A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(36)

It wasn’t just waterfowl, either. Smaller birds dotted the air, flitting and curling, calling out in every voice from fluting to harsh. They seemed to be trying for a perch on the boat, or on Robin himself.

“I’m going to be Noah’s Ark if this keeps up,” shouted Robin. “Oh—blast,” and ducked as a blackbird swooped right for his face.

The water around the red boat was frothing with the motion of curious fish. Edwin had exactly enough time to wonder uneasily about eels before the inevitable happened: one too many birds, one sudden movement too far on Robin’s behalf, and Robin was toppling into the lake. Again.

Belinda shouted with laughter and buried her face in one hand.

“Robin?” Edwin shouted.

“Ah—help?” came from Robin, somewhat muffled.

“Oh, Lord,” screeched Trudie.

Belinda laughed harder—all the others were laughing, too, and Edwin was trying to suppress his own helpless amusement at the sheer ridiculousness of the spectacle— And that, of course, was when the swans appeared.

There was a single elegant pair of them, and they’d been crossing the lake at a serene pace, reaching the scene of the hubbub like a couple arriving late at a party to ensure that their entrance was noted.

Robin waved one arm and shouted something that was difficult to make out from within his local storm cloud of beaks and feathers. He was likely flailing for effect, playing up to the crowd. If he really wanted to escape, it would be easy enough for him to dive and swim clear of the charm.

One of the swans spread its considerable wings, hunching up. A hiss came from the snowy throat, loud enough to be audible even above the outraged din of the other birds and the gales of laughter from the boats. The second swan began to follow suit. It was—large. Somehow one didn’t think of swans as that large.

Edwin found himself clutching his oar. He’d thought his magic drained to quiescence, but something new was churning within him, a feeling like sandpaper being applied to the underside of his skin.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

And in the next terrible moment before the swans charged he saw Robin’s face, very clearly, and it was white and stiff with dread.

“Bel!” Edwin yelled. “Something’s wrong, will you—Billy, help him!” and turned his boat, badly, furious and scared and being scraped raw by the urgent impetus of a magic that he’d never had cause to feel, never had a hope of recognising for what it was, before now.

He kept glancing over his shoulder as he rowed, trying to tell himself that he could still see Robin’s head, sinking below the surface and then rising again, and then sinking— Someone was still laughing. Edwin wanted rope to erupt from his fingers and choke them for it.

Edwin rowed with panic and no grace through a cold-charm and some kind of auditory illusion that he barely had time to notice. By the time he reached the Pied Piper square, Billy was there, floating on the outskirts of the fray and building an illusion that—wouldn’t work on animals, the idiot.

“You need a negation—no, a reversal,” Edwin said. “Second-class, give it a radius of at least ten feet, hurry it up,” and took a breath and cursed his life for a nightmare before leaping into the water.

He regretted it immediately. The hiss of the swans was unbearably loud, their wings a blinding maelstrom of violence, the strike of a webbed foot against Edwin’s neck almost brutally painful. The water was cold, and unmentionable slimy things writhed against his ankles, and Edwin had no idea how one rescued a heavier and more athletic man from swan-induced drowning, and he’d used up his magic on that bloody drying spell—why hadn’t Edwin thought, why was he so useless? And that horrible urgent scrape of sensation still had him and was driving him on.

Edwin’s hand touched a moving limb. He took a handful of fabric and hauled upwards with the strength of desperation. Robin’s head broke the surface, spluttering, just as Edwin’s forearm cramped.

“Fucking—” Robin gasped, and then Billy finished the reversal, and every single bird tried to exit their vicinity at once in a whirlwind of flaps.

And then it was, at least, quiet.

Edwin panted with the effort of staying afloat. He felt like he had grown extra limbs solely so that they could ache. His trousers were fighting him. Robin was spitting out water.

It took Charlie and Billy together to haul Robin into Billy’s boat, and Edwin swam after them towards the lake’s edge, abandoning his own; someone could charm it in later. Robin managed to step ashore on his own legs, but they wobbled and sat him down hard on the sand. Edwin, trailing filthy weeds, went and sat next to him while Charlie helped Bel and Trudie pull up their boats. Edwin’s neck throbbed nastily where the swan had kicked it. Robin’s bared forearms sported more than a few red grazes.

“Got another of those drying thingums up your sleeve?” said Robin hopefully.

“No,” said Edwin, low and short with frustration. “What the devil happened? Why didn’t you swim clear?” A thought hit him. “It was the curse. Or a vision.”

“Neither, this time,” said Robin. “I couldn’t move my legs. They felt like they’d been turned to lumps of lead.”

The spell casually dubbed Dead Man’s Legs was a favourite of most boys when they learned it. The idea of it being used on someone trying to stay afloat in water was horrifying.