Grey pushed his plate away. “Look, I’m sorry. Pain’s making me say things I shouldn’t. But this might be my only chance to get back into the Unseen World, to really be a part of it again. And that matters to me.
“I hate the way these people look at me now, like I’m nothing now that I’m not standing behind Miranda’s skirts. Like they’re wondering if maybe I don’t belong here. I was born in this world—I was the heir to a House! No one belongs here more than I do, and I’m sick of being looked at like an object of pity. This is how I change that.”
Grey had never told him why Miranda had disinherited him—he said he had agreed to be bound to secrecy. At the time it had happened, Laurent had understood Grey’s decision not to fight his disinheritance. He would have had to prove that Miranda was incompetent to lead Prospero in order to overturn it, a thing that seemed impossible. But he wondered now whether it would have cleaned some of the poison from his wound if Grey had fought back then. “Sure. I get it. Just remember I’m on your side in this.”
“As much as you can be, anyway.”
Laurent thought back to his conversation with Sydney, when he had very carefully laid out the circumstances under which Grey could be challenged, and said nothing else.
? ? ?
A diner this time, early enough that pieces of the sky were still sunrise pink. Even so, Sydney had gotten there before Madison and was halfway through a plate of French toast drowned in syrup when the other woman slid into the banquette across from her.
“So, how’s your shoulder—wait, seriously, that’s what you’re eating? Are you secretly twelve?”
“I like syrup,” Sydney said. “And from the first part of your question, I gather you heard about the Blackwood challenge. It’s fine—all healed. Have you heard anything about what will happen to Colin?”
“Happen?” Madison asked, and flagged down a passing server for coffee.
“For altering the duel. Trying to make it fatal. Whatever he did.”
Understanding crossed Madison’s face. “Sydney, nothing will happen.”
Sydney set her fork down. “He was trying to kill me. In a nonmortal challenge. Which breaks the rules that were sent out at the beginning of this. Rules set by the Unseen World. And nothing will happen.”
“Right. Okay. I forget that you haven’t been through one of these before, and Laurent is new, too, and so no one has told you how things work.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Sydney said.
“Nope. You’re not. First of all, it was during a sanctioned challenge. There is a lot of leeway over what’s considered proper behavior in the course of one, and people don’t like to interfere. Fortune’s Wheel, blah blah blah. And the thing is, you were the better magician, and so you’re fine. His loss is considered punishment enough—he’s out of the Turning now.”
Sydney poured more coffee. “And second?”
“Special Projects doesn’t have a criminal division.”
Sydney’s face went blank.
Madison sighed. “What I mean is, even under normal circumstances, the Unseen World doesn’t have a criminal justice system. What they have is a bunch of people with extraordinary power who take matters into their own hands. When the Unseen World decides that someone has crossed a line, there’s either social and economic sanctions—disinheritance being a popular one—or there’s the equivalent of vigilante justice. And this is a Turning, which means it’s not normal circumstances; it’s an entire event presaged on the ideas of upheaval and change. The fact that Colin is out of the Turning is enough. And if it’s decided that it isn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he has an accident in the next week or two. But there won’t be any formal consequences. Now or later.”
Sydney stabbed at her French toast. “These people.”
Madison held up her hands. “No argument. But happy as I’d be to spend the morning talking about how they all suck, I’ve got to run soon if I don’t want to be late to the office, so maybe I should answer the question you asked me here to talk about.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“No problem. So, you asked if House Prospero was doing anything out of the ordinary. Which, turns out, it is. Miranda has our office running two different financial scenarios—one where she shifts her investment portfolio very heavily into only Unseen World concerns, and the other where almost every investment is mundane.
“Now, that could be just caution or curiosity on her part, and I’m going to check Prospero’s files to see what the House has done in past Turnings, but it’s definitely odd.”
“You’re going to need to explain why this is out of the ordinary. Aren’t there usually financial rearrangements during a Turning?” Sydney asked, pouring more syrup over her plate.
Madison shuddered. “You’re doing that just to make my teeth hurt. I can tell. And yes—participation in the Turning tends to be an expensive endeavor, even if you’re not paying the big bucks for a champion. Plus, business alliances tend to change when magical ones do, so the fact that she’s running scenarios makes sense.
“But the thing that’s odd is the potential removal of her assets from Unseen World holdings altogether. That’s something I’d expect to see if it looked like the House were in danger of being unmade. Which—did you hear? House Greenfield was.”
Sydney set her fork down. “What did they do that was bad enough?”
“Apparently, they tried to re-create your audition spell as part of a challenge. Turns out it’s harder to drive a flying bus than people think, and seven mundanes wound up in the hospital, all talking about how the crash felt just like the bus falling out of the air.”
“So that’s enough to unmake a House, but Colin can . . . You know what, never mind,” Sydney said. “Anyway, Prospero?”
Madison nodded. “Prospero is currently ranked second. There’s no imminent danger of it being unmade as a result of performance, and Miranda’s way too careful to allow Ian to pull the kind of shit that could cause exposure to the mundane world, not to mention he’s too good. So shifting assets to fully mundane concerns makes no sense. I’m looking into it.”
“I think maybe I can help with that. What if it’s not just House Prospero that’s in danger,” Sydney said. “What if it’s the entire Unseen World?”
“What?” Madison asked, her voice knife-sharp.
“If something’s wrong with magic. Which, there maybe is. Actually, almost certainly there is—I’m just not sure precisely what or how bad yet. But it’s obviously bad enough that people are noticing. How much have you heard about the failures of magic?”
“Are there failures beyond what happened with Ian’s duel with—who was it—Hawkins?”
“Yes. Verenice said normal spells are starting to go haywire, too. There was a mess at the Mages’ Club the other day. So something is for sure going on. And if Miranda thinks the entire Unseen World is in danger of falling apart—”
“—then switching her investment portfolio to mundane concerns makes perfect sense. Shit, goddamn, Sydney.”
“Exactly,” Sydney said.
“Okay, now I really have to go.”
“Thanks, Madison.”
“Not a problem.” She swiped a strip of bacon through the lake of syrup on Sydney’s plate, and left.