Watched his older brother seeing him, for the very first time, as an equal.
“You probably shouldn’t have threatened to burn my house down,” said Edwin. “I don’t think it liked that.”
“I’m going to get the coin from his pocket,” said Robin.
“Wait,” said Edwin.
“Edwin—”
“Wait.”
Robin frowned, but waited. Edwin thrust his exhaustion aside and thought faster and more carefully than he’d thought all day, forcing himself to see the whole pattern. Yes, they could take the coin now. But Walt followed through: he would bring every resource he had to bear on taking back the thing he wanted, unless Edwin—what? Wiped his brother’s memory? Even if Edwin could muster enough power to do it properly, there were other people involved in this. They’d simply fill Walt in on what he’d forgotten, and then—again—Walter would come after them, bent on revenge. What did Edwin want from this situation? What was he trying to win for them?
Freedom. Safety. And a chance.
“It’s only one piece,” Edwin said. “One of three. It’s useless without the others.”
“You can’t be serious,” Robin said. “Edwin, you have him, you can—”
“What can I do?” Edwin said sharply. “Kill him?”
Robin blanched. Walt sucked in his breath. Then, unbelievably, shook it out in a laugh. “You wouldn’t,” Walt said.
“I could,” Edwin said. It would be easy. He could slow Walt’s heart, beat by beat until it stopped, and thereby lift the curse that had been Walt’s presence in the whole quarter-century of his life. But it would be deliberate, it would be cool-blooded and cruel, and Edwin had already identified his own uncrossable line. “I could. But I think I’m going to hold you to your word, instead.”
Mrs. Sutton had demanded it of Reggie, hadn’t she? He put blood into the swearing. Yes. There was more than one sort of blood-pledge in the world. This one was very old, and very exact, and could only be broken by death.
“No,” Walt began when he saw what Edwin was doing. Edwin raised his head and Walt stopped.
“My vote is for killing you, Courcey,” Robin snapped. “Whatever Edwin wants, we’re going to do it.”
It took nearly ten minutes. The cradle did not require a great deal of magic to build, as it was powered largely by the blood of the participants, but it was complex. Robin located the knife, which had spun beneath a chair when the ivy took hold of Walt. By then the spell was ready and waiting, glowing a deep orange in Edwin’s hands.
“I, Edwin John Courcey, am overseeing this oath,” said Edwin, and outlined the terms. That Walt would not cause—directly or indirectly—any harm, of any kind, to come to Robin, to Maud Blyth or any other member of Robin’s household, or to Edwin himself. That in exchange Walt would leave here with Flora Sutton’s coin, and that Robin would liaise with the Magical Assembly and give truthful report of the contents of his visions.
Edwin paused. “Do you consent to these terms?”
Robin shot him a look, eyes widening slightly. He’d heard the missing piece, then. Had Walt? Edwin raised his eyebrows in warning.
“I consent,” said Robin.
Walt, after another two heartbeats, voiced his grudging agreement. A cut on Walt’s hand as he spoke his full name; a cut on Robin’s. Blood from each of them dripped into the cradle, where it disappeared in flurries of white sparks, and that was that: Walter Clifford Courcey of Penhallick and Sir Robert Harold Blyth, fourth baronet of Thornley Hill, were bound in oath by blood. Robin gasped and clutched at his bleeding hand as the magic took.
“We’re done,” said Edwin. He touched one of the ivy loops. Usually he’d have been tense enough to snap, standing this close to Walt, but his fear had washed out of him. He’d never outgrow it entirely—he’d grown up with it woven into his nerves, a spell cast on a sapling—but he also didn’t think it would ever return to the same extent. “Thank you,” he said to Sutton Cottage. “Let him go.”
Walt’s nerves held old patterns too. He lifted a furious hand to Edwin as soon as the ivy released him, but it was the hand with the cut on it, and it spasmed into a useless fist. No harm.
“So you’ve found yourself some power after all,” Walt spat. He steadied himself on the back of an armchair—Edwin thought that was rather brave of him, all things considered—and massaged his wrist. “A power that you won’t have if you’re anywhere but this estate. Much good may it do you.”