Edwin nodded. “I presume the Cambridge libraries are arranged much like the Oxford ones. Indexed by shelf position in the stacks?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. I’d assume so.” As far as Robin was concerned, you requested books and they were fetched for you. He’d spent as little time in the library as possible.
“Not any more sensible, if you want to browse by topic. There’s a man in America who’s published a similar kind of classification system based on numbers, actually. And I thought I was so ingenious, when I came up with this one on my own.” A wisp of bitter self-mockery in his voice.
Robin said, faintly staggered, “You were twelve.”
“The ladder’s imbuement is keyed to the classification system. And I’ve marked each book so that the indexing spell knows which ones to fetch.” He stroked his fingers down the spine of the book in his hand. A briefly glowing Π67 appeared, and then faded.
“You invented this system? You applied it?” Robin looked around them at the hundreds, thousands, of books. “And you carry the whole thing around in your head?”
“I made a catalogue.” Edwin indicated a small hand-bound volume he hadn’t once touched. “And if you’re going to suggest that I was a very dull child, let me assure you that it would by no means be an original insult.”
When Robin was twelve, he’d spent his summer trying to invent the game of indoor cricket, much to the distress of several antique urns and at least one window, and leaving beetles in Maud’s bed. He had a sudden flash of a pale, bookish boy—the kind that he’d have barely noticed at school, except to wonder why they couldn’t be more fun—creating tables and patiently inscribing book after book, forcing the sum of his knowledge to fall neatly within the dictates of his mind.
“Remind me not to make an enemy of you, Edwin Courcey,” he said, smiling to show he meant no sting. “I think yours is probably the kind of brain that could run a country.”
Edwin wasn’t smiling, but something about the way he ducked his head suggested that he was pleased, and not sure how to handle being pleased.
“That would involve people, and I’m less good with people. I’ll settle for knowing all the things I want to know,” Edwin said quietly. “When and how I need to know them.”
“Can you fetch me something like that?” Robin asked.
“What?”
Robin cast around for ideas. He just wanted, for no reason he could explain to himself, to see Edwin’s fingers create that commanding hot-shimmer again. “Any good stories in this library of yours?”
Edwin looked at him for a few seconds. Robin prepared himself to be told off for wasting research time. Then Edwin rearranged his string, coaxed the shimmer into existence, and said, “Alpha ninety,” his blue eyes fixed on Robin with the incurious gaze of a Byzantine saint.
A new pile of books floated over and formed itself in front of Robin. Most of them had battered, much-loved covers, and smears down the edges of the pages. Fairy tales. Books for children. Two of them were thicker; the largest and most imposing was called Tales of the Isles.
Edwin sat, abruptly. There was a faint sheen of sweat to his brow.
“Are you all right?” Robin asked.
“I’m fine. Read your stories.”
“Is this indexing spell a particularly tough one, then?”
“No.” Edwin’s voice was thin ice. Robin remembered Belinda’s sweet comments at dinner. The one in the room with the least magic.
“Does the string—magnify the effect of the spell?” he hazarded. “Is that why you use it?”
Edwin’s unfriendly expression sharpened and then, all of a sudden, relented. “No,” he said. “But I can see why you’d think so. You can get away with imprecision in your cradles if your power fills the gaps. I can’t. And magic is like any other kind of strength. If you use too much of it, you have to wait for it to replenish. So if a dragon crashes through the library window in the next hour, you’ll have to save us.”
“A dragon—”
Edwin looked at him. Some of that irony was seeping in through the edges.
Robin grinned. “You sod. You really got my hopes up.”
“Dragons live in books,” said Edwin, nodding at the one in front of Robin. “I’m going to see if I can find out anything about your curse, and your—foresight.”
The index mark, ?90, was also pencilled on a bookplate inside the cover of each book. Robin flicked first through those of them with coloured illustration plates, looking for dragons, but didn’t find any. He cracked Tales of the Isles instead and became rapidly absorbed in the contents page.