North’s head falls into his hand, and the rigid cast of his shoulders eases incrementally. “Sorry. I just… Yeah.” He sighs. “Bad day.”
“Northcliff,” I begin. “You realise I am not here to blackmail you. I amtryingto help you both.”
He nods jerkily. “Yeah. I get that. It’s just…we can’t stay out there anymore.”
“I finished moving in,” Eddy adds brightly, jogging down the stairs. She pauses at the opposite end of the table, her brows creasing as her eyes land on the copy of Leo’s ensorcellment and linger. “Is Pierce gone?”
“Yeah.” North drags the contract underneath a book, hiding it from her. “He skulked back up to his room. Said he was tired.”
Small mercies. I wasn’t looking forward to witnessing his reaction to the contract—assuming that the Arcanaeum left him a copy, too.
“Now, explain,” I demand. “What do you mean you can’t stay ‘out there’, and who told you about the Sanctuary plan?”
“Sanctuary plan?” Leo steps through a door on my right, and I groan.
“It's been suggested that you would all besaferhere.”
“Because Mathias just crashed North’s meeting with Rector Talcott and declared himself the vicegerent of Ackland House,” Eddy supplies, abandoning her perusal of the runeform and drawing her dressing gown tighter around herself.
“He didwhat?” The crunch of paper alerts me to the fact that my hands have balled into fists.
“He had all the paperwork and everything,” Northgrumbles. “Turned up at the meeting with the lawyer and Talcott, and started changing shit straight away, and they just let him.”
That was why the Carltons needed Abe Talcott. To give Mathias a position of power.
Now he’s a parriarch once more in all but name. Stars only know where that leaves us.
I smooth out the wrinkles on Lambert’s contract as I think things through.
“What kind of changes?” I finally ask.
North shrugs. “Moving the official residence. Some stuff about raising liminal tax contributions, stopping them working in enforcement or directly for the parriarchs. Stupid shit.”
That’s North for ‘I didn’t understand what they were discussing.’
“Raising liminal tax contributions is essentially charging the liminals of your house more for Mathias’s protection,” Leo explains.
“Which means he’s dragging Ackland back to the way it was when he was last parriarch.” I sigh, turning away with a groan.
“What, just because they’re liminals?” Eddy says. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he doesn’t see liminals as arcanists.” I rub at my temples. “Many adepts believed—and some still do—that the magic of their bloodlines was watered down whenever they intermingled with inepts. It gave them someone to blame when weak arcanists were born to strong parents. In times past, when inepts hunted us, those children were a drain on resources and a liability. Nowadays, inepts no longer believe we exist, and it’s been proven time and time again that magical strength is not genetic, but…people will be people.”
The pattern of deprivation turning to blame, blame to persecution, and persecution to violence is as universal as it issad. Still, a lot of progress has been made in the last five hundred years, and Mathias will undo all of it if given the chance.
Leo chooses the chair I expected he would, pointing a sleek black remote at the television on the wall. It flicks on so easily, and I purse my lips. Had I embraced electricity earlier, we could’ve been watching the official footage rather than reliant on North’s distracted gaze.
Not that I want these infernal devices, of course. But I’m not mulish enough to deny they have their benefits.
“What are we going to do?” Eddy asks me, coming up on my other side. “Hide here until North passes his magister exams?”
“Or until the rector can be convinced to choose a new vicegerent,” I say. “If the two of you end up under his thumb…”
Well, it’s not exactly hard to control North. Mathias only has to threaten Eddy, and the heir would bend. Josef already proved as much.
“Did he do anything?” I ask. “Speak to either of you without the other parriarchs present?”
North shakes his head. “Eddy wasn’t in the meeting, and we came straight here the second it was over.”
