Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  They were her parents.

  “You already knew you belong here,” the boy said.

  You belong here. She felt those words hit her like a physical thing. A satisfying hurt. She knew she would remember hearing them again later when her mind and her heart caught up.

  “So you were brought up in an orphanage.” There was sympathy there this time, the subtle softening of his typically biting words. Ilsa nodded vaguely. “If it means a thing, your life – blessed or otherwise – is a remarkable stroke of fortune.” He looked up at the portrait. “An hour later and you would have died with her.” He turned to the window and gazed up at the stars, scowling like they had done him a grave insult. “Someone else might call it a miracle,” he said ponderously. He shook his head and straightened. “The lieutenants will want to tell you everything in the morning. You should go back to bed.”

  And then he melted back into the shadows. It was only when Ilsa was alone that she realised she had never asked his name.

  7

  When Ilsa returned to bed, she did not believe she would ever find sleep. Her mind turned with thoughts of her birth, her exile, an orphanage in a grand old house. Self-pity weighted her down, and perhaps it dragged her under, as some hours later Ilsa woke a second time.

  The fish market came rushing back. The quadrangle at Westminster Abbey, and the uncanny fountain that concealed a staircase to another world. The stranger in the black hood. Giant wolves.

  And the shape of a boy in the darkness. Or was it a panther? Her slumbering mind had sent her phantoms bearing stories of her parents and her past before. But when she woke, the stories dissipated like smoke, broken apart by their own lies. Now, with golden morning light limning the drapes, her midnight discoveries seemed just as implausible and fantastic.

  Only, there had been truth in them. Facts she recognised. Puzzle pieces that fit.

  God granted me this house, child, and He’ll have thanks for His grace…

  Lord Walcott’s former housekeeper was Miss Mitcham, the matron of the orphanage that used to be his home. The woman who had filled her childhood with torments she wished to forget. He had trusted her enough to leave her care of Ilsa, and kept her close enough that she had inherited his house and belongings. It stood to reason he had also made her privy to his magic. That was how Miss Mitcham had known what Ilsa was before Ilsa knew herself. Why she had been so intent on curing her.

  And now Ilsa knew that everything she remembered suffering was only half of what Miss Mitcham had done to her. The matron had believed it her God-given task to rid Ilsa of her magic, her evil – and she had believed it so desperately, she had lied to keep her. She had faked Ilsa’s death to the people who would have seen her safe.

  Helpless anger seized her and she gritted her teeth against the threat of tears. Ilsa often tried to tell herself that the matron of her old orphanage couldn’t hurt her any more. She was grown up. She was braver. And now, she was in an entirely different world.

  But it wasn’t true. Miss Mitcham hurt her every day. She had left a pernicious fear in Ilsa as surely as she’d left physical scars, and Ilsa could escape neither, no matter how well she hid them. She had been afraid of her magic her whole life. She had kept her true self from everyone but Bill Blume. She had woken in the night biting her pillow to keep from screaming in remembered pain.

  There was hate and cruelty, and then there was Miss Mitcham, who could have wiped her hands of Ilsa and instead chose to steal what little her orphaned ward had left.

  Ilsa buried her face in the pillow and found it wet. She hadn’t held back her tears after all.

  “Don’t be alarmed.”

  Ilsa shrieked, and was on her feet before the cry faded. As her eyes swept the curtained chamber for the source of the voice, her fingers felt along the end table behind her and closed on something hard and heavy. She raised it above her head as across the room, a delicate female hand pulled back one of the drapes and the girl was illuminated.

  She was beautiful – probably the most beautiful girl Ilsa had ever seen, and Ilsa worked in showbusiness. She was not much older than Ilsa, with smooth, alabaster skin and straight, raven hair tumbling freely down her back. She could have been made of porcelain, or marble; not just because of the delicacy of her features, but because of the way she held herself – with perfect posture and stillness. She looked dispassionately between Ilsa and the thing in her hand.

  “What are you planning to do with that statue?” she said.

  “Hit you with it, what d’you bloody think?”

  That didn’t garner much of a reaction, so Ilsa readied herself to demonstrate. The girl came towards her, until Ilsa could see sea-green eyes framed in long, dark lashes, and a distressed crease between them. There was an uncanny sadness about her.

  “You are Ilsa Ravenswood, aren’t you?”

  Ilsa hesitated, the statue dropping lower. “I might be,” she said. “I think so.”

  “But you are a Changeling, yes? The Wraith assured us he saw you shift. In your stage show. Did he not?”

  Deny it, said an old instinct. Devil’s get, rang the echo in her head. Tears of the agony her magic had caused were still fresh on her cheeks for this stranger to see, but things were different now. She had seen others like her. She was in a place where they shifted in the streets, unafraid.

  “He did see it,” she said carefully. “I can change. It’s just no one’s ever called me Ravenswood. I was Ilsa Mitcham when I was a kid. Ilsa Rose on the stage. Ilsa Brown, if the police ask.” Ilsa’s weapon-wielding arm was growing weary, so she switched, and held the thing aloft with renewed vigour. “And who the hell are you?”

  The girl studied her a moment longer, then drifted to the other side of the room and opened those curtains, too. Ilsa pivoted to keep the statue aimed at her.

  “We already met, don’t you remember? My name is Cassia Sims. You can call me Cassia,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep thinking what an ordeal you’d had. The Wraith said… your friend was killed.” With the light pouring in, Cassia was looking at her differently. Ilsa realised why, and hastily wiped the moisture from her cheeks. At the mention of Martha, images of her needless death crowded Ilsa’s mind, but she was beyond tears over her friend. The memory was still too biting. Too unreal.

  “I was afraid you’d be distressed to wake alone,” Cassia went on, hastening to continue as Ilsa opened her mouth to argue. “Yes, it’s occurred to me now that waking… not alone is itself quite distressing. Forgive me. I hope we can start again.” She unfolded and refolded her hands, fumbling a little, and Ilsa could no longer resist cutting in.

  “What is it?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re scared! What’s happening?” She tightened her grip on the statue, blood pounding, body bracing on instinct for new danger. “What are you hiding?”

  “Hiding? No, I—”

  “I ain’t stupid! Are you here to stall me? Is someone gonna—”

  “I was nervous to meet you,” Cassia said in a rush, volume rising to meet Ilsa’s. Her mouth snapped closed.

  Ilsa dropped her arm: it was difficult to be coordinated and dumbstruck at the same time. “Beg pardon?”

  The crease between her eyes returned, deeper than before. “You’re Ilsa Ravenswood. You’ve been nothing but a sad story for seventeen years, and now you’re here, and you’re real. And you mean so much to” – she drew a short breath and recollected herself – “to the Zoo. And we waited for Captain Fowler for days. I’ve done nothing but wonder what you were like and what we would say to you and how in heavens we would explain.” She grew quieter the longer she went on, until Ilsa was moving closer to hear. From the moment she’d seen the girl, she thought Cassia might be on the verge of tears, but now it appeared to be true. “I’m honoured to meet you, Ilsa. Thank you for coming.”

  Incensed, Ilsa resisted the urge to heft the statue again. “Well I weren’t given much choice!” she snapped. “After my friend was murdered and
the man what was sent to find me bound my hands.”

  Cassia paused a moment, her mouth open. “You make a fair point. We have a lot to answer for, I know. Let me take you to Hester. It’s early, but… well, she won’t be sleeping.”

  Cassia went to the wardrobe and produced a dress – white with a black ribbon at the waist and a high collar. “Let me help you,” she said, unbuttoning the dress, but Ilsa would be damned if she was about to put her back to the girl. Cassia must have inferred this from Ilsa’s sneer, as she tossed the dress over the top of the screen beside the wardrobe and retreated a respectable distance.

  “You can put the statue down,” she said. “No one will hurt you here, but should someone try, teeth and claws would be more effective, don’t you think?” That delicate frown line appeared again. The rest of her face didn’t appear to be malleable. “Or perhaps you’re not a strong shifter. Did anyone teach you?”

  Ilsa slammed the statue – a marble wolf, she noticed; always wolves, in this place – down on the end table and pulled the dress behind the screen. “I taught myself,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I shift just fine.”

  Behind the screen she grappled with the dress, which had obviously been designed for a lady who had a maid to help her. Even a magician’s assistant’s flexibility, a pickpocket’s dexterity, and the magic ability to grow her arms longer would not allow Ilsa to best the endless run of tiny buttons that fastened the back.

  “Ilsa,” Cassia said tentatively from very close to the screen, after several minutes had passed and Ilsa’s sighs of frustration hadn’t ebbed.

  “Fine!” Ilsa snapped. “You can help.”

  Cassia came around the screen. As she fastened the buttons at Ilsa’s waist, the dress magically cinched to fit her perfectly. Once again, Ilsa gasped in alarm.

  “I didn’t know what would fit when I ordered things for you, so I spelled all the garments to fit the wearer,” Cassia explained as she worked, though it wasn’t half an explanation enough. “But perhaps you noticed in the clothes you wore last night.”

  Ilsa warily turned her head, but she couldn’t read the girl’s expression any more than she could read her tone. Had there been someone watching the room after all? When Ilsa wanted to go unseen, she sometimes made herself into something very small. Her stomach lurched. How had she been so foolish? Cassia could have been in the chamber the entire time. Or perhaps, after all his reservations, that duplicitous boy had…

  “You left them hanging over the end of the bed.”

  Ilsa peered through the gap in the screen. So she had. Cassia ducked her head purposefully, and Ilsa wondered if it was humour she was hiding.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I needed some air was all.”

  There was a long breath of silence. Cassia reached the final button at the neck of the dress and dropped her hands. “Did you pass through the gallery?” she asked.

  Ilsa turned around. “Did I see the portrait of my parents, you mean?” Her parents who had tried to protect her; who would be angry for her if they knew of the lie that had changed the course of her life.

  The sadness in Cassia’s eyes compounded, and a conflict played out behind them. “I’m so sorry, Ilsa, but your parents—”

  “They’re dead? I know.” Cassia opened her mouth. Closed it again. Ilsa thought it over a moment, but still wasn’t sure why she chose the lie she told next. “I asked that Captain Fowler. He told me ’bout the factions and the Principles and all that. ’Bout how my mother and father was killed.”

  “I see,” said Cassia, nodding absently.

  Ilsa rounded the screen and made for the mirror to avoid any further questions. She was already lucky to have said something Cassia could believe. And she was lucky to have kept her tears in check in front of her.

  “You’re so much like your family.” Ilsa stopped fussing with her hair as Cassia appeared in the glass behind her. “Your eyes…”

  It was hard to drag her gaze from the beauty of the other girl’s face to look at her own. Ilsa didn’t think very often of her face. Appearance meant little when she could change it as she pleased. But now, as she looked in the mirror, she saw the woman in the portrait, dressed in a fine dress, standing in a beautiful bedchamber.

  You belong here.

  Doubt and dismay swelled in her chest, and she turned away.

  “Have I got any relations here?” she asked, not daring to hope.

  She must have caught Cassia in her own reverie, for she startled. If it was possible to upset the girl further, Ilsa had managed it; her eyes were glassy.

  “You do,” she said shakily, and let Ilsa reach the point of madness before she finished: “Hester is a cousin. Your second cousin, I think.”

  A cousin. The woman who had searched for her was her cousin – her family. There were names and faces, lives and deaths, all too big for Ilsa’s paradigm. Her feet followed Cassia from the bedchamber and down the corridor, but her mind was in several other places; the orphanage, the portrait gallery, the room they were headed.

  They reached a set of double doors, and Ilsa’s nerves rivalled the first time she had stepped on stage. As Cassia knocked and waited for a reply that never came, Ilsa resisted bursting into the room, just to have it done with. Eventually Cassia took the handles and swung the doors open to reveal a long sitting room. Pre-dawn light was filtering softly through the high windows. It mingled with the lamplight to illuminate the feminine, pastel accents of the furniture and wallpaper – but the scent of stale smoke and rotting flowers spoiled the impression.

  Across the room, a woman sat facing the window. She didn’t rise, or even turn to acknowledge their presence; she just stared out into the gardens.

  “Hester?” Cassia closed the doors behind them, and Ilsa followed her deeper into the room. “Ilsa has arrived.” When Hester didn’t react, she added lamely: “Here she is.”

  Hester spoke, her voice clear and commanding. “Fliss, move me nearer the couch.”

  As a tall, willowy woman with eyeglasses hurried from an adjoining room, Ilsa rounded the console between them, unable to resist the urge to get closer. Hester’s wicker armchair had wheels. Fliss took the handles of the chair, pivoted Hester to face the room, and brought her closer.

  And just like that, Ilsa was face to face with her family.

  Hester regarded her with a bored, sardonic expression. She was not decrepitly aged, as Ilsa had foolishly imagined when she saw the wheelchair; thirty, perhaps. The resemblance she bore to Ilsa and her mother was less pronounced, but her eyes were the same distinctive shade. Her hair was caramel blonde – a shade darker than Ilsa’s but identical in texture – her chin was pointed, and she had a high, broad forehead above narrow brows. She held a cigarette in a silver holder, and she took a long drag as she studied the new arrival.

  “Ilsa, this is Hester Ravenswood, a cousin of yours and the Warden Alpha of Camden Town,” said Cassia.

  Ilsa wondered if a curtsey was proper, given the unfamiliar title. She did not perform one.

  Hester cracked a smile, though it wasn’t entirely friendly. “My lieutenants are always sure to remind me of the warden part. Thank you, Cassia.”

  “I was only…”

  “You’re Lyander’s double, to be sure,” she went on, heedless of Cassia’s small sigh as she trailed off. Her voice had a ringing clarity that was equal parts compelling and intimidating. “Why don’t you sit?”

  Unsure if this was a request, Ilsa took a seat on the couch. Fliss was shooed; Cassia remained standing by Ilsa’s shoulder.

  There was a long silence while Hester watched her unblinkingly and enjoyed her cigarette. Ilsa met her stare, resisting the urge to seek direction from Cassia, who stood just beyond her sights.

  “I din’t know I had any family,” said Ilsa eventually.

  “Not a lot of it,” replied Hester. “It’s a shame you couldn’t have come in December.”

  “I din’t know none of this existed in December,” sh
e shot back, indignant again. “Why? What happened in December?”

  Humour coloured Hester’s features. Her gaze reached beyond the couch, to Cassia, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “Ilsa only arrived yesterday afternoon, and she’s been on an opposite clock,” Cassia said. “Oren proposed we gather in the meeting room this morning and explain everything. Your presence is requested, as always…”

  “And your presence in my chambers is deterred, as always, yet here you are.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and Ilsa gaped, open-mouthed.

  “Ain’t you in charge?”

  Hester laughed acerbically. “Only as a last resort, cousin dearest.”

  She made the endearment sound like a grave insult, and Ilsa recoiled. She looked to Cassia, whose mouth was pressed into a hard line.

  This was so very far from everything Ilsa had imagined. She had a nauseating sense of things she had only just grasped spinning out of her control, and she reached wildly to grab hold again. “I ain’t waiting for no meeting to find out what you ain’t telling me.” She pushed off the couch, gaze swinging between them. “I want to know why I’m here!”

  “Damned if I know,” said Hester.

  Ilsa swallowed hard. Captain Fowler had said he was working for her, hadn’t he? If she hadn’t summoned her…

  “Hester—”

  “It’s Alpha Hester to you, Miss Sims,” Hester snapped, her expression suddenly fierce. “And this is some hour to be springing long-lost relations on me. Fliss! I’m tired.”

  Fliss reappeared and wheeled Hester into the next room. The door closed behind them without another word.

  It had begun and ended so fast, and now Ilsa had family – this cold, hostile woman who had no time for her; who hadn’t wanted her home at all.

  A feeling Ilsa didn’t want to name – hot, gutting, leaving her feeling exposed – set her lip trembling, and propelled her out of the room, Cassia hurrying after her. In the corridor, she took a deep breath, buried the awful feeling and replaced it with something stronger.