Arthur still felt like he was standing on a precipice, trying to figure their way out of this: there were a couple options, none of them good. He could go beat the shit out of Macmillan so that he wouldn't come to Ireland tomorrow, but that was liable to land Art in prison. He could write to Aldous, except Aldous probably already knew. He could tip off the Department of Magical Law Enforcement but, again — prison, and maybe they would just reschedule the duel, and did Art know anyone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement anymore? He could write to Valerian and maybe Valerian would say no and then they'd have to call it off because they didn't have a healer. He could go to Ireland early and find a way to shut off the floo's connection on the other end, but that also felt illegal, and what if he got caught there? He could talk Ben out of it, except that wasn't working so far.

He couldn't let Ben do this.

He didn't have any good options.

But maybe one of those things would work.

He wasn't as smart as Aldous was, though; would a scheme even work?

"And," Art said, "You're sure we have to go through with this? Maybe the threat was enough — " It wasn't a lie if he was just asking what Ben thought, and maybe the threat was enough — maybe Macmillan would back down and he wouldn't show up, or maybe they could pretend he would. Maybe November would manage things herself, even if she was as fragile as her brothers believed her to be. Maybe if Art could solve just this one thing without anyone bleeding on him tomorrow, he could figure out the rest of his fucked up life.

---