A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(101)

A phantom cradle lingered in Mrs. Kaur’s hands, visible only when tilted at certain angles, catching up both the orange of the lights above and the blue of the map-spell. The dark creases of her palms ran beneath it at different angles again. At her direction, Robin gingerly placed the lock of Edwin’s hair into the cradle’s centre; he could feel nothing there, but the lock sat and stayed as though caught in a web. Immediately the map pulsed brighter and more purple, changing, rewriting itself on the wall to show a small section of city. Robin stepped close to read the neat text of street names.

“Still in London,” he said, excited. “St. James’s, Jermyn Street. That’s the Cavendish Hotel, I’ve been there before.”

“Mr. Courcey rents rooms there,” said Miss Morrissey. “I didn’t think he’d—but I’m sure he would have come back to talk to me.”

“Something might have happened. He—he could be hurt.” Robin touched the map, fingertips meeting only wood, and felt his chest tighten subtly. It wasn’t the inexorable slide of sensation that it had been before now. It felt like a nudging at his mind, like one of those optical illusions. You could choose to see the duck; you could choose to let your eyes absorb the lines a different way, and see a rabbit. It felt, for the first time, as though Robin had control.

He leaned his weight against the wall, closed his eyes, and let it come.

A room, cosy-looking and with books spilling over half its surfaces. A small table laid for tea, with a single cup in a saucer, set out in front of the armchair in which Edwin was sleeping. He looked exhausted and peaceful and entirely normal but for the glowing string around one wrist, the free end of which trailed down to the floor.

Billy Byatt came into view. He sat on the arm of the chair, looking down at Edwin with something too mild to be concern. He took hold of Edwin’s shoulder and shook him; Edwin’s eyes stayed closed, his head lolling into a lower angle. Billy sat back with a satisfied nod. He reached for the teacup and tilted it to look inside—

Robin wrenched his hands away and came back to himself with enough force that he nearly overbalanced. The map was fading, leaving only a faint trace that wavered when Robin blinked.

“He’s not all right,” Robin said. He was so angry he had to force the words out. The casual shake. The glowing string. “They’ve put one of those horrid bridle things on his hand. We’re going there. Now.”

He turned to see two identical pairs of raised eyebrows. Mrs. Kaur’s expression had a layer of shock that her sister’s was missing.

“I thought you said you weren’t a magician,” she said. “What was that?”

“Foresight,” said Miss Morrissey. “I’ll explain on the way, Kitty.”

“Billy,” Robin blurted, “he’s with Billy. Billy Byatt.”

“Billy Byatt,” echoed Mrs. Kaur sharply.

“You know him?” asked Robin.

Her mouth made a strange shape. She exchanged a glance with her sister and said, “I very nearly married him.”





Edwin didn’t use the rose-hip tea from Whistlethropp’s often. He kept it in the cupboard of his pantry for those nights when he’d worn his own magic down to the last specks and didn’t have the energy to cast a simple charm for sleep, but knew his mind would otherwise keep turning the latest idea over and over instead of letting him rest.

Billy laid his own spell on the tea as well, to enhance it, and heated water in Edwin’s hob-kettle instead of removing the bridle and letting Edwin ring down to order some. Edwin watched the tea steep, sitting quiet in his own chair, unable to move except as Billy wanted him to move.

“I am sorry about this,” Billy said, pushing the full cup towards him. “But I need to run an errand before we have a proper chat. And you always look as if you could use a nap, you know, Win.”

Edwin drank, the half-sweet half-tart liquid spilling across his mouth just the wrong side of too hot. He doubted Billy had done that on purpose. There was something anxious and absent about Billy’s smile even then, as though they were merely two young men of passing acquaintance and one was about to ask the other to let him crib off his notes for the Greek exam.

The dispassionate, observing part of Edwin was still trying to cling to that, in order to shout down the part of him that was hopelessly angry and deathly afraid, as the tea leaded his eyelids and he fell asleep.

He woke to evening shadows in the room—he’d lost most of the day—and the smell of melted butter. Billy was sprawled on the rug making toast at Edwin’s fireplace. The scene was cosy. Edwin felt well rested and blurred for the few seconds it took him to ground himself in what had happened, and then his muscles tensed and his pulse flew into his throat, probably undoing all the good that the drugged sleep had done.

“Ah, there we are,” said Billy when he noticed Edwin’s open eyes.

Then, to Edwin’s surprise, he removed the Goblin’s Bridle. Edwin didn’t even think of hitting him until he’d already moved out of reach; Billy saw the twitch of Edwin’s hand and said, reproving, “Settle down, Win.”

“It’s Edwin.” He was past accepting a name he hated from someone who wished him ill. “How many of the others knew?”

“The others? Bel and Charlie and all of them? Oh come now, I’m not a fool,” Billy added as Edwin began to fumble in his pockets, where he encountered a handkerchief and some lint and the round, smooth ball of the oak-heart where he’d stashed it, but no string at all. Billy dangled the rough brown string from his fingers, then returned it to his own pocket. He settled himself on the low table, nudging the teapot aside. “You are a clever one, even if you’ve not much magic to put behind it.”