Lucky Rabbit

While Beeswick was gone, Thaniel and Pandy told the rest of the story. When they got to the part where Matthias all but ordered Thaniel to contact Andres Forrest, Worst Cousin Ever, Augustus grimaced, then looked thoughtful. He didn’t say anything, just let Thaniel finish up, at which point the boy looked between the two adults and said, “Who was that?”

Pandy blinked. She was back in her human shape, which she rather regretted because this room definitely wasn’t made for two adults, three children, and a cat with an attitude problem. Pandy was all but sitting on the little desk, and had been weighing the benefits of giving in and actually climbing onto it just like she would have as a rabbit.

“Who was who?” she asked, but realized what he meant before he could answer. “Matthias? The boy who spoke to you after Matilda left?” At Thaniel’s nod, she sighed. Matthias couldn’t be more than eleven years old, and she didn’t want to say he was bad. She’d met a lot of kids while she was in the foster system, and many of them behaved much worse than Matthias, but there was something about the boy that she just didn’t like.

Fortunately, Augustus stepped in – figuratively, at least, since he was standing by the door, his shoulder turned toward it as if he wanted to be sure he could hold it closed if someone tried to open it. “He’s not someone to be trifled with,” the chancellor said firmly. “You’re to stay as far from him as possible, Thaniel. I’m not yet certain how he’s involved in all of this, but he is involved.”

Thaniel instantly looked intrigued, and Augustus shifted so he could look directly into the small boy’s eyes. “I’m serious, Thaniel. Right now, we feel we can protect you well enough to allow you to remain in school. If that changes, you’ll be sent away, just like Ellie was. Your safety is our primary concern.”

Thaniel’s lower lip protruded in a pout that was almost a tangible presence in the room, but he gave a reluctant nod. “Should I write a letter to Cousin Andres, though?”

The corner of Augustus’s mouth curved up in a wicked kind of smile. “That you should. In fact, I’ll provide you with paper and a pen, and you can do it now. Keep it simple and try to sound natural, but remember, you’re very unhappy with me, and you want to go home. Just ask for permission to go to your friend’s house for dinner, complain about how unreasonable I am, and sign it.”

Reaching into his cache pocket, he removed a pen and paper, handing them to Thaniel just as Professor Beeswick opened the magical doorway again, motioning for Augustus to enter. The chancellor left his spot by the door, holding out an arm to Pandy as he smiled at the children. “Geraldine, Abbington, if you would help him, please?” He gave Abbington a particularly meaningful lift of the brow, and the tall boy flushed in pleased embarrassment, but nodded. Bing was the only one of the trio who could be counted upon not to go overboard, so Pandy could only hope he’d taken the hint.

Pandy and Augustus slipped past the Dragon, who allowed the door to close again. Without saying a word, he led them to a table where the envelope and letter lay, now open and splayed across the table, looking no more threatening than any other paper product. Beside them lay a long, slender stick, and some kind of dust dulled the glossy shine of the table.

Motioning to two chairs, Professor Beeswick said, “Sit.” They did so, and the Dragon picked up the stick so he could carefully lift the envelope. “Sealed with wax, using the Mossley family seal, or at least one designed to look like it. A hint of pheromone powder in it; Sweet Lovage and Lunate Moth wings, the same as the one Matilda was using. Nothing directly harmful, especially without magic infused into it, but if Thaniel had been exposed to it, it would have made him a bit more inclined to feel positively toward the letter and possibly anyone associated with it.”

Augustus nodded. “About what we expected then.”

“Yes, but no,” the Dragon told him with a hint of satisfaction. Holding the envelope up so he could point to the edge of the flap, he said, “I found minute particles of vitrine glued along the flap, and in the wax itself. Again, nothing dangerous, but Thaniel would certainly have cut his finger if he tried to tear it open by hand.”

“I don’t know a lot of children who keep a letter opener readily available,” Augustus said dryly, and the Dragon gave him a nod of agreement.

“But why?” Pandy asked, frowning. “What good would a tiny cut- Oh.” She swallowed hard. “They want to be able to track him.”

“Or create a poppet to control him. Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t managed to get hold of his blood yet, but this tells us that both Mistress Rose and the hospital staff are loyal. They’re supposed to destroy anything that could be used against their patients, and they have apparently done exactly that,” Professor Beeswick said.

Well, that and the fact that Pandy healed Thaniel almost constantly. He didn’t have a chance to bleed on anything. She frowned. “But how would they get the envelope or whatever got blood on it?”

Augustus’s eyes went cold, and his smile was as sharp as the edge of the envelope. “That’s an excellent question. I suspect that if we find out the answer, we’ll also find at least one of the rats scurrying around my school.”

Professor Beeswick matched the cold smile and raised the chancellor a full set of sharp teeth, which left Pandy feeling a bit left out. She could probably try for an evil smile, but there was no doubt in her mind that she would fail utterly, so instead she folded her mental hand of expression-poker and said, “So we’re going to lay another trap while we’re waiting for the first to go off? A trap within a trap?”

The chancellor’s gray eyes warmed as he focused on her, and he chuckled. “Exactly so.” He leaned over to read the letter that lay face up on the table, though he made no effort to touch it. “Dinner is at seven, a carriage will be sent at six-thirty, and attire should be semi-formal or the school uniform will do. A few other ‘young people’ will be present, and this is an opportunity for Thaniel to ‘make connections outside of school’. Hmm. Nothing overtly unusual in any of that.”

“Did you expect there to be?” Professor Beeswick asked, lifting a brow.

Augustus sat back with a sigh. “Unfortunately, no. These people have been able to remain above reproach – or at least above the law – for at least two years now. I didn’t think they’d spill their nefarious plan in a letter to an eight year old boy. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t hope.”

Pandy looked back and forth between them, a suspicion rising to the top of her mind and bursting from her tongue with a pop. “You already know who they are.”

Augustus tilted his head in a so-so motion. “We believe we do. Not that we have a single shred of proof, or even any evidence that would allow us to investigate them more openly. It’s simply that when you add up all the coincidences it becomes just a bit too much for someone with a certain suspicious sort of mind to ignore.”

“Finding out young Miss Matilda is a pheromone Air mage simply told us how they were doing it,” the Dragon said, his wings rising slightly behind him as he pinched the letter between his talons and dropped it back into the small box he’d used before. “Her family claimed she was a Nature mage who had achieved a natural awakening. She is genuinely good with animals, though apparently that was due to her own personality and the powders she was provided, rather than her magic. Once we had that key piece, the rest of the puzzle fell into place.”

Augustus nodded, crossing to a nearby shelf and taking down a book with the ease of long familiarity. Returning to the table, he laid the book down as far from the innocent-looking envelope as possible and turned pages until he found what he was looking for.

“When West Altheric was formed and Nora was made queen, she ennobled several of her most loyal allies. Lord General Preston Avington was one of them, as you know, but you may not be aware that he was the only Dark elementalist in the lot,” Augustus said, touching the page. Pandy leaned in, seeing what might have been part of a family tree drawn in teeny-tiny, crabbed handwriting.

“Many of the original families have died out since then,” Professor Beeswick said, something dark passing over his expression as he spoke. Was it sadness? Regret? Or just history seen through the eyes of one who had actually been alive at the time?

The corners of Augustus’s mouth pinched. “Too many,” he agreed. “For a group of people as wealthy, powerful, and influential as the founding families of our country, there are far too few remaining only a few hundred years later. The lucky ones simply found their power eroding over time, but others had a distinct tendency to succumb, root and branch, to one of the many plagues to sweep our land.”

He shook his head. “You want to know who we’re dealing with, and I’ll tell you, but it cannot leave this room. We don’t want them to have a chance to hide their tracks before we’re ready to present our evidence.” He waited for Pandy’s nod, then tapped the book again.

“So, the Avington family was the only one with Dark magic, and after a few generations, as the prejudice against that magic rose, and the value of General Avington’s reputation diminished, fewer and fewer people were willing to marry into it. The Avingtons chose to marry lesser nobles with more desirable magics, especially Air, in an attempt to regain the political power they’d lost.

“Over the years this trend has continued. Dark magic crops up in a family, and that family is forced to accept alliances with social climbers and others in the same position as themselves. Over the last few generations, Matilda’s family, the Mossleys, has become one of these. For whatever reason, a number of Dark mages have been born to the house, including Matilda’s mother, the current Marchioness Mossley.”

Pandy blinked. Matilda’s mother was a Dark mage? Well, that explained a few things about the girl’s attitude toward Dark mages in general and Suzanne in particular. Even though Matilda herself wasn’t a Dark mage, she would have seen the results of the fear and distaste turned on them, which made her much more sympathetic to the only Dark mage at school.

Augustus turned a few pages, pointing to names that meant nothing to Pandy, until one in particular hopped out at her: Bastian Mossley. His name was right next to Matilda’s, and one line up were their parents’ names. Just like in Gacha Love, Bastian’s father was the younger brother of Matilda’s mother, making the two children first cousins. In fact, Matilda was the very cousin whose birth had deprived Bastian of his chance to get a title of his own, though she’d never been named in Gacha Love. Not that Bastian ever held it against his cousin. He was the only one of the four boys who never showed any bitterness about anything, even though he actually had the most difficult life, at least when it came to money and titles.

“Just over a decade ago, Marchioness Mossley suddenly married Wulfric Winfielde, son of an extremely successful merchant, and the heir to a considerable fortune. They quickly produced an heir, Matilda, who is supposedly a Nature mage like her father, and like much of the rest of the Mossley family.” Augustus turned a few more pages, his eyes scanning for something.

“Now, while the Mossley family’s status is no secret, few other nobles like to admit they’re involved in something so crass as trade,” he said, looking down at the page with an inscrutable expression. “They hire people to represent them, and sometimes even set up their own companies to do more acceptable things, and those companies form their own alliances in back rooms. There are people who keep track of such things, but when the people who are supposed to be watching are the very people who need to be watched, things… slip.”

He turned the book, and Pandy squinted, trying to figure out what he was trying to show her. Again, a familiar name practically leaped off the page and bunny-bopped her. In fact, this time she recognized several: Fergus Aeris, who married Louisa Winstanley, producing Kaden and Eleanor.

Augustus smiled grimly. “Young Matthias is a few branches away from royalty, but he’s not lying when he says the queen is his father’s cousin. And you may recognize the name of another of her slightly more distant cousins as well.” He tapped a squiggly name: Andres Forrest.

Professor Beeswick picked up the book, brushing at the page as if Augustus’s finger might have smudged it. Closing it with a thump, he said, “What Augustus is trying to explain, in a very roundabout way, is that the major shareholders in Wulfric Winfielde’s company are some of the highest-ranking nobles in the country, and probably the very people behind the effort to discredit Queen Louisa and Prince Kaden, which would almost certainly result in Duke Benedict Aeris becoming the next king.”

“Why?” Pandy asked, her head swimming with names. She’d only just started learning the noble families, and now not only were there a bunch more, but they were all being sneaky together? Even when she was playing Gacha Love, she’d just skimmed over the ‘such-and-so was the father of whozee-whatsit, who married whats-her-name’. She was not going to remember generations of families who had all apparently just married back into each other anyway.

Augustus shook his head. “The only thing they have in common is that none of them are currently the heir to their family title or estate. Even Thaniel and Lian’s cousin, Lord Andres, has an older half-brother from his father’s first marriage. Honestly, the whole thing is just… petty. Every one of them has money and power in their own right, so there’s no need for this ridiculous conspiracy, if that’s what it is. But, as I once mentioned, we believe there are actually two groups working within West Altheric.”

He gestured to the book that Professor Beeswick had just returned to the shelf. “The first one is this cabal of-” He broke off, looking frustrated, then sighed. “Not fools. This would have fallen apart years ago if they were, yet here we are.”

“The second group is the true threat,” the Dragon said as Augustus shook his head. “The talons behind the illusion, as it were.” He raised his hand, flexing the fingers so his lilac claws glinted. “They move within the shadows, manipulating these narrow-minded men like puppets. There’s no reason for the cabal to be interested in Thaniel and Lian other than, perhaps, the fact that without them, Andres would inherit the Conroy title and lands. That’s a reason to kill the boys, however, not adopt them.”

Pandy let out a little eep, and Augustus took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “That’s why we’re watching Thaniel and Lian all the time,” he said. “The boys are safe, and they’ll be even safer once we expose these men and their conspiracy. First, however, we need to find those who are wearing Mossley and the others like masks. That begins,” he released her and pointed to the envelope, “Saturday night.”