The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [141]
“Aren’t you a little straight A?” he said. “I bet you make the boys in your classes furious. The bell curve wasn’t made for clever girls.” Draven smirked and I forced myself to keep my face neutral. Good thing that was far from the most insulting thing someone had said about me.
“I get along with everyone,” I lied. “A ward can’t afford to be snobbish.”
“No.” Draven stubbed out his cigarette. “But I suppose it’s difficult to keep that vapid smile on your face. Mad mother, mad brother, the bastard child of a rich man. How the barbs must fly.”
“How did you know about my father?” I said, my surprise genuine. I tugged against the shackles. They were as immobile as the other ten times I’d tested them.
“Come on now, Aoife,” Draven said. “Aoife Eileen Grayson. We Proctors are the eyes, ears and wings of the entire nation. There’s nothing we don’t know.”
There was at least one thing about all this I was pretty sure Draven didn’t know, but I kept that to myself.
A knock on the door cut off Draven’s smug smile. “Yes?”
“Superintendent Draven.” A uniformed Proctor stepped in with my carpetbag. “The girl’s effects.”
“Put them on the desk, Officer Quinn.”
“Yes, sir.” Quinn set down the bag and stepped back. Draven lifted one eyebrow.
“Something else, Officer?”
“One of the boys is giving us trouble,” Quinn said. “The skinny one.”
“Cal—” I bit back a further cry when Draven’s eyes crinkled in amusement. At least I knew Cal was alive.
“Take him to a separate interrogation room and do whatever it takes,” he ordered. “I want information from him about what he and the girl have been doing out there in Arkham. He’ll give it quickly if he knows what’s good for him.”
“No!” I shouted as Quinn saluted and backed out. “No, Cal had nothing to do with this!” I started up, to lunge for the door, to do something to prevent them from hurting him.
“Sit.” Draven pinned me across the desk, his finger hovering in front of my face. “I am not going to humor your lies, Aoife. Not when I know what you are.”
“I’m not anything,” I whispered, although I had the horrible feeling Draven knew my secret. “I ran away, I admit.” Maybe if I confessed to what the Proctors expected, I could buy Cal leniency. I started again. “I consorted with heretics and I’ve got a latent necrovirus infection, and you can do whatever you want with me, but I swear that Cal hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“You’re so sure of your good friend Cal? That’s nice,” Draven said, standing and going to the single window that wasn’t closed off by a shutter. His view looked down the hill, to the river, the bridge, the foundry. “I want you to think, Aoife. Think about the day your mother was committed. A young girl and her brother would go to a state orphanage, girls and boys in different institutions. You would never see your brother again. You knew this. You perhaps shed a few tears right there in the courtroom.”
He turned back, arms folded. “Where did you go, Aoife?”
“To … to a group home,” I said, wondering where this was leading. The house I’d gone to had been close, noisy, full of other children, who pulled my hair and taunted me with jokes until Conrad chased them off.
“With your brother.” Draven ticked off on his fingers, backlit against the windows by the endless gray of the sky. “You stayed with your brother. Your needs were met. You both went to the finest school and you both gained entrance to the Lovecraft Academy.” He looked at his fingers. “If one were a heretic, one might almost say you had a guardian angel, Aoife. But of course we know the real reason, don’t we?”
“I want to see my friends now,” I snapped. “What does this have to do with them?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Draven said. “Archibald Grayson may have fathered bastards, but he made sure they’d be as smart as him. He had his clever little ways of ensuring they were taken care of.”
“My … my father?” I blinked at Draven, genuinely confused as to why he thought my childhood was so important. To my mind, it had been nothing but misery from the day Nerissa