“I’ll wear it to your wedding,” said Violet, taking his arm, “and we’ll say it was that.”
Jack led Maud out through the ballroom doors, down the back terrace, and out onto the lawn. The way from here to the lake was indicated by more of those glowing lights, strung up in the trees or from tall lantern poles where clean, white light glowed and illuminated the grounds. The magic that usually produced the Hall’s guidelights had been redirected and gathered atop those poles; it wouldn’t be needed indoors tonight.
The gentle slope of lawn and the large flat terrace filled steadily with people. The air smelled of honeysuckle and food and perfume, and even out here it faintly fizzed with the number of spells laid over the food tables to keep things fresh, hot, or cold as required. The maids and footmen had only to keep the tables stocked and the drinks circulating.
Maud turned her head at an offended peacock screech.
“I told Violet the peacocks wouldn’t like the cheetahs,” she said.
Violet was saving all of her magic for this evening, but she’d spent the past fortnight steadily at work constructing elaborate light-show illusions and then anchoring them to small oak-wood discs, which Edwin had shown her how to use as a power sink. Tonight her illusions required no magic from her at all. The oak-hearts would power them all night.
Already there were murmuring clusters of magicians gathered in various places to watch the show. An enormous koi fish soared in a slow, watery circle in the sky, giving off its own scarlet-and-gold light. A fairy-tale tower built itself from the lawn upwards, bricks first and then a rapid crawl of ivy and thorns. A pair of young men had already levitated themselves to window level, nearly twenty feet above the ground, to see if the tower was inhabited.
And there was a vivid illusion-menagerie featuring larger versions of the creatures that Violet had danced over Maud’s lap on the evening of the primrose wine. The poor pheasants and peacocks—very real, and unbothered by the throngs of people—were indeed giving the big cats a wary eye and the occasional threatening yell.
It really was a triumph. Magical society would be talking about it for months, even if nothing more interesting or dangerous than a giant fish were to happen. Jack had been running from magic for so long that to find himself surrounded by a brilliant celebration of it was somehow more jarring than trying to escape a magical building dissolving in a magical storm. A tight collection of buried emotions was unfurling. He forced himself to ignore them.
Familiar and half-familiar faces were everywhere, many of them being whipped away so that their owners would not be caught looking at Jack. Even beyond the rumours that were no doubt swirling about the Barrel’s destruction, nobody had seen Lord Hawthorn in magical society for years, and the rumours there were even better. Violet and Edwin had told him most of them. He’d lost his magic. He’d refused his magic. His sister had gone mad and he was halfway to following suit.
Jack heard the raised voice of Edwin’s brother-in-law Charles Walcott, loudly denouncing the disgraced Edwin as a black sheep of the family—nothing to do with the rest of them, no, hang the very thought! Jack caught sight of the Mannings and exchanged a nod with Pete. Violet’s dicentis Arthur Manning was there, along with two young women who Jack assumed were the bookish sister and the new fiancée.
“There’s George,” said Maud.
“Good,” said Jack. “Keep him in sight.”
George was indeed standing in a group of Assemblymen and their wives. Jack cast a quick look around. Robin and Violet—acting as the bait—would be keeping an eye out for Walter and Morris. Somewhere in this crowd was Edwin, disguised by an illusion sewn in white thread onto the white silk scarf draped over his tailcoat. Only Violet and Alan knew exactly what he looked like. And Alan was … there, busy behind another of the food tables, head bent. Jack let his gaze swing past without sticking.
The endless discussions and arguments had come down to this: they needed to know, before anything was done with them, which of their adversaries had the pieces of the Last Contract. Or where they had hidden them.
The contract was undetectable to magic. A fossicking-spell for silver would be all but useless in a formal sea of pocket watches and canes and cufflinks and tiaras and necklaces. And they were up against suspicious and powerful magicians, one of whom commanded a gang of men trained in suppressing any kind of threat to magical society, and all of whom would be extremely on their guard.
All they had to work with was that suspicion. And the fact that most of them were, indeed, extremely visible, with one prominent missing piece. Edwin. A missing piece who’d shown himself capable of greater and stranger magic than anyone knew he had, even if it had ended in disaster.
The plan, as Maud had put it, was to pretend that they’d already succeeded.
Robin and Violet had between them three exact replicas of the contract pieces, formed painstakingly in silver from Edwin’s magic and Robin’s memory for pattern. They had the hardest piece of theatre to perform: to bring these into the open, in front of Walter or Morris or both, and let them be seen. All they needed was enough of a reaction to determine if one of them, or George, was carrying the items. Or for one of them to hurry away to check on someone else or some secret hiding place.
The cradlespeak was for anyone to signal to Alan which person was most suspect, or which person should be followed. Simpler than magic, and faster than coloured pebbles. Alan would then pass that information on, via the same signals, to Edwin; both of them should be moving unseen by their enemies until the time came to act.
Edwin had been practicing a directed sleeping spell until he could cast it with one hand and no string. He would get up close to their target and use it.
Violet’s next role would be to keep anyone else away, through illusion or defensive magic or simply having hysterics, while Edwin found and retrieved the contract pieces. Maud and Jack would run whatever interference was needed there.
It would be risky and tight. But they needed only a few moments. As soon as Edwin had the silver in his hands, Jack would ask the Hall to revoke the guest-right of their enemies, once and for all.
And then they would go to the Lady’s Oak and transfer the Last Contract into a form that could not be carried off Jack’s land.
Jack nearly swayed into Maud and caught himself on his stick as a man shoved bodily against and past him without so much as an apology. Jack turned to snap something and was distracted by the sight of Dufay, who was not wearing anoraks. Nor was she wearing a dressing gown. She was wearing—there was no other word for it—robes. As if this were a costume party and she’d come as the concept of spring.
She was attracting even more looks than Jack himself, and carried herself with twice as much scowling arrogance. Jack was impressed. Everyone would assume she was exactly what she was: an elderly recluse deigning to emerge only for the gala.
“George is keeping an eye on us in return. He’s holding court. Lots of handshakes. This would be easier if all men did not insist on dressing exactly the same at formal events,” said Maud. “At least the women—oh. She is here after all.”
She wasn’t speaking of Dufay. Maud had caught sight of Seraphina Vaughn, who was entering the terraced area with a look of suppressed pain on her face, as if climbing even the gentle lawn slope had been more effort than she wanted. The last member of the Forsythia Club looked around and clearly saw Maud, too, because she changed direction to approach them.