“No use arguing with a lost cause, Maud,” Jack said shortly. “Come on.”
He drew them away from Mrs. Vaughn, walking to the edge of the terrace and finding a sight line down to Alan. Maud’s silence brimmed with excitement as she kept her eye on George and Morris. Jack waited until Alan looked in their direction and then cradlespoke the symbol they’d come up with for George, disguising it in an adjustment of Maud’s hand on his arm.
Alan turned away at once. So did Jack, steering Maud in a loop so that they’d end up close to George again, ready to leap in and contribute to the distracting chaos when the man collapsed.
Morris nodded and strode away again. Jack let him go and watched George.
“Come on,” Maud said beneath her breath.
Together they stood and watched the shifting group near the balustrade. This would still take time. Time for Alan to find and signal Edwin, and then remove himself prudently from the scene. Time for Edwin, whatever he looked like, to make his way towards George. A pity that Morris wasn’t still there; Edwin could have taken them both down at once.
George cradled a spell with fluid grace.
Jack tensed his hand around his stick and softened his knees, ready to shove Maud behind himself, but George did not attack. Nor did he collapse in sleep.
George floated calmly into the air until he hovered above everyone’s heads, a dark and confident shape against the lights and the sky.
28
It was a levitation spell. There must have been an amplification spell tacked on, too, because when George spoke, his voice was loud enough to be easily heard over the noise. He gave a brief speech of welcome, including a heaping of praise for his dear aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Cheetham, who had produced such a wonderful array of spectacle.
“But I think we can do more,” George added. “This is a remarkable evening in more ways than one, and we have a very great achievement of the Assembly’s to unveil for you. An achievement that deserves a particularly special stage for its unveiling. We have this wonderful lake here, after all. It’d be a pity to waste it. In fact, I invite you all to come and stand upon it.”
Admiring murmurs began to rise from the people closest to the balustrade. Jack frowned and got himself and Maud a bit closer.
“What is it?” said Maud, who couldn’t see. The question was being echoed all around them.
“They’re freezing the lake,” said Jack.
At least eight magicians—Coopers, no doubt—stood at various points around the lake, working the same spell in practiced unison. White mist rose curling into the air, and white arrows spread out across the lake’s surface from where each man stood. Each arrow of ice met its fellows and formed a solid, unbroken sheet. At the further edge of the lake, the ice was doing something more complicated: a raised stage, giving the whole thing the air of a theatre. Which of course it was.
“To allay any fears the ladies may have: we’ll keep the air warm enough, and it’s quite safe to walk on without slipping,” said George. “You have my word.” And he sank back to earth, looking satisfied.
It was a spectacularly George thing to do. It wasn’t enough for him to piggyback on someone else’s triumph of hospitality: he had to make one for himself. And it was a pointed display of the level of magic that at present could be produced only by a group.
As invited, the mass of finely dressed magicians began an excited exodus down from the terrace and the grassy slope and around to the sides of the lake, where two gorgeous bridges of densely braided ice now led out onto the frozen surface. Jack and Maud were in the tail end of the crowd. Jack had lost sight of the others. He kept a steady pace, Maud right at his side.
This was the window for Edwin and Violet, surely. George had said his piece. For the time being, nobody’s eyes were upon him.
Where most of the crowd was heading towards the bridge, Jack and Maud turned with unspoken accord and broke away from them. Instead they took the path of white stones that led back to the sea grotto, directly beneath where they’d been standing.
“Hawthorn,” said Maud.
It wasn’t quite a question. There was a thread of unease in her voice. It met a matching thread in Jack, which was then swamped by the rightness of their feet taking step after softly crunching step along the path of white stones, beneath the pink coral arch. This was where they were supposed to be.
They stepped into the grotto proper, and the unease flourished into outright fear.
“Fuck,” said Maud beside him.
“I completely agree, darling,” said Violet.
Violet and Robin stood in the centre of the grotto, this beautiful, mosaic-ridden space glowing in sea colours with another string of magic lights. Neither of them moved more than their eyes towards Maud and Jack. Both of them were grim-faced atop the stillness of their bodies.
All of which was explained by the glowing strings that looped around their wrists, the other ends vanishing into the slender central pillar of the grotto: dark rock adorned with smooth green tiles and a ring of real pink-and-white seashells.
And standing by the other entrance to the grotto, watching Jack and Maud’s progress with an expression of faint and malicious amusement, was Walter Courcey.
Fuck, indeed.
Jack felt his face shut down with anger and despair. Still his legs kept walking, as if his bones were working from a different script to his mind. As if someone had opened him up and engraved the runes of a compulsion there. He and Maud walked right up to the pillar, and their hands rose in unison towards it.
“Fight it, Maudie,” Robin said urgently. “Hawthorn, if you can…”
Maud’s hand trembled. If Jack knew her at all, she was fighting for all she was worth. It made no difference. The magic was too strong.
As soon as Jack’s fingers touched the first shell, the overwhelming urge to do so vanished, as if he’d been yearning for a specific food and it had turned to ash on his tongue. He’d have hurled himself away, he’d have turned and charged at Walter Courcey stick-first, except that—as he’d expected—a fresh Bridle appeared around his wrist. All control over his body sank away.
“Very good,” said Walter. “I must say, that worked even better than I’d hoped.”
There was a silence in which Jack realised he was waiting for Edwin to ask the question. Edwin wasn’t here. Edwin wasn’t here, and neither was Alan.
Dry-mouthed, Jack asked it instead. It seemed as good a way as any to buy time.
“How do you make a compulsion work without words?”