“I could,” Edwin said. It would be easy. He could slow Walt’s heart, beat by beat until it stopped, and thereby lift the curse that had been Walt’s presence in the whole quarter-century of his life. But it would be deliberate, it would be cool-blooded and cruel, and Edwin had already identified his own uncrossable line. “I could. But I think I’m going to hold you to your word, instead.”
Mrs. Sutton had demanded it of Reggie, hadn’t she? He put blood into the swearing. Yes. There was more than one sort of blood-pledge in the world. This one was very old, and very exact, and could only be broken by death.
“No,” Walt began when he saw what Edwin was doing. Edwin raised his head and Walt stopped.
“My vote is for killing you, Courcey,” Robin snapped. “Whatever Edwin wants, we’re going to do it.”
It took nearly ten minutes. The cradle did not require a great deal of magic to build, as it was powered largely by the blood of the participants, but it was complex. Robin located the knife, which had spun beneath a chair when the ivy took hold of Walt. By then the spell was ready and waiting, glowing a deep orange in Edwin’s hands.
“I, Edwin John Courcey, am overseeing this oath,” said Edwin, and outlined the terms. That Walt would not cause—directly or indirectly—any harm, of any kind, to come to Robin, to Maud Blyth or any other member of Robin’s household, or to Edwin himself. That in exchange Walt would leave here with Flora Sutton’s coin, and that Robin would liaise with the Magical Assembly and give truthful report of the contents of his visions.
Edwin paused. “Do you consent to these terms?”
Robin shot him a look, eyes widening slightly. He’d heard the missing piece, then. Had Walt? Edwin raised his eyebrows in warning.
“I consent,” said Robin.
Walt, after another two heartbeats, voiced his grudging agreement. A cut on Walt’s hand as he spoke his full name; a cut on Robin’s. Blood from each of them dripped into the cradle, where it disappeared in flurries of white sparks, and that was that: Walter Clifford Courcey of Penhallick and Sir Robert Harold Blyth, fourth baronet of Thornley Hill, were bound in oath by blood. Robin gasped and clutched at his bleeding hand as the magic took.
“We’re done,” said Edwin. He touched one of the ivy loops. Usually he’d have been tense enough to snap, standing this close to Walt, but his fear had washed out of him. He’d never outgrow it entirely—he’d grown up with it woven into his nerves, a spell cast on a sapling—but he also didn’t think it would ever return to the same extent. “Thank you,” he said to Sutton Cottage. “Let him go.”
Walt’s nerves held old patterns too. He lifted a furious hand to Edwin as soon as the ivy released him, but it was the hand with the cut on it, and it spasmed into a useless fist. No harm.
“So you’ve found yourself some power after all,” Walt spat. He steadied himself on the back of an armchair—Edwin thought that was rather brave of him, all things considered—and massaged his wrist. “A power that you won’t have if you’re anywhere but this estate. Much good may it do you.”
“Walt, you still have what you want,” Edwin pointed out. “You have what you came here for in the first place.”
For a very long time, he thought, he would remember the look that came over Walt’s face when Walt realised that he had won this battle—for his cause, for his passion project—but had lost every scrap of his leverage over Robin, and also lost his ability to threaten Edwin. Ever again. It was a look that meant Walt was seeing something shatter, and what was shattering was the story. The story about the relationship between the Courcey brothers, a story that Walt had built and Edwin had always believed he had no choice but to inhabit. Now it was in pieces.
Edwin thought of the oak-heart: an explosion, and charred splinters on the floor. He put his shoulders back, met his brother’s eye, and did not smile.
“This is my brother, Walter Courcey,” said Edwin. “I am revoking his guest-right. He is not welcome on these lands, and I would like him to remove himself from my property. Now.”
Sutton was an estate that understood warding; more than that, it understood Edwin. And vice versa. Edwin felt it in the soles of his feet, in the whites of his eyes, as the boundary’s warding swept inwards across lawns and hills and ponds and paths, seeking, until it found the target of Edwin’s displeasure and took him in its grip.
Walt’s face went greenish and he stumbled for the door. Edwin felt his brother’s frantic footfalls as Walter shoved his way through the house and out onto the long drive, like fingers tapped on his own skin. He was aware of the servants exclaiming as Walt continued to run, away from the cottage and towards the boundary. He was aware of the golden net of strange, wild spellwork that ran through the roots of trees and spiderwebbed its way across autumn-sleepy rosebushes, through beds of peonies and primroses and asters and violets.
Beneath that, impossibly, he could feel the throb of the ley lines that crossed as they ran through this place and away: south to north, east to west, tugging with their vast tidal strength at the spark of magic in Edwin’s core.
His body fell to its knees. He barely noticed.
Hello, Edwin thought. My name is Edwin John Courcey, and I am determined to do this right.
This wasn’t just an ease of magic and of breathing. This was something ancient and unmapped, the land reminding him that blood-pledge was the oldest contract played out small—power for responsibility, to tend and to mend. Edwin breathed through it, dragging his awareness in from the trees and the hedge-roots, nearly gasping with relief as it shrank and sharpened to only the house itself. Even that was overwhelming for a few long moments: he was the joins of the wooden furniture, he was the skitter of mouse-feet in the gaps between walls, he was mirrors and clocks and dried herbs hung in the rafters and the charms for safety laid around every fireplace.
“Edwin,” Robin was saying.
Edwin dragged it all in until the tendrils of connection were only here in the parlour—and then it was all inside his chest, his throat, the whole world burning there as though if he opened his mouth it would all come pouring out like sunlight— And then it was just him and Robin, kneeling on the floor.
Robin’s face was close to Edwin’s and he looked worried. He was gripping Edwin’s fingers in his own, hard enough to be painful.
“Robin,” Edwin said. Coughed. “May I have my hands back?”
Robin gave him his hands back. Robin gave a grin of open affection and pure relief that brought the sunlight back into Edwin’s mouth for a fleeting moment.
“Are you all right?” Robin asked.
“I don’t know what I am,” said Edwin. “But yes. I’m all right.” In the spirit of enquiry, he sat back on his heels and tried to identify what he was feeling.
Somewhat to his shock, he decided it was joy.
Robin’s hand had mostly stopped bleeding, but one of the kitchen maids was summoned anyway. She cast a ticklish charm, which left the cut looking two days old; Robin supposed a knack for that sort of thing would be useful in her line of work. Edwin was telling Mrs. Greengage the housekeeper why Walter’s bag needed to be brought back down again and sent to London. The explanation was along the lines of the one he’d given to Sutton Cottage itself. My brother. Not welcome here.
Mrs. Greengage had only appeared, with a stately knock, in the wake of Walter’s hasty departure. Unlikely as it seemed, the disturbance in the house had been contained to the parlour alone; Robin should have realised it from the fact that no servants came running to see what the fuss was about when the room shook and the ivy moved. Now the ivy panel looked innocent and flat like all the others.
“May I ask if you and Sir Robert are still intending to stay overnight?” Mrs. Greengage asked.
They were. They would appreciate the chance to wash up, and possibly to rest before a late luncheon. No, they would not require assistance to dress. Robin hid a brief smile in his collar at the new notes of authority that filled Edwin’s voice.