17. Jaxson
17
Jaxson
W hen my video call with Lauressa suddenly disconnects, I’m half a second from messaging Magdalene to make sure she’s fine before a text comes through from Lauressa. Apparently, someone knocked on her door so she had to end the call abruptly to get herself together. I believe her in the meantime, but make sure to check in with Magdalene about her who says that the two Sentry assigned to her said all was good and that they escorted her home on time as promised.
Still, I glance at the tracker in her phone to make sure it’s at my father’s house.
One of these days, I'm going to get one installed under her nail bed that tracks her location and that her vitals are normal. Until then, there’s not much more I can do beyond any of that. I manage to soothe my remaining paranoia with the knowledge that if anything was wrong, I have enough eyes and ears around that I’d learn about it.
In the meantime, I’ve got my own investigation to continue.
Serenity Yates is a fourteen-year-old prodigy. A math and technology whiz who was so smart that she tested out the Sovereignty University K-12 at thirteen. The only reason she wasn’t enrolled in college immediately was that her parents decided they thought she was still too young and vulnerable to withstand the onslaught of wicked forces that would seek to come after her righteousness and virtue. Thus, she won’t be enrolled in college until she’s sixteen. In the meantime, she helps the local treasurer run the finance department in Charleston. At least, that’s the story her parents give.
According to J, who has been spending a significant amount of time with Serenity between their mutual gaming interests and the fact that he clearly has a burgeoning crush on her, Serenity decided she didn’t want to go to college yet herself. Her parents threw a fit, having aspirations of a viral social media story of their thirteen-year-old child being one of the youngest enrolled in college and on track to graduate when she was sixteen. Serenity stood her ground and promised to fail every single one of her classes if they persisted before her family finally relented and allowed her to wait for college.
In the meantime, she not just helps in the treasury department, she runs the whole department behind the scenes while the actual treasurer does little more than shows up and reads off her reports to the Sovereign body. Which also means she’s well aware of a certain anonymous donation from a likely anonymous account that the Altar’s coffers get every month. She likely doesn’t know where from, but for someone as observant and intelligent as she seems to be, no doubt she’s asked who the donor is and what it’s for and her father has given her some sort of answer. Thus, when Serenity offers J to help her in the department on days when the Sovereignty meets, I subtly encourage him to take her up on it. Because the entire department is run by a fourteen-year-old, most of the people in the department are all minors under sixteen and it’ll be a good opportunity for him to make friends.
J gives me a skeptical look at my encouragement and says, “From the guy who doesn’t have friends.”
“I have friends,” I reply.
“You have people you tolerate being around. Not friends.”
“What is a friend if not someone you can tolerate being around?”
J rolls his eyes and says, “It would be a lot easier if you just told me what you want me to find out from Serenity for you.”
“Until I know that you have the subtlety not to make it obvious you’re trying to get a certain piece of information out of her, better that you’re an unwitting pawn,” I reply bluntly.
“I can be more than a pawn,” J grumbles with his arms crossed. “I can’t even be like… a rook or something.”
While I wait for J to inevitably stumble across some information that will help me glean exactly where this money is going, I work on finding out whether Yates is in the know of what’s happening or whether he’s just an unwitting, gullible pawn in all this.
Based on the time I’ve spent with Yates, I’m heavily leaning toward the later. There’s a certain sincerity to his belief in the good that exists in the Sovereignty, that I doubt he could fathom something more nefarious happening than the conspiracies of outside enemy forces trying to sabotage it that everyone in the Sovereignty is fed and made to believe. That said, stranger things have happened. The gullible idiot who zealously buys into all this could be just an act. If it an act, it’s a damn good one. But I doubt it.
So that has to mean that it’s someone close to him that knows what’s going on. Someone on close to him that he wouldn’t question, especially if the money is an anonymous donation. And in order for that anonymous donation to not raise any eyebrows, there has to be something on the accounting books that’s ostensibly for the upkeep of the Altar, but is going to something else.
The obvious answer is their figurehead treasurer. However, it could be anyone on the Atlar staff. But the only way to confirm that is to get information. And the way to get that information is to tap into the gossip grapevine. Because where there is something funny happening, there’s gossip about it no matter how much the Sovereignty tries to forbid gossip and punish those who participate in it.
The first thing I do is ask Jessie if she’s heard anything, but she’s as in the dark about the inner happenings of the Charleston SC Altar as I am.
“I don’t hear anything but good things about that place. They consistently meet their treasury goals and they’re Priest is infamous for how charismatic he is at riling p a crowd with his lectures and sermons. A very straight and narrow Altar too. Stickler for attendance and the Sovereignty rules. Had a friend transfer there for college, but left because she thought they were too much in her business. Still nothing but good things to say,” Jessie says when I ask .
Jessie may not have heard anything, but I know there’s dirt somewhere, and based on the squeaky clean image they project, it’s likely a steaming pile of shit.
But since Jessie has no information, I have to resort to the one thing I despise to get the gossip that I’m looking for. I have to socialize with people I would rather not tolerate.
I don’t even have to artificially arrange anything. A few of the Sovereigns in the city are always hosting an exclusive gathering or another, and no one is passing up the opportunity to invite the possible future Oracle into their home.
Within a week, I’m invited to a men’s night at some exclusive longue that one of the men has paid for our exclusive use for the night. I’m almost positive that the invitation is a curtsy more than anything. They certainly don’t expect me to come—not with my reputation for being aloof and reserved unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately for them and for me, it’s necessary.
The fact that they didn’t expect me to come shows on their faces when they arrive and sit amongst them. They all exchange looks, unsure of what to do or say for a while until our waiter comes and asks what our drinks order is.
It doesn’t take a genius to hear them ordering their sparkling non-alcoholic drinks to know that if I weren’t sitting here, those drinks would be decidedly less non-alcoholic. So although I have very little desire to drink alcohol when the waiter gets to me, I order the first alcoholic drink I can think off the top of my head .
“Whiskey and coke,” I say, grateful that Lauressa insisted on educating me on different types of alcoholic drinks in our time together, and that I remember something from it.
It’s clear that everyone at the table is stunned, exchanging looks.
I break the stunned silence by saying, “I trust that this little vice of mine won’t get back to the Oracle. Not that he’d believe your word over mine.”
The table breaks into raucous laughter as every changes their drink orders and someone orders a round of shots for the table.
The ice broken, the other men, who all vary from the ages of twenty-one to forty, begin to loudly engage in the sort or raucous and ribbing that I was dreading having to be around and participate in. It’s made worse by the presence of alcohol loosening their tongues which is both to my dismay and my benefit.
Almost immediately, someone pulls out a deck of cards and asks me if I know how to play spades. I don’t seeing as I was forbidden to play with them as a child even when I wasn’t using them to gamble like those at the table clearly intend to.
“Then you need to sit right over there with your drink,” Alex, a dark skinned young man with sponge waves in his hair says loudly. “Only people who know how to play spades are allowed to play spades.”
“How is anyone supposed to learn how to play it then?” says Solomon, a younger man around the same age as Alex.
“The fact that you even have to ask that question reminds me that you don’t know how to play either?” Alex declares. “You sit over there with Priest Devine. ”
“My name is fine,” I remind for the umpteenth time nursing the same drink I’ve had since the beginning. Not that anyone has noticed. Normally, I wouldn’t care what people call me. I understand by virtue of being who I am in the Sovereignty, I automatically command a certain level of respect. But in this moment, I need these men to see me as just like them. As a peer that happens to be in charge of them and not the other way around.
“Yeah, yeah,” someone mutters as they begin to play their game.
The rules are fairly easy to pick up on as I watch them play and they discuss mundane things that anyone else might find interesting, but that I find painfully boring. I glance at my phone, seeing a message from Abner who I’ve been intermediately texting when no one is looking and has been teasing me about my anti-social personality.
I’m tempted to call it an early night. I’ve gotten no useful information, and I’ve already been here three hours. I won’t be missed, and the only reason I wouldn’t call this a wasted night is that I showed a few people in the Sovereignty that I’m not as above it all as I act and can be down to earth. The particulars probably would be spread, but they’ll have told a few people outside of Charleston by the end of the week adding a positive nuance to my reputation.
I’m just about to stand up to leave when Solomon says, “I guess Eran’s not coming.”
“He’s not coming because he wasn’t invited,” Alex says.
“You invited this stick in the mud from headquarters, but not Eran?” someone says and then looks to me. “No offense, but we didn’t know you like that before.”
“None taken,” I answer .
“I had to invite him,” Alex says. “I couldn’t not invite the Oracle’s son, and to be fair, I didn’t think he’d show. But I don’t have to invite Eran.”
“Eran?” I interject because it’s clear that something is understood about this Eran person amongst the group.
“The High Priest’s son,” Alex grumbles. “Don’t get us wrong. He’s cool… it’s his bastard of a father that’s not cool. And every time we do anything , if we invite Eran and he comes, everything that happened no matter how innocent always gets back to that dumbass.”
“Don’t think too ill of us. We like Eran. We all grew up together, but his father is a controlling bastard.”
Calling someone controlling when they’re all a part of a controlling cult means two things. One is that despite my father’s running the Sovereignty into the ground with his delusional leadership, the programming that tricks Sovereigns into thinking they aren’t being controlled and that they’re willing choosing to live the way an old man tells them still works. The second is that if their calling the High Priest a controlling bastard, he must be trying to exercise the control already given to him by the Sovereignty with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I wish I could say it’s not a problem in a the leadership in the Sovereignty but I’ve heard similar complaints based on the revolving door of leadership in many altars.
“And Priest Yates knows it,” a random man puts in his two cents. “If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be constantly trying to get rid of him.”
I resist the urge to perk up at that .
“Trying to get rid of him,” I repeat. “He’s the Head Priest of the Altar.”
That is to say that the Head Priest of any alter has ultimate say of who works under his administration, no matter what anyone says. Even if it’s ill-advised.
“Yeah Yates is. But your neck of the woods has authority even over him, and they won’t let him sit the bastard down,” Alex mutters.
“Where did you hear that?” I ask.
“My little sister works in the treasury department with Serenity, Priest Yate’s oldest daughter,” Alex says. “That girl knows everything that happens in that damn Altar. If you ever want to know something, ask her… although, she’s not one to give information for nothing unless she wants to. Best thing to do is let her tell the kids and the kids to tell everyone else.”
“Anyway, she hates that guy. They are constantly fighting. If it were anyone else, she would have gotten time out for flagrant insubordination by now. She won’t do a thing the High Priest says if she doesn’t have to. Hell. Even when she has to, she won’t.”
“You know a guy is a bastard if he has fucking beef with a fucking fourteen-year-old. Crazy work there,” Solomon adds. “Anyway, she’s been trying to get her dad to get rid of the guy for years. They’ve gotten close. Even chosen multiple replacements for the guy. But Chicago always says no. Direct order from the Oracle’s office. Some bullshit about learning to work with adversity and respect those we hate. Yada, yada, ya.” Solomon suddenly perks up, looking at me in alarm as he adds, “Not that I mean any disrespect to the Oracle or question his wisdom. ”
I wave a dismissive hand, and they continue with their conversation. I stay, but tune it out because I’ve gotten the information I came for. A Sovereign Priest that the Head Priest has been trying to get relieved of his post for years but that Chicago won’t let even though it goes against all the usual protocol. Someone that Serenity Yates hates.
It appears I’ve found the person I’m looking for.