34. Bad News for Your Least Favourite Finger #2
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Alistair says. ‘What I mean is, he wouldn’t be playing pips with you.
That’s never been his style, not even with the actual pips.
But I was on my way to see him this morning, and what did I spy?
’ Briar has a pretty good idea. ‘You, slithering your way out of his room. So the crux of the matter is—’
He hauls off and punches Briar square in the face, surprisingly scrappy for an aristocrat, pain exploding in Briar’s jaw. As they breathe raggedly through their nose, waiting for the initial shock of it to subside, they think: Punishment the old-fashioned way. I can deal with that.
‘First of all,’ Alistair says, eyes bright and feverish, ‘you’re not fit to lick the grime from his shoes. Or - any of our shoes, for that matter. Anything that gutter mouth of yours touches is demeaned by it.’
Briar manages to lift their head just in time for the second punch. This one is messy, but their head already hurts so much it feels like it might be about to split its seams, so the lack of technique hardly matters.
‘Secondly - I don’t believe you’re as ignorant as Wolfe says you are.
I think you know exactly what we’re doing here, and that your little friends are the ones who’ve been meddling with sacred rituals because deep down, they know they’re all failures, destined for lives almost as depressing and inconsequential as yours.
’ He grabs Briar by the chin, forcing their head up.
‘Almost, but not quite. Understand this: there is nobody more worthless than you in a five-mile radius. Your death wouldn’t even make the evening news.
’ The inside of his lip is stained dark, traces of red wine clinging like a bruise.
Briar can smell the alcohol on his breath, too, sour and strong.
‘Well,’ he amends, letting go of Briar’s face, ‘unless it was particularly disturbing.’
Briar’s eyes dart around the room, looking for exits, unsure faces, anything at all that might give them the slightest glimmer of hope. They find nothing.
‘Wolfe already asked me about all this,’ Briar says, trying for confusion. ‘I don’t know anything.’
Alistair rolls his eyes, then sighs, drawing his shoulders back like he’s limbering for a fight.
‘It seems you’ve already forgotten our lesson in Inquiry,’ he says.
Briar’s stomach squirms uncomfortably. A lifetime of learning to hit back, and when it matters the most, they’re completely defenceless.
‘But perhaps we’ll have no need for it. I believe honesty can be taught. ’
There’s an echo in his words of someone else, someone older, and Briar wonders who said the same thing to Alistair, and what age he’d been at the time.
He disappears into the shadows, and comes back accompanied by another Mon holding a stool, who places it on the floor next to the lamps.
He carefully lays out a mallet, then a knife, and then melts away again into darkness.
Alistair is circling now, taking his time. ‘Are you left or right handed, Jones?’
‘Right.’
‘Right hand on the stool, then.’
Briar places it on the dark wood and then looks helplessly down at their fingers, unremarkable and stubby and enormously precious.
They’ve never spared them much thought before, but right now they love every frightened vein and rough callus, even the small, raised barbed-wire scar that curves around their index finger.
‘It’s Crispin Westby, isn’t it? What’s his game?’ Alistair says. Briar can tell he’s relaxed into his role now, enjoying it. ‘What could have possessed him to interfere, so close to graduation?’
‘I don’t know,’ Briar says, surprised to discover that they can still lie.
‘All right,’ Alistair shrugs. ‘Break one of your fingers, Jones. By hand first, I think. Dealer’s choice.’
Briar watches with a sense of violent unreality as they reach for their ring finger, thinking, logically, that it might be easy to break and relatively expendable. Without hesitation, they wrench it back on itself as hard as they physically can.
Briar screams. They can’t help it; the pain is like nothing they’ve ever felt before.
It seems connected to every other nerve in their body, their spine, their brain, everything blinking out for a moment in a burst of white heat as they double over and vomit on the floor.
It’s not like that punch, acute and then dull, fading to an insistent throbbing. It goes on and on and on.
‘Very good. So, again: what the hell is Westby playing at?’
He could decide to use the Work at any time, end this at once, the truth spilling over Briar’s lips as freely as the bile from their throat, but Briar knows he won’t.
Not yet. This is what he wants: Briar broken before him, shaking from the pain, trying to breathe through it as it catches them on every breath.
They don’t bother saying anything this time. It’s not some grand commitment to the cause; it’s pure, stubborn loathing, a spite strong enough that they want to hold out as long as they can, to not give Alistair the satisfaction of winning.
‘Go on,’ Alistair says, sighing. ‘Index finger this time, I think. You’ll find it’s one of the more useful ones.’
Briar’s body says no no no no no, but their mind overrules it.
The second finger breaks with a wet, sickly crunch, and Briar finds themself unable to be sick; unable to do anything but moan, clutching at their wrist where it rests on the stool, fingernails digging in so hard as they try to redirect the sensation that they begin to draw blood.
‘There’s something quite charmingly inevitable about this,’ Alistair says. ‘It’s up to you when you’d like it to—’
‘Buck,’ someone says, a hushed voice Briar can barely hear over the feeling of their screaming hand. ‘There’s—’
‘Not now,’ Alistair snaps.
‘But . . .’ His voice drops, and Briar just about makes out the words somehow and running out, although they can’t attach any meaning to them right now.
All of Alistair’s languid cool is gone. ‘For fuck’s sake. All right.’ He turns to Briar. ‘What was Westby’s plan?’
‘He didn’t have a plan,’ Briar chokes out. True.
‘What?’ Alistair kicks the stool out from under Briar’s hand, and Briar gasps, sagging towards the floor. They look at their fingers, then wish to God they hadn’t. ‘Oh, right, well, fucking - Adams’s plan, or Watson’s, then? What were they doing at the Trials? Are they coming back for more?’
‘They’ve been embarrassing you on purpose,’ Briar says, between huge lungfuls of air, none of which help at all. ‘They were gathering evidence to show to the board of governors. Tate and Westby are done, but Hadley—’
The glass in every one of the LED lanterns shatters at the same time, a sharp spray against Briar’s knees, plunging them all into darkness.
There’s a horrible creaking coming from everywhere, a deep groan, like the ceiling’s about to fall in.
Briar finds that they can stand, and staggers backwards, in a futile hunt for an exit.
Alistair is swearing loudly; the wide beams of two phone torches blink into life, sweeping wildly across the room, and then both phones fall to the floor with a synchronised clatter.
There’s a thud and a sudden, urgent feeling in Briar’s leg, quick pressure, hot and cold at once, but it pales in comparison to the forest fire of their hand.
‘Stop what you’re doing, right now,’ Alistair shouts. ‘Fucking - stop.’ He must be trying desperately to Work, to get this situation under control, but the chaos of everyone floundering in the dark continues, until Briar feels a hand close around their upper arm.
They know that hand. It’s more familiar to them than their own.
‘Come on.’
Briar quiets their harsh breathing as they’re lead silently across the room, through what feels like a doorway, elbow glancing off a rough wall.
Everything hurts; it’s hard to put weight on their leg, but they do it anyway, keeping pace with Bastian through the tunnels.
It’s getting lighter, and they can see him just ahead of them now, head down, features obscured by his cloak.
They make their way through a cavern that’s perfectly circular above, a small dome, a hint of a breeze coming from somewhere.
There’s enough moonlight breaking through to make out a large chalice resting atop a rocky plinth, but then they’re past and away, plunging back into the darkness of a tunnel that twists to the right before it begins to climb uphill.
When they reach the door, Bastian shoves it open, and Briar discovers that they’re emerging from a thick, fortified wall on the east side of campus, near Cavendish house.
There are scholars everywhere, on their way to or from dinner. The nearest looks over, frowning.
‘No,’ Bastian hisses, and every single person on that manicured lawn turns to look at something else, paying the two of them no mind, not even when they begin walking across the grounds.
Briar cradles their mangled hand and limps along powered entirely by adrenaline, and only realises where they’re going as they skirt around the cloisters, aiming for a side door.
Once they’re finally in Robert Parker’s office, Briar collapses onto the rug as Bastian apologises under his breath and starts searching their pockets, only closing their eyes once they eventually hear the sound of the key turning in the lock.