“Forgive us,” she said, “but you’re the acolytes’ target, Ilsa. We can’t protect the house while we’re trying to protect you.”
“You don’t need to protect me, I can hide! I’ll shift into a mouse. They won’t see me.” She backed away as Eliot approached, shaking his head. “Eliot—”
But Eliot lifted her clean off the floor and, before she could shift and skin him, deposited her next to Hester.
“I have to,” he said weakly, backing her further into the hidden room. Bare brick met her back less than three feet in. “It’s what we decided if they attacked again. We can’t risk your murder.”
What we decided. Anger lanced through her.
“I din’t decide. Let me fight!” The words spilled out in a jumble. “I’ve been practising! I’ve got a combat form—”
“This isn’t practice!” he yelled. He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of another window breaking. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“No—”
As the panel slid into place, its edges vanishing against the seams of the wooden wall, Ilsa’s knees buckled. Her vision was blurring around the edges, perhaps to save her from seeing the dimensions of the “room”. But she could feel them; feel four solid walls within arm’s reach.
She closed her eyes and drew her knees to her chest, not caring if Hester was watching and judging her. She wasn’t at the orphanage, she told herself. She wasn’t trapped, not forever. The wolves would fight off the invaders and then she would be freed. She just needed to survive until then. She needed to breathe.
But the memories were coming with startling clarity. The screams of the other children as she became one of them by mistake. Bruising her feet as she was dragged up the stairs, begging. The iron scrape of the lock on the attic door. The taste of dust and rot on the air; the cold whisper of a draught kissing her hairline. The hides of dogs and birds and horses prickled across Ilsa’s skin, but the harder she grasped for them, the more their full forms eluded her. She couldn’t do it. She would never be able to change at will; to get out of here. Miss Mitcham would open the door again, and Ilsa would perform her penance, shaking, because she knew that within days, her ungodly curse would erupt again, and maybe this time the matron would tie her up. Ilsa made her do it, she said. She had to protect the other children from this devil she’d been cursed with.
Ilsa heard herself moan. How could she hurt the other children when she was barely allowed to spend time with them?
Something cold and hard pressed against her arm. Ilsa covered her mouth to stifle a yell and opened her eyes. Hester was staring opaquely at her, her arm outstretched. In her hand, against Ilsa’s arm, was a metal flask.
“I’m sorry we don’t have a magic potion for misery, but whisky laced with vemanta has always worked for me.”
Focusing on nothing but the flask, Ilsa took it from her and hastily unscrewed the top. She took two long gulps, relishing the burn as it barrelled through her. The sensation that followed was unexpected. It was like sinking into a feather bed when exhaustion was about to claim you. The wall and floor grew softer. Her limbs felt loose. It occurred to Ilsa that this lack of control was why she had vowed never to drink as Blume had, but the corresponding emotions were blunted. She wasn’t content, she wasn’t comfortable, but she wasn’t going to vomit either.
“Better?” said Hester, taking the flask.
Ilsa only nodded, and Hester let out a humourless chuckle and frowned at the flask. “The effects get weaker with constant use, but this small dose just about keeps me sane. Most of the time.” She sighed. “I hate to state the obvious but this box would be larger if you were smaller. A rabbit, perhaps.”
Ilsa only shook her head. She couldn’t be smaller, weaker. If anything, she wanted her snow leopard. But she couldn’t explain that to Hester; she could barely explain it to herself.
But Hester didn’t press, and they lapsed into silence. Ilsa tuned out the distant sounds of violence and focused on the feeling of the vemanta.
“I’m sorry you got hurt.”
Hester’s eyes snapped to hers. “You grew up in an orphanage, yes?” she said with no hint of sympathy, as if she were asking where she could buy nutmeg. Ilsa nodded. “And you ran away. Why? And don’t lie. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
The memories felt so real that Ilsa wondered if Hester could see them too. The older she got, the more her magic grew, and the longer she spent suffering for it until, by the end, she forgot what the rest of the orphanage looked like.
“They were ’fraid of me,” Ilsa said, her eyes on her hands. “They… did things.”
With frightening speed, Hester shifted within reach of Ilsa and snatched her wrist. With her other hand, she pulled back the sleeve of Ilsa’s nightgown. “Show me.”
Ilsa didn’t have the wits to disobey, nor to question how Hester knew. She had mastered this one deception so flawlessly that she could literally maintain it in her sleep, but she grappled at its edges now and tore it down. The scars rose from her skin like phantoms from the grave; white, ugly, and with gruesome stories to tell. Coils upon coils of them around each wrist where chains, wires, whatever Miss Mitcham could get her hands on had bitten into her flesh all those years.
“They must have thought you an abomination,” Hester said conversationally, pushing herself back against the wall and toying with her long braid. Ilsa vanished the marks from her wrist and leaned away from her, or tried; even with the alcohol and vemanta calming her nerves, the room was definitely shrinking. “Did they bleed you? Try to exorcise you? Flog you holy?”
“All of it. ’Til I ran away.” Ilsa tentatively reached for the flask and Hester gave it to her.
“And then – what luck? I lose everything and Gedeon goes rogue. He kidnaps the Seer’s apprentice, the Seer puts a bounty on you, and my lieutenants whisk you home like—” She snapped her fingers. Cruel amusement sparkled in her eyes. “Now you have a house full of wolves fighting to protect you, and your biggest worry is a few minutes in here with me. Don’t be sorry I got hurt, cousin dearest. It was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Perhaps she was right. But curled up in that closet-sized hole in the wall, in a house under siege from two kinds of enemy, Ilsa learned to be careful what she wished for. She took another long drag of the spiked whisky, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed to the Witherward’s damned stars that everyone would make it out of this alive.
Especially Eliot. He had a whole other kind of hell waiting for him when Ilsa got free.
Slowly, the sounds of fighting died away, and not long after, the hidden door slid open. Fliss’s hair was falling from its pins, and she was breathing heavily, but she looked unharmed.
“The Zoo is secure,” she told Hester.
“Then get me out of here,” said Hester through gritted teeth.
Ilsa scrambled gratefully out into Hester’s bedroom and gulped down several large breaths. The cocktail she had taken to survive the box was resurging with the fresh air in her lungs, and as she climbed to her feet, a soothing tingle spread through her.
But she was not too afflicted to gasp when a familiar black panther padded into the room, dragging a wailing Oracle man by the arm. Then with one fluid, lightning-quick motion, Eliot was before them. He lifted the man by the collar, and tossed him at Hester’s feet.
“I brought you a gift to make up for hiding you.”
At the sight of the Oracle, something came alive in Hester. “Stars, how many of you people have we killed this week?” she said. “Keep coming at her like this and you’ll be an endangered species. Any others?”
Eliot shook his head. There was blood on his shirt, and it had torn down the arm where he’d been cut. “The Sorcerers were all wearing homing charms. They were vanishing to wherever they came from as quickly as we could wound them. There were only half a dozen Oracles. The rest are all dead.”
“Sorcerers and Oracles?” Eliot nodded. “But the Fortunatae have members in every
faction—”
“They’re not here,” said Eliot. “They don’t need to be. They’ve got this rebellion on a string, I guarantee it, and now they have the Docklands too. They’re all working together.”
“So Gedeon has made this easy for them.” Hester tutted and added scathingly: “Well done, little cousin.”
Oren entered, looking just as battle-weary. There was a glint of violence and bloodlust in his eyes as he said, “Three wolves down. The raiders formed groups and fanned out around us. It was a sweep. Or would have been, if they had gotten very far. Aelius was right, they’re looking for something.”
The Oracle on the floor was clutching his arm where Eliot had bitten him and was moaning in pain. Eliot lifted him to his feet. “I think we ought to make the most of this audience, don’t you?” he said, grasping the man by his hair.
Ilsa swallowed. She was about to witness something horrible, but perhaps it would tell her something about her brother, so she was going nowhere.
Hester levelled her lethal glare at the Oracle. “Have you allied with the Fortunatae?”
The man was breathing heavily. He mustered a cruel smile. “The enemy – of my enemy – is my friend.”
“Yes, yes. Oren.”
It was then Ilsa noticed that Oren, pacing like a caged animal, had a knife. “Hold him,” he said in his ever-genial tone. Ilsa tensed as Eliot tightened his grip on the Oracle and tilted his head back. Oren brought the knife up to rest on the man’s cheek.
“I’ve always wondered,” said Hester. She wasn’t even looking at Oren or the knife, but searching her braid for split ends and plucking them out. “If you take an Oracle’s eyes, can they still See?”
Without further preamble, Oren drove the knife into the soft flesh of the Oracle’s eye socket. The man screamed; a high-pitched, agonised sound that sobered Ilsa a little. But the acolytes had attacked her three times now, and they had murdered Martha. She felt surprisingly little urge to turn away as Oren hooked his bloodied fingers around the man’s eyeball and tore it out.
The man trembled and wilted like he would faint, but Eliot forced him upright as Oren calmly wiped his hands on his handkerchief then wrapped the eye in it.
“Please!” cried the Oracle, blood pouring in a steady stream down his face and onto the floor.
Hester looked incredulous at his plea. “You attack the Zoo, you pay the price,” she intoned, as if this was simple arithmetic. “No riddles, no lies. And if you utter the words yours not to know I will have the other eye. The Fortunatae are making your rebel friends dance, are they not?”
“Yes,” the captive whimpered. Hester shot Eliot a look that was almost approving, and he nodded.
“And you have allied with them too.”
“Yes.”
“There’s a good man. Though it’s awfully bold of the Docklands to anger Camden and the Heart in one fell swoop, I can’t fault the Seer’s bravado. So. Where is Gedeon Ravenswood?”
“I d-d-don’t know,” the man gasped. “I don’t have enough power. Please—”
“Stop your begging,” Hester snapped. “Did he really kidnap your Seer’s apprentice?”
“Yes!”
“Oren.” Oren brought his knife down above the Oracle’s other eye.
“Please, understand!” he shrieked. Oren paused. “The apprentice belongs to the Seer. They are not free to leave.”
“Is he making sense to you, Eliot?” said Hester.
“Not much,” growled Eliot.
“Oren?”
“Sounds like a riddle to me.” Oren pressed his blade nearer the Oracle’s eye socket.
“The Changelings came for the temple! We were ready for them but the apprentice was not there!” His words fell over each other. “The apprentice met them on the border of our lands. They went willingly but they were not free to leave.”
“I see,” said Hester acidly. “What a neat little deception.”
“Where’re they now?” said Ilsa, stepping in front of the Oracle’s remaining eye.
The man recognised her as his target, and unmistakable violence flashed across the visible part of his face. Eliot noticed it too, and it earned the man a blow hard enough to double him over.
“No one can See Cogna,” he gasped when he recovered. “Cogna is different from the rest of us.”
“Different how?” said Hester.
“No one can See Cogna.” His words were slurring together. He was going to pass out.
Hester sighed. “Send him home,” she said. “See that he doesn’t drop dead on the way. I want the Docklands to see for themselves what this vendetta will cost them. Fliss, fetch me another bottle of whisky.”
As Eliot and Oren hauled the now unconscious captive from the room and Fliss peeled off to the pantry, Ilsa made straight for Fyfe’s lab, hoping desperately to find it whole and Fyfe unharmed.
She was relieved to find not just Fyfe, but Cassia and Aelius in the lab, none looking too worse for wear. As for the room itself – Ilsa had forgotten the clutter. It was difficult to tell at first glance whether it had been spared a ransacking, but after a moment, it was clear the raiders hadn’t been there.
“They din’t get in,” Ilsa said, and for Fyfe, she managed a smile – but he didn’t return it.
“Well… actually, it appears they did,” he said, scouting about and rubbing his hair absent-mindedly. “Everything’s undamaged and where I left it. Nothing’s missing – except the pocket forge.”
Cassia was eyeing the clutter disapprovingly. “You’re certain it’s not… somewhere here?”
Fyfe pointed to the desk full of holes. “It lives right here, between this inkwell and this bookend. I was showing it to Ilsa just yesterday and I put it back there as always.” He shrugged despondently. “I know the place is a mess, but it’s organised mess.”
“These damned raiders have been making the odd visit since the spring,” said Aelius. “They couldn’t possibly have been looking for a… what did you say this thing is, Fyfe? A torch of some kind?”
“It’s a” – Fyfe sighed and rolled his eyes, like he’d explained it a thousand times – “the pocket forge can melt anything, Aelius, don’t you see? One could, I don’t know, rob a bank with it.”
“Or destroy a magical artefact,” said Cassia ponderously.
“Precisely!” agreed Fyfe, before frowning. “Although, what artefact exactly, and how destroying it would help their cause, I haven’t the faintest.”
They lapsed into silence. To have the thing the rebels were looking for finally taken, and so quietly, felt like a perverse anti-climax, especially given what the Zoo – and Hester in particular – had suffered in obstructing them. But something about it didn’t feel right. If the thing the rebels had been searching for was here all along – then what was Gedeon doing?
Ilsa’s gaze met Cassia’s, and she could tell the other woman was thinking the same thing.
“I don’t see any catastrophic outcome in the rebels having this pocket forge,” Cassia said, but there was no relief in her tone.
“P’raps one of the Oracles took it,” said Ilsa. “They’d know where to find it without turning the place over. And I s’pose they’d know if they might need it at some point in the future. And I wouldn’t put it past any of the Oracles I’ve met to rob a bank if they could.”
Aelius chuckled. “Yes, indeed. I’m sure one of our forceful guests simply took a shine to the thing.”
“Either way, we can’t relax,” said Cassia, turning and heading for the door. “I’ll pass this on to Oren and the wolves, but I recommend we prepare for more raids.” She paused at the threshold. “I’ve a feeling this isn’t over.”
Ilsa followed after her and found Eliot lurking in the corridor. The Oracle had been unloaded on someone else, but his blood still mingled with Eliot’s in patches on his shirtsleeves.
“Walk me to my room?” said Ilsa.
Foolishly, Eliot obliged. The second everybody else was out of sight, Ilsa turned
on him, arms folded tightly across her chest to stop herself throwing a punch. Eliot must have seen the fury burning in her eyes as she did so, for he stepped back warily.
“Next time you pull something like that, I will hammer the living daylights out of you, you hear?”
“Pull something like what?” choked Eliot.
“You shut me in a three-foot box!” said Ilsa, voice rising with every vicious syllable.
Eliot groaned and looked heavenward. “Stars, Ilsa, I was following orders,” he said tiredly. For a moment Ilsa watched him in stunned silence as he picked at a bloodstain on his shirtsleeve, not even looking at her. After everything she had lived through that evening – the attack, the hidden room, watching a man be tortured – Ilsa finally felt her very last nerve snap.
She placed her hands on Eliot’s chest and pushed him into the wall.
He stumbled. He was looking at her now. “What the—”
“How do you like being pushed around, Eliot?”
“I—” he cut off, mouth snapping shut, the indignation wiping clean off his face and leaving it blank.
“I begged you not to lock me in there.” Ilsa was trembling, and she prayed that her words wouldn’t do the same, but she could feel the angry tears building behind her eyes. “P’raps I can’t… fight off rebels as well as you or… or make a plan if we get attacked. But that don’t give you the right to lock me up like I’m the fine china you don’t want the rebels to break. So you can hang your orders! You think Hester’s got a bite? Well I can still shift, and I’ll rip your bloody throat out the next time.”
For a long moment the only sound was Ilsa’s breathing as it came in jagged pulls of air. Slowly, Eliot leaned back against the wall and buried his face in his hands.
“Stars help me,” he whispered between his fingers. When he looked up at her, bleak remorse shone in his eyes. “I’ve grown so used to doing as Hester orders,” he said softly, “even when it feels wrong.” He rubbed his eyes and rolled them heavenward. “Though now I think on it, I would have forced her into that room too. I panicked. Ilsa, I’m so very sorry.”
Witherward Page 21
