Ilsa nodded. “Right. Used to make me really sick at first.”
“That’s Changeling’s bane. The price of using our magic. Some of us don’t ever overcome it. I wish it weren’t the case but I never learned to use my magic all that well. I never got used to the pain.” Bren shook his head. “So I couldn’t even put up a fight when the Wraiths came for us. And once we were taken, we thought that was it for us.”
“Hester was alpha back then,” Diana said. “She didn’t strike deals with kidnappers.”
Ilsa could believe it. Hester would have considered it a show of weakness to cave to someone’s demands; a weakness others would seek to exploit.
“We were trussed up in a disused stable for two days, barely fed or watered, left in our own waste.” Bren shot a glance at his son, who was still playing rough and tumble with his friends, and lowered his voice. “Can you imagine it?
“But the wolves came,” Bren went on. “And he was with them. He didn’t send his militia to do the job, he wanted to see for himself that we were rescued.”
“Gedeon?”
Diana nodded. “We were blindfolded,” she said. “We didn’t see what happened, but he’d brought a small squad of wolves with him from what I could make out. Not enough to seem threatening, just enough to look like he was thinking of his own protection. But he was the distraction. While he stalled the Wraiths, a second group of wolves surrounded them. Next thing I knew, we were pulled to safety, out of the way of whatever happened next.”
“Gedeon was just a lad,” said Bren. “But not a tremor of fear in him. I owe him my life, and my wife’s and my son’s.” He laughed. “He said his cousin’s wrath would be worth it.”
To save a family from slaughter? Ilsa would go toe to toe with Hester too. But could she walk into a stable full of Wraiths – men and women as fast and strong and deadly as Captain Fowler – on the fool’s chance of walking out again?
“Camden’s stars-blessed to have a leader like that,” said Diana, and Bren pulled her into a hug and kissed her forehead.
Ilsa turned to where the couple’s son was still playing with the other children; they were taking turns shifting into lion cubs.
“You want to see a real lion?” called a voice through the crowd, and Millie the elephant woman approached.
“Millie! Show us!” squealed the children. “Show us, Millie!”
The children squealed and cheered and Millie became a massive roaring lion. They climbed on top of her and Millie let them pull her to the ground. Bren and Diana watched with fond smiles, their brush with death relegated once more to the past.
This was who Gedeon was, Ilsa realised. Trusted. Admired. Courageous. Someone who made people feel valued whether they were the woman he loved or the people who looked to him to unite them. Perhaps it wasn’t the whole story – the full portrait – but Fowler was right: it was important.
The Wraith spoke by her shoulder. “Your hounds will be on their way back. Shall I set them another game?”
Ilsa shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. “I’m done now.”
They cut a path through the party heading south, stopping only briefly when Fowler’s curiosity was tugged by the wrestling.
“D’you think they’d let a Wraith in the ring?” teased Ilsa. “P’raps you can take your chances.”
Fowler pulled his gaze from the spectators laying bets and raised an eyebrow. “Unlikely. That’s not a fair fight,” he said, and abruptly continued past the circle.
The High Street spat them out on a quieter road not far from the park.
“So Wraiths are the strongest of the magics, ain’t they?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You said it wouldn’t be a fair fight, between you and a Changeling. I’ve seen you fight,” said Ilsa, skittering quickly over the memory of the fish market. “You’re unstoppable.”
“I’m strong,” Fowler conceded with no hint of humility, “but the same can’t be said for every Wraith. Learning to transmute – to pass through something solid – is an acquired skill, like learning any magic. Some aren’t as fast or as strong. Plenty are immensely fast and strong and have never trained for combat. Power isn’t black and white. Some Changelings shy away from the pain of using their magic, some Oracles cannot tame theirs. The Sorcerer ability to transport – the move from place to place in an instant – never comes to some, however learned they are. They believe it to be an inherited trait.”
“And you having strong magic,” said Ilsa. “That something you inherited too?”
Fowler’s grey eyes slid to hers, then to his feet as he walked. “I’ve belonged to the Order since birth. I can’t say if my strength was inherited but that is often the way of things. As for being unstoppable – do you want to try me?”
Ilsa came to a dead stop in the street, mouth hanging open in shock. “You want to wrestle?”
“You say I’m unstoppable,” he said, unbuckling his bandolier and tossing it aside, “but in the Order we learn that’s never true. No one is unbeatable. And you say Wraiths are the strongest of the magics. So fight one and see for yourself.”
It was an awfully elaborate way of deflecting, but Ilsa was intrigued. She put her purse down next to his bandolier. “Alright.”
“No gorillas,” said Fowler. “That’s child’s play.”
Ilsa wouldn’t dream of a gorilla when she had a snow leopard in her arsenal. Fowler watched her shift the way he’d watched Edgar Dawson dance: like she was prey. It set the same thrill racing through her blood, but she wasn’t afraid of the Wraith.
He circled her, fifteen feet away. “I might be faster, but to score a strike I still need to get under your guard. I need to get close. That gives you a chance to be stronger.”
Quicker than lightning, Fowler closed the space between them and tapped Ilsa on the shoulder. She snapped at him, but he had already danced out of reach. Then he was on her other side, hitting again. Ilsa turned, jaws primed, but he had moved again.
“You’re on the defensive,” he said, stopping out of reach and looking for all the world like he hadn’t lifted a finger. “You don’t need to wait for me to strike.”
Then he attacked again, scoring featherlight touches one after the other. Ilsa launched herself at the places he appeared time and time again, but she was never quick enough.
Exasperated, she shifted human. “How am I s’posed to strike when I can’t bloody keep up with you?”
In answer, Fowler came at her again. Ilsa didn’t have time to shift before he caught her by the arm and pulled it behind her back. It was perfectly judged; he didn’t hurt her, but she could never have twisted free.
“You have more than one blade, my lady,” he whispered in her ear.
He loosened his grip and stepped back, and when Ilsa shifted again, it was into a kestrel. She launched herself beyond his reach.
“Better,” said Fowler, keeping his eyes on her even as she moved soundlessly through the dark above him. When she slowed to hover, he averted his eyes, like a challenge. Attack how she wished, he would hear her coming.
She picked a spot behind him and dived for the ground. Predictably, Fowler spun, and was there before she was, ready to strike. But he had expected Ilsa to grow into something fierce and battle-worthy, not shrink as she did into a mouse. She freefell under his guard, and when she landed, a leopard once more, it was with her jaws closed around flesh.
Fowler stilled. Ilsa had him by the forearm.
“Ah,” he whispered, the ghost of a smile on his mouth. He tugged experimentally on her grip and almost broke free, but Ilsa held tighter, a growl reverberating against his skin. “That’s it. You almost have me.”
She didn’t want to hurt him, so she only bit down a little harder. Fowler’s smile grew. “You can do better than that.”
Ilsa did as he asked, and again Fowler almost slipped her, but he nodded his consent, and she tightened her grip again, planting her feet like in a tug of war. Fowler hissed in p
ain, but the glint of humour in his eyes told Ilsa not to let go. He tried to pull free again, putting his weight behind it, and though Ilsa was pulled off balance, she held on.
“Do you see? A Wraith may be inhumanly strong,” he said, struggling against her vice-like grip and losing, “but a Changeling is more than human.”
As if to prove his point, Ilsa applied a flash of more pressure, and Fowler gasped.
“Alright, I yield!” He laughed.
Ilsa released him. She still doubted it would be so easy in a real fight with a Wraith, but she would take the win. She shifted human, a victory quip on her tongue, but Fowler’s expression stopped her. His eyes were on the sky, cynical and weary. Ilsa’s bravado faltered. “Did I hurt—”
A black shape descended between them, fluttering wings obscuring the captain. Ilsa jumped back in surprise, and Fowler didn’t, as Eliot appeared where only a raven had been before.
“Back away, Wraith,” Eliot growled.
“Eliot!”
He started at Ilsa’s scalding tone, spinning to face her, incomprehension forming a scowl.
“Quillon,” said Fowler by way of greeting. His expression was shuttered, a tension in his narrowed eyes.
Eliot’s glower swung between them. “What’s going on here? Did he hurt you?”
“No, he din’t bloody hurt me! It was playfighting.”
The tension in Eliot’s shoulders eased, but his snarl didn’t let up as he shot another look at Fowler. “Well do forgive me for not trusting a merciless bit of steel.”
Ilsa placed herself in front of him, between Eliot and the captain. “What are you doing here, Eliot?”
Eliot made an incredulous sound and gestured wildly. “You slipped the wolves to spend a stolen evening with an assassin while the Seer and all her acolytes are baying for your blood, where should I be?”
“Take a breath, Quillon,” said Fowler lazily. He strolled to where his bandolier lay and picked it up. “She’s been with me all evening. She was safe.”
Eliot pointed an accusing finger at Fowler. “That’s a damned lie and I think you know it,” he said, danger dripping from every word. He turned to Ilsa. “Please trust me when I say members of the Order of Shadows do not make good friends. Just because he saved your life, don’t fool yourself into believing he wouldn’t end it just for coin.”
Ilsa wanted to shout that he was being unfair, but hadn’t she had the same thought earlier that evening? She hesitated to answer as she wondered how she’d come to be playfighting with an assassin, and Fowler answered for her.
“We can talk money if you like, Quillon,” he said, and Ilsa heard a darkness in his tone that had never been there before. “Do you have another job for me?”
Somehow, that did it. With a snap, Eliot was a panther. Ilsa barely had time to react; she had seen him several shades of vicious, and she had seen him violent, but the rage rolling off him as he snarled at Fowler was something new. He reared as if to strike at the Wraith, who stepped back with a hand on the hilt of his blade. But Ilsa was still between them, and she was about as scared of the panther as she had been of the Wraith. She crowded Eliot until he dropped to all fours. When he tried to dodge her, she opted for rank insanity and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Eliot growled as she dug her fingers in, blue eyes turning on her. Then he was human again, pulling away with an outraged glare and massaging his neck.
“Next time, I’m going to let him gut you,” said Ilsa, her own anger bleeding through in the tremor in her voice. “Now, I bet the wolves are still looking for me, so let’s go.”
Eliot stared Fowler down with the full force of his cruel, cold eyes, then wrenched himself away and leapt into the sky. Ilsa looked back at the Wraith. She opened her mouth to apologise for Eliot, but Fowler shook his head and sketched a paltry bow. “My lady.”
Ilsa waited until he was gone and shifted into a falcon to chase down Eliot. He was stood in the forecourt when she reached the Zoo. The darkness cast him in pallid, ghoulish tones, but it did not account for the haunted look in his eye, the dull way he stared at the white knuckles of his clenched fist.
“What the bloody hell was that about?” Ilsa snapped.
For an endless moment Eliot didn’t move or say a word. Then he sank his hand into his pocket with aching slowness.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Ilsa’s anger was dampened under a worse feeling. She didn’t know what it was about Eliot’s anguish; why it always felt fresh, like virgin snow, like she was the first to brush up against it. She reached out a hand to touch his arm and his head snapped up in surprise, like he’d forgotten she was there.
“It was nothing,” he said. He removed her hand, but squeezed it before he let go. “I’ll round up the wolves, tell them we found you.”
Before Ilsa could blink, the raven was lost to her against the vast night’s sky.
20
Ilsa’s escapade into Camden had taught her a great deal, but provided no clues to the whereabouts of her brother. She continued to pore over Lila’s riddle to no success and to turn Cassia’s account over in her mind, but she feared she was hurtling towards a dead end.
To combat her frustration, Ilsa had taken to practising her snow leopard form every morning with Georgiana and Rye. It left her feeling a little less useless to see her mastery of the leopard’s most lethal qualities improve day on day; to know that, if her life was threatened again, hiding wouldn’t be her only option. Plus she suspected that, for Georgiana and Rye, putting Ilsa in her place when they sparred took the sting out of losing to her whenever they played cards in the guard room.
Progress was also being made in her lessons with Alitz. The Whisperer and her assistant came to the Zoo for two hours every day to run drills with her. They began with some breathing and relaxation exercises that Alitz said allowed her better control of her own mind, and which Ilsa riled against with a passion.
“Why’ve I got to relax my mind to protect it?” she challenged, arms folded. “I’ve got to be sharp and concentrate, not half asleep and picturing a calm sea and that. I won’t do it!”
“Tell me, little expert,” Alitz said, “what were you thinking about when I saw you in the rose garden just now?”
“All kinds of things,” Ilsa said loftily.
“Recount them for me. Every one.” Ilsa was silent, and chewed the inside of her cheek. “No? Your sharp mind got away from you, and you don’t remember. You chose none of those thoughts because you are not in control. So, you will start at the very beginning, as if you had never once used your brain before, which I am tempted to say you have not.”
So Ilsa reluctantly submitted to Alitz’s methods, and by the end of their first week of lessons, Ilsa could perform card tricks, hold a conversation with Fyfe, or play “Three Blind Mice” clumsily on the piano while guarding her mind.
“You will never be able to hide everything from a Whisperer,” Alitz declared. “Decisions to act, observations, impressions of the present moment – these things appear so close to the surface of your conscious mind, it is not much different to reading them on a person’s face.” Her owl’s eyes wandered Ilsa’s face. “I understand that is how non-Whisperers make sense of one another.”
Tone of voice too, said Ilsa in her head, with a pointed glare, so that Alitz would know her derision hadn’t gone unnoticed. Alitz smirked knowingly. The Whisperer was fond of such speeches; assertions of her own power, thinly disguised as warnings. It was the price she exerted for her wisdom.
She was particularly insistent about the relative weakness of Changelings against Whisperers, as was the focus of one afternoon’s lesson.
“As an animal, a Changeling’s mind is different, is it not?”
Ilsa shrugged. “A little. And it depends on the animal. Generally, everything’s sort of… clearer, but less deep.”
“Blunter,” said Alitz unequivocally, though it wasn’t what Ilsa had been trying to say. “Smaller. And far less capable of resistin
g telepathy, regardless of one’s training. You must remember this.” Alitz’s mouth quirked smugly. “Your particular brand of magic makes you weak against a Whisperer. Allow us to demonstrate.”
“Us?” said Ilsa, glancing pointedly at Pyval.
The younger Whisperer had limited his part in their lessons to consulting privately with Alitz, and he and Ilsa had not exchanged words since the first incident with his nightmarish manipulation. As much as she was loath to admit it, and never would out loud, the experience had kept her on her toes and made her sharp.
“Manipulation is Mr Crespo’s speciality, not mine,” said Alitz. “But you have no reason to be afraid. Nothing you will experience is real, after all.”
Ilsa almost asked whether Pyval had ever thrown her into a dread-filled void, but she bit her tongue.
“Now, if you would, become an animal.”
None of it was real. That was true. She clung to this knowledge as she dropped to all fours, as the coat of dappled fur prickled across her skin and her bones grew and shifted with exquisite pain, until her body was that of a massive snow leopard.
Pyval wasn’t the only one who could show off.
He took in the size of her as she stalked closer, her ears twitching in warning, but he wasn’t cowed. No, for the first time since entering the Zoo, he smiled.
And then he seized her. The darkness rushed in. The sentient horror in the void made the impression of sound this time too; an unearthly clicking all around her and moving ever closer. The sound, the smell, the sight of it; none were real, and so she could block none of them out. They were things she knew without sensing them, like in a dream, and they burrowed incessantly into her mind. They brought with them a feeling that slipped past the true things she knew and the thoughts she recited and pierced her anyway: dread. Cold and consuming.
Ilsa growled, and the sound reverberated off walls that weren’t there. She pawed in a circle, thrashing her tail, tracing the void with her eyes and finding nothing, but knowing all the same that unimaginable horror lurked there.
Then a light fell on her. Looking up, Ilsa saw a hole. A gap in the void where the sky above London poked through, rafters and broken roof tiles around its edges. She stepped back, a sinking suspicion taking hold. And beneath her paw, where before there had been nothing, the loose floorboard of the attic creaked.
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