As Peter crossedinto the brewing room, Beatrix turned, brow furrowed. “Everything OK?” he asked, and she nodded. But after safeguarding the room, she said, “I think I’d better recast the tripwire. The … twang, for lack of a better word, wasn’t as strong as usual when you walked in.”
He watched her do it, feeling an irrational but no less keen regret that he had never—would never—cast the spell himself. “What does it feel like?” he asked, the words slipping out before he could consider whether he would be better off not going there.
“It sends a vibration down the casting arm. Very… distinct.”
He thought about that for a moment as he set up for brewing, wallowing in what he had lost. Then the fresh ginger slipped from his fingers as sudden, blinding inspiration hit.
He went dashing for paper and a pen.
“Peter?”
“Hang on,” he said, scribbling like mad. Three incantations, ten, thirteen, variations on a theme. He handed her the paper. “Cast these spells while holding this.”
He dug in an inner pocket and pulled out his remaining payload stone.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Do you think—is it really possible to modify the tripwire for an object? For … this object specifically?”
“Let’s find out.”
None of those thirteen potential spells worked. But the fifty-ninth one, which popped into his head seventy-two hours later, after a day of brewing followed by an evening of march-related scut work—thatone did the trick.
“Peter!” Beatrix stared first at the payload stone and then at him.“Peter?—”
She leapt into his arms. “You did it, you did it, youdidit!”
He enjoyed roughly ten seconds of white-hot happiness before it faded into the reality of what he’d actually accomplished. “It’s just a first step,” he reminded her.
She nodded. She had understood from the start that it did little good if the spell created a tripwire that would be set off only in the event it had been cast on the specific payload stone passing through. They needed a spell that, cast on one such stone, would also be set off by any other like it.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Key it to the rune?”
The alabaster payload stones had anearrune inscribed on them—the sign of the grave, of annihilation. He’d spent two months working on spells designed to key toear, all failures. There seemed no way to get a foothold on a rune, no way for a spell to sense it and ping back a warning. But he had two-and-a-half more books on runes to get through, and more coming on special order. If a tripwire spell could go off for an object, why not a symbol? It was possible, wasn’t it, that the solution was in their grasp?
“Yes,” he said, answering her question and his. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
Her grin overflowed with optimism. “You can do it. Iknowit.”
At long last, he believed it.
“But now we’d better go to bed,” she added apologetically. “It’s past eleven, and tomorrow …”
Tomorrow was the day before the march. They were on the hook to spend all of it in Washington with a small army of League volunteers, getting ready.
He held back a sigh. “Is it a moral failing that I’m dreading this?”
She winced, then smiled. “I hope not, because I’m dreading it, too.”
That speech—they’d dutifully practiced it every day, but it felt flat, perhaps because they simply weren’t and would never be up to Lydia’s caliber. And so much else could go wrong: Rain, high temperatures, too few people showing up, too many people showing up and clogging the toilets…
He brushed his teeth and tried to concentrate on one considerable upside. Magiocracy meddling was highly unlikely. In contrast with the League’s conference last fall, when one thing after another fell apart because wizards pulled strings, the glare of national attention was on them. Just to be absolutely safe, every contract from a vendor for the march was kept in a magically locked safe in a hidden location, with copies squirreled away in equally secure spots. But he doubted that was necessary. This time, the dirty-tricks squad had to know that blame would attach to wizards if anything odd occurred.
He was cheered by that thought until he slipped into bed and it hit him: Beatrix’s dangerous Plan B had a specific aim in addition to the broad one of removing any incentive the wizards had to target her sister. She wanted to render the march superfluous. She’d been deathly afraid of it, and he could guess why. They’d both seen what had happened in the immediate aftermath of the League conference.
Now, of course, they knew that the apparent assassination attempt was a ruse that Washington had not ordered or known about—a designed-to-fail stunt by Garrett to frighten the Harpers out of politics. But bone-deep dread did not easily let go. New facts could not always eradicate it.
He pulled her closer, meaning to ask whether she was worried. But no—if the subject wasn’t already lodged like a splinter in her mind, why on earth should he introduce it? He cleared his throat to try a more general question—what can I do to make the march less rotten for you—but she turned at that moment and gripped his arm.
“Listen, I know this is unnecessary and even silly, but I need us to stay on Lydia like shadows. If anything happens, we can castbeorganon her in that way we practiced, and…” She closed her eyes, pressing her head to his chest. “Nothing is going to happen.Nothing.But let’s please stay with her the whole time, OK?”
