Chapter 25 First Meeting
First Meeting
Ifelt myself redden, and glanced reflexively down at my monocerus. It pawed the carpet, snorting, like it wanted everyone in the room to know they were rude for staring at me. It glared with particular ire at the large, muscular, bull-shaped primal that belonged to Quicksilver.
The bull only stared back, its red eyes haughty.
I cleared my throat.
“Yes, well.” I looked away from the bull. “I’d actually wondered about that myself.” I glanced at Forsooth. “How did you find out Alaric and I had been doing that? How did you know we were tracking the Priest?”
A few of the faces in that circle blinked, then looked to Forsooth, obviously expecting him to field that question.
“I have a few resources that aided me,” Forsooth said a little cagily, his dark eyes serious.
“I cannot tell you all of my sources, not at this time, but suffice it to say, I have my own informants on the periphery of Dark Cathedral.” He smiled at me reassuringly, possibly due to something he saw in my reaction.
“They are not yet aware of your involvement, Ms. Shadow, but they are aware of Alaric Greythorne’s successful attempts to listen to several broadcasts.
I was able to extrapolate your involvement because I also know people at the Dragon’s Keep, and in fact arranged for extra security for both of you while you were staying there. ”
My eyes widened more.
I considered pursuing that, then decided it could wait.
“But…” I frowned, puzzled. “How could they know about Alaric and not me?”
Forsooth paused for a moment, stirring his tea with a silver spoon.
“Well,” he said next, his voice a bit heavier.
“I imagine it’s because you have a loyal friend in Alaric Greythorne, Ms. Shadow, a friend who did not implicate you.
From what my sources tell me, they’ve worked very hard to get that information out of him.
” He cleared his throat, still stirring his tea.
“They’ve also tried various magical means to reverse-engineer the signal to discover any accomplices, but they were unsuccessful in that, too.
Your name, so far as I know, has not been mentioned by the younger Mr. Greythorne at all. ”
I felt my eyes sting, right before my jaw hardened.
“How did they catch him?” I glanced around the circle, then back at Forsooth. “It was because they caught us listening in, wasn’t it? We always figured he could say he was listening out of curiosity. Being a royal himself, we thought he could pretend to be recruited––”
Forsooth lightly coughed, and I fell silent.
“Ah. Yes,” Forsooth hummed. “Well. It seems young Mr. Greythorne rather imprudently wrote a letter to one of his half-siblings in Greece, a letter that contained detailed information about at least one of the broadcasts you overheard. I believe he meant to request sanctuary, and gave details about the missive to convey the danger he believed himself to be in. That said, I never saw the contents of the letter myself, so I cannot say for certain what he intended. I also don’t know whether that letter was intercepted, or if his sibling or stepmother turned him in.
In either case, the information did get back to Alaric’s father, and Lord Greythorne came to collect his son. ”
My jaw clenched.
Alaric wrote someone in his family?
Why? Why would he risk that?
Even as I thought it, the rest of Forsooth’s words landed.
I knew why. He’d done it because of that broadcast, the one that got cut off. He’d been looking for an escape hatch after that night on the Eyrie where I cocked everything up. Alaric clearly thought he might need a way out.
He’d at least wanted something lined up in case we’d been seen.
I kicked myself, again, for everything that happened that night.
I’d thought I was being careful, but I’d obviously rushed things, enough that they’d known someone was listening who shouldn’t be.
Alaric must have sent the letter with one of the school drakai after spending a day and a night worrying about what might happen and deciding he needed a backup plan.
Gods, I wished he’d talked to me first.
“Ms. Shadow,” a strange witch asked. “Is it true that you and Greythorne listened to more than one broadcast?”
Her voice boomed across to me, exaggeratedly loud in the high-ceilinged room.
I wiped my eyes a little fiercely, and nodded.
“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “We did.” I frowned, thinking.
“We began talking about it at the end of our first school year. Alaric told me during summer term that he worried his father was getting more fanatical about his political beliefs, and that it had something to do with Dark Cathedral. The weekend after Beltaine, Lord Greythorne said a number of things that gave him reason to worry. He also made it clear he expected Alaric to speak and act more in alignment with what he called ‘the family position’ on Magique affairs.”
My jaw hardened as I remembered Alaric telling me in a Bonescastle restaurant how his father, slurringly drunk, said that he, Alaric, should be thinking about what he would do after Dark Cathedral’s “Project of Worlds” came to fruition.
He’d bragged that they’d have their pick of lands to occupy, and slaves to barter for and purchase, both as a permanent workforce and as “entertainment.” He’d scoffed that Alaric needn’t worry about university for much longer, as no one of royal lineage would need work, ever again.
“Alaric talked about running if things got bad enough, even then,” I continued, clearing my throat.
“But we didn’t actually do anything until that summer, when I approached him about trying to determine the identity of the Priest. I thought that would be easiest, as an entry point for Dark Cathedral, and really, safer.
Alaric’s father constantly pushed him to listen to the broadcasts, anyway, so he’d at least have an excuse if we got caught. ”
I swallowed, realizing again that it had been me who dragged Alaric into this, not the reverse. Granted, Alaric jumped on the idea with enthusiasm, but I’d been the one to say it first. I’d started us down this track.
Still thinking, I bit my lip.
“Alaric didn’t want to ask his father to notify him about any upcoming broadcasts, for a number of reasons,” I explained. “For one, he strongly suspected his father would want him to mirror home, and listen with him at the Greythorne estate.”
I glanced around at their faces. “I don’t know how many of you have listened to the Priest speak, but there’s a reality-distortion element, one that’s difficult to resist. Alaric really struggled with it, even when it was just him and me.
We tried various methods to lessen the effects on his magical aura, and on his mind, but none of them really worked.
Even so, he told me he struggled noticeably less with me, and exponentially more the one time he listened with true believers.
He didn’t trust his father not to exploit that. ”
At their blank stares, I waved a hand vaguely, and added, “He also didn’t want his name down as officially being a member, because, as he explained, that meant swearing a loyalty pledge to Dark Cathedral.
Once he’d done that, there would be a number of other expectations and requirements, including a deep security scan of his magical aura, various magical vows and rituals that would ensure his loyalty, additional rituals that ensured they knew his whereabouts at all times, monitoring of his associations, and so on.
Alaric didn’t want any of that, for obvious reasons.
He refused to let his father ‘brand’ him, as he put it.
He was determined to find a way to listen without permission, instead.
He had good guesses as to which of our classmates would’ve made those pledges already.
But we only managed to intercept five before––”
“Five?” Quicksilver broke in.
He stared at me, his light-brown eyes suddenly razor sharp.
“Are you saying you and Alaric Greythorne listened to five full broadcasts by the Priest?” His mouth hardened. “Including the coded instructions at the end? Without Dark Cathedral having any awareness of you pirating their signal?”
“Yes,” I said, puzzled.
I glanced around at the others, but they looked equally astonished, even Valor.
Why were they so surprised? Wasn’t that why I was here?
“That doesn’t include the truncated message here, at The Eyrie,” I added.
When no one else spoke, I went on, still cradling the mug between my hands.
“I’m pretty confident we got notice of all the public messages at least, from the end of July until mid-September.
” I gazed unseeingly at the floor. “Alaric was adamant we not miss any, as he felt sure something big was in the works. His father was also making increasingly violent threats against him, saying he’d force Alaric to take loyalty vows, if he didn’t align with the family soon.
He was furious when Alaric refused to commit to the first of the binding spells before the autumn term began.
Alaric said he only got away with it because, for that for that particular ritual to work, the petitioner needed to consent. ”
Glancing around the circle, I frowned at their dumbfounded stares.
“He was scared,” I said simply. “We both were. It made us a little obsessive. We spent a lot of time working on various protections around our attempts for that reason. We eventually wanted to intercept private messages too, not just the Priest but between royals higher up in the leadership structure, but we never got that far.”
“Can you explain how it worked?” Forsooth asked, politely. “How the two of you accomplished the signal hijack with the public broadcasts?”
I thought about that, and shrugged, lowering my mug to my chair’s arm.