'I'm getting tired of this,' Alexander said. He was leaning against the table with his full weight, arms spread wide, head drooping to his chest. 'I'm getting tired of these games.'
'Kinda late for that,' I said.
'Kind of. Yes.' He placed the mask gingerly on the table, straightened the edge of it so it lined up with the table. 'There are things I should have left for you, son. Other than obligations.'
'And mind-numbing debt,' I laughed. 'Good news on the debt part. Since I've been written out of the will, that won't be my problem either.'
Alexander lifted a square of paper from the table and tapped it against the mask. When he raised his head, I thought for one startling second that he was crying. He slid the paper toward me, then sat at the table and crossed his arms.
When it became clear that I wasn't going to move, Wilson went and got the paper. He laughed as he read it, then held it up for me to read.
I got the words 'Right of Name,' 'Councilor-in-Standing' and 'Son, Jacob Burn' through my head before I turned and walked out of the room, leaving the letter behind. Wilson followed, laughing all the way, with a touch of hysteria.
Just a reminder. My father, Alexander Burn, betrayed me. He sold a part of me to the Church of the Algorithm, buried one of their secrets in my flesh and then cast me out of the house when I didn't show the proper gratitude. When his little compromise got some of my friends killed, I acted against his will. Directly against his will. This is what got me shot by Angela, got Emily killed, got me a bad name in the city of Veridon. Everything that man has done has in some way acted against me. And this was his last shot. He took everything from me, spent it all, and now he was giving me the bill.
'We should get a drink,' Wilson yelled from behind me as I pushed through the busy streets of DowningTown. 'Celebrate. You've been reinstated!'
I gave him a nasty look over my shoulder. He was all smiles and teeth.
'You know damn well that it's too late for that,' I yelled back. The crowds were loud tonight. Rumors of the attacks at the dock this morning were driving a certain madness through the air. 'The Burn family name died a long time ago. That skeleton has just been rattling along.'
'So it's up to you to bury it. Shouldn't be that hard.'
I grimaced and kept trudging through the crowd. Lots of pushing, lots of noise. The Down wasn't usually this busy, even on festival nights. People were seriously spooked, if they were treating this like some kind of holiday from sanity. But who was I to talk? One thing Wilson had right. Way things were going, we should seriously get a drink.
We chose a place I used to frequent in my days as a serious criminal. I didn't think they'd recognize me. Hoped not, at least. Some people I pissed off back then, they might pay folks to let them know I was around. Come by and have a swing at my head. Or maybe that's just what I needed. A good fight to clear the head. Wilson seemed like he could do with the same. Seemed edgy, and there was nothing quite as intimidating as an edgy bug. All those teeth, that smiling, nervous energy. The knives bulging under his vest. We made a good pair.
I got our drinks and found a table in the corner. Wilson sat across from me. Still grinning.
'Cut it out,' I said.
'What?'
'That smile. You're happy about this.' I drank and wiped my face with the back of my hand. 'You like to see me suffer.'
'Not exactly. I like to see you when you get like this, though.'
'Like what?' I asked.
He spread his hands around the room. People were giving us our space, for all that the rest of the tavern was knees to nuts.
'Dangerous,' he said. 'People can smell it. You're a man who isn't thinking straight.'
'I'm thinking just fine.'
'We had questions for your father. Lots of questions, really. Best thing we could do is go back to that morbid house, climb up to that room and sit in the dark with your father. Asking questions.'
'Maybe,' I conceded.
'But we're not going to do that, are we?'
I was quiet. His smile widened. My beer was empty, but another appeared without having to ask. The barmaid wouldn't meet my eyes. Hurried away. She could smell it on me.
'No,' I said. 'We're not.'
'We left the mask behind. You think we might want that later on?' Wilson sipped his beer and rubbernecked around the room like a tourist. 'I think we'll need it. But no matter.'
Again, I didn't answer. I wasn't going back to that house. Not now, not ever. I had been under the gloom of the Burn name for years now. Some folks blamed me for the noble family's fall from grace, some folks blamed my father, or the industrialists who were squeezing the Founding Families out of the Council. Out of power. Last thing I wanted was the responsibility of righting that ship. Or worse, standing at the helm when she finally slipped under the water. Thinking that reminded me of the morning's fight on the river, and the crawling dead. I shivered. It also made me realize I'd been up for a lot of hours in a row, here, and a lot had happened in a day. Suddenly, fatigue plucked at my bones. I settled into my chair and stared at my beer. I was feeling unapologetically bad for myself.
'Why did he do that?' I asked no one in particular. 'Why'd he reinstate me? What happened to letting the name disappear before he'd hand it over to the likes of me?'
'You may not have noticed this, but your father is in a peculiar state of mind.' Wilson folded his hands around his mug. 'I don't really understand what he meant by hearing voices. I think we can trace that pretty directly to our boy Crane, don't you?'
'I thought of that. Wasn't sure how to put it to him, though.'
'I'm not sure you should have.' Wilson sipped his beer, as though it was hot, and licked his lips. 'We're in an unusual position, Jacob. I think we have more information than most of the people involved in this.'
I blinked at him across the table. Fatigue was really pulling me down.
'Sure doesn't feel that way,' I said. 'Feels like we don't know the first damn thing.'
He laughed, but kept the mirth from his eyes. There was something uncomfortable in the way he was sitting, like he was trying to balance on a very tiny chair.
'We know Crane is working with Tomb. We know that he is somehow connected with a Rite of Purge, and that a lot of the abilities he's demonstrated align with your father's sudden case of madness.' He drank, then slid his mug slowly around the table, making patterns in the condensation. 'And Crane took the time to hire you for a job that was probably going to get you killed.'
'I don't like where you're going with this,' I muttered.
'I'm not going anywhere with it. I'm just laying out some facts.'
'You're implying that a Rite of Purge has been written out with the Burn name on it.'
'I'm not sure that I am,' he said. 'Although that is a possibility. From what your father described, though, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing the Council would enact. Unless your family has done something heinous that we're just not aware of.'
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my face. 'You never know. Dad likes his secret plans.'
'Let's discount that for a moment. This Rite of Purge thing seems pretty extreme, even for Angela Tomb. I don't think she'd take the time to bring it in front of the full Council. If she was serious about snuffing out the Burn name, I mean… there are really only two of you left. Your mother's not going to contest the Right, your siblings are dead or married. Honestly, you didn't really count toward the total until your father reinstated you.'
'Maybe that's why he did it,' I said. 'He's worried Angela is trying to get him out of the way, so he brought me back into the family. Putting the crosshairs on my head would force my involvement. Force them to act against me, and me to react against them. That'd be typical of him.'
'Doesn't explain the purge mask, though,' Wilson said.
I shrugged. It did seem a little theatrical for Angela's style. She was much more the type to just pull out a pistol and shoot you in the chest, without preamble or warning. Which was also the problem with Crane's
