Chapter 29

C HAPTER 29

Cordelia worked harder in the next seven days than she could ever remember working in her life. Her eyes ached from focusing and her mind ached from trying to sort through so much information. Scrubbing the floors and peeling potatoes back home seemed like a fond dream by comparison.

Willard had worked a minor miracle sorting the books. They had discarded everything written in a language that no one could read—"For," as Imogene said, "even if it lays out all the solutions in plain text, none of us would be able to tell"—and set aside many books that seemed highly unlikely to be useful.

"If it turns out that the secret was hidden in A Brief Treatise on the History of Potatoes, I shall be very cross," Hester said.

"You may blame me," Willard told her, "and I shall retire and take up potato farming to make up for it."

Nevertheless, this still left a daunting pile of texts before them, many of which were densely written or printed in the old black-letter style that seemed to swim on the page in front of Cordelia's eyes.

Worse than the eyestrain was the fear that she would miss something vital. She would often find herself halfway down a page with no memory of what she had just read, and would be forced to start again. So far it had only ever been about crop rotation or pigeon keeping or artesian wells, but she dreaded the possibility that she might mindlessly turn the page on a footnote that would be the solution to their problems.

There was this much to be grateful for, though: she was not afraid. Her mother was far away, and would be for many days. She no longer cared if she grabbed the wrong fork at dinner, because everyone was eating dinner on a tray in the library with a book in their hand. She did not have time to feel guilty about Ellen's father, and she did not worry that Imogene or Hester would hate her, because all of them were tired and alternated between snappish and giddy with exhaustion and one chased the other, usually with a mumbled "Sorry. You know," and everyone forgave everyone else because they were too busy to do otherwise.

Once, briefly, she wondered how Penelope's ghost was faring. She was skimming a book of old plays, full of magic and high tragedy, and a ghost appeared to denounce her murderer. I hope she's okay, Cordelia thought, turning the page. I hope she found someone else to talk to. And then the act ended and a pair of comedic nursemaids came on stage and Cordelia skimmed fifty more pages and everyone died but not of sorcery, so she shut the book and stopped thinking about it.

"I think I've got something here," said Imogene, on the afternoon of the eighth day. "Maybe?" She hefted the tome in her hands, the sunlight streaming through the windows behind her and outlining her in golden light, like a saint's halo. The others set down their books and came to see.

" On Reagents, Their Uses, and the Alchemical Work That May Be Done with Them, " Richard read from the binding.

"It's not going to outsell the latest serial novel," Imogene said, "but it has a ritual in it for ‘the breaking of sorcerous powers.'" She looked at them over the top of her glasses. "And it uses water, wine, and salt."

"How can we be sure it'll work on Evangeline?" Hester asked, after they had all read the ritual in the book several times. "If it's just another version of what they do in church, that won't help."

"It's a lot more involved than church," Richard said. "We have to draw sigils. And a circle inside a triangle. It says it takes four people. One to use each reagent, and one to chant the words."

"Not to mention how we're going to get her to just stand in a circle while we chant at her," Imogene added. "I don't like the woman, but I don't think she's daft enough to just stand there." She scowled down at the book. "But if we could, this sounds like it might work. It doesn't just break a spell, it says it ‘renders the gold of sorcery into base human metal.'"

Cordelia leaned over Imogene's shoulder and read the paragraph underneath, which told of how the ritual had been used on "one who delighted in sorcerous wickedness" and how "forever after, he had not the smallest gift of such." "That sounds good," she said. "If she couldn't do magic anymore, that would be enough, wouldn't it?"

The four adults exchanged looks, which Cordelia could see, even if she couldn't quite decipher them. She straightened, annoyed. "You can tell me. There's not much p-point in sheltering me now."

"You're right," said Hester. "In answer to your question—well, she could probably still get up to a lot of mischief."

"But it would be ordinary mischief," said Imogene, her eyes sparkling with interest, "and we've more than enough experience with that. It's only the magic that makes her impossible." She tapped the book. "In fact, once she's no longer a sorcerer, we could probably just kill her."

" Imogene, " said Hester.

"What? You can't tell me that it wouldn't be a great deal easier all around."

Evermore gave Cordelia an apologetic glance and murmured something about not allowing that, which Cordelia found both sweet and largely misguided. "My m-mother's a monster," she said. She rubbed her face. Guilt tried to raise its head— how dare you even consider such a thing!? —and she stomped it down hard. "If there was some way to… to put her somewhere where she could never hurt anyone ever again, then I would. But I don't think there is, is there?" She didn't wait for an answer. "We can't just let her keep going, just because we don't want to kill her. It's not fair to anyone else she might hurt."

"We need to break the magic first," said Hester. "If she's gotten her hooks into my brother somehow, I want that spell broken. ‘Great chaos is unleashed when a sorcerer dies,' according to the book I found, and you can't tell me that a woman like that wouldn't have put all manner of things in place to make life unpleasant after she died."

Cordelia winced. What had her mother said once, so many weeks ago? Even if they did decide to burn me as a witch, they'd get no joy of it. "I think you're probably right," she said faintly.

"We could probably drug her," said Imogene practically, "and get her into the circle that way. Enough laudanum and she won't care if we drag her into the lawn, the parlor, or the back of beyond. But we still need to test it first."

"I know how we can test it," said Cordelia. "We'll do it on Falada."

Falada still walked the grounds in the evening, just as he had at Chatham House. The difference now was that he never did so alone. The groundskeepers did not whisper about how uncanny he was, because it was hard to look uncanny when you were surrounded by a ring of agitated geese.

They found a window that evening, and watched him glide by, accompanied by his waddling bodyguards. Sometimes he would break into a run to get away from them and the geese would scatter, but they would all immediately take to the air and come down beside him and form a ring again.

Cordelia had to admit that they were not particularly graceful birds, and standing beside Falada's unearthly beauty made them seem even more ungainly. Yet they were fearless and apparently tireless, never allowing Falada to roam the grounds without being watched.

"I take back what I said about the short-legged one," said Hester, gazing out the window into the twilight. "I still wouldn't breed him, but he's remarkably good at corralling a horse."

"We have to draw the circle around that particular horse," said Imogene, looking down at the book. "It's very clear. You can't just lead him into it, you have to actually draw it around him or it won't contain him. It suggests a bag of white chalk. Then the triangle around it, with each of us at one point. Then we invoke the water, wine, and salt—"

"Invoke it how ?" asked Hester. "I've never invoked anything in my life."

Cordelia remembered the ghost of Penelope saying that the wine in the church had rung when it was drunk, and that the water had done the same when she drank it. "I think you just have to drink it," she said cautiously. "That seems to be enough? Maybe?"

Please don't ask how I know that, because this is complicated enough already.

"Drinking it seems to be enough in a church wedding," Evermore said. "Although perhaps the priest blesses it beforehand. I'm not sure."

Imogene frowned down at the book. "‘Let he who invokes the reagent be he who is best suited to the task, water to water, wine to wine, salt to salt. Let him reflect on the reagent that is his: the salt that comes of earth, the water that is borne on the swift stream, and the wine that is made of growing grapes and the art of man. For salt bars the entry of the shadowed ones; water fills the space it is given and washes away that which is impure; and wine binds the space between the seen and unseen, even as it binds the bargains struck between men.'"

"And we're supposed to do this while a horse is tied up in front of us?" Richard asked.

"I know that I reflect best on reagents when a thousand-pound animal is screaming at me," said Hester.

Imogene shrugged. "Look, if it fails, all that happens is that we look silly and Richard's grooms think we've joined a cult."

"You know they used to burn people at the stake for that," said Richard mildly.

"So you have to buy the Archbishop a new church somewhere. You can afford it."

"That's not all that happens," said Cordelia.

"Eh?"

"Falada's her familiar. Even if it fails, she'll know that we did something." She stared out the window, where the bone-white form stood on the grass, surrounded by a ring of watchful geese. Whenever the horse took a step, the ring shifted to keep him in the center. It would have been hilarious if she had not known what Falada truly was.

"How does he communicate with her?" asked Richard. "Do you know? Does she have to come here?"

Cordelia tried to remember every detail of her mother appearing when she had tried to run away on the horse's back. "I don't know. I tried to get away once, and he must have contacted her somehow, because she came after me as soon as I did. But I don't know how much she knows when they're apart." She remembered all the questions she'd asked Ellen. Her mother had never seemed to pick up any of them. Perhaps she had to choose to listen in, or perhaps Falada simply hadn't told her.

"In that case…" Hester clasped her hands together. "We'll try the spell, and if it doesn't work, we'll simply have to kill the beast."

Cordelia stared at her. "Kill him?"

"You object?"

"No. Oh, no!" The rage and horror that she had kept under her breastbone since she had learned that Falada was not her friend roared suddenly to life. Kill him. Yes. Yes.

"Can you kill a familiar?" asked Richard doubtfully. "Do they die like normal animals?"

Imogene moved to the windowsill, looking down. "Well," she said, "I don't know very much about magic, but I do know that cutting their heads off kills just about anything."