A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(9)

Normally he’d have sunk into the dry, fascinating words as gratefully as he’d sunk into the atmosphere of the bookshop itself. He found it difficult today. The bruises from the visit to Reggie’s family were starting to smart: the pity, the familiarity, the blatant mirroring of Edwin’s own disgust at what he was compared to what he should be. Little wonder that the unmagical Reggie, like Edwin, had borne the expense of living outside his family home in London, and visited them so seldom.

And on top of that, tomorrow Edwin would have to go back to Whitehall and deal with Blyth again.

At least that would be a limited irritation. Edwin would explain the mistake to the Minister. Blyth would be given a cup of tea and sent back to his own life. Someone more suitable would be found in the interim. And eventually Reggie would reappear, and laugh at Edwin for worrying over nothing.

Edwin ran his eyes twice more over the page and then, when the words refused to line themselves up and be seen, replaced the sweep of his sight with that of a fingertip, finding pleasure in the tiny roughness of the paper. Edwin’s collection of small enjoyments was carefully cultivated. When he exhaled his worry he imagined it going up in the snap of the fire. He thought about the meticulous cogs of the Gatlings’ clock, and the particular hazel of Sir Robert Blyth’s eyes.

In the gaps between small things, Edwin could feel his quiescent magic like a single drop of blood in a bucket of water: more obvious than it deserved to be, given its volume. He could breathe into the knots in the back of his neck. And he could feel out the edges of the aching, yearning space in his life that no amount of quiet and no number of words had yet been able to fill.

Edwin had no idea what he ached for, no real sense of the shape of his ideal future. He only knew that if every day he made himself a little bit better—if he worked harder, if he learned more, more than anyone else—he might find it.





The attack came while Robin was thinking about roast beef.

Charlotte Street was full of rattling wheels and scuffing feet as he walked home from his boxing club. The day’s rain had cleared into a sullenly overcast sky. Robin’s wrist ached from where he’d let annoyance and the brain-spinning impact of the day—magic, magic—distract him during his last bout against Lord Bromley. Scholz, the scowling German ex-champion who owned the boxing club, had treated Robin to a heavily accented diatribe on keeping his wrists and shoulders at the correct angle.

Roast beef. With potatoes crisped at the edges and fluffy on the inside, and golden Yorkshire pudding, and a savoury drape of gravy over the whole.

Robin sighed. No doubt the dinner at home would be fine, but the club only did that particular roast on Mondays. On a normal evening he’d have much preferred to join the group of his friends going directly from the boxing ring to the club’s dining room, then head home late enough into the night that he could dodge whatever conversations were waiting for him.

This was not a normal evening. It had not been a normal day, even by the off-balance new standards for normal that had invaded Robin’s life since his parents had died.

“Sir. Moment of your time, sir.”

Robin wouldn’t have looked up, but the rough voice was accompanied by a touch on the back of his hand, and he wondered if his pocket was being picked. He loosened his arms, ready to lash out, and slowed his steps.

That was a mistake. A loop of yarn slid over his hand and tightened on his wrist. Robin thought first and absurdly of the string that Courcey had used to make the snowflake.

“Look here,” Robin said sharply, and would have gone on, but the loop tightened further and the words died in his mouth.

Perhaps his first thought hadn’t been so absurd. The yarn was glowing, yellow-white where it cinched the dark sleeve of his coat. It looked hot, like it might burn the fabric—might burn him. Robin tried to flinch away.

His body refused to flinch just as his voice refused to raise itself and shout. A horrible, numbing warmth drenched him, like the stupor of cosy blankets in early winter mornings, but with none of the comfort. His body hung on him like rags. Unmoving.

Robin had once been knocked to the ground hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs. He remembered vividly the sheer animal fear of lying there in the long, long seconds before he recovered, unable to gasp, trying to force an action that should have been instinctual, his aching throat struggling against the dumb sluggishness of his rib cage.

He was still breathing now. But somehow it felt worse.

Without any guidance from his own will, Robin’s chin lifted and he gazed straight ahead. At least now he was looking his attacker in the face, and— Robin’s gut lurched with a new horror. The man in front of him—or so he assumed; the voice had been that of a man, at least—had no face. He had a rough shirt and sun-browned hands that gripped the other end of the glowing yarn, and a matching sun-browned neck. At the top of that neck was a head-shaped nothingness: a queasily shifting fog.

“That’s it,” the man said. “Come nice and quiet.”

It was less than an hour off sunset, hardly the inky midnight one thought of as playing host to ruffians. There was enough light for someone to notice if Robin frantically waved his arms. There were more than enough people on the streets to stop and ask questions if Robin yelled for help.

If, if. Robin could do nothing of the kind.

He followed the man, meek as a trusting child. Pulled on the end of a string. Viewed from behind, his captor had a head of remarkably normal fair hair. There was a clear line where the hair became not-hair—became the fog.