Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  She turned back into a sparrow, flitted to the other side of the roof, and dropped into the next street in her mousy human disguise. She only had to evade her pursuers long enough for them to realise she was no longer on the High Street and then she planned to double back. She’d had her eye on a tray of iced cakes that were circling.

  But Ilsa had barely moved before a prickle on the back of her neck made her turn around. There was nothing there but a deserted corner where two houses met, but Ilsa hadn’t picked pockets for years without learning when she was being watched. Music and laughter drifted from the High Street, amplifying the silence of where she stood – or masking the sound.

  A strange instinct struck her.

  “Eliot?” she called down the street, a vivid image in her mind of a panther stalking from the dark.

  But there was no reply. If one of the wolves had found her, surely they wouldn’t be playing this game. Not waiting to find out, Ilsa picked up her skirts and headed in the opposite direction, poised to sprout wings if one of the myriad threats of the Witherward emerged from the shadows. She pushed down her fear. There were wolves nearby, here precisely for her protection, wanted or not, and a whole community of Changelings, at least one of whom was strong enough to shift into an elephant.

  But then, there it was again. The nagging sensation that someone’s eyes were on her. It was strong, more than a learned mechanism or a relic of her pickpocketing days. It was tugging her gaze to an alley across the street, a barely there space between terraced houses. Ilsa squinted into the dark, but didn’t stop. If she made it to the end of this street, perhaps she could take to the skies without a militia hawk sighting her.

  But now the presence was ahead of her. For a split second, Ilsa was tempted to face whatever watched her head-on, drunk as she was on the half-dozen foolish things she’d already done that night. But she tamped down the reckless instinct and retreated to the only place left to go: another alley, this one leading back towards…

  At the end of a tunnel of black was the multicoloured glow of a thousand lamps, the carefree flicker of wings flapping and skirts twirling. She was being herded towards the party. Back towards the militia who were seeking her. Another instinct, this one more sure, made her stop in the tunnel and put her hands on her hips.

  “Captain Fowler.”

  A black form flickered at the very corner of her vision, and when she turned, there was the Wraith, arms folded, impassive expression belied by the glint of humour in his eyes. He was dressed head to toe in black, the hood of his long coat thrown back and a bandolier of knives strapped across his broad chest. More weapons dripped from his belt. Ilsa couldn’t recall what the Principles had to say about walking about armed, but she doubted it was good.

  “How’d you recognise me?” she huffed.

  “Your eyes, of course.” He nodded towards the High Street. “My eyesight is far stronger than a Changeling’s. I saw you on the roof from across the street.”

  “And I s’pose they’ve roped you in to bring me back home?” she snapped, knowing better by now than to try and make a break for it.

  Fowler looked over his shoulder, back in the direction Ilsa had come. “You were about to cross paths with your bloodhounds. They’re on the scent trail of a pair of gloves that have mysteriously found their way up a tree half a mile west of here.” He reached into his coat and produced something Ilsa recognised. It was her bag, the one she’d been carrying the night Martha had died. The night he’d saved her life. It had had her gloves in it. “You’re in the clear. For now.”

  He held the bag out and Ilsa took it, fingers closing on the worn, faded velvet. She ran a thumb over the repair she had done on one corner with the red cotton thread she used for alterations on her stage costume. It was all she’d had. Funny, how she only noticed how tattered it was now.

  “So you just went and broke the Principles, all over me sneaking out?” she said, holding the purse behind her back, where she couldn’t see it.

  “Which Principles did I break?”

  “You ain’t allowed to use your magic outside the Wraith quarter.” Ilsa shot a glance at the party. A group of men with tankards of ale were joking and laughing mere feet from her and the Wraith, but shrouded as they were in shadow – and drunk as the men appeared to be – they hadn’t noticed them.

  The flash of humour returned in the captain’s grey eyes. He reached a hand into the collar of his shirt and drew out a chain. On the end was a silver coin embossed with a bird’s skull and crossed arrows. “I belong to the Order of Shadows. We’re exempt from the Principles, and from their protection.”

  The Order of Shadows. Mercenaries. Assassins. Ilsa was reminded that Fowler had only saved her life because he’d been paid to do so. If the Docklands had hired him first, would he have slain her in that fish market alongside Martha?

  “You’re saying if I clawed your chest open, right here and now, no one would stop me?”

  “No one would stop you,” he conceded. He took a step closer, shifting so that his body filled the whole tunnel, and slipped a blade from his wrist into his palm. It was a pathetic, dull-looking thing compared to the weapons decorating his belt and chest. As he held it up, Ilsa saw why: it was her blade. It had also been in her bag. “Just as no one could stop me cutting your throat in time. But the Zoo would have its vengeance, and likewise the Order take care of their own.”

  Ilsa reached out and snatched the knife from him. He let her; she was under no illusion that she’d been quicker than him. “Go through all my things, did you?”

  “Curiosity is a force of habit.”

  Ilsa folded the knife and put it away. She had drawn it several times in the Otherworld, and used it once – against a lecherous drunkard who had flung her against an alley wall and let his hands roam where they pleased.

  “And you ain’t gonna ask me what a Changeling’s carrying a blade for?” she asked, thinking of that night. She hadn’t been afraid of the man, she’d been afraid of her urge to shift and of what might happen if she did. Her gaze drifted out to the party, where Millie was still enjoying the attention showing off her magic had earned her.

  “Something to do with her impeccable foresight?” said Fowler. “A blade is only as good as its backup. The same is true for claws, I imagine.”

  Ilsa glanced at the Wraith’s dozen backup blades, remembered him throwing one at an Oracle’s chest with lethal precision. “And what’re you doing at a Camden street party, so well prepared?”

  “Nothing bloody, I assure you. Let’s get a drink.”

  Ilsa blinked in surprise as he slipped past her and out onto the High Street. She hurried to catch him up as he made for an open-fronted tent that had been erected on one side of the street.

  “What’s the occasion?” Ilsa asked the captain as she dodged a gentleman with a tray of beer.

  Fowler glanced over his shoulder at her. “Camden’s foremost astrologer told them to.”

  “Come again?”

  “Every lunar cycle, she reads Camden’s stars. This month, she told them to throw a party.”

  Ilsa shot a bemused glance at the scene around her; streamers, dancing, heaps of food on giant platters, all because someone told them the stars willed it. “Do people here do everything astrologers tell them?”

  “Some do,” said the captain. “Most probably discard whatever asks too much of them and keep what they like. As guidance from the stars goes, I doubt throw a party rustled many feathers.” He glanced at one of the rainbow-bright birds still dancing through the air, then at her, his eyes sparkled at his own joke. “Do the people in the Otherworld not take their fun where they can find it? Life is trying here sometimes. We like to remember that it can be good too.”

  That much was clear. Ilsa saw no trace of the violent chaos that threatened every moment of her life among the lieutenants and militia. She wondered how well these people understood what the Zoo did to protect them.

  Inside the tent was a long table in front of
a rack of ale casks; a makeshift bar. The Changelings shot the captain glances as he accepted two mugs of beer and handed one to Ilsa, but no one challenged his presence. Ilsa also drew attention just by being beside him. Perhaps they thought she’d invited her assassin beau to drink and dance with them. She checked her disguise was still in place and averted her eyes from all who glanced their way.

  Fowler found a spot near the entrance of the tent, right in a corner. It would have been an inconspicuous place to stand if he hadn’t been a six-foot-two Wraith clad in black and accessorised with a small armoury.

  “How’d I know you was there?” Ilsa asked. Fowler quirked a brow in question. “Back in the street, I knew you was watching me. I knew exactly where you was.”

  “Ah. Something about slipping through solid objects creates a feeling of unease in those nearby, if they’re attuned enough to their surroundings. That sense of being watched. You wouldn’t have noticed it when we first met. You had, ah, other concerns at the time.”

  Martha. The acolytes.

  “I did in the theatre though,” Ilsa said, suddenly understanding the prickle on the back of her neck the moment before she’d first seen the captain.

  “The sensation’s not often so acute,” said Fowler, studying her. “You knew precisely where I was.”

  “Caution’s a force of habit too,” Ilsa shrugged. She took a long sip of her beer and studied Fowler over the rim of her mug. He had fixed his gaze intently on the dancing outside the tent. Ilsa followed his line of sight to a smiling, dimpled young man, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his neck scarf askew as he spun his pretty dance partner in his arms.

  “Who’s that?” said Ilsa, an inexplicable thrill of fear coursing through her at the way Fowler watched him.

  “His name’s Edgar Dawson,” said the captain, his eyes still on the man. “He’s a con artist.”

  “We’re Changelings,” she said. “Ain’t we all con artists after a fashion?”

  Fowler pursed his lips, and Ilsa got the impression he was trying not to smile. It made her oddly proud, to draw a reaction from the stone-faced assassin, and she swallowed more beer to hide her own smile.

  “This particular con artist,” said the Wraith, “has a lover in the Underground, a wealthy merchant’s son, who’s packing his belongings and his considerable fortune and preparing to leave on a ship tonight with our man here. All Dawson’s taking with him is a single suitcase and a vial of poison.”

  Ilsa’s gaze snapped back to the dancing; to the laughing, carefree Edgar Dawson. He didn’t look like a killer, but for all Ilsa knew, he didn’t look like that at all.

  “His lover’s friends have pooled their gold to have me put a stop to the affair. They suspected foul play. I doubt they suspected a murder plot.”

  “You gonna kill him?” Ilsa whispered, though she was afraid to know the answer.

  Fowler tore his eyes from his mark and looked at her wryly. “If I have to. But I won’t. Tonight will be the second time Dawson’s seen me. He’ll get the idea.”

  Sure enough, after a few minutes of Fowler’s eyes burning into the back of his head, Edgar Dawson glanced towards the tent, and his smile, his dimples, his carefree glee all dropped from his face. He careened to a halt in the middle of the dance. His partner tripped and caught herself on his arm, but Edgar didn’t notice. Ever so subtly, Fowler raised his cup to his mark and nodded. With his bewildered partner staring after him, the man stumbled away, looking like he might be sick.

  Studying the captain – his predatorial stare, the casual way his hand rested on the hilt of his long knife – Ilsa wasn’t sure she blamed him.

  “You really would kill him, wouldn’t you?” she said, though she already had the answer.

  Fowler nodded. “If my contract required it,” he replied nonchalantly. He turned that stare on Ilsa. She could feel him reading her every reaction. Not wanting to appear cowed, she met his stare.

  “I s’pose it might be the right thing to do, if it saved another’s life,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she believed that. She only wanted to see him react too.

  He downed his beer in one long swallow. “My job this time is not to save anyone’s life,” he said to the bottom of his cup. “It’s to end the affair. One way or another.”

  “Oh.”

  The heat drained from her at the finality of his tone. Fowler signalled a barman with a tray of cups and swapped his empty one for another. “And what’s compelled you to slip away this evening?” he said quickly, and he took a deep drink of his second beer. “The people of Camden often extend their invitations to the Zoo, but only one person is known to regularly accept them. And I was under the impression he was missing.”

  Ilsa felt that kick, the one her heart gave whenever she gleaned the slightest detail about her missing brother. Gedeon mingled with his people. That was something real. Not a portrait made to flatter, or the contradictory testimony of his lover.

  This was why she was here.

  “D’you know him?” she asked Fowler. “Gedeon?”

  Fowler shook his head. “By sight. That’s all. The Prince of Camden’s never been a friend to the Order. Your brother has lofty ideas that a society of mercenaries and killers should not have so much power.”

  “Outrageous,” muttered Ilsa.

  “They could have told you everything you wished to know about him at the Zoo. Had you not run away.”

  “I din’t run away,” said Ilsa, fingering the worn velvet purse still clutched in one hand. “And they can’t tell me everything. Or they don’t want to. He’s gone missing when he’s s’posed to be running things, and still no one’s said a bad word about him. It’s like they’re afraid he’ll hear or something.”

  “It is not that type of fear that stays their tongues, my lady. Gedeon Ravenswood holds the hope of a whole people on his shoulders. To topple him is to dash that hope.”

  “So it’s wilful ignorance?”

  “Who’s to say he’s not deserving? Have you uncovered his whereabouts? Do you know what made him leave?”

  Ilsa huffed a sigh. “No.”

  Fowler fixed her with an earnest look. “Let your friends’ trust inform your own,” he said slowly. “They know him as you don’t.”

  That was the truth of it, and it cut her to her core. She was angry with Cassia, with all of them, because they had something she didn’t. No number of truths gleaned or stories told could compare to real memories of her brother, and she hadn’t been there to make any. She had been struggling to survive alone in the Otherworld.

  You belong here.

  Ilsa wished it were that easy. It still wasn’t the Zoo she pictured before she opened her eyes in the morning. It was the attic at the orphanage.

  Ilsa’s thoughts were interrupted by a word plucked straight from them: her brother’s name.

  “Gedeon!” came the call again.

  Her stomach lurched. She stepped out of the tent, pulled as if by a string to whomever was calling that name. Could Gedeon be here, miraculously, suddenly? Why not? No one knew why he was gone, so no one could say when and why he might return.

  “Gedeon, it’s time to go home!”

  Ilsa came to a stop when she found the caller, her hope snuffed out. It was a man summoning his son. The little boy, three years old at most, was shooting his father mischievous, defiant grins as he continued to play with the other children.

  Ilsa felt foolish. Perhaps she had had too much beer.

  Fowler appeared at her shoulder. He could probably have told her that her brother wasn’t here if she’d given him a chance. With a Wraith’s senses, he could probably hear every single person at this party.

  Little Gedeon’s father gave up with a groan and looked up, startling when he saw them standing there.

  “Can I help you, miss?” he said, shooting uncertain glances at the captain, who took a couple of steps back and kept his hands far from his weapons.

  “No. It’s nothing,” said Ilsa, arranging her fac
e into a gracious smile. “It’s a lovely name, is all.”

  The man smiled proudly. “After the alpha, thank his stars.”

  “Oh, spare the poor girl, Bren!” A woman came running from the dancefloor, breathless and red-cheeked. She ran right into the man’s arms, and his smile widened as he wrapped an arm around her. “He’ll talk your ears off if you let him,” she said to Ilsa, rolling her eyes. She too looked the captain up and down, and kept her distance.

  “Gedeon almost didn’t make it into the world,” said Bren. He spared an affectionate look for the woman, but a hardness had crept into his eyes. “Diana and I were taken for ransom by a gang of Wraiths when she was eight months gone.”

  Ilsa swallowed a gasp. “That’s… horrible.”

  “And common,” Fowler cut in. “It’s one of the citizens’ preferred ways of terrorising one another.”

  Bren nodded. “Snatch someone from a neighbouring faction, make their leader pay to get them back. It’s one way to make money if you’re desperate, or just ruthless, and if you don’t get caught, you can’t get punished. We lived right by the border to the North, but far from the nearest guard point. No militia about. They slipped in through the walls while we were sleeping. I woke in the dark to cloaked phantoms all around me. Diana was too far along to shift, and I suffer the Changeling’s bane something terrible. We had no hope against them.”

  “S’cuse me,” Ilsa cut in. “Changeling’s bane?”

  Bren and Diana exchanged a look, and Ilsa realised this must have been a stupid question. Diana’s eyes drifted to the twitches along Ilsa’s right cheekbone; the proof she was a Changeling too. “That feeling when you shift?” said Bren. “The stretching or squeezing, the pain in your bones?” He shuddered. “That… burning feeling of feathers or fur growing on you.”