Alan tucked his hands into his pockets. He had work to do, but first he needed to walk for a while. Now that the clouds of desire were dissipating in the sunshine of the street, the guilt was creeping back, and he couldn’t stop the thought dancing through his mind:
What if things were different? What if I was allowed to keep this?
The world was playing a sick joke. Here, like a reward for all Alan’s self-denial and hunger and hard work, was everything he wanted for himself.
The deserving poor.
Nobody got what they deserved. And things weren’t different—they were how they were, just as the world was the world, and Alan had always known it. He couldn’t afford to forget.
14
“Hm,” said Adelaide, turning her face this way and that as she inspected it in a palm-sized mirror. “Do you know the number of shops in Mayfair I’ve been politely ushered out of with simpering remarks about colonial tastes? I’ve a mind to march back into all of them with this illusion on, try on ten gowns while loudly talking about my enormous inheritance, and then dismiss them all as not up to scratch and not buy a thing.”
Adelaide’s posture still spoke of deportment lessons, and her accent was as melodically educated as it had ever been. But the woman standing beside Jack, on the street a little way down from the Barrel, had white skin and mid-brown hair. Beneath her jacket, her shirtwaist had elaborate embroidery down the front and collar and cuffs: a dense floral pattern, which contained the runes required to anchor the illusion of a different person to the garment and whoever wore it.
“Bring me along on your shopping trip,” said Jack. “I’ll loom in the corner and look rich and unpleasant.”
“You do that wherever you are,” said Adelaide absently. She gave her reflection another long, complicated look before tucking the mirror away. “And I suppose I’m myself wherever I am. Unless I’m suddenly a pale English rose, in which case half the difficulty of my life is—gone. With just a few stitches and a flick of Violet’s fingers.” Adelaide’s smile was strange and cool on that prim, pink mouth. “It’s a queer thought. I’m not altogether sure I like it.”
Jack’s own illusion disguise was stitched into his necktie. Violet had merely fixed his nose and weakened his chin and turned his eyes brown. Even that much had given him a lurch of oddness, of being lost to himself, on looking in the mirror. Queer indeed. He had no idea how it would have felt for Adelaide, for whom appearance carried so much unavoidable weight.
He checked his pocket watch. Time.
“Ready, darling?” He offered Adelaide his arm. She tucked her hand through his elbow.
“Ready.”
Adelaide’s pass-token was in the woven bag she carried. They walked up the wide steps and through the huge doors, and were in the main foyer.
At once Adelaide clutched his arm more tightly. “Oh, look at that! Just like they describe, isn’t it?”
Jack followed her gaze up to the glass-and-lead ceiling high above their heads, busy as it always was with the feet of crossing people. By the time he looked down again, Adelaide was exclaiming over the oak doors and the season-clock and the polished marble beneath their feet.
Her attention to detail reminded Jack to fold her jacket and his coat over his arm, as if prepared to carry them through the building. He made a show of surprise when one of the blue-liveried attendants stepped over with hands inquiringly outstretched.
“Much obliged to you,” said Jack, handing them over. “Perhaps you can point us in the right direction? We’ve not been here before.”
“By all means, sir. Do you know which office you’re looking for? Is someone expecting you?”
“No,” said Adelaide. “Oh, Tom, I told you we should have made an appointment!”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Jack. Perhaps he’d allowed too much of his natural tone to sneak in, there—the arrogance that was expected of Lord Hawthorn would be rudeness in a minor country squire. He coughed. “It’s about our girl Rosie, you see. Her lock ceremony was just last week. Normally of course we’d send the hair down by post, but as we were visiting London anyway—we heard tell it’s possible to bring it here ourselves, and watch it be put away in the Lockroom? Watch her be registered?”
“Rosie’s our eldest,” put in Adelaide, radiating goodwill. “It was such a proud day when her magic showed.”
“Of course,” said the attendant. “I’ll fetch someone who can take care of you. Please take a seat, Mr.…？”
“Pember,” said Jack. “And this is my wife, Margaret.”
Tom and Margaret Pember were deposited on a bench while the attendant traced a rune on a door, handed their coats through it into the cloakroom, and closed the door again. The next set of runes was more complex; the attendant turned the glowing doorknob and stepped through, and was gone.
According to Mrs. Kaur, there were three possible people who would be summoned to escort the parents of a new-minted magician for a lock registration. Jack and Adelaide waited a tense ten minutes before a stout man with buttery blond hair and a much-waxed moustache stepped out of a door, looked around the foyer, and then headed in their direction, smoothing back his already smooth hair as he came.
“Fawcett?” Adelaide murmured.
Jack nodded. He stood and strode forward, meeting the approaching man—Mr. Alec Fawcett, going by Mrs. Kaur’s description—with a hearty handshake. He adopted what he hoped was the smile of a proud father and captured Fawcett’s attention in introductions while Adelaide pulled a pebble from her bag and laid it on the floor beneath the bench.
“Maggie?” Jack called, after giving her enough time. “Come and meet Mr. Fawcett. He works for the Assembly.”
“Mrs. Pember,” said Fawcett, nodding politely when Adelaide hurried up to join them. “A pleasure. Congratulations on your little girl’s lock ceremony.”
“Thank you. I do hope we’re not pulling you from more important work,” said Adelaide earnestly.
“Nonsense. Nothing more important than registering a new addition to magical society, is there? And you’ve come all this way. Let’s give you a story to take home.”
Adelaide made a tiny rueful face at Jack behind Fawcett’s back as the man turned to lead them towards one of the oak doors. If they’d shared any cradlespeak, Jack would have told her not to be so sentimental. They would be inconveniencing the man, perhaps giving him a bit of a scare over nothing, but they weren’t sticking a Goblin’s Bridle on him. Or knocking him out and hiding him in a cupboard. This act of high theft was being run to Maud Blyth’s rules of moral engagement.
Fawcett cradled, traced a complex rune, and then opened the door. The view through it was warm with wood and orange light. Fawcett ushered them both through and into the Lockroom.
“Oh my.” Adelaide, who had been inside the Lockroom on illegal business only last year, clasped her hands. “It’s so much bigger than I expected.”
The Lockroom’s rows of shelves stretched away into gloom. The air was still and quiet; untouched.
“Every magician who’s come into their power since the Barrel was built,” said Fawcett proudly. He pointed to the enormous map of the British Isles on the wall, pinned up above the high bench containing the room’s ledger, and Adelaide hurried over with the keen air of someone determined to get their shilling’s worth at an art gallery.