Sweet Fyfe, who would protect Cassia against the feeblest of harsh words. Perhaps there was nothing suspicious about the same boy going out of his way to be kind about Eliot too, but his discomfort was strange.
“What ’bout Hester? She think he knows where Gedeon is too?”
Fyfe held the door of his room open for Ilsa. “She must. She made him give up command of the wolves. And she’s been particularly frosty towards him since the attack. And whenever I mention him her face does this—” He did an impression of Hester’s sneer that, while uncannily true to his sister, was twice as unpleasant to see on him.
“But she’s always making that face.”
“Well.” Fyfe scrubbed absent-mindedly at his hair. He was still hurting over Hester’s pain. A perverse part of Ilsa wanted to prod and poke at him until she understood the feeling exactly, until she knew just what it meant to love a sibling, but instead she changed the subject.
“What d’you remember ’bout the attack?”
“Ah, well.” He hopped the arm of his oversized chair and dropped down, his nervousness over Eliot and melancholy over Hester gone. “It was early in the morning. The smash of glass woke me. I ran to Eliot’s room but he was already downstairs in the fray.”
Ilsa studied the desk full of holes where Fyfe’s pocket forge had lived. “And they came for the lab?”
Fyfe threw up his hands in a dramatic shrug. “They came for everything. In one of the raids they turned the greenhouse over. In another they slashed the upholstery in the library.” His shoulders dropped. “A couple of weeks before that attack I told Hester I was losing sleep over the lab and everything they might destroy, but it never seemed like a target, until…”
“’Til the pocket forge got took.” Fyfe nodded. “Who knew ‘bout it? Anyone outside the Zoo?”
“I share ideas with some Sorcerer contacts of Aelius’s sometimes. When my experiments go beyond Cassia’s purview.”
Ilsa straightened in excitement. “Then p’raps they’re with the rebellion!”
Fyfe grimaced. “I don’t recall mentioning the forge.”
She deflated again. Aelius – and probably Gedeon too – believed the raiding Sorcerers had come looking for something, and on their last break-in, something had been taken. It wasn’t a complicated chain of events to follow, yet nobody was convinced it was that simple.
They both jumped as the door burst open and Eliot stalked in without knocking.
With a jolt, Ilsa thought against reason that he must have heard them talking about him, and she found herself rifling her memory for anything she wouldn’t wish for him to know. But Eliot registered the pair of them with nothing more than a moment’s glance. His cold gaze swept the lab like the room had displeased him somehow.
Fyfe shot out of his chair and started to say hello at the same moment Eliot’s attention snagged on something across the lab, and he stalked past Fyfe towards it. It was the map with the overlay of the underground. He took in the frame, the stand, the wheels, looking at it from several angles before moving to the far side and pushing it towards the door. Fyfe scooted out of his way. Ilsa made him go around.
“I’m borrowing this,” was all Eliot said as he reached the hallway.
“Don’t you got enough maps already?” called Ilsa, but the door was already closing behind him.
Fyfe let out a long breath and collapsed back into his chair.
22
Following the incident in which Pyval Crespo nearly lost an arm, it was decided by all involved that he should cease attending Ilsa’s lessons. So Ilsa was unprepared to step into the drawing room and find him standing there, hands behind his back like a military man, sullen expression staring through her as if she were nothing.
But she refused to show him any weakness. She folded her arms and looked only at Alitz. “I ain’t doing jack with him here.”
Alitz raised a placating hand. “Pyval is here at my request to ask your forgiveness.”
“He can’t have it.”
“Let him swallow his pride, anyway. You might find it amusing.”
Gritting her teeth, Ilsa let out a slow breath and faced Pyval.
“I apologise that my teaching methods are too much for you,” he said in his reedy, delicate voice.
Incensed, Ilsa turned back to Alitz. “That ain’t an apology!”
Alitz’s eyes bored into Pyval, and Ilsa could imagine the scathing content of her reproach. But Pyval did not relent.
“I was under the impression you wanted to learn to protect yourself,” he said, “not play children’s games. So I apologise that I misconstrued your intent.”
“Go to hell and burn there, you hateful—”
“Alright!” said Alitz. “I see this may not have been the best course of action to take.”
Pyval was dismissed without another spoken word and stalked from the drawing room like nothing in the world could keep him there. Good riddance, Ilsa thought, as she glared daggers at his back. She hoped to never see him again.
“What are we doing today?” she asked Alitz.
Alitz almost smiled. It must have been a relief for her too that Pyval’s loathing would not mar their lesson. “I’m quite satisfied that you are able to guard against mind reading as well as you ever will, as long as you maintain your practice. So we are turning our attention more thoroughly to the second matter: this afternoon I am going to test what you are capable of.”
Someone had laid out tea for them as always, and Alitz poured. “You and I are going to talk,” she said, “and as we do, I will attempt to manipulate your thoughts. You have fared well since the first time Pyval tried to control you, but be warned, I shan’t make it easy to resist.”
Ilsa eagerly accepted a cup and saucer. She knew how to make the most of a good prop, and sipping and stirring would buy her time to concentrate. She piled in four lumps of sugar – a move that usually earned her a look of unrestrained disgust from Alitz, but today resignedly amused her – and took a long drink to fortify herself, relishing the heat as it singed down her throat.
“Now.” Alitz arranged herself in a chair, straight as a rod, and stirred her tea. “Tell me, how are you acclimatising?”
“Slowly, I s’pose,” said Ilsa. “What with discovering there’s a whole other universe under Westminster Abbey, and that some people can walk through walls or magic themselves from place to place, and that all them times I felt like the fortune teller in the theatre across the street was reading my mind, well, she just bloody might’ve been. S’cuse my French.”
Alitz smiled restrainedly. “I meant, how are you acclimatising to being a Ravenswood?”
“Oh.” Ilsa had been cracking jokes because she was nervous about the exercise, but a new anxiety crept in, unbidden. “Fine, mostly. It ain’t like they expect all that much of me. ’Cept that I don’t run off and get myself killed.”
“I understand the wealth and privilege they enjoy here at the Zoo is starkly different to the life you used to lead. It’s somewhat jarring, I imagine.”
Alitz watched her with patient, probing eyes, but Ilsa let the silence linger, a weight sliding off her as she realised what the Whisperer was doing. It was a classic pickpocket’s trick; draw the mark’s eye with one hand and pilfer their pockets with the other. Alitz knew enough of Ilsa’s mind and memories to unsettle her with just the right question, and if Ilsa got lost in her thoughts – thoughts about learning to be part of Camden’s ruling family, for example – she would not notice Alitz slipping in.
Ilsa smiled sweetly. Alitz could borrow a pickpocket’s tricks, but Ilsa had been one, and she knew how to watch her back without looking like it.
“Well, I can’t say I find it ordinary that when I leave my petticoats and stockings all over the floor, someone comes and puts them away.”
There it was. An errant thought. The sudden and inexplicable urge to look over her shoulder, like someone might be standing right behind her. Ilsa caught it, bent it until it broke. The corner of
Alitz’s mouth twitched before she could disguise her surprise.
“And I’d prefer to dress myself than have a maid help me. Call me old-fashioned, but I just think it’s a valuable skill.”
Another: the glint of metal in the mirror above the console. Ilsa’s intellect told her it was Alitz’s magic. Her instinct still made her look. There was someone behind her, stepping away from the wallpaper where he had been camouflaged, drawing a blade. Ilsa felt her skin prickle as the leopard begged to be let out. She felt around the edges of the image and found the seam where it had been stitched in between her senses. But could she be sure? He could be a Wraith…
No, the Zoo was warded against such intrusions, and Ilsa’s own thoughts were stronger than these. The image was wrong; when she focused, she knew it was. She tore her eyes from the mirror and held Alitz’s stare with stubborn resolve. Only when her tutor let out a small, dissatisfied sigh did she dare to look back. The man behind her was gone.
Ilsa smiled to hide her growing nerves. “Other than that I can’t complain. There’s an awful lot of leisure time when you’re rich and no one trusts you to help run the place. Aelius is teaching me chess. And I play cards with the wolves some nights and batter all of them.”
Alitz’s eyes narrowed in question, whatever game she’d been playing forgotten. “And you think it wise to befriend the militia?”
Ilsa frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“Three of them perished in the last attack on this house. Ten altogether in the raids, and four in other altercations in recent months. That is the role the faction rulers have given them. It’s unwise to find value in the expendable, Miss Ravenswood.”
Ilsa choked on a mouthful of tea. “Expendable?”
Alitz was raising her cup to her lips, but she put it back down. “If I sound callous, understand that that’s not my intention. I have lived in this city my whole life, and you, a matter of weeks. Wolves will die. Whitechapel stewards will die. Disagreements and skirmishes are in abundance, so bitterness and bloodlust are as well. They fuel one another and dauntless men and women run headlong into the fire.”
As much as Ilsa didn’t want to hear her go on, the fact she had managed to distract Alitz had brought with it a welcome reprieve. And knowing the Whisperer, there were plenty more opinions where that came from. Ilsa only had to ask the right questions.
“I s’pose some of them wolves and stewards die fighting each other, don’t they? What with us sharing a border.”
“His Honour would have otherwise if he could make it so. He believes being border fellows brings with it the responsibility of good citizenship, not opportunities for war.” She had fallen into the disapproving tone she usually reserved for Ilsa. “But, unfortunately, you are correct, Miss Ravenswood. Stewards and wolves die on our border every year.” She brought her teacup nearly to her lips, frowned into it, and continued, compelled to talk on. “I remember one particularly vile incident some years ago. A Changeling woman was crossing into Whitechapel, fleeing her husband, who had beaten her. Not for the first time, from what I understand. So the stewards denied him entry. They protected her, as one should under such circumstances.”
Ilsa nodded warily, but Alitz didn’t see. Her eyes were clouded over.
“He grew enraged. The wolves involved themselves, futilely. They failed to subdue him, so when he became a bear and charged the guard point… one of the stewards shot him dead.” Alitz blinked and turned her newly sharpened gaze on Ilsa. “Do you think that’s reasonable, Miss Ravenswood?”
Ilsa hesitated, but it was clear Alitz expected her to answer. “If it was the steward’s life or the Changeling’s… then yes, I s’pose. I think so.”
“Hmm.” Alitz was silent a beat, her lips pursed. “The wolves did not. Evidently, they considered the steward to have drawn first, and they attacked. Do you think that’s reasonable, Miss Ravenswood?”
“They’re s’posed to defend Changelings,” said Ilsa uncertainly. “P’raps they thought—”
“While defending themselves against the wolves,” Alitz went on, “no one thought to defend themselves against the dead man’s wife. She slaughtered the steward who shot him, while his comrades were looking the other way.”
Ilsa gripped her saucer in both hands. Alitz asked her no more questions. Her features were tense, but after a long moment of silence, she turned to Ilsa with accusatory, narrowed eyes. She had noticed they’d stopped the exercise.
“As I said, a veritable inferno of bad blood. But enough of this talk. I prefer a brandy in hand when discussing such things. Tell me, what success in the search for your brother?”
Ilsa was glad Alitz was trying to manipulate her thoughts rather than read them, but she still clamped down hard on any memories of the search; Lila’s riddle, the diagram she had found in Gedeon’s room. She was keeping these things from most of the Zoo because she couldn’t decide whom to trust. She would keep them from outsiders as a matter of course.
“I ain’t had all that much success,” said Ilsa, though the lie was painful and Alitz’s narrowed gaze said she didn’t believe it anyway. “I’m still trying to understand what made him leave in the first place.”
“Discontent, perhaps?”
Ilsa could suddenly see her brother with stark clarity. It was night. He was alone in the library, slumped forward in a chair by the fire, face lost in troubled thought. A sound disturbed him, and he turned to face her, wiping clean his expression.
“Concentrate, Miss Ravenswood.”
Ilsa’s eyes snapped to Alitz’s. She had been aware, distantly, that the Whisperer was still putting images in her head, but stopping her had become unimportant. Ilsa was fully back in the drawing room, teacup in hand, and she wanted the daydream back. Alitz must have read this on her face or in her mind, because she pursed her lips and scowled.
“You would rather not focus on the present, as I have taught you,” said Alitz acerbically. “Very well. Why don’t you tell me about your life in the Otherworld instead?”
“I was a magician’s assistant,” said Ilsa. “Like on the stage. Guess you don’t have that here.”
“Theatre?”
“Stage magic.” She thought of Fyfe’s awe when she had magicked her handkerchief into her hand. Then she thought of the diagram that had been hidden up her other sleeve – and wrenched herself immediately back to the present. She shot a glance at Alitz, taking a long sip of her tea to hide her anxiousness.
“Well, we have exhibitionists,” said Alitz primly.
There was Gedeon again in her mind’s eye, younger than his portrait; fifteen, perhaps. Ilsa looked down on him from the balcony over the entrance hall, where he was sizing up a familiar black jungle cat and laughing. Eliot was ready to pounce. Gedeon cracked his neck arrogantly and transformed into a gigantic lion just as Eliot collided with him—
“Miss Ravenswood,” snapped Alitz.
“What am I seeing?”
“If you were trying but at all, you would be seeing very little,” said Alitz.
“I mean, are you making these thoughts up, or are they memories? You know him, don’t you? My brother?”
“Oh yes,” said Alitz, lifting her cup to her lips. “I’ve known Gedeon his entire life.”
Ilsa was hit with another image: a boy of seven or eight, fair-haired and red-cheeked, running across the park with the string of a kite in his fists. Another boy with black hair and blue eyes – Eliot again, as an untroubled child – was tossing the kite in the air, trying to get it to catch the breeze.
“You’ve seen all these things!” gasped Ilsa.
“And you are failing at your task, Miss Ravenswood,” said Alitz, putting her cup back on its saucer with a clatter. She was losing patience. “I f I wanted to distract you from the present moment, of course I would show you things you wished to see – and then perhaps I would slit your throat while you were daydreaming. Do not underestimate my magic, Miss Ravenswood. A Whisperer can incapacitate you with nothing but your o
wn mind the same way a Wraith would with blunt force, and they would leave less evidence.”
“Right,” said Ilsa. “It’s just—”
“It’s just that you’re yearning,” said Alitz, like the idea bored her thoroughly. “Want is a weakness, Miss Ravenswood; a weakness any half-skilled Whisperer would be able to exploit. Show someone what you desire and they can use it to control you.”
“It ain’t a weakness.”
“Speak up.”
“I said it ain’t a weakness,” repeated Ilsa, hearing her own uncertainty. Perhaps Alitz was right, but her whole life had been about want, and she was loath to think of it in Alitz’s terms. Want was Ilsa’s driving force.
Had it been Gedeon’s too?
Ilsa disguised her thoughts by bringing her cup to her lips again, but missed, sloshing tea onto her white lace summer dress.
“Oops,” she said, but it came out in a slur.
“Miss Ravenswood?” said Alitz, quirking a disapproving brow at Ilsa’s ruined dress. “Are you well?”
Ilsa didn’t know. She held her teacup with both hands to stop it slipping from her lax grip. She felt drowsy. No, not drowsy. Her mind was sharp, it was just her body that was losing strength. She tried to tell Alitz this but her lips wouldn’t cooperate. They had gone completely numb. It was happening to her fingers as well.
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