Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God by Scott Duff

figured out it was through the
ward. I was picking up Kieran’s sympathy for both of us through the
ward. That he was sympathetic to Ethan, I found curious and turned
to face him. Apparently, he understood the unasked question.
    “Once he had the opportunity,” Kieran said,
almost in a whisper, “while you were still sleeping the first
night, he went through your life to learn, to see the world he was
coming into. In doing that, he saw what he did to you as the same
violation that you do. We both considered withholding the
information but in the end, he decided that compounding the misdeed
with a lie would be far more damning.”
    I looked at Ethan across the table. He looked
back. He wasn’t asking for anything, just meeting me. Big blue
eyes, soft round face, blond hair. Cherubic. I had to remember
they’d designed him. I hoped I wasn’t being suckered.
    “All right,” I said, nodding. “We can work on
this. It’s a beginning.”
    “Ethan,” Kieran said, “Since you’ve already
seen this, would you mind finishing up in here while I show Seth
what we’ve found so far?”
    “Sure,” he said, standing to clear the
table.
    I followed Kieran back to my office to find
orderly piles everywhere. They had dismembered the records and laid
them out in some order on the floor. I assumed he was going to
explain the order to me and I didn’t wait long.
    “Ethan and I went through these last night
after you went to bed,” he said. “There were ten years of records,
ending with January of this year. Quite frankly, it didn’t tell me
very much. No, not what I mean. It didn’t tell me much about what
Father’s been doing lately. If you look at how we have it laid out
on the floor, you can see each year as a column. Each row is a
different aspect or company. The top two rows being household or
transfers to you personally.”
    I looked at the mass of papers on the floor.
Kieran’s explanation made sense in some terms, but there were
several places where files were stacked onto others.
    “And the clusters?” I asked.
    “Those are areas where we couldn’t quite
figure out exactly what he had done,” he said. “Most likely, the
transfers were between your mother and him, or were perhaps
political in nature, but were not insignificant.”
    “Don’t you sleep?” I asked him, treading over
the papers slowly.
    He barked a laugh, “Yes, just not that much
right now. I’ve been Rip Van Winkle for a while.”
    “Really?” I asked, glancing up as I picked my
way through the mess, idly reading papers.
    He nodded, saying, “My body was in a stasis
as I traveled, basically sleeping for weeks.”
    I stopped and stared at him, slack jawed.
“Weeks?” I asked, astounded. “How far away were you?”
    “Distance really isn’t the issue here,”
Kieran said, squinting at me. “It’s more like how deep was I and
even then the only answer is ‘pretty deep’.”
    Ethan and Shrank came in then. Ethan plopped
down on the floor near the door, one of the few clear spots. Shrank
flew around the room, peeking and poking at things.
    “So all of this is a bust?” I asked, happy
for their arrival to divert us from that strange topic.
    “Well, there is much here that you might need
in time,” said Kieran, “but I don’t think it will help now. I
started making a list of recurring names, but only one came up. A
Colbert.” He said the name as “cole-bert.”
    “Coal-bear,” I corrected him. “Artur Colbert,
our family attorney.”
    “Artur is your attorney?” he asked,
grinning.
    “I take it you know him,” I said.
    “Yes, I know the old pirate,” said Kieran,
still grinning. “His name is all through these files. Does he have
Father’s power of attorney?”
    “I imagine so, at least in some
circumstances,” I said. I looked down at the floor and picked out
several company names I recognized. “I know he can sign as
Comptroller for this company and as legal counsel for those two.” I
pointed out three rows