Inquisition

==Book I==
Written in the early 60s, this journal, thin and bound in business blue, details Thomas Hope as a younger man, decades before the founding of Treehouse. In it are abbreviated mentions of dark interrogations and frank skepticism about a budding romance, fluffed with pages and pages of musings on power structure and essays questioning the efficacy of four-court systems.
===Psyche===
Summer rain spilled down like Heaven's upended washtub on a parking lot.
A GOOD SNAKE, declared the wall in pink hotter than the torrent.
His chest heaved as his fingers worked, tearing cloth. "Right, June, come on," He couldn't hear his own quiet requests over the mounting Sorrow, the building Wrath. "You've got to wake up, June. Eyes open."
The bruised body was cooling, the smaller man shoved his hair out of his eyes. An empty spray can sailed away like a toy boat. Seconds stretched like waking cats into minutes.
Brakes squealed and a wrinkled door banged shut. "Halloo!" Sang a jaunty bluejay, "It's the other one! It's our scaly friend's chum! What's the odds of that, eh?"
A white fire called out. "Here, Snake! Show us your badge trick!"
He was younger in those days, all vengeance in his bloodless eyes. The Crossroads Motley swarmed him, he scrapped like a demon against grinning exorcists, ripping and kicking until the power of Christ compelled him, a crack across his skull. Warm asphalt cupped his cheek. Their prayers were guffaws and slurs, they laid on hands, and boots. The knight drooled blood and rainwater.
Then thunder cracked, and a holy man fell away.
Out of some unseen hellgate, the Devil himself strode, hellfire pouring from his black eyes as another body toppled. Holy downpour plumed away before it touched his scarlet button-up. Two more shots rang out before the bluejay fled, the last of her brothers, and Satan leveled his long pistol. He changed his mind and holstered it.
"Can you talk, cavaliero?"
The knight felt a strong arm scoop him up to a sitting position while he tried to make his mouth work. "Whuh.. Wot you want then?"
"Nothin', sure a cute accent y'all got." The horned man's face split into a wide grimace. "Got a name, bud?"
"S'..." No' your business, he tried to say, and blinked the rain out of his baby blues to squint at his infernal savior: all slim lines, an honest gaze, a... cowboy hat. "S'Hope."
"Hope, I'm Bill. Listen, the place I'm stayin' aint far, I can getcha patched up. Sound good? Hey, keep your head up."
Sod off, Hope mouthed.
"Welp."
==Book V==
Written in the mid 2000s, this journal, thick and bound in black leather, details many of Treehouse's growing pains. Chief of the young freehold's issues is the tragic loss of her Summer Boss and his motley, the freehold's go-to defenders. The journal's author begins down a darker path, one fraught with Thorns.
===Thanateros===
The lean ranchero perched on the corner of Hope's wooden desk, watching him type. "I dunno what's got into him lately. He's got that resting bitch face."
"That means tha's just 'ow'is face is," Hope glanced at the gunslinger and grinned sideways at the boxy monitor in front of him. "I've got one, too."
"No you don't. I mean somethin's up." He gazed out the high bay windows of the shack, watching the midnight tree line.
Hope finished typing and sighed through his nose. "Want me to 'ave a chat wit'im?"
"Nah, he's my foreman." Bill Howdy slid off the desk, and stepped toward the window, squinting out with black eyes. "My problem. We havin' a bonfire tonight?"
"None scheduled, why?"
"I think I see smoke-"
The door slammed open, and a woman-shaped golden calf stood in the light. "Hey, the barn's on fire!"
Hope stood as Bill dodged the idol and shoved his white hat on his head. She trotted out alongside the smaller man, explaining something, turpentine, Susan was already inside looking for Buzz. The barn was on fire, hungry heat swirling out of the painted loft. Hope was listening until Bill sprinted into the inferno.
"Call the fire dep-!" Whirling on his company, he met empty air. The metal longhorn bolted for the barn. "Jessie!" He called, as if she could hear him. Hope looked up at the treehouse, at the weird tree that held it, branches hanging into the flames. He swore.
People fled the barn, rolling in the grass to put themselves out. Fire sucked inward, and the barn's structure was failing. Black skeleton walls collapsed while ash snowed down. Hope was holding an odd beetle, giving her a search plan, when the muddy thing manifested a bloody summer crown.
In the middle of Summer, Thomas Hope could see his breath.
===Aphrodite's House===
The gleaming cylinder spun. Hope snapped it back in place, and put the muzzle to his head. His exhale was steady. His finger squeezed the trigger. Click.
Sunset, its name was. Mud's men had found it in the debris, divorced from its partner. Sunrise was with Bill, wherever he was. Hope checked the chamber, his mouth set in a grim line. He'd made deals with the world, oaths to himself and to God. No rest until there was word on Bill's whereabouts. Running the freehold, running the Tower, all the weeks of clandestine quests, chasing ghosts and ghosts of leads, everything, he did it alone. He was breaking. He set the decorated piece down.
"Still gnawing that bone?" Rich perfume saturated the air in his tower office. Long, perfect arms draped over his shoulders, and ancient rose lips whispered in his ear. "You're a whore, and you don't deserve my son."
Hope turned and slashed at her with a penknife, and across the room she stood, hands and waves of blonde hair covering her modesty. Her lip trembled before she burst into drunken laughter. You're not here, Hope mouthed, wiping imaginary lipstick from his cheek.
The visions were coming more often, though he drank from Crow's cup every chance he could. His myriad masters paid him visits, taunting him with twisted reminders of another life. He saw their faces, and his partners and comrades, Silvia's glinting teeth, Reese with his thick eyelashes lidding ember eyes, the list went on, every one had betrayed him to some new master.
With no sleep, he had more time, but his obligations swallowed him, and the living memories were like acid on his flesh. Frederick had come by earlier, tearing at his arm, but when Hope gained the upper hand he saw that it was only his own white fingers clutching paper from his shoulder. Have to get out, Hope reasoned again, and he knew he was wrong.
He left a spear-clutching dalmatian by the heavy door, justifying his leave with over-accented garble. The faithful guard just nodded.
On the mulchy trod, Hope pushed Venus' chuckling from his mind, and focused on a scrap of power gleaned just yesterday, the Sorrow of one thin addict cradling the cooling body of another. "I could have stopped it, could have seen it coming," He breathed, and the frozen puff swirled away from him, floating off the path, into shadow and Briar. The misty tail formed into a perfect palm with fingers curling and beckoning him. There, Bill was that way.
"Do it, Tom!" Whispered an echo decades old. Alister? Hope looked behind him. The Tower was gone. "Just RUN, damn the Thorns!"
He hadn't. He wouldn't do that. The tangled vines circled him now. He shrank from the verdant daggers that pierced a limp body.
Like the bone sword had burnt him, he dropped the bloodied weapon, chest heaving.
Where was he? What was happening?
A fox-eared child huddled in the hollow of a tree, staring with eyes full of horror, accusation.
Behind him, Baal-Marduk got the giggles.
Hope ran.
==Ghosts==
Three letters penned at an unknown date arrived on Thomas Hope's desk the night of June 26th, 1997. The first is written on blank newspaper, the second and third are on torn notebook paper.
===Letter I===
Hope,
I will never find you. This letter won't either.
Susan's gone. Taken by the hills here. I found her later, and she was already one of them. I smashed her head in with my pistol. I beat her until the grass was torn away and the roots broke, her blood oil on my face and I kept hitting it over and over. I heard her screaming in the rocks. This parched land bleeds me out. I don't know how much more I've got left in me.
I'm still following him. I don't know if he knows where you are, if he remembers you, or me. I don't know if you're dead, or back in fairy steel shackles.
There's stretches of silence. They happen when the old master here cries out in fever.
He's got no bane, Tom. The Highway Man is just regular, but he's one of the story kinds, at least I know that. He plays whatever part he's hired to, and sometimes he gets hired to fail, and I bet if I can sucker some pompous ass into hiring him to play just the right part in the right story, I bet I can swoop in and really end him. I've got the tale. All I need is a pompous ass.
Light's almost out. I know I got a chance if I make it out of the Valley of the Shadow. Still believe in God, amigo? Ask him to send me some angels, cause I can almost smell the Dead Sea.
Yours faithfully,
Bill
===Letter II===
Hope,
I'm glad that's your name, cause you're all I'm hanging on to now. Got sick, lost my gun. I've got my fists and the blood in my eyes, but somehow I don't see gumption finishing off the Highway Man. Won't stop me from trying if I think I've got a shot.
When all this is done, I'll ask Saint Peter if I can just see you one more time, before they drag me down to the infernal pit.
Yours faithfully,
Bill
===Letter III===
Hope,
Made a friend today. Lost like us I think, found her eating rust. Offered me some, and I tried it, but it was rust and I couldn't eat it. Said she was looking for her pa. Won't tell me more than that, says she can't talk about it.
I hate secrets, Tom. I hate that we kept us secret. We had good reasons, but I regret it, and when you regret things, that means you did something wrong.
Anyway, I expect we'll part ways soon. She's headed for the Nile, says it's good eating when the right Plagues are upon it. I'm gunning for Camelot.
Oh yeah, she found Sunrise. Don't know how she got it, but she gave it back, all loaded up with silver. Nice kid, just got too many secrets. Remind you of anybody?
Yours faithfully,
Bill
==Home==
"Can I get a minute?"
My fingers curled around the smooth payphone plastic, and Nico, the Winter guy in the motley, left me alone. I didn't realize I was shaking until I tried to speak. No words came, and Tom, god bless him, Tom spoke first for once in his life. "Bill?" He was whispering. Where was he, that he had to whisper? "Is that... is it you?"
My breath came ragged, like I was running, but for the first time in fifteen years, I wasn't running anymore. I pictured him in the old barn, thumb absently running over an unpainted beam, but I knew that couldn't be. The barn was gone, they said. "It's me, hon." I sniffed and smeared tears out of my eyes.
"Oh God," I heard his voice break, and the hiccuping he tried to stifle. "I never thought- I'd hear your voice again."
"Me either," Mine cracked, too. I bowed my head, shutting my eyes to the wood chips zigzagging across the plywood floor. "Your voice," I amended, and laughed an awful, sobbing laugh that just turned into sobbing.
There was nothing to say, and we were like that for a while, just crying, four thousand miles apart.
After a long time, I felt numb, and I remembered what I had wanted to say. "I love you, too." I looked up, to the fluttering green moth pulling figure 8s around the single lamp. "I'm so sorry, Tom. I didn't know. I had no idea."
"It's okay, Bill." I could hear the pain in his words. "It's almost over."
We stayed on for a long time after, but neither of us said anything. Finally, I mumbled, "I should..."
"Okay."
"I love you."
"I'm going to kill you if you die on the way back here. I will kill you."
"I won't die, Tom."
"Please come home."
"I'm workin' on it."
"Okay," He said, and I heard his sniff. "I love you, too."
My heart skipped. I wondered, not for the first time, if this was all actually happening. If I was really talking to Hope, if I was really trailing along with some new motley that'd been sent after me. I hung up.
==Book XII==
A strange notebook with its spiralbound skin cover and crisp white pages, this accounting of the Knightmaster is unfinished, and updates in real time. Entries to-date are largely dark observations about fellow freeholdsmen, but in recent months these encoded essays have become footnotes, possibly due in part to the safe return of William Herrera.
===Jupiter's Blessing===
The ice in his short glass was as cloudy as his conscience. Fifteen years in tribulation, and it was true: he had only one acid regret. Maybe he did write those letters. The old ranch hand downed his lemonade like hard liquor.
No clocks ticked. Their house had always been quiet, all cool white cabinets and cushy couches, a refuge from supernatural noise and danger. Meals went the same way, full of little grins and little announcements, but mostly quiet. The clicks of buckles was gentle, and he pretended not to notice Tom's shielded glances.
Checking his fastened breastplate twice, the knightmaster took his time. "What are you thinking about?"
The cowboy looked down at his sandwich, then at the linoleum. "Couple things," He drawled, "How much I love you."
"Mm." Hope tightened his leather bracer.
"Gay marriage being legalized in Texas."
His clear eyes flicked up to meet Bill's. "Yes?"
"And that Episcopalian church you liked." His gaze wandered, and he fished in his back pocket for something.
"Their chapel is beautiful," Hope mumbled, and left his other arm guard where it lay on the seafoam countertop. "Though I find the services lack gravitas."
"We can write our own script."
"Bill," Hope put a hand to his lip, whispering. "That's hardly traditional."
"So's this." The prodigal king knelt on the hard floor. "I've been in love with you, through hell and high water, for thirty-six years. You've been my air, my sunlight, and my partner through it all, and I'd like it if we could make it official." Between forefinger and thumb he offered up one sparkling, golden band. "Thomas Ajax Hope, would you do me the honor, the sacred privelige, of marrying me?"
The silence stretched a hair long, and Hope uncovered his mouth. "Yes, I certainly shall." He touched the offered ring, and Bill slipped it over his knuckle, and neither was sure when their embrace became a kiss.
Category:Fiction