“No, you don’t,” murmured Sir Robert.
Edwin reached out without breaking his hungry perusal of the letter and flicked the back of Sir Robert’s hand, winning himself a smile that he didn’t notice.
“That postscript is the most sense the Grimm’s ever made,” Miss Morrissey said.
Edwin nodded. “And the timing … how … I can’t believe I’m asking this, but has anyone in the Office ever tried to write back? Adelaide?”
“There’s a return address, if we want to try.”
“Or visit.” Edwin looked almost as shaken as when Alan had revealed the seventh door. “How did we miss this? I should have been reading these letters all along.”
“Sorry, but before we go down that rabbit hole—there’s something else.” Sir Robert had a second envelope in his hands, this one sealed with a round of purple wax, and he held it out to Violet. “It was in the liaison pigeonhole at the Barrel. Addy’s been checking it daily. But it’s addressed to you.”
“Well, that’s … making a statement,” said Violet.
“Yes. I don’t think there’s any point pretending they don’t know we’re all equally involved in this,” said Sir Robert.
Violet slid her finger beneath the sealed edge to open it. She made a startled sound as the purple wax melted abruptly, forming a dark trickle that wrapped up her finger like a vine and wriggled its way to the back of her hand. And then there was no wax at all, just an intricate bracelet that encircled Violet’s wrist like a woven strand of purple leather. When she touched it, her fingers slid over her own skin. Not woven. Written. Inked, magically.
“Hell,” said Violet. “More bloody runes.”
The room was quiet and tense as her eyes flicked down the single typed page. Violet’s face was set in one of her theatrical masks now, but her fingers tightened on the paper. She looked at the marks on her wrist, then up at Edwin, when she was done.
“It’s a summons,” she said. “To a hearing at the Barrel, tomorrow, about the details of Lady Enid’s will. I assume the runes will provide a painful reminder if I fail to turn up.”
“Let me see.” Edwin took the letter and gave a sharp, empty laugh. “And it’s signed by my brother Walt. Of course it is.”
Miss Morrissey and Sir Robert both peered over Edwin’s shoulder as he read. Miss Morrissey was the first to look up, worry creasing her brow.
“It’s not just a hearing, Violet. We’ve been waiting for their next move in regards to getting inside Spinet, and this is it. It’s a direct legal challenge to your inheritance.”
There was a loud, splintering crack from the floor. Alan jerked. One of the floorboards had torn itself free and snapped in half.
“No,” snarled Violet, and her voice had splinters in it too.
8
Spinet House might agree with Jack that he was no longer a magician, but the Barrel seemed to be siding with Cheetham Hall on the matter. He walked over the threshold without feeling the warding or needing a pass-token for the unmagical like Robin did.
Jack hadn’t been to the seat of the Magical Assembly since he was a boy. It hadn’t altered from his memory. The lead-and-glass ceiling of the main foyer, over which people walked. The standing oak doors set in their frames, scattered across the marble floor, which could take you anywhere in the building.
It was coming up on noon. The foyer wasn’t busy. Their small group—Robin, Edwin, Violet, and Jack himself—garnered curious looks from the attendants in the Barrel’s blue livery.
Perhaps it was mostly Violet. Edwin had tried to encourage her to dress soberly, but Violet Debenham wasn’t the sort of person to treat formality as armour. Quite the opposite. She was in full eccentric-heiress mode: her boots and skirt were both bright bottle-green, the skirt crawling with gold thread embroidery, and at least two ostriches were feeling colder in service of her ridiculous hat. She stood with her gloves clutched in her hand and an expression on her face that was obviously stolen from some character or other.
“Where’s this fellow you’ve hired for me?” she asked Jack, who looked up at the clock on the far wall. The season-clock was a boxy thing of stained glass and ebony wood, with a little balcony halfway up the face. There were charmed wooden figures inside which would emerge and act out various scenes from magical history: a different one for every hour.
When Lord Cheetham had taken his twins to the Barrel to deliver the hair after their lock ceremony, a delighted Elsie had dashed across the floor and floated herself up the wall to investigate the clock before anyone could stop her. Jack remembered the minor uproar, his father’s angry apologies, and the smugness on Elsie’s face later that day as she triumphantly pulled a carved fox from her pocket to show him. Away from the clock, it never danced again, but she didn’t care.
“I told him a quarter to the hour,” Jack said. Violet nodded tightly and began unpinning her hat. Jack looked at Robin and Edwin, who were sitting close together on one of the benches. “You two come here all the time. Stop looking as though you’re expecting snipers. Nothing will happen to you in the Barrel. It’s neutral ground.”
That was a truism hammered into the bones of British magicians. The Barrel was an absolute.
Robin, who was not a magician, gave Jack one of his stubborn Blyth looks. “I suppose nothing happened to Reggie Gatling. I suppose nothing’s ever happened to anyone that these Coopers of yours take against.”
“They’re not—” Jack started, and noticed the trap too late.
“No,” said Robin. “They’re your cousin George’s.”
Jack didn’t have grounds to argue. He’d tripped over a pothole and caught himself on an assumption. Lord Hawthorn, son of the Alston line, never felt unsafe anywhere in England; the Barrel least of all. But he did know how far the powers of the Coopers stretched. And he knew what had happened to Reggie Gatling, and knew how dangerous George and Morris and the rest of them could be, with or without the Assembly’s support.
And when he let his thoughts rest properly against George Bastoke for more than the customary few seconds, instead of whipping them away again as if burned, he did feel something close to fear. It tasted like blood and char in his mouth.
It wasn’t real. A secret-bind couldn’t respond to thought alone. But bodies didn’t always play by the rules.
A nearby door glowed bright around the bronze knob and opened to emit a broad-shouldered, freckled young man with limply curling fair hair. He wore the dark suit of most office workers, carried a briefcase in one hand and two thick books in the other, and looked apologetic as he extended a finger to pull the door shut behind him and then hurried over to them.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m late—are you Miss Debenham? And—Robin?”
Robin acquired a plank-whacked expression. He glanced at Edwin, then back at the new arrival. “Arthur?”