Things weren’t as simple as just leaving the room and immediately going to see Lord Montague first. No, that would be too simple.
“As dramatic as that pronouncement is,” Gregory said. “I think I’ll require an explanation first before we boldly go off to inform my father and Voltar of this surely case-solving discovery.”
The temptation to snark back was high, but I wanted him to be reminded as little as possible of our previous conversations. As tempting as getting drawn into traded words might be.
“Not case-solving,” I clarified. “But very important. I want Voltar there to support me on several points, since his word is more trustworthy than mine, especially here.”
Gregory chuckled while the guards formed up around the door; the message there was very clear to me. Trying to force my way past wouldn’t turn out well for anyone involved.
“My father isn’t exactly in favor of trusting Voltar, as you might have heard when you came inside. One might say he isn’t fond of the man.”
“Less fond of him than he would be of me?” I asked.
“That’s a fair point,” Gregory acknowledged. “However, it won’t be an issue for me.”
I eyed the guards nervously. “No matter how outlandish? Because this story verges on the more difficult-to-believe kind.”
“I once had to escape a room via an improvised, clothes-made parachute, followed by rafting through the canyon it took me down into. Try me.”
That sounded…like a bit much for a tryst. A canyon?
“Shape-changers are involved,” I said, looking for any signs of disbelief or mockery.
I recieved a slight raising of the eyebrow in response, which only made me realize that the proportion of people who regularly did that around me compared to those who didn’t was entirely too high.
He nodded slightly, gesturing to the table. “Even if you don’t like tea, it seems better to be seated and no giving Calab anything to worry about. Like you diving out the window or pulling something similar to what you did at Lady Karsin’s estate.”
“What must I do to convince you I am not Katheryn Falara?” I asked, going over to sit down. Truth be told, anything to make the guards not consider me like a Watch officer waiting for the slightest reason to arrest you right as you’d picked the right mark to pickpocket. Also, I really could go for a cup of tea.
“Finding her would do the job, I think,” Gregory said. “Calab, you and your group can go back outside the room.”
The lead guard’s eyes widened in shock. “But Master Gregory, you said that this one-“
“I know what I said. Trust me, if she started sacrificing me to a devil, you’ll probably hear it in plenty of time to intervene. If it sounds like violence is going on, you can rush on in, and if it turns out not to be the case, it won’t be the first time to be disappointed by his children’s choices of who they invite into this room.”
Calab seemed like she wanted to argue more, but another of the guards subtly shook his head just a little and soon it was just me, Gregory, and the sleeping form of Edward Montague.
“How do you like to take your tea?” Gregory asked.
“I don’t drink tea,” I replied. “Also, ‘choices of who they invite into this room’? I really hope you aren’t implying what I think you are. This is only our first meeting.”
“Hrrm…third. Or fourth. Depends on how long you extend that first meeting we had to our little tea party with Lady Karsin.”
I stared blankly at him as he poured two cups, setting one for each of us.
“You insisted I stay in here because you wanted to discuss my recent realization involving the attempted poisoning of your elder brother and didn’t want me dashing off to see your father about it. I’m assuming you have your reasons for wanting my reasoning first. Maybe in case the danger to your brother is immediate enough, we can’t wait for a meeting with your father. I’m being charitable there because it sounds like your real reasoning is finding out if I was Skall’s disguise she used to hide her tendency to play jump rope with people’s entrails!”
The door opened briefly, a concerned-looking Calab peering inside, musket at the ready.
“Violence, Calab,” Gregory said. “Not raised voices. Even if the latter typically leads with the former, you should know by now that’s not the case most of the time with me.”
The door shut again after a moment.
“She mothers me,” he explained. There are only six years between us, but it’s apparently significant.”
Mothered him. Sure.
“I believe you were saying something about me seemingly not taking this seriously?” He asked as he nudged my cup closer to me.
Oh, the temptation. Pretend to be a novitiate to something that deserved the title of holy more than the burning drek clerics made to torture poor innocent Infernals or not risk it and go without?
I settled on a sip and tried to disguise my moan of contentment as a surprised one of appreciation.
“And there goes my reputation with the guards on the other side of the door and anyone else who heard that.”
“You are really not helping with the idea that you aren’t taking this seriously,” I muttered, taking another sip.
Sighing, Gregory reached inside his coat, pulling out a medallion which he hit across the table three times. The reverberations continued for much longer than they should and blinked my eyes just in time to catch the lines of white and grey weaving themselves into all the openings in the room.
“No one should be able to overhear us. So. Shapechangers?”
I risked a third sip before replying. “Shape-changers.”
“A bit weird since the last public appearance of them was, well, decades past by this point. Although some nobles I’ve known, I could entirely believe they were ones. Why do you and Voltar think them responsible?”
What to say? I could hardly tell all the truth here unless I wanted to give up the idea of not being identified as Katheryn Falara.
“I encountered one while pursuing a lead on this case,” I said. “I was investigating a warehouse connected to these events, and found a hidden storeroom. They came soon after, and we fought. Either that person was a shape-changer or showed abilities so similar that they might as well be one.”
“Investigating a lead for Voltar?” Gregory asked.
Damnations. Voltar had hinted there was more to Gregory than met the eye. Magic of some kind? Perhaps best to stick close to the truth.
“My own lead. I got drawn into this partially at his prompting and I’m more than familiar about how involvement with Voltar can turn out. Best to get ahead of potential complications instead of dealing with them as they arise.”
A task I had wholly failed at, but that wasn’t very important.
“And he agrees with the assessment it was shape-changing? Not say, Biosculpting?”
“Biosculpting of that kind doesn’t move that fast,” I said. “Even the best methods of healing don’t allow one to suddenly chop an arm off and have it regrow in minutes. Or survive being burned alive and start regrowing.”
“Point taken,” Lord Montague said, taking a proper, righteous sip of tea that I immediately buried my desire to be smug about down. “Voltar agrees with you about the Shape-changers?”
“He believes my account. If he found other evidence to support it? Who knows for sure? But from my discussions with him and Dr. Dawes, a possibility came up. Even a mutable being who can change form, if we’re assuming an intelligence similar to most humanoids, would need something unique to them to prevent themselves from being subsumed in the role they are playing. An anchor. Something that remains unique. If they’re artificial creations, it would make even more sense since their creators would want some kind of flaw, so they aren’t too good at their job.”
“Makes a degree of sense,” Gregory said, frowning pensively. “Bio-sculptors do the same with their own experimental creations, right?”
“The smart ones do,” I said. “The others quickly find out why not having an easy off-button for your specially made murder machine is never a good idea. Then you get the ones who do include the button but also make the creature able to adapt and evolve within itself instead of across generations. Those end up being the nastiest ones.”
“I think I see a little of what you’re suggesting. The personality-altering parts of the poison would be a good cover. But it’s not without holes. Why not target infants? Or children? Why do this now? Why do it at all since they’ve apparently remained hidden for this long?”
I frowned. “Good questions. Conservation of mass maybe on the children or infants? They may have a limit on how much their own mass can change. For why now, perhaps they’ve settled on taking over people who aren’t in the public eye, but something’s changed, and they want to take over identities that give them more power.”
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Gregory looked over the room with a sober expression. “We’ll have to be much more careful about who can access this. Have you found any ways to identify them?”
I shook my head. “None yet, although we haven’t had time to research yet. I’ve spent most of the last day running about confirming things and trying to fit pieces together. I have had three, maybe four hours of sleep, and this is after already having some less-than-restful nights.”
“Which might be why you’ve not been on your game about disguising yourself.”
I sighed, considering the ceiling above us. “This? Again? Lord Montague, have you perhaps considered you are projecting from Skall onto me and that’s why you think I am her? In which case, I immediately ask that you cease comparing me to her. She perhaps ranks among the worst five people I know, which is not an easy feat.”
“I am comparing you to Katheryn Falara, who I don’t know enough about to say if she’s on that list, but I’m tempted not to put her anywhere near the worst people I know. The opposite.”
My lips quirked. “Lord Montague, I’ve heard a few things from Voltar in being briefed on this case. First, Skall assaulted you. Second, what your reputation is as a lady’s man-”
“Not just the ladies, let’s please not besmirch my reputation,” he interrupted.
“Fair enough. If you’re about to say that Alice Skall, Katheryn Falara, whichever you wish to call her, has intrigued you enough that you’re desperate to pursue her, I will laugh.”
He laughed instead. “I assure you, she knew my reputation well, and I think having met my father first and being introduced to me first as a potential payment for her services went and messed any possibility of that up quite well. Assuming I’m not talking to her.”
“You’re not,” I said bluntly.
“I can understand the reluctance to be clear about this. Father’s ability to understand nuance waxes and wanes depending on the situation and a combination of stress, the display at Lady Karsin’s estate, and Infernals has it threadbare.”
I frowned, leaning back in the chair. “If this is going to turn into some explanation of an event that happened in his past that explains your father’s views, I am going to be very needled over the idea it would excuse things.”
Gregory snorted. “Oh gods no, Father’s reasons for hating your kind have never made sense, no matter how many reasons he’s given. One of which is the Black Flame to which I’ve told him to his face. Blaming them for him being that stupid is no excuse.”
I took another sip of the tea. “I can see Versalicci wrapping your father around his finger easily enough, but if you know the specific story, I wouldn’t mind hearing it.”
“Ah, ah.” Gregory wagged his finger. “No getting off the subject, which is relatively simple. You do not need to put on this charade, although I must commend you on the suggestion you’d carve up Edward. You, being that bluntly impolite, certainly threw Father off the trail.”
I rolled my eyes, putting the teacup down. “If it progresses us past this topic of conversation, let’s pretend I am actually Katheryn Falara. What do you wish to discuss with her so much that it couldn’t wait?”
Some kind of impish glee lit behind his eyes as his mouth opened, but then it shut and that fire guttered out. After a few seconds, he spoke.
“You didn’t like me comparing you to Alice Skall. How does Malvia Harrow compare to Alice Skall?”
Well, at least this wasn’t about me secretly being Katheryn Falara.
“Marginally better,” I said. “More of a distance now than back then. Depends on which Malvia Harrow you’re talking to.”
“What difference would it make?”
I started to talk, but then my mouth clamped shut. This…. I should not open up this much. I’d never opened up this much except to Mother, and she’d been in a coma by that point. By all rights, I should end this conversation here and insist on seeing Voltar.
Instead, I sighed and spoke.
“People change. Not always dramatically, which is how this whole mess got started,” I said, gesturing towards his brother. “Imagine you’re a street kid in the Quarter. The bad days of the Quarter, before they started conscripting everyone to go fight the empire’s wars. This room we’re in? You’d get twenty people living in a space that small, inside or outside. You’re an Infernal, which means in the eyes of everyone, you are worse than the excrement. Your entire race was responsible for the Hell’s Empire, the Damnations, Her Most Profane Majesty.”
“Other districts have it bad, of course. But other districts have the Watch trying to keep the peace. The only time the Watch came in was when someone inside the Quarter had done something to an actual citizen, and that was just to grab the ten close enough to a description if they had it. If a fire starts in another district, even if the fire brigades fight each other and are drunk, at least they exist. You’re not getting charged triple prices on firewood in the middle of winter when walking home means tripping over a body in the street that’s frozen under the snow. Imagine growing up as a pickpocket there, slowly working your way up by the slim pickings exploiting your own kind because if they catch you outside the district, they don’t hang you, they drive silver spikes in your eyes to trap your soul in some church vault so you don’t go to the hells.”
Montague looked a little ill for the first time I’d seen him. Oh, was he hearing this for the first time, perhaps? He said he’d been down to the Quarter. I’d seen him there, but of course, he never knew. They never knew till you rubbed their faces in it and forced them to look.
“Eventually, you get offered a chance to join the biggest gang in town, only it’s not like any gang you’ve been a part of. The guy in charge talks about not being a gang but changing things, and everyone else seems to believe. After a while, you start to believe, if only because you don’t want things to be the same. Then he actually starts doing what he said.”
Completely sober in expression, Gregory nodded. “I hear you so far. The other Malvia?”
“Imagine finding out it was all a lie, and there’s no way for you to leave.”
Gregory winced, then frowned, face pensive. “By no way to leave, you mean?”
“Dead. I would be dead the moment I gave any hint, any sign. I was in too deep, in more ways than one. I retreated inside myself, just gave advice, and did the tasks assigned to me. It didn’t seem that out of the ordinary to him. He had plenty in his ranks who just lost motivation and got burnt-out. I didn’t burn out, just retreated like a coward away from it all.”
“I eventually found a way out. Too late to avoid the worst scars. I can’t show them, because I got rid of them. Vanity, and Biosculpting. At least I never went as far with that diabolic duo as some go. Some are..” I would not mention the imp. “Some stick around in their own ways. In some ways, I think finding a way out was the worst part.”
Gregory stayed quiet, not saying anything, as the rest of what I wanted to say slowly came out.
“It felt like…I could have done it at any point. Which meant anything I had done I couldn’t have if only I tried earlier.” I snorted bitterly, taking another drink of the tea. “The funny thing is how things got better in the Quarter right after. We attempted to take over the city, practically spat in Her Majesty’s Face, and apparently, that’s what caused them to actually pay attention. Not going to pretend it wasn’t for anything but to make sure something like that wouldn’t happen again, but things got better. Of course, they also started conscripting everyone with horns and a tail, and it’s easy to tell where that’s going. Meanwhile, I’m stuck here doing whatever the hells this is.”
“Helping my brother,” Gregory said. “Which I appreciate. You didn’t need to do this.”
He didn’t get it. Of course, he didn’t.
“I’m being paid,” I said bluntly. “If I’m Falara by your father, if I’m Malvia by Voltar. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Payment or not, I appreciate it,” Gregory told me. “No matter what else you’ve done, you’ve helped him.”
“I did it entirely, purely out of self-interest. Not altruism. Not even pay, blackmail, since all it might take is the right words to the right people for me to re-experience the joys of having my fingers chopped off by the Watch again.”
Gregory paled a little. “They actually did that? I thought those were exaggerations. Are you exaggerating?”
“I. Am. Not.” I hissed. “They cut them through the bone. Again and again, and each time when I made it out, I’d regrow them one by one. One time Versalicci got me a present when we escaped. He nabbed the woman who did it, had her dragged underground, and told me as a gift I’d do the same to her. And I fucking did, as she shrieked and wailed, and I did nothing but watch. And then he took her to a circle and had her torn apart by imps so he could make a succubus out of what was left. And I watched. And back then? I loved him for it.”
He leaned back, muttering something under his breath.
“Whether or not I’m Falara, here’s the best advice I can give you, Montague. Stop prying if you don’t want to find things that discomfort you, because I will make you squirm. I have killed people and felt their lives slip out along with their blood along my claws or through my teeth. I have poisoned people with concoctions that make what’s happening to your brother look like mercy!”
I was out of my chair now, those same claws pushing into the table’s surface.
Gregory Montague stood up from his chair and looked hesitatingly at the door. “Perhaps we should end this here?”
No. He’d insisted on this. He was going to get this. As his hands reached for the medallion device, I gestured.
With my body back to normal, it didn’t hurt to call on Diabolism. All it harmed was my soul and my conscience, and both of those were just a pretense on my part.
Wisps of shadow shot from my fingers, the air shrieking as they carved their path, taking the medallion. Another of them shot for the door, filling in the cracks and jamming it shut.
“I had blood on my hands while you were being taught which fork is the salad one. What do you think Diabolists do in the Black Flame, Gregory? Your father is the one with the rational approach here because even on the other side of those muskets, rid yourself of any idea that the rational move is keeping me alive.”
The temperature in the room dropped as shadows gathered around my feet. The window shuddered, the frame shifting as parts forced their way inwards, and the wall became crooked.
“What I did at the tower. Through a body designed to inhibit any channeling of the Diabolism, with injuries aplenty and only manageable because I had a focus attuned to me. If you think that’s the worst I can do, whichever files you’ve been reading didn’t tell you enough!”
Shadows gathered around me, more going to the windows to blot out the light, others snuffing out the candles and the lamp.
“Katheryn,” Gregory said warningly, hands out almost like he thought he could push me away.
“Let’s both sit down, and we can just talk this out reasonably and without my brother in the room. I perhaps pushed you a bit hard-”
“Perhaps?” I yelled. “Do you have any idea how much I told you not to pry?”
Gregory nodded, and then suddenly, something clamped around me, squeezing.
Mage! I blinked, going into the astral once again, and when I opened them, I was blind.
Light, light all around, at its epicenter Gregory Montague, a lute in hand that wasn’t there in the material, shimmering gold.
It seared my eyes, and I wrenched my gaze away. A cleric?! Him?!
“I do apologize in advance,” I heard, and then a second later that searing wasn’t just in my eyes.
The touch of the divine wasn’t pleasant, even in its lightest forms. Shadows dissolved, fleeing as their connection to me was cut, and my flesh screamed at the touch of a deity’s attention.
And then suddenly, it was gone, and I stood in the same room, exactly the same as it was before.
Gregory Montague stood across, strumming absentmindedly on that lute that still hurt to look at, but not as much. He looked.. sorrowful.
“You’ve got no sense of craft,” Gregory said as the last of my patterns dissolved. “Makes it very easy to dispel.”
I teetered, feeling ill. What had I been about to do? Another in a long string of mistakes I had yet to pay for.
Gregory watched me cautiously but made no further moves as I fell against the chair. Finally, I dragged myself onto it, staring blankly at the cup of tea. I moved it out of the way in a daze before my face fell down to land on the table, supported by my arms as I tried to blot out all the light.
“Malvia?” He asked me quietly. “Malvia? Are you alright?”
The silence stretched on. He was standing right behind me, close enough I could feel him, but he didn’t move any closer.
“Katheryn?”
I let out a sound halfway between a choke and a sob.
“Katheryn Falara,” I said. “Is a fantasy concocted to hide behind. It is the end of responsibility.”
“Well, regardless of that, do you need anything?”
I tried to think of something, anything to say. There was one thing, but for hells sake, he was practically a stranger.
“Quiet. Please. Just….quiet.”
I couldn’t tell when it was I drifted off to sleep.
Perhaps there is some potential in you yet. Something crooned as I drifted deeper. The music weaver being here was something you can eventually overcome. Oh, technique I could always teach you, but your heart never was in it before now. Now that it is.
Oh, you’ll do better than the other.