The Perils of Presumption (The Conclave Series Book 1)

by Sarah Sokol

  "I would be delighted, Your Grace," she said with a bright smile as she accepted his arm.

  He began to guide them around the outskirts of the ballroom, and Charlotte strained to look for Sophie, but there was no sign of her.

  "Shall we go to the upper balcony? There are far fewer prying eyes there. Or prying ears, as the case may be." Sutcliffe gestured to the stairs curving up away from the ballroom. "We will have peace to discuss whatever we please. And perhaps you can demonstrate your power for me again. I am terribly curious; it is so rare to see such an unusual form of magic."

  Charlotte eyed the balcony. It was still a public area; her reputation would not suffer for it. She nodded, feeling her heartbeat picking up within her chest. "I appreciate your sense of decorum, Your Grace."

  "Indeed, my lady, I am the very soul of decorum." Sutcliffe's granite features cracked into a smile. "You would be astonished at all the secrets I can keep."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Naked Raven

  Ben couldn't concentrate.

  The paperwork in front of him was no more than a prop, his eyes blurring whenever he attempted to read it. He was trying to draft up an agreement for the American Conclave while he waited for Oliver, but it was no good. His mind was too busy on other things.

  He had received the reports back on the first three days of activity for Roble, Doucette and Sutcliffe. The reports for Roble and Doucette had been as expected; unremarkable day to day activities, eating meat pies, visiting gambling dens, and performing their duties for the Conclave.

  Sutcliffe, however, had repeatedly spotted the man tailing him and managed to lose him every time. He must have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city streets, and an incredibly sharp eye. There was almost nothing in the report about Sutcliffe's activities; just a recounting of the times they actually managed to find him, and his subsequent inevitable disappearance.

  Ben had to admit, he would likely try to do the same if he found someone following him. On the second day, the report stated that Sutcliffe had chased after the man following and attempted to cast a spell on him, though it was evaded. That spoke of a bad temper, and willingness to inflict harm. Ben was no stranger to that, either.

  During the past three days, Ben and Oliver had managed to slip into Roble's and Doucette's town residences to inspect them and had found nothing out of the ordinary. Without knowing Sutcliffe's schedule, however, they hadn't found the time to inspect that particularly grand townhouse. If Oliver would just hurry along, perhaps tonight would be the night.

  Ben glanced at the door of his study, as if his thoughts might conjure Oliver from the ether. No knock was forthcoming, however, so he sighed and sat back, trying once more to stare at the papers in front of him.

  "In the event of a partnership between the Conclave of Americans and the London Conclave of Practitioners, let this document hereby represent the intentions of both parties to conduct themselves in a manner befitting the arcane, pursuing mutual knowledge and learning, with... with... Oh, bugger this," he muttered, shoving the papers aside.

  Instead he pulled out his cane and began to inspect the glyphs of spell storing carved into the polished wood. They could be released with a single word utterance, and most of them just created a blast of fire. Fire was the easiest element to conjure out of thin air.

  Perhaps it was time to get a little more creative, make a new cane with different options. He had grown in knowledge considerably since he first carved this one years ago, and he could certainly get more creative than burning everything around him.

  If only he could find the time.

  Once this whole black magic murder mess was cleared up, he was going to work on a new cane. And call a meeting with the rest of the Conclave regarding the existence of black magic in general. He knew it was a dangerous move, with how sensitive the older members were about black magic. He just hoped they had enough trust in him to at least open a discussion about the possibility that blood magic was not innately evil.

  If so, they would have to figure out a new way to control the spread of magical knowledge. Would they need to establish a university for the study of blood magic, as well? Force blood mages to register their names and abilities?

  Ben's thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock, then the door bursting open to reveal a flushed, bright-eyed Oliver. He carried the smell of rain with him, and his blonde hair was soaked.

  "Brilliant night for a break-in," Oliver proclaimed, his voice too loud in the ominous halls of Windy Oaks.

  "You're foxed," Ben observed, both amused and irritated.

  "Two glasses of champagne can hardly get me foxed. Don't I wish." Oliver rubbed his hands together with a gleaming grin. "I'm simply excited. Sutcliffe's such a damned shut-in, who knows what he's got stashed away in that townhouse of his? Dead wife in the attic? Babies floating in jars in the basement? Or perhaps some awful, sordid dungeon full of--"

  "Enough," Ben cut him off with a reluctant smile. "I trust this means Sutcliffe was at the ball, as we suspected. Did he mention anything about the confrontation with the man we had following him?"

  "Oh yes, he was there all right." Oliver took off his overcoat and shook it vigorously, casting a spray of raindrops over the carpet. "I asked him very leading questions and he never mentioned it. I don't think he knows we're the ones having him followed."

  "Or if he does, it's a bit suspicious he didn't mention it," Ben agreed with a nod. "And you're sure he's going to be there long enough? We'll need a good hour, at least."

  "He said he planned to stay, and last I saw our intrepid Lady Lottie was keeping him occupied." Oliver studied his nails with an air of innocence.

  "Oh?"

  "Yes, and she was looking exceedingly well. Do you know, I think the as-yet-impervious Duke may fall prey to her charms."

  "Hmm." Ben gathered up his coat and hat, along with his cane and satchel. "I know what you're doing, and it won't work."

  Oliver smirked, pulling his coat back on and following Ben to the door. "You are just adorable when you're jealous."

  "For God's sake, I'm not going to be jealous of Sutcliffe. The man is fifty years if he is a day, and also, I should mention, a murder suspect."

  "I suppose I shouldn't point out that you were quite jealous of Hastings not so long ago, who we also suspected?"

  "Hmm." Ben rolled his eyes, jerked the office door open and locked it behind him, and the two of them made their way to the front entrance where their horses were waiting.

  The rain steadily soaked the entire city, and the chill of it crept into Ben's bones by the time they arrived before the stately mansion in which the Duke resided. His was the only mansion on the otherwise-quiet street. Ben and Oliver guided their horses behind a tall hedge which would protect them from being easily spotted, then dismounted and took a moment to size up the place.

  The grey and white-painted gables were accentuated by a single spire which rose towards the back of the house. The yard was small and well kept, surrounded by a black iron fence, and as a whole the residence was surprisingly unassuming, for a duke. There did not appear to be any windows lit or servants moving about that Ben could see, which was also odd. There was always someone keeping the fires lit on a night like this.

  "No servants," Oliver observed from Ben's side.

  "Yes." Ben rummaged in his satchel and pulled out two pairs of golden spectacles. In place of glass, the lenses were fashioned of thin coin-shaped pieces of carved obsidian. He handed one pair to Oliver and donned the other pair himself.

  "Vident tenebris," Ben whispered and tapped thrice on the sides of the spectacles.

  Instantly the dark landscape around him transformed into various shades of pale grey, allowing him to see intricate details even in pitch blackness. He blinked rapidly, eyes tearing up as they struggled to adjust.

  "Bloody hell, are you sure we'll be able to see properly again when we take these off?" Oliver whispered.

  Ben wiped the moisture from his e
yes and turned to his cousin. "Positive, tested them myself. It's better than carrying a lantern all around his home and being spotted for sure."

  "Lead the way then."

  Ben nodded, gave Merlin a last gentle pat on his nose, then stepped forward towards the black iron gate. As soon as he got within a meter of it, he could tell it was humming with arcane wards and protections. Fortunately, he had come prepared for that, too.

  From his pocket he removed a small brass key, something he had laboured over extensively in his free moments since breaking into Hastings' desk. Carefully placing the brass key upon the ground, he stepped back three meters and reached into his pocket for a handful of salt. He sprinkled it in a circle around himself and Oliver, then reached for his cane and tapped twice on the cobblestones.

  "Extexo, patentibus, extexo," Ben murmured under his breath. He felt the line of energy rising from the brass key, sinuous as it stroked along the edge of the ward, finding the loose threads, fixing itself to them, weaving into the ward.

  As he repeated the phrase a second time, he felt the power of the brass key lock tight and begin to pull, tug and wiggle at the wards, trying to unravel them, as if they were tapestries fashioned out of pure energy. They remained stubborn, however. Sutcliffe was no stranger to wards.

  Ben was no stranger to them either. "Extexo, patentibus, extexo!" he murmured louder the third time, and tapped his cane again.

  There. All those threads of power tightened with one last straining heave before abruptly going loose, fluttering and fraying apart, sliding away from the black iron gate, leaving it unprotected.

  Ben could already sense the ward attempting to repair itself, beginning to weave its loose threads together once more. He had expected as much; wards around homes were generally meant to be self-sustaining.

  "Quickly, follow me," he murmured, and stepped through the hole he had created in the ward. The hair on his arms stood on end as he stopped to pick up the brass key, which was now warm in his palm.

  "I'm beginning to think you're quite a frightening fellow," Oliver whispered as he stepped into the yard. "Is there anywhere you can't get your grubby hands into? Aside from Charlotte's knickers, of course."

  Ben sighed and began stepping forward cautiously down the stone walkway to the front door. "Don't talk of her knickers, you hound."

  "Wait." Oliver grabbed Ben's shoulder and nodded at the spire rising above their heads. "Assume he's got more wards like that, traps as well, throughout his house. Let's save ourselves a few steps. If you were a Conclave practitioner and you lived here, where's the place you'd set up your laboratory? In a study like a plebeian fool, or in that looming tower?"

  Ben cracked a smile and glanced up. "Fair point. There's probably an external door at the back of the property, come."

  The two men began making their way through the grass around the side of the mansion. The backyard was completely protected from view of the street by more of the tall evergreen hedges, and there was another ward on the gate leading through, but the brass key made quick work of it.

  With Ben leading the way, they crossed the small, scraggly and untended gardens to the door at the curved base of the tower. As he had suspected, there were more layers of wards here, and a trap as well. From what Ben could tell, the thick ivy vines growing around the base of the tower were spelled to spring up, binding and holding the intruders against the tower until the owner returned to release them.

  The brass key helped with the ward, but he had to work meticulously to disarm the trap, and by the time he had finished he was sweating, the rain had soaked him completely, and Oliver was nervously checking his watch.

  "Done," Ben panted as he pushed back to his feet.

  "Took you long enough."

  "Only reason I had a chance is that I'm a gardener," Ben explained as he tucked away his components and the brass key into his pocket again. "He really didn't want anyone entering."

  "We're going to have a lot of apologies to make if we're wrong," Oliver said as he reached forward and tested the doorknob. "It's locked."

  "He'll definitely be able to tell we were here," Ben agreed. "Can you pick it? I'm quite drained from that last one."

  "Can I... What a question." Oliver scoffed and pulled a leather pouch from his coat pocket. Unrolling it, he revealed a row of slim silver lock picks, and drifted his elegant fingertips over them until he landed on two he deemed the correct size.

  As Ben waited for Oliver to go to work, he tugged out a handkerchief and wiped away the sweat from his face, which surely was beet red. The adrenaline had his heart pounding in a quick rhythm, sending tingles down his arms and legs, making him twitchy and nervous.

  He glanced around the small yard again, trying to avoid looking too closely at that poor garden. There were other signs of wear and tear, peeling paint on the back porch and unkempt, dusty curtains dangling in the windows.

  It seemed to him that Sutcliffe must be living in the tower, and the house was abandoned. It would explain the absence of servants, certainly, and one man didn't require an entire mansion. Windy Oaks' many empty rooms were a testament to that.

  "Finished," Oliver said. He gestured to the door with a bow. "Après vous."

  Ben took a deep breath and pushed open the door. He was tensed for another trap, perhaps an explosion of some kind, but it seemed Sutcliffe had faith in his wards. There was nothing beyond but a stone staircase spiralling upwards.

  He began the ascent with slow steps at first, gaining confidence as he climbed. There were no glyphs carved on the walls, no flickering torches; just plain, serviceable grey stone stairs that ended in a single large room at the very top of the tower.

  As Ben's head began to emerge from the stairwell and into the room itself, he found his eyes growing wide and his muscles freezing in place.

  There was a small cot in the corner of the room which looked unkempt and dirty. There was a wooden desk with a journal and quill placed upon it. Scattered across the entire floor were drawings, sketches that looked like parts of various rituals. They were all meticulously drawn in the same sharp, neat pen strokes that spoke of an extremely talented practitioner. It was impossible to tell at a glance what all the bits and pieces were adding together to become, but in the very centre of it all was the object that had caught Ben's eye.

  It was a brass cage, sitting upon a bed of newspapers. Within the cage, clinging to the perch, was a large black raven. Perhaps at one point it had been sleek with blue-black wings, but now it looked on the edge of death, with bits of skin showing through the bedraggled feathers. Most of its tail was plucked, and its wings were nothing more than skin stretched over bone. As Ben watched, it turned its head to give a pathetic squawk as it surveyed him through beady black eyes.

  "Good God," Ben whispered as he forced himself to move, climbing the last few steps.

  Oliver followed and stopped to take in the room and its contents with a similar dumbfounded expression. "Well. This is all a bit... er... sinister."

  "Sutcliffe," was the only word that Ben could manage to speak. He had vaguely suspected the duke, but he hadn't expected to find anything. He hadn't expected any of this.

  Oliver said something, but Ben's urgent heart beat drowned out the words; he crossed the room to the desk and opened the drawer. It was full of black feathers.

  "Quills," he burst out, seizing one of them and lifting it. The glyphs carved up the shaft were neat and clear, with the same amplification enchantment, but the feather itself had snapped. "Failed attempts."

  Oliver glanced up from where he was stooped next to the bed. He had pulled out a box full of trinkets from under the cot and was sorting through them with a grim expression. He pulled out a small brass button, stained with black.

  "Mementos from victims?" he guessed, his voice hoarse.

  "Good God," Ben repeated, throwing the quill back into the drawer. He picked up the journal, opening it and scanning over the first few pages. It was all written in the same neat script, no da
tes, just little spaces on the page to separate paragraphs.

  "Read it." Oliver stood and pushed the box back under the cot.

  "Let's see..." Ben flipped a few more pages. "It's all field notes, at first. From his time undercover, I think. Let me find... Ah, here. 'I cannot understand how Hastings is so sympathetic to the blood mages. I can hardly look them in the face and pretend we are friends. The filthy scum are all leeches, the true face of the vampiric legends.'"

  "Hatred against blood magic, well, nothing unique there. Every older Conclave member feels the same." Oliver stepped across the messy floor closer to Ben and peered over his shoulder. "What about a later entry?"

  "Let me see." Ben flipped forward to the middle of the book. Through these pages were a few diagrams, a human form stretched out, with glyphs and symbols drawn on various body parts. It looked like Sutcliffe was attempting to design some sort of spell or ritual.

  He began reading aloud again. "'I had another vision. Those filthy blood mage Purcells are finding a way to weaken the barrier between realms. I can feel it every day in the air around me, I can see it in my dreams, and now I smell the evidence in the streets of London. Blood mages popping up everywhere, and Hastings calls them harmless. I always knew blood magic was seductive, insidious. We need to set an example.'"

  "An example. Oh God. Could that be a reference to Avery?" Oliver's eyes widened.

  "I don't know. Perhaps." Ben flipped forward a few more entries until he found the word he was looking for. "Look, he's talking about the quills. 'I have devised a brilliant plan. These blood mages are weak and want ways to become stronger. I can offer them the quills I've been designing from Beatrice. This way I can watch them and see who truly denies the practice of their evil arts as Hastings claims, and who is a blood mage.'"

  "So, he was using the quills as an anchoring device, to scry on his victims," Oliver said. "Wait for them to do something magical and that was all the proof he needed."