“From what you’ve all told me,” she said, “these ladies of the Forsythia Club may have made some discoveries about this.”
“Yes,” said Edwin. “Old magic, new ways to use it. Flora Sutton was convinced that ley-line magic should never have fallen out of use, though I don’t know how far she took it. I’ve decoded nearly all her diaries now, and she never put things in terms of—or perhaps she did, but I didn’t know how to read it. Dawn, dusk. The liminal times.” He slumped, rubbing his forehead. Robin put a hand on his back.
Violet said, “I’m sure Lady Enid at least knew the song was important, given how she worked it into Spinet’s doorways and charms.”
“I wonder,” said Maud, “how much Mrs. Vaughn knows.”
That made them pause. The fourth member of the Forsythia Club was still a cipher. From Maud’s account she was equally ruthless as the men she was working with, but had little respect or liking for them.
Alan stirred as if to say something, but hesitated. He collected himself and said to Dufay, “Edwin talks about the magic of magical houses—like this one—as a different language. Which one is that? Dawn or dusk?”
Dufay’s booted feet drummed on the floor as Maud’s sometimes did when she was made to sit still for too long. “Messy. Both.”
“Of course it would be both,” said Lady Cheetham. “Houses only become like this when inhabited by magicians. Magic done in the houses and on the land must contribute as much as any magic inherent to the land itself. And when I use magic on Cheetham land and find it easier, stronger, the extra power must be coming from something outside of myself.” She shrugged. “Mingling and reciprocity. It makes perfect sense.”
“Hmph. Cheetham might be particularly mingled,” said Dufay, “because it has all of mine as well.”
“Your…?” said Lady Cheetham.
“Magic.” Another drumming of feet. Dufay made a flicking motion with her fingers, like the very start of a cradle. “I thought some of it might return to me, being back here, but apparently not. No reciprocity there.”
“You’re not a magician?” said Maud. It was nearly a blurt, and Maud winced as soon as it was out. “I mean … you can’t do magic? But you’re fae.”
“I am the fourth gift of the dawn,” said Dufay. She tucked a greasy strand of hair behind her ear. “Myself through the oak. A symbol. The oak put my magic into the land, adding it to what was inherent, and putting it out of my reach. A gesture of goodwill.”
“No magic, for all those years,” murmured Lady Cheetham. Her hand twitched towards Jack’s, but she didn’t touch him again. Jack might have flinched if she had, with the raw familiarity twisting in him now. Dufay had magic, and lost it here, at the top of that hill.
How much more painful, though, to lose magic when magic was what you were? What was left then to define yourself by? Marriage, to someone who had what you’d lost? Children? Guardianship of a land abandoned by every other one of your kind?
No amount of money could have spurred Jack to ask Was it enough?
“Contract is contract,” said Dufay. Her voice harshened. Now the throatiness had a birdlike quality to it. “There had to be a sacrifice. It was mine. And now it may have been for nothing, because not only have mortals left yourselves with only that gift, some of you had the stupid idea of taking it all for yourselves.”
“We’re the ones trying to stop it!” said Violet.
“Yes, so this one said.” Dufay nodded at Adelaide. “Your attempts seem less than useless. Perhaps you can now explain why these thieves of the contract have not simply been brought up in front of the council and executed?”
An entirely new silence sprang into being.
“Ex-executed?” said Maud.
“You do still have a council of magicians?” Dufay demanded.
“The Assembly,” said Adelaide, “ah…”
“They’re the ones doing it,” said Robin. “Or at least supporting it.”
Dufay’s face set. “You choose your leaders terribly.”
“That’s a common human failing, all right,” said Alan, on top of the beginnings of protest from the rest of the table.
“Then how do you intend to stop them?” asked Dufay.
More silence. This one had a depressed feel. Edwin slumped a little further.
“We were hoping you might tell us,” said Robin finally. “But it has to be done. The cost of an act of power shouldn’t be borne by anyone except the person who gains the most from it.” He looked at Jack. In that moment, his steadiness was a gift. “If magic can’t be drawn upon and combined safely, and with consent, then it shouldn’t be combined at all.”
22
The next two weeks were some of the strangest of Alan’s life. And yes, he was including in that the time he’d spent on the Lyric being involved in such things as escaped menageries, theft of hair from corpses in ice rooms, and haggling over jewels and pornography with a hateful aristocrat.
“No, that’s no good. I think you’re making it worse,” said Violet.
Alan opened his eyes and inspected himself in the huge gilt-framed mirror that hung on the wall of Cheetham Hall’s library. He wore a waistcoat into which Violet had stitched one of her illusion disguises. The illusion was based on one of the Hall’s younger footmen; Alan was supposed to look like the man’s shorter brother.
Instead he looked like he had been in an unfortunate slow-motion accident that had altered the geometry of his features. And was still altering them. He couldn’t help lifting a hand to support his left eye where it was slipping down his cheek like melting ice cream. Luckily, his cheekbone was exactly where it should be. And his eyes too. He closed them; that helped.
“Making me queasy,” he said. “I’ll try it again.”
Alan, Maud had pointed out, was once again a potential ace to be played. Bastoke and the others would not expect him to be at the equinox gala at all.
There was, though, the matter of illusion disguises. His perturbation had gone from being useful to an inconvenience, and Edwin now wanted to find out if Alan could suppress it at will. He’d suggested that Alan stop imagining channels and instead imagine being porous. Let the magic sink in and work. He’d even gone out to the grove of tall trees, which were apparently beech, and woven Alan a ridiculous crown of supple twigs and leaves, in case the magic-enhancing properties of that tree made a difference.
Jack had wandered past during that attempt, and his eyes had gleamed with the promise of fifteen comments about Julius Caesar that he was no doubt tucking patiently up his sleeve for when they would be most aggravating.