power will disrupt the warding and release the magic. That's how you know that someone has crossed your warding — you'll feel the release and know it's been broken.'
'So she pushed me out.'
'There's no point in brooding on it, Niall. You invaded her privacy and she reacted. Instead of expressing your concern and asking if she was safe, you started making demands. It was not, perhaps, the best way to re-establish relations with your daughter.'
'You always take her side.'
'I take no side but my own, but I know Alex is precious to you and I'm trying to help. You need to stop thinking of her as a little girl.'
'That was pretty cool, what she did, though, wasn't it?' I smiled.
'Crude but effective. She excluded you and prevented you from re-entering. Maybe she's more capable than you think, and she's certainly better at learning and not getting distracted by side-issues when someone is trying to teach them something.'
'Sorry, where were we?'
'You were extending your awareness outwards and telling me what you feel.'
I closed my eyes. Here beneath the trees the shade was welcome, but the rustling of the leaves and the smell of the grass was a constant distraction from what I was supposed to be looking for.
'It's just trees and grass,' I told her.
'Is it? Or is that what you're supposed to think?'
I let myself sink deeper into the sense of the place, hearing the buzzing of bumble bees, the far-off coo of a wood pigeon and the faint rumble of distant traffic. 'It's peaceful.'
'How peaceful?'
Now that she mentioned it, there was something. 'There's a kind of dampening, a dullness spread around us. Is that what I'm looking for?'
'What can you tell me about it?'
'It's heavy, like a wool blanket but not warm like that, just heavy. Now that I can see it it's over everything. It's huge.'
'Every day the Warders renew these boundaries.' Blackbird said quietly. 'Every day they reassert their magic over this ground. What you're sensing is the repeated warding of this place, layer upon layer, until it's so thick that it can no longer be broken, simply endured. It's one of the things I don't like about being here. It's smothering.'
'Why didn't I sense it before?'
'Here at the edge it's easier to detect. You can feel the density of it change as it fades out towards the edges. Within the grounds of the house it's pervasive. It invades every space and seeps into every crack. There is nowhere not steeped in it. Like background noise that never ceases, after a while you don't notice it. I do though. It's like a constant niggle at the edge of my senses, a lingering doubt that things aren't as they should be.'
'You could have said something.'
'It doesn't seem to bother you, and as you pointed out it's all very convenient having everyone on call, with all the facilities to hand.'
'But I get to go out and leave for a while. I get some relief from it,' I said.
'Indeed.'
'Couldn't you set up your own warding, just in our rooms? You could exclude the Warder's magic and have a little island of peace.'
'A bubble inside a bubble? Somewhat unstable, don't you think? I'm not sure that would even be possible. Besides I can't see Garvin allowing any area over which he has no control anywhere near the courts. He is responsible for security when all's said and done.'
'I'm sorry. I didn't realise.'
'It presents us with an opportunity, though. I want you to establish your own warding, right here at the edge of the courts where it's weaker. You will need to push their warding back to establish your own.'
'How?'
'Do you remember when we were sitting outside the Church of St Clement's Dane in London and I was showing you how to establish your glamour?'
'I guess. I could feel the way your magic concealed us, as it spread across the area around the statue.'
'Think of extending threads of magic outward, like a spider spinning a web. Push it out a little, connect it together, then push it out a little more. Keep extending the boundary.'
'That's not how a spider builds a web,' I pointed out.
'I know that. I'm just drawing an analogy. Think instead then of how wasps build a nest. They start small and then build onto it in spirals, shoring it up as you go.'
'I don't even know what it is I'm shoring up.'
'It's like territory, like putting your stamp on it, as if you were claiming it.'
I tried to imagine myself claiming the area around the fence. Nothing happened. 'It's not working.'
'OK, forget that. Come down here and lie down.' She hopped off the fence and smoothed her skirts before sitting on the grass.
I stepped down and sat down with her and then lay back onto the grass so that my head was near to where she was sitting.
'Look up in the tree and allow your eyes to defocus — better still close them, not tightly, but so that the sunlight filters through your eyelids. Imagine the tree is still there.'
'It is still there.'
She tweaked my nose.
'Ow!'
'Shut up and listen. The tree is above you, extending its branches out into the air, leaning up into the sunlight. Let your magic extend around your body, let it relax into the earth, so that it seeps into the soil, down among the roots and worms. Let it follow the roots of the tree, in your mind, in your imagination, up through the trunk, out along the branches, onto the twigs.'
'It feels light and warm.'
'Follow the light out along the twigs into the leaves. Feel the sunlight in the leaves, feeding the tree, bathe in the sunlight at the tips of the leaves.'
'This is really very restful. You're not going to be offended if I fall asleep are you?'
She ignored me. 'Leave a sense of yourself, a presence there at the leaves, but now float from the leaves into the air, following the shifting breeze, drifting with the wind.'
'Is this how a seed feels when it falls? Oh, hang on, there's something here. It feels like a fungus or a fuzzy mould.'
'You've reached the edge of the warding. Send a root of your own into it. Explore it with your senses' she suggested.
'It tastes sour, not like the tree.'
'It's very old, layer upon layer. But like all layers it has weaknesses. Explore the cracks. Push your way into it. Find the fault lines and wheedle your way into them.'
I could feel the weight of the warding ahead of me. Somehow it left the taste of decay in my mouth, along with the smell of the forest floor and something beneath that — a bitter sourness that crept onto the tongue, making my mouth flood with saliva.
'What do you think you're doing?'
It was Fionh's voice and I opened my eyes, squinting up against the light. She was standing next to the fence we had been sitting on. I blinked, glancing at Blackbird.
'I asked you what you thought you were doing,' she repeated.
'Blackbird was showing me how wardings work,' I explained.
Fionh raised an eyebrow at Blackbird.
'It seemed a good way of demonstrating how a place can be warded over time,' she said.
'You know better than to interfere with the wardings of the courts,' said Fionh. 'And getting Niall to do it in your place will not help you.'
