Billy had better luck collecting himself. His pleasant expression drew together like curtains. “All right. You two had your adventure—very brave and clever, running around solving riddles. But we have the rings now. And we’re going to find the other pieces of the contract, and I think your knack for the fiddly theoretical bits of magic would be an asset to us. It’s as simple as that. Come on board, and you’ll have the power you’ve always wanted.”
Edwin wasn’t brave. He wasn’t. He was tempted and tense and he was terrified of pain. But he’d found a line in himself, right where Billy’s casual shrugs met the memory of Robin gasping on the lakeshore, and he wasn’t going to cross it. It was a relief to know that the line was there. He would take the consequences.
He said, “Or . . .?”
Billy stared at him for a long moment. The curtain by the cracked-open window moved gently in a draught, and the noise of the late London evening filtered into the silence.
“Honestly?” said Billy.
“Honestly. I won’t lift a damn finger for you.”
“Damn,” said Billy with a sigh, and started to build a spell. “Now you’ve left me looking a right idiot, Win. I did tell them I’d be able to talk you round.”
The spell taking shape was one to burn away memories, a soft and cheerful yellow like filtered sunlight. Lethe-mint was preferable to these spells for a reason: they were difficult and relied on absolute precision of clauses, and the potential for adverse consequences was high. There were maybe three magicians in London to whom Edwin would have entrusted his mind with this sort of spell, and Billy Byatt had neither the skill nor the power to appear on that list.
Despair soaked Edwin like spilled wine. He tried to burn the feel of Robin’s mouth into his skin along with the scratches and bruises, wanting almost to cry at the idea that he would wake up having forgotten how it felt to be . . . smiled at, yes, and touched in ways that he craved, and thought to be fascinating. He had been easy. Robin had walked into the maze of him and solved him with no string required at all, and Edwin had been stupid enough to let that slip out of his hands.
“All right,” said Robin’s voice, terse and clear. “Stop.”
The jerking-round of Billy’s head was the only clue that Edwin hadn’t hallucinated a speaking illusion of Robin Blyth through the force of his longing.
If it was an illusion, it was the strangest Edwin had ever seen. Emerging from the fading shimmer of a curtain-spell was a small group of people. It was Robin, along with an unfamiliar woman shaking the last sparks of the spell’s banishment from her fingertips, and Adelaide Morrissey. Who was standing with her feet planted and a longbow in her hands, an arrow drawn back flush with her cheek, for all the world as though Edwin’s parlour were an archery range.
The arrow was pointed at Billy.
Billy said, “What the devil . . .”
“Hullo, Byatt. This is, as someone once told me, a game of nerve,” said Robin. “I suggest you don’t move.”
It turned out that having a truly strong magician on one’s side made a lot of difference, when it came to quietly opening the locked door of a hotel suite and quietly tiptoeing, disguised behind a spell, through an entrance hall and into the parlour that Robin had seen in his vision.
Robin’s two contributions to the adventure thus far had been baroneting Edwin’s suite number out of the concierge, and managing not to step through the subtle shimmer of the spell and plant his fist in Billy Byatt’s freckled face. He’d been all for charging in as soon as the door was open, but had been persuaded otherwise by Catherine Amrit Kaur’s calm voice, laying out this plan. Robin felt rather silly; he’d worried Mrs. Kaur might be made incautious by emotion, given her history with Billy. She’d looked strained, and kept her hand on her sister’s arm as they listened, but she’d been a model of patient caution.
Robin’s emotions, as Billy talked about the contract, had been howling for caution to be thrown to the winds in favour of . . . well, punching.
“Kitty?” said Billy.
The yellow spell in Billy’s hands sat quiescent, half-built, already dimming as his attention wavered. Edwin leaned over and shook Billy’s wrist, dissipating it completely. Billy spared him only a quick, jerky glance before his eyes swung back to Kitty Kaur. He began to stand; Miss Morrissey said, “Ah,” warningly, and he froze.
Edwin looked like a poor reproduction of himself, tainted by disbelief. He’d been readying himself for something awful, Robin had seen it happening, and now here Robin was appearing out of nowhere. A magic trick. Robin managed a smile, giving Edwin something to latch on to, if he wanted it.
“Kitty,” Billy said again, a bewildered plea. “What are you doing here?”
“And where did you find a bow?” Edwin asked.
“Transformed a broom,” said Mrs. Kaur. She didn’t seem inclined to answer Billy’s query.
“I couldn’t be much help there,” said Miss Morrissey. “But I did get a ribbon at school for archery.”
“Edwin,” said Robin. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Edwin. Their gazes held. Robin had to bite his tongue against blurting out accusation and apology and admission, all at once. Edwin stood and began to cross the room.
Mrs. Kaur made a short, broken-off noise of warning, too late. As Edwin moved to step past him, Billy stood—grabbed him—Robin started forward to help, but came up short against Mrs. Kaur’s urgent arm.
“Hold it there,” said Billy.
Edwin held. Was held. The switch-knife pressed against his side was not large, but it winked deadly sharp in the light. Billy’s other arm snaked around Edwin’s chest, dragging Edwin back against himself.
“Edwin here knows that those of us without much magic have to rely on other things, from time to time,” Billy said. “It helps to have something in reserve.”
Edwin breathed shallowly and fast. Robin felt paralysed with the speed at which things had swung in their favour and back out of it. They could overpower him, certainly, but Billy had already shown he could move fast and believed in . . . broken eggs. Omelettes. Perhaps he didn’t like the idea of getting blood on his own hands, but he was cornered and annoyed and there was nothing hesitant about his grip on the knife.
The tip of the arrow wavered as Miss Morrissey, too, considered her options. Robin was grateful that she’d had the sense not to release it when startled. Billy was shorter than Edwin; he’d be able to keep Edwin entirely between himself and the weapon, and Robin could only assume that a similar sort of constraint held for spells. Anything Mrs. Kaur cast, even if she could do it quickly enough, would affect Edwin as well.
“Put it down, Adelaide,” said Billy.
She hissed her breath through her teeth, but let the string slacken. She bent and placed both bow and arrow at her feet.
Edwin held Robin’s gaze again. He dropped his eyes to his own hands—which he’d moved to clasp in front of him—and back up. Robin’s heart gave a pound.
“Kitty?” Robin inquired, turning to Mrs. Kaur as though he hadn’t already heard the outline of their relationship on the way here. “Do you two know one another, then?”
Mrs. Kaur took up the thread immediately, tilting her elegant brown neck and touching the base of it, as if uncertain. Her eyes were liquid pools. Anyone who’d ever loved her would find it hard to look away from her at this moment.
At the edge of Robin’s vision, Edwin’s hands were pale flickers.
“We used to be close, yes,” said Mrs. Kaur. “This isn’t like you, Billy. You’re a good man. Put the knife down and let’s talk, shall we?”
Billy’s lips pressed together. Edwin’s breath hitched and Robin saw the tip of the knife move.
“A good man,” said Billy. “I’d like to think so. But that wasn’t enough for you. For your family.”
“My parents and grandfather asked me for my cooperation,” said Mrs. Kaur softly. “I made my choice. I’m happy with it.”
“Happy? Marrying a man you were barely friends with at the time?” This argument had the weakly bitter note of leaves twice-steeped. “If you loved me enough, you’d have told them to go hang.”
“Yes,” she said.
The syllable hung there, simply.