Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
KINGSTON
After class, I don’t waste time.
My destination is a quick walk across campus, the opposite direction of Camlann House, but equidistant from the Classics building. When I get there, it’s quiet, dark, yet somehow not calm.
The receptionist nods as I stride in, not bothering to ask me for an ID or anything to prove who I am. She knows who I am—so does everybody—and she knows exactly why I’m coming here. I wouldn’t be surprised if even she’s heard about what happened this weekend.
I get to the paneled wood door at the back of the hallway and pause, rock back on my heels, breathe out.
I want to use my key, unlock the door, storm in, be self-righteous, indignant.
But it’s unbecoming. The very fact that that’s what I want rather than what I think I should do is an indication that it’s wrong.
He won’t listen if I come in like that, anyway. It’s never worked for Kai. It certainly wouldn’t work for me.
So I swallow my pride and knock on the door.
“Come in,” comes my father’s voice.
I do.
It’s too big a room for an office, almost the size of an auditorium, vaulted ceilings, shadows cutting in from three-story windows, a platform that could hold a throne instead of a desk, low bookshelves, a few armchairs for casual meetings with deans, professors, visiting scholars, antiquities dealers, whoever’s coming by, and the requisite array of brown liquor in decanters.
And in the midst of it all, my father. Luther Pendragon.
Behind me, the door shuts with a mechanical finality. I straighten my posture, keep my weight in both feet, my head lifted, my eyes trained forward, almost as if I’m ready to step en garde, but not.
My father is sitting, his reading glasses perched on his face, a few papers in his hands. The lenses glint in the light, obscuring his good eye from view and making it impossible to tell where he’s looking, except for the feeling he’s burning into me.
“I want out of Dr. Emrys’s class,” I say, quick, to the point, before I lose my nerve. “I’m done.”
My father says nothing, shuffles the papers, places them face down so I can’t read what’s written, and removes the glasses.
“I beg your pardon,” he says.
“Out of the class,” I say again. “It’s…” I pause, hesitate, just a half second, a half second too long, even though I know what I’m going to say, have been reciting it in my head the whole walk across campus. “It’s a distraction. It’s too taxing. It’s, I think, why I?—”
“No.” His response is just as swift, a parry that clatters my words to the ground. “It’s out of the question.”
He purses his lips, slowly stands from behind the desk.
“Frankly, I’m astonished you even thought you could propose such a thing, Kingston.”
Luther Pendragon is formidable. Though I’m taller than him now, it doesn’t feel like it, and his six-foot-three form commands the entire room. In the tailored suit, the polished cufflinks, the Italian silk tie, he looks the part. He lives the part. He is it, embodies it.
The silken patch that covers his right eye only seems to intensify his stare, as if the left has doubled in strength in the absence of its partner.
“Truly unbelievable,” he says, coming slowly around from the back of the desk. “All of you. First Kai at the cap this weekend?—”
“That was?—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” he says.
I lower my head a fraction of an inch. Obey.
“I’ve already informed Kai of my disappointment. Extensively.”
It wasn’t Kai’s fault. Not exactly. I know that, and I could speak to that, but he won’t let me speak.
He wants it to be Kai’s fault. He wants me not to contradict that.
And I’m helpless to disobey.
“That kind of upset cannot happen on the Caliburn campus,” my father goes on. “Is that clear?”
No , I think. He doesn’t want it to be Kai’s fault. Kai is only the whipping boy.
It’s my fault. Ultimately, and always.
“Disorder. Drunkenness. Damage,” he goes on. “It brings scrutiny we do not need.”
I know this. He knows I do.
Yet he continues.
“And you,” he goes on. “Your focus waning. Your faith wavering. And you blame it on your schoolwork?”
I say nothing.
“Shameful, Kingston, that’s what that is. Shameful.”
I say nothing.
“You lost in a scrimmage to St. Ignaty. Did you think I wouldn’t hear of that? ”
I can only stare at the ground. I can’t look anywhere else. I am tense, head to foot, waiting, waiting for the blow. And when my eyes close, I hold them shut a fraction of a second longer than usual.
Bracing.
But there is no strike, of blade or of fist.
There is just her face. Concentrating. Focused.
No.
My eyes fly open.
“Answer me,” my father roars, and I realize he’s been speaking to me. “What good comes of you quitting, Kingston? What good, to anyone?”
“Not…quitting. Not permanently,” I mumble, freshly ashamed at how weak my voice sounds. “Only for the season, the semester. I’ll come back to it when?—”
“You will not,” my father interrupts. He glances back at his desk. “I’ve just finished the logistics. A new tranche of documents coming into the library. French, German, Italian, all over the place. All at Emrys’s asking. All for your benefit.”
I clench my teeth hard. So hard I can taste blood at the back of my mouth.
Because I know he’s right. I know it shouldn’t be too much. It’s part of what we do. The purity of purpose, the excellence with the blade, the quest for the ultimate knowledge.
Swordsmanship. Scholarship. Self-mastery.
It all comes together. It all has to.
And yet…
“It’ll still be there,” I say, voice a little stronger now. “Still be there once we’ve completed the season and…”
“But will he take you in the class?” My father cuts in. “Do you know what I’ve done to appease that doddering old fool? The lengths I’ve gone to, the strings I’ve pulled, the sheer amount of money I’ve spent… ”
There’s a heat to his words now, the flicker of power waning slightly.
“You know the kind of scrutiny we’re under. This sort of…unorthodox arrangement with him is already testing the limits.”
It’s more than that. And we both know it.
Because what he doesn’t say, would never say out loud, is that it’s heresy.
To the rest of the world, the White Brothers of Saint Vincent are a harmless, secluded sect of monks in the south of France. They mask their faces, pray ceaselessly, keep bees and keep away from the world.
To us, they are judge, jury, and executioner. The Consistory.
Founded by the antipope Benedict XIII of Avignon just after his excommunication in 1417. Charged since then as keepers of the grail protocol. Fervent, exacting, zealous.
A mage like Dr. Myrddin Emrys is not someone to be tangled with in their kind of holy pursuit.
Unless, of course, it succeeds.
In that case, of course, all sins are forgiven.
But only if.
“I do,” I murmur.
“Do you?” my father says, rubbing his brow.
“Because you do nothing, nothing, it seems, but keep me in a bind. I’m at Emrys’s beck and call to source these manuscripts.
Smugglers. Kingpins. Ungodly amounts of money.
All so he’ll deign to allow you to interpret , and only so long as you’re the worthiest of all scholars, which you must be. ”
My chest tightens, the back of my neck going stiff.
I know I must. I know that I must stay in Dr. Emrys’s good graces and be an exemplary scholar. I know I must stay pure of heart and spirit and body. And I know I must never lose to another swordsman.
Something my father could never quite manage .
The dark, silken void of the eye patch is testament to that.
“What if I’m not?”
Now my father goes cold. “What if you’re not what? ”
“What if I’m not the worthiest of all scholars?” I say. “What if someone else is?”
“What,” he says, the word pointed and dark, “do you mean by that?”
I stand straighter.
“There’s this new student in Emrys’s class who’s…”
Unstable. Unpredictable. Brilliant. Challenging.
Christ in heaven. It had to be the same person. The center of all the student unrest and the standout pupil in the most competitive class.
I clench my fists, my abdominals, my shoulders to my calves.
“What makes you think,” my father says slowly, “that you have any right to be less than the top? Do you not know what is at stake? ”
Of course. Of course I know. I have never not known.
This is the quest of all quests. The burden that outlives the bearer. The last true charge of the broken church.
“It…doesn’t work like that,” I say, weakly. “You know how Emrys is. He’s…” I cast around for the right word. “… mercurial . I think he’s taking a liking to?—”
“And that’s why you want to quit?” my father interrupts. “Simply because now there’s a challenge? A challenger?”
No , I think. That’s not it. It’s that, it’s that…maybe for the first time there’s someone else who can do this crazy thing, who could figure out where it’s been hiding all these years. Who can think like Emrys, in riddles and puzzles, in contradictions as well as facts and records.
“Listen to me,” my father says through clenched teeth. “Look at me. ”
I don’t want to, but I do. He clasps one shoulder in a broad hand, his one good eye boring into me.
“This is about more than you,” he says, slowly and carefully. “This is about all of us, about everyone, the good of humankind. This could change, could fix…”
He doesn’t have to say anymore. I push his hand from my shoulder.
“I understand,” I say. Too sharply, I realize.
“ Do you ?” he says again. “If this new student is as good as you say, you think Emrys is taking some sort of shine to him, then you dog his steps. You keep tabs on him. You don’t let him uncover a single thing without you looking over his shoulder.”
Him. His.
Too late, I realize I didn’t mention who this student is.
Who she is.
“Is that clear?” my father asks. “Do you understand? Do you truly understand?”
I don’t answer. I look anywhere but him, around, at the massive expanse of this office, if it can even be called that, the platform and the massive desk, the pebbled glass of the windows, the way the light seems to warp around my father’s silhouette.
For a moment, I consider telling him.
Revealing the truth.
If this star student is a woman, there’s no way he’d encourage me to stay this close.
But as long as he doesn’t know…
“I have no arguments against it,” I say at last.
The truth—a version of it. I’ve learned this is the only way to address Luther Pendragon—litigious logic the only language he speaks.
“That’s right,” my father affirms. “You don’t.”
There’s nothing more to say. Both of us know it. I give the barest nod and turn, heat seething under the surface of my chest, anger, constriction, all of it unproductive, all of it needing to be banished and worked out of me through prayer or exercise or study.
Yet when I get to the door, it doesn’t open. Won’t open.
I stay there, waiting, at attention, as I hear my father make his way to his desk, settle in, and carefully press the locking mechanism.
With a sigh and a click, it opens again.
Freedom.
“I’ll be looking forward to you fencing Sainte-Odile,” my father’s voice says from behind me.
Or the closest to freedom I’ll ever know.
Once more, I have nothing to say.
So I leave. Nothing but echoes behind me, and no time to waste. Practice comes soon, and the captain of the team cannot be late.
I pick up the pace as I take my leave of the building, the chill wind like a whip at my skin.
I tug my coat collar up, its protection minimal, and try to turn my attentions to the next matter at hand: footwork drills and equipment maintenance. Practice spars and strategizing.
But I can’t master my own thoughts. Can’t look away from the stark truth of what faces me now. My father may not have said it in so many words, but he never has to. I took his meaning all the same.
Gwenna Vale is no longer simply a problem.
She’s my problem.