11: For a Father’s Approval

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“It looks like a monument,” said Vesperia, as the girls regrouped.

“Oh no.” Elizabeth’s dug her nails into Astrid’s skin. “This must be where they pray to the Agnoia. Those filthy rats sneak in beneath our noses and use this place to—to summon their evil gods! We should go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Her theory fit with the Founding Fathers’ teachings, but Astrid knew there was more to these things than they were willing to share, especially with teenage girls that had only reached Second Emanation. Her father, in his usual vague and indirect way, had assured her of that. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” she said, wrapping her shawl around Elizabeth’s shoulders as the two of them took shelter in a nearby porch.

While Vesperia scouted out the courtyard, Astrid tested the front door handle, but it was locked.

“I bet they still live here,” whispered Elizabeth. “We’d do well to raze this whole cursed place to the ground.”

“With what?” asked Astrid.

Vesperia returned with news that the courtyard was clear, but there was no sign of their crystals. “However, I think you should take a look at the monument,” she said. “I do not think it an altar to any god.”

Despite Elizabeth’s apprehensions, Astrid decided to indulge her friend. The obelisk looked smaller than it did from a distance, its light seeming to dim the closer they got, never too bright to blind them but always enough to illuminate the immediate surroundings. Astrid figured it made from some kind of synthetic, bioluminescent stone. As she approached it, she noticed a list of names adorning its sides. Some of them Astrid recognised: Armstrong, Eoghan, Ritches, Thorbjorn. Seelie names. The names of the dead.

“No doubt they were fools who sacrificed themselves to the Agnoia,” said Elizabeth. “Just like those Donaran witches.”

“Is that so?”

The girls turned in unison. There stood Ceres Mendoza, appearing as if from nowhere, her scowl one of utter contempt. She held a knife in her hand.

“Would you like to say that to my face, Lizzie?”

~*~

“I see.”

Director Guirlande sat back and closed his eyes. His weathered features, cracked and worn like the cover of an old tome, betrayed no hint of what he saw in Rembrandt Payne’s message. He almost looked as if he had fallen into an afternoon snooze—but then his eyes snapped open, a pair of ice-blue daggers that fixed upon Lord York with unnerving intensity. Oscar trembled.

“And you would have me take action, I presume?” said the Director. He had a low, gravelly voice with pitch-perfect enunciation, yet his lips scarcely moved as he spoke.

“Of course I would!” Lord York spluttered in disbelief. “This proves Seelie is as wretched and corrupt as the Donara, just as we always knew they were.”

Oscar kept to his father’s shadow. He felt more like an aide—like the turquoise-haired Donaran boy stood at the Director’s side—than the noble who had delivered the means of Seelie’s destruction. Just as his father hoarded the young and pretty servants, so too had he taken Oscar’s greatest accomplishment for his own. Was it any wonder Alexis abandoned them?

“The Donara harboured renegades,” said the Director. He was too calm, too sure of himself. Oscar’s eyes twitched from one corner of the office to other, expecting to find Astrid Guirlande mocking smirk looking back at him, but, other than the Director’s aide, they were alone.