Alan was fucked in so many ways.
“Hawthorn,” said Edwin, jolting Alan back to the present moment. “If you scare my perturbator away by being your usual bastard self, we will never find this knife and you will be stuck here child-minding, as you put it, forever.”
Violet picked up the loop of paper, which Alan had set down on the settee between them. “Let’s return to business. Is this what happens when anyone else’s magic touches him now?” she asked. “It—loops itself away?”
“I believe so,” said Edwin. “Not to the same extent, obviously. But magic looks for paths. It replenishes itself in ley lines in the earth. And every path in you, Alan, is carved for diversion.” With his string, he cradled a pale green spell. Goose bumps spread over Alan’s forearms in memory, but Edwin held the magic within the pattern of string. “This is the chilling spell I used on you before. Don’t imagine a shield, this time. Think about that loop of paper. Think about the magic as something that—twists away. Yes?”
The spell broke over him, and Alan imagined himself as smoother than skin. Ice, or porcelain, or a polished, glossy surface of wood. Anything that tried to find him porous would instead be diverted gently away.
It was still cold. And Christ, it took effort—as soon as a stray thought snuck in at the side, muddying the image he was building, the cold intensified.
Still—“Better,” he said, when Edwin was done. “I think.”
Edwin was frowning. “I can’t tell. Too subjective. Violet, one of your illusions, perhaps?”
Now Alan was the one to have no idea if it was working. He couldn’t feel the illusion as he could feel cold. He stood there and thought about carved paths and loops of paper while Violet cast a spell and then walked around him in a circle, hands raised, making thoughtful noises.
“He looks a mess,” said Jack.
“You’re so helpful, Hawthorn,” said Violet. “It was a mess on the Lyric, too, but it’s worse now. Whatever you’re doing is working, Alan. I think.”
“Feels like running uphill,” said Alan, breath catching unpleasantly in his chest, “so it’d better be doing something.”
“We won’t tire you out on experiments,” said Edwin. “Let’s try the door.”
They went to the spinet room. The oak door remained visible to everyone, a fact which sent a satisfied light into Edwin’s face that almost made him handsome. Whatever he’d done last time, to stabilise the door’s appearance, was still working.
The warding on it was still working too.
“How do you get through any of the other doors here?” Jack asked. “If one rule gives you a doorknob for those…”
“Music,” said Violet. “They have it carved on the frames, if you look.” She sat at the spinet and played a one-handed tune. A humming sound came from the dark red door—jarrah wood—as it took up the same tune. And between one moment and the next, the door had a brass knob.
Alan went to look. On the topmost edge of the jarrah door’s frame he could see the five lines of a musical stave and a short series of notes.
“If you’re counting on me to see what’s on the oak and then hum it, I won’t be much help. I can’t read a tune. Do you have a music-taster, along with the one for wood?”
“It’s engraved? You could do a rubbing,” said Jack. “Charcoal and paper.”
“Let’s see if he can get close enough, first,” said Edwin.
So Alan took step after cautious step towards the oak door while the warding-dread tried to drown him. If he concentrated hard … it might have been no more than hopeful imagination, but perhaps he could feel something after all, pathways within him carved slowly and thoroughly like a scar constantly reopened with the same knife.
Even the idea hurt. He was dimly aware that he was clutching his chest as if to keep its contents from spilling out. But the hurt brought everything into focus, and all of a sudden he knew that when he touched the wood-taster to the door, last time, it had been too much power trying to escape down channels that were too narrow to hold it. So it had flooded out into him instead, and nearly burst him, until it found a new path through Violet.
Feeling like he was walking a tightrope above a storm-raging sea, Alan walked up to the oak door and looked at the frame.
“No music,” he said. “Only stars.”
“What?” said Edwin.
“Stars.” Alan lifted a helpless hand and made the fingers twinkle. His head ached. He was losing what little mastery he had over the warding’s effect on his nerves. He wanted to run a mile away and then empty his guts. “A whole—row of them.”
“Violet,” said Edwin sharply, but Violet was already saying, “Yes, yes, give me a moment—I have to do it by ear—”
A few false starts—the notes falling like broken glass on the throb of Alan’s head—and then it sang out in the room. The orrery song. Alfred Dufay’s song.
The storm carving through Alan’s body vanished all at once. Exclamations came from behind him; the warding had dropped for everyone, then. And the oak door now had a doorknob exactly where a doorknob should be.
Unfortunately, it was still locked.
“What d’you think?” said Alan, now light-headed with the absence of pain. “Another song to make the keyhole appear?”
“It might only open to the owner,” said Edwin. “The rose parlour in Sutton is like that.”
But rattling the knob did Violet no good either. She frowned. “Hawthorn, your turn to contribute. How do the runes in the Barrel work?”
“I don’t know.”
“When will you stop being contrary, Jack?” Edwin snapped. “It’s stopped being impressive. We all know you wish you weren’t here. Now it’s only tiresome.”
Jack was leaning on one of the other doors, arms crossed. He seemed unable to exist without something to lounge in or against. He’d also chosen as his backdrop one of the paler woods—Alan couldn’t remember most of the names—which made his dark brown hair look almost black, and his eyes like chips of iridescent glass. His waistcoat was of emerald green with rows of stitching that gave it the impression of scales when the light hit it.
His lordship sent Edwin a level look that did nothing to dispel Alan’s thoughts of snakes. And then made Alan abruptly remember which category of people were invited to use the name Jack. The idea splashed in his mind and rearranged some things. Alan bit his lip against laughter.
“Believe it or not, Edwin, my very presence here means I am resigned to seeing this thing through. Yes—my mother’s grandfather designed the rune system that controls the Barrel’s doors. I’ve no doubt it was a difficult, time-consuming project, and it’s hardly been passed through the generations as a bedtime story.” Having delivered his squashing-down, Jack’s posture loosened. “It’ll be like your library-indexing charm. Every room in the Barrel marked and named. What the doors need to know is which two rooms are being linked, and whether a person has permission to pass through. The rune will be a shorthand for those cradles. A defining clause and a pass clause. That’s all the theory I can give you, and it may not even apply here.”