A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(10)

Robin’s captor led him off the street and into an alley that smelled of rotting apples. Two more men were waiting for them. They, too, wore the fog masks, and were dressed like street workmen. One of them was heavyset; the other had a thick coating of dark hair on his knuckles. Robin’s brain landed on detail after irrelevant detail as though he were trying to memorise a painting for an exam and expected to have the image snatched away at any moment. His heart was causing a hell of a ruckus against his ribs.

“Right, Mr. Whoever-You-Are. Blyth,” said the man holding the string. “I’m taking this off your hand now. And you’re going to keep nice and quiet, and answer my questions, all right? Because I reckon you can count, and I reckon even a man from Scholz’s saloon knows he can’t hold his end up against three, when we’ve got more than just fists on our side. And we’ve not been told to kill you, but we’ve not been told to not. If you catch my meaning.”

Robin wondered if the man expected him to nod, and how he was meant to go about it. But the yarn was tugged off his wrist without any further ado, and he gasped in relief as his body came back under his own control. He shook out his hands and felt his knees tremble.

“Now—” said the man, and Robin hauled off and popped him in what he assumed was the jaw.

The next thing that Robin knew, he was blinking awake, propped against the wall of the alley. The rotten smell was abruptly a lot closer to his nose, and something damp was seeping through the seat of his trousers. It was not a comforting combination.

“That was a bloody stupid thing to be doing,” said the man. Robin would have liked to see the blood on the man’s split lip—he’d certainly felt his knuckles grind flesh against tooth—but the fog mask kept it obscured.

“Do the other two speak?” asked Robin, nodding at them. He was angry enough that it was keeping him afloat above the fear. “Or are they more in the looming silently line?”

He was ignored. “Mr. Blyth. You’re in Mr. Gatling’s shoes now. You’re in Mr. Gatling’s office.”

“And Mr. Gatling is very displeased?” Robin demanded. “Is that it? He can damn well come back, then. His typist’s upset.” That was an exaggeration. Courcey had seemed upset. Miss Morrissey had seemed . . . miffed.

“Mr. Gatling hid something in his office that’s very important, didn’t he? But it’s proving tough to locate. You’re going to help us.”

Robin found the words Like hell I am in his mouth and tasted them longingly. But he was wary now. These men had tailed him from the office, and then from his club. They knew his name. They weren’t going to be put off easily.

“What is it? What did he hide? And how do you know it’s there? If it’s that important, he’s probably taken it with him, wherever he’s buggered off to.”

The fog swirled a little. A chill chased across Robin’s neck.

“No, the contract’s there,” the man said. “Had that from his own lips, and he weren’t lying.”

“There’s a lot of paperwork in that office” was all Robin could think of to say.

An impatient sound. “Don’t play foolish, Blyth. Gatling must’ve had someone muffle it for him. It doesn’t have the feel of power to it anymore. But it’ll be there.”

“What?”

A pause. “He didn’t tell you any more specifics than he told us, ey? Secret-binds’ll do that. Something hidden, we reckon. Something that doesn’t belong.”

This was turning into one of those dreams where you turned over the Latin paper to find that it had been replaced with Ancient Egyptian instead.

“Not one word of this is making a single bloody ounce of sense,” said Robin. “And—” He managed to bite that back too. Instinct told him that admitting he’d had his first glimpse of magic that very day was more likely to hurt him than help him at that precise moment.

When Robin didn’t continue, his speaking captor gestured to one of the loomers, who knelt down and took hold of Robin’s right arm at the wrist and just above the elbow. The fear flared urgently, but Robin recognised superior strength when he felt it. Trying to pull away would just wrench his shoulder for nothing. His fingers curled into a tight enough fist that he could feel the blunt edges of his fingernails.

It took Robin a second to recognise what the speaking man was doing as cradling: the same thing that Courcey had done, except that Courcey had used string, and had been much slower than this. Robin stared, because for a moment it seemed that there was string there, the same glowing yarn that had noosed him. But there wasn’t. The glow clung only to the man’s fingertips, then gathered in his palm as he upended his hand onto Robin’s forearm and moved it as though smearing paint.

In the wake of the man’s hand a pattern laid itself over Robin’s sleeve. Something like geometry, or a foreign alphabet. Robin barely had time to notice its details before it seeped into the fabric, fading slowly. Gone.

Robin’s arm was released. He cradled it to his chest, but there didn’t seem anything wrong with it. Bones intact. Muscles working fine.

He said, “Whatever you—”

Sudden, excruciating pain captured his forearm as though a cage of red-hot wires had been clasped around it. The pain startled a frantically guttural sound from between his teeth. He’d broken bones in his time, as a boy and an adult. None of them had felt anything like this.