Two more oak doors took them to their destination. The second one required a complicated cradle, which Mrs. Kaur fumbled the first time and then made a face as she began it over again—“The identification clause is a fiddle, and the secrecy one even more so,” she apologised, and then: “Hah,” with satisfaction as the rune flared into being.
Robin’s first thought was that Edwin had probably appreciated the lockroom, if he’d ever been there. It resembled nothing so much as the stacks of a library: a windowless room that had the feeling of being well below ground level, illuminated by pale orange ceiling lights that could have been either electric or magical. Rows of wooden shelves and drawers stretched away from the entrance. There was a peculiar, cathedral-like, anticipatory silence to the air.
“What is this place?” Robin asked.
“This is the Lockroom,” said Mrs. Kaur, and now Robin heard the way she said it. Title, not descriptor. “Every registered magician in Britain is represented in this room.”
A leather-bound ledger the size of a decent card table lay open on a bench, with words arranged in columns. A pen lifted itself from its stand as soon as Mrs. Kaur stepped close to the book. She raised her hands and moved them through the motions of a new spell, then paused with fingers held at angles.
“Catherine Amrit Kaur,” she said, and the pen entered it in one column, then hopped to hover over another. “His full name, if you know it,” she murmured.
“I don’t,” said Miss Morrissey.
“I do,” said Robin. For the rest of his life he would be able to recall the exact sight of Edwin kneeling, desperate and pale among closing holly, and hear the sound of Edwin’s voice. “Edwin John Courcey.”
Mrs. Kaur touched her index finger to thumb, creating a circle, and her hands glowed red for less than a second. There was a faint grinding sound from the bowels of the stacks. A new light sprang up in the distance, like a red ribbon unfurling to the ceiling, tethered at a particular point.
“Stay here, Sir Robert,” said Mrs. Kaur. She stepped across what Robin now realised was a threshold, a change from one pattern of wood on the floor to another.
Before long the tap of her footsteps brought her back with a small box in her hands, which was labelled with Edwin’s name. Inside was something small and pale, nestled on a velvet interior. Robin reached out to touch it, then snatched his hand back, belatedly trying to teach himself some caution when it came to new magical things.
“It’s all right. It’s only hair,” said Miss Morrissey.
“The Lock Room,” said Robin. “Locks of hair.” He swallowed and looked out at the depths of the stacks. “Every magician in Britain?”
“It’s a ceremony, when a child first shows signs of magic,” said Miss Morrissey. “A lock is cut. It used to be that your family would keep it safe, but now it’s kept here. Centrally. We know every member of our community.”
“Could someone do harm, using this?” Robin touched the lock of hair gently. It was like white silk, much whiter than Edwin’s hair was now.
“Nothing direct,” said Mrs. Kaur. “The hair’s dead. It’s no use as an active conduit. You can use it to trace because of . . . its memory, I suppose. The Assembly wouldn’t keep a potential weapon against its own people like that. But it means we can find and protect our own, when there are no other options.” A pointed look.
Robin was full of questions. How did this fit into Edwin’s rules about physical distance and the laws governing magic? What happened to the hair when someone died? Were there magicians who refused the ceremony, refused to have their children registered in such a way? What if a magician didn’t want to be found? The whole concept was more than a little creepy, but he didn’t want to be rude, and besides—he was, in this moment, very grateful indeed that the Lockroom existed.
Mrs. Kaur was already building another spell, standing in front of a dingy map of the British Isles that was pinned above the table holding the ledger. When she turned and flung her hands apart, she conjured a much larger version of the map into being; it hung in the air then drifted to overlay itself on the blank wooden panels of the wall behind them. There was some unevenness where the map dipped over the contours of the door and its frame. But it was the Isles, detailed and glowing and sprawled wide.
A phantom cradle lingered in Mrs. Kaur’s hands, visible only when tilted at certain angles, catching up both the orange of the lights above and the blue of the map-spell. The dark creases of her palms ran beneath it at different angles again. At her direction, Robin gingerly placed the lock of Edwin’s hair into the cradle’s centre; he could feel nothing there, but the lock sat and stayed as though caught in a web. Immediately the map pulsed brighter and more purple, changing, rewriting itself on the wall to show a small section of city. Robin stepped close to read the neat text of street names.
“Still in London,” he said, excited. “St. James’s, Jermyn Street. That’s the Cavendish Hotel, I’ve been there before.”
“Mr. Courcey rents rooms there,” said Miss Morrissey. “I didn’t think he’d—but I’m sure he would have come back to talk to me.”
“Something might have happened. He—he could be hurt.” Robin touched the map, fingertips meeting only wood, and felt his chest tighten subtly. It wasn’t the inexorable slide of sensation that it had been before now. It felt like a nudging at his mind, like one of those optical illusions. You could choose to see the duck; you could choose to let your eyes absorb the lines a different way, and see a rabbit. It felt, for the first time, as though Robin had control.
He leaned his weight against the wall, closed his eyes, and let it come.
A room, cosy-looking and with books spilling over half its surfaces. A small table laid for tea, with a single cup in a saucer, set out in front of the armchair in which Edwin was sleeping. He looked exhausted and peaceful and entirely normal but for the glowing string around one wrist, the free end of which trailed down to the floor.
Billy Byatt came into view. He sat on the arm of the chair, looking down at Edwin with something too mild to be concern. He took hold of Edwin’s shoulder and shook him; Edwin’s eyes stayed closed, his head lolling into a lower angle. Billy sat back with a satisfied nod. He reached for the teacup and tilted it to look inside—
Robin wrenched his hands away and came back to himself with enough force that he nearly overbalanced. The map was fading, leaving only a faint trace that wavered when Robin blinked.
“He’s not all right,” Robin said. He was so angry he had to force the words out. The casual shake. The glowing string. “They’ve put one of those horrid bridle things on his hand. We’re going there. Now.”
He turned to see two identical pairs of raised eyebrows. Mrs. Kaur’s expression had a layer of shock that her sister’s was missing.
“I thought you said you weren’t a magician,” she said. “What was that?”
“Foresight,” said Miss Morrissey. “I’ll explain on the way, Kitty.”
“Billy,” Robin blurted, “he’s with Billy. Billy Byatt.”
“Billy Byatt,” echoed Mrs. Kaur sharply.
“You know him?” asked Robin.
Her mouth made a strange shape. She exchanged a glance with her sister and said, “I very nearly married him.”
Edwin didn’t use the rose-hip tea from Whistlethropp’s often. He kept it in the cupboard of his pantry for those nights when he’d worn his own magic down to the last specks and didn’t have the energy to cast a simple charm for sleep, but knew his mind would otherwise keep turning the latest idea over and over instead of letting him rest.
Billy laid his own spell on the tea as well, to enhance it, and heated water in Edwin’s hob-kettle instead of removing the bridle and letting Edwin ring down to order some. Edwin watched the tea steep, sitting quiet in his own chair, unable to move except as Billy wanted him to move.