This was not a normal evening. It had not been a normal day, even by the off-balance new standards for normal that had invaded Robin’s life since his parents had died.
“Sir. Moment of your time, sir.”
Robin wouldn’t have looked up, but the rough voice was accompanied by a touch on the back of his hand, and he wondered if his pocket was being picked. He loosened his arms, ready to lash out, and slowed his steps.
That was a mistake. A loop of yarn slid over his hand and tightened on his wrist. Robin thought first and absurdly of the string that Courcey had used to make the snowflake.
“Look here,” Robin said sharply, and would have gone on, but the loop tightened further and the words died in his mouth.
Perhaps his first thought hadn’t been so absurd. The yarn was glowing, yellow-white where it cinched the dark sleeve of his coat. It looked hot, like it might burn the fabric—might burn him. Robin tried to flinch away.
His body refused to flinch just as his voice refused to raise itself and shout. A horrible, numbing warmth drenched him, like the stupor of cosy blankets in early winter mornings, but with none of the comfort. His body hung on him like rags. Unmoving.
Robin had once been knocked to the ground hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs. He remembered vividly the sheer animal fear of lying there in the long, long seconds before he recovered, unable to gasp, trying to force an action that should have been instinctual, his aching throat struggling against the dumb sluggishness of his rib cage.
He was still breathing now. But somehow it felt worse.
Without any guidance from his own will, Robin’s chin lifted and he gazed straight ahead. At least now he was looking his attacker in the face, and— Robin’s gut lurched with a new horror. The man in front of him—or so he assumed; the voice had been that of a man, at least—had no face. He had a rough shirt and sun-browned hands that gripped the other end of the glowing yarn, and a matching sun-browned neck. At the top of that neck was a head-shaped nothingness: a queasily shifting fog.
“That’s it,” the man said. “Come nice and quiet.”
It was less than an hour off sunset, hardly the inky midnight one thought of as playing host to ruffians. There was enough light for someone to notice if Robin frantically waved his arms. There were more than enough people on the streets to stop and ask questions if Robin yelled for help.
If, if. Robin could do nothing of the kind.
He followed the man, meek as a trusting child. Pulled on the end of a string. Viewed from behind, his captor had a head of remarkably normal fair hair. There was a clear line where the hair became not-hair—became the fog.
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?”