Chapter 72: Chapter 17: Revelations

> “Truth be told, I am not fond of the Old World accent. But the people here seem to respect it. And it is expected from a woman with my title. So I will endure it for this lifetime as a minor inconvenience.”

It only took a moment for everything to erupt into chaos. There was shouting, curses, epithets, more shouting, and at some point, someone threw their chair against the window. During that commotion, one of the Guild members had bound my wrists and ankles together with a piece of gold rope, completely immobilizing me. I suspect that they would have done the same to Ty had Dalia not moved in front of her.

Finally, a tense order returned to the room, and I looked at J.P., who had a satisfied, smug grin on his face. He, in turn, was looking at Emma, who was trying to fake the same look, but clearly failing.

“Well,” said J.P. “Like they say down in Wimberly, sometimes your hook reels in two fish.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Ty with her typical teenage snark. “You live in the middle of Hill Country. There’s no fishing!”

“Who are you?” asked Lucca, pointing at Ty.

“I’ll tell you who she is,” said J.P. “You are looking at Ty Anzio de Wyck, otherwise known as Dalia’s only daughter.”

Had I not been firmly tied to the chair, I would have fallen over from the revelation that the girl helping me all this time was none other than the daughter of the Chairman of the Guild. I tried to recall at that moment everything that Ty had told me during our encounters, now that I knew who I was really dealing with, but the mayhem would not relent.

“By your comment, J.P., it seems you expected your nullifier to only reveal one interloper hiding in our midst tonight,” said Lucca. “But instead there are two. Who, then, is this?”

“Haven’t a clue, Luc. Emma, you’ve spent the most time with her. Who is she?”

Emma glared at me with even more venom.

“She’s a goddamn liar, that’s who she is. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. She was honest about having a glamour.”

“A detail you failed to mention to me in Boston,” said J.P. “And if you had, I would have told you never to go near the-”

“Enough,” said Dalia, quietly. “That’s enough.”

“I don’t think so,” said J.P., rising to his feet again. “In fact, I’m just getting started. I am hereby invoking Article XII of the By-Laws and am moving for a vote of no confidence in Chairman de Wyck’s leadership.”

“Seconded,” someone yelled out.

“Excellent,” said J.P. “All those in favor, say-”

“And I,” interrupted Dalia, “am invoking Subarticle XVI and am moving for a full inquest, to take place at the next meeting.”

“Seconded,” said D.C., my First Seat.

“All those in favor,” said Dalia.

Four hands went up besides Dalia’s, and I would have added mine if it hadn’t been tied to the chair. But that left her…

“One short of passing,” said J.P. “Which you would have had if our dear friend Gilbert were still with us. But I’m afraid-”

Emma’s hand suddenly shot up.

“I vote for an inquest,” she said.

“The Ayes have it, then,” said Dalia, with a half-smile.

“Emma Nadia Patel, what are you doing?” said J.P., his voice nearly screaming,

“I want to know why.”

“That’s preposterous,” he said. “We know why, it was to-”

“We had our suspicions,” said Emma, “and now, in a month, we’ll know the truth. And until then, Dalia, I’ll be keeping this vial.”

“Fine, we’ll do it her way,” said J.P. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, Dalia, you realize that. In a month, you and your daughter’s grip on this institution will finally be at an end, and then we all will be free to-”

“If you say so, Mr. Laurel,” said Dalia. “But a lot can happen in a month. If no one has any new business for tonight, then I will hear a motion to adjourn.”

“What about me?” I said, in my own voice.

J.P. laughed.

“What about you, indeed? Seeing as how Ms. de Wyck was so adamant in rejecting your application to join, she can figure out what to do with you now. I move for adjournment.”

“Seconded,” said the woman to my left whose name I’d forgotten.

“All those in favor?” asked J.P., waving his cane in the air like a maestro conducting a symphony.

“Aye,” said the entire room.

“The Ayes have it.”

----------------------------------------

The room emptied rather quickly until only Dalia, Ty, and I remained. Mother and daughter whispered to each other for several minutes, before Ty finally removed my bonds and gestured for me to take up one of the closer seats.

As I walked toward the head of the table, I glanced down at the now-inactive glamour around my neck, taking a second to carefully remove the chain. The stone made barely a peep when I slammed it against the Orange Table, and if Dalia cared about my outburst, she didn’t show it. But Ty’s eyes went wide, and I had to stifle a laugh at how ridiculous she looked in Gilbert’s clothing.

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“Ty tells me your real name is Jen Jacobs,” said Dalia quietly, after a few more minutes of silence.

“Yes,” I said. “I-”

“Where did you get your token?” she interjected.

“I … umm … it’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

Fearing that the truth of the matter was less believable, I went with the easy lie.

“In the wall of a parking garage downtown. It was underneath the etching of a-”

“And your friend’s? Where did she find that one?”

“You’d have to ask her,” I replied. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

“I see,” said Dalia.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Why?”

“Why what?” replied Dalia.

“Why did you give me that?” I said, pointing to Jade’s glamour.

“I didn’t. That was Ty’s doing. My daughter has a particular fascination with glamours, although I don’t share the same fondness, for several good reasons, many of which you’ve already witnessed in the last two months.”

“You could have warned me what would happen if I wore it too much,” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Ty. “I specifically said-”

“You said nothing about the glamour having a mind of its own. Had I known that, I would have-”

“Enough,” said Dalia, and we both stopped. “This is pointless and we have a much bigger problem to deal with now.”

“Yes,” said Ty. “I suppose you’re right. My current count is three. Do you agree?”

“No,” said Dalia. “You’re off by one. You forgot her.”

She pointed at me, and my eyes widened.

“Sorry, what are you talking about?”

“We’re tabulating the votes for my mother,” said Ty. “With you, it’s still not enough.”

“But am I even in the Guild? You rejected my application last meeting pending the retrieval of the Dragon’s blood. And then J.P. said-”

“Mr. Laurel is an idiot who thinks he has already won,” said Dalia. “I’ve dealt with many such men over the years. He left me to decide whether you can join the Guild because he believes that you and your vote, in the end, will not matter. But I am going to prove him incorrect. Doubly so.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Ms. Jacobs, that if you pledge yourself to me, I will officially approve your application to fill the Third Seat of the Breuckelen Table.”

The offer sounded familiar, and it reminded me of a similar one that Beatrice had given me. Except, it hadn’t been an offer, it was a command.

“And if I refuse?”

Dalia laughed.

“No one refuses. No one turns down a Guild Seat. Especially not that one.”

“Even if it means I have to sell my soul to you?”

“I’m not the devil,” said Dalia. “Far from it. And besides, we need you.”

“You need me? For what? To help rubber-stamp another term as Chairman?”

Dalia motioned to Ty, who nodded and nearly sprinted out of the room.

“No, as Ty said, your vote, by itself, will not be enough. The candidates for Chairman do not vote, and so there are ten votes and I will at best get five, if you are so inclined. That leaves it at a tie, and a tie means things are settled via more draconian measures. To avoid that, I need your help to recruit someone over to our side.”

Ty returned then, carrying something familiar and unfamiliar.

“Do you know what this is?” asked Dalia, tapping the lid of the plain wooden box that Ty had placed on the table.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the box you said we stole. Which we didn’t, for the record.”

I thought back to my initial meeting with Dalia at the weird midtown office, where she had accused us of kidnapping Frankie, the Guild’s Keeper and the wooden box. But it had been exactly the opposite, as Frankie had been kidnapped by the Guild, or at least by Doug.

“Noted,” said Dalia. “But had we not accused you, you never would have found the Compendium.”

“We didn’t find the Compendium,” I said. “Just the one page we gave you at our first meeting.”

“I see,” said Dalia. “Is that the story you’re sticking to?”

“You think we’re lying?”

“Of course I do. You and your friend found the whole Compendium, but other than the page you gave me, it was blank, wasn’t it?”

“How … how did you know that?” I said.

“Because,” said Dalia, “this box holds the rest.”

She gently tipped the box onto its side and a torrent of metal rings spilled forth from inside.

“And do you know what these are?” asked Dalia.

“Yes,” I said, deciding that any further lies would be called out immediately. “They’re memory rings.”

“Correct. When paired with the respective blank page, the memory, or in this case, the entry, can be recovered. And with it, the hundreds of years of Guild knowledge that we lost.”

The sinking feeling that had been quietly building in the recesses of my stomach during the meeting finally reach its apex as I realized what it was they wanted me to do.

“I see. And, let me guess, you want me to find out where it is exactly Beatrice hid the Compendium.”

“You got it,” said Ty, who picked up one of the rings and flipped it into the air. The tiny circlet seemed to take an abnormally long time to return back to the earth and when it did, it rattled around the top of the box before finally settling in place. “You find the Compendium, my mother becomes the triumphant hero, J.P. loses his stupid vote. Everybody wins.”

“Seems like I’m the one doing all the work, though,” I said, drawing stares from both mother and daughter.

“Well, yes,” said Dalia. “You’re the ones who didn’t give me the Compendium in the first place. If you and that uppity friend of yours had handed it over a few weeks ago, it would have saved you a lot of trouble now.”

“So, what would you like me to do?” I asked. “It’s not like we’re on speaking terms exactly. I have no idea where she is.”

“You have some idea,” said Dalia. “That relay mailbox that you and she have been using. I’ll admit, it’s clever. Figure out a way to reach her.”

“Is there anything you don’t already know about me?” I said, exasperated at how nearly every secret I possessed had already been taken from me without me even knowing. “Do you want my ATM pin?”

“No, that’s quite all right,” said Dalia. “I have enough money for several lifetimes.”

“But I don’t,” said Ty, “if you’re offering.”

Dalia ignored her daughter’s quip and gestured for the rolled-up piece of paper that Ty had brought back with the box.

“Do I even want to know what that is?” I asked.

“Only if you want to officially join the Guild,” Dalia replied, unfurling the paper and withdrawing a quill pen and a vial of ink from her bag. She dipped the tip of the quill into the ink, made several flourishes across the parchment with it, and then slowly pushed the finished product toward me.

A handful of lines written in faded black ink were set at the top of the mostly empty parchment, contrasted with the insertions that Dalia had just added:

“Now, let it be known, as witnessed by the Chairman, that Jen Jacobs presented the twelfth Alerion token and hereby claimed the Third Seat of the Breuckelen Table for her and her heirs in perpetuity.”

Just below that were two signature lines, one for the Chairman, which Dalia had already inked, and a blank one for me.

“Well?” said Dalia. “The ball is in your court.”

“The offer I made you at the fountain still stands, by the way,” said Ty. “Walk away and you’ll wake up with a bank account filled with lots of money and all it will cost is a slightly larger memory wipe. But the whole thing should be relatively painless. And we’ll figure out some other way out of this mess.”

“No,” I said. “Every time I fight through whatever crazy bullshit gets thrown at me, it’s always, ‘are you sure you want to continue?’ The answer then and the answer now is the same: yes. The pen, please.”

Dalia handed me the quill, and I signed my name with a flourish.

“There,” I said, rolling up the paper and handing it back to Dalia. “Now you can’t get rid of me.”

She considered me with a discerning look before taking the scroll from my hand

“Good,” Dalia said. “Then this meeting is now officially adjourned.”

She stood up abruptly, shoving her chair into the New Amsterdam Table, the vibrations sending several piles of the memory rings sliding over the edge and onto the floor.

“Wait, you’re not going to clean this up?” Ty called out as Dalia strode out of the room.