A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(52)

“What is?” asked Edwin.

Robin was quicker. “The last contract,” he said. “Whatever the blazes it really is, Gatling had it from you?”

Mrs. Sutton pressed her lips together and bowed her head. The shake of her hands worsened for a few moments. When she looked up, half of the vivacity had left her face. “I think you boys should leave,” she said, suddenly querulous. “I cannot help you.”

“You don’t know what we want help with,” said Edwin, feeling wrung by guilt, but irritable nonetheless.

A sigh like rustling leaves. “Please—”

“I was raised by liars, Mrs. Sutton. I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”

Edwin looked at Robin, startled. Mrs. Sutton was doing the same. Robin looked apologetic and charming and yet, somehow, like a rock planted amongst crashing waves. He was already shrugging off his jacket, unfastening his shirt cuff.

Robin went on, “We don’t mean you any harm, you have my word. There are people after this contract, and they think I know where it is. And they’re not too concerned with the niceties of how they go about getting their information.”

Mrs. Sutton gathered her spectacles onto her nose and gazed at the bared curse. She was controlling her face now, but she still looked shaken.

“You wrote to Reggie, didn’t you?” Edwin said. “At the London office. I’m the Assembly liaison,” he added, into her hesitation. “I work with Reggie. He’s been missing for the past three weeks.” Hastily, he explained the circumstances—who Robin was, and how he’d become involved. How the contract was mentioned for the first time when Robin was cursed, and how they’d found her letter, rose-scented, in Reggie’s mail.

“Yes, I wrote to him. I wanted to—check in,” said Flora Sutton. The spectacles dropped again. Now she sat like a fairy queen in a bower, keen as fresh-cut grass. “He didn’t send me a single word after he left with it in his pocket. And I’d kept it safe so long, I felt anxious over it.”

Myriad questions hung thick in Edwin’s mind, and he was dizzy with urgency at the promise of finally having them answered. He snatched at the first that came to hand. “How did Reggie know you had it in the first place? All of this, the threats, the curse—it must be because the contract can’t be found with any kind of spell.” He thought of the tantrum of spilled paper and overturned furniture in the office.

Mrs. Sutton hesitated a moment more. Edwin struggled to trap the rest of his questions behind his teeth, his breath held, waiting.

Then a spark entered the old woman’s eyes, and she seemed to come to a decision. “That rather depends on the spell. You. Courcey.” She nodded to Edwin. “Go to that cabinet and fetch me the stone in the uppermost drawer.”

Edwin did as directed. The room was lined with bookshelves. One didn’t notice them at first beyond the sheer, colourful, nose-itching extravagance of the flowers. The standing shelves alternated with panels of dark-stained wood carved in a pattern of ivy.

The stone in question, nestled in a velvet-lined drawer in a pretty wooden cabinet, was a flat and sharp-edged chunk of grey rock. Etched into its surface, most visible when angled into the light, was a branching fern.

“A fossil,” said Robin. He quirked a smile at Edwin’s surprise. “My parents liked the occasional antiquity along with their art. I think we’ve a nice stone seashell or three in one of the parlours.”

“This plant is long gone, but you can tell where it lay,” said Mrs. Sutton. Her manner was quicker now, more eager, as though she’d given in to an impulse to indulge herself by explaining a theory to a willing audience. “An object of power has a weight to it, and will warp the normal lines and channels of magic around itself. That’s what you look for, if you know how. Even if the thing’s removed, if it’s been there long enough”—a nod to the fossil in Edwin’s hand—“the shape of it remains.”

“Like one of those echo illusion spells?” said Robin. “An imprint of the past, turned into something you can see?”

That got him a sharp look from Flora Sutton. “This is how we found the contract in the first place. And the imprint is stronger if the object rests in a place of power. Like Sutton.” She glanced around the room, pride heavy in her gaze. “Two channels of magic cross one another here.”

“Channels of magic.” Edwin’s mind was spinning. He needed two hours and a notebook to make sense of all of this. He needed to fling himself onto the rug at this strange old woman’s feet and refuse to budge until he’d absorbed everything she had to teach. “You’re talking about ley lines. That’s—nobody bothers with ley lines anymore. That sort of magic hasn’t worked for generations.”

“Certainly it doesn’t work, when you men try to wrench it into your neat little boxes and cradles.” Flora Sutton sniffed. “Sutton’s power makes it a perfect place to enchant as a hiding place, but also makes a—heavier footprint. Easier to locate, once one knows the trick. It was always a risk.” She sighed. “Reggie said that the people he was working with hadn’t quite got the knack of it, but they were starting to triangulate the pieces. And Reggie saw their maps and figured it out, because he knew I lived here. And so he came.” She spread her hands. “To warn me.”