“What would better be, exactly?” said Robin through his teeth.
“To begin with,” said Walter, lifting the hand with the rings on it, “there wouldn’t be a missing piece to this, and I wouldn’t have had to come knocking on the door of my brother’s ridiculous insistence on living apart from his family.”
He stepped towards them. Robin sensed Edwin’s minute flinching-back, and decided not to complicate things; he took a few steps back into the parlour, pulling Edwin with him, rather than make Walter have to physically shove past them.
“What do you mean, a missing piece?” Edwin sounded bloodless and dull.
“An object of power wants to be whole,” said Walter. “Not that I should have to explain this to you. Brought together, the simplest of rectifications should have transformed it back into the coin. The rings failed to transform. The old bitch kept part of it back.”
A sneer carved itself around Walter’s nose. At the sight of it Robin knew, though wasn’t sure how he knew, that it was Walter in front of whom Flora Sutton killed herself to frustrate his efforts; Walter who would have tortured information out of her otherwise.
Walter who pushed his own brother into the maze and left him there to die.
“There’s nothing else,” said Edwin, but with a thread of uncertainty. How would they know, after all? Edwin had taken one ring and gone off in search of its twin. Who was to say that there wasn’t a third?
“I—” said Walter, and at that moment caught sight of Billy’s body. His eyes widened. It took him a moment to speak. “Well, well. So you’re not entirely the limp piece of cabbage you seem to be, Win. Or was this your handiwork, Sir Robert?”
“Byatt tried to be clever,” said Robin. “It didn’t suit him.”
A smile that rose no higher than the mouth appeared and then disappeared on Walter’s face. Where Billy had been tense enough to snap, Walter’s posture was entirely relaxed. This was the poise of a man who knew himself to be the biggest threat in the room, and knew his own capabilities; who’d left his inhibitions behind long ago, buried them beneath the floorboards as a boy. Or perhaps never had any to begin with.
“Then let’s not mess about with cleverness,” he said. “Tell me where the rest of the coin is, Edwin, or I’ll break every finger on both your hands.”
Edwin’s shoulders had curled in as if to make himself smaller. At the threat his hands clenched together. Walter’s smile, as he watched his brother’s reaction, was much more genuine now.
“I told you, you have all of it,” Edwin said.
“Stop it,” said Robin, stepping half in front of Edwin. “There’s no need for any of this.”
“I am practical, Sir Robert,” said Walter. “Direct action produces results.”
“That’s rot,” said Robin. “I think you just enjoy fear, and you know you’ve managed to tangle Edwin up so much that all you have to do is tug on his edges and he’ll produce it for you.”
Walter’s nostrils flared. “I am also not a fool. And neither, it seems, was Mrs. Sutton. This section of the contract is still missing a piece. Enough of this faffing about.” He raised his hands, casual as a master swordsman would raise a blade. Behind his shoulder, Robin sensed Edwin go still. “Blyth. As you seem so keen to deflect me from my brother, you’re more than welcome to take the punishment in his place.”
“Go fuck yourself, Courcey.”
A thin smile in response, and Walter began. He cradled with none of Edwin’s painstaking care and none of Charlie’s casual sloppiness. His fingers moved quick and sharp, and the spell was a dart, far too fast to defend against. It felt like a sharpened stick jabbed sickeningly through Robin’s front, stirring his guts in an agonising roil. When he collapsed and spat bile onto Edwin’s floor he was surprised not to see blood.
Part of him managed to think, with a red-tinged dispassion: It’s not nearly as bad as the curse was by the end.
“Stop,” yelled Edwin. “Walt. Stop. Stop.”
The tide went out on Robin’s crippling nausea. He pushed himself to knees, then feet. He knew how to get up again. He could do that.
“I don’t know where it is,” said Edwin, “but I know where Flora Sutton would have kept it, if she didn’t hide it in the maze with the other pieces.”
“And if it was in the maze?” said Walter.
“Then the whole stupid mess died with Reggie, and you’re no worse off than you were yesterday,” said Edwin.