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“Thank you for all your assistance, Mr Squall,” President Wintersea folded her hands together and nodded at the door, dismissing him.
“Of course,” he stood, bowing, and walked out, his hands still at his sides, his suit perfectly pressed. There was a gaggle of diplomats and lobbyists all crowding the hallways, a few MPs, and most curiously, a delegation from Great Wolfacre, with their chancellor at its head.
It had only been two weeks since he’d taken that man’s daughter on as his apprentice. And he had no idea she was even alive. Squall doubted he would want to know, if anyone did tell him.
Still, know thy enemy. He turned towards them, smiling politely, but not too much. Friendly, but not an idiot.
“Chancellor Crow,” he nodded. In this sphere, he was lower than this detestable man. As Mr Jones, that is. “You might remember, we met at the Chancellery meeting on the so-called Wunder Shortage Crisis.” Of course, there had been a crisis. He knew that better than anyone, given that he had started it, but it was the official position of Squall Industries that the crisis had never existed and what had happened was a strange misunderstanding and the sign that there needed to be more public investment in his company.
“Ah, yes, Mr Jones, how nice to see you again,” he didn’t sound bored, but these men were never interested in the assistants of men who wouldn’t even deign to show to the meetings about their own companies. “I hope you are well.”
“I am, and the same to you, and your family. How are your children?”
“My sons are well,” he said. “Both are growing very strong so far.”
Perhaps it was only because he was looking for a reaction but he could have sworn that his eye twitched just there. The reminder of his daughter. How he must have hated it.
He continued to make polite conversation for a few minutes, before taking his leave and returning to his company to overview what needed doing for the rest of the day before he had to leave to teach Miss Crow.
She was making good progress, but she was still far too timid. She was scared of what she could do, what wundersmiths were capable of. He had thought that with the deal made, the “hollowpox” destroyed and cured, that she might have let go of all of that nonsense, but no such luck it seemed. What a shame that was that only a few days later, she was back to her nonsense of trying to help the society, and calling him evil.
As if things were ever as simple as that, but she was a child yet. He had time yet to convince her of the nuance required to deal with Wintersea and her ilk. Which seemed to contain Crow senior, but he was sure she wouldn’t need too much convincing to do away with her own father. It was about her only saving grace.
His fellow wundersmiths had been just the same really. Always so concerned with what was perceived to be “good” or “right” but not what was really the best thing to do in the wider scheme of things.
He knew what he was, of course. He wasn’t so concerned with his personal optics that he was going to dress it up with concepts of utilitarianism and the “greater good”. He’d been forced to read enough boring philosophy about it when he had been a boy. What he was, when it came down to it, was a lesser evil. He could do the bad things that needed doing, to get rid of their shared worse evil, and keep Miss Crow on side by sparing her that, for now.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t aggravating. Even Owain had been less scrupulous than her, and he had been the type to polish all his shoes to mirror shininess every single week since he had been five.
He had been shadow making absentmindedly all evening, his hands moving in ways he didn’t even have to think about, it came so familiarly to him.
Soon enough a little shadow puppy was yapping away at his feet, casting darkness wherever it scarpered around the fairly spartan sitting room in his flat. It was his personal one, not the one anyone but him saw. He had more impressive rooms than this, but he saved those for when anyone came begging to Mr Jones to intercede with Ezra Squall on their behalf. Or when President Wintersea came knocking. He didn’t shiver thinking about those scant occasions but that was only through great practice.
He whistled for another packdog and bundled it off to be with the rest of the hunt. He didn’t want to look at it anymore. It looked like all the others.
Owain and Elodie had thought the first ones were cute, adorable even, when he had brought them around to meet them. Wundersmiths traditionally lived in Proudfoot House, but since Odbuoy hardly wanted for teachers, and the rest of them had finished their education, they had disappeared off to different parts of the realm.
Elodie had gone to study timezones in the Fifth Pocket, Owain… something he didn’t ever explain in the Third Pocket, and Ezra had ended up in Great Wolfacre.
If he had known that it would have resulted in him never leaving the cursed place, he would never have gone. But how could he have known? He had never paid much heed to oracles and fortune tellers in the first place. He had always found that their warnings and predictions only made sense when it was too late to change anything. He had been told once that he would redefine what it was to be a wundersmith, that he would be the best known one anywhere, even if they didn’t know his own name. He would see the world in smoke and shadow, and the calling of hunter’s horns would tell of what he had done.
He’d spent years and years working under the delusion that it had been a good thing. He would save them from their broken government, make the world anew in ash and smoke, and build it back up. cuncta prius temptata: sed inmedicabile corpus/ense recidendum est, ne pars sincera trahatur had always stuck with him after all.
It had one come to him when he had been the last one standing in Courage Square, having reached out his hands, eight for each of his fellows, and choked the very life from them, and one of his hunters had blown his horn in celebration.
The hunter had never been really alive, but he had killed him anyway. Had the dogs tear him to pieces, and made a new set of beasts instead from the dispersed wunder. From what he understood, the Wundrous Society was still dealing with that one.
“I don’t understand,” Miss Crow said, frowning at her work. “Why won’t it come together?”
“You need to believe in what you’re doing,” he said. “You cannot lie to yourself.”
Ezra Squall was not a good person. He heard a horn in the distance, and rose to his feet, “Work on that for now. You need to believe in something before you ever carry it out.”