Edwin looked unhappy, but it was hard to dissuade a Blyth with an idea in their head. Robin closed his eyes and took slow breaths, rubbed his palms together as if trying to warm them, and—went still. Jack had only seen Robin Blyth in the grip of foresight once before. It was unnerving. His eyelids slotted open. The hazel eyes thus revealed were unfocused and glazed.
It lasted less than half a minute, and then Robin blinked several times and raised a wincing hand to his temple. A breath left Edwin like a quiet breeze.
“I don’t know,” Robin said, frustrated, before anyone could ask. “It was—bizarre. Chaotic. Dark clouds, and flashes of movement in the clouds. I think it was indoors, but I don’t even know if it was the Barrel at all. And everything was shaking like a photo apparatus tossed around in a storm. Not much help. Sorry.”
“Are you sure we can’t leave the knife where it is?” said Adelaide. Worry creased her face, looking at Robin. “If it’s all chaos and uncertainty—is there really any harm in letting it stay hidden?”
“And if the other side finds a way to make the triangulation work and finds it first?” said Edwin. “I haven’t had time to plan for that scenario yet.”
“We should,” said Violet. “We should plan for it. Or—what if we did let it happen?”
“What?” said Edwin.
“What if Robin had the right idea at my legal hearing? Put it all out in the open, for everyone to know. Walter claimed they’d only use the pooled magic of Britain’s magicians for the common good. What if we held them to it? If we had the entire Assembly on board, not just Bastoke and whomever he has in his pocket. We could insist that they needed the consent of everyone—a vote—before they did anything. Or … insist that they built a ritual that used the bloodlines of the Three Families but would exclude anyone who hadn’t given direct consent.”
“Insist how?” said Edwin, but he caught his lip between his teeth, thoughtful. “I—I suppose, in theory, pooling power isn’t inherently dangerous. Only doing it without consent or oversight.”
“It is dangerous,” said Jack.
Everyone turned to him. His throat was tight and hot.
“Once magic has been drawn out of someone and mingled, there’s no guarantee it goes back in again untainted. Or. At all.”
“Does it need to go back in? I thought the whole point of magic was that you used it and then it”—Robin waved a hand—“refreshed itself. With time. Or else you’d never be able to do more spells the next day.”
“Normally, yes,” said Jack. “But—” And that was it, he was about to explain how he knew any of this, and the secret-bind flared to sudden, terrible life on his tongue.
Jack couldn’t help the sound he made. He at least made sure it was short.
“Hawthorn!” Maud dissolved into concern. “This is about what happened with Lady Elsie, isn’t it? And your cousin?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Edwin. He sat, heavily, and rubbed his face. “Hawthorn, we need to know what you know, if it’s about what Bastoke has planned for the contract. Especially now that the Dufay lead has come to nothing. It’s absurd to have you sitting there like a book that’s been glued shut.”
Jack swallowed a gulp of water and slammed down the glass. “What a delightful fucking image, Edwin. And how do you intend to force the pages open?”
Edwin flinched but held Jack’s gaze. Edwin was not kind, and neither was he weak, despite his appearance. Edwin would pin Jack down like a butterfly to a collector’s board and do whatever it took, if it meant finding the answers he needed. And if it was for the greater good, Maud and Robin might let him do it.
Despite the water, Jack’s mouth felt like it had been scoured from the inside. He wanted to spit. He wanted to leave this table, this room, and climb aboard a ship bound anywhere but here.
“By tricking it,” said Maud.
“What?” said Jack.
“Magic is far less clever than people. Robin’s oath to report his visions proves that.” She smiled at her brother. “We’re both very good at telling the truth in stupid ways.”
They were. Jack had seen Maud tell a stunning number of lies without actually telling them. It was all about the shape of things.
An idea rose.
“Edwin.” Jack snapped his fingers at the notebook. “I need a pencil. I’m going to draw you a section of my family tree.”
“Why—”
“For no reason,” Jack nearly snarled.
Maud laughed. “That’s it! Sarcasm is exactly what might work.”
It didn’t seem like it could be that simple. Jack couldn’t convince himself that his sister’s name on his tongue would do anything but sear it.
But he took a piece of paper torn from Edwin’s notebook, and Edwin found him a pencil, and Jack drew his mother’s side of his own family tree. Mary Bastoke. Two brief lines connecting her to Frederick Alston, Lord Cheetham, and more lines down to the names John and Elsie. His hand shook and his mouth dried further as he sketched a quick, erasing line through Elsie, then skipped up the paper. His mother’s parents. His mother’s older brother, the second John on the page; he leaned weight through the lead, writing the name more heavily, and did the same for the line down to the name George Bastoke.
He underlined his uncle and cousin’s names, trying to think of his hand as something separate to himself, and then set the pencil down.
“Ask,” he said. “I’ll tell you some lies.”
He wasn’t surprised that it was Maud who spoke first.
“So, my lord. May we assume that you maintain excellent relations with your”—she consulted the paper—“uncle? And your cousin.”
“I have the utmost respect for them both,” said Jack. “We’ve kept in frequent contact over the past sixteen years. It pains me extremely that my uncle passed away some years back, after being in very poor health since—” But despite his trying to speak quickly, as if to outrun the racing hounds of the secret-bind, he couldn’t finish the sentence once it tipped towards truth.
“Since,” echoed Edwin. He traced the thick lines that Jack had drawn. “Don’t try to nod. Just tap on the table if I’m wrong. Bastoke senior and George were both involved in what happened to Elsie. And it had something to do with pooling magical power.” His voice, too, sped up and nearly stumbled. “Even then, that’s what the Bastokes wanted. They were trying to draw on someone else’s magic. And of course they’d try with you and Elsie—direct blood relations, who out of anyone would seem to have magic to spare.”
“Did these people kill your sister?” said Alan quietly.
Hearing it filled Jack with the sort of wild, despairing anger he hadn’t felt in years. The anger he’d been hiding from when he refused to follow his mother through the gate in Cheetham’s gardens. He couldn’t repress a small shudder. Did John kill Elsie? Yes. No.
“Too big,” said Maud, watching him. “Someone try a specific.”
Violet was pale, but she said baldly: “Did one of them push her off the roof?”