The Miscreant (34 page)

The strongbox made an awful clamor as the carriage dragged it down the street. The noise abated when he steered the carriage off the road and across the campus lawn. Garran guided the horses through the trees until he reached a clearing and brought them to a halt.

Toby emerged from the darkness holding a blacksmith’s hammer and a steel chisel. “You got it!”

Garran swung over the side of the buckboard and dropped to the ground. “Yeah, but I made a hell of a mess in the process.”

“Well, we figured you would make a bit of a hole during the extraction.”

“True, but I don’t think either of us expected the fire.”

“Fire? What fire?”

Garran reached for the hammer. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

Toby knelt in front of the safe and held the chisel against the big padlock. “Watch your swing. I want to keep my fingers.”

“You best hope I don’t hit you in the head, but at least then you won’t have to fake it anymore.”

It took only half a dozen strikes to break the shackle loose from the housing. Garran flipped open the heavy lid and smiled down at the packet of papers lying within. He held them up against one of the carriage’s lanterns.

“This is it. All I need to do now is deliver them to Dean Kelsey’s office and I’m an agent as soon as King Remiel awards me my pin and I take the oath.”

“Congratulations, kid.”

“Thanks, Toby, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Toby clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you ever forget it.”

Garran jogged across the manicured lawns, a feat made much easier since he had shed nearly a hundred pounds of rope. As expected, the door to the administration building was open and guarded by a campus constable. The man nodded to Garran and allowed him to pass. Garran practically skipped up the steps to the top floor. Professor Lyndon, as the final exam’s official proctor, sat in the dean’s foyer waiting to receive the documents.

Instead of taking the packet from him, Professor Lyndon stood and motioned for Garran to enter Dean Kelsey’s office. He found the dean sitting behind his desk with Martin and Constable Elric standing to each side.

“Dean Kelsey, I expected you to still be at the ball,” Garran said as he entered.

The dean smiled, something that made Garran very uneasy. “I presume you thought I would still be trying to help with the fire?”

“Fire, what fire?”

“I am certain you know precisely what fire.” Dean Kelsey stood, walked around his desk, and prodded Garran’s swollen cheek with his finger. “What I would like to know is how you managed to swell up your face like this. It is most certainly not facial putty.”

“I’m horribly allergic to bee stings,” Garran answered. “If it was not for my unique physiology, I’d probably be dead.”

“I must say, Mr. Holt, that your dedication to achieving your goals is remarkable. It is almost a shame that you have failed.”

“Failed? I have the papers right here, unless you are all going to conspire against me and claim I never had them. I have witnesses who know I got them.”

Dean Kelsey leaned against his desk. “Are you sure? Did you read them?”

“I glanced over them.”

“Read a little more slowly.”

Garran slipped the pages out of the folder and began reading. His certainty grew until he reached the middle of the second page where a line stated that if Garran was in possession of these pages then he had cheated on his exam and was subject to expulsion. His heart hammered in his chest and his ears burned as blood raced into his head. He fought back his mounting anxiety.

“This doesn’t mean anything. Just because you scribbled a line about me cheating does not prove anything. Everyone knows you want me out.”

The dean beckoned to Martin with a finger. Martin handed him a sealed packet.

“Note the three seals and signatures adorning this parcel. Inside is a copy of your exam and the papers you were supposed to obtain in order to pass, all verified and signed by me, Professor Lyndon, and Gregor Ward. If you still have the exam you signed for, you will see that the two are identical. Had you bothered to read closely what you were issued prior to your exam, you would have noticed some subtle but significant differences.

“Not only did you obtain the wrong papers, you were not even in the right building. The only way you could have mistakenly taken the packet that is in your hands is if you had gotten into my office and read the papers in my safe that purposefully led you to taking the wrong ones. Not only that, but you have been stealing fake tests since your midterm exam. I can prove beyond doubt that you have been cheating by stealing information from my office for at least the past two years.”

Garran’s heart fell into the pit of his stomach. He had come too far to fail now. He could feel his entire body tingling, and a familiar energy coursed through him. He could enter his transcended state and kill everyone in this room. Then he could take the real packet before setting fire to the building. He would pretend to have come upon the blaze while turning in his exam. Could he? Garran was many unpleasant things, but was he a murderer? He desperately hoped he did not have to find out.

“It won’t matter. Gregor and Remiel will not let me fail. Even if I cheated, I did it in a way that proves I am a brilliant agent.”

Dean Kelsey nodded. “Possibly. Gregor and Remiel are both unduly enamored with your
unique physiology
, but I would not want to bet my life on possibly. Would you?”

“Maybe.”

“Let us consider it a moment. Even if the king insists upon making you an agent, he will do it with my strictest opposition. Everyone will know you for the fraud you are. You will have never passed this course, and the pin he bestows on you will be as meaningless as the one you are so fond of flashing around town. Oh yes, I know all about your little public escapades and criminal activity. You look down your nose at me, but you forget that I was an agent long before becoming the dean. You might one day have become a better field agent than I ever was, but right now you are just a clever yet arrogant little shit who outsmarted himself into failure.”

The dean gave Garran a self-satisfied smile and let the weight of his words soak in. “I know what you are thinking. I know you better than you know yourself, so wait a moment before you do something you will deeply regret. There is a way for you to graduate with my blessing.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Despite my hatred of you, you do have the makings of an outstanding field agent. I took an oath, the same oath you will take, to serve this kingdom. I am not so petty a man as to deny what could be a valuable asset to the kingdom just to get revenge.”

Garran took several deep breaths. “What do you want from me, Kelsey?”

“I want your soul. I have never loathed another human being to the extent I do you. It is not enough to kick you out of my school. I want you broken. I want you to hate yourself as much as I do. I want you to see and know without a doubt the true measure of your character.”

“How do I give you that?”

“By giving me your accomplice. I know you did not break into my office. I have had more people watching you than you know. That means someone else did it for you.”

Garran shook his head. “No, I won’t do it. I’ll take my chances with Gregor and Remiel.”

“Such a noble but hollow sentiment. We both know the truth. You are just the only one who does not yet accept it. I have spent the last four years studying your psychological reports and competency interviews. I know what and how you think. I know how your mother and Dwight think. What would they say? How would they feel about you becoming an agent under such false pretenses? They would say it was so typical of you to cheat and scam your way into possessing something you did not earn. You would validate every vile, disgusted thought they have of you.” Dean Kelsey took a step away from his desk and slid a piece of paper to the front of it. “All you have to do to prove them wrong is write out in detail how he helped you cheat. I already know who it is, and I have enough to expel him without your help.”

Garran glared at the paper then at the dean. “If you can do that, then why do you need me to write it down?”

“Because this way hurts more. Turn in your friend and you graduate. Otherwise, I will expel you both.”

Garran was in an unwinnable situation and he knew it. The best he could hope for was walking away with a shred of dignity and a clean conscience. Glaring into Dean Kelsey’s eyes, Garran knew what he had to do.

***

“I can’t believe you betrayed me like this!” Aniston seethed as he shoved his clothes into a trunk.

Garran held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Garran, apparently we haven’t met before.”

“I knew you were a piece of shit, but I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends.”

“Friends don’t throw you under a carriage!”

“What was I supposed to do? I told you what happened. What would you have done?”

“I would not have snitched you out!”

“Then we would have both been expelled,” Garran argued.

“Maybe, but it would not have been because of me.”

“Are you saying that if you were in my situation, you would have done anything to keep me from getting expelled?”

“Yes!”

“Then here we are! You sacrificed yourself for me just as you would have wanted had you been there to make the call. You weren’t there, so I did what I thought you would have wanted.”

Aniston stopped emptying his dresser and glared daggers at Garran. “Do not pretend you did this or anything else for me. Do you have any idea how important this was to me? I was going to be able to make my own way in life, gain respect for what I did on my own, and not because I’m my father’s son.”

“Oh boo-hoo. Poor Aniston has to go back to his mansion and take over his rich daddy’s business,” Garran mocked. “Forgive me if I am so distraught I’m unable to work up the requisite amount of tears for your plight. Do you know what I have outside of this school? Nothing! My mother sold me into slavery, and it nearly got me killed by raiders. This is my only chance at becoming something other than a dirt-poor logger living in the devil’s ass-crack of a town.”

Aniston stepped closer and stuck his finger in Garran’s face. “You know, I could almost forgive you if you had ever shown that you gave a damn about becoming an agent beyond your own selfish and egotistical reasons. You don’t care about being an agent. You don’t care about service to the kingdom. All you care about is having a shiny, silver pin that you can use to manipulate people and feed your petty, twisted desires.”

Garran scowled back. “It’s so easy to judge me when you haven’t lived a single second in my skin, you with your wealth, friends, and family connections. If I want something, I have to rely on myself to get it. I don’t have anyone. I don’t have family. I don’t have friends who are there to watch my back or help me.”

“Wrong, you had one, and you shit all over him. Get the hell away from me and go crawl into your bottle or one of your whores.”

“I plan to, but your mother doesn’t like me waking her before she’s had breakfast.”

Aniston swung his fist and snapped Garran’s head back with a powerful blow. Garran retreated several steps, but Aniston followed with a flurry of punches. Garran had expected him to lash out, but his level of fury surprised him. He fell back, and Aniston rode him to the floor, trapping his arms beneath his legs and pounding Garran’s unprotected face until it and his fists were a bloody mess.

Garran was not sure if it was the arrival of the valet or if Aniston balked just before killing him. He stood, clenching and unclenching his hands, and spit on Garran’s barely conscious form before storming out and letting his valet handle his trunk.

Garran lay on the floor for several minutes, spitting out gobs of blood and saliva until he was able to sit up. It was one of the better beatings in life, but it did not help him much. He still hurt, but he hoped Aniston felt better. No matter, he had something that could erase all forms of pain, at least for a while.

***

Garran milled about amongst his fellow graduates in one of the palace’s reception rooms. A long table provided refreshments while they waited for someone to announce the start of the ceremony. It was a paltry gathering considering how many students began the course four years ago. Only seven others made field agent along with thirty-six analysts, but Garran only noticed one particular absence, and it stabbed him in the gut like a knitting needle.

Once again, Garran took to medicating the pain before it could take hold. He pulled out a small glass vial, pressed his tongue against the opening, and tipped it back to absorb just a single drop of the potent liquid. His conscience subsided, and a feeling of mild euphoria spread through his brain. He glanced at the punch bowl and smiled.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” Garran announced with a nod to the two women in the group, “let us toast our achievement.”

Garran received several hostile looks, but everyone formed up around the table and drew a glass. Word had gotten around about his betrayal, and few sided with his reasoning. He was not popular to begin with, and his overt treachery made him something of a pariah within the school ranks.