“Well, if it helps at all,” said Robin dryly, “you and your great-nephew have certainly made these people very angry. So he must have hidden it well.”
“Of course. He swore on his name that he’d do his best to keep it safe from them, and he put blood into the swearing. Besides,” said Mrs. Sutton, “I’d be a sorry excuse for a magician if I didn’t trust my own secret-bind.”
Edwin blanched. He’d only seen a secret-bind laid once, on an unmagical woman who’d seen some things her lover wasn’t supposed to let her see, and who’d been past the temporal window when lethe-mint would have been effective. It had been a sloppy job; Edwin and Reggie had been involved in the debacle for all of two days before it got kicked up the chain of command to someone else in the Assembly, but the image of the woman stood out painfully in Edwin’s mind. The tears ravaging her face, and the way she tried to clutch at her own swollen tongue where the brand of the bind sank further every time she tried to explain what had happened.
“A bind, so he wouldn’t talk,” said Edwin. The mist of his fear thickened abruptly to a sickening, mind-numbing fog. “And now nobody’s seen him for weeks. He might be in hiding, yes, but how do you know he hasn’t been killed?”
Guilt illuminated Mrs. Sutton’s face like lightning: no tears filled her eyes, but remorse twisted her lips. Edwin couldn’t muster much sympathy for her. You didn’t lay a bind on someone unless you thought they might be either tempted or coerced into giving up the information.
Sure enough, the next thing Mrs. Sutton said was: “I did suspect people would start to die.”
Robin flinched. He rubbed his forearm convulsively, then clenched his fists by his sides. “Why? What is this contract? Does it have anything to do with that fairy story? What does it do?”
Mrs. Sutton’s hands made bony landscapes of tension as she gripped the arms of the chair. Ludicrously, she and Robin looked like two people on the verge of battle. Part of Edwin wanted to slip away and hide.
“On its own, one part of it does nothing. Even if the wrong sort of people do get their hands on it, my piece alone is hardly going to do them much good. But if they came close to finding me, they could find the others.” She inspected the middle distance, face drawn. If she was seeing a vision of the future, it was nothing good.
Robin ground out, “Will you just tell us what—”
“No,” said Flora Sutton, a whip of finality. She lifted a hand when Robin began to protest again. “The contract should have stayed lost; failing that, it should have stayed secret. It could be used in ways that would harm every living magician in Great Britain—could cause unspeakable damage, and the very idea—” She looked grey. “It’s despicable. We didn’t know, when we discovered it. And as soon as we realised what it could mean, we stopped. No. I won’t help another soul another step towards it, and that includes you two gentlemen. No matter how sympathetic you claim to be. It will be safer for everyone that you not get involved.”
“I am involved,” snapped Robin. “These people, whoever they are, believe that I can find this contract. There’s every chance they’ll come after me again for it.”
“I am sorry for that, Sir Robert,” said Mrs. Sutton. She did sound sorry. She also sounded like someone who had no intention of letting Robin spill any secrets if and when this happened.
Robin started forward; Edwin put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“All right,” Edwin said. “We won’t press. Mrs. Sutton doesn’t know where Reggie is either; that’s what we came here to find out.”
“No, we—”
Edwin squeezed hard and Robin subsided. “Will you tell me about the warding on this estate?” Edwin asked.
Her thin silver eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”
“You must have been trained. Not many women in this country could do a secret-bind. Did your husband teach you?” The book he’d read the previous night had told him a little about the Sutton family. Five generations of them in this cottage; the late Gerald Sutton had been powerful and well regarded, and sat on the Magical Assembly for a term or two. The book had contained nothing at all about Flora Gatling, who’d become Flora Sutton when she married him.
“He taught me as much as he could.” Her face showed the first signs of softening. “Everything else, I taught myself.”
“The estate warding,” said Edwin, lowering himself onto an ottoman. “How did you do that? It only works on magicians, I assume?”