Arthur wakes at seven, showers, shaves and brushes his teeth, then spends a good ten minutes and the best part of a tin of pomade persuading his hair to lie sleek and orderly against his skull. It will have sprung back into its usual state of spiky disarray within the hour, but by then it won't matter anymore.
He buffs his shoes, dresses in a freshly-pressed suit, shirt and tie, and hurries downstairs, reaching the formal dining room at 7:58 precisely. Alasdair is already seated at the long table there, looking like an overstuffed sausage in his own suit as he always does, no matter how much Grandfather spends on them or how well-tailored they are.
He nods a 'good morning' to Arthur, but then disregards him in favour of the fork set out by his plate, pushing on the tips of the tines until they touch the table top – tick – and then letting go so that the handle slams down – tock. Over and over and over again. The sound grates on Arthur's nerves within seconds, but he grits his teeth and says nothing. Grandfather will not stand for raised voices in the morning.
Michael rushes into the dining room at 8:04: pallid, sweating, and still in the process of fastening his tie.
"You're okay, Mikey," Alasdair tells him. "Grandfather hasn't come down yet."
"Thank fuck," Michael says, slumping down onto the chair next to Alasdair's. His head hits the top of the backrest with a solid thunk, and he stares up at the ceiling whilst he fights to bring his ragged breathing back under control.
At 8:08, Alasdair undoes the top button of his shirt and leans back in his chair to the accompaniment of a deep sigh.
At ten past, Michael takes a book out of his jacket pocket, which he lays open on his lap and begins to read.
Arthur stares straight ahead, unmoving, and at 8:16, the sound of Grandfather's stertorous breathing enters the dining room, closely followed by the man himself.
His heavy gaze immediately sweeps the table. "Alasdair," he snaps, "sit up straight. I know you've got a spine, I suggest you learn how to use it.
"Michael, put that thing away. No books at the table.
"And Arthur…" Grandfather's eyes narrow down to thin slits, almost swallowed up by the fleshy folds of his face. Arthur faces this close examination with complete serenity, knowing that, this time, he doesn't have so much as a hair out of place. Nevertheless, Grandfather still concludes that: "Your tie's crooked. Sort it out. Clothes make the man, my boy."
The morning inspection concluded to his satisfaction, if no-one else's, Grandfather lumbers to his seat at the head of the table and wedges himself into it. He commands one of his attending retinue of henchmen – Number Twelve – to fetch breakfast, and the man complies with a bafflingly wide smile, as though being tasked to play servant represents the very pinnacle of his henching career to date.
He dismisses the rest of his minions, and then, in an off-hand tone belied by the stiff, angry set of his shoulders and florid cheeks, observes, "No Dylan today?"
"He had to go to an emergency optician's appointment," Alasdair says, the words stiff and mechanical-sounding. "He sat on his reading glasses and broke them."
It's a weak excuse, but the best they'd been able to extemporise on short notice. The list of places they're allowed to visit alone is vanishingly small.
Arthur holds his breath until his chest aches, certain that Grandfather will see straight through their attempted deception, especially given Alasdair's poor performance of it. He's always been an appalling liar.
But Grandfather's mind must, thankfully, be on other things, because he simply shakes his head and says, "Bloody typical."
He says no more on the matter or any other – conversation is as discouraged at the table as books are – and their breakfast is conducted in its usual silence.
After the dishes have been tidied away, Grandfather informs them that: "I'll be leaving for a meeting in London at eleven, and won't be back until Sunday. Most of the henchmen will be accompanying me, but Ten and Fourteen will remain here with you. I expect hourly reports from both them and you, and I expect them to match."
Ten henched for their great-grandfather and should have been put out to pasture long ago, and Fourteen is still laid up in bed, both of his legs in plaster, after being thrown into a wall during Grandfather's last showdown with Power-Man. It's almost as good as being left on their own, and, on any other day, Arthur would have been proud to be accorded this show of trust, but now he's just relieved. Retrieving Grandfather's stolen property will be a hell of a lot easier if they don't have to do it behind his back.
Arthur choruses, "Yes, Grandfather," along with his brothers, and then Grandfather dismisses them, too. They quickly scatter to take up their usual weekday pursuits: Alasdair to his patrol of the grounds, Michael to his tutor, and Arthur, his research.
-
-
Magic has coursed through the veins of the Kirklands for generations, dating back, or so Grandfather tells it, to a medieval witch so powerful that she needed to be burnt at the stake three times before it finally stuck.
Grandfather has little intrinsic talent for it, and struggles to perform even the most rudimentary spells that his daughter and grandchildren all mastered before they hit double digits, but he has always been fascinated by the study of the art, all the same.
He buys every spellbook and grimoire he can lay his hands on, and likes to boast that he has amassed the largest collection of magical literature in Europe, if not the world. No-one will ever be able to verify that claim, however, as he keeps the library secured behind multiple locks so complex that they would even stymie the Frog, and, until two years ago, he had never let a living soul set so much as a toe inside it.
After completing the Masters in Library Studies Grandfather insisted he take, it had become Arthur's job to sort and catalogue the books, which had hitherto been shoved higgledy-piggledy onto any old flat surface that had room for them, with no thought or care given for their organisation or even preservation.
Some of them were so old and desiccated that they dissolved into dust and scraps of leather when Arthur picked them up, others – especially those stacked on the windowsills – had soaked through from the damp that permeates the entire manor during the winter months, and their bindings were mottled with mould.
Arthur quietly bins the volumes that are beyond saving, restores the rest as best he can, and reads through whatever pages remain legible, taking careful note of any spells they contain.
It's slow, laborious, and strangely boring work, given the subject matter. Most of the spells have long outlived their usefulness to anyone, never mind Grandfather. He doesn't talk much about his work, but Arthur still doubts that he'd have much call for incantations that purport to cure the grippe or replicate bushels of wheat.
Every now and again, though, Arthur happens to stumble across something of interest. Last month, it had been a rune circle meant to ward off intruders; the fortnight before, a cantrip which would turn the head of a man into that of a beast.
Today, tucked away in the closing paragraphs in an otherwise dull treatise on the uses of lamb's blood, Arthur finds a spell that could be salvation for him and his brothers.
-
-
Arthur is eager to share his discovery with Alasdair and Michael, but he doesn't even get to finish the preamble to his announcement before Dylan bursts into the dining room, looking windswept and distinctly harassed.
"Sorry I'm late," he says, not looking up from the coat buttons he's clumsily trying to unfasten. "I got caught up in—"
"It's all right," Alasdair tells him, "Grandfather's gone down to London on business, and taken most of the henchmen with him. They won't be back till weekend."
"He has? That's wonderful." A smile blossoms on Dylan's lips, but it withers and dies almost instantly. "Well, not wonderful, of course. I don't think that… Perhaps I should have said good luck? Or… Or maybe good timing? I just meant—"
"We know what you meant," Alasdair cuts in, nipping Dylan's nervous babbling in the bud before he works himself up into an even greater state of agitation, by which time there will be no hope of stopping it save that he talks himself hoarse or fortuitously falls unconscious. "We're all glad he's fucked off, as well. Now" – Alasdair's nose wrinkles, as though finding the words taste as unpleasant as he already considers the subject matter – "how did your meeting with Lovino go."
"Oh, it was fantastic, thanks." Dylan's smile returns, softer around the edges than before. His eyes also take on the faraway, dreamy cast they otherwise only display when he's reading one of his dreadful, turgid romance novels. "Very, um, very productive."
As Dylan's shirt collar is askew and his trousers badly rumpled, Arthur shudders to think how the negations were performed.
As does Alasdair, apparently. "You can spare us the gory details," he says, looking vaguely sickened, "but did he agree to help?"
"He said he'd get some of his people on the case."
"Or," Arthur says, "we could go after the Frog ourselves."
Alasdair asks, "How?" at the same time as Dylan says, "Why? Grandfather's always said that The Shrike's henchmen are the best trackers in the Guild. They're bound to be able to find him before we can."
"Then why haven't they unearthed his safe house yet?" Arthur asks. "You know The Shrike will have tried; all of the Council have, at one time or another. But we have what they didn't." He lifts the book from the seat of the chair next to him, where he'd stashed it before Alasdair and Michael arrived, to better produce it with a flourish when the requisite moment arose. He does so now, and then places it reverentially on the table. "Magic."
"Did you steal that from Grandfather's library?" Alasdair asks. At Arthur's nod, he laughs. "Fucking hell, Wart. The old bastard's not even been gone two hours and you've already descended into barbarism."
Arthur ignores him. He's found it's the best course of action when he needs to work, otherwise he'd never get anything done save for arguing with his brother. The urge to throttle Alasdair does still assail him, but faint enough now after all the years he's spent repressing it that he can discount it with relative ease.
"There's a tracking spell in here," he says, "that's said to be very powerful. The incantation seems straightforward enough, and it only requires a few, simple ingredients besides. Most of them should be easy enough to get hold of.
"We no doubt have plenty of rosemary and sage in the kitchens, and, presumably, we can buy some lamb's blood from the butcher's in the village. There's just one more requirement, and that could prove impossible to supply, I'm afraid. We need something that used to belong to the Frog."
Dylan frowns. "I don't think we have anything of his. Except maybe…" He blushes, and sounds embarrassed to be voicing his next suggestion, which, Arthur thinks when he hears it, he has every right to be. "Alasdair had him locked up in the dungeons last night, and maybe he happened to leave a few hairs behind. Or, I don't know, some of his skin cells on the shackles? Do you think that would work?"
"I don't imagine so," Arthur says. "It has to be something bigger. A possession of some sort. I was hoping that he might have accidentally left something behind after one of his other break-ins. A lockpick, perhaps?
"We should check Grandfather's study again. If he ever found anything like that, he would have stored it his desk. If we have no luck there, then—"
"I have something that used to belong to Francis," Alasdair says, and evidently solely for the edification of the table, because he keeps his eyes trained on it unwaveringly even when Arthur and Dylan turn to look at him in question. "It's a… I think it's a silk scarf, or something like. He left it here about six years ago, and I kept it because…"
He hesitates, his mouth opening and closing in silence whilst he struggles to provide some sort of rational explanation for his actions.
Arthur doesn't need - and definitely doesn't want - to hear one. It really doesn't bear thinking about, either.
"I don't care why you kept it," he says hurriedly. "Just go and fetch it now. Dylan," he nods towards his brother, "you go down into the village and buy the blood. Michael and I'll get the herbs. Then we'll all meet back here at two o'clock and perform the spell."
If it's as effective as the book claims, then, with a bit of luck, they'll have the Frog under lock and key by the end of the day.
