His lordship sent Edwin a level look that did nothing to dispel Alan’s thoughts of snakes. And then made Alan abruptly remember which category of people were invited to use the name Jack. The idea splashed in his mind and rearranged some things. Alan bit his lip against laughter.
“Believe it or not, Edwin, my very presence here means I am resigned to seeing this thing through. Yes—my mother’s grandfather designed the rune system that controls the Barrel’s doors. I’ve no doubt it was a difficult, time-consuming project, and it’s hardly been passed through the generations as a bedtime story.” Having delivered his squashing-down, Jack’s posture loosened. “It’ll be like your library-indexing charm. Every room in the Barrel marked and named. What the doors need to know is which two rooms are being linked, and whether a person has permission to pass through. The rune will be a shorthand for those cradles. A defining clause and a pass clause. That’s all the theory I can give you, and it may not even apply here.”
By Edwin’s face, that was more than he’d expected to get.
“If we have to know a defining clause that’s only visible inside the room that we can’t get to, then it’s an impossible riddle,” said Violet irritably. “Lady Enid clearly wanted this secret to die with her.”
“But the house wouldn’t,” said Edwin. “It’s not old enough to work like that. And you did inherit. You have the right to every inch of this space.” Some of that light was back, animating him. “Hawthorn. Can you give us a rune for a basic opening-spell? Would standard spell notation work?”
What followed was some more scribbling in a notebook, producing a pattern like an exploded spiderweb, at the end of which Violet attached the looping VAD that was her signature.
On the verge of cradling a true spell, Violet looked at the paper and then at the door. She swallowed. A crack appeared in her poise. “Edwin. You made blood-pledge with Sutton, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I—you didn’t?”
“No. I was named in the will; the house accepted me. And you’re right. It’s young, they built it with new magic. Not the old traditions. I don’t know if anyone has ever given blood to this house willingly.”
A feeling stirred in Alan as if hauled up from the well of his childhood, from the years when he believed in God and the saints and the powers of heaven and hell. At Mass, the sound of the chant was like standing knee-high in black water, shivering with delight at being overwhelmed by something larger. A power that was strong enough to hold you up when you were too tired to do it yourself, or hold you down when you were too restless to sleep.
Magic wasn’t religion, but it was a world of power, and a hungry shard of Alan wanted to rage for his own thwarted inheritance. To hurl himself against it until it carved him open along those childhood channels. Blood, if that was what it took.
“Fuck,” Violet muttered. “Edwin, you do it, please.”
She held out a hand in Edwin’s direction, and winced when Edwin cradled something that left the side of one finger oozing red. A visible breath hauled her head upright.
“My name is Violet Anne Debenham. I accept this inheritance, and I…” Still wincing, she used her bleeding fingertip to trace the rune on the door. “I make blood-pledge with Spinet House and with its land.”
“Mine to tend and mine to mend,” said Edwin. “Mine the pull and the natural right.”
Violet repeated it. And then added, in a rush, “I’m sorry I’ve been—afraid. I truly am sorry. I know you’ve been doing your best. Thank you.”
Her hand fell from the door.
And the door clicked open.
* * *
The room was small; perhaps two-thirds the size of the downstairs parlour with the large string instruments. No spinets in here. No instruments at all, although Alan wouldn’t put it past this house to suddenly start flinging clarinets at one’s head.
Sunlight and faint city noise streamed through a single window with its curtains looped back—a real window rather than illusion, going by the faded patches on the floorboards. The wallpaper was pale yellow with tiny white flowers. All the furniture seemed a little too large for the scale of the room in a way that managed to be cosy instead of cramped. There were a great many fat embroidered cushions. The air was soft with dust and lavender, with age and quiet. And—
“Oh,” said Violet. “This is where she kept the boxes.”
They sat along the window ledge, adorned small tables and display plinths and the lady’s dressing table with its delicate chair and large mirror. Some were round, some square, some in the shape of hearts or many-pointed stars. They ranged in size from that of a matchbook to one—set on the floor and topped with a lace doily and another, smaller box, as if wearing it as a hat—that more rightly deserved to be called a chest. Like the doors in the spinet room, like every piece of wooden beauty in this place, they ranged in colour from palest cream to ebony black.
“James Taverner made boxes for Lady Enid as courting gifts,” said Violet. “And then made her another as an anniversary gift every year they were married.”
The air took on the weight of that as they looked around.
“This feels like either a bad dream or a fairy tale,” said Jack. “I’m waiting for an elf to appear and tell us we have until sunset to find the one golden pin in all these boxes.”
“Silver, not gold,” said Edwin. His string was around his hands. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Lady Enid had the idea for this place from Mrs. Sutton’s rose parlour. And let’s hope…”
He cradled a colourless spell, which he held as though balancing a soap bubble between his palms before tossing it away. After a few seconds, he inhaled sharply and looked at his hands, still raised in front of him with the string.
“It’s a fossicking spell,” he said. “It doesn’t care how magical something is, only what it’s made from. Here.” He led them over to the dresser.
“Those again,” said Alan in surprise, looking at the silver hand mirror and hairbrush.
Violet picked up the brush to inspect the pattern on the back. “Mrs. Navenby said that Flora Sutton gave a set to each of them. What else, Edwin?”
Edwin frowned as if listening to a faint sound. The next piece of silver was apparently in a simple rectangular box atop a high corner table. Violet carried the box into better light, where it proved to contain a thick bundle of letters tied with fraying pink ribbon, and a silver photo frame, very tarnished, with a sepia-toned photograph of a grinning young man with a gap between his front teeth.
“I’d forgotten they had a son,” said Violet. “I—it’s awful, but I can’t remember his name. Lady Enid didn’t talk about him. He died young. Before I was born.”