Alan grinned and used his other hand to toss the cushion at Jack’s face. “I look forward to it.” But he made his own pile of pillows and slumped against them. Then shifted, restless. “Lying down in the afternoon. Doesn’t feel natural.”
Jack laughed. He still had Alan’s hand; Alan hadn’t seen any need to remove it from Jack’s possession. Jack’s own fingers slid against what Alan knew were distinct pen calluses, and a small constellation of dark freckles, and—
“What’s this from?” Jack asked.
The white scar on the back of his hand. There was a matching one in the centre of the palm.
“That’s—a reminder.” Damn. He’d lost control of his voice. Jack looked at him sharply and managed to guess.
“Morris and George…?”
Alan hadn’t gone into detail when he first told Jack about his reluctant recruitment to the role of Bastoke’s spy, but what was the point in keeping it secret now?
“Morris handed me a penknife and drew a rune on my hand. He called it a compulsion.” He swallowed. His fingers curled tight within Jack’s grasp. “They didn’t stab me. I stabbed myself, when they told me to. And—” And twisted the blade, when he was told to. Alan swallowed a rise of bile. “And once the point was made, Morris healed me. Good as new.”
Except for the scars. A reminder of who owned him, and what was at stake.
“Compulsion is difficult magic.” Jack could have been Edwin, explaining a concept, except for the terrible flatness of his tone. “Hard to maintain for any length of time. And it must be very contractual, very specific, to work at all.”
Ah. Part of Alan had wondered why they hadn’t slapped such a rune on him and told him what they wanted, and set him loose. Simpler than coercion, surely.
And Alan hadn’t known how to perturb anything purposefully then. There’d been just enough room to shift within the compulsion that Alan’s terrified fingers had spasmed and released the knife the first time he set its point to his own hand.
Not the second time. Morris had put more effort into it then.
“They were,” said Alan, “specific.”
A pause. Jack kept Alan’s hand folded in his as if the cufflinks or some other precious thing lay there.
“Maud is still hoping we won’t have to kill anyone tomorrow,” said Jack. “I rather hope the opposite.”
Alan looked at his hand engulfed in Jack’s. He said, coming to the realisation along the way, like a sentence that only revealed itself word by word as he wrote it down: “You’re still the kind of arse who’ll pick two fights before breakfast, but you’ve been desperate for someone else to look after, haven’t you?”
“Someone else…?”
“Because of Elsie.”
Jack’s expression began to darken, and Alan was ready to snap back. Then he read the darkness properly. It wasn’t directed at him.
“Jack—you didn’t fail her. It’s obvious you’d have died for her, given the slightest opportunity.”
He wondered if Jack would break to anger after all. Alan had stopped thinking in terms of presumption, when it was just the two of them; here he was, talking to this lord as if they’d grown up on the same street. But like the very first night in Jack’s study, there was a gap along his nerves where the danger could have been.
Jack’s arm, near him, was trembling.
“Oh, fucking hell,” said Alan. He did what he’d have done for anyone else he cared about: he reached out and touched Jack’s shoulder.
Jack leaned into it, and then kept leaning.
Alan swallowed a sound of surprise. All right then. He let his legs flatten so that Jack could shift further down, until the arrogant Lord Hawthorn was lying with his head propped on Alan’s leg and his hands over his face. He wasn’t crying, Alan didn’t think. A storm long buried had been creeping closer to the surface since they’d come to Cheetham Hall, and Elsie’s ghost had knocked down the last barrier keeping it at bay. Alan had no idea what to do about it. It didn’t seem the sort of thing anyone could fix.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Didn’t seem the kind of thing words would help either.
Alan slid a hand into the dark walnut-wood of Jack’s hair and left it there. Occasionally he moved his fingertips, soothing. Mostly he just sat and let the enormity of this, the fact that Jack was letting him see it, sink into him. Despite the gulf between their lives, they had this in common: neither of them was given to trust. Both of them had been twisted up by the plain facts of their existence. The past could turn you into a strip of paper with a single side, so that comfort and vulnerability slid away down invisible channels and couldn’t be grasped.
Except, perhaps, if you bent your will towards unlearning your own history. If you let yourself soften and be porous. Even if only like this, in silence, and at an angle.
27
The last time Jack had attended the triennial equinox gala of British magicians was the year he and Elsie turned sixteen. Just old enough to attend, their parents said. As long as they behaved, they added, with rather less hope.
It had been held in a castle near the Scottish border, and Elsie had taken less than two hours to acquire a small regiment of similarly excited young magicians. By the time the sun rose, there wasn’t much left of the castle’s greenhouse. Lord Cheetham had apologised frostily and then lectured his offspring for the first hour of the long carriage ride home.
Jack thought about this as Oliver shaved him. He could remember that night with less pain than before: his father encouraging Jack to take an interest in politics both magical and not, the candles charmed against midges, the fireworks that had filled the sky at the deep midpoint of the night, the unrepentant dimples that always ringed Elsie’s mouth when she led them into trouble.
George and Lord Cheetham arrived even earlier than expected. Oliver, stationed as lookout for the approaching motorcar, rushed into the breakfast room to let them know. Everyone set down cutlery on poorly emptied plates.
“Here we go,” said Robin.
“Edwin,” said Jack.
“I know.” Edwin sent a faint smile at Robin and slipped out of the room. If all went to plan, that would be the last Jack would see of Edwin’s face until this was finished. Alan had not even come to breakfast with the rest of them.
If the enemy didn’t know you had a weapon, you damn well kept it up your sleeve for as long as you could.
“Well then,” said Lady Cheetham, rising. “Let’s find out exactly how much poison my nephew has been feeding my husband along the road, shall we?”
Jack squeezed her hand when she slipped it through his arm, and they walked out into the cool September morning with the others trailing behind them. Liveried servants were hurrying to gather as well.
No Morris stepped from the car this time; no doubt he’d be coming later, along with Lord Cheetham’s valet and most of the luggage. His lordship did not travel lightly when switching residences.
Jack treasured the moment of raw surprise on George’s face as George climbed the stairs and found himself greeted by most of the people he’d been searching for.