“The warding.” Griffin agreed with that, and brought it up with a gesture, feeling it settle into place. Charlus let out a longer sigh. That was curious information indeed. Now Griffin waited. When he’d been training as a solicitor, that had been a big part of it. He’d learned how to give someone space for something they were finding challenging. It made it easier to get at what they needed and at the truth, both. Then, he’d had to keep an eye on the clock, and here he didn’t have to, other than being ready in two hours for the evening’s work.
Finally, Charlus looked up. “Someone wants to prove that you can’t do this, sir.”
Griffin’s mouth quirked up. “More than one someone, yes.” He considered. “At least two, it might be four or five. I don’t have a good angle on some information that would help. What makes you say that?”
“It’s not a town terribly conducive to a wheelchair, sir. I think you can make it work. I’ll get to that in a second, from what you told me, but I have a few questions. But the whole thing’s built into the side of two cliffs. There are those steps up to the Abbey, cliff faces on the side streets. And near every hotel or lodging house I checked has stairs.”
“But not every.” Griffin had caught that, and it got him a lopsided smile from Charlus. “Do you want a bit more of the explanation than I’ve given you, then? I’m sorry to bring you into it like this, mind.”
When Charlus had apprenticed with him last year, it had been all about what Griffin could teach. Griffin had gone to school with Charlus’s aunt, and she had agitated for the apprenticeship. Certainly, Griffin had come out well from the agreement - the money didn’t hurt, though he wasn’t dependent on it. He found Charlus was attentive to detail, responsive, quick to pick up techniques, and in every other way a model apprentice. He was patient with the forms and formalities, some of which were ridiculous, and he was developing the necessary knack for when to go around those forms.
But Griffin had not then or since particularly explained why he used the chair. He’d left it at explaining it was an injury during the War, which was true enough. He’d only explained the parts that applied to their work. Charlus was never to touch or push his chair unless requested. It was, in fact, a help for someone else to get the door, all of that. Charlus hadn’t asked, which was probably his good manners, and Griffin hadn’t offered. It was an awkward sort of conversation, but now it was necessary. And to his credit, Charlus had been exemplary in keeping to what Griffin had asked, in the chair as with everything else.
Now Charlus nodded. “Whatever you feel you wish to tell me, sir.” Just then, the kettle sang, so there were a few moments of fussing with that and the teapot to let Griffin decide how to begin, where to begin.
Once Charlus was seated again, Griffin swallowed. “Long story short, partway through my service in the Great War, I was assigned to a mining company. Someone saw the Monmouthshire address, I suspect, and assumed I knew mining. I was an officer. I knew enough about how to manage a project, of course.”
“You’d been well through your apprenticeship then, sir,” Charlus said, pausing to do the maths.
“That too. I’d been named as one of the three potential Heirs before the War, but of course that didn’t matter to my orders. They were mining deep tunnels to get under the enemy. Near Messines, in France. That part went well enough, or at least as well and as badly as that sort of thing ever does. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, the impact on the land and the land magic, and all that, but I couldn’t actually speak up about it. I just kept my head down, took care of my men as best I could.”
Griffin stopped, as he always had to when he talked about this. “When the explosion happened, I remember it. There was fire shooting up terribly far into the sky. But it was the earth shaking that I remember most. And then I don’t remember much for a fortnight. By that point, I was back at the Temple of Healing, and had been for at least a week. I’d been lucid on and off, apparently, but keeping confidences even then.”
Charlus didn’t seem sure how to take this, but after a moment offered a comment, trusting it would be all right. “You kept to your training, then, sir. The training here.”
“Exactly.” Griffin rewarded that with a smile. Charlus had certainly earned it. “The rest of my recovery was slow and complex. Long story short, as I mentioned when you began, I have some issues with balance and with weakness in my legs. We’re not entirely sure why, still, just that it’s been stable for years. The chair lets me do more, far more reliably. And most of the time, my life is arranged so that it’s not a bother. You’ve seen my flat.”
“Everything you need on the ground floor, sir. Even if you have a spare room upstairs, as well.” Charlus hesitated.
“Go on, ask your question. It’s not something I bring up often. You might as well.” Griffin didn’t much like talking about it - it was somewhere between awkward and just plain boring at this point. But Charlus would, Griffin hoped, not be awful about it. The precedent so far certainly seemed encouraging on that point.
“Pardon, sir. I was wondering if, um. If it’s painful?” The young man’s voice cracked a little.
“Not terribly often. Some aches, and such, especially when the weather’s foul or changing. But less, on average, than my mother, and she blames that on age. Mostly, it’s tedious, when it’s a bother. Shops and such. The housekeeper who sees to me is a treasure, thankfully, she knows how things work for me. Or days like this, when the wet makes everything even worse. I’m right at the best height to get a puddle across my chest if someone doesn’t watch where they’re driving.”
It visibly wasn’t something Charlus had put together, and he snorted at the image before looking abashed. “It isn’t funny at all, sir, just...”
“It’s a hilarious image, and remember, I told you we’d have truth here, as much as we can.” Humans could not, in fact, bear unending truth, but that was a challenge for people to aspire to live up to. Certainly Griffin aspired to it. “Anyway. I manage well enough when I visit my parents up north. Or a little travel, but that’s mostly been London for the theatre, and with a friend.”
Griffin considered that this was probably as good a time to mention the rest of it. There were all the political considerations and Charlus was about to see more of those. “But it took a while to make sure that whatever it was that was causing the problem would not get worse. I spent some time in the Temple of Healing, then at a care home that specialises in magical injury. And in helping people figure out the next thing they’re going to do.” He shrugged. “And eventually I came back here. I was lucky enough to meet someone who makes a much better wheelchair than I started with.”
“Huh. There are - I mean, I’ve seen there are different kinds.” Charlus asked it a little uncertainly. “And you said yours was better on hills than some.”
“It is. Magic’s a great help, actually. The man who made it has a good friend - chosen brother, friend since Schola, all that - who’s paralysed. Seth mostly makes furniture, but he got into wheelchairs as a sideline, ones that suit someone.” Griffin considered. “You had Professor Wain at Schola. Her brother.”
Charlus took a moment to chew on that. “How does the magic help, then? Do you mind my asking?” That was a good sign, that he was curious about that. Griffin had hoped this was how he’d take it, rather than asking about what Griffin couldn’t do.
“If you’d like, I’ll arrange a chance for you to ask Seth and Ponyard - that’s the engineer he works with - when they’re in town. Magic makes it more comfortable and helps stabilise it, it helps reduce the amount of maintenance I have to do. And it gives me more tools than sheer mechanics for turning and braking and all that. Or a little more leverage, going up a steeper hill. I don’t exactly enjoy going down those, either, but I’m not at risk of rushing down or tipping over the same way I would without the magic. Out in public, somewhere like Whitby, there are limits to that, of course. Can’t push the bounds of the Pact and do something that could only happen with magic.”
Of all the oaths that ran his life, that was one of the most basic. Only, living in Trellech, where everyone was magical and had made the Pact, it was also one of the easiest to manage. Travel would change all of that, and it had been years since he’d had to consider that for more than a day or two at a time.
“And that’s why you asked if I’d come up with you. Right, sir, I think I understand better with what you told me before.” Charlus paused to pour the tea from pot to cup, then handed Griffin his. “Some hills are very steep, but there are people who go there to take the sea air, and I saw several people using chairs - the older kind, the basket chairs someone has to push.”
“That’s not a bad sign. I suppose there are cobblestones.” Not Griffin’s favourite, and there were entire streets in Trellech that he avoided unless he was in the mood to bump up and down. The cushioning charms only went so far, and there was always a stone every so often that was particularly difficult.
“There are.” Charlus looked down at his notes. “The main inn won’t do. The hallways are tight, the whole thing’s cramped, and there are no ground floor rooms at all.”
“I can get myself upstairs with canes or crutches, if needed, but it’s having somewhere to leave the chair that’s a problem, yes. But you said there was something that might work,” Griffin said.
