Ilsa nodded tightly, the violence that had been coiling inside her like a snake loosening. Given time, it would melt away.
Eliot straightened his ruined shirt and fixed his hair, all the while watching her guardedly.
“I didn’t realise the hidden room would be such a… an ordeal for you.”
“It weren’t,” said Ilsa automatically, tilting her chin proudly.
“Really.”
They were near a window seat, and Ilsa dragged herself to it and sat down. Only when she tried to fold her hands in her lap did she notice they were still trembling. There was a spattering of the Oracle’s blood near the hem of her robe, but when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t the image of his bloodied, empty eye socket that assaulted her. It was the door to the hidden room sliding closed. Better to open her eyes and look at Eliot. She concentrated on the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones, more elegant than she had first thought; on the fathomless intensity in his eyes as they searched hers with something like concern.
“I’m sorry I shut you in a three-foot box. I ought to have listened.” With the tentativeness of a nervous wild animal, he lowered himself onto the seat beside her. “May I ask something?”
The only safe answer to that question was no, but Ilsa saw an opportunity. “I’ll trade you. You answer one first.”
A muscle fluttered in Eliot’s jaw. “Alright.”
“Where’s Gedeon?”
Eliot’s breath left him in a rush. Ilsa thought it might be relief. “I’m still offended by that question.”
“Then why’d he leave?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“But you might. You might have clues at least.” He was shaking his head, but she pressed on. “What was his mood like? What did you talk about? He do anything strange?”
“No,” snapped Eliot, surprising them both, and Ilsa remembered who he was: the boy no one trusted. The boy with secrets.
“I see they din’t teach you manners in the Witherward,” she parroted, holding his cold glare with her own.
“Oh, they tried.” Eliot leaned his forearms on his knees and rubbed his eyes. He groaned and relented. “Between the attack and Gedeon leaving, I barely saw him. And we didn’t speak once.”
“Weren’t that strange itself?” challenged Ilsa.
“Well, yes, but his cousin had nearly been killed, and as alpha, Gedeon felt responsible.” He paused, then added stonily: “As any of us would.”
“What ’bout… meetings and that?”
“There were none.”
This would get her nowhere. “I s’pose he wanted to be with Hester, din’t he?” she said weakly.
At this, Eliot tilted his head. “Well, no. He barely saw her either.”
“What? How’d you know?”
“Because I hardly left her side,” he said, looking at his hands. The right one clenched and fidgeted, toying with a pocket watch he had no doubt left in his room during the commotion. “I heard him talking with Fliss in the lounge once or twice, but he never came to her bedside. Not when I was with her, at least.”
Ilsa grappled to place this in the growing picture. Hadn’t she decided there was bad blood between Eliot and Hester? Had he sat at her sickbed because he cared for her? Ilsa’s boldness nearly got the better of her, but she bit back any more questions. She had the sense she would scare the honesty out of him if she got too close to the truth.
“Look.” He cleared his throat. “Talk to Cassia. If any of us have been privy to some clues they didn’t recognise, as you say, it’ll be her. Perhaps Gedeon let something pertinent slip during their pillow talk.”
“Their – oh.”
Ilsa marvelled at her own obliviousness. The impenetrable sadness behind her eyes; the cracks she couldn’t hide when someone mentioned Gedeon; the brittle shell she had donned to keep herself upright.
Cassia’s heart was broken.
“I din’t realise,” said Ilsa.
“So you got some information from me after all. Now it’s my turn.” He straightened and eyed her curiously. “You fight with your fists. I hear when you woke up in the Zoo you threatened Cassia with a statue.”
“That ain’t a question.”
“You’re a Changeling, Ilsa. A capable one, I hear. But you don’t use your magic on instinct. Why?”
Ilsa pretended to rearrange the folds of her dressing gown. “I use my magic,” she said. “I used it to sneak and get places and that before, when people weren’t looking. It ain’t like you can bust into a leopard in the street in the Otherworld.”
“You’re not in the Otherworld any more.”
“I know that, I just… it’s habit, is all.”
“Did any Otherworlders ever see you shift?”
“Plenty. But the only one who knew it weren’t a magic trick was Mr Blume.”
“No one else?”
He knew the answer. She could tell from the way he looked at her like he’d believe anything she told him.
“And how d’you think them Otherworlders would react if they did see it?” she challenged. “They don’t know ’bout magic through the portal but they know ’bout God and the devil. Anyone knew the things I could do, they’d think I was possessed by something from hell. They’d think my magic came from the devil.”
“There’s no such thing as the devil,” he said.
“Oh yeah? You can tell that to—”
She stopped herself too late. The liquid quality of Eliot’s eyes turned to ice.
“Who?” The word rushed out like a breath. Was he truly angry for her? And did it mean anything, when he was angry about everything else?
“It don’t matter. Point is, p’raps I had good reason to learn not to use my magic.” Ilsa shifted to look out the window. The chaos of the attack still hadn’t been righted. Someone had sent for more wolves to reinforce security, and they were receiving orders on the lawn. A body lay near the wall. Someone had covered it with a sheet, but the blood was seeping through.
Helpless to stop it, Ilsa snorted out a laugh. Eliot eyed her with a new kind of concern.
“Least no one wanted to run me out of London in the Otherworld. And your damned Principles mean I can’t use my magic for nothing a mile east of here, or they’ll kill me.” She shook her head. “Captain Fowler told me this weren’t the bad side of the portal. He said there’s worse horrors where I’m from.”
Eliot’s scowl returned in full force, and when he spoke, his voice was cold and hard as marble. “Cadell Fowler lives and breathes for blood. Carving up his enemies is his idea of bliss.”
Ilsa shook her head. “He said there’d be peace one day. Everyone’s just got to decide they want it.”
“Do you believe that? That it could be so simple?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He tilted his head, studied her mournfully and waited.
“I don’t know. I can’t get my head ’round nothing ’bout this damned city.”
“Then allow me to explain.”
He stood, offering a hand to pull Ilsa to her feet before steering her in the direction of her bedchamber.
“London is nothing but a battleground disguised as a city. The Callicans founded it to assert their dominance and when the empire fell, domination was for the taking. This city is designed to court hatred, Ilsa. It’s in its bones. We’ll fight and we’ll die, and then our children will fight over our bones, and so on.”
“Trying to protect yourself ain’t the same as having hate for those what threaten it. That ain’t what Camden’s doing.”
“Fight for long enough and you’ll stop seeing the difference.”
“Then why do it at all?” said Ilsa, throwing her arms wide. “Why not leave?”
They had reached her bedroom door. Eliot opened it but didn’t go inside. There was an intensity in the way he regarded her that was nothing like the fierce malice he so often wore. It was determined and passionate.
“Because there are ordinary people in this city who are just trying to live.
Who keep their heads down and don’t attract attention; who follow the rules to the letter to buy themselves as much peace and safety as they can scrape together; who are trying to be happy. You said it yourself – they have lives here. And it’s not the choice I would make, but they’re entitled to it. So as long as there is a single Changeling living in London – an ordinary Changeling; a chimney sweep or a schoolmaster or a laundry woman – then the Zoo will protect their right to be here. I will protect that right. If we stop fighting, we condemn them all.”
Occasionally, a person had a different kind of tell. Lying made people feel vulnerable, but the truth – when that truth really, truly mattered to them – did the same. It was hard to disguise, just like a lie.
For a moment, Ilsa didn’t care what Eliot’s concern for her meant, or what his secrets were. There was good in him, she could see it, and it was noble and self-sacrificing. He hated this city – this battleground – and he was here anyway. Without second-guessing herself, she took Eliot’s face in her hands – inhaling the scent of fresh linens and rain – stood on tiptoes, and lightly pressed her lips to a fresh bruise blossoming on his jaw. He stiffened, but he didn’t stop her. When she didn’t immediately pull away, his hand drifted tentatively to her waist.
Ilsa hadn’t meant to linger; hadn’t planned to crave more of this. But she couldn’t take her hands off him, so she let them drift down his neck, across his shoulders to his chest. He drew in a sharp breath.
“Ilsa…” There was no mistaking the reproach in his voice, the warning, even as his hand tightened on her waist and his breath hitched. And he was right. The part of her she still controlled didn’t want to kiss Eliot this way. If she fell into him now, when all her other thoughts were of prisons and chains and people who wished her harm, she might want to get lost.
Maybe that wasn’t Eliot’s concern. Maybe he was thinking of a pocket watch with another girl’s name on it.
She let her hands fall. She put some distance between their lips.
“Your people are lucky to have you, Eliot,” she whispered against his shoulder.
Then she stepped through her bedroom door and closed it behind her, with Eliot staring dazedly after her.
18
As the Zoo’s master of “communications”, Aelius was the one to face the Seer in the Docklands and request they drop their vendetta now that the Zoo knew the truth. It was not a long visit. The Oracles were stalwart; Gedeon Ravenswood had broken the Principles, and they would have Ilsa’s life in compensation. Nothing Aelius said could talk them out of trying to claim it.
“But I suppose there’s good news,” said Aelius wryly. “Their own stubborn traditionalism means the truth of Gedeon’s misdeeds still remains between us and the Docklands. Theirs to know, everyone else’s not to, and all that nonsense.”
“Great,” Ilsa whispered to Fyfe. “So the rebels are looking for we don’t know what for we don’t know what purpose that probably involves revenge and overthrowing us, the Oracles only want to kill me – guess that’s something to be thankful for – and the Fortunatae want to wipe out my family and dissolve Camden, and have done a champion job of getting the rest to put their differences aside and work together to destroy us. But least no one’s worried Gedeon’s gonna kidnap them too. Then we’d really be in trouble.” Fyfe didn’t laugh and Ilsa didn’t blame him. It wasn’t funny. “I don’t get it. We got wolves and barricades all ’round the border, right? So why let any Oracles in at all? Why let anyone in?”
“Trade,” said Fyfe. “It’s the only thing that’s sacred in this city. The threat of losing it is perhaps what keeps the Principles working. We’re free to close our borders, but if we did, the Docklands would almost certainly close theirs to us. And the Oracles have possession of the docks, of course. They don’t have the numbers or, ah… care to manage them, so the rest of us pay them a share to do our own business. It’s how they stay solvent despite the vemanta crisis. We trade with all the factions.” He smiled wryly. “We’re all doing so much violence, swindling one another at the Trade House is almost a good-natured pastime.”
When they weren’t trying to get a step ahead of the rebels or bargain with the Docklands, it was mainly trade that kept the lieutenants busy, because just weeks before, it had been Hester’s job. There was still a faction to manage, and the unfortunate irony was that managing it without Gedeon left little time for finding Gedeon, even if they hadn’t exhausted all their ideas.
They were so stretched that they even begrudgingly called on Eliot, if only for the most menial and innocuous tasks. It left Ilsa truly on her own in her search for clues to Gedeon’s whereabouts, but Eliot had given her a new lead.
It was many days after learning of the Sorcerer and her brother, that Ilsa finally cornered Cassia. Fyfe had told her that she had a small laboratory of her own, and that she had been spending a lot of time there recently. Unfortunately, its location did not appeal. The hidden room in Hester’s chambers was one type of horror, but it wasn’t where Ilsa’s fear came from; it wasn’t an attic.
Cassia’s lab was a narrow, bare space in the servants’ quarters, with dark floorboards, white walls, and a small lattice window looking onto the roof. On a wooden bench along one wall was a neat succession of flasks and beakers, and opposite, two shelves of orderly, labelled jars. A glass-fronted cabinet at the far end housed what looked like completed concoctions. There was none of the clutter, or the appeal, of Fyfe’s larger, eclectic space downstairs.
Cassia was stood by the open window, frowning into a book. A breeze was making a lock of black hair dance across her shoulder, but if she had noticed, she didn’t mind. Ilsa fixed her eyes on that window – through which she could fly away if she needed to – and rapped lightly on the open door.
“Oh, hello,” Cassia said. She looked neither pleased nor uncomfortable to see her, but instead folded her book closed and turned to a large round flask on the bench. It contained a transparent liquid of the palest green, and underneath, a tiny flame bloomed from thin air.
“D’you do that?” Ilsa gasped.
“Hmm? Oh, that.” Cassia snapped her fingers and a small flame erupted at her fingertips. She shook it out like she would a match. “I’ve been slaving over this potion for four days, and everyone who has come up here has marvelled at that flame, perhaps the most basic bit of corporeal magic. Changelings.”
“What is it?” asked Ilsa.
“It’s supposed to be a truth serum. Hester asked me to try and make one up after that Oracle Eliot captured was so uncooperative, but even a specialist potion master would struggle with the formula, and I’m nothing of the sort.” They shared a glance at the fact that Hester had asked anyone to do anything other than wheel her back to bed. “I’ve been testing it on myself and all I’ve managed to do is induce hallucinations. Oren came by this morning and found me arguing with an empty chair.” Her words became quieter and more mumbled as she spoke, and Ilsa wondered who Cassia had thought was with her.
“D’you make all them potions?” she asked instead, gesturing to the cabinet. One of them was the syrupy magenta sleeping draft Cassia had once given her. A crate on the bottom shelf read ANTIDOTES, which struck Ilsa as wise.
“Well, the Zoo could hardly let a Sorcerer into their ranks and not put her to work. I prefer corporeal magic to this stuff, but I like to be of use.”
“But Fyfe makes potions too, don’t he?”
“He does,” Cassia said with a pensive tilt of her head, “and he’s a remarkable chemist, but he always needs a little of my help. I imbue my potions with something Fyfe can’t replicate on his own. Certain substances and ingredients are strong receptors, but they do very little by themselves. They can only perform magic” – Cassia pressed the very tips of her fingers to the bowl of the flask, and a barely discernible ripple shot through the liquid within – “with the right nudge.”
Ilsa toyed absent-mindedly with the worn corner of the cabinet as she worked up to her reason for being there.
“Eliot said you might be the one to talk to ’bout what happened with Gedeon just before he disappeared,” she said, and Cassia blanched. “He said something ’bout pillow talk.”
“Oh.” Cassia turned back to her potion.
“I ain’t judging. I’ve known lots of girls what’ve lain with men what ain’t their husbands.”
“It’s not that. The Witherward is different to where you grew up. Our laws are concerned with far graver matters than our flesh. Our deities don’t condemn us for what we do with ours.
Hester and Fyfe’s mother was married to neither of the men who fathered her children, you know, and she was held in the highest esteem by all of Camden.”
Perhaps Ilsa should have suspected something like that when she first learned a woman was in charge in Camden. Things were not as she had known them in the Otherworld.
“It’s just that… Eliot doesn’t approve of me.”
“Why’s that?”
Cassia’s voice quivered as she answered. “My parents and yours were good friends. They wanted to strengthen the Heart’s alliance with Camden, and raising us without the biases of their generation and my grandfather’s was a way of accomplishing that. So they sent me here. I’ve known Gedeon since we were five years old. I lived here in the Zoo with your family. Eliot’s father was a lieutenant to your mother so Eliot grew up here too. We played together. We shared a governess and took lessons together. Camden is my home and it always has been.” Her voice broke. Indignation flared in her lovely, wide eyes. “But I needed a Sorcerer’s education too. I wasn’t entirely unversed in how to use my talents, but they did suffer because of my upbringing, so when I was fifteen, I went home.”
“Was that before you and Gedeon were…?”
A faint, humourless smile appeared on Cassia’s lips, but her eyes became even more desolate. “I always loved him. He has this way. He made all our differences feel like puzzles he wanted to solve. Even as a child, I knew that whatever I told him, he would make me feel clever or interesting or special for saying it. He just has this… curiosity for everything and everyone.” She blinked, suddenly self-conscious. “I knew that he felt for me too, but I was shy. It was the hardest decision I ever made; to leave just as he was coming of age and meeting so many girls. I thought, without a doubt, he would fall in love while I was gone, and if I ever came back, I would be just this girl he knew once, deserving of his kindness and attention the way everyone is, but nothing more. But I wasn’t a Changeling, I was a Sorcerer, and I wanted to be a talented one.” She shrugged, a small smile creeping onto her lips. “And now, I suppose am.”
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