“There.” Gabe nodded at Isobel, spotting the two people in a quiet corner of the pub’s lounge. They’d gathered up their drinks, both because that was entirely proper and to give them a chance to get the lay of the land. He was not entirely sure what to make of the fact the pub was named the Green Dragon. It smacked entirely too much of an omen for Gabe’s comfort. It was not terribly far from Ytene, though; the parties involved had suggested meeting there, and Gabe would make the best of it. Omen or no.
The two waiting at the table looked rather ordinary. Deliberately so, Gabe expected. He and Isobel looked the same. She was wearing a blouse and tweed skirt with a cardigan jumper over it, and he was in country tweeds. Rufus had been clear that this lot was on the upper end of the educated middle class, give or take. Certainly, they ran to the intellectually focused. The two of them had left the pony and carriage in the yard, with the pony glad to take a break, rather than ride.
Gabe was a decent judge of age in many circumstances, it was something of a professional advantage. These two both looked to be in their early fifties. Neither had made the Pact, he could tell that thanks to the trick Alexander had taught him of reading the oaths. Reading the oath of the Pact was the simplest one to read. He could draw on the resonance of his own to spot the shimmer. They both had a something about them that wasn’t entirely ordinary.
The man was on the tall side, and a bit angular, especially around the face. When he moved his hands, Gabe could see dark smudges on them. Silver nitrate, maybe, though it was hard to tell at a glance. Decidedly not of Albion, to have his hair that short if not obligated to. He had glasses tucked in his breast pocket, the way men did if they needed them fairly often, but not for a casual conversation. His suit was well made, but a few years old, with a single red rosebud in the lapel.
The woman was perhaps a year or two older, neatly dressed in country clothes, a tweed skirt and jacket set, but nothing that caught the eye. She had shorter hair too, or at least Gabe thought those were carefully managed waves and curls, not a mass of hair pinned up at the back like Isobel’s.
He approached, nodding once, tapping the book in his hand against the other. “Pardon, I gather you know an acquaintance, a man named Pride?” It was a common name in the New Forest, though none of them but his immediate family were related to Rufus, not anymore.
“Rufus? Interesting man. Do have a seat? A friend of ours chats folklore with him, quite often. She’s been delighted. Not all of those with long roots here have the time to chat.”
Gabe half-smiled at that. “He’s proud of his family’s history here, for certain.” He nodded at Isobel. “This is Isobel, and I’m Gabriel.” They’d discussed using a pseudonym, but it wasn’t as if either of them would be terribly easy to trace back by non-magical records, not by first name only. And there was always the risk of not answering to it.
“Call me George.” Clearly not his actual name. “And this is Theano.”
“George, Theano.” That one, Gabe thought, was a name that the woman used more regularly, like it fit her comfortably. Gabe inclined his head again. “Rufus mentioned your interest in folklore.” This was the delicate part. You couldn’t just come out and say ‘what ho, good chap, are you by chance having a witchcraft ritual in a week?’ For one thing, witchcraft was on the books as illegal, at least for those not of Albion. For another, they’d only just met. Anyone sensible would be skittish, and anyone who wasn’t, well, Gabe wasn’t sure about getting entangled with them.
Fortunately, he and Isobel had discussed this, and she spoke up, brightly. “I’d so much love to learn a bit more. We were chatting with some people in Kent, near where Uncle Gabriel lives. Some of the lore about Napoleon, the Armada even. Being on the coast, that’s such a thing. We were helping out at Dover during the evacuation, of course. Pitching in every way we could.”
“Ah, now, there’s quite a lot of lore about that, isn’t there now?” George spread his hands, settling into his topic. Bless Isobel, for figuring out how to get that started with quite a bit of elegance. “We’ve some tales about that. In my family, even, about people getting together, using their will to keep Napoleon across the channel.”
“Really?” Isobel wasn’t laying it on too thick, just enough earnest curiosity to be appealing. “I grew up in Yorkshire. There’s different sorts of traditions up there, and of course, not so near the Channel by a long shot.” She chattered on for a minute or two, about her granda, the cunning man. Isobel made a point tossing in various of the little folk traditions the family had kept that wouldn’t remotely break the Pact because just about everyone did them.
“Now, I’ve heard Rufus has a touch of a gift with a horse. More than one cantankerous sort he’s handled and calmed. Like magic, some would say.” George added that after Isobel made a comment about breaking charms on livestock.
Gabe grinned. “Ah, well. If you ask some, they’ll say he’s got the Horseman’s Word, and I’ve never heard him deny it. But the treats he keeps in his pocket are a fair bit of help. And he’s kind with a horse, and they know it.”
Theano inclined her head at that. “Kindness goes far, doesn’t it?” She had been keeping an eye on the room around them. “You take the lore seriously, then, both of you? Ever explored any of it yourself?”
This was where it was going to get tricky, to thread the needle between truth and lie, Pact and what they could say. “Not as much as what we’ve been talking about as I’d like. But if there were a magic to keep the coast safer, I’d be all for that. My family takes the obligations to the land seriously. All the customs - hodening, in Kent, of course. The traditions around the hops harvest. All sorts of songs and chants and dances, and they mean something, don’t they?”
It must have struck the right note. More to the point, he could feel the ring on his finger warming to the work, quite literally. It had never burned him, but he’d learned the feeling of it coming more alive, exerting itself. It wasn’t that it forced a decision. Perhaps the Fatae had known that if they’d tried that, he’d have pitched the thing into the deepest bit of water he could get at with a bit of cold iron to weight it. The Bolton Strid, perhaps, where the waterfalls would pull it down immediately.
“And you think that’s got some weight, then? There are plenty who’d laugh - and a few who’d go tell the constabulary that witchcraft is still on the books.”
Gabe was familiar enough with the laws, Papa made sure of that, the ways that it interacted. Among magical folk, it was one more reason to keep to the terms of the Pact, if the oath on the Silence wasn’t enough. He spread his hands. “The prosecutions I know about for it either have to do with fraud - and we all know there’s some of that about. Spiritualists turning their hand to separating the grieving from their money, and nothing else. Or a bit of card reading as an excuse for someone else to pickpocket. But the problem there’s not the magic or the lore. It’s what people use it to cover.” Then he shrugged one shoulder. “At the moment, the constabulary’s got other things to keep up with.”
George snorted. “Fair enough.”
“Tell me a bit more about what you’ve done, in terms of exploring your interests.” Theano was, he thought, a tad sharper and more cynical in a particular way than George was. George liked the lure of the magic. He might have been right on the line of making the Pact, honestly. Gabe had come across a few like that. It was where some of the cunningman tales came from. Somehow, their magic worked. It just wasn’t of Albion. Theano, though, seemed more like a ritualist, someone who leaned into the incantation to shape the ritual, deliberate as a theatrical performance and when it worked, just as transformative.
Gabe decided it was time to put his cards on the table, or at least the ones he was willing to play. “I’ve seen more than enough things in my days that could only be magic walking in the world.” Or riding a few inches above the ground, his mind reminded him rather loudly. “I don’t know what I think about the Society of Inner Light bits about a vast astral castle, all those rooms that seem so empty.” Though there was something about that, as he said it, that was like the Council Keep, how people moved cautiously there. He shrugged once more. “I’d rather turn toward magic, in whatever form. Wonder. Possibility. And there’s something about the tales, isn’t there, about doing the thing together.”
He could feel Isobel’s foot against his, under the table, pressing on the good side, then her fingers tapping something on his leg, to let her take the next bit. He signalled his own agreement and waited for their response.
“What would you give for it?” Theano, again, and sharply. “For the chance?”
He had to answer that, at least to start. “I’ve already made promises a plenty in my life, adding more’s a trick. But I am - well. When I was young and a good bit more foolish than I am now, I swore to the land, and to keeping it thriving.” All true, though, that wasn’t a fraction of the oath he’d made.
Isobel picked up. “We’re in a position where so long as it’s not doing something in the middle of the town square, all public, there’s not much others could do to harm us. We’re not dependent on the goodwill of our near neighbours to put food on the table, or anything like that.”
“And your neighbours aren’t near here, either.” George nodded once, and then his eyes half-focused, as if he were trying to do something specific. Gabe had seen Alexander take on the same sort of expression when he was reading oaths in the lines of magic. And he’d seen Cyrus do much the same when considering which line of action to take, like reading currents in the water that carried the bobbing ship of each person and their soul along. That was probably fanciful, but Gabe hadn’t been able to shake the image since he’d had it months ago.
Gabe held himself still. He trusted that his own magical training wouldn’t let anything slip that he didn’t intend. At this point, he trusted Isobel’s to hold as well. She’d come through Schola well, and that had taught her how to navigate scrutiny half a dozen ways before breakfast. There was silence at the table for a good minute before Theano lifted her glass, took a sip, and set it down.
Theano and George exchanged glances. Then she leaned forward. “We might know some people gathering to do something. If you’re in earnest, willing to give your all, and respect the privacy of all those involved.”
Those three words, ‘give your all’, echoed for him, but of course that was, in the circumstances, a quite reasonable thing to say. He held still, he couldn’t let his personal take on that show, not here and now, the hollowness of the certainty of it. The privacy was easy enough to swear to, at least. Gabe was actually quite sure they weren’t going to get introduced by name at such a thing. “No names, or chosen names, all that?” he asked, because why not make it clear?
“It does make it easier to keep the agreement.” Theano produced a small notebook from somewhere and wrote a few words - perhaps a dozen - with a stub of pencil tucked into it. “Can you get there, just before sunset, on the first?”
Gabe glanced down at the paper, then nodded. “We’ll need to ride and leave the horses, but we can do that.” The Naked Man. It was a reasonable site, all told - clear, a bit away from the more likely places the Army had people stationed, not near a pub or other activity.
“Ask Pride where you should leave them, then.” She dismissed it as entirely not her problem. Not a horsewoman, he guessed, but the horses they’d borrow would be fine. If all else failed, Rufus or one of the stable lads could ride down with them and meet them in the morning, spending the night in a pub’s loft nearby. All in a bit of war effort, or something like that.
“Sunset, then. Anything we should wear or bring?”
The ‘wear’ made her snort. “You know the answer to that, surely. Trust to your lore. Though you shouldn’t need the bear grease.”
Gabe could interpret that easily enough. “May I ask if this is a rite that’s been done before?” It felt clumsy to say it like that, but he wanted a bit more information, or confirmation of what Rufus had got, rather.
“The full moons, starting in May. We had it suggested Lammas night might do well. We were looking for a few more to see what it helped.” She kept her voice soft. “There you go.”
The conversation was clearly over. Gabe inclined his head and waited for Isobel to stand before he scooted out of his own chair. He’d forgone the cane for this, no reason to raise that question, but of course now his ankle had stiffened up. Isobel immediately took his arm on the left side, which helped him cover for it.
It wasn’t until they were a good half mile up the road, well away from anyone who might overhear, that she cleared her throat. “Does that mean naked for the ritual, then?”
“Oh, I expect so. There are reasons for it, even in our lore. Ask Alexander sometime, when he needs a bit of a distraction, you’ll get a good twenty or thirty minutes even if he’s being brief.” Gabe flicked his fingers. “Me, I’d rather a robe, but robes are identifying, unless you’re quite careful about it. Marks of status, of money, not just what they’re made of but how well they’re made. When it’s skin, everyone has what they were born with.”
“No boots, either?” Ah, that was sharp of her.
“That, I don’t know. I’ll wrap my ankle, put a bit of an illusion charm on it. You can do the same with your feet, keep them from getting cut up. I think Mama’s still got some charmed linen suitable for it. If not, we can snag something from the stable that’s suitable.” Gabe let out a long breath. “All right with doing this?”
“If you are. I’ve done odder things so far.”
“That, well. That’s true enough. The time with the doe, the interior hall, and the hunting horn, for one.”
“And the black hound, neither black nor a hound.” Isobel agreed. “And I know you have a plan, sir.”
“Several.” Gabe clucked at the pony to pick up a trot. “Let’s get back to Ytene and talk it through.”