The next sound Walter made was even shorter and more stifled. Jack and George both winced in unwilling sympathy.
“Oh, you shit” came from Violet, and then retching noises. Jack couldn’t spare attention to see what had happened—George, apparently inspired, was now trying to kick him in the bollocks. In his periphery Jack saw a raised hand and his nerves yelled grenade without his consent, sending a splash of cold terror down his spine.
The raised hand was Hartley’s. Robin had hold of his other wrist, holding it high above his head, but the young Cooper clearly had grit—practically dangling, he still cast the contents of his free hand in Jack’s direction.
“Sir!” he yelled as he did so. George made another go at wrenching himself away.
The small glasslike bauble landed at Jack’s feet and spilled out yellow smoke. The first tendrils rose to Jack’s nose and all the air left his lungs at once. It was worse than landing hard off a horse. His chest refused to expand.
George wrenched again, and this time Jack couldn’t hold him. He couldn’t even breathe.
“All right, stop this,” said George to the room at large. He lifted his hands to cradle.
Before he could, the British Isles flung themselves across the room.
It was the Lockroom’s map-spell, designed for locating individuals; the map on the wall was now writ large and in white lines, on every wall and most of the ceiling. The lines turned a vivid purple and the map began to change, to merge and shift fast enough that Jack felt queasy as well as suffocated. Within it appeared one searingly bright line, running all across the ceiling and down the wall to a point close to the floor, like a vein of gold in a rock. Like lightning cutting through the sky.
“No,” said Edwin. “You stop.”
He came out of the shelves with a cradle in his hands and light crawling all over him. The light was the clean white halo of guidelights and electric, and bright enough that it took a moment to notice that Edwin was shaking as if in the grips of fever.
“Oh God,” said Robin hollowly. “You made it work.”
Jack managed to inhale for the first time in what felt like minutes. George, fast as ever, finished his spell and released it in Edwin’s direction. Edwin jerked his wrist and—something appeared in the path of George’s spell, sizzling it into nothing. All the light was concentrating between his palms.
“Give us back the contract, and let us go, or I will unmake you. I will tear your cells apart—”
The lightning line on the crazed map thickened and brightened, as if a crack were forming in the shell keeping an explosion contained. Edwin gasped raggedly, and the light in his hand grew brighter too. He did not look triumphant. He looked as if he’d been awake for three days under heavy fire.
“Mr. Courcey, what are you doing? You will stop that! Immediately!” squawked Prest, huddled near the door.
George tried another spell. Even Walter managed to drag himself upright and cast something, but this time their magic turned to sparking uselessness before even leaving the cradles. Dark clouds were filling the room now as if pouring from hidden vents, the light between Edwin’s hands was brighter and brighter, and the map line began to writhe like a snake pinned down at both ends and tortured.
Even Jack could tell something was going very, very wrong.
Adelaide tried to take hold of Edwin’s arm, and snatched her hand back. Jack took a half a step forward but never finished it. The floor gave a few tremors and then shook hard and fast like a dice cup.
Jack’s leg gave out and he fell down. Walter almost followed suit but caught himself with a curse. Raised voices and shouts of alarm filtered dimly down from above them. Whatever Edwin was doing had stopped being contained by the Lockroom.
“All right, out!” snapped Walter, waving his hand at Prest. “Get out!”
Prest flung the door open and ran.
“Idiot,” said Walter savagely. He limped over and closed the door again in order to cast the exit rune, hands shaking with haste. When he opened the door, it led to the main foyer.
At that point the writhing line of light abruptly shattered, a table leg broke and both table and ledger fell with a heavy crash, and between the thick black clouds and the fact that Edwin was now outright painful to look at, Jack’s vision became more or less useless. He climbed warily to his feet.
He heard voices and shouts and questions and saw the outlines of moving figures. Some of them probably went through the door and out, because the stew of voices thinned to Robin’s alone.
“No, not now—not yet.” Robin sounded frantic. “Edwin, you can stop. Let it go. Please—please. One piece at a time, love.”
An awful crack of stone sounded close above their heads. Dust fell onto Jack’s face. A memory he’d have sworn he’d long ago set aside, one of the worst of the war, grabbed at all the nerves of his body. A high-pitched ringing burrowed into his ears.
He nearly lashed out with a fist when someone bumped into him, but managed to haul it back as he heard a female exclamation and felt the swish of skirts against his legs. Adelaide or Violet. He shoved whomever it was firmly in the direction of the open door, which was a dim picture frame showing frantically running people. Had George made it out? George had the contract pieces. Surely he’d be protecting them above all else.
Jack stumbled towards Edwin, face averted, and didn’t bump into anyone else. He could still hear the steady rhythm of Robin’s voice, though he couldn’t make out the words.
“Robin!” he shouted, thinking of what Alan had done for Maud in the cemetery. “Knock him out!”
But he could barely hear himself; his voice and Robin’s were both swallowed in a grumbling roar of rising noise.
All of a sudden the pressure of light vanished from Jack’s eyelids. He swiped them free of dust, wincing as tears spilled down his cheeks.
Edwin was standing—standing, thank God, though leaning hard on Robin, pale and filthy and wracked by coughs.
Jack had hoped that Edwin managing to stop the spell, whatever it had been, would also stop this disaster in its tracks. But the clouds were taking on a reddish tinge like wildfire and the violent shaking was, if anything, intensifying. The stone of the floor and the wood of the walls were blurring, as if they were an illusion dying with the end of the caster’s power. As if they were softening into mist despite the weight of the Barrel above them.
Unmake, Edwin had said.
“Time to leave,” Jack snarled. He took hold of Robin’s arm and dragged them to the door. The ground was uneven, as if potholed. Jack didn’t dare look down to find out what the floor was turning into, in case it was happening to his feet as well. He got Robin and Edwin out into the crowded, noisy lobby with one good shove, and then—paused.
“Hawthorn!” said Robin.
Jack swore and turned back around.