A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(4)

Courcey said, “It’s a simple enough . . .” and then stopped. Perhaps because he had realised he was applying the word simple to something that was anything but.

Perhaps not.

Robin’s mind was oddly blank, as it had been sometimes at the end of a particularly fiendish examination, as if he’d scooped out its worthwhile contents with his fingers and smeared them grimly onto the page. The last time he’d felt this way was when he found out that his parents were dead. Instead of surprise, this. An exhausted, wrung-out space.

Robin waved his hand between the pen and the ceiling. Nothing. No wires. He didn’t even know how wires would have worked to create such a thing. But the action seemed necessary, a last gasp of practicality before acceptance flooded in.

He said, with what he could already tell was going to be a pathetic attempt at levity: “So when you said special . . .”

Courcey was now regarding Robin as though Robin were an unusual species of animal, encountered in the wild and possessing a large mouth full of larger teeth. He looked, in short, as though he were bracing himself to engage in a wrestling match, and was wondering why Robin hadn’t pounced yet.

They stared at each other. The room’s weak light caught on the pale tips of Courcey’s lashes. He was not a handsome man, but Robin had never been inspected this closely by other men except as a prelude to fucking, and the sheer intimate intensity of it was sending confusing signals through Robin’s body.

“You know,” said Robin, “I’m beginning to suspect there’s been a mistake.”

“How astute of you,” said Courcey, still with that lion-tamer tension.

“I might be lacking one or two vital qualifications for this position.”

“Indeed.”

“I suppose your pal Gatling could conjure pigeons from his desk drawers with a snap of his fingers too.”

“No,” said Courcey, the syllable drawn out like toffee. “This position’s still part of the Home Office, it’s not a magician’s job. I’m the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly.”

“Magical. Magician. Magic.” Robin glanced at the pen again. It continued to hover, serene. He took a long breath. “All right.”

“All right?” The humanising note of exasperation was matched by something flaring in Courcey’s face. “Honestly? You expect me to believe this is the first time you’ve come across any kind of magic, and you’re sitting there without so much as—and the best you can muster is all right?” The blue eyes searched him again. “Is this a joke? Did Reggie put you up to this?”

It seemed late in the day to be asking that question. Robin wanted to laugh. But Courcey hadn’t asked it with anything so normal as hope. The light in his face had retreated, as though someone holding a candle up to glass had taken a few steps backwards. It was the resigned expression of someone on whom jokes were often played, and who knew he was expected to laugh afterwards even if they were more cruel than funny. Robin had seen the candle-flicker of this expression at his parents’ sumptuous dinner parties, when the person making the joke was most often Lady Blyth herself.

“It’s not a joke,” he said firmly. “What else do you want me to say?”

“You aren’t going to suggest that you must be going mad?”

“I don’t feel mad.” Robin reached out and touched the pen. He had expected it to be immovable in the air, but it allowed him to take hold of it and move it around. When released, it floated without urgency back to hover near the margin of the paper.

“How does it know what you want it to do?”

“It’s not sentient,” said Courcey. “It’s an imbuement.”

“A what?”

Courcey took a deep breath and clasped his hands together. Robin, who had suffered under long-winded tutors at Pembroke, recognised the symptoms and braced himself.

Sure enough, the words quickly stopped making sense. Apparently magic was as inherently fiddly as Latin grammar, and required the same sort of attention to detail even when constructing what Courcey described as a minor object imbuement.

The pen, apparently seized with the desire to be helpful, transcribed everything Courcey was saying in a neat, spiky hand. It didn’t make any more sense written down. Robin’s eye caught on the phrase like a legal contract as Courcey was explaining how British magicians used a shorthand of gesture called cradling in order to define the terms of any given spell, including those that rendered an innocent pen capable of darting fussily back and forth across the paper.

“Does the pen sign the contract itself?” said Robin, struggling to stay afloat. This won him another of the suspicious, flat-mouthed looks that meant Courcey thought he was trying to be funny. “Show me something else,” Robin tried instead. “Anything.”

A corner of Courcey’s lip tucked between and drew out of his teeth. He pulled something from the same pocket that had housed the magical pen, and glanced over his shoulder as if to reassure himself that the door was closed.

Excitement crawled over Robin’s scalp. He didn’t think Courcey actually meant him any harm; the man was far too prickly. If he’d been trying for charm Robin might have been worried.

What Courcey had pulled from his pocket was a loop of plain brown string, which he wrapped around both of his hands. He then held them about a foot and a half apart, pulling the string taut.