CHAPTER EIGHT: OF BLOOD HIGH AND LOW
Summer, 2001
Heart
Jonathan Heart knelt in the center of the ballroom at Cliff House. Two retainers stood on either side of him. He was twenty-two years old and determined to go through with this at any cost.
Jacob Vallais and his wife stood before him, only two years Heart’s senior, and with the death of Matthew Schwan, the youngest Prince on the Council. He’d only been elected by his family two months ago. Heart raised his eyes to look at the man who would be his liege in just a few moments. He was pale, with gray eyes and reddish hair, more statesman than warrior. His Aspect was Mender, Heart remembered, and much had been made since he took his seat of the Vallais choice to have a healer lead them. Not every family was so democratic in its methods. The Adelins made the eldest children of the Prince snipe and manipulate and undercut one another until one gained the current leader’s favor. The Tyres—rumor said—had some sort of enchanted glass ball that chose their Prince. House Castel was matrilineal, while House Weber used some sort of divination. The late Schwans, now a year gone, had passed their throne to the eldest child of the sitting prince, whether boy or girl.
Heart took a deep breath. Refocused on the pair in front of him. “I admit,” Prince Jacob said, “I still have reservations about you. Your family was known to me, and I have to ask: what would make a man whose loved ones vowed enmity against the Council seek to swear fealty to one of the sev—” he corrected himself “—six houses?”
Careful, Heart thought. One wrong word and it’s all for naught. “My liege is astute,” Heart said, using the high speech he’d worked so hard to learn, “but as you should know better than many, I am not the ones who came before me.” He met the Prince’s eyes, unflinching. It had always been hard for him to do that; Heart didn’t care for direct eye contact, but it was necessary now.
“What do you bring to us?” the woman beside Jacob Vallais asked. She was slightly taller than him, with dark hair, pale skin, and bright hazel eyes. Isabel Vallais was a Traveler, quick and acute, and rumor said she was one of the rare ones that could walk through the In-Between, seemingly teleporting from place to place. “What is your Aspect, Jonathan Heart?”
That was the in he needed. Heart straightened, though he remained on his knees. “Seer,” Heart said. “And I possess a unique gift, which I offer to you without reservation or hesitation. Your retainers have been informed of it.”
The man to his right nodded. “And we’ve seen proof,” he said. “Never encountered another Seer who could do the same.”
Isabel frowned. “Explain.”
As the man to Heart’s right elaborated, Heart kept his eyes on both. When he’d been younger his stepfather had said that his gift was a weakness. That it was a flaw and a defect. Only with time and training had he proved everyone wrong. If this wasn’t good enough, he didn’t have any cards left to play. This was a betrayal of everything he’d been raised to do. The deepest transgression he could have possibly imagined, once upon a time… but the goal was everything. He could not choke. Not now.
Jacob’s eyes widened, and he looked down at Heart, still kneeling. “You would betray the place from which you come, offer me this, and become blooded, bladed, and pinned. I would be a fool to turn this away, so I must ask you again–why?”
Heart took a deep breath. Opened his mouth and was cut off by Isabel. “I don’t need to know,” she said.
Jacob looked at her, confusion painting his face. “What?”
Isabel’s hazel eyes were on Heart, now, bright and cold as the glassblade she wielded. “I will take him,” she said. “His gift is enough, and I see earnestness in his face. I don’t need to know all his secrets. A binding oath will suffice.” It was as if she was staring through him, picking apart the layers that wrapped around his soul, and stopping short in a sign of mutual trust.
“I believe that this man knows the value of a promise.”
The words cut through Heart like a knife, even as he breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief. “I do, My Lady,” he said.
“So be it, then,” Jacob said. And Isabel summoned her sword from the void-sheath with a soft crack. The glassblade was named First Frost, and it was as pale as ice over water on a winter morning.
From this moment, I am a traitor to everyone who reared me, Heart thought. It is worth it.
“Hold out your hand,” Isabel said. Heart did as she ordered. The cut came so much quicker than he’d expected, like a swift scrape across the skin, and a thin line of beading red formed in the sword’s wake.
“Blooded, Bladed, Pinned,” Isabel said. Drops of blood pattered on the pale floor.
Heart felt the pain rise. He didn’t clench his teeth. Let no sign show of the sharpness of the wound that keened now in his senses. “My life for the Vallais,” Heart said. “My honor for their blood, my sword against all that threatens them, whether bloodshed or slander.”
He closed his eyes as the dim sound of Jacob and Isabel accepting his oath echoed in his ears. Their words faded as Heart kept his mind only on the goal for which he’d committed treachery and transgression.
“—Do you so swear?” Isabel finished.
Heart looked them both in the eyes and said, “I will not fail.”
Autumn, 2013
He went over his notes by the warm light of a desk lamp against the gray drone of the rain outside. It was morning and he’d slept poorly, still, between his duties to Claire and the normal tasks around the Vallais household, extra time for investigations was in short supply. There were other retainers standing guard this morning, in any case, and he didn’t need to take Claire to school for a little while yet.
Allison Taylor, Will Brown, Joana Davies, Tiffany Silverton.
At least he’d finally put a finger on why the last name was familiar, and it made his heart sink: Tiffany Silverton was the name of a woman he’d known years ago, a regular from his days at the Hearth Community Center. He’d lost track of her at some point after becoming a retainer, though he remembered hearing that she’d gotten some sort of job. Not that that helped for the purposes of his search. Heart had done cursory internet searches on each of the victims, enough to confirm by reading between the lines that they were Wielders with sparse enough social media and all the marks of people whose online presence had been professionally scrubbed, and likely by magic. Normally that meant they were in the service of one of the Families… but nobody had claimed them, and that made no sense.
Heart took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, resting elbows on the paper-strewn desk. So far, he hadn’t visited the site of the killings, largely because he wanted a better idea of who the people were and what they were doing there, before he used his gifts on the crime scene.
If I’m allowed. The odds were high he wouldn’t be, if Fisher had been forced to stop his investigation. No sense chasing that lead yet.
He rolled the names of the dead over in his head again. Something about the sparseness of their presence left him with the impression that whatever service they’d provided, it was important. Heart got up and started pacing. A visit to the archives might’ve helped, but it was too early at the moment, and he had his own duties to consider. Some part of him just wanted to go back to bed. Memory and loss was still too close to Heart’s mind, and he didn’t fancy a sleep spent trapped by the ghosts of what might have been.
He wasn’t using his Sixth Sense, so the knock on the door took him off guard, and turning, Heart said “it’s open.”
The door swung inward, and Claire stood on the other side. She was up early, but already ready for school, her uniform immaculate and her red hair up in a ponytail with a blue bow.
“I looked for you downstairs,” she said. “What are you doing in your office this early?”
“Just work,” Heart said. “Do you have all your things ready?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. A pause followed, then “whatcha working on?”
Momentarily unsure of what to say, Heart seated himself in his desk chair. He considered how much he could afford to say laid against the simple reality of how intelligent his charge was and how quickly she’d see through any deceits. He’d taught her annoyingly well, he sometimes thought.
“I am researching four people,” Heart answered, “with just enough obfuscation around them to suggest they’re more important than they seem. They’re not retainers, or nothing would remain on the internet about them. I need to find out why.” Perhaps he could turn this into an exercise. “How would you go about this, Claire?”
She paused. “Ask their families directly?”
“No next of kin to be found,” Heart sighed. “But even if their digital footprints hadn’t been so effectively scrubbed away, people whose importance is hidden typically have eyes pointed at their loved ones.”
“Why do you need to find them?”
Heart paused. Careful. He thought for a moment, then said, truthfully, “because I took on this task as a favor to someone, and because I have come to believe that these people need justice. Justice starts with the truth.” Whatever they were involved with, it may now lie derelict, and I have a sense that’s a danger.
Her brow furrowed. He could see the gears turning in her head. The girl had a keen mind, and a powerful Physic’s gifts, he had no doubt. She just needed to learn to think like something other than the blunt instrument her family would seek to turn her into, once her gifts were known.
“Hmm,” she said. “I guess you’ve gotta find things they were associated with, and poke them.”
Heart laughed lightly. “‘Poke them?’”
“I mean, yeah,” Claire said. “If you wanna know where the apples are, you gotta shake the tree, right?”
A small smile crossed Heart’s face. The Archives were looking more and more sensible.
“Best part,” she said, “is you can probably tell when you’re close to the truth based on who shows up angry about your looking.”
“I suppose that trouble intrigues you?”
Her mouth curled up in the hint of a grin. “If I were you, it would.”
“Thank you,” he finally said after a few moments. “Is there a reason you’re up and ready so early?”
“Bad dreams for the last few nights,” Claire admitted. She looked down for a moment, then back up.
Heart took a stab in the dark. “About your mother?”
“How’d you know?”
Heart’s smile softened. “Claire, I’ve known you since you were two. I remember.”
She looked down again.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
A pause. “I just… wish I knew what happened to her.”
A memory of loss flitted across Heart’s mind. Loss, and things long searched for but never found. He remembered another terrible night, searching through rubble and ashes, desperate for a sign, anything, only to find nothing at all. “I understand.”
“I don’t suppose…,” she started.
“I can’t tell you,” he answered. “You know that, and you know why.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I know. Can you at least. I don’t know… tell me about her?”
“Of course.” Heart smiled again. “What would you like to know?”
“What was she like? I mean… I remember a little, but not what she was like when I wasn’t around.”
Heart sighed, leaning back in his chair. How did you sum up a person like Isabel Vallais? He hesitated, not wanting to get it wrong. Claire looked like the perfect fusion of her parents. Isabel’s chin and Jacob’s brow and red hair. He didn’t know where her eyes had come from, neither of her parents had been that shade of sky blue, but they had the same character and quality as her late mother’s.
“Able,” he finally said. “Before anything else, she was capable. She was compassionate, valorous, and considering.” He leveled his gaze on Claire. “And she loved nothing in all the world so much as you.”
She took that in, and Heart prayed that it would be enough.
“Thank you,” she said. Then, a pause. “… Do you think she’d be proud?”
“Of you? Immeasurably.”
She hesitated. “There’s something you’re not saying, there.”
Heart smiled sadly and ended the conversation as best as he could. “Get breakfast. You don’t want to get to school on an empty stomach.”
He watched her realize that further prodding wouldn’t get her anywhere. Watched as she nodded with that acceptance that wasn’t really acceptance before turning around. “I know. Thanks for the talk, Mr. Heart.”
When the door closed, Heart ran a hand down his face. Do you think she’d be proud?
He’d been a retainer for five years when Isabel had died. She’d been a fiercely opinionated woman, and wondering what she would’ve thought of the state of Wielder Society and her family’s place in it was a quick route to facing questions he’d politely ignored in himself for well over a decade. It was a good way to lose sleep he was already behind on, and to let his numerous misgivings disrupt his duty… that could not be allowed. Heart stared out the window at the Narrow’s Bridge. It would not do to disrupt everything.
Not yet.
The car pulled up to Annie Wright School, stopping at the curb in front of the sign. Heart put the vehicle in park and looked over at his charge. Claire was fiddling with her earbuds, looking out the window at the other kids. “The conversation you overheard, with your father, several days ago,” he let the words hang in the air.
Claire looked at him, mildly apprehensive at first, then calming just a little when she saw that there was no judgement in his expression. “Yeah?”
“There’s a lot of tension between the families, right now,” Heart said. “I know that you know the shape of it, so don’t take this as me being patronizing.”
“I will,” Claire said, and abruptly shifted to high speech, “but you may proceed regardless.” There was the hint of a joke in it—teasing him by reminding him of her rank—but also… she was reminding him of her rank. Careful.
Heart closed his eyes for a moment, let out a small sigh. “I need you to keep a level head, right now. Use your sense, avoid conflict with your classmates from the other Houses. Use your wits, not your fist. Keep a civil tone, and for the love of the Lost Guides—”
“—don’t use grown-up magic, I know.” She’d pulled one bud out of her ear and looked at him candidly. “We’ve been over this—” she parroted his own words back at him “‘just because I’m ready to use it, doesn’t mean the world is ready to see it.’”
“You know the words,” Heart said with an arched eyebrow. “But do you grasp the meaning?”
Her face did its best attempt at becoming more serious. “I do.”
“Good,” he said. “Now go on, your friends are waiting.”
She got out of the car, shouldered her backpack, and walked across the lawn, her bright red hair sticking out in the crowd, but nevertheless she was soon through the doors and out of sight. Heart would’ve immediately pulled the car away and called Fisher, but he noticed two men a short distance away, looking towards the doors of the school. He knew both of them: the first was a retainer of the Pierce family named Jack, with thinning brown hair and a gray suit and the lance shattering a shield forming his lapel pin.
The other man was far more well-known, and far more dangerous. Frank Adelin, the son of Adrian Adelin and heir apparent to House Adelin stood by, dressed in a blazer over a simple button-down tucked into slacks, brown leather shoes on his feet. At eighteen, he was just entering the peak of his powers as a Physic, already known for winning several duels to first blood, and his close-cut brown hair and square, strong face had broken more than one girl’s heart, or so the story went.
The Pierces and the Adelins were allies, forming the core of the Regnant voting bloc, but still, a Pierce retainer with an Adelin heir was odd.
As far as Heart’s intelligence went, Frank had no relatives in this school, and while some Pierce children were enrollees, Jack was not responsible for his Liege’s children. Something was going on. Getting out of the car, Heart squared his shoulders and approached the pair congenially. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “You’re an unusual sight here.”
What the hell are you doing at a school? He wanted to warn. He held back. Just your presence could be seen as a threat. Was that why Jack was with Frank? To give a veneer of legitimacy to the heir being here?
“Ah, Jonathan… Heart, yes?” Frank said. His voice had that tone that teenagers had when they sounded more adult than most but weren’t quite as grown up as they played at. “You’re Claire Vallais’s caretaker. We were actually hoping to talk to you this morning.”
Heart didn’t let the surprise at being remembered register on his face. His own impatience was rising, however. Two adult men hanging around outside an all-girl’s academy was uncomfortable enough, but to be addressed and have his duties mentioned was more troubling still. “And what would the heir of House Adelin and his companion want from a humble retainer of the Vallais?” Heart asked.
Instead of answering the question, Frank looked back towards the school. “Claire’s what, fourteen now?”
Heart’s chest clenched. He didn’t like where this was going. “With respect, I don’t see how that’s any of you, or your Princely father’s business.”
The heir apparent shrugged. “I hear she’s quite exceptional. I know Aspects aren’t determined formally until Coming of Age, but everyone knows she’s got the making of a potent physic. Shit-ton of potential. You already know that, though.”
“We’re here,” Jack spoke up, “because our respective Lieges want Jacob Vallais to know that they care about his daughter’s future. She’ll be an invaluable asset to her family one day, and the Council by extension.”
The unspoken ‘if’ hung in the air. Heart shifted his feet, seeing the threat coming before it arrived. The last of the kids on the lawn were entering the building, now. A small sea of blue uniforms disappearing behind the doors one by one. Heart watched them, waiting until the last were gone.
“Get to the crux of it,” he said, observing both men, knowing his position protected him at least marginally from the consequences of disrespect.
“Jacob’s been voting in a less-than-helpful way, Dad says,” Frank continued. “Acting like the Dawnward bloc is still around, putting Commoner interests before those of his peers. He even had the audacity to donate a considerable sum of money to the Kitchens. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want the Council to remain preeminent.” Frank let that sit for just a moment, then he said “Dad just wants your Liege to know that he, I, and our whole house, care about his daughter’s future. It would be a shame if his behavior altered it for the worse. Jack is here to make sure it’s apparent that the Pierces agree.”
Heart took a few seconds to answer. He needed to handle this with grace and composure. Knew he needed to be careful lest an incident occur that might threaten the tenuous peace, but in a flash of temper, he locked his eyes on Jack and said “Jack, how’s your wife?”
Jack paused, off-footed. “What?”
“I know about your infidelity,” Heart said, bluntly. “I know who your mistress is, and I know where she lives.” It pays to research your liege’s enemies. I am very thorough.
Jack’s eyes widened. Before he could answer, Heart turned his eyes to Frank and shifted to the formal high speech. It did not do to show disrespect, and this had to be delivered with precision. “Noble-born, forgive my rudeness, but I expected better of you, both in form of threat and in target. In fact, stooping to menace a fourteen-year-old girl, and without even having the guts to use direct words, is such a weak-handed fucking move that I wonder if you’re a credible threat to any adult living.”
Frank’s eyes flashed. His right hand swept to his opposite hip and Heart’s Sixth Sense felt the tingle of a glassblade about to be drawn. Only one thing for it. He stepped forward into Frank’s space, and snapped his hand out, pressing it over the other man’s wrist, holding it in place. “You are dangerous, My Lord,” Heart said quietly. “But you are also young. Will you add stupid to your list of qualities?”
“You dare lay hand on royal blood?” Frank whispered in similar tones. Pulling rank.
Not today, Heart thought. I’m not sworn to you.
“Consider it a reminder,” Heart said, keeping his words formal. “That what you do to my charge will be repaid ten-fold. A touch for a threat. Are you ready to start a war?”
“Our alliance is stronger than your house alone,” Jack snarled. “And this is two on one.”
“And one of you will die to take me down,” Heart said. “Which of you is ready, I wonder?”
For a terrible two seconds, everything balanced on the glassblade’s edge. Then Frank took a slow step back and lowered his sword hand. “Tell your Liege what happened here,” he said. “Because I will certainly be telling my father.”
Heart took a step back as well and lowered his hand. He met the younger man’s eyes and simply said “Good.”
The two men turned and walked away.
Heart waited until they rounded the corner, then sagged where he stood. That was a bluff he couldn’t have made good on, but if he’d done nothing, the sign of weakness would’ve been fatal. He was not his master, but he had to defend his master’s actions, his blood, and his position. The Council tilted more conservative by the day as the Regnants gained ascendency. That meant that the Vallais position was ever more tenuous and dangerous.
The dangerous world of supernatural politics through which he moved could afford many things, but not weakness. Never that. Heart got into the car and turned out onto the road. He had only a few hours to get a lot of work done.
The car pulled up to the old Tacoma City Hall. Officially, the building stood derelict, rising from the ground between Commerce and Pacific Ave. The red brick edifice rose into the sky, crowned by a square-shaped, ten-story clock tower whose bells once tolled the hour across the city.
Unofficially, the Families had used this place for their Archives for generations, the secret floors and rooms slowly expanding over time until the Council had manipulated the city government out of the building in 1957, making way to repurpose it for their exclusive use. Heart stared up at the brick against the grey daylight. He was fortunate that Jacob was still allowing him to pursue his own ends even after the report he’d just delivered. Stepping up to the door, he pressed one hand over the Vallais pin on his lapel and another to the old wood. “A Retainer to the Blood Royal requests entrance.”
A series of clicks followed, and the wood slid backwards and to the side. Heart was met by a short, white-bearded man dressed in an apron over a button-down with the sleeves rolled up. The man’s hair was gone up top, with a thin ring of white encircling his head, and the glasses perched on his nose were so thick they widened his eyes to an alarming size when looked at head-on. The Archivist had no name, no past, and so far as Heart had known, he had always been old. Some assumed he was a Spirit, but the old man wouldn’t say.
“Good morning,” Heart started.
“Ugh,” the Archivist said. “You. What do the Vallais want?”
“I’m doing a bit of research,” Heart answered. “I just need to ask some questions that are probably sensitive and uncomfortable, but that you might actually know the answers to.”
“Of course I would,” the Archivist grumbled. “I know everything.”
“And yet,” Heart said with a smile, “you’re always obtuse.”
The Archivist frowned. “That’s because I don’t like you. Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, come on. Let’s get this over with.”
They climbed a set of stairs on the other side of the door. It was different than the last time Heart had been here, but that was no surprise. The interior of this building was so full of magic that things often shifted, moved, and changed of their own volition. Only the Archivist knew how to navigate the space, and he was notoriously prickly. But also, having the charge of the collected histories of the families, countless bits of magical knowledge, a full census of the commoners, and the sacred family trees of every noble family in his care, he was also someone even Princes were forced to show some respect to.
“I’m looking for information on four commoners that were recently murdered,” Heart said.
“Yes, yes, I’m familiar,” the Archivist said.
“Have you heard anything of use?” Heart asked. “Their presence on the net has been carefully curated to reveal exactly nothing of substance. I was hoping you might know more.”
“I do.”
“Will you tell me?”
“No.”
Expected. Heart sighed. “May I ask why?”
The Archivist looked at him for a long moment as he opened the door to his dusty, paper-strewn office. The historian in Heart would’ve given anything to root through this room and its countless piles of books and papers, but he forced himself to stay focused.
“Their names were sealed, fifteen years ago,” the Archivist explained as he shifted papers on his desk. “No, I won’t tell you by whom.”
“Only the Families can compel that,” Heart said with a sigh. “Which means they served one of them.”
“Yes,” the Archivist said. “Very astute. Now what else do you have for me to say no to?”
Heart paused, considered his options, then made a decision. “In my capacity as Retainer, you have to answer with honesty what will not violate your agreements with the other families, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Then,” Heart said, “I want to know if anyone else has been asking about those four commoners. And if so, whom?”
The Archivist looked at him suspiciously, then his eyes glazed for a moment as he searched his memories behind them. After a moment he named two names. “Adrian Adelin and Alexandra Pierce.”
Heart immediately dropped to one knee and pressed his hand to the floor. He heard the Archivist growl “Oh you little shi—” then the world of now faded to gray as Heart activated his Seer’s gift.
This was why they’d thought he was broken: Heart was a Seer who couldn’t look into the future.
But he could look back.
Time rewound in front of Heart’s eyes. Outside the window, the sun rose and set in the wrong direction, and the Archivist came and went in reverse as the strain increasingly built as a pressure at the back of Heart’s neck. He looked backwards, further and further through time, his unique and precious ability, until he saw the two people the Archivist had mentioned standing in the dim room. Alexandra Pierce, Prince of House Pierce, and Adrian Adelin, the infamous Prince of House Adelin.
Stop, Heart thought, and the scene began to play out. He focused, dialing in his vision onto the words the two were saying. “… Tiffany Silverton,” Adrian said, his deep voice distant and cold. “I need to know what her job was.”
The shade of the Archivist looked up from his papers. “And I already told you, that information is sealed. Even a Prince cannot demand a break of that trust.”
“I could try,” Adrian’s voice took on the slightest hint of menace.
The Archivist stopped, and turned, and the faintest hint of… something flashed in the depths of his eyes. “And fail.”
“Listen,” Alexandra redirected the conversation. “She’s currently the only survivor of the attack. My retainers have her under secret watch at Tacoma General, but we don’t know if or when she’ll recover. On the off chance that she knows anything valuable about the attack, I can’t run the risk of anyone else getting access to her. Anything that you can tell us about her is valuable.” A pause followed, then she carefully chose her next words. “Who ordered the information sealed?”
The Archivist paused. Then he said, “Prince Matthew Schwan.”
Heart’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath, then a hand grabbed a fistful of his suit lapel and the vision abruptly dissipated as he found himself staring into the Archivist’s face. “You think you’re so damn clever, don’t you?” He shoved Heart so hard against the door that it rattled loudly. “Nice little workaround. Are you satisfied? Has violating my oath and my privacy made you feel smart?”
Heart grimaced as he straightened. The Archivist looked angry, but he advanced no further. “Well,” Heart said with a small smile. “Maybe a little.”
“Get out!” The Archivist bellowed. “GET OUT!”
Heart made his way down the stairs, pencils and pieces of wadded up paper bouncing off his back until he reached the front door and stepped out into the street. The door slammed behind him and a stream of curses echoed from the other side as the man retreated back into his cave. Despite the abrupt interruption, Heart’s mind was now filled with a hundred buzzing questions. Tiffany had been in the service of the Schwan family. Prince Matthew Schwan himself had ordered the information on her sealed. Whatever she’d been doing, it was important.
But more than that, she was alive. Alive, and in the custody of the Pierce family. Did Fisher know? Was this why he’d passed the information on? Careful. You don’t know what his motives were, either. As there was no active state of war between the families, Fisher was neither a friend nor an enemy, but that didn’t mean he could be fully trusted, and Heart didn’t like the feeling that sooner or later he was going to be forced to choose.
How the hell was he going to get close to Tiffany Silverton?