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  Ollivan spread a map of London over his desk as Cassia removed her earring and held it in a fist before her.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “It’s a token,” said Cassia of the earring.

  “Very good. If you’re going to waste both our time, at least do it with commitment,” Ollivan said sarcastically. He rifled through the drawers until he found a stub of sealing wax and tossed it to her. “This spell is going to cast a net for anything related to the doll, including you. Something of yours in the mix is only going to amplify your influence. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Yes,” muttered Cassia. She was trying to fasten her earring back in place but her fingers were trembling. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Intrigued, Ollivan stood back and let his sister perform the spell. She took her time, staring unblinking at the map for several seconds before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. One would think she was preparing to step on stage and perform an aria.

  Cassia dropped the sealing wax onto the map. It landed with a dull thud right below her hand.

  “It didn’t work,” she said.

  “Yes, I can see that.” He had felt it too. Or rather, hadn’t. No spark of magic had occurred as Cassia dropped the token. “What intention did you use?”

  “Find. I know how to perform a locating spell, Ollivan.”

  “And were you thinking of—”

  “Of course I was thinking of Violet!”

  Ollivan raised his hands in surrender, but he couldn’t stop his smile. “So this is the problem I keep hearing about.”

  “Hearing from whom?” said Cassia, her eyes wide.

  “The Successors, mainly. Some of them were talking about your initiation attempt the night I came back.”

  She sank into a chair like the air had gone out of her. “Oh.”

  He could see what this conversation was doing to her, but his curiosity got the better of him. “Is that how it always goes wrong? Your magic doesn’t pick up the intention?”

  Cassia opened her mouth to respond – no doubt with a barb – but then halted. “What do you mean?”

  Ollivan’s eyebrows shot up. “Someone taught you how to use your magic over in the Changeling quarter, didn’t they?”

  Her mouth was a hard line. She looked down at her hands before speaking. “I think it might have been a poor substitute for actually knowing other Sorcerers. The others always seemed to learn the most about Changeling magic by playing together. I didn’t have that.”

  She fired the last at him like an accusation. Ollivan chose to ignore it. He’d been seven years old when his sister was fostered in Camden; it was clearly not his fault that she grew up there.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing you missed about play that you couldn’t learn yourself through practice,” he said. He meant it as a comfort, but Cassia seemed to be immune to any attempt at kindness from him. Her mouth dropped open like he’d insulted her.

  “If that’s the case, then something dire is wrong with me.”

  “Well.” It wasn’t an invitation to comment, but stars help him, he couldn’t stop himself. “I can tell you right now that it’s psychological.”

  “Psychological?” Cassia said, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “It’s certainly not the strength of your magic, is it?” He laughed. “Stars, you’d have to be supremely untalented to not produce a single spark performing a locating spell.”

  She was on her feet so suddenly that Ollivan lurched back. She snatched his wrist and firmly deposited the nub of wax into his palm. “Just do the damn spell.”

  “I didn’t mean—” he began, but she shot him a look that told him not to. He sighed in indignation. “Fine, but I want my objection to this farce noted for the record.”

  “Don’t fret, Ollivan. I assume you object to everything until told otherwise.”

  Ollivan was quick-witted, so it was rare he had to ponder whether he was being insulted. It told him to tread more carefully around his sister. Perhaps they had more in common than he’d first thought.

  He fixed the appearance of the doll in his mind, summoned his magic, and tossed the wax at the map. It tumbled and spun for a moment, before being pulled as if by a magnet to a street pressed against the south bank in the Sorcerer quarter. Ollivan bent over the map to look closer. Cassia came to stand by his shoulder and gasped.

  “It must have worked. Why else would it lead us to such an unrelated location?”

  “Why indeed?” Ollivan murmured.

  He knew this street. Not just the street but the very spot, he believed. How it was connected to the Guysman, or even if it was connected, he couldn’t say. “This is my very objection: we don’t know. Jasper stole that doll from a child we know nothing about. Perhaps they lived there. Or perhaps the relative who handed it down to them did, since the thing is so old. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to gallivant about because location magic told me to.”

  Cassia was full of arguments, but at that moment Sybella appeared across the Sanctuary and breezed towards them. She looked as vibrant and healthy as ever, and Ollivan sent up a silent thanks that the Guysman appeared to have done her no lasting harm.

  “There were enforcers here,” she said breathlessly, and Ollivan realised the flush of vitality in her cheeks was from alarm. His gut answered by twisting in on itself. “A Psi man was found unconscious in the square last night. Ollivan, his magic is gone.”

  “A Psi?” said Ollivan. He could hear the edge of hysteria in his voice. “That can’t be.”

  “If Violet can drain Psi as well as Sorcerers, then…” Cassia looked at Ollivan, her face paling. “Anyone in the city could be in danger. And no one but a Sorcerer could be to blame for magic like this.”

  Ollivan ran a hand over his face. “Jupitus will wet himself with glee if he can pin an inter-faction incident on me. Who is this man? We should try and talk to him.”

  Sybella shook her head. “I don’t know. Two enforcers came to the door and asked me to provide a list of everyone who was here last night. I tried to get more information from them by insisting it was for the safety of the Society members but they wouldn’t tell me a thing. They were unusually circumspect. What do you think it means?”

  Ollivan looked again at the map spread over his desk. “What’s the date today?”

  “It’s the third of October,” said Cassia. “What does that have to do with any of this?”

  “Everything,” said Ollivan, and then wished he hadn’t. The date, the Psi man in Drusella Square, and the result of the locating spell aligned in a way he couldn’t share with either of them. “I think I know how I can find out more. Tonight.”

  There was a pause. He watched Cassia slowly realise it was all he had to say. She made a noise of indignation.

  “You have to tell me,” she said, and Ollivan fought not to laugh at the petulance in her tone. She transformed before his eyes into a four-year-old, demanding things of him in exactly the same way. On the heels of his humour came a stabbing of something sadder.

  “It’s better if you don’t know. But I’ll report back what I learn right away.”

  “No! You can’t pull me into this and then continue to keep secrets.”

  “This is dangerous, Cassia. Trust me—”

  “If I haven’t already made it perfectly clear, I don’t trust you. But whatever stars-damned awful decisions you make from here onwards affect me too. I’m coming with you.”

  He was surprised by her courage, and impressed, but it made no difference. She didn’t understand what she was asking. Better that she continue to believe him selfish and untrustworthy, so he flashed her a grin he knew would make her want to kill him and gave a small salute.

  “You can try,” he said, and then he was gone.

  20

  Cassia was going to kill him.

  Ollivan would clearly disagree, but she had thought being in this mess together meant actually sharing what they knew. If something happened to Ollivan during whatever dangerous thing he planned to do that night, how would they ever stop Violet? He was the only one who knew the enchantment well enough to unravel it.

  “I won’t let him do this.” She looked up at Sybella, who was wearing an expression of greedy curiosity. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just learning what it must be like to have him as a brother. Thank the stars my sister isn’t yet a year old. I would hate to have to loathe her as you must Ollivan.” She gave a small sigh. “Well. I have one thousand things to do and must be getting on.”

  “What? But we have to… stop him. Or help him.”

  Sybella raised an eyebrow. “Well, which is it?”

  Cassia didn’t know. She had expected stopping Violet to take her beyond the bounds of her respectable life, and maybe that meant letting Ollivan be Ollivan. But not if it got him killed and left Cassia holding the gun. She needed to get to where he was going tonight, and she needed help.

  But Sybella was shaking her head before she could speak. “I helped him revoke his banishment,” she said. “I didn’t know what a truly terrible idea that would turn out to be. But it’s done, and I helped, and if any of it gets out because his attack doll has run rampant across the Heart, I shall be very upset. That’s why I came up here to tell you both about the Psi man, but now I’m done. I won’t be involved any more.”

  She swept towards the door, her curls bouncing and her skirt swaying with her steps. Sybella moved as if she had never stumbled; as if the only way she could end up on the floor was if it were to come to her. Cassia envied her confidence.

  “What would you have done?” she called before Sybella reached the door. “When you were together?”

  “What would I have done?” She gave a laugh. “It’s not a woman’s job
to keep a man out of trouble if that’s where he chooses to be.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” Cassia tried to channel the other girl as she crossed the space between them. “Didn’t you used to love him? Weren’t you ever afraid he would push my grandfather too far? Or get hurt?”

  Sybella’s boldness faltered. “It wasn’t like that,” she said, her voice like a damning confession. “Back when the escapades were harmless, we were in them together. We used to sit outside cafés and cast glamours to taunt passers-by. Gold coins on the street. Bird droppings on their shoulders.” Cassia could almost see the reflection of memories flicker across her eyes. “I knew when he started spending time with Jasper, but he was always the same old Ollivan around me. We didn’t talk about magic.”

  “Never? Magic is all he cares about.”

  “He cared about me,” she retorted, voice breaking, and Cassia sensed her opening.

  “Then help me. Please.”

  Sybella laughed, brushing away her sadness like it was a dusting of snow. “Oh no. You shan’t draw me into this by playing on my emotions. In two years, I’ll be President of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers. In ten, I’ll be High Sorcerer. One doesn’t forge a career like that by abandoning the path to run headlong into trouble. I suggest that you think on the path you wish to forge also.” She tilted her head to one side and squinted at Cassia. “You know, I’ve been looking for a young woman to mentor. Someone hoping to get into the Society and make the most of being a Successor. When I’m President I’ll need to appoint a Secretary, after all, and I’d like it to be a woman, and someone who shares my values. I was imagining someone younger, but what would you say if I offered my mentorship to you?”

  A mentor. Someone to help her get into the Society, not just tutor her for her mother’s coin and her brother’s secrets. Someone to usher her towards who she wanted to be and how she wanted to be seen. There was nothing Cassia wanted more. With the Secretary herself as a patron, she might finally win the good opinion of her peers. It would be her angle, as Lev Mallory had said. The thing they can talk about instead.

  “I would need my future Secretary to be dependable, sensible,” Sybella went on, drawing the words out meaningfully. “Someone the powers in the Heart would approve of. Someone who would reflect well on me.”

  So this was the choice: follow Sybella, or follow Ollivan. Was it too late to leave Ollivan to clean up his own mess? Perhaps not, but stepping away from their quest to stop Violet wouldn’t be enough to absolve her. She would also need to turn Ollivan in.

  She will continue to toe the line…

  Cassia deflated. Sybella meant well. She was trying to incentivise her to extricate herself from this. She had identified Cassia’s weakness and used it to manipulate her, if only for her own good. Sybella was a true politician, through and through.

  “Thank you, Sybella,” said Cassia, making sure Sybella knew she meant it. “But for better or worse, I have to find my brother.”

  Sybella shot her a small smile and turned again to leave. “At least I can say I tried.” She had one hand on the doorhandle when she spoke again. “But if you’re sure you’re intent on trouble, I know the boys to help you.”

  21

  Ollivan didn’t go far. He had long known one of the best places to go undiscovered was the Wending Place library. Despite the library being a cornerstone of the Society’s ethos, most members would sooner die of boredom than step foot inside. For most of the day, Ollivan ensconced himself blissfully in a corner from which he could see the door, with a volume on meteorological manipulation and a platter of sandwiches from the kitchen, .

  In the darkest hour of the night, he went to the river.

  There was a bite to the air, and the sky was perfectly clear. That was good fortune, astrologers said, as the stars turned fate in devious ways when they weren’t being watched. But tonight, the ripples and whorls of the Thames caught flecks of moonlight, scattering them in an abstract pattern that illuminated the water from the north bank to the south.

  Except in one spot. In the middle of the river, a patch of moonless, black water, thirty feet wide, was moving at a steady pace upriver, away from the docks and further into Sorcerer territory.

  The glamour in use on the river had this single flaw; Ollivan had watched it many times to confirm it for himself. The ships enchanted with it made no sound and caused no disturbance to the current, nor did they catch the light like the water around them – but they did block it. Whoever wrought the disguise was either unaware of this flaw in their work or unable to correct it. Ollivan suspected the latter – water could be tricky – but so far it hadn’t mattered. The ships docked only in the dead of night. Besides, there was enough magic operating in London at any given moment that observers were not in the habit of interrogating unexplained phenomena unless they had a reason to be suspicious.

  Perhaps Ollivan alone knew what a perilous night it was to be on this stretch of bank. Be spotted, and he would be begging to have everything he had accomplished undone. He would be lucky not to be tortured before they killed him. That Cassia had demanded to go with him made him shudder. He held no guilt over leaving her behind without an explanation; his sister didn’t know what she was asking.

  He stood at the corner of a warehouse, where the hulking building threw a heavy swath of black into the moon’s path, and kept his bad right ear to the wall. Two hundred yards down the lane was the spot that stars-damned locating spell had identified. Between them, a woman leaned against a lamppost and pretended to pick at her nails. Despite the chill of the evening, she didn’t wear a coat, which was probably in an attempt to make her look like a working girl. It was where the resemblance ended, but if the brush of magic against Ollivan’s senses was anything to go by, she had the aid of a distraction glamour. He doubted any passers-by would have time to doubt her line of work before they met with a pressing need to think about something else.

  Such magic would not work on Ollivan, who had no trouble noticing the ship docked in the tiny quay behind her, for he already knew it was there. The glamour that had made the vessel nearly invisible on the river had been lifted to allow the smugglers to unload their cargo onto waiting carts, but the tiny mooring – a space only wide and long enough for one ship, and best navigated by Psi using magic to steer it in – was hidden between two buildings.

  Buildings owned by Jupitus Fisk.

  Doing business with the smugglers were half a dozen of his grandfather’s most trusted enforcers, all of whom would recognise him. And if Jupitus ever learned that Ollivan knew of his black-market dealings, nothing he did to absolve or damn himself would make a jot of difference to his fate.

  The Principles decreed a great many things that shaped life in the broken city of London, from what a person must do to live or work beyond their own quarter, to who was responsible for them if they married or bore children with someone of another magic. But none of the Principles carried as much weight or as great a penalty as those relating to trade.

  The agreement decreed that all imports must come through the docks – in the Oracle territory of the Docklands – and be declared at the Trade House. And the High Sorcerer had probably been flouting that rule since the day he helped write it. The ships crept up the Thames and delivered poisons, artefacts and – Ollivan feared – slaves to his grandfather. It was an enterprise that had made Jupitus – already publicly one of the wealthiest people in the city – a lot richer than anyone knew. And one that would see the destruction of his empire if it came to light.

  But this was where Ollivan might find his only clue about the whereabouts of his Guysman. He would rather be dead than suffer the consequences of failing to stop what he had started. As for the torture he would most certainly suffer until his grandfather could be sure he had told no one else – Ollivan chose to simply not think about it. It was how he achieved most ill-advised things, and it was yet to fail him.

  The deal taking place down the lane would soon be over; the militia and smugglers were going about their work with practised efficiency and a visible dose of nerves. But he needed a more secure place to hide until then, and he knew of one. He had long ago discovered that the buildings disguising the little quay were façades; empty shells that served no purpose other than to hide the mooring between them. He transported himself into the nearest one, his arrival displacing a pallet leaning against the wall. Breath tight in his chest, he caught it before it hit the ground, but couldn’t prevent the deafening groan of the floorboard as he did so. He froze at the noise, eyes peering out from the dark at the people on the wharf.