CHAPTER LVIII (58) - MOTHERLY REUNION

“You already have a response?” Kizu said, surprised by the swiftness of the service.

“It came in an hour after your departure,” the clerk said. She handed him an envelope with a massive red wax seal. “Already paid for in full.”

Kizu tried to rip it open. The paper was tough.

“Thumb on the seal,” she added lazily, going back to her novel.

He did as instructed and pressed his thumb on the wax. Immediately, the letter spilled open.

Kizu,

Your sister’s lapse in judgment has been recorded. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Do not say anything to anyone about this child. Your mother has now been dispatched to take care of the problem. She will arrive early in the morning before dawn and will meet you at the family villa. Stay there for the night and do not expose the child to the public. We always feared this burden would inevitably fall upon us and have made arrangements in preparation for such a disaster. Swift action is key in keeping our family shame from exposure. Thus far, you have done well contacting us immediately. Conceal all information about the issue. Use the post’s incinerator to dispose of this letter.

You have done well, my son.

Kaga Kubou

Kizu stared at his father’s hanko stamp’s imprint at the bottom of the page. He read the letter again. He thought he must be misunderstanding it. Or maybe his father had made an error in his wording. This letter almost read like they already knew about Anata. His father likely just meant that he expected something like this to likely occur eventually. They clearly didn’t hold a high opinion of Anna.

Kizu looked over at Anata, who was currently back under the potato sack illusion. His parents did have a place arranged for her at least. Despite their flaws, they knew how to plan. Tomorrow, she would be both safe and not his problem anymore.

Sliding the paper into the incinerator’s slit, he thanked the rude clerk and left the post office.

The last time he had gone to the family villa, he had ended up spending the night in a jail cell. It was possible his family had updated the wards, but Kizu wasn’t taking any chances. First, he sent a mental image of where he was to Mort, to give his familiar a sense of his actions. Then he put on his enchanted necklace before reaching for the door handle.

Nothing happened this time. Well, nothing beyond the mundane of the door opening. Just as it had for the academy dorms, his necklace’s enchantment hid him from magic detection. Kizu dismissed Anata’s potato sack before entering into the villa.

There was a light in the main room. Finn had fallen asleep at the table, face down in a pile of books with a lantern still burning beside him. It cast a warm orange light over the room.

Kizu decided not to bother his brother. Instead, he brought Anata over to his old bedroom. He was surprised to see his old bunk bed still there. Growing up, Anna, of course, always took the top bunk, claiming it was her right as older sister.

He boosted Anata up to the top bunk and sat on the lower one. After a few minutes, he could hear the heavy breathing of sleep above him.

It didn’t look like Finn usually used the room. He probably preferred to stay in their parents’ room with the larger bed. Kizu flipped through the old children's books. His memories rekindled as he looked at pictures and read familiar rhymes. Part of him was surprised that his parents hadn’t purged the room of everything having to do with his sister. But it also made a bit of sense too. His parents very rarely visited the villa, usually far too busy with work for leisure. They mostly used it as a place to dump their children when they didn’t have time for them. It would have been a treasure trove for his divination spell.

Nothing exciting happened as the night went on. Kizu simply sat on his old bed, looking through crafts made from old shells and sea glass that he found in the drawers. And yet, he also spent the entire night smiling wider than he had in months.

“Argh!”

Startled by the noise, Kizu looked up from an old finger painting he had made of their family. Finn stood, his back to the wall across the hall, staring at him through the doorway.

“Oh,” Kizu said. “Good morning, Finn.”

“How did you get in here? What are you doing? And what is that thing above you?”

“Our father told me to spend the night here. So I walked in. And that’s our niece.”

“We don’t have a niece!”

Kizu rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother responding to the denial.

“Hey,” Kizu said, deciding to change the subject. “Do you have any leads on where Anna might have disappeared to?”

“No,” Finn snapped. “She’s probably dead.”

Kizu frowned. With his divination spells leading him to Anata, not Anna, that possibility was starkly possible. But Otochi had implied she still lived. It also had said Anna had the strongest wards imaginable concealing her from divinations. Completely undetectable. Then again, it also could have been lying. A Blood Lord wasn’t the most reliable source of information. Kizu didn’t fully understand the monster's motives.

Kizu examined his younger brother. Black bangs down to his eyebrows, but undercut short on the back of his head. Still young enough that his face was unblemished by acne, Kizu supposed that his brother might pass as handsome. And yet, he had no regular friends, let alone a girlfriend. Likely as a result of the dark bags under his eyes and a mouth that only seemed to know how to sneer or frown.

“You should get more sleep,” Kizu finally said.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Finn’s eyes narrowed.

“You aren’t Mother. Stop pretending like you care.”

“Oh, speaking of Mother, I guess I should mention that she’s arriving in a little bit.”

That caught Finn off guard. He blinked and glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting to see her there already. Then he hurried off without another word.

Kizu shrugged off Finn’s weird reaction. He couldn’t quite figure out his brother. But before he could return to his reminiscing, he heard the front door open.

He poked his head out the bedroom door and saw his mother standing in the entryway, hanging her jacket on the coat rack. Her dark clothing made her look like a funeral attendee.

“Oh good,” his mother said. “You’re awake. This nasty business requires me to come and go before civilized people wake up.”

“Nasty business?” Kizu asked.

“With the child. I knew this would come back to us eventually. Thankfully, I set up a plan for this all two years ago. Your father wanted to just ignore the issue. Sometimes he has no sense at all. This isn’t an investment that will produce gains while being ignored. This is a mortgage that requires careful attention and a steady amount of funding to amortize.”

“Does that mean you have a place for her to stay?”

“Yes, of course. The child will go deep into the northern forests of Hon. We own a property managed by a tongueless caretaker. She won’t be able to spread any rumors about the child and they will remain completely unseen by society.”

That sounded a lot like Kizu’s childhood. Except, somehow even lonelier.

“So, you knew about Anata this entire time?”

“Who?” His mother frowned and furrowed her brow.

“Anna’s daughter.”

“Oh, yes, of course we knew. Surely you’ve now realized why Anna had to be removed from the official familyline. We hoped to shield you from your sister’s disgrace, but unfortunately these things pop up.”

His sister’s disgrace? Kizu’s brain processed the statement for a moment. Then he understood.

“You cut her out of the family because she was pregnant?!”

“For countless reasons, but that was the final piece, yes. And the ailment did not even come from another academy student. She got knocked up by an unknown nobody with no connections and no apparent future. There was no positive spin on it whatsoever.”

Kizu stared at his mother, speechless.

“Your manners have not improved, it seems,” she said, her frown deepening. “I don’t have a great deal of time right now for pleasantries. As I mentioned before, this is an urgent matter. Now tell me, who else has seen the child?”

“No one except me and Finn,” Kizu lied through gritted teeth. Both Basil and Ione knew about Anata, but he didn’t care to explain all of that right now.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” his mother warned. “It’s good that you had enough sense not to blab about her to anyone. Your sister’s expulsion was a favor we had to call in.”

His anger was boiling. He couldn’t ever recall feeling this way before. He clenched his fists and did his best to keep his voice even.

“Anna’s expulsion was a favor? Why was she expelled?”

“Do you think it was an easy decision?” she snapped. “Do you think I didn’t love my daughter? Do you think I just tossed her aside? I gave her opportunity after opportunity. I tried! She made it clear she had no intention of taking the mantle as heir. And her decisions were destroying Finn’s future as the Kaga heir. I already had lost one son, I didn’t want to watch her destroy everything I worked for!”

Kizu’s heart twisted. But he didn’t trust himself to speak. He just stood there for a minute, matching her glare.

Finally, his mother sighed and recomposed herself. She continued on as if her earlier outburst hadn’t happened. “As we already had paid for the semester, we needed her removed from the public eye. Her pregnancy would have ruined a dozen different negotiations and deals. Despite what the bog hag might have taught you, in the civilized world reputation matters. Since she already had several marks against her at the academy it wasn’t difficult to have them remove her altogether. Originally, we planned to keep her hidden away at the house until the end of the pregnancy, then anonymously send the baby to an orphanage. It would have been inconvenient, but manageable. But Anna refused. Because of course she did. For years she dedicated her life to deliberately embarrassing us. Removing her from the family wasn’t a decision we came to lightly, but we have to think of the legacy we leave behind. We couldn’t let her jeopardize Finn’s future as well. There comes a point, when you have to stop paying for a liability.”

A liability. His mother’s words sickened him. She claimed to love Anna and that only made him angrier. He loved Anna. He would do anything for her. And his sister’s actions had made it apparent she felt the same way about him. Meanwhile his mother threw her out like a broken tool.

Something else about her explanation didn’t make sense though. He took a deep breath, taking control of his emotions. He needed information.

“Why did Anna leave Anata with her father if she was against the idea of an orphanage?”

“That girl’s mind was too fickle to keep track of,” his mother said. “She likely saw something shiny and chased after that.”

At that moment, Kizu made up his mind. Something in him snapped at her dismissive tone. He arrived at a conclusion he hadn’t even considered until that very second.

“Anata is staying with me.” The moment he said it, he felt an unknown weight lift off his shoulders. He knew this was the right decision.

“What idiocy are you going on about?”

“I won’t let you take her.”

“Son,” she said warningly. “You summoned me here. I dropped everything to take care of this problem.”

“Sorry to waste your time,” he said coolly. “If you want custody, you’ll need to go to the Hon courts for it.”

He was pretty sure that’s how custody worked for children in Hon. You needed official documents. The crone had told him a story about a witch she knew who’d beaten around the law to legally claim an apprentice. It had been a lesson about how uncreative and broken society’s laws had become.

Judging by the cold fury in his mother’s face, the story had been accurate enough for his threat to hold weight. His parents wouldn’t dare go through the paperwork for Anna’s bastard. That would require publicly acknowledging her.

“I’ll keep her hidden,” Kizu promised. He decided to try to offer some measure of compromise.

“You want to play at being a parent?” she snarled. “You think it’s easy? Fine. Go ahead, Kizu. But you won’t receive any support from us. Your allowance will be terminated immediately. But so long as you keep our family’s name away from that…girl, we won’t do anything more. Show us your vast parental knowledge.”

Kizu blinked. “What allowance?”

He heard someone shuffle behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see Finn standing in the hall, looking extremely uncomfortable. Until now he had been a silent spectator the entire confrontation.

“Let me guess,” Kizu said dryly. “Finn was in charge of distributing the money to me?”

His mother pursed her lips and turned her glare to Finn who withered under her scrutiny.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to see Anata before you leave?” Kizu still felt a cold fury with his mother. But, denying his mother a chance to meet her granddaughter felt cruel.

“That won’t be necessary.” She reclaimed her jacket and opened the door. She took a step outside, then paused.

“Anna landed on her feet,” she said softly, as if speaking more to herself. Her face was turned slightly and Kizu thought he saw something glisten slightly on her cheek. “I’m certain. I wouldn’t have made that decision if I thought otherwise.”

It looked like she was about to say something more, but then the moment passed and she continued on her way, the wind slamming the door behind her.