Walter narrowed his eyes, staring Edwin down. They were like strange shadows of each other: Walter a little taller, a lot broader, but with the same fine features looking almost too delicate for the rest of him. The same blue eyes. Robin was full of admiration for Edwin, who was ice-carved and rigid but holding himself strong, in the face of that stare and the weight of their history. If Edwin meant what Robin thought he meant, then even if he was guessing, he’d at least thought of something that would buy them time. And move them onto a kind of home turf.
“Tell me,” said Walter. “I’ll take this one with me,” with a tilt of his head towards Robin, “and if you send me on a wild goose chase, well.” His smile was nauseating as the spell had been. “He doesn’t need the use of his legs to tell the future.”
“I have to show you,” said Edwin. “You need me to get into the room.”
Robin could see this deteriorating into mistrust and yet more useless attempts to coerce information through pain. He said, “Is there such a thing as a truth-spell?”
Both Courceys looked at him.
“Seems to me it’d save us some time and argument,” he added.
“No,” said Walter shortly, but Edwin said, “Ye . . . es. Of a sort.”
The next few minutes went over Robin’s head entirely. Edwin claimed he’d seen a theoretical mention of a way that two other spells could be combined to make it difficult for someone to lie, and something something bind negation something. Walter refused to believe him; Edwin fetched a book, looking more stubborn than ever now that they’d moved into an area of his own strength. Walter, after studying the page thrust in front of his face, grudgingly agreed that it might work in principle but looked very imprecise.
“I know,” said Edwin. There was a strange moment of accord between the Courceys, like two violins played at random meeting briefly on the same note.
“Er,” said Robin. “I wasn’t suggesting anything experimental.” Sense smacked him around the face and he added, before Edwin could do anything absurd and martyrish like volunteer himself to be put under a truth compulsion by his hideous bully of an older brother, “But I’ll give it a try.”
“Edwin,” said Walter. “Cradle it.”
Edwin looked startled. Walter said, “I’ve seen the notation; I’ll know if you’re doing something else. And I hope you don’t expect me to stand here with my hands occupied and let you get the hop on me.”
Relief trickled through Robin. He trusted Edwin to do this far more than he’d have trusted Walter.
“Billy took my string,” said Edwin. “I—wait.” He cast a look at the body, and went to retrieve a different loop of string from a drawer of the desk tucked beneath the window.
The truth-spell was the mauve of building storms, and felt like inhaling in a steam room.
“Blyth,” said Walter, impatient. “Did Reggie Gatling remove a third piece from the maze?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Robin promptly.
A sigh. “What room is my brother referring to? Why does he need to be present?”
“The Rose Study. It’s behind a mirror in the parlour at Sutton Cottage.” He threw an apologetic glance at Edwin, but it wasn’t as though Walter’s question had been ambiguous. “Only a Sutton heir can open it.”
“Sutton heir?” Walter demanded. “Explain.”
Robin could feel it now, the way the spell crept in hot tendrils around the cavities of his mouth, waiting to catch him in an outright untruth. Sailing uncomfortably close to omission was as much as he could manage. He explained that Edwin had made a pledge with the Sutton estate to get them out of the maze. He was delighted to realise that the spell enjoyed him being forthright and effusive—and it was easier to distract them all with irrelevancies than glide around the fact that Edwin was directing them back to a deeply magical house that was bound to his blood—so Robin went into some detail about exactly what he thought of Walter bloody Courcey’s character, appearance, and habit of attempted murder via shrubbery.
Edwin’s eyes widened. He hadn’t made that connection yet, Robin saw at once.
Walter looked half-angry, half-amused. “Enough. Do you agree that’s where the old woman would have hidden it? Yes or no.”
“Yes,” said Robin, who actually believed that if Flora Sutton had been clever, she’d have been buried with it. But if she had hidden it, it was obvious to the blindest fool that a secret study opening only to your touch was the place to choose.