A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 24

24

It was just Violet’s luck that Chapman extricated himself from the badminton tournament as Maud and her phantom passenger were having a pair of clashing conniptions. Maud’s face was contorted as if she’d taken a gulp of rotten milk.

Violet patted Maud on the back and glanced again at Chapman. He was leaning on the railing some way away, lighting a cigarette and casting them the occasional glance. Fine.

“All right?” she asked Maud.

“Yes,” wheezed Maud. The rotten-milk expression had given way to one of guilty misery, as if Maud were now blaming herself not only for Mrs. Navenby’s death but for the death of Lady Enid. Even though there wasn’t the slightest thing she could have done to prevent—the murder of Violet’s cousin?

Honestly, of the three of them, Violet had the most right to a conniption.

“ How did Enid die? ” Mrs. Navenby asked. “ And when? ”

“I don’t know how,” said Violet. “But I’m sure my inheritance would have been even more contested if there was a suspicion of foul play.”

“Your inheritance…? Don’t tell me that son of hers was off creating by-blows before he died. He was barely a grown man.”

“Her father’s brother was my great-grandfather, on my mother’s side. As for when —it was in March. Nearly two months ago. There was some extensive argument over the will before Aunt Caroline and Clarence dispatched themselves to bring me back to England.”

“And Flora was killed in September last year.”

“Yes,” said Maud. “She was the first one they found, because of her great-nephew. Reginald.”

“A long gap, and then two in close succession,” said Violet. “Seems like someone finally learned how to track down these bits of silver.”

“Part of the point of moving to America with my piece was that Flora was certain it would disrupt any attempt to do what we Forsythians had done in the first place, which was find them due to the effect that they have on British ley lines.”

And now they were on an ocean. Liminal space, indeed.

“Perhaps they followed me to New York, and to Mrs. Navenby,” said Maud in a small voice. “They may have known who I am all along.”

“But you never had any contact with Lady Enid, and she died first. And your brother and Edwin never uncovered her name, in their investigations?”

Maud shook her head. Brightened a little. “And Chapman has called me Miss Cutler, every time.”

“So these people—Chapman and Morris—came to America expressly to find you, Mrs. Navenby, just as Maud did.” It was an obvious conclusion, but an unpleasant one. “Bastoke and his friends know about all of you. They got their hands on the full list.”

“ Four of us is hardly a list, ” said Mrs. Navenby, and stopped. “ Seraphina .”

“Mrs. Vaughn must be in danger too,” said Maud.

“Or she’s the one with the list,” said Violet grimly. “It’s too much of a coincidence that she’s on board the same ship as yourself, ma’am.”

“And the same ship as the heir to Lady Enid’s estate,” said Maud, wide-eyed.

“ Estate? ” said Mrs. Navenby sharply. “ Or fortune? ”

“Everything,” said Violet. “As far as property goes, there’s only Spinet House. James Taverner built and bought everything he had. If he left it all to his widow when he died, and they had no living children, then she could leave it to anyone she wanted.”

“Which means,” Maud said slowly, “that whatever and wherever the knife is, Violet… it’s yours now.”

Violet nearly asked knife? before she remembered. Coin, cup, knife. The Last Contract.

“If it hasn’t been stolen already,” she said.

“ Nobody would know how Enid disguised it, ” said Mrs. Navenby. “ Not Sera, not even Flora or myself .”

The back of Violet’s neck itched, hard and sudden.

“Maud,” she said urgently. “Adjust my collar.”

Maud obeyed, and Violet heard her intake of breath. “It’s glowing again. And—oh, blast. It fades so quickly.”

Violet looked at Chapman, as the most likely suspect, but he had his hands full. An enterprising stallholder was wandering around with small cups of punch, and Chapman held one in his cigarette hand while fishing for coins in his pocket. Unless he could activate the rune without cradling, perhaps it was Morris. And they still had no bloody idea what it did . Violet felt no different.

Not quite correct. She felt overfull, overstimulated, which was unusual for her. The revelation about Lady Enid had been one stone too many dropped into the whirlpool of her feelings. Violet didn’t want to be on this crowded deck full of wind and noise. She needed a few minutes to think.

“We’ll let Hawthorn know about this at lunch,” she said. “I still need to move the rest of my luggage to your cabin, Maud.”

Maud passed her the cabin key. “I can see the Bernards. I’ll stay on deck and keep Helen company until lunchtime.”

“Promise you won’t go approaching Mrs. Vaughn or doing anything else impulsive on your own.”

“I’m not on my own,” Maud said innocently, patting her hand over the centre of her chest.

“ Promise .” Violet was not letting Maud wriggle out of this, no matter how adorable her dimples were. At least she could trust Maud to keep her word.

Maud sighed. “I promise.”

Violet sent Chapman one more brilliant smile before leaving the deck. She moved fast, taking a circuitous route; she did know how to lose a man who wanted to follow her. Most of the time.

She swallowed down an abrupt and lemon-sweet rise of bile, thinking again of that night when she’d realised that she’d miscounted alleys and entered a dead end. The footsteps behind her, heavy and confident. Moonlight kissing the exposed blade of the man’s knife when she turned.

It had been dark. She hadn’t seen clearly. The wound had been monstrous, neck to groin torn open like a black gash in the earth. Most of all she remembered the abrupt splash of hot liquid across her neck and chin, drenching her front and her gloves. And the smell. The smell woke her from sleep for a month after.

She’d given Maud her fear of blood because she’d never given it to anyone else. Thom and Claudette knew about the attack itself; nobody knew how blood had made her flinch ever since.

She’d given Maud her fear because it was the closest her craven tongue could come to apology. The previous night she’d lain in that four-poster bed aching with both the distance and the closeness of Maud, asleep in the next room. She hadn’t slept much. She kept hearing Maud saying of Robin, He’s all I have, and realising all over again that Maud Blyth was a desperately lonely girl.

Maud had reached out in friendship. And Violet had shrunk away, instead of letting Maud’s knowing fingers sink past any of her illusion.

Back at her own cabin, Violet thought at first she’d opened the wrong door by mistake. Doors and drawers and her large trunk were open, with clothes scattered on the bed. Tasteless fizzing sherbet tingled the back of Violet’s mouth when she inhaled: a sign of heavy magic recently performed in a small space.

And her cousin Clarence was rubbing his forehead, frowning down at a pile of Violet’s clean stockings and petticoats.

When Violet entered the cabin, Clarence turned. Surprise warred with guilt on his face, which reddened as he glanced around as if in search of some excuse.

“Where is it?” he burst out.

Normally Violet prided herself on having the right cutting comeback. Especially for someone like Clarence, whose entire manner begged to be verbally pruned. In that moment, however, fear wiped her clean of words.

Clarence? Clarence was part of this?

She’d sworn, after freezing like a prey creature when facing Morris and Chapman, that she wouldn’t be caught without magic at her fingertips again. As she’d told Maud, she had been a magician for eighteen years. She had no idea how to cradle the priez-vous that the Coopers favoured, but there was more than one way to bind a man’s hands.

The spell was a fierce, hungry indigo in Violet’s cradle. Clarence said, “What the devil are you—” and it leapt across the space between them like a rope carved from the night sky and sailor-tossed from deck to dock.

Clarence made a dismayed noise and flung up his arms to shield his face. The magic wrapped around him lovingly: binding forearm to forearm, hand to hand, then looping down to wrap around his legs. Clarence’s eyes bulged as he fell, managing to twist awkwardly and get himself onto the bed rather than the floor. He lay on his side. The spell dripped starlight and moved in gentle coils like snakes.

From time to time, the Penumbra’s magicians pretended at the more mundane sort of stage magic. Violet and Inez had spent two seasons as magician’s assistants: disappearing, reappearing, being sliced in half. Tying each other up. They’d developed this spell to look titillating on a body otherwise scantily adorned. Clarence, in his respectable brown walking-suit and tie, looked only silly.

Silly… helped. Violet released her breath.

“Take it off!” Clarence said.

“Stop whining.” This spell wasn’t tight enough to be painful, only secure.

Clarence subsided. “There’s no need for this. I know it’s not the thing to be going through your effects, Vi, but you wouldn’t show us.”

“Show you what?”

“The letter .”

Violet rubbed a hand over her eyes as if that would turn the world the right way up again.

“The letter?”

“From Lady Enid. You’ve been so darned secretive about it, there must be something .”

Violet had refused to show Aunt Caroline and Clarence the letter because it had annoyed them so much. And because it was hers . They were words meant for her.

Did this have nothing to do with the Last Contract at all?

“Why do you care? You know what it says. She left everything to me.”

“Everything? She didn’t mention anything in particular?”

“No, Clarence. There is no line in Lady Enid’s letter specifically mentioning a giant pile of gold that she wants me to hand over to you, or—wait.” Her skin prickled. “What do you mean, in particular?”

Clarence’s eyes cut sideways. “I don’t know. Any items of particular sentimental value.”

“You do know. You are talking about the Last Contract. You’re working with the people behind this conspiracy.”

Clarence had the gall to look hurt. “It’s not a conspiracy . They’re just trying to recover stolen property.”

“Is that what Chapman told you? Or are you working for that man back in England—Bastoke?”

“What? Who?” Clarence’s brow furrowed.

Violet opened and closed her mouth. She dragged a chair out and sat down. She thrust out her legs, wide as her skirts allowed, a mannish pose that Aunt Caroline detested. One of them was coming at this from the wrong angle, or Clarence was lying, and Violet was an expert in lies. She drew her fingers together idly. Clarence’s gaze followed them.

“Tell me how you got mixed up in this,” she said.

“A chap from the Assembly. One of their advisors. He came calling one day, not long before we left England, and said he’d heard about Lady Enid’s passing and—the circumstances of your inheritance, Vi.”

“What was his name?”

Another pause. Another meaningful feint towards a cradle by Violet.

“Walter Courcey.”

Edwin’s brother. The one who’d tried to hunt down Edwin and Robin.

Clarence went on, more easily now he’d decided to speak. “He said that Lady Enid had stolen a powerful magical item and hidden it somewhere, and that for the good of the Empire it needs to be returned to the Assembly. He said he was trusting me with a special job.” His face darkened at Violet’s snort. “It’s the Assembly, Violet. They work for the safety and betterment of all the magicians in Britain.”

“Bollocks they do,” said Violet. “So he trusted you to… what, exactly? Irritate me to death so that you could find this object yourself? Congratulations. You’re doing a bang-up job.”

“Stay close to you,” said Clarence, with as much enthusiasm as one would use to say clean the privies . “Perhaps even…”

“Marry me, and make my inheritance yours. Which is what Aunt Caroline wants from you as well. How very neat.”

“It didn’t need to go that far. It would be enough to be on friendlier terms with you, so that I could bring people to visit the house. Let them search it properly. But Courcey said that Lady Enid had changed this object’s appearance, so I needed to find out if she’d left any hints. If she’d told you if there was anything she particularly didn’t want you to sell.”

“And as far as you know, there’s nobody else involved in this on board the Lyric ?” Violet asked.

“Why would there be?”

Violet stared at him. She knew Clarence enough to have little faith in his intelligence or resourcefulness, and he’d never struck her as hungry for more magic than he already had. He was gullible enough to take a story of a villainous, thieving woman at face value, but his only real value to this conspiracy was his proximity to… Violet.

Whatever the knife is, it’s yours now.

This wasn’t a diversion that Violet had been tugged into by chance. This had been her fight all along—far more hers than Maud’s, in fact. No wonder she played a recurring role in Robin Blyth’s visions. She was in this up to her neck.

For a moment she entertained a vivid thought of discarding her finery and going down to third class. Becoming someone with a working-class accent and a different name. Stepping off the Lyric in Southampton and losing herself in the crowd. Not letting this touch her.

No. If she wanted to be Lady Enid’s heir—if she wanted to be Lady Enid’s revenge—then she had to be Violet Debenham, whose name was on the will. She had to be herself.

“I can’t trust you, Clarence,” she said finally.

“What does that mean?” His tone went high. He gave an experimental wriggle within the ropes. “Vi?”

Violet permitted herself one slow and evil smile, enjoyed Clarence’s resultant whimper, and cradled a silence-spell. The only one she knew was actually a finicky one for altering the loudness of a sound while maintaining a pure tone. Lady Enid had taught it to Violet, long ago in one of those wonder-stuffed visits, showing her how it could be adjusted to imbue the materials of an instrument.

It gave Violet great pleasure to use the charm on Clarence.

She left the cabin to go to Maud’s, where she negated the warding and let herself in with the key. Maud kept the truth-candle in plain view, sitting on a gold-rimmed lily-pad saucer. Violet pocketed it and left again, hurrying, struck with a niggle of worry that the rope-spell would wear off faster than she’d hoped.

She steeled herself and used a hatpin to prick Clarence’s finger for the blood—only a drop, she could manage it—and propped the lit candle awkwardly between rope coils. She negated the silence-spell but wasn’t removing the other until she had her questions answered.

Had Clarence ever heard of the Last Contract? No.

Was he aware of anyone else on board who knew anything about Lady Enid’s mysterious item? No.

Green flame on both. Violet extinguished it. She’d done some thinking, on her excursion to fetch the candle.

“Here’s what will happen, Clarence. You’re going to forget that this—oh, shush, I’m not going to use lethe-mint on you.” Even if she wiped his memory of the past few hours, he’d remember his mission from Courcey and keep bothering her about it. “You will tell Walter Courcey that I’m just as contrary and horrible as you remember, and impossible to engage in civil conversation. And that you snuck a look at the letter and it contains only Lady Enid’s hope that I use the money to live an enjoyable life. Which is true.”

Clarence glared at her. Violet smiled.

“I am never going to marry you, Clarence,” she informed him. “And I do not intend to let hordes of government magicians loose in Lady Enid’s house. But if you don’t tell Courcey that I know about his plan, then I’ll give you and Aunt Caroline a gift. Money, ” she said, in the face of continued glaring.

That made Clarence lift his head from where it lay. Then he dropped it again. He looked more worried than Violet had expected, now that she’d offered him exactly what she’d spent the past week delightedly intending to withhold.

“I don’t know if I could hide things from him, Vi. Courcey… he’s powerful.”

“And you’re a toad,” snapped Violet. “Do I have to secret-bind you?”

Clarence blanched. Violet struggled with her temper; with that part of her carved out of anger, which always wanted an excuse to lash out. At the same time, it was as if Maud were there in the room with her, laying a hand on her arm. The memory of Hawthorn choking around his own secret-bind flashed across her mind.

Damn it.

Violet’s thoughts cleared. Even if Clarence told Walter Courcey that Violet had been asking questions about the Last Contract, it was no more than Chapman and Morris already knew.

“All right,” Violet said. “Tell him everything. Tell him I’ve no idea what this bloody item is, but he and the Assembly have no right to come rummaging through my property.”

She cradled a negation and the spell fell away. Clarence’s glare returned as he climbed off the bed, rubbing at his wrists. The cleanness of his dislike was refreshing compared to Jerry’s habit of laughing at Violet’s anger and Maud’s stubborn refusal to stop liking her, no matter what. Clarence had never fallen for Violet’s stories. Clearly they were about the wrong things—about her, and not about him . He’d fallen right into the arms of a story painting him as an important agent on a secret mission.

For all that her cousin was an obnoxious parsnip of a man, Violet didn’t want him hurt. Well. Not much.

“Go away now, Clarence.”

“Do you know, Violet, you’re going to end up exactly like Lady Enid,” Clarence shot at her. “Alone with all your money, unable to tell if anyone truly likes you or is just toadying up to you because you’re rich. You probably won’t even do anything with it. Just sit on it like a dragon, feeling smug about the fact that you’ve ruined the family’s reputation.”

It landed hard on the bruise Maud had left. Violet should have fed him mint, should have branded his tongue, should have left him silenced forever. It wasn’t as though anything Clarence said was improving the world; and she very much doubted that giving him money would improve anything either, except to reduce the whining.

“How wrong you are, Clarence,” Violet said brightly. “I’ll spend it all on scandalous parties, where I invite only the most dissolute and radical guests, and we all walk around in the nude. Though perhaps I shall have a pile of gold in the corner for me to lie on. What a helpful suggestion.”

Clarence, purple-faced, had given up around the word nude . He slammed the cabin door as he left.