Chapter 53: Grievances
Confronting Thomas and his wife Lenna became a contest of patience. Neither was willing to talk, and it was only after I suggested to the Matriarch that we separate them that we began to get any information. Once that was done, we waited for more than an hour before confronting Lenna.
It was a coin toss on who to question first, but my gut was telling me that she would be the first to crack, especially if we convinced her that Thomas had already shared certain secrets. Questioning them individually worked, and we were ready to exploit each against the other.
"We've heard what Lenna has had to say," Helena began once we had sat across from Thomas. We had returned to his home and were using a dining room table to question him. The space transformed into a hasty interrogation room. "You did all of this for a bit of wealth?
"Lenna gave us the general location of the Spirit stone mine. Why would you want to hide this? If you reported it, you would have gotten a claimant's share of the wealth. More than what little you have been receiving by mining it yourself.
"I don't understand why you would risk the settlement. This has been your home. You raised your children here. What possible justification could you have for destroying everything for wealth that would have been yours easily?"
Unfortunately, this wasn't film noir, and I wasn't Nancy Drew. Thomas maintained his silence and Helena only became more frustrated the longer he did. The full story only finally emerged when the fluctuations of my Qi enveloped the house. I couldn't sustain or even emit killing intent, but I was able to invest a bit of emotion into my Qi field. That anger had surprising results.
"Papi!" The wail of a young boy crying in the night drew our attention. We had barely registered the cry before the child came barreling into the dining room nothing but feet and arms. The boy bee-lined directly for Thomas slamming into his side and burrowing his head into the crock of his arm, tears, and hiccups making his words incoherent.
I had known the family had children, but I thought that sleep would protect them, REM sleep was a natural barrier to Qi aura. If I had known the child was sensitive to fluctuations in Qi, I would not have unleashed my Qi field. By expanding it, I had hoped to intimidate Thomas into speaking. Their oldest son's appearance, fearful and distrustful worked where intimidation and unrelenting questioning had not.
Thomas finally supplied the missing bit of information we needed to understand the twisted motive that he and Sophia were operating under. His instincts to protect and shield his children creating the crack in his intransigence.
"You know how much we love our children," Thomas said to Helena as he hugged his son tightly to his side and began stroking his hair, "how hard it was for Sophia to conceive? Thom, Lana, and Liesa have been our greatest joy. Watching them grow has been the proudest accomplishment of our lives.
"Imagine how you would feel if these beautiful, innocent children. The people you love most in the world were dismissed, their heritage and inheritance trivialized. If they were discounted as worthless?
"There can be no greater betrayal than when it comes from a family member, and Clan Fidel is guilty of that betrayal. Sophie is the young miss of the Clan. The only acknowledged girl child of this generation. And our cousin twice removed.
"We settled here with her family because we are related, distantly, an outer branch member of Clan Fidel. But the ties exist, we are an offshoot of the main branch related to a young woman who refused to entertain the possibility of marriage before her majority with a Cleave young master.
"A young woman that was beloved and protected. A young woman who Clan Fidel would martial all resources to protect. While our twin daughters and our son were cast aside as nothing. Imagine what it must be like to be forced to watch as Sophie was feted and spoiled, and all the while our own daughters were not even acknowledged.
"Finding the mine had been a boon, a way to advance our family. But if we had reported its existence and claimed a share of the profits, Clan Fidel would have also been entitled to those same share's and profits.
"I couldn't do it. I couldn't enrich a Clan that had cast us aside, that had refused to see the beauty and talents of my children," he lamented.
Just as his son had been the tipping point, the reason he began explaining his actions to us, his children had been the breaking point for him, the rationale behind his actions. To be forced to turn over monies to a Clan that had ignored them broke something in Thomas.
"I convinced Lenna that it would be best to wait, to sell a soul stone occasionally, and to hold off on staking our claim and reporting the mine until after the dispute between the Cleave young master and Sophie were resolved. If Sophie was ruined, or forced to wed the young master, the Clan might re-evaluate the importance of a pair of twin daughters no matter how tenuous the connection or distant the relationship.
"It was then that we would settle all debts. We have no intention of claiming those ties of kinship, ties that should have been offered long ago. We would wait until the Clan came calling, offering our daughters a Name and Position as part of Clan Fidel, and only then would we severe ties.
"We have begun taking the necessary steps to create own Clan, the paperwork has been filled out, only the fee is yet to be paid and Clan Fidel will be a distant memory, no longer entitled to any of the profits from our windfall. Once we have been officially recognized as a new Clan, only then would we report the existence of the mine.
"We had gone so far as to consider the method and timing of that announcement. We have planned the precise moment we would splinter and repudiate the connection between ourselves and the main branch.
"The Clan would be required to hold a naming ceremony, a revel, and party where friends and business associates were invited if they wanted to recognize our daughters, a formality that Fidel would be honor-bound to host. It would be at that event, when the Clan Head stood before guests to name my children as Clan members, that I would repudiate the name and inform those gathered that we would disavow any connection between Clan Fidel and the Clan that we had established.
"It would be a devastating and humiliating blow to Clan Fidel. One that would have real ramifications, both financially and socially. The Clan Fidel would become a laughingstock, but more importantly, rumors would begin to swirl as those in attendance wondered exactly what had happened to cause a minor branch family to repudiate the protection of Fidel.
"The Clan would be left reeling, and they would finally know the torment their actions have caused our family, as we repaid them in kind. Their refusal to see the worth of three beautiful children had been the harbinger of change, the final insult that forced us to cast them aside just as easily as they had us."
"So, you partnered with Elios of Clan Hui to ruin Sophie?" Helena asked to clarify his involvement in the recent fire. "You were the source that supplied information to the men that fired our fields and might have caused your neighbors and their children to face starvation this winter?"
"I didn't know they were going to set the fields ablaze," Thomas protested.
"But you were willing to give them information as long as Sophie was compromised, and her family ruined?" Helena demanded.
"Yes," he replied fury blazing from him, his anger palpable enough that his son began crying once more. "I would have done anything for my children. Anything to destroy Clan Fidel."
"How unfortunate," I said drawing his attention and fury towards myself. "You hold your children in such high repute but dismiss Sophie and her family. How are you any different from Clan Fidel? Was Sophie the person that implemented the policies and actions of the Clan?
"It seems to me that you have exceeded the deprivations and inequalities of your Clan. At least they never tried to ruin your daughters."
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