“This plant is long gone, but you can tell where it lay,” said Mrs. Sutton. Her manner was quicker now, more eager, as though she’d given in to an impulse to indulge herself by explaining a theory to a willing audience. “An object of power has a weight to it, and will warp the normal lines and channels of magic around itself. That’s what you look for, if you know how. Even if the thing’s removed, if it’s been there long enough”—a nod to the fossil in Edwin’s hand—“the shape of it remains.”
“Like one of those echo illusion spells?” said Robin. “An imprint of the past, turned into something you can see?”
That got him a sharp look from Flora Sutton. “This is how we found the contract in the first place. And the imprint is stronger if the object rests in a place of power. Like Sutton.” She glanced around the room, pride heavy in her gaze. “Two channels of magic cross one another here.”
“Channels of magic.” Edwin’s mind was spinning. He needed two hours and a notebook to make sense of all of this. He needed to fling himself onto the rug at this strange old woman’s feet and refuse to budge until he’d absorbed everything she had to teach. “You’re talking about ley lines. That’s—nobody bothers with ley lines anymore. That sort of magic hasn’t worked for generations.”
“Certainly it doesn’t work, when you men try to wrench it into your neat little boxes and cradles.” Flora Sutton sniffed. “Sutton’s power makes it a perfect place to enchant as a hiding place, but also makes a—heavier footprint. Easier to locate, once one knows the trick. It was always a risk.” She sighed. “Reggie said that the people he was working with hadn’t quite got the knack of it, but they were starting to triangulate the pieces. And Reggie saw their maps and figured it out, because he knew I lived here. And so he came.” She spread her hands. “To warn me.”
“And you gave him the contract to take away with him,” said Robin. “Left with it in his pocket, you said.”
“He took the danger away with him too,” said Edwin. “That was noble.”
“Was it?” said Robin. He was watching Mrs. Sutton, as he had when he’d accused her of being a liar. “I have to assume there’s some reason everyone’s after this thing, and prepared to do violence for it. And you’ve told us a great deal for someone with little reason to trust us, but you haven’t told us why the contract’s so important.”
He was right.
The wrinkle-lined mouth tightened. “Ignorance of its purpose is the only reason to trust you at all. Safekeeping works until the moment it doesn’t, Sir Robert. Reggie told me he didn’t like the people he was working with; he’d stopped trusting their intentions, but he couldn’t stop them from coming here eventually. The best he could do was to stay a step ahead. We agreed he would move it to a new place, where it hadn’t rested so long, and so make it more difficult for them to find. And I refused to let him tell me where that would be.”
“Well, if it helps at all,” said Robin dryly, “you and your great-nephew have certainly made these people very angry. So he must have hidden it well.”
“Of course. He swore on his name that he’d do his best to keep it safe from them, and he put blood into the swearing. Besides,” said Mrs. Sutton, “I’d be a sorry excuse for a magician if I didn’t trust my own secret-bind.”
Edwin blanched. He’d only seen a secret-bind laid once, on an unmagical woman who’d seen some things her lover wasn’t supposed to let her see, and who’d been past the temporal window when lethe-mint would have been effective. It had been a sloppy job; Edwin and Reggie had been involved in the debacle for all of two days before it got kicked up the chain of command to someone else in the Assembly, but the image of the woman stood out painfully in Edwin’s mind. The tears ravaging her face, and the way she tried to clutch at her own swollen tongue where the brand of the bind sank further every time she tried to explain what had happened.
“A bind, so he wouldn’t talk,” said Edwin. The mist of his fear thickened abruptly to a sickening, mind-numbing fog. “And now nobody’s seen him for weeks. He might be in hiding, yes, but how do you know he hasn’t been killed?”
Guilt illuminated Mrs. Sutton’s face like lightning: no tears filled her eyes, but remorse twisted her lips. Edwin couldn’t muster much sympathy for her. You didn’t lay a bind on someone unless you thought they might be either tempted or coerced into giving up the information.
Sure enough, the next thing Mrs. Sutton said was: “I did suspect people would start to die.”
Robin flinched. He rubbed his forearm convulsively, then clenched his fists by his sides. “Why? What is this contract? Does it have anything to do with that fairy story? What does it do?”
Mrs. Sutton’s hands made bony landscapes of tension as she gripped the arms of the chair. Ludicrously, she and Robin looked like two people on the verge of battle. Part of Edwin wanted to slip away and hide.
“On its own, one part of it does nothing. Even if the wrong sort of people do get their hands on it, my piece alone is hardly going to do them much good. But if they came close to finding me, they could find the others.” She inspected the middle distance, face drawn. If she was seeing a vision of the future, it was nothing good.
Robin ground out, “Will you just tell us what—”
“No,” said Flora Sutton, a whip of finality. She lifted a hand when Robin began to protest again. “The contract should have stayed lost; failing that, it should have stayed secret. It could be used in ways that would harm every living magician in Great Britain—could cause unspeakable damage, and the very idea—” She looked grey. “It’s despicable. We didn’t know, when we discovered it. And as soon as we realised what it could mean, we stopped. No. I won’t help another soul another step towards it, and that includes you two gentlemen. No matter how sympathetic you claim to be. It will be safer for everyone that you not get involved.”
“I am involved,” snapped Robin. “These people, whoever they are, believe that I can find this contract. There’s every chance they’ll come after me again for it.”
“I am sorry for that, Sir Robert,” said Mrs. Sutton. She did sound sorry. She also sounded like someone who had no intention of letting Robin spill any secrets if and when this happened.
Robin started forward; Edwin put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“All right,” Edwin said. “We won’t press. Mrs. Sutton doesn’t know where Reggie is either; that’s what we came here to find out.”
“No, we—”
Edwin squeezed hard and Robin subsided. “Will you tell me about the warding on this estate?” Edwin asked.
Her thin silver eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”
“You must have been trained. Not many women in this country could do a secret-bind. Did your husband teach you?” The book he’d read the previous night had told him a little about the Sutton family. Five generations of them in this cottage; the late Gerald Sutton had been powerful and well regarded, and sat on the Magical Assembly for a term or two. The book had contained nothing at all about Flora Gatling, who’d become Flora Sutton when she married him.
“He taught me as much as he could.” Her face showed the first signs of softening. “Everything else, I taught myself.”
“The estate warding,” said Edwin, lowering himself onto an ottoman. “How did you do that? It only works on magicians, I assume?”
“Yes.” Up went the eyebrows again. “I rather thought you’d have unravelled it, to get through it in the first place. You didn’t?” Her eyes went distant for the space of a heartbeat, then regained their sharpness. “Hm. You didn’t. However did you get past it, then?”
“Thank goodness for motorcars,” said Robin.
“No, thank goodness for you,” said Edwin.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Sutton. “Yes. The more magic you have, the stronger the push.” Her glance was a question—Robin answered it with “Not a drop.”