A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(5)

“Like scratch-cradle,” said Robin. And then “Oh” as the light dawned. “Cradling.”

“Yes. Now be quiet.” The lip did its disappearing act again. Courcey’s fair brows drew together.

Scratch-cradle was an activity for pairs: one person to hold the strings, the other to pinch them and twist them into a new position. Courcey was doing it alone, and the complex pattern forming as he hooked his fingers, moving loops of string around with his thumbs, bore no resemblance to the soldier’s bed or the manger or any of the other figures that Robin remembered from playing the game in nursery days.

Robin’s own hands, resting on the desk, began to feel as though he were holding them over the cracked lid of an icebox. He could almost imagine that his breath was beginning to mist as it did in winter, and that Courcey’s was doing the same.

It was.

The mist became a single dense cloud between them, a white clump the size of a walnut. Courcey’s fingers kept moving like supple crochet hooks. After nearly a full minute, something emerged, glittering.

Robin had never been the sort to pore over the proceedings of the Royal Society, and had never personally applied his eye to a microscope. But he knew what this shape was. The snowflake was only the size of a penny, but the light caught on it, showing up tiny complexities and flashes of colour. It was still growing.

Something more than scorn was seeping into Courcey’s expression now, like watercolour applied with the very tip of a brush to a wetly swept piece of paper. Concentration. Satisfaction. He kept his eyes on the growing snowflake and plucked at a single part of the tangled web of string with his forefinger, again, again, keeping up a steady rhythm.

When the snowflake had reached the size of a small apple, Courcey moved his fingers more quickly, and the snowflake sagged and dripped into a puddle of water on Robin’s desk.

Some sort of reaction seemed expected. Robin didn’t know what to say. He’d felt a pang when the snowflake, so carefully built, had melted. He was quietly, startlingly charmed that for all his curt, practical manner, Courcey had chosen such a pretty kind of magic to show Robin. He wanted to say that it reminded him of a snow painting by the Frenchman Monet, sold just last year at one of his parents’ charity auctions, but he felt awkward about it.

“That was lovely,” he said, in the end. “Can anyone do it? If it’s just a matter of—making contracts, and learning what to do with your hands.”

“No. You’re either born with magic or you aren’t.”

Robin nodded in relief. The whole thing was still strange and fascinating and barely credible. But here he was, credulous, and nobody was going to expect him to make some sort of meticulous contract with an intangible force by waving his fingers around, so it seemed like something he could live with.

“But if this is a job for people who aren’t,” he said, “surely you’ve got to be used to explaining about the whole—special—nature of it.”

“Usually the Chief Minister advises on the appointment. Someone’s cousin. Someone with no magic, but who knows magic.” Courcey frowned. “Secretary Lorne is a friend of the Minister’s, he’s always understood . . .”

“Oh,” said Robin. “No, it wasn’t Lorne. He’s on a leave of absence. Something with his wife’s health. It was Healsmith who gave me the job.”

Courcey shook his head, frown deepening. “Don’t know him. And if he doesn’t know—devil take it, what a mess. And none of this explains where Reggie’s gone and why the position’s available to begin with.” He stood, tucked both pen and string away, picked up his folder, and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Robin blurted. “Aren’t we meant to be . . . meeting?”

“Dealing with an unbusheling is enough for one day. I don’t have time to walk you through the job as well. Ask Miss Morrissey—by the sounds of it, she’s seized the reins anyway.” He tapped the folder. “This can wait until tomorrow.” The hints of emotion were gone again. This look said that Courcey wouldn’t be unhappy if he returned to find that Robin had disappeared from this office with the same suddenness with which he’d appeared.

Courcey left. Robin drew his fingertip through the small pool of water on the desk, streaking it.

“Sir Robert?”

“Miss Morrissey.” Robin pulled a smile onto his face. Simply having it there made his shoulders relax.

His typist closed the office door and leaned on it. “Mercy, what a mess.”

“That’s what Courcey said.”

“I didn’t know you didn’t know.” Miss Morrissey’s version of the lion-tamer look was, alarmingly, more fearless than Courcey’s. She looked as though she were calculating the going rate for lion skins. Robin was calculating the odds that she’d had a glass pressed to the door during the last few minutes. “I’ve never been part of an unbusheling before. What did he show you?”

“Unbusheling?”

“We are man’s marvellous light? Oh, no, you wouldn’t—the English slang’s biblical, obviously, and the French say déclipser. Their idea of a pun. In Punjabi it’s got nothing to do with light, it’s either a snakeskin being shed or the tide going out, depending on where you are—”

“Stop,” said Robin. This really was like being back at university. “I beg you, Miss Morrissey. Pretend I’m very stupid. Small words.”