Chapter 97: Chapter 41: Inquisition

> “Meanwhile, Rita’s two heirs have flourished. They took my advice and formed their own company, the Van Asch Trading Company, and have been quite successful with their new mail-order catalog. Through several shell companies of my own that have been in existence for generations, I at least own a piece of their success.”

My office was empty save for the old wooden furniture that had been dumped into the room upon the Guild’s move to its current headquarters. And that meant that Beatrice had been telling the truth, because the only thing I had added was now gone: the green glamour stone and its necklace. I didn’t want to believe that Jade had self-actualized and exited under her own power. No, there had to be a trick, a back door, another key that Gilbert—no, not Gilbert, Ty—hadn’t told me about.

I walked over to the spartan looking wooden chair and sat down. To my surprise, despite the lack of any cushioning, it felt like I was sitting in a comfy leather chaise in front of a roaring fire. So much so that all I wanted to do was close my eyes and fall asleep until someone came to wake me. Which, given the provenance of this room, would be never. Instead, I mentally traveled around the Guild’s Tables trying to guess how the votes would land, but quickly stopped when I realized I knew nothing about the politics of the organization beyond the members I had spent time with over the past month. And even then, I could see each voting for either side.

I gave up on pontificating and journeyed back to the south tower, passing the gauntlet of tapestries again, before the one of the purported witch burning caught my eye. The three individuals surrounding the accused were faceless, but from their clothing, I surmised two were women and one was a man. They were posed as if they were praying to a deity, rather than committing unspeakable violence, and I was about to turn away and continue to the end of the tunnel when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Each wore a full-length cloak, much like our Guild cloaks, and holding the cloaks together just below the neck was a small brooch that was embossed with a spiral-looking symbol.

I walked closer to the tapestry and my mouth dropped when I saw that the shape on each brooch was of a serpent eating its tail. Running my fingers over the threads, I confirmed that the ouroboros was really there and not just a trick of my memory. Its faint golden red color seemed out of place with the rest of the tableau and I searched for other hidden details I may have missed the first time, but came up lacking.

Still puzzled, I left the tunnel and walked up the two flights of stairs to the Board Room. Opening the doors, I immediately felt my body tense up, triggered by the memories of my prior visits to this place. Thankfully, the focus would not be on me, but that gave me cold comfort for what was to come.

The chairs were still mostly empty, with the disheveled looking Third Seat of the New Amsterdam table digging his hands into a pot of what I hoped contained only dirt and J.P.’s Second Seat Balthasar reapplying a large a bandage around his forearm. Lucca was in her Seat next to mine and to the left, the woman whose name I always forgot was sitting upright wearing a dazzling dress and matching earrings to boot.

I saw down in my Seat and took a deep breath, trying to forget everything that had happened since the last meeting and trying to forget what was about to happen. As the minutes ticked by, the Seats slowly filled and I tried to make small talk with Lucca, but even her usually chipper demeanor was tempered.

The silence was interrupted by the sound of the doors swinging open and knocking against the wood-paneled walls. I turned around to see J.P. high-stepping in with his stupid cane and his stupid cowboy hat and his stupid cowboy boots. He looked like a man who had won Best Pig at the State Fair, if that was even a thing. Or, more accurately, he looked like a man who was convinced that he was going to be the next Chairman of the Guild.

Behind him was Emma, who, similar to Lucca, was lacking any of her usual spunk. My eyes darted down to her right hand, which was now gray and weathered, as if it had aged 50 years more than the rest of her. She caught me staring, and I quickly averted my gaze until I noticed the final person trailing J.P. into the room.

Hugo.

He strode right by me without a second glance and took his Seat next to Emma, leaving only Dalia and Gilbert’s Seats empty at the head of the Table. As if on queue, the back door of the room opened, and in walked the Chair and her daughter. Dalia wore a look that matched J.P.’s, but Ty’s was the opposite, and she looked like a miserable teenager who had been dragged into the principal’s office to be lectured at for some transgression. But before the former Gilbert could actually sit, J.P. banged his cane on the table.

“Stop,” he said. “That’s not your Seat, girl.”

Dalia’s demeanor shifted in an instant.

“Call my daughter ‘girl’ again and you won’t have any hands to pull that stupid walking stick out of your-”

“My apologies, Madam Chair, I only meant that Seat belongs to ‘Gilbert’ and seeing as how he’s not here, she cannot take it.”

“I hold the gold token, you twit,” said Ty, slamming the metal coin on the table, “so, yes, this is my Seat, whether you like it or not.”

“We’ll see,” said J.P.

Dalia ignored the comment and turned to Ty, who pulled Gilbert’s gavel out of the inside of her jean jacket.

“Roll call,” she said before looking around the room. “OK, we’re all here. Never mind. This 434th meeting of the Worshipful Company of Alchemists shall come to order. We have, umm, two outstanding items from the last meeting.”

“Indeed,” said J.P. “I’m sure you know most of this, Ms. Anzio, but my sub-committee has completed its Inquest report. Care to hear it?”

He grinned like a Cheshire cat and I thought for a moment that Ty was about to throw the gavel at him, but she merely nodded.

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“Very well,” he said, setting a spiral-bound booklet on the table and opening it to the front. “Our research is extensive, if anyone would like to read the full write-up after, but I’ll stick to the highlights. The prior holder of the Second Seat of the New Amsterdam Table died without issue seven years ago. Or so we all thought. For after many months of searching, an heir was found in the Swiss Alps. That heir was Gilbert, who quietly took the Seat and didn’t say much until very recently. I used to wonder why that was. Our august body can be intimidating, sure, but everyone eventually finds their sea legs, as it were. But now I know the truth. That beneath that cold exterior was a child. Dalia’s child. And she has used her extra vote on countless occasions to steer the direction of the Guild on a course of her own making.”

He shut the document with a flourish and sat back down, evidently very proud of his little speech. I looked around the room for some indication of how this information was playing with everyone else, but the assembled group seemed barely fazed by J.P.’s bluster.

“Is that it?” asked Dalia. “I was expecting something more hard-hitting. Did you not consider giving me a call? I would have told you some really juicy stuff.”

“You think this is a joke?” said J.P. “You think we are only here because you haven’t figured out a clean way to take our Seats?”

“It certainly would make these meetings go faster.”

“Enough,” said J.P. “That’s enough.”

“I agree,” said Emma, who winced as she pushed herself up from her own Seat. “I wanted to know the truth, and all you’ve given me is the obvious. I wanted to know why, damn it!”

“Emmy, it’s not that-”

Emma pounded her injured fist onto the table and I honestly thought it was going to shatter into a dozen pieces. The room fell silent, and everyone’s eyes shifted between Dalia, J.P., and Emma, but no one had the courage to break the impasse. Finally, Ty cleared her throat, drawing a look from her mother, but she shook it off.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I wanted to be on the Guild, ever since I was little. I knew I would one day take my mother’s Seat, sure, but that eventuality felt so distant. And then Ayla died, and it seemed like kismet. Things were in a precarious position for us and holding a Gauntlet for the empty Seat would have only destabilized our standing. So it was decided to keep the Seat in reserve until a more opportune time.”

“What do you mean, keep it in ‘reserve,’” asked Emma. “And who decided?”

“Ah, yes,” said Dalia, with a smirk. “I wondered when this little detail was going to emerge. I’m sure it’s buried at the end of that dumb report, but a decision of this magnitude could not be done in secret. Why, that would delegitimize our whole organization! And so I called a meeting of the Firsts. Hugo’s uncle, Charles. D.C.’s father, D.C. And of course, our esteemed colleague, Mr. J.P. Laurel.”

Emma’s eyes turned in an instant toward her own “uncle,” whose face had turned beet red.

“You KNEW?”

“Now, Emmy,” he said, “it’s not that simple. We were-”

“-presented with the proposition of giving the Seat, temporarily, to one of the glamours in our possession,” said Dalia. “And it was unanimously decided that this was the most prudent course.”

A wave of murmurs swept across the room and I had to believe that this latest wrinkle might turn the tide against J.P.’s vote.

“Yes, unanimous,” said J.P. “Or rather, we were cowed into agreeing with the Chair. But I knew, deep down, that this subterfuge would only come back to hurt us in the end. And no, I didn’t know who was beneath the glamour until recently.”

“That doesn’t make it better!” said Emma. “You set this whole thing in motion, already knowing that there was no Gilbert. All for your own gain.”

“No, Emmy, for everyone’s!” said J.P. “Charles and D.C. were hesitant to go along with it too, but they’re not here, so this knowledge fell to me and me alone. Believe me, I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to give Dalia the benefit of the doubt, but when you returned from Boston and I saw your hand, I-”

“So this was all for me, was it? Well, maybe you should have said something BEFORE I nearly burned to death!”

Emma stormed out of the room like a toddler having a tantrum, and I resisted the urge to laugh at how this whole plan had blown up in J.P.’s smug face. After a few more moments of awkward silence, Dalia took the gavel from Ty and banged it on the table.

“I call the question of the Inquest,” she said.

“Seconded,” said Lucca.

“All those in favor of ending debate over the Inquest,” said Ty.

A chorus of Ayes swept across the room with all but J.P. and Hugo voting in the affirmative.

“The question carries,” said Ty. “We will now vote on the Inquest motion. All those in favor of continuing the Inquest.”

The vote was a reverse of the previous one and a dejected J.P. slumped down in his chair, but only for a second.

“I move to take up from the table the vote on Chairman of the Guild,” he said.

“Seconded,” said Hugo.

“All those in favor,” said Ty.

Surprisingly, the vote was unanimous in favor. I suspected Dalia didn’t want this to drag out any further, and given the disastrous results of the Inquest and her own trump card, she felt the vote was even more in her favor.

“The motion carries. We will now debate the question of who will be the Chairman of the Guild. Mr. Laurel, the floor is yours.”

“Thank you,” he said, stopping for a moment to allow Emma to waltz back in and retake her Seat. “There’s not much more that needs saying from me. We’ve seen how, under Dalia’s leadership, our esteemed organization has become more irrelevant with each passing year. We are too slow, too set in our ways, to adapt to the world that is changing around us. And so, when I take the Chair, we will be reinvigorated by a merger with the Van Asch Corporation.”

Only D.C. had any sort of reaction to this news, and it was barely a chortle, but I immediately gathered that J.P. had probably rightfully concluded that the clan who had spent hundreds of years hammering away in a forge was not likely to throw its vote behind such an upheaval.

“I’ve told you all how this will benefit us, but you ought to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.”

“Mr. Laurel, if you think for a second that I’m going to let those charlatans waltz right into my Board Room, then you have another thing coming,” said Dalia.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, Madam Chair! Even so, they’d like to all speak to you, and so the three of us have arranged an alternative method.”

I glanced around the room quickly to see if there was some video conferencing set-up that I had missed, but as I suspected, the only hangings on the wall were the odd assortment of banners and medieval looking metal shields. Before I could point out this deficiency, J.P. reached into his inner jacket pocket and retrieved two silver beads and a flask, which he put neatly on the table in front of him.

“You didn’t,” said Ty, shaking her head.

J.P. smiled and placed both pieces of silver into his mouth, which he chewed for a few seconds and washed down with a sip of something so strong that I could smell it from my Seat. His body immediately tensed up, his eyes began to blink rapidly, and he instinctively grabbed the front of the table. When he came to a moment later, his face had contorted into such an expression that it was as if someone had put on a loosely fitting J.P. mask onto his head.

“Hello, everyone,” said the woman’s voice that emerged out of J.P.’s mouth. His features suddenly shifted again and then a man spoke as well.

“We’re so honored and humbled to be before this esteemed organization today.”

“What’s going on?” asked Balthasar. “Who are those people talking?”

“It’s modified electrum,” said Lucca. “An auditory memory, or in this case, two of them working together. As to who they are…”

“They’re Lorna and Xander van Asch,” said Dalia with a snarl. “Sibling chairs of the Van Asch Corporation.”