Case File MO67

Accused Recording #1

Marshal: Please state your name for the voice recorder.

Accused: So respectful. So formal. I almost forget that you nearly broke my arm a few days ago.

Marshal: Your name.

Accused: Rosalee. Campbell.

[silence]

Accused: I do have to ask, how did it happen? What spell ravaged you so thoroughly that you agreed to bind yourself to Jewish claywork?

Marshal: You realize I can kill you where you stand and no one will argue against it.

Accused: But you won’t. Because your government is so fascinated by the wizardy tha nearly destroyed it that you need to know details about this that only Morrison and I know. And he won’t talk to you because you killed his daughter.

Marshal: His ‘daughter’ was a homunculus.

Accused: And this is exactly why you need me. Morrison specializes in scrying. That’s how he pulls off his fancy gun tricks; he knows where the bullet will land before he fires the pistol. Seers typically struggle with the craft needed to create homunculi, especially if they need to pass as human.

Accused: His daughters were both self-made and of extremely high quality. Most likely constructed from his own humors. They were tools first, but to go through that level of effort, he must have loved them like his own children. And you burned his last daughter to death after Freestone broke the other in half. He will never forgive you or the Union for that.

[silence]

Marshal: I find myself justified in removing him from society. What does it say about Duke Morrison, this ‘Steelheel’, that the only people he loved were constructs who had to follow orders, couldn’t fight back?

Accused: They were white girls. Young white women. None of us are allowed to fight back. We are no better off than Jefferson’s slave whore. And that’s why you men love us. Shall we get on with this, now that we’ve established that you can’t back up any threat you can make?

[silence]

[silence]

Marshal: How did you learn magic, and how did you master floramancy?

Accused: My father was a botanist in Alabama, working on increasing the yield of cotton crops. I knew more about growing plants than most plantation owners before I was twelve.

Accused: The end of slavery hurt our fortunes, but we were the luckier ones; there was still cotton to pick after the bullets stopped. Several of my uncles and cousins had invested into slavery one way or the other. They died in the war; they were imprisoned after it; they were left near bankrupt.

Accused: My father was written in the wills of many of those uncles. One of them was apparently a secret wizard; I found books on magical theory in the cupboard we got as part of his inheritance. I was forced to compensate with my father’s knowledge of botany, which led me to create what you call ‘floramancy’.

Accused: I tried to get in contact with one of the post-war wizard orders. Every time they rejected me for my sex, I spent a little more time studying, a little more time innovating. After the fifth time, I decided to earn their acceptance by showing them my skills personally. Do you know how quickly writhing vines can tear a meetinghouse apart?

Accused: And that’s how I became the first wizardess of the Lily-White League - at which point I was relegated exclusively to Northern investigations so I wouldn’t cause any more disruption.

Marshal: …Not very fond of your fellow wizards, I see.

Accused: I wanted credit and I wanted prestige, and no matter what I did, they tried to push me to the side. Why do you think I’m bothering with this? In five years, or ten or fifteen, someone will attempt to rewrite the 16th so that Morrison was the mastermind. I won’t have it.

Marshal: You do understand that being the mastermind won’t reflect well during your trial.

Accused: Morrison didn’t have a trial and he got out, didn’t he? Couple of years against the r******* out West and he was fine as far as the Union cared. I think I’ll test my luck.

Marshal: …Very well then. Describe what you were doing here.

Accused: We received word that there was some non-sorcerous but unusual activity happening in Henshaw, centered around Victor Freestone, possibly related to your hidden war hero, Prince Remus. We had orders to capture, analyze, and dispose of him. I was also to assess Morrison’s performance, probably so they could promote him past me.

Accused: Marvin’s geek show is usually better cover for this sort of thing, but as soon as we started converging on Henshaw, Morrison’s scrying went awry; Prince Remus’s interference, I’m certain. Morrison refused to act until he could get a clear prediction, so we were stuck until Benton triggered the trap that would have caught us. Marvin hated every delay, and I don’t blame him.

Accused: If we’d stayed on schedule, we’d be long gone by now and Freestone would be a charred husk hanging from a withered rope.

[silence]

Accused: Don’t look too disgusted now. Didn’t you just threaten to kill me? I’m sure that would have been so neat and tidy.

Marshal: It would have been legal. So Benton didn’t attack Mr. Freestone on your orders, correct?

Accused: I advised Marvin to leak some information to some of the other members of the circus. Neither I nor Morrison gave any direct orders. I’m sure you’ll try to pin that on us regardless; best of luck to you.

Accused: Freestone cracked the brute’s mind, but left enough clues in there for us to figure out how he survived Benton and plan the next step.

Marshal: You say…cracked.

Accused: [scoff] I know little more than you do there. We were never able to figure out his methods, and only Morrison saw the mind directly. But whatever it is, it’s effective. Morrison was practically salivating over the chance to steal it for himself.

Accused: So he sent the elder daughter to go destroy Freestone’s defense amphibian and capture him while Duke was doing his act with the younger. It’s one of his little tactics. No one knew about the second daughter until now, so the younger would have an ironclad alibi.

Marshal: And Freestone ‘broke her in half’.

[silence]

Accused: It was…disturbing, really. Just walked in, covered in what I assume were frog guts, dragging her top half by the arm. Half her face was off too; you could see the wicker and bear fur underneath her skin.

Accused: He did that on purpose. If it wasn’t obvious that she was a homunculus, the crowd would have strung him up for killing a white girl. Instead they just panicked.

Accused: The n***** just stood there and waited. I don’t think he knew who’d tried to kill him; he wanted to lure us out. Duke moved first, yelling vengeance and telling the younger to attack him. Poor move. He grabbed her and started using her as a human shield.

Accused: After that, it was cat and mouse. Morrison tried to shoot him without hitting his daughter; Freestone tried to get close enough to grab Morrison’s gun.

Marshal: Were you just watching the whole time?

Accused: Morrison was handling the target. Marvin was handling the witnesses. He was always worried about something like this happening, so half of his performers doubled as emergency mercenaries. Plus the acrobat homunculi; that was his payment the first time we worked together. I saw no need to intercede just yet.

Accused: I wasn’t too concerned about Morrison dying. If he failed his test so thoroughly, that might convince the Grand Wyrm of how valuable I am.

Accused: Besides, Morrison had blown his cover. I hadn’t. Freestone wasn’t paying attention to me, and that let me move without notice.

Accused: I’d been working on a cultivar of belladona that-

[silence]

Accused: Well, there’s no reason to tell you all of my secrets. I’ll say I had the opportunity to ambush him lethally. But then the Wench’s patsy tackled me.

Marshal: Geraldine Macy.

Accused: Vicious creature, isn’t she? Like a stretched-out raccoon. I can’t imagine what the n***** did to get her under his control. We fought for a bit, wrestling over the branch I was about to use, but eventually I got a seed off and locked her down with vines.

Marshal: Non-lethally.

Accused: Oh? Ah, you think because I’m willing to lynch a n***** that I’m willing to kill anybody. No, not another woman.

Accused: I support other women. I’ll condemn the fools and slatterns among us, but only because they make it so much harder for us to be taken seriously. We need to band together for the sake of our rights. If I had proper influence in the league, I’d be using it to get us the vote.

Accused: Do you have any idea how humiliating it is that you gave the dirty c**ns the vote before us? You’d rather have the atavistic brutes, only a century out from banging rocks together in the grass, in a voting booth than your wives and daughters.

Marshal: But no solidarity for Sally Hemings.

Accused: Who? Oh, Jefferson’s whore. Well, as long as men’s lust can’t be slaked, they’ll take it out on whoever they can control. Better an ape to suffer than a real woman; they’re built for that sort of thing anyways.

[silence]

Accused: Anyways, by the time I dealt with her, Freestone had reached Morrison. Not sure what happened to the younger daughter before you recaptured her. I expected Morrison to lay him out quickly. Morrison’s a wizard first, a gunman second and a pugilist third, but he did serve in the army twice. He knows how to fight.

Accused: Freestone annihilated him. I have to wonder if he stole some of Benton’s strength when he broke his mind. He’d make a cut with a little bone knife and it’d bleed out like a waterfall. He shrugged off hits that would have knocked out most men.

Accused: So once again, I decided to try and save him like a fool, and once again I was ambushed by the girl in gingham. I don’t even know how she got out of the vines. Before I could fend her off, you and the war hero showed up, and that was that.

Accused: There you go. All your questions answered. I’m sure you’ll be so happy. What time is it, by the way?

Marshal: It’s 10:05 AM.

[silence]

Accused: That’s

Accused: You’re certain?

Marshal: Yes. In fact, let me call in someone to confirm. Special Assistant Walstead?

[muffled thumping]

Assistant: Here, Marshal.

Accused: What…is she doing here? Don’t tell me you hired the Wench. Are you just going to toss her at wizards feet first, legs spread?

Marshal: Special Assistant Walstead will receive full training over the next few months, but what she’s been working on so far is-

Assistant: Same thing I’ve always done. Figure out how an audience will react to the right words. I’m just doing it for keeps now.

Assistant: For instance, after spending two months cooped up with you, I knew you wouldn’t talk to the Marshal unless you thought you wouldn’t face consequences over it. You won’t let anybody know you’re less than perfect unless you won’t get caught.

Assistant: So I found out that Morrison kept a letter from your worm man, and I was able to see a printshop in Columbia, and I made you a little type message saying he was sending a prison break team that would free you and annihilate the Marshal. Set to arrive at exactly…six minutes ago.

[silence]

Assistant: Are you alright, Rosalee? You’re looking flushed.

[silence]

Accused: I suppose…this is where I should say well-played.

Accused: But I won’t. Fuck the both of you. I hope you get turned into pavement and I hope syphilis rots you from the inside out.

Marshal: Walstead, get her back to her cell.

Accused: And when the wizards take back the country, I’ll see you both hang for this. I’ll make the rope from scratch if I [fades away]

Marshal: That’s…enough of that. Cut the recording.

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