Charlie snorted. “You mean I’d merely be in demand as some sort of—cart horse, or motor-engine. Someone else holding the reins? Rather not. You have the power you have, and that’s an end to it.”
“Is this another of those central problems?” Robin asked Edwin, who nodded.
“Theoretically, it should be possible,” Edwin said. “But it’s never worked in practice. Not in the entire history of magic.”
Robin struggled to recall the explanation Edwin had given that very first day in the Whitehall office. At least he had the excuse of lifelong ignorance. “It isn’t just a matter of contracts?”
“Should be, shouldn’t it?” said Billy. He gave Robin an appraising look, as though he’d unexpectedly done a trick. “You’re settling into this like a natural, Sir Robin. Honestly, a commendable lack of gibbering.”
“Win’s probably been lecturing the poor boy for days,” said Belinda. “Some of it’s bound to have sunk in.”
Edwin looked steadily at Robin. “Yes. Contracts. But how do you define a person, with the precision needed? How do you define their magic? Either it would be so complex it would take ten magicians a year to build the spell, or it’s something so simple we’ll never think of it. It’s impossible. We work around it.” He tapped his fingers on the table and glanced at Charlie. “We make do.”
“We rely on the brainy types,” said Miggsy. He said it much less pleasantly than Billy had. “Are you sure this is going to work? There are plenty of curses that last until death, you know.”
Robin’s throat tightened. Edwin’s glance to him was shuttered, as Edwin’s company-glances were, but Robin could have sworn that what the shutters had closed on was guilt. So Edwin was withholding some information.
“I’m not a child,” said Robin. “You don’t have to protect me.”
Instead of answering, Edwin frowned at Miggsy and said, “And there are plenty of curses that do not, and each of those had a first time when someone cracked their removal. Should we give up without even trying?”
Miggsy raised his hands in mocking surrender. Trudie gave a stifled giggle. The eager attention of their eyes reminded Robin of laughter on the lake, and suddenly he felt more exposed, more vulnerable, and more angry. He wasn’t anyone’s to put on display. Not anymore.
“I’d prefer it if it was just Edwin and Charlie,” he said. “If you fellows wouldn’t mind?”
Trudie had the nerve to pout. None of them argued, though Belinda lingered near the door as though she were thinking of doing so.
“Go on, darling,” said Charlie. “A man doesn’t care for a female to see him in pain, does he? You wouldn’t sit around gawping at him having his tooth pulled.”
“Thank you,” said Edwin dryly as his sister left the library. He handed Charlie a piece of paper half-covered with the symbols of cradling notation. “Shall we get on? It’s built on a reversal framework, but you won’t be applying it to the curse itself. I’ve defined the three stages. The first is an exact copy, ink onto paper—you shouldn’t have any trouble with that. Then a deep sympathy, like the one you used on the map of the lake. I’ve had to guess at the defining terms for the curse, but it should hold. And then this one, with the reversal folded into it.”
Charlie skimmed his eyes down the paper. “I’ve not seen that one before. That clause—is it dissolution?”
“It’s a domestic spell.” The corner of Edwin’s mouth curled: a small piece of pride. “Your maids likely use it to lift stains from your tablecloths. You lift the ink away, once the sympathy’s applied, and we hope to blazes the curse comes away with it. You see?”
“I say, that’s rather neat,” said Charlie. “So it starts . . .?”
“Don’t just waft your finger like that. Here.”
It took another ten minutes while Edwin frowned and adjusted Charlie’s fingers in the same way that Scholz adjusted a man’s stance in the boxing ring. Charlie, in the absence of his wife and friends, took the corrections more amiably than Robin had expected.
Robin, hating the constant winding of his nerves with the delay and not at all keen on the image of tooth-pulling that Charlie had dropped into his head, sketched the eerie landscape of his last vision on the back of some more of Edwin’s notes.
Finally Edwin pronounced himself satisfied. Robin rolled up his sleeve for what he hoped was going to be the last time.
“I really can’t promise—” Edwin said.
“I know,” said Robin. “Is there anything I need to”—he waggled the fingers of his free hand awkwardly—“do?”
“We could find you a belt to bite down on,” said Charlie.
“Charlie,” said Edwin.
“A joke! A joke, old man.”
Robin tried to sit on his free hand in a way that was surreptitious, then gave it up as a bad job and simply squeezed it between his thighs.
“Right-o,” he said. “Give it a try.”
It was almost fun, to begin with. Edwin spilled a small pool of ink onto some paper as Charlie cradled the first stage of the spell. Robin felt a queer ticklish sensation as though the runes were being traced by a wet feather, and he watched with interest as the large blot of ink split and rearranged itself into a perfect copy of the curse, including all the new curls and densities that had developed overnight. The second stage, the sympathy, called up no sensation at all. Edwin’s eyes were slits of concentration, watching Charlie’s hands as though he could see the phantom string that he himself would have used.
“Stains from tablecloths,” murmured Charlie, winking at Robin. “Shall we?”
He splayed his hands flat above the ink-copy, then tugged suddenly upwards as though yanking a net of fish clear from water.
Robin heard a scream like metal under strain.
It was him.
It felt as though the symbols were alive, all teeth and heat, burrowing their way through Robin’s flesh. The hand that had been between Robin’s thighs gave a pang, and Robin realised he’d jerked it so hard it had struck the edge of the table.
“Robin,” Edwin was saying.
The pain ran out of fuel in Robin’s forearm and headed north. Robin had the sudden conviction that if it reached his chest, his heart would stop. A wash of fear weakened him entirely. He gave another scream, this one coming out muffled through his teeth, and then the pain took gleeful hold of his muscles and he spasmed all the way out of his chair.
He didn’t remember hitting the floor, but he must have. When he opened his eyes the left side of his head was pounding as someone rolled him onto his back. His left wrist throbbed in tandem with it. His entire right arm felt like water at a low simmer.
“I’m fine,” he said weakly. “I can sit.” The arm behind him was Charlie’s, helping him upright. Edwin, on his knees on the rug, looked a curdled mixture of fear and relief. One of his hands was gripping Robin’s ankle.
“Is it—?” said Robin.
“No,” said Edwin. “I’m sorry.”
Robin made his eyes focus. The runes of the curse had spread, rapid and angry as ants in a poked anthill. They wrapped around both sides of his arm, now, and reached halfway up the span between elbow and armpit. The snake of his fear swelled and writhed.
“Rotten shame,” said Charlie with genuine sympathy. “Chair or feet? Or stay where you are?”
“Chair,” Robin decided, and winced his way into it with Charlie’s help. “Thanks for trying, Charlie. You should probably let the others know I’m still alive and whole; I’m fairly sure I was yelling my head off, there.”
Charlie waved a don’tmention-it kind of hand and left, looking transparently glad for the excuse. Robin exhaled. It felt like the first time he’d remembered to do so since regaining consciousness.
“I made it worse,” said Edwin, flat.
“It was getting worse anyway.”
This did not appear to help matters. Edwin’s pale face was pulled tight with unhappiness. “Perhaps I should take you to the Assembly after all.”
Robin remembered what Edwin had said about the Magical Assembly and the rarity of foresight. “I’d rather you had another go at it,” he admitted. Edwin looked taken aback; Robin shrugged. “Why not?”