“And Trudie, with Charlie?” Robin ventured.
“Bel and Charlie surround themselves with people who are in love with them,” said Edwin. It didn’t sound like malice. It sounded like tired statement of fact. “They can’t stand not to be loved.”
And then there was Billy, whose perpetual smile was more interesting given that he was apparently nursing a broken heart and a broken engagement. To be found inadequate by the beloved’s family was a familiar story in any society, whether the deficit was breeding or wealth or—in Billy’s case—magic. Perhaps his cheerfulness was armour. You wouldn’t walk around with open wounds in this crowd any more than you would in one of those South American rivers full of fish that would nibble your bones bare.
Robin felt an uneasy wash of familiarity. He’d had that thought, about the blood-sensing fish, before. All these casual currents of game-playing were a smaller version of the social world that his parents had built around themselves—their own carousel, full of sparkle and mirrors and meanness, all too ready to collapse in the end.
He settled himself on the arm of one sofa and watched Charlie’s illusion for a while longer. Light glinted off the curling golden poles above and below the plaster horses in a way that would have had one of Robin’s art-masters shouting about amateur awareness of light sources: it was a definite sunlight glint, here in this gas-lit and fire-lit—and guide-lit—room. One of the perils of working entirely from memory, Robin supposed. What did it feel like, to work on a creation like this, to paint it in one’s mind and call it into being? And then see it blink into nothing? And then raise your hands and do it again, entirely anew?
“You know,” said Edwin quietly, “that’s the first time you’ve looked envious. Even a little.”
Robin looked down at him. Edwin’s finger kept place in the book as he lifted the last inch of his cigarette to his lips, and an unabashed flare of heat settled into Robin at the sight of it.
“Envious?”
“Of magic. Of magicians.” Edwin’s mouth quirked. He stubbed his cigarette out on a green glass saucer. “I think it’s why the others are taken with you. You’re playing it rather cool. Being pleasant and sociable and unimpressed is not the usual response to an unbusheling.”
“I wasn’t unimpressed,” said Robin.
The quirk deepened. Edwin looked away, a sudden twitch of his head, then back down at his book.
It was true. Robin hadn’t thought that he might be acting in any way out of the ordinary. But he supposed that in a society where more power was transparently desirable, Robin’s attitude might seem like that of a bootblack standing among the silks and perfumes of Court, sipping Champagne and cheerfully declaring how content he was with the freezing attic room he shared with five brothers.
Magic, Robin reflected, was different things to different people. For Mr. Courcey it had fitted exactly into that comparison: something like money or political power. The more the better. For the people in this room, though, Robin had the sense it was closer to the way that most people he’d met thought about religion: a social glue, a bedrock. And for Edwin it was clearly both science and art. An academic passion.
Bits and pieces of the dinner conversation tumbled through Robin’s mind and he wondered how Lord Hawthorn thought of magic these days. Lord Hawthorn who had said he’d never liked Edwin’s family. At the time it had sounded like another insult; now it seemed evidence of good judgement. The way these people had gossiped about Hawthorn’s sister was enough to make Robin’s teeth ache.
No, that wasn’t an ache. It was hot tension—it was tingling pepper on his tongue—it was the sensory weirdness that preceded the visions, light dancing at the corners of his eyes. He was noticing it earlier. He had time to anticipate.
“Edwin,” Robin said weakly, and leaned forward on his elbows, head drooping, just as the foresight took him. He managed to think, with a throb of irritation: Why can’t this be useful— A narrow street, a line of shop fronts in the glumness of fog. City lights glowing like the eyes of beasts. Grubby signs and brass trim, and a window full of clocks, almost dream-like through the murky air. Clocks spinning and ticking and pendulum-swaying. A slim male figure wrapped in coat and hat pushing open the door in order to enter the shop; a bell at the door’s top set into feverish tinkling motion.
Change. An elderly woman in a strangely small and windowless room, dressed in impeccable black silk, backed up against the wooden panels of the wall. Fear in her face, and then an angry smile emerging from the wrinkles that carved lines away from her thin lips. She flung out a hand and something flashed—a spell, a thrown knife? The next moment there was an answering flash, a glow of pink light around her neck, and the woman crumpled and fell.