Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  Oren shook his head. “I don’t know, Ilsa. I would like to hope she wouldn’t, but…”

  He trailed off, and as their eyes met, an understanding passed between them. Hester’s orders didn’t matter. They couldn’t claim such evil magic for Camden.

  Ilsa lowered her voice even further. “You said you tried to destroy it already and it din’t work. What d’you plan to do?”

  “Arm yourself,” he said, already stepping away from her. “And don’t be concerned. You can leave the amulet to me.”

  * * *

  Nobody thought about the weather.

  When they passed through the portal and stepped into the ice-cold downpour of an early March night, the only one remotely prepared was Captain Fowler. The rest were likely to succumb to pneumonia, if they did not succumb to the Fortunatae much sooner.

  Four of them spread wings; one took off at a run and quickly became shadow; and the last vanished in place as if she had never been there. All made their way as fast as they could to a place Ilsa had hoped never to see again.

  Kennington Road was dark – the gas lamps failing to cut far through the downpour – and quiet but for the groan of the wind and rain against the buildings. Ilsa had directed them to gather in a residential garden, which was walled and hidden, and fifty paces from the orphanage, on the other side of the street. If the owners of the garden were to peer out their window, they might make out six figures huddled in the rain, but some indignant Otherworlders were the least of their worries.

  Fowler was the last to reach the rendezvous. “The adjacent streets are all peculiarly busy for this time of night,” he said over the rain. “A lot of lurkers.”

  “You’re saying the place is surrounded,” said Cassia. Her hair was plastered to her neck and her lips were turning blue.

  “It looks that way, but any number of them could be Otherworlders. Unless they make a move there’s no telling.” He took a blade from somewhere in his coat, inspected its edge in the light of the porch lamp, and put it away again. “Oh, and your man is approaching from the south. He’s eighty paces away.”

  “What?” hissed Ilsa. She craned around the wall as her taller companions peered over and squinted down the street.

  Sure enough, a male figure was approaching St Genevieve’s. His soaking hair could be any colour, but he had the build of the man Ferrien had impersonated, and as he came into the light of the lamp in front of the orphanage, Ilsa’s breath caught.

  Gedeon. He was so close.

  He stopped with a hand on the gate, his attention snagging on something in Ilsa’s direction. Four hooded men were coming the other way, and as they passed their hiding spot, the lamplight flashed across the shape of a revolver.

  Eliot spotted it too. “This one’s armed. Whisperer. They must be Fortunatae.”

  Was Alitz one of them? Was Pyval? Ilsa made to step around the wall, but Fowler’s hand closed around her arm and tugged her back. She was about to throw her best punch at him when Cassia gasped and pointed down the road.

  Prowling silently behind the Fortunatae were four huge wolves. They were gaining with every step, but they weren’t fast enough. As soon as the hooded men were in range of Gedeon, the leader raised his gun. Gedeon froze in place. It was too late to run.

  The wolves pounced. The gun fired. Ilsa’s scream was muffled by the shot. Gedeon fell to his knees and collapsed face first into the street.

  36

  They burst from the garden into the road, but it was all over. The Fortunatae men were dead, the wolves were Camden militia again and Gedeon was…

  Was no longer Gedeon.

  Cassia reached him first and hauled him onto his back. “Oh stars. Scotty!” she cried.

  He was another soldier, and he was breathing. “Cassia?” he gasped, gripping at his bleeding chest. “What are you—”

  An enormous crash sounded from somewhere in the orphanage. “That’s the second decoy,” said another wolf. “Desmond, with me.”

  Two of them disappeared through the gates and the door beyond, while the other two hauled Scotty to his feet.

  “With all due respect, sirs, Miss Sims, help or get out of the way,” said a long-haired wolf. He shot a mistrusting glance at Fowler, then looked Ilsa up and down. “Who are you?”

  “I’m—”

  “Get down!”

  Ilsa’s face smacked the cobblestones as Eliot threw himself on top of her. A flash of light filled her vision, the stone wall of the orphanage cracked with a sound like thunder, and then she was being hauled to her feet again.

  In those few seconds, everything had descended into chaos. The flash had been a spell, the first of a flurry now raining down on them from a boarded-up house across the street. Cassia had generated a protective shield, but more Sorcerers were advancing from behind. Fowler was a blur, slowing just long enough to cut each rebel down, then disappearing again. A bird of indeterminate species swooped down onto a rooftop, thrashed like it was having a seizure, landed haphazardly on gangly human limbs, and took cover as he tossed a projectile into the fray. It was as safe a spot as any for Fyfe to defend himself from.

  Oren was nowhere to be seen.

  “Come on!” yelled Eliot, and they ran for the house. “Be careful when you shift. Keep an eye out for Whisperers.”

  If there had been time to think, Ilsa would have talked herself out of it. The square, grey-stone structure of the orphanage seemed to reach for her as she drew nearer; the doorframe seemed to narrow even as they passed through.

  Inside was a different kind of chaos. Children were pouring from their rooms and running, screaming, down the corridors. Desmond and the other man were trying, and failing, to herd them to safety.

  Ilsa and Eliot followed the sounds of fighting to the kitchen at the back of the house. The loud crash, it turned out, had been someone tearing a hole in the high wall that surrounded the courtyard out back. Rebels and more hooded men and women – the Fortunatae – had engaged with the second decoy and were overpowering them. One was Psi, and was using the rubble of the wall as missiles. She could probably take down the whole building if she chose. Another, Ilsa saw with a jolt of terror, was a Wraith. As she watched, he emerged through what was left of the wall behind a cornered wolf, and cleanly snapped his neck.

  But several were Whisperers, and Gedeon’s wolves were at a disadvantage. The Changelings were less skilled with real weapons, and some were struggling to stay in control of their minds. They became beasts in flashes, lashed out and changed again, but the damage wasn’t great enough.

  “Bloody hell,” breathed Eliot. “This is a shambles.”

  He drew his own gun and aimed it through the open kitchen door, but missed.

  “When your aim is bad,” said Ilsa, carefully slipping the knife she had holstered at her waist up her sleeve, where she preferred her tools. A blade is only as good as its backup. “You just got to close the distance.”

  “Ilsa, wait!”

  But she had already become a sparrow, and in the chaos, she slipped unnoticed through the Fortunatae’s front line. As a bird, it was easy to think about the present moment – and not the things she’d seen Wraiths do, or whether she might lose her knife, or cut her own wrist by mistake – so she concentrated on it as she shifted and landed lightly on the wall behind him. He heard her, of course, but Ilsa had expected that. She had already let the blade slip into her hand; she had already raised it; she was already falling on top of him.

  It wasn’t until Ilsa opened her eyes that she realised she’d closed them. She was sprawled on top of the Wraith, who had got a hold of her around the ribs, and she gasped as he squeezed, breaking something. But that bit of pressure was the most he could manage, because Ilsa’s knife was in his neck, and the light was leaving his eyes.

  He went still as Ilsa got to her feet, woozy and breathless, but there would be no respite, because she had attracted the attention of another hooded figure.

  The Whisperer glared at her with hatred and disg
ust. Ilsa was on her knees before she could push him out of her mind. She hadn’t thought she would ever want to hurt herself, but a macabre curiosity to learn what the Wraith had felt as she killed him seized her, so she turned the knife to her own neck.

  And then the desire vanished. Ilsa stood. A black panther’s jaws were closing around the Whisperer’s neck. A woman – Oracle – was swinging the butt of her pistol at Ilsa’s head, but Ilsa ducked and dragged the knife across her shins. She caught the Oracle’s gun as she fell, then finished her with a blade to the neck.

  But she now had bigger problems – much bigger. Another Whisperer was smiling viciously at her, and between them, under his spell, was Eliot.

  He was stalking towards her on massive paws, claws extended and ready to tear her to ribbons.

  “Eliot, you idiot!” she cried, but the cat took no notice. So she fumbled with her stolen pistol and fired off three rounds at the Whisperer. All missed.

  The panther pounced. Ilsa tensed. A fourth bullet, fired from the door, found the Whisperer right between the eyes. Soft, wet fur brushed her skin before Eliot became human. The force of his impact sent them flying, but Ilsa hit the ground with one of Eliot’s arms banded tight around her waist and the other braced by her head, saving her skull.

  They were alright.

  Stunned, they both lay there – noses touching, chests heaving – until Ilsa shoved him away and scrambled to her feet.

  “I said if you did anything stupid I’d kill you!”

  “I didn’t realise saving your life counted,” he shot back.

  “Somebody find Oren!” called Cassia, their saviour, who was still picking off the enemies from the door. She was firing her revolver with her right hand and letting off spells with the left. “Find the amulet!”

  She covered them as they re-entered the house and raced back to the entrance hall. The front door had been obliterated, and glass and wood chips scattered the stone floor. The yellow smoke of a Sorcerer dampener was billowing from a doorway to the left, and the singing of a Wraith blade was coming from within. Ilsa hoped it was Fowler and not another Fortunatae member.

  The wet sound of flesh tearing made them turn. Five yards away, a man was choking on blood, a blade run up through his abdomen. Ilsa was so utterly horrified she almost didn’t notice that his killer was her brother.

  “Gedeon!” Ilsa gasped, but he didn’t react. He wiped his blade on his breeches and made for the stairs, catching sight of Eliot as he passed them. He careened to a halt, and Ilsa felt Eliot tense beside her.

  “Eliot?” said Gedeon, cocking his head. “What are you—”

  A nearby window shattered under a spell, and half a dozen Sorcerers poured in. Gedeon cut one down and continued on without a backward glance. Ilsa made to chase him, but Eliot grabbed her arm and shook his head.

  “Blue eyes,” he said, ducking a spell. “Not him.”

  They couldn’t see any Whisperers, so they both risked their animal forms to take on the rebels. Eliot moved like water, cutting through air and enemies like a stronger element. Every move was swift, graceful, intentional, like this was the body he truly belonged in. He took several hits from a flurry of spells, but each seemed to glide off him like he had a spelled shield of his own. He was just too strong for them.

  Fowler joined them, and Ilsa – a menacingly oversized cat in her own right – was left with nothing to do, so she risked letting Eliot out of her sight to find the amulet.

  But she didn’t have the first idea where to look. When Oren had told them about leaving it here, he seemed to hint to Ilsa that she knew something of it. But how could she? She had been a baby when it was hidden. At a loss, and with enemies in every direction on the ground floor, she decided to try upstairs.

  The fighting lessened on the first floor, and as she got further from the stairs, the sounds of claws and guns and magic grew distant. Somehow, the orphanage was more frightening this way. It was more like the place she had known. There was the girls’ dormitory where she slept when she was good. There was the stairwell where she had accidentally become Lulu and sent the other kids screaming. Up there, on the second floor, was the door to the attic…

  Ilsa jumped as a gaggle of small children burst from the dorm at the end of the hall and ran past her.

  “Go!” a Camden wolf called after them, before something caught her in the back and she fell, lifeless, to the floor.

  Ilsa ran towards her. She had to step over her body to get into the dorm, where a single remaining wolf was fighting off three men. It didn’t seem any of them could break into his mind, but their guns and spells were deadly enough, and the soldier had only a blade. He had barricaded himself behind a cot turned on its end, but he wouldn’t hold up much longer.

  “Hey!” Ilsa called, and all three men swung towards her.

  But she was already a mouse. It was her favourite part of The Great Balthazar’s defunct show, her vanishing trick, and she was well-practised in using her surroundings to move unseen. When she grew again, she was in their blind spot, and she shot the first man at close range before he could react. Then the whole room changed. The men were gone. Then they had shifted positions. Then Ilsa was facing the door, not the room. One of them was in her head, pummelling her with confusing images, but she’d been ready for the interference this time. She had already clocked the distance to the makeshift barricade, so she dived blind and rolled behind the cot.

  When the Whisperer gave up on her, she found herself face to face with another Gedeon. She was utterly desensitised by now.

  “What are you doing?” he said, looking at her like she’d sprouted from the floor.

  “Helping.”

  “Helping?”

  “You idiots are surrounded!” she snapped. “Fortunatae, Heart rebels. They got the acolytes on their side too now, so stealing that kid better have been worth it.” A bullet hit the cot and they both tensed. “This is a children’s home, you know. Full of children?”

  “We’re on top of it,” he said, grinning. “No children are getting hurt.”

  “Yeah, you look really on top of it.” A spell; this one hit with a crackle and set the cot on fire. “You take the one on the left,” Ilsa said, and without giving herself time to reconsider, she stood and started firing.

  Or, at least, she tried. She was empty. The wolf had closed the distance between him and the other and was winning, with a little help of his claws, but Ilsa was on her own.

  The Sorcerer smiled at her and raised his hand. On instinct, she pulled out her knife again and threw it, and it buried itself in the man’s chest. Ilsa took a second to marvel at how many useful skills her former profession had given her.

  Across the room, blood spattered across the floorboards. Her comrade shifted from lion to man with a thrashing motion, and grinned; a dashing, carefree grin the portraits never showed.

  “Thanks,” he said, making for the door. “Now get out of here.” He stopped at the threshold and tilted his head, hazel eyes flashing. “It’s strange. You look awfully like my mother.”

  “I—”

  But he was gone. “Wait!” She ran, but when she reached the corridor, it was deserted. “Damn it, Gedeon.”

  There wasn’t time to catch up with Gedeon. She needed to find Oren and the amulet, but the house was huge, and it could be anywhere. She kicked the wall in frustration. Why had he been so sure she knew where it was? A floorboard groaned overhead, and Ilsa’s head snapped up, something tugging at her memory. The very first time they had spoken, Oren had pressed her for the whereabouts of something, but it wasn’t the amulet. It was the wooden wolf, the one that matched Gedeon’s.

  Only, it didn’t. One wolf was hollow, the other was not.

  Ilsa’s throat went dry. She climbed the stairs to the next floor without difficulty, but when she found herself before the steps to the attic, her feet locked in place like she was under some kind of spell. But the power that had taken over her this time came from her mind; her frightened, f
ractured mind, scored irrevocably with fifty reasons not to climb the stairs.

  She hated that the words that swam up through the depths to soothe her were Eliot’s; treacherous, lying Eliot.

  Look around you, Ilsa. We’re all scared. It’s only a weakness if you give in to it.

  And so she let herself be scared. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and sickness churned in her belly, but she squared her shoulders anyway, and climbed the stairs to the attic.

  37

  The attic room was tiny, just as Ilsa remembered, with gaps in the floorboards and roof tiles.

  Oren stood warily by the door, his gaze fixed on a spot under the slope of the far wall, between two towers of boxes, where the cot Ilsa had slept on as a child still lay. And sat on it, of all the horrors, was Miss Mitcham herself.

  She hadn’t aged much, but then, it had only been eight years. Her mousy hair was thinner, and peppered with more greys, but her skin had that same too-soft quality; her face the same shapelessness.

  Her hair was messily plaited and she wore a nightgown that had seen better days. The stump of her left arm poked out where she had rolled the sleeve up to the elbow. Ilsa remembered biting her vividly. Her teeth had sunk bone-deep and the wound had gotten infected. That was what you got for cornering a frightened bloodhound. The only remorse Ilsa had felt was over the blood on her own pinafore.

  She had been crying, and she shook, but the most striking thing about Miss Mitcham was the knife at her throat.

  Her captor was small for thirteen, and round-faced with a round chin; a babyish look that made them seem even younger. Sleek, white-blonde hair was gathered in a tight bun at the top of their head. Small ears stuck out at right angles, and a pair of all-white eyes shimmered like opals.

  “This is the famous Cogna?” said Ilsa. She kept her eyes on the Oracle to keep from seeing the walls shrink towards her.

  “Hello, Ilsa Ravenswood,” Cogna said in a light and lilting voice. “We’ve been waiting for you.”