There had been two separate instances in childhood when Robin had broken one of his arms. He only dimly remembered the pain of having the bones set and the limb wrapped in linen strips, soaked in plaster that hardened to a cast. What he remembered with startling clarity was the moment when the shudder of the surgeon’s plaster-saw finally cracked the cast in half, and his arm emerged from it, limp and pale as that of a girl who’d spent her life under parasols.
The curse was gone. The knowledge felt like having a bone new-knitted beneath white flesh. Robin found himself still rubbing at the shirtsleeve with his thumb, wondering. He didn’t care that a headache had buried itself behind both his eyes since he was wrenched awake in the library. For the moment, he didn’t care that the Last Contract was still out there, and people would still kill for it. No more pain. No more fear that the next attack would be the last. A weight that had been dragging at him was gone. He wanted to shout and laugh and scull from Putney to Mortlake and back again.
Edwin caught up with him just outside the breakfast room. He was shut away inside his clothes, hair smoothed back, looking far more composed and far less touchable than he’d been in the library. Always, with Edwin, this drawing-back. He drew close and lowered his voice. “I didn’t ask—can you remember any of what you saw? It went on a long time.”
“It was all rather scrambled, after the beginning,” Robin said. “I’ll jot down what I can after breakfast.”
Once again Robin’s curse and its dramatic removal were the talk of the table. Charlie was explaining the ink-spell to Trudie and Billy, while Miggsy made an elaborate show of floating the coffeepot down the table to serve Belinda a fresh cup. Maud sat apart, not talking to any of the magicians, pulling grapes from a cluster and eating them one by one. She shot Robin a smile, though, when he sat opposite her, and she eyed his overfull plate with approval. Robin’s hunger was no joke; he’d taken huge servings of everything hot, and liked his chances of going back for seconds. Maud poured him tea as he took the first forkful of devilled kidneys, followed by another of bacon and fried potatoes, heavily dusted with salt and pepper. He took two more mouthfuls, barely bothering to chew, and regretted it when the middle of his chest complained about the amount he’d gulped down all at once.
Robin coughed and set down his cutlery. He was reaching for his tea when the smell hit: a wrong note in the morass of savoury odours that filled the room. This was like petrol fumes. Like damp stones.
No. It couldn’t be what he thought. The food was well seasoned, and he’d eaten it too fast. He was seeing—light glittering off the silverware and the window, that was all.
It was done. It was off. It was— An Indian woman, neatly dressed in shirtwaist and skirt with a blue tie at her neck, seated behind a desk in an office. She was arranging a pile of paper and speaking to someone, while the typewriter on her desk flung its keys up and down without a finger applied to it. She looked up and her face broke into a smile. When she stopped speaking, the typewriter paused too. Her face had the faintest echo of familiarity, as though she were a sketch copied many times over from a well-known original. She began to stand up.
“—bin? Robin?” It was Maud, voice high with panic.
The breakfast room swam back into focus. Everyone was staring at him.
“Yes. Sorry.” Robin’s heart was surging into a race. His gaze found Edwin, whose hand was tight around a forgotten muffin, horrified. Edwin had seen this happen far too many times to mistake it.
“No,” Edwin said, as though he could erase the last minute through sheer force of words.
Robin scrambled at his sleeve, yanking it up, not caring when he caught his cuff in the butter dish. The skin was still bare of marks. The curse hadn’t managed to come crawling back. “How is that possible?” he demanded of Edwin. “The foresight and the curse, they’re connected, you said—”
“Foresight?” said Belinda, and the word was echoed off-kilter by at least two others on the table. Every pair of eyes was already on Robin, but he felt the keenness of them redouble.
“I didn’t say,” Edwin said, very thin. “I hypothesised.”
“Mercy,” said Trudie. “Just think, a foreseer, at one of our house parties!”
“No wonder you’ve been keeping him all to yourself, Win.” Charlie sounded bluff, but there was an annoyed edge to it.
Edwin’s face closed off entirely. He was still looking only at Robin. “It seemed logical that the foresight was part of the curse. I suppose it is possible that a latent gift was merely . . . uncovered . . . by your first contact with magic. Unpleasant though it was.”
“Unbusheled,” Robin said dumbly.
“That’s not what—” Edwin snapped. “I—there’s no precedent, I didn’t know—”
“But you did know he had it,” trilled Belinda. She waved her fork at her brother. “You’ve always been like this, you know. Can’t bear to share anything interesting. It’s one of your least attractive qualities. Remember that time Mother found the hoard of stones in your bedroom after we’d been to the seaside? And that time you threw yourself on the floor and wailed because Father wouldn’t let you keep that watch you’d put in your pocket when Grandpapa died? He was six,” she told the table at large. “Thought he was going to study it.”
Edwin was more porcelain than ever. Robin had the warring desires to defend him and for Edwin to have the guts to defend himself, for once.
“Makes sense,” said Miggsy. “Been wondering why you decided this one was worth leaving with his memories after all. But if it’s for study.”
“Shut up,” said Edwin. His lips were white.
“Win,” said Belinda.
Robin had picked up his knife again. It took real effort to unclench his fingers and set it back down on the table. It was a surprise, and yet not a surprise. It wasn’t just Maud who’d been intended for the lethe-mint. Everyone in this room, everyone in this house, down—he was quite sure—to Edwin’s frail and charming mother, had assumed that as soon as Edwin took the curse off Robin, he’d be subjected to exactly the same thing.
“It’s a game, you see,” said Trudie. “One of us invites someone unmagical and we show them a good time. Show them everything they’re missing, in their own world. And then at the end of it we give them lemonade and send them home. Let them think they’ve overindulged. It’s less fun if the unbusheling’s happened before they arrive, but . . .” She gave an elegant shrug, but her eyes were as they’d always been: pinned to Robin, cool and expectant. Trudie had been robbed of her fun, Robin realised, by Robin’s own phlegmatic acceptance of magic and Maud’s rescue from the mint. She was going to watch them react if she had to wield the prod herself, and revealing the game was now the easiest way to do it.
“Lemonade.” Maud’s voice was quiet and tight. It was how she’d talked in company when their parents were alive, and it sent another skewer of anger through Robin’s heart. “Oh. I see.”
“I thought you protected guests,” Robin found himself saying. “Blood-pledge, and all that. Doesn’t seem to sit right with the idea of bringing people onto your precious land and then toying with them.”
“There’s no harm done,” said Charlie, looking baffled. “They enjoy it.”
“You’re the first time Edwin’s brought anyone,” said Miggsy. He wasn’t baffled. He had the air of someone who knew exactly how unpleasant this was turning, and was relishing it. “He’d not shown much interest in the game before. We were starting to hope the stick up his arse was unbending.”
“All right,” said Belinda. “There’s no need to be vulgar.”