7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Jessica
They give me the meeting at nine, in a small room off the administration corridor, and I get to say who's in it.
Falken. A woman from the Council's office with a recorder and two pens. A man from academy security. Freya, on a chair by the door with her notebook, because I asked for a witness.
Luke at the far end.
Jon isn't here. He asked Falken if he could be. Falken said no.
I give them all of it.
The lead car stopping. Cassel getting out and putting herself between me and the trees. The shots. Dragging her into the ditch by the back of her coat.
Kavek getting out of the lead car.
Six steps.
That's as far as he got.
The net. The darts. The zip tie around my wrists. Waking up on a stone floor with my side bandaged and a note folded on top of a sweater.
I tell them about Frances. Elise. Benny. Tomas.
I tell them I was locked in. That I wasn't allowed to leave. That Frances told me why they'd brought me there and showed me what they'd kept.
I tell them Elise and Benny got me out.
Nobody interrupts.
It takes forty minutes.
"Thank you," the woman from the Council says. "Now. The location."
"No."
Her pen stops.
"Miss Miller—"
"I've given you everything I saw. I'm not giving you a road."
"You are aware that you're describing an abduction."
"I'm the one it happened to. Yes."
"Then I don't understand what you think you're protecting."
"People who had nothing to do with it."
"And people who did."
"Yes."
She waits.
"Elise helped me leave," I say. "So did Benny. I want that in the record."
"It is."
"Frances has a man there who was involved in taking me. He was alive and under guard when I left."
"Is he being questioned?"
"I assume so."
"That's going to be a problem."
"I know."
"And you still won't give me the location."
"No."
The man from academy security puts his pen down.
"May I say the unpleasant part?"
"Go on," Falken says.
"Officer Kavek has a mother and two sisters. They've been told he was killed protecting a student. At some point they're going to ask whether anyone was charged."
I look at him.
"If this goes the way you're asking," he says, "the answer may be no."
Nobody says anything.
I think about Kavek. And Tomas.
"Put that in the record."
The Council woman looks at me. "What part?"
"That you told me."
She writes it down.
It takes another hour.
I don't get everything I want.
The Council agrees to take the records Frances sends without requiring me to identify the valley. Nobody there is cleared of anything. Nobody is charged today either.
Benny and Elise get their protection in writing.
The hired men, whoever paid them, and the pistol go into the investigation. There's a case number. I write it down.
Then the Council woman looks at Luke.
"Were weapons discharged by House personnel during the rescue of Miss Miller?"
Luke doesn't look at me.
"Draeven will answer for its own people. In writing, to this Council, by the end of the week." He closes his folder. "I won't answer for anybody else's."
She writes that down.
At the end they turn the statement around.
I read every page.
I sign the last one. Freya signs under me. The Council recorder signs under Freya.
In the corridor, Freya closes her notebook.
"I wrote down what he said about Kavek's family."
"Good."
She hugs me and walks to class.
Elise finds me in the corridor outside Faris's lecture hall with my bag over Declan's shoulder and my notes under my arm.
"They gave me a pass," she says, holding it up. It's a buff-colored visitor card with a clip on it. "It only lets me into the academic buildings."
"How's the guest accommodation?"
“The bed's terrible, but the food is great.” She says it excitedly. "Three meals I didn't have to cook. I keep expecting somebody to hand me a bill."
"No, you better not get any bills."
"I know." She shifts the strap on her shoulder, and I notice the canvas case against her hip and the way she keeps one arm over it without seeming to know she's doing it.
"I have something I'd like to show you," she says. "It'll take an hour. If you'd rather do it next week, or never, that's okay and I'll go look at your library instead."
"Today."
"Today's fine." She hesitates. "Who do you want there?"
"Freya," I say. "And Torres."
I pick my suite because the sitting room is big enough and I don't want to walk any farther than I have to.
Freya arrives with a notebook. Torres brings coffee for four people and sits on the arm of the ugly chair beside me, his hip warm against my good arm.
Elise knocks, and Freya lets her in. She carries the canvas bag straight to the coffee table and doesn't release the strap until she's sitting in front of it.
"Before I show you anything, I need to be clear," she says. "Some of what my family knows is written down. Some of it was passed from one person to another."
She opens the case and reaches for the larger folder. I recognize the edge of a family tree before she gets it out.
"Hess already showed me the line from Victoria to Emil," I say. "I've seen the parish records, the marriages, the name changes, and every place the trail nearly disappeared."
"Good." Elise leaves the folder inside the case. "I didn't bring this to prove who you are. You shifted into a direwolf. That's all the proof anybody needs. I brought it because you should see everything we have."
"That folder is our version of the family tree," she says. "It can wait."
"Not forever," Freya says.
"No. Not forever."
Elise takes a clear sleeve from the case. Four handwritten pages are protected inside.
"Marla," she says. "My ancestor. The woman who took Victoria out. She wrote this as an old woman because her grandson asked her to, and it's the only time she put any of it on paper."
"You can read it. You can't touch it. Freya, there are gloves in the front pocket."
Freya has the gloves on before Elise finishes the sentence.
Marla was told to take six-year-old Victoria down the valley and wait until the fighting ended. Everyone expected the Council to arrive and Victoria to be home within a week.
"Why her?" I ask. "There must have been older children."
"She was in the kitchen when the order came," Elise says. "Victoria was small for her age, and Marla had looked after her often enough that she trusted her. Marla could pick her up and leave without Victoria fighting or calling for someone. That's the only reason the statement gives."
"What did they tell her?"
"That they would come for her."
Torres's thumb moves once across my knee.
"When did Victoria understand they weren't coming?"
"The statement doesn't say," Elise says. "Marla writes about the first winter. About her going to the window whenever a cart came up the road, and how long it took before she stopped."
I read that part twice. Halfway through the second time, the words blur and I have to stop.
"Do you want to stop?" Torres asks.
"No."
"Okay."
He moves his hand from my knee to the back of my neck, under my hair, and leaves it there.
"There's one more thing in it," Elise says. "Marla wrote down a line Victoria kept repeating. Something she'd heard the adults saying before any of it started."
"Say it."
"They want it all under one hand."
Freya's pen stops.
"Who were they?" I ask.
"Marla didn't know."
"Whose hand?"
"She didn't know that either."
I look at the sentence again. "Then what does this give us?"
"If the paper and handwriting authenticate, it tells us Marla recorded those words long before anyone knew about you."
"And that people inside the House were afraid before the attack."
"It tells us Victoria remembered them being afraid," Elise says. "She was six. We don't know what she understood."
I want that sentence to mean my family was framed. It doesn't. Not by itself.
"Why did you bring it?"
Elise looks down at Marla's statement before she answers.
"Hess gave you names and dates," she says. "This tells you Victoria waited at a window for her family. I thought you deserved to know that too."
"That doesn't undo what your valley did to me."
"No," she says. "It doesn't, and I'm not offering it as though it does. That's a different conversation and I'll sit through all of it whenever you want it."
"I want a copy after it's authenticated."
"You'll have one."
"And I want someone outside the valley to examine it."
"That's why I brought it," Elise says.
Then she turns the last sheet so it faces me, and steps back.
For most of the statement, Marla calls her the child. The child slept. The child would not eat. The child went to the window whenever she heard wheels on the road.
Near the bottom of the final page, Marla finally uses her name.
Victoria stopped asking when her family would come.
I read the sentence again.
Torres's hand stays at the back of my neck.
Elise slides the sleeve back into the case and puts it in the bag but doesn't close it.
“There’s something else I need to say,” I tell her.
Elise settles back in her chair. “All right.”
“You came here to give me records about what happened to the Fourth House. About the people who were hurt because someone decided they were in the way.”
“Yes.”
“Your people did the same thing.”
Elise's face changes.
“You decided I didn’t belong here. You decided you had the right to take me. And when people tried to protect me, you went through them.”
Nobody says anything.
“I know you weren't there,” I say. “I know Frances wasn't standing in those trees with a gun. But they were people, acting on what all of you believed.”
“Yes.”
“And I need you to understand what that cost.”
Elise nods once.
“Her name is Cassel.”
I feel Torres give my neck a squeeze.
“She ran my detail. She had only been with me a short time because the man who had it before her was still on crutches from the last time somebody came for me. The last thing she said to me was do not talk to me.”
My mouth almost moves at that, because it was such a Cassel thing to say.
“Then she got out of the car and put herself between me and the trees. She took two rounds. I dragged her into the ditch by the back of her coat. I still had her blood on my hands when your physician was working on me.”
“I know her name,” Elise says quietly.
“Knowing her name isn't the same thing.”
“No.”
“Kavek died.”
Elise doesn't look away.
“I never even talked to him. He was in the lead car. He got out and didn't make it six steps. He used to hold doors for me. I'd say thanks. That was it.”
My throat tightens.
“I've read the report. I know where he was hit and where they found him. But I don't know anything about him.”
I look down at my hands.
“Someone should remember him.”
“We do.”
I look back at her. “That's not good enough.”
“I know.”
“Frances making everyone memorize their names doesn't make this better.”
“It wasn't supposed to.”
That stops me for a second.
“Then why?”
“Because people died,” Elise says. “The least we could do was know who they were.”
“It doesn't make it okay.”
“No.”
“And finding out somebody did terrible things to the Fourth House doesn't erase what your people did to me.”
“No.”
“I need you to know that.”
Elise holds my eyes.
“I do.”
"I haven’t heard from Frances, has he been in contact?" I ask.
"He messages me. Twice since I got here." Elise doesn't hesitate over it. "Not to you. You didn't say he could."
"What does he say?"
"Mostly he asks whether you've eaten and whether the shoulder is closing." Her mouth moves, not quite a smile. "He's ninety percent a frightened old man and ten percent a head of household."
"Benny?"
"Fine. He came off the gate."
"Was he taken off it?"
"He asked. Frances said yes." She shrugs. "He's on the water pipes at the top of the valley, which is cold and boring and nobody talks to you for six hours, and I think that's the point. Tomas follows him around. Benny lets him hold the wrench."
Something loosens under my ribs that I hadn't known was tight.
"And Klaus."
"Frances said it in the yard the morning after you left, with the whole valley standing there, the way he promised you.
" Elise's voice doesn't change. "That Benny and I were under his protection, that no one would raise a hand or a word against us, and that anyone who did would answer to him personally.
Klaus stood at the back with his arms folded and didn't say anything. "
"And since?"
"Nobody's said anything to my mother in the shop." She looks at the case. "Klaus hasn't spoken to me since the burial. He carried his brother himself. I don't think he's stopped blaming you, and I don't expect him to."
"I'm not asking him to."
"No," Elise says. "I didn't think you were."
Torres says, “And the man with the pistol?”
“Still alive. Still under guard. Frances has questioned him three times.” Elise closes the flap on the case and puts both hands on top of it. “He's given three accounts. The dates move, the names change, and he lies about things Frances already knows because Benny was there.”
“What about the pistol?”
“He won't say where it came from.”
“Won't say?”
“Won't say. Frances has asked him every way he can think of. He stops talking when they get to the weapon.”
“Does Benny know?”
“No. He'd never seen it before.”
“I want the questioning. All of it.”
“It's already being sent here. Frances assumed you'd ask and had it copied.”
“And I want him out of that valley.”
“So does Frances.”
I wait.
“He's trying to figure out how to turn him over without giving anyone the location of the valley. He can't exactly call the authorities and tell them he has an armed man being held somewhere he's not willing to identify.”
“No.”
“Frances asked me something before I left.”
“What?”
“He wants to know if you'll come back.”
Torres's hand goes still against my neck.
I think about the bedroom with the shutters, and the courtyard, and nineteen children being hurried toward the shelter while a man stood there with a gun. A six-year-old at a window.
“Not yet,” I say.
“That isn't no.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn't.”
Elise breathes out.
“Do you want me to tell him anything else?”
I look at the canvas case under her arm, with four pages in it that an old woman wrote because her grandson asked her to.
“Tell him I read Marla's statement.”
Elise's eyes go bright. She blinks once.
“He'll want to know what you thought of it.”
“He doesn’t get that.”