“Spellbinder,” Joyce said. When I looked a bit confused, she added, “An enchanter, but specialized in control. He keeps three or four Others with him at all times. I named him because he broke the rules. He’s paranoid, and doesn’t really associate with people. Only Others. We’d hoped to use her as a way to bring him back to society, to get him involved. But we underestimated his paranoia.”
“What happened?”
“He bound his wife. To keep her from passing information on to us. Bound her mind and bound her bodies, so she only does what he says.”
“Hypnosis?” I asked.
“The binding is as solid as hypnosis is soft and vague. He’s… scary. In a lot of ways. I don’t think the family would miss him if he was gone, but we invested in him, we lost a family member to connect to him, and I guess Sandra decided that if we’d paid the price, we might as well…”
“Use what you paid for?” I finished for her, as it didn’t seem like she’d continue speaking.
“I didn’t know that whole story,” Lola said, quiet.
“It was a long time ago,” Gail said.
Joyce nodded. “It’s not the kind of story we share, especially to someone engaged, or yet to be engaged.”
“You could have told me. Holy shit. We condone that?”
“He’s strong,” Joyce said. “And we play a long game. Sandra promised we’d act against him, and that the revenge would be dramatic enough that others would know we weren’t to be trifled with.”
“But only if we got the Lordship?” Lola guessed. “Only if we had that clout?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “There isn’t a lot of time.”
Joyce frowned. “If anyone needs to die, it’s him. Nobody will associate with him, given circumstances and the danger that he might use them. He protects himself with puppet Others. Any other practitioner you go after, you’ll find webs of safeguards. You can’t hurt them or target them without our enchantresses knowing. But Landon stands more or less alone.”
I nodded. “Okay. The Spellbinder is strong. I’ll put him off until later, then.”
“Put him off?” Lola asked.
“It makes sense,” Gail said, eyes on the ground. I could practically read shame radiating off of her, as she betrayed her family. “If he’s going to alert others no matter what he does, he might as well pick off the strongest first.”
I nodded.
“Gudbrand,” Joyce said, looking down at the list.
“Valk-something?” I asked.
“Valkalla,” Joyce spoke.
“He didn’t do anything,” Gail spoke.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Joyce asked, looking up at her sister. She looked at me. “I said I wouldn’t speak unless it helps you. I’m helping you by explaining, giving context.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s not married to one of ours. His father remarried, and married one of ours.”
“And?”
“He was unhappy with the fact that she only bore girls. Valkyries and the various offshoots, they work with spirits and souls. Rather than have girls, he used his newborn daughters.”
“As fuel,” I said, just a little spooked at the thought.
I only got a tight nod from Joyce in response.
“That was him,” Gail said. “That was at a different time, for the Duchamp family. Thirty-five years ago. Before Sandra was in charge.”
“But the metaphorical apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Joyce said. “I’ve met Gudbrand. I feel confident in saying he’s no different from his father.”
“Holy fuck,” I said. “How have you not turned against the family heads for this? You marry these guys?”
“No,” Joyce said, shaking her head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s… once or twice a generation. A lot of pairings. Divorces are hard, and sometimes not even allowed. Things go wrong.”
“Who are the others?”
“I can barely read your handwriting. Crooked Hat… he deals with your kind.”
“Yeah.”
“His Demesne overlaps with a section of the Abyss. He’s trying to learn to manipulate the Abyss to his own ends. The elder Duchamps thought it was enough of a prospect that we could, how to phrase it, metaphorically buy stock in the venture?”
“He went there willingly?” I asked. “Long term?”
“Yes. I don’t know what he did that made someone think he deserves to die, I haven’t even heard that he’s a bad person.”
“He’s married, though?”
“Seems fine enough… as arranged marriages go. They have four daughters, three young, if I’m remembering right. He gave his daughters odd names, but that’s not anything worthy of execution.”
I frowned. “Eric and Stan.”
“Eric is Stan’s brother. They’re not major practitioners. But they had an extensive library with texts we needed access to. If it was a little bit larger, we might call them something more impressive than dabblers. But it isn’t. They’re collectors.”
“Someone thinks they deserve to die.”
“I don’t know,” Joyce said.
“Looking at the people in chat,” Lola said, “Manon?”
“No comment,” I said.
“She’s the only one I can think of that would know them, besides me. And Manon knows Laurine, Stan’s daughter. They gave the names in this order? Eric, then Stan?”
“Yeah.”
“If I’m guessing right, connecting dots… they deserve it.”
“That’s all you’re giving me?” I asked.
“If you don’t give them a chance to call home and network, they’re not a threat,” she said. “You don’t need to know more.”
I didn’t like that, but time was short. “What about the guy with the title?”
“The Benevolent,” Joyce said. “I can guess. He’s old. Got married to Clara before Rose Thorburn the senior was a practitioner, if I remember right.”
“Old. He’s been around a while, obviously.”
“Longevity goes hand-in-hand with good karma,” Joyce said. “Which he has. In abundance.”
“He practices using Karma?”
“Yes. I can see why people would be unhappy with him. He made his wife miserable. Tricked our family, even. Neglected to mention that he already had three wives, making his Duchamp wife the fourth. Likeable in person, but less so from a distance, and those of us who realized that kept our distance, myself included. We never had an angle or clear excuse to retaliate for his deception, but that’s how he operates.”
“If I didn’t feel like that was a pretty vague justification for attacking someone,” I muttered, “I almost suspect I’d enjoy hurting him.”
“Enjoy?”
“Almost. Almost. It sounds like he’s a personification of everything I hate about all of this.”
“If it helps,” Lola said, “He’s probably done far worse than what we just described. But events play out in a way that supports him. There’s rarely enough people in the same place, talking about him in a way that would let them put the pieces together, at a time that we’d be free to do something about it. If someone named him, maybe they have a stronger suspicion, but aren’t in a position to voice it?”