A Power Unbound （The Last Binding, #3）
Freya Marske
For my family
& for everyone who’s built their own
1
CHEETHAM HALL, 1893
Elsie Alston’s running feet hit the grass like pale secrets. During daylight hours she could usually be persuaded to wear shoes, but the day was fading and Elsie had unfastened everything of herself that could be unfastened. Shoes, stockings. Corset strings. The locks of her dark hair, which fell to the small of her back and bounced as she ran. She enjoyed the sensation of it tugging against her scalp, and Cheetham Hall enjoyed her enjoyment where it sang through the soles of her feet.
“I’ll leave you behind,” Elsie called, “see if I don’t.”
“Oh, will you now?”
Jack’s footfalls were stronger, firmer. Not to mention: more shod. He’d followed his sister into the world, and he’d been following her ever since.
Now he stopped dead in the last line of beech trees before the grove opened out to the slope of lawn. The distance between the twins widened, then faltered, as Elsie slowed. She looked over her shoulder. Her brother grinned, teeth white as the tree trunks in the purpling light, and threw cradlespeak: negation, with a private illusion-clause tweak that meant you’re bluffing. He didn’t believe she’d ever leave him behind, no matter what she threatened.
Elsie laughed and cradled a lash of a spell to trip Jack to the ground. The grass caught him soft and held him fond as he cursed, laughed in answer, and pushed back to his feet. And then they were running again, strides nearly matched with the length of their eighteen-year-old legs, up towards the Lady’s Oak. The Hall’s awareness spooled out to follow, hooked burrlike into the magic that surged within its young heirs.
Of the generations of magicians who had called Cheetham Hall home, there had never been anyone like Jack and Elsie Alston.
Their parents, the Earl and Countess of Cheetham, had been properly raised in the oldest traditions. The twins were only a few hours old when they were carried around the Hall and shown to every mirror in every room. Then taken outside into the grey brightness of a winter morning and introduced to the bees. Some of their own blood, pricked from tender heels, went into the soil at once. Not many families would have bothered. The Hall was glad.
This is Elsie Leonora Mary Alston, and she is first of our line.
This is John Frederick Charles Alston, and he will inherit you, one day.
Years passed and no further heirs were forthcoming, but Cheetham Hall and the Alstons were more than content with those they had. The twins were indulged in wildness. They spent their early years roaming and claiming their land, seldom leaving its boundaries. Riding, walking, clambering up trees, swimming in the lake.
Jack was trained in the use of his gifts and taught most of it to Elsie, if only to have someone to share with, play with. When he went away to school, as boys did, Elsie stayed rooted.
Elsie Alston had magic to bring down the wind. She had everything her brother had passed on to her—and more than that, an instinct for wielding the power that dwelled beneath her often-bare feet. She was a girl of dusk and dawn and everything in between.
And tonight she was alight with mischief. Her parents were away in London and her twin was home between terms before Oxford dragged him away again, and they had a secret.
The Lady’s Oak crowned a low hill. Older and taller than anything else on the grounds, it muttered creaks in blustery autumns when it threw acorns to be faithfully gathered by under-gardeners. Now, in summer, it stickied the air and spread its towering leaves beneath the sun.
From the hillcrest gnarled with the oak’s roots, Cheetham Hall’s lands stretched out in every direction. To the south, the Hall itself and the formal gardens were hidden by the birch grove. To the west, human eyes might catch the top of the distant gatehouse, its blocky corners and regular arch standing stark against the dusk-stained sky.
The two men tucked within the shade of the tree didn’t seem interested in Cheetham’s views. They leaned against the oak’s lowest branch—as thick as a normal tree all on its own, it bent at the waist and came down moss-furred to touch the ground before curving up again—and conferred until the noise of Elsie’s arrival had their attention.
“Cousin,” said Elsie primly, and dropped a curtsey. Dirt clung between her toes. “Uncle John.”
Both men nodded welcome to her and to Jack, who arrived panting in Elsie’s wake. “Uncle,” he said. “George. Lovely night for it.”
“Lord Hawthorn,” said George.
Only Elsie recognised the way their cousin George Bastoke spoke the title: with so much respect it was a kind of mockery. The Hall hummed its ready sympathy to her annoyance but did nothing else. These men had guest-right: not part of the household, but family nonetheless. George in particular was rich in the gifts of the dawn, his magic orderly and strong within him, with a brassy-cold and sweetly ravenous edge that the Hall did not trust.
The Alston twins sat on the looping branch. It was a favoured spot for slow summer afternoons bickering in the shade. Of all the places on the estate, this one was the most theirs.
“Now will you say what this experiment is?” said Elsie. “If you’d told us more, we could have practiced.”
“I don’t want you two practicing this where someone with more skill can’t step in if it goes wrong,” said their uncle John. His body beneath the dark overcoat was held stiff, as if fighting a pain somewhere. “There’s a good chance it will be dangerous.”
The twins exchanged a glance of pleasure. Broken bones, countless sprained ankles, and at least one scar on Elsie that not even the best potions could fade were all testament to the fact that danger had never stopped them before. Being careful, the Alstons had agreed almost as soon as they could speak, was for dullards.
“So that’s why we’re doing this when Mother and Father are off to town,” said Jack. “Do you think they’d disapprove?”
“Almost certainly.” John smiled. “I’d have your mother in my ear for months. But I think the two of you are old enough to make your own decisions, don’t you agree? And if it works, it can be a grand surprise when they return.”
“If what works?” Elsie bounced on the branch.
“Transfer.” George, a few years older than the twins, had nearly his father’s height and more ease to his carriage. He spoke as if words were stepping-stones leading him across a brook: steady, deliberate, refusing to be rushed. “We think we’ve found a way for a magician to draw on another’s magic and wield it as their own.”
“That’s impossible,” said Jack. “Everyone knows that. Can’t be done.”
“What if it could?” said George.
Jack, marginally more prone to forethought than his sister, listened hardest to the explanation that followed. Their uncle already knew that the twins had a knack for simultaneous spellwork. He’d asked them, on previous visits, to demonstrate how they could wield their individual magics towards a single end, until it was almost as if a single pair of hands were doing the cradling and a single will directing it.
Almost.
They were doing this on the grounds of Cheetham Hall because, like most magicians with blood-oath binding them to a particular place, the Alstons found magic easiest there. The Hall stirred uneasily when George used a spell to split the finger-skin of each twin in turn, adding a clause against clotting so that their blood flowed to mingle in a small copper bowl. But there was no threat. The twins gave their blood willingly to the spell—and Alston blood spilled in ritual in this place was normal, natural.