beat-up truck. It was time to walk the earth once more.