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Robin’s eye caught on the phrase like a legal contract as Courcey was explaining how British magicians used a shorthand of gesture called cradling in order to define the terms of any given spell, including those that rendered an innocent pen capable of darting fussily back and forth across the paper.
“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.
And now he had to deal with Sir Robert Blyth, who had the speech and the manner of every healthy, vigorous, half-witted boy that Edwin had spent his school and university years trying to ignore. A perfect specimen of incurious English manhood, from the thick brown wave of his hair to the firm jaw. Not enough wit to be sceptical. Not enough sense to be afraid.
“I can’t think why I should care.” “Just look at it,” said Courcey. “Ten damned seconds of your precious time. Your family’s always been strong with runes.” “Strong,” said Hawthorn. “Is that what I am? Jealousy’s an ugly emotion, Courcey.” “Jealous?” Courcey hissed. “I may not have much magic, but I’ve more than you.” “And I’ve lost more of it than you’ll ever have, and doesn’t that burn you up?”
“We are man’s marvellous light / We hold the gifts of the dawn / From those now passed and gone / And carry them into the night.”
“All right. Books are at least somewhat less likely to hurl insults at one,” he said. “It is one of their major appeals,” said Courcey, and Robin found himself unexpectedly smiling.
“You should have told me it had happened again.” Blyth gave him an exceedingly stubborn look. God save Edwin from the idiotic flower of English manhood.
Robin had nothing at all against the country, but could never shake the impression that it would rather everyone buggered off to town and let it administer itself back into wilderness.
Charlie and Bel kept Robin involved in lively conversation after that. Charlie always liked people more once he’d explained something badly to them, and Bel just liked things that were Edwin’s.
Edwin stood near the centre of the library floor, shirtsleeves rolled to mid-forearm, one hand turning the page of a thick book splayed open on a table while the other scratched at the back of his neck. Looking at him, Robin realised that before this moment he’d never seen Edwin Courcey look even the slightest bit comfortable.
“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.”
The atmosphere between them had become both lighter and more weighty, somehow. What Hawthorn had implied about Edwin, the purple tract had confirmed. And it would have been far more than that, for Edwin. It would have been tantamount to realisation—a first dawning glimpse of the fact that Robin, too, was a man who sought the company of other men, or at least was familiar with one of the more popular writers of homosexual erotica distributed through an otherwise reputable shop on Charing Cross Road.
Bel had explained the basics over lunch—or rather, she’d begun to explain and then Charlie had taken over, with a touch to her wrist and one of those benignly bestowed smiles that said he didn’t want to tax the little woman’s intelligence.
Like Bel, their mother had perfected avoidance for self-preservation. Every time she sat at table with both her sons, Edwin saw stamped on her face how much she hated her inability to step between them, but it was useless to expect her to change. The shape of the Courcey family had been ironed in place years ago, and trying to rearrange it now would do nothing but leave dangerous holes in the fabric.
He liked being with other people. Too much time alone and he felt his colour leaking out.
Robin managed to hold his tongue on something truly unwise like You look like a Turner painting and I want to learn your textures with my fingertips. You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you. Those were not things one blurted out to a friend. They were their own cradles of magic, an expression of the desire to transform one thing into another. And what if the magic went awry? Robin took a long sip of tea, instead, and smiled at Edwin through the steam. “I’m not going
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“Edwin,” said Robin. He had that storm-soaked look on his face again, the one that meant he was coming to the end of his store of credulity for one day. “Tell me what’s going on.” “Oh, nothing of consequence,” said Edwin. “I’ve merely inherited one of the oldest magical estates in Cambridgeshire.”
Edwin sat on a sofa and let his head rest in his hands. Robin should have been the one to have an estate crash into his grasp. He needed money; Edwin didn’t. He knew how to be nice to people, to make them feel appreciated. Edwin was lucky to remember to nod at acquaintances in the street.
Jack Alston, a dark, wild boy with all the power of his inheritance at his command, and a family who loved him without question. Edwin had learned to want him, then, and also to fold his resentment in that want like a glass shard in layers of tissue.
“No, I’m not glad,” he snapped, a wild and unstoppable lie. “I knew you would be nothing but trouble.” Robin was smiling, because Robin didn’t know what was good for him. That was how he ended up like this, with the scratches on his face and his hands, and—and Edwin couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and tracing the worst of the scabbed red lines, half-flattered and half-guilty and all-over angry with the world for putting him here, now, richer than he’d been at the start of the day by one of the oldest magical properties in England and by this, Robin Blyth lifting his palms willingly to
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Edwin hadn’t kissed anyone in years and it was like a language long unspoken in his mouth, coming out with the wrong cadences and with the grammar all askew.
And then Robin’s mouth was on his again, and all of a sudden the grammar of the thing fell into place.
The easy vulnerability of the admission startled Edwin. But of course Robin was brave in this, as he was brave in everything else. Of course he’d throw himself that open without a second thought. If someone tried to mock him for what he wanted he’d probably just laugh.
“I’m wondering what sort of blind idiot I was, not to find you attractive when we first met,” said Robin. Colour touched Edwin’s cheeks. The smile that tugged at his mouth was the same one he’d worn when Robin had admitted to being fascinated with his hands: faintly incredulous, but mostly pleased. It wasn’t an expression of regret. It did make Robin want to drag him back to the bed, pin him down, and murmur praise into his skin until it inked itself there like the opposite of a curse. “Ah,” said Edwin. “Whereas I am neither blind nor an idiot.”
Edwin frowned, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. The lines scored across his throat by the thorned vines were disconcerting. He could have been a decapitated saint in a devotional, the carmine line of the wound painted in to hint at the manner of martyrdom.
“Pure foresight isn’t the only way to glimpse the future,” said Walt unexpectedly. “Only the clearest. You want to know the story? There’s something coming. We don’t know what, or when, but we need to learn to use all the power we have. The search for the Last Contract is a project with the backing of the Assembly. This is a story about the magicians of this land coming into the fullness of our birthright, as we were always meant to.”
For a very long time, he thought, he would remember the look that came over Walt’s face when Walt realised that he had won this battle—for his cause, for his passion project—but had lost every scrap of his leverage over Robin, and also lost his ability to threaten Edwin. Ever again. It was a look that meant Walt was seeing something shatter, and what was shattering was the story. The story about the relationship between the Courcey brothers, a story that Walt had built and Edwin had always believed he had no choice but to inhabit. Now it was in pieces.
“Of course I’m on your side. You complicated my life,” Robin said warmly. “You woke me up. You’re incredibly brave. You’re not kind, but you care, deeply. And I think you know how much I want you, in whatever way I can have you.”
“You,” said Robin. Every time it was easier. It was carving its own groove in his mouth. “I want you.” Edwin closed his eyes. “You could still hurt me,” he said. “But I do think you’d somehow manage to tear your own arm off before you did it on purpose.” His tone walked a tightrope between disapproval and wonder. “And I’m sick to death of being afraid, and I want you. Enough to risk it. More than enough. You make me feel like something—extraordinary.”
Of course I’m on your side, Robin thought numbly. I’m yours.
It wasn’t up to Edwin to decide if he was worthy. He had been chosen, and he would fight to live up to it. Chosen twice over, in fact; his heart lightened again as he met Robin’s affectionate smile.
And he paused, in the space between inhalation and exhalation, and invited magic in.
a book about the responsibility we owe to the places we live
And to my contemporaries in SFF, who are making the genre wider and deeper and richer and weirder and queerer: I’m thrilled and honoured to be working at the same time as you, in the same spaces as you.
Keep talking about the things that interest you; don’t let anyone teach you otherwise.
