Gavin turned. The man had peeled off from a clique of people Gavin recognized as local spellmakers. Among them was Bayard Attwater, a pale and elderly man with a pretentious monocle. There was Fang Wen, who wore an intricate spellstone pin in her long black hair. And Diana Aleshire, a woman with dark skin and a designer purse whose shop downtown rivaled the size of a department store.
Gavin knew them all well. After all, he’d visited each one of their shops, and they had all turned him away.
Gavin could craft crude spells himself, in the same way he could, theoretically, sew his own clothes. But he needed far better equipment if he wanted to stand any chance once the Blood Veil fell. The tournament lasted either three months or until only one champion remained—whichever came first. Grieves rarely lasted longer than a week. A spellmaker agreeing to support him would help solve that problem. Make him able to compete with the likes of Elionor and Isobel.
Unfortunately, no spellmaker would sponsor a Grieve.
“Yes?” Gavin said warily, but also hopefully.
“Osmand Walsh, of Walsh Spellmaking,” the man said grandly, extending a hand. Gavin caught a whiff of cigar smoke and gin as he shook it. Osmand Walsh was large and ostentatiously dressed in a lavender suit, tufts of gray hair sprouting above his ears that were strategically combed over the bald spot on his skull. “You are your family’s champion, are you not?”
“I am.” Gavin didn’t miss the mocking way he’d said champion.
“Then you should know,” said Osmand Walsh, his pink face reddening slightly, “that there are rules about how to conduct yourself in the weeks leading up to the tournament.”
“Excuse me?” Gavin was suddenly reminded of his schoolyard bullies, whose taunting had come in many forms, who had only stopped when he’d grown strong enough to curse them back.
“You cannot simply march into my shop and ask for an alliance. Our clientele expect a certain sort of experience in our store, and having you there, interrupting them? Well, you must understand the impression it leaves. No spellmaker has ever allied with your family. Do you really think we’d start now, after you’ve dragged our city through the mud?”
Fury boiled through Gavin. He focused on the spellstone on his left middle finger.
The Devil’s Maw would glue Osmand Walsh’s tongue to the bottom of his mouth, making all speech incredibly painful for a day. It would do nicely for a man who was so carelessly cruel with his words, even if Osmand would certainly curse him back.
Yet Gavin forced his fist to uncurl. He couldn’t do this here, not at his sister’s wedding. Winning the tournament would be its own revenge.
“Of course I understand,” Gavin said, as politely as he could manage, and then stomped away. He tried to block it all out, all the people, all the noise. It was the only way he could think of to stay calm.
Which was why, when the fight broke out, it took Gavin a few seconds to realize that his little brother had been the one to start it.
He saw the telltale white glimmer of spellcasting from the corner of his eye and turned in time to see Fergus launch himself at a dark-haired Payne cousin on the mossy banquet hall steps, in full view of everyone, magick forgotten in favor of good, old-fashioned fists.
“Take it back!” Fergus hollered, gripping the lapels of the boy’s suit.
“Your sister’s no Payne,” the other boy said, his voice dripping with scorn. “And she never will be.”
Fergus tackled the Payne cousin with a wordless howl, and they tumbled onto the curb, a blur of half-cast spells and windmilling fists cleaving through the crowd. The cursechasers watched it all with abject delight, whooping and hollering as if this were a spectator sport. Several cameras flashed.
Gavin knew when this was said and done, Ilvernath would blame the Grieves—the same way they blamed them for the outside world’s presence. He could see how the story would go already; a fight at a wedding, another embarrassment, another disgrace.
Unless he changed the ending.
Gavin eyed the large gold signet ring on his middle finger, set with a gaudy crystal that glowed white with common magick. All the anger of the past few minutes coursed through him as he cast the spell inside it.
It was a simple class three Hold in Place, a generic version of the trendier Freeze Frame, but it did the job. Both boys froze from the neck down, and wisps of white magick shimmered around them, suspending them in stasis.
“Hey!” snapped Fergus. His fair skin that matched Gavin’s own was flushed red, and a bruise bloomed beneath his eye. “Did you do this?”