Page 95 of Her Majesty's Necromancer
"I want you to trust me," he said. "So I'm going to tell you about Gurry."
My eyes widened. "You don't have to."
"I want to. I want you to feel safe here, and that means allaying any fears about me you might still have."
I was about to tell him that I didn't have any fears, but I didn't want him to change his mind and not confide in me so I remained quiet.
"I was eleven when he came to tutor me. We didn't get along particularly well, but that wasn't unusual. My tutors were there to teach me in any way they saw fit."
How could any child learn anything while being beaten? Or fearing a beating?
"When I was twelve, things changed in the general's household. The housekeeper's nephew came to live with us. His parents had died, and he had no one else. He was two years younger than me, but we became friends, of sorts. I'd never had a friend before, never been around other children, so I wasn't easy to get along with. But we did, after a while. The problem was, I was busy with my studies and had little time for him."
"What about after lessons?"
"I studied every day from six in the morning until eight at night for day classes, then the night lessons would begin on those evenings I had them."
"Night classes? What could you possibly learn at night?"
"How to find my way around London in the dark. How to get in through a locked window without waking anyone. How to move about the clubs and dens without being noticed. Among other things."
That was quite an unusual education. I wished I'd had those sorts of lessons. Living on the streets might have been easier at first if I had. "The less I saw of Tim, the harder he tried to get my attention. He was bored and lonely in that house with nothing to do but a few chores. So he would amuse himself by tapping on the windows until my tutors came looking for him, then he'd run off. Or he would place tacks on their chairs, or break their pens and inkwells. He was mischievous, but he did it to get me to laugh."
"He never got caught?"
"Frequently. The tutors would beat him, but never severely. The housekeeper wouldn't let them."
"Did the general know what they were doing to him? And to you?"
He nodded. "It was in the reports they gave him upon his infrequent returns to the city. They'd detail what I'd learned, how well I was doing, how much they needed to discipline me et cetera."
"And he didn't try to stop them beating you? Or Tim?"
"The general believes in strong discipline. The more wayward the boy, the harder the beatings should be."
I covered my mouth. "Oh, Lincoln."
He flinched and I bit my lip. It wasn't pity he wanted, it was understanding.
"That's why he liked Gurry so much. His beatings were the hardest. Several months after Tim came to live with us, he took his fun too far. He'd made himself a slingshot and hid outside the window. We'd planned for me to open it during my lesson with Gurry and Tim would fire things at him. I followed through on the plan, and Tim shot a series of small objects at Gurry. Gurry batted some away, but Tim was fast and the rapid fire overwhelmed Gurry. He accidentally swallowed one of the pellets and almost choked. When he recovered, he went looking for Tim. It took all afternoon to find him and catch him, but when he did, he beat him with a cane. Tim was defiant, and refused to apologize. He told Gurry that the object he'd swallowed was a ball of dried horse dung. Gurry was a stickler for hygiene and had a fear of germs. He almost had an apoplexy when Tim told him that. It set him off even more. He beat Tim harder and harder, on his back, his shoulders, and around his head. Gurry went into a frenzy. I tried to pull him off but couldn't. The housekeeper started screaming, but he seemed not to hear her. He kept hitting Tim, even after he collapsed. He was bleeding from the nose and ears, but still Gurry didn't stop. It seemed to go on forever. Finally, he calmed down, but only when Tim was no longer moving."
"Oh God," I whispered into my hand. "He killed Tim. He beat him to death."
"The housekeeper wrote to the general, and the general dismissed Gurry. I never saw him again until almost a year ago in that lane. It all suddenly came back to me, and I couldn't put aside my anger. I'd let Tim down all those years ago. I hadn't been able to save him, but I finally had a chance to see justice served. So I killed Gurry then and there."
I stared at him, stunned by the story and the image of that poor boy at the mercy of Gurry. And poor Lincoln too, living with the memories for so many years. He'd had one friend in his entire life, and that friend had died because he'd been a distraction to Lincoln's studies. It was a lot to bear.
"You didn't fail Tim," I assured him. "You were only a boy too, when it happened. Don't blame yourself for something only Gurry is responsible for."
He glanced at me, a small crease connecting his brows. "And of my actions in the lane? I was an adult then. I knew what I was doing, and I chose to do it anyway."
I couldn't meet his gaze. While I understood why he'd done it, it still unnerved me to think he could hold onto his revenge for so long then act upon it in a cold, calculating manner. "Was his death swift?"
"Yes."
"Then that's something."
His brows arched.
