And now I feel obliged to actually read the file rather than Georgiana’s diary. That’s still tucked safely away in my trunk, since – oh, I need to talk to Edward about that, don’t I? Might as well do that now.

  “We should talk about the books,” I say.

  “I’m not going to like this, am I?” he replies. “But all right.”

  The study room is deserted, as is to be expected when there have been no classes and not everyone is even here. Edward judges it worth chalking some temporary wards for a private conversation here rather than going to a meeting room. He’s not sure if his permission to book the meeting rooms extends to today.

  “Right,” says Edward. “What’s the problem?”

  I was planning to be a little more gentle about this, but his directness leaves me no choice but to respond in kind. “I can’t keep it to myself.”

  “You want to… share the diaries and books? Have them published?”

  “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  “…why?”

  Ah. It looks as if I will be arguing with a brick wall after all. But this is an argument worth having. It takes me a moment to formulate a response, because it’s just obviously the right thing is not a persuasive argument to someone who doesn’t already believe that. “For history. Because it’s priceless evidence of what happened in the past, and I can’t just – hoard that knowledge for myself.”

  “You realise that you’re accusing my family of hoarding knowledge, though?”

  “…I suppose I am. Yes.” Maybe he won’t like that, but I can’t very well claim otherwise after what I just said.

  “You’d want to make the entire contents of my family library public?”

  “Not anything that has secrets relevant to the present day,” I hastily point out. “Or whatever magics you’re keeping to yourselves.”

  “Aside from those, though.”

  “Yes. If it were up to me, yes.”

  Edward stares at me for a long moment. “I was right,” he says finally. “I don’t like this.”

  “Why not?” I’m genuinely curious. “Do you not want them to be released?”

  “I… I can’t say I’ve ever given much thought to it. But a lot of the books there… they’d be fuel to the anti-Blackthorn flames.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “You mean… because it shows that your ancestors were bad people? That they did awful things?”

  He nods. “I don’t think they were all that much worse than a lot of others have been. And if they were, maybe only because they had more resources than most. But… try telling that to someone who’s already predisposed to hate my family.”

  “…yeah. If you only release parts of it – “

  “Then it looks like we’re trying to cover the other parts up. Because, you know. We are.”

  I grimace. “And just what you gave me?”

  “Then we’re hoarding everything else in our collection. We can’t win by doing this.”

  I don’t like that response, but it takes me a little while to work out why. “If by winning you mean avoiding damage to the Blackthorns’ reputation, then yes.”

  He blinks at me, as if he’s never considered an alternative. Maybe he hasn’t. “How are you defining it, then?”

  “Advancing the study of history. Making your family’s stories available to everyone, so people see that Blackthorns are actually human. And if someone’s already predisposed to hate your family, then what does it matter if they have one more excuse for that?”

  “Okay,” says Edward. “That’s fair, maybe.”

  Maybe he’s not entirely a brick wall after all.

  “Let’s say for the sake of argument we agree it’s a good idea. My dad won’t let anything be released without reading through it himself to check for sensitive information that needs to be redacted.”

  “…did he do that for the books you gave me?”

  “Yes.”

  I blink. That’s not something I would have expected him to do for my sake. But then it wasn’t for my sake at all, was it? It was just because it was what Edward wanted. I find myself appreciating it regardless. “When you next speak to him, tell him I said thank you.”

  I imagine a lot of Lord Blackthorn’s work is thankless. He probably doesn’t hear that very often.

  “I will. But – asking him to do that for the whole library just isn’t realistic.”

  “Not at once,” I agree. “But over time. And if they’re published – if enough people care about reading them – it’ll make a profit, I expect.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “My dad doesn’t want to make a profit.”

  “Then – then donate the money to the Temple. Or another charity. Whichever one your dad wants. They can’t say he’s a bad person for raising that much money for good causes, can they?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. Maybe the charity is a front for the army he’s building to support his bid for the throne, or something.”

  I laugh. “Just to be clear…”

  “As far as I know, my dad is not building an army and has no intention of claiming the throne.”

  “Good to know.”

  “I’ll tell him what you said. I can’t promise you anything more than that.”

  “I can’t ask for anything more than that,” I reply at once. Because with the way this conversation was going, I did not expect him to do that. Of course, that then means that I’ll have to have this conversation again with the senior Blackthorn. Which I suspect I will not enjoy. And that’s if he doesn’t just reject the idea out of hand.

  “Any other sensitive matters we should discuss, while we have the wards up?”

  That’s not a particularly subtle subject change, but I don’t see anything to be gained by resisting it. Most of the sensitive matters I’ve discovered over the holidays are sensitive because I don’t want Edward – and thus, likely, his father – knowing about them, so I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Unless you wanted to talk about the anomaly?”

  Edward shrugs. “Not really much to say. I’ve tried searching the family library, but… it’s large and not always well-structured and my dad won’t let me read a lot of the advanced magic books. Well, technically the agreement was that I can read them when I can break the ward preventing me from doing so, but… ward-breaking isn’t something you can teach yourself, and I’m not allowed into most of the advanced classes here either, so.”

  I shouldn’t laugh. But that is just such a Blackthorn way of doing things. “Why can’t you teach yourself ward-breaking?” I ask. I have a suspicion, and if I’m right then also an idea.

  “Well, you need wards to break. And the amount of mental trickery it takes to learn anything from breaking wards you made yourself…”

  It sounds like my suspicion is right. “But if you had someone else to learn with, though, it would be possible?”

  “Well, yes, but who am I supposed to do that with?”

  I give him a Look. I’ve got better at not comparing myself to him when it comes to magic, at accepting that he just has advantages that I never did and trying to catch up with him is an exercise in futility and suffering. But it still hurts, when he says that and I realise he still doesn’t think of me as anything close to an equal in this regard.

  “…oh. Tallulah, no disrespect intended, but – “

  I bite my tongue, hard, to stop myself saying something about that always being followed by something disrespectful.

  “Wardwork is hard. You’ve probably figured that out by now. It would take you months just to be at the level where you could reliably create wards that would be interesting to try and break. And then you’d have to be able to keep up with me for it to be any use to me.”

  “So you’re saying I’m not good enough.”

  “That’s not what I meant – “

  “I thought you of all people wouldn’t mince words to avoid telling me something I don’t want to hear.” I’m not being fair on him here, I know, and a lot of my frustration and anger doesn’t have anything to do with him. But I still say it.

  “Well, sorry for caring about you and not wanting to hurt your feelings.”

  The sarcasm is so bitter I can taste it, but it’s a serious point. If it were Elsie, or any of our other classmates (except Robin, who might actually stand a chance of keeping up with him) I think he would have just said yes there.

  It’s probably not great that I’m giving him credit for not saying things like that to me specifically. But I set that thought aside for later. I’m not so angry any more, at least. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Me neither. But… wait, no, this is one of the times I should stop talking, isn’t it?”

  And at least he learns from his mistakes.

  “If you want to try, then we can. Just promise you won’t be annoyed at me if it doesn’t work because of what I just said.”

  “Promise me that you won’t be annoyed at me if it doesn’t work because of what you just said.” Because that is a much bigger risk, the way I see it. I don’t want to have to deal with his impatience and frustration that I’m not living up to his impossible-for-us-mere-mortals standards.

  “…fair point. All right, I promise. And – don’t feel like this is something you have to do for my sake.”

  “I’ve been meaning to try and learn more wardwork anyway.” I leave out the main reason for that: wanting to have private conversations with people who aren’t Edward, that can be kept secret from him. Really, I should have had it figured out by now in preparation for the long talk I need to have with Elsie as soon as I can find her, but…

  “I’ll put together a set of reading and practical exercises for you whenever I next have the time, then. But… anyway. The anomaly. I haven’t got anywhere with it. And it looks as if Electra hasn’t either. So unless your experiences with it over the holidays have given you any ideas of where to look – “

  “Actually,” I realise, “there was this incident in the haunted woods – I don’t know if it’s relevant or not, but – “

  “…there was a what?”

  I explain the situation, and suffer through his lecture on how reckless I was to reveal that I was a magician and then venture into the woods alone. It was reckless, yes, but I’m not sure I could have done anything differently. Not without being the sort of person who would let a little boy keep being afraid and upset when she had the power to help him.

  He hasn’t heard of the shadow-creature I encountered, and doesn’t know all that much about spirit-forests. Not having any intention to venture into one, he hasn’t seen the point in doing any extensive research until now. But next time he’s near the family library he’ll see what he can find out.

  Now we’re really done with sensitive conversations, and Edward clears away the ward-chalk with a spell. “Shall we actually do what we came here for?” he asks wryly.

  “If you insist,” I laugh. Seriously, though, I don’t want to look at the file Electra made. I don’t want to have to deal with finding out how well-connected a murderer is and how many problems that is going to cause. But hiding from it isn’t going to solve anything.

  I sit down and unfurl the parchment.

  It’s as bad as I expected. Actually, probably worse. The killer’s name is Martin Hampton. That also happens to be the surname of the former Prime Minister who witnessed John’s active episode. I suspect immediately that that is not a coincidence, and am grimly unsurprised to find I’m right. Martin Hampton is the nephew of the person in question.

  Part of me wonders if that maybe helps us. If we can frame it as the blatant corruption and nepotism it was. But then it becomes a political scandal, Electra warns without outright saying it. An attack on the reputation of a respected elder statesman of politics (Martin’s uncle Ernest still sits in Parliament, though by now he’s old enough to have retired from active political work) by Lord Blackthorn’s personal lawyers and a girl who’s known to be best friends with his son.

  I hate politics sometimes. The way every action has a thousand layers of meaning and perception that don’t even relate to what you’re trying to do.

  I also decide I need to research Ernest Hampton. Find out exactly what I’m getting myself into by making an enemy of him.

  Because that’s what I’m going to do.