A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(14)

Robin drained the glass, hoping it would soothe the kicked-hard feeling of his brain. He would worry about that when he planned to worry about everything else. Tomorrow.





Edwin arrived at the liaison office the next morning and had to blink several times before he accepted that the scene in front of him was truly happening. The hem of Miss Morrissey’s skirt disappeared in a snowbank of paper strewn over the office floor. She was sitting on a wooden box; after a moment Edwin recognised it as one of the three sturdy drawers that had made up the filing cabinet, which was now a hollow frame. Here and there amongst the chaos of paper lay the late contents of the bookshelf. Edwin’s stomach squeezed at the sight of splayed pages and bent-back spines.

Sir Robert Blyth sat cross-legged on the desk. Around him was a battlefield of detritus that was probably the contents of the desk’s drawers, and yet more paper. He had a pile of envelopes in his lap and was reading something.

“What have you done?” Edwin demanded.

Blyth looked up. “Come in, close the door,” he said cheerfully. “Oh, wait, no—it doesn’t do that anymore.”

“What?”

“Close.”

Edwin’s fingers dipped through empty space. There was a scorched, splintered gap in the door where the knob had once been.

“Someone was in a temper,” said Miss Morrissey. “There’s no particular imbuement on the locks. A robust opening-spell would do it.”

Edwin hung his hat and coat on the stand in the outer office and waded into the battlefield. “My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I assumed . . .”

“That I tossed my own office?” said Blyth.

“It was like this when I let myself in, at eight o’clock,” said Miss Morrissey.

Edwin looked around again. Viewed with that eye, it was obvious. “Someone was looking for something.”

“Yes. Your friend Gatling has gotten himself muddled up in some sort of serious trouble,” said Blyth. Belatedly, Edwin realised that the cheer in Blyth’s voice was too high-pitched.

“What do you mean?” Edwin asked sharply. “What do you know about it?”

Blyth waited as Edwin picked his way into a patch of bare rug. Up close, Blyth didn’t look like a man who had slept well. Those mild hazel eyes had pinches of tension at their corners. There was a stubbornness to his mouth.

“I mean,” Blyth said, “that I was attacked last night by—magicians—who seemed to think that because I’d stepped into Gatling’s position that very morning, I’d have known to search his office for secret documents and would be happy to hand them over.”

“Documents?” Edwin found his hand drifting towards the pocket holding the small vial of lethe-mint he’d prepared that morning, and forced it back down by his side before the movement could become obvious.

Blyth unbuttoned one of his cuffs and pushed it up his arm. He proceeded to tell them a story that Edwin had to interrupt several times, including a forced pause where he scrambled for a piece of blank paper and set his pen to taking notes. Fog masks: that would be a simple illusion spell. Something that Reggie had hidden. And glowing shapes that became a tattoo. Blyth’s voice halted when he talked about that.

Edwin frowned and made Blyth repeat the words that had been exchanged between himself and his attackers. “Are you sure that they didn’t say anything else about where Reggie might be now?”

“No, I’m not sure,” said Blyth, looking at Edwin with dislike.

“Well, then—”

“I was distracted, due to being knocked out and tortured and tugged around on a piece of string.”

A small index card flicked out of the stacks of Edwin’s mind. There was a spell by the unfortunately fanciful name of the Goblin’s Bridle, which could be used to calm frightened horses and make them biddable. The idea of it being used on a person made him feel ill.

“It hurt. And then when you looked, later, it was on your arm? Anything else you can remember? How the cradling—oh, this is useless, as if you could tell.”

Another held gaze from Blyth, longer this time. That stubbornness had redoubled. “No. Nothing else.”

“I’m so sorry, Sir Robert,” said Miss Morrissey. “It does sound like you had an awful night.”

“Thank you.” The dislike melted away and Blyth smiled at her. “Didn’t you say something about Gatling behaving oddly, before he vanished?”

“Yes. Ever since he got back from that trip to the North York Moors.” She frowned. “It was some tiny mining town where the inhabitants were reporting ghosts walking through the streets.”

“Ghosts?” Blyth’s eyebrows shot up.

“He did say it’d all been a misunderstanding when he got back,” said Miss Morrissey. “Nothing magical involved. But he was vague about it. That was when he started acting all mysterious.”

“It was a fool’s errand in the first place,” snapped Edwin. “Visible ghosts? Nonsense. There’s no such thing.” But half of his annoyance was with himself. Nonsense or not, if he’d accepted the invitation to go along—if he’d even acted interested instead of telling Reggie not to waste his time—would Reggie have liked him more, trusted him more? Enough to confide in Edwin about this dangerous mess he’d become mixed up in?