Chapter 12

MARCH 18TH

A nnice hadn't meant to run into Griffin and his assistant over lunch. She hadn't meant to be in the pub for lunch at all, actually. But she'd discovered the sort of mould through her last bit of bread that wasn't at all good to eat or easy to cut around. Spending a bit of coin wasn't impossible, and she knew what the cheapest filling things on the White Horse & Griffin's menu were, always. Fish, at the moment.

She'd wondered if she could get in and out without them noticing, but in the end, something pulled her over to their table. Likely her desire to have a bit more coin in her pocket. Another consultation, that would be something. She told herself that was most of it.

"Pardon." She cleared her throat. "Sirs. I had a thought about the question you'd asked about Grandad's work. Perhaps you might come round when it's convenient?"

"This afternoon?" Griffin gestured at his half-eaten meal. "After you've had time for your own luncheon?"

She hadn't meant that early at all, but there was no help for it. She'd have to follow through with talking to them now. She'd been the one to make the offer. Better to do it sooner than later, at least that way it wouldn't be hanging over her. "An hour. Would that be all right?"

"An hour. Excellent." Griffin smiled at her. "Until then." He didn't add the ‘Mistress' on the end, not out among folks without magic, but she heard what he didn't say. All the bits of respect and consideration. And she thought he seemed pleased about it, more than just whatever progress it meant on his project. That didn't seem right, but she couldn't get the idea out of her head. It wasn't anything he'd done. It was more what he hadn't done.

He had been nothing like that man looking for some poor nursemaid to marry his cousin. It hadn't been like the other handful of not quite offers she'd got. She wasn't any sort of beauty. Her hands were rough and scarred in places from not just the jet carving and a knife or stylus slipping, but the ordinary cleaning when magic wasn't on offer.

She went and picked up her order, taking it back to the shop and the backroom, perching at the little table by the stairs to eat. She went back and forth, throughout the meal, about whether to tell him - them - about that big odd stone, with the carvings. They'd had a proper education at Schola, they must have, they'd know more about that sort of thing. But what if the stone was something bad or wrong, the sort of thing people like her weren't meant to have? They were also tied right into the Courts, surely they had to report wrong things.

Maybe she'd have to decide in the moment. The last fifteen minutes before she expected them, she spent tidying up the shop. She set up space for Griffin's chair. Then she pulled out more comfortable chairs from the kitchen for herself and Charlus. She added a table to put things on, and she selected a handful of pieces that showed the skills she might want to talk about.

They were indeed precisely on time. That was taking some getting used to. She was used to people turning up on a schedule that made sense with the sun or the tides. Or how many people they'd stopped to chat with on their way through town. That sort of precision to a clock was unnatural. They immediately went round to the back, without needing to be told, and she let them in. "Good afternoon. Come through? Would you like tea? I can put the kettle on."

"Please, if you think the conversation will be a little. And do put Charlus to work carrying things, if you like. He won't mind." Griffin was smiling, looking comfortable even though it must be an odd situation for him too, an unfamiliar one.

Charlus grinned, looking much younger suddenly. "I don't mind, and I almost never drop anything." That had the sound of being a joke of some kind.

"If you'd like. Let me put the kettle on and set out the tray, and show you where that is." There was a little fussing with that, but Charlus stood well back and didn't get in her way. She got the kettle on and set out the tray. It wasn't as if there was a lot of choice in teas on offer.

By the time they came back to the main room of the shop, Griffin had a notebook out. It was balanced on a little sliding table that somehow fitted onto the chair itself, at a bit of an angle. He had a pen out and resting on the open page. "Quite handy for notes," he said, as if she hadn't been staring at it rudely.

Annice coughed, then sat down, perching on the chair. "I looked through some of Grandad's notes. Can you tell me a little more about, um? What's been done with the space since 1900?"

Griffin pulled over a small notebook, but Annice rather thought he didn't actually need whatever notes there were. "The last time the stone was reset was late 1902 - the work was done in October and November, as Saturn went direct again. I was in my apprenticeship, but not very involved with that specific process. I was still focused on getting chartered as a solicitor."

He tapped his fingers on the notebook, as if checking an aspect. "Historically, we aim for refurbishment roughly every seven and a half years, but we adjust based on whether we can get a transit or alignment that's reasonable. That's a magical process, primarily, though sometimes individual stones are replaced. Only, they had to do a short-term fix in 1919. I wasn't back in the Courts yet, but I have notes from it. Then again in 1921, and in 1924, but the charms feel like they're fading fast. And the next time we renew the stones would normally be 1929."

Annice frowned at that. "And you don't think you can wait that long."

"No." Griffin's voice was sharp for a moment, then he swallowed. "I do beg your pardon. I have had to argue that point with a number of colleagues. We might patch something together, but I'm concerned about the damage to the alternate room, and at the impact of degrading charmwork in the Courts as a whole. You might think of them, perhaps, as beads in a necklace. They are all distinct, but part of a larger whole, and if any of them is cracked or shattering, the others might also be affected. Certainly, the piece might become unwearable without mending." Then he looked up, suddenly earnest. "That's likely a bad analogy. I don't know your line of work nearly well enough."

That he'd said anything of the kind startled her, rather a lot. She swallowed again, then was saved momentarily by the kettle singing. Charlus got up without more than a murmured comment and went off to put the tray together. It left Annice to look down at her hands until he'd set things out. He poured, too, which felt very odd, but she certainly didn't feel trustworthy with hot liquids right now. Charlus left the cup where she could reach it.

It meant Annice had to say something. "So the last time the stone was reset, replaced, that was 1902. That wasn't Grandad. He talks about doing it in 1875. And I can tell, besides the date, he talks about being away from Yorkshire during the mine disaster, he knew people who knew people there." When both men looked blank, she added, "The Swaith Maine Colliery explosion. December 6th, 1875. A hundred and forty-three men and boys died." Whitby people weren't miners, mostly, but plenty of them had family who were from other parts of Yorkshire.

"I'm so sorry." Griffin seemed like he almost meant it, and that didn't make sense either. He paused, taking a sip from the teacup by his free hand, then cleared his throat. "So someone else did it in 1902. Do you think your grandfather would have known, if it were someone in Whitby?"

"Probably. Do you have any notes about it?" Annice wasn't sure what records they kept.

"The name's blurred on the copies we could find, which is not how things ought to be done. I have one of the clerks looking back in the records - payments, that sort of thing, that might have more information. Can you explain the process a bit more? Most of our notes just say the jet is set in places in the floor and the walls - I can show you those sketches - but not the details."

"Grandad talks about the stones needing to be prepared a certain way. There's some amount of markings, carving, to help with alignment, but then, yes, set into something. In an ideal world, I suppose you'd have an entire line of it, making a channel all around the room, whatever the proper shape is? But you can do it with single pieces, and link them together. I know some of that. It goes into certain kinds of jewellery, pieces that have an affinity."

"Huh." Griffin considered that. "So you'd need, do I have this right, not just pieces that could be the right size and shape, but that also, I don't know, got along with each other?"

"You don't think that's nonsense?" It burst out of her before she could think better of it, or of her tone.

He shrugged. "I've certainly come across odder things. Modes of talking about it. And it makes sense, honestly, with some of what I know. But I'm not a Materia specialist, or a Sympathetic magic specialist, and this is a bit of both, isn't it? The materials and how they relate. And how they relate to that space and location and all that. So add in a Locational magic specialist to the pot."

It should have sounded flippant, somehow, but it didn't. It sounded like he meant it. "Can I ask, um, what you do? Not your title." Which still didn't make sense, and which certainly hadn't been explained.

Something about the question made him smile a little, leaning back in his chair. "I'm a solicitor, as I said, which means I'm qualified to work with clients in all sorts of legal ways, bar representing them in court. Which I wouldn't do anyway, because maintaining the court is my job. My training is in Incantation, primarily. That's fairly common for people in our line of work. Schola, then a long apprenticeship, ours runs six or seven years on average. We train as a solicitor first, then in the judicial magics. Charlus has been doing the second part for going on a year now." Charlus nodded once.

"Oh." Annice looked down for a long moment. "That's nothing like what I know."

Griffin was looking at her, his head slightly tilted. It made her a little uncomfortable, like he was seeing things in her she wasn't sure about. But he was also paying attention in a way no one had since Grandad died, even her cousins and aunt and uncles. Then, he said as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "Would this be an easier conversation if Charlus weren't here? Two on one seems unfair."

Annice had been brought up with old-fashioned manners and a certain dubiousness about unrelated men and women being alone in the same room. But this was, in fact, a new world, the tail end of a vastly different decade. And while she didn't understand Griffin, she was almost certain she had nothing to fear from him, not exactly. Almost. Finally, slowly, she nodded.

"Charlus, would you mind heading back to the cottage, then? I'll write in the journal if I need a hand getting back, but I should be able to manage if Annice will hold the gate for me."

Charlus was immediately standing up, unbothered by the request. "Sir, of course. Later. Thank you for your hospitality and information, Mistress." Having him be so polite almost made everything worse. He set his teacup back on the tray for tidiness, and then he was out the door, closing it behind him and leaving her alone with Griffin.