“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.