Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  “All present?” Necks craned as they peered up and down the line, then nodded in unison. Ilsa nodded back, just once, and patted Fowler on the arm. “Watch them ’til the police get here, will you?” Before he could protest, she slipped unseen back into the side road where her brother waited.

  The rescue mission too, had partnered up.

  It had been Ilsa’s idea, in case of chaos: once they found Gedeon and the amulet, they were to find their partner and get back to the Witherward. Captain Fowler had scorned Ilsa’s system and since his partner, Cassia, did not suffer fools, she appeared to have left him behind. As Ilsa looked back over her shoulder to see the first policeman on the scene put the Wraith in irons, she swore to remind him when they next met.

  But Ilsa’s partner was dead. It was her and Gedeon now.

  On another night, they might have attracted attention as they made their way west and crossed the river; there were certainly enough policemen around, every one of them swarming to the scene they had left in their wake. But a young man too wet with rain for the blood to show, a woman strangely clad in summer attire and shivering and a child who could have been ten years old and sleeping, were the least of the sights in Lambeth that night.

  Ilsa was acutely aware at every moment of her brother, and she had the unshakable sense that his thoughts were likewise on her. It made the aching silence between them all the more excruciating. But there was too much to say – some of it she wanted to scream – and she was feeling too much; mournful, confused, bloodied, giddy, horrified with herself, and unbearably cold.

  “Where’re your wolves?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Back through the portal,” said Gedeon. After a long pause he added: “I hope.”

  They reached the fountain in the quadrangle and passed through; the descent, the lurching sensation, the sudden realisation that she was climbing to the surface, then bright daylight and a mild breeze.

  “Ilsa!” A blanket was thrown around her shoulders. Cassia’s hands pressed into her arms and warmth spread through the fabric, until Ilsa felt like she was sitting by a roaring fire. “You scared the life out of us… where’s Oren?”

  “Dead.” It was Gedeon. He stepped forward and dragged Cassia’s attention like he was one of Fyfe’s explosives going off.

  The quadrangle was teeming with shocked, crestfallen faces. Fyfe was cradling one arm but looked otherwise unhurt. Ilsa didn’t have any words of explanation to offer him as she placed the pocket forge in his uninjured hand. He looked at her bleakly, and his mouth formed Oren’s name. Seven of Gedeon’s wolves had made it back, including Scotty and a badly injured woman who was being tended by a healer.

  Ilsa’s gaze met Eliot’s as he limped into view from the cloisters. It was only for a second, before Gedeon shifted and leapt at him. Eliot’s face was pained and wary as he crouched and transformed, just in time to catch the full force of Gedeon as they collided with a roar, shattering one of the arches of the cloisters.

  Everyone was too stunned to react. Cassia clapped a hand to her mouth. Fyfe let out a wordless shout. The only witness who knew that this wasn’t some petty spat, that Gedeon might just kill Eliot – or be killed trying – was Ilsa.

  The cats tumbled into the centre of the quadrangle, oblivious to their friends leaping out of their way. Ilsa dropped to all fours and grew into a great white leopard. She let out a reverberating snarl, but Gedeon and Eliot took no notice, so she saw no choice but to launch herself into the fray.

  Her reward was a claw tearing into her shoulder; she didn’t know whose. Eliot reeled back, no doubt recognising her, but it took a firm bite to Gedeon’s neck to get him to back off. She transformed the second there was space between them, and threw up her hands. Eliot had already shifted, having been ready to end the fight before it begun. Gedeon transformed, looking startled.

  “What are you doing?” he said in alarm, eyes drifting to the cut trailing down her shoulder. Her bullet wound had reopened too.

  “You can’t just kill him,” Ilsa said, her breath ragged. Eliot was somewhere behind her. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look at him.

  “Ilsa?” Cassia said. Her eyes darted between the three of them. “Gedeon?”

  “Eliot’s a spy,” Ilsa said, loud enough so everyone could hear. “He told the rebels when to attack.”

  Cassia’s fingers stilled. Fyfe lowered himself onto the lip of the fountain. His look of abject disbelief made Ilsa flinch.

  “He’s a traitor to Camden,” Gedeon growled. “Put him in chains and bring him back to the Zoo. I think my cousin deserves to hear what he has to say for himself.”

  An abbey guard fetched some manacles. Mutely, and reluctantly, the wolves took him prisoner. Eliot didn’t resist. He was a faster shifter than any of them; he could have burst from the abbey and been gone. But where? He had told Ilsa that serving Camden had been his whole life. So instead, he offered his hands to be shackled.

  Ilsa had once read an article in the newspaper by a Metropolitan Police detective. Something she had been surprised to learn was how many suspects are glad to confess. They want to be caught and cornered. When there is nowhere left to hide, their honesty can finally win out over their self-preservation, and the burden of secrecy is lifted. The weight of running is just too tremendous.

  Watching Eliot being led back to the Zoo, Ilsa could have sworn that the mercurial, tormented young man she had come to know was fading. Eliot looked more at peace than she had ever seen him.

  * * *

  “Why?” said Gedeon.

  He was sprawled in an armchair in the drawing room, with a cold compress to the bruises on his neck where Ilsa had bitten him. The lieutenants, two dozen wolves, and the house staff were arranged around him like satellites.

  Ilsa, Cassia, and Hester were the furthest from him; three remote points on the fringes of his influence. He was trying to concentrate on one immediate problem at a time, but his hazel eyes kept returning to each of them; Ilsa the most.

  It wasn’t Gedeon she was maintaining distance from, but the whole scene. All mysteries had been solved, but something was still tickling the hairs on the back of her neck, and it was putting her out.

  Those who had heard Oren’s confession put together an explanation of what he’d done at the orphanage. Ilsa did not contribute. She had said her piece in the attic. No one brought up Hester’s command that the amulet be brought back to the Zoo, but Ilsa didn’t doubt Gedeon would find out later. What he would make of it, she hadn’t figured him out well enough to guess.

  A long, pressing silence lingered when the story was told. Ilsa never thought she would miss wrapping up a conversation with a thousand pedantic questions and criticisms, but a lump caught in her throat. She could tell everyone else was thinking it too.

  At last, Gedeon stood. He was nearly as tall as Fyfe, but broad and muscular. If there was a finite ration of brawn to be passed from parents to offspring, Gedeon had gotten it all. He drew a breath the whole room was waiting for.

  “If he wasn’t dead I’d be furious,” he said, his tone betraying how hard it was to joke.

  “Speaking of furious,” he added louder, flashing the room a cold, humourless smile. Then he turned to the wolf hovering at the door, waiting to collect his charge and bring him forward. “Let’s get this over with.”

  39

  Ilsa’s nagging sense of unease grew and grew. A small part of her still believed Eliot was innocent. She tried to catch his eye as he was led into the room, tried to see a glimpse of some unlikely truth, but his attention was on Hester.

  Her cousin stared back at him from the edge of the room, and even Ilsa cowered from her look of stoic disappointment. But Eliot didn’t flinch. Every apology he had been unable to give was etched onto his face.

  Gedeon fixed him with a long, unreadable stare. Then he turned to Ilsa. It jolted her. She couldn’t get used to him. His eyes were just like Hester’s, just like hers, but gentler. Curious, instead of probing. “How
did you know?”

  She hesitated. Would he be asking her if he knew what she would expose? It didn’t matter; the others deserved to know what he had done. She had the diagram tucked in her sleeve, and she unfolded it and handed it to him. Gedeon stared at her, incredulous.

  “You worked it out from this alone?”

  Ilsa shook her head. “It started with Aelius. He had his suspicions ’bout a spy at the Zoo, but truthfully, I don’t think he was all that serious. I din’t think much of it at first, but then Cassia told me what you said when you argued ’bout Millwater.” Gedeon flushed, and his mouth moved like he would argue, but no sound came out. Cassia watched him squirm. The upward tilt of her chin was stubbornly fixed. Her arms remained crossed. “And I realised you thought it too. ’Bout the spy, I mean. It weren’t until this afternoon, when I talked with Oren, that I understood you din’t think it was Cassia who was spying, not in particular. You were suspicious of everyone.

  “And Eliot—” She dared to look at him. He met her gaze, but warily, like he wasn’t sure how badly she was about to hurt him. Everything he had done to deceive her; everything she could tell them all now. “He said you din’t see Hester when she was hurt. But it weren’t her you were avoiding. It was because Eliot was always with her, and I knew. I knew it the second before I worked that diagram out.”

  “Knew what?” said Cassia, though she looked like she didn’t want the answer.

  Ilsa glanced at Gedeon, but his eyes were on the floor. He folded the diagram away protectively.

  “There was never no trip to Millwater,” Ilsa told the assembly. “It was a test, to see if one of you’d pass the information along to the Sorcerer rebels, to give them a window to attack.”

  Cassia’s stoniness faltered. Fyfe blinked stupidly at Gedeon, hurt in his eyes.

  “Eliot,” he said, like a question. “For how long?”

  A muscle fluttered in Eliot’s jaw, and he swallowed. “For three years.” Ilsa didn’t realise she was clenching her fists until they weakened in a rush, and she felt the sting of her nails come free from the cuts they'd made in her palms. It was true; Eliot had betrayed the Zoo. “They weren’t rebelling at the time. They were merely unhappy with Fisk. And I had no idea, I swear, that they had ties to the Fortunatae.”

  “Well that’s much better,” muttered Cassia, and the wolves growled.

  “Ten wolves have died at the hands of the rebels,” said Gedeon, silencing the muttering. His rage was white hot, but theirs was just as searing. “You’re complicit in those deaths. You risked us all.”

  Eliot was silent. His gaze drifted to Hester again. The weight of remorse seemed to press on his shoulders, and he grew smaller.

  “It was an exchange,” he told Gedeon limply. “A backchannel. It just got out of hand.” The wolves hissed and scoffed. “Last year I warned you someone was trying to obstruct our bakers from the sale of a whole season’s crop of wheat. We made an early bid and bought up what we needed. Our people would have starved that year without that tip. I got it from my contacts. And when I told you sixteen of Lucius’s people were vying for change?”

  “Do you have any names?” challenged Gedeon.

  Eliot’s expression was as rigid as stone. “I was working on it when the raid happened.”

  Another rumble of derision from the group. Gedeon sneered. “You could have come to me. I could have helped you. I could have stopped the attack that cost Hester her magic!” He gestured at his cousin, who was still glaring coolly at Eliot.

  “Hester—” Eliot whispered desperately. He took an unconscious step towards her, but Gedeon blocked his path.

  “I should kill you,” he said.

  It didn’t sound like much of a threat – maybe, like Ilsa, he was still expecting some miracle of vindication – but there were a few murmurs of assent from the wolves. Eliot ended them with that venomous look.

  “Gedeon,” he said firmly, “I’m sorry. For everything.” Stirred by the realisation that Eliot was begging for his life, Ilsa found herself pressing forward. “But you couldn’t have helped me. Believe me, I have played every decision of the last three years over and over in my mind. Everything I have done… I had no choice.”

  “Why?” Ilsa said. All eyes turned to her. “Why din’t you have a choice?”

  She hadn’t meant to ask the question, but the longer she pondered the truth, the more wrong it felt. She couldn’t imagine an answer Eliot could give that she would believe.

  Eliot looked at her for the first time, that rare tenderness melting away the ice, and heaved his shoulders in a lacklustre shrug. “It doesn’t matter any more.”

  “It does to me,” said Ilsa, but her small voice was drowned out by Hester’s large one. It was the first time she had spoken since they had returned with Eliot in chains and told her the truth.

  “He’s right,” she said. Everyone parted to let her into the centre of the room. “Whatever excuse he has to give, I don’t want to hear it.” She turned to Gedeon. “Just deal with him.”

  There were jeers of concurrence from the wolves as Hester wheeled from the room. Eliot’s desolate gaze tracked her out. His mouth soundlessly formed her name.

  “What does that mean?” said Ilsa, over the dozens of voices.

  “It means hang him!” someone yelled before Gedeon could respond.

  “We haven’t hanged someone since before Lyander’s day,” said Cassia, but her voice was lost among the growing shouts.

  “He’s a traitor!”

  “He’s with the enemy!”

  “He should hang!”

  Gedeon swept a level gaze over his soldiers. He was hearing their piece, Ilsa realised, and it wouldn’t do. She stepped close to her brother and spoke at a volume that demanded the rest of them be quiet.

  “If you start killing us off,” she said, “soon enough there’ll be no Changelings left. We lost five wolves today already.” She paused, the room having fallen quiet, and looked each man and woman baying for Eliot’s blood in the eye, one by one, daring them to argue. “Won’t our enemies love it if we start killing each other and save them a job? Ain’t there enough death in this starsforsaken city already?”

  When she looked back at Gedeon, she was the only one with his attention. He nodded, just once, and put his back to Eliot. Everything in the motion said that he had looked at his old friend for the last time.

  “Escort him to the portal,” he said. “See that he passes through. Tell the abbey guard he is never to re-emerge. Ever.”

  “Gedeon—” Eliot began.

  “This is mercy,” Gedeon growled. “You can thank my sister, and then you can bid her farewell.”

  He couldn’t have known the true impact of those words, but Ilsa felt them like a punch to the stomach. She knew from Eliot’s face that he did too. But how did she say goodbye? Wanting him mingled with wanting to hurt him and she couldn’t stand it.

  In the end she looked away, and Eliot said nothing.

  40

  The Zoo was running out of medicines.

  Aelius would live, and was growing stronger by the hour, but he was still taking a steady cocktail of pain and healing tonics. Most of those who had been at the orphanage were also in need, including Fyfe, who had shattered his radius, and Cassia, who had never let on, but had taken a cutting curse to her abdomen and lost a frightening amount of blood. Gedeon was frantic when she almost passed out – even more so when she refused to see him.

  This was how Ilsa was left to heal from a tear in her shoulder, several broken ribs and a freshly bleeding bullet wound all on her own, with only the Otherworld tools of stitches, iodine, and gauze to aid her. Fliss dictated that there was no medicine either side of the portal more essential than sleep, but between the pain and her troubled mind, Ilsa couldn’t manage it.

  She was back in her own bedchamber; her belongings had been quietly moved there while Fliss was stitching her shoulder. Sometime in the night, after the Zoo had quietened, she stretched, opened her eye
s – and was jolted out of bed by the presence of a short, pale child sitting atop her dresser.

  “What the bleeding hell is wrong with you?” she hissed. “Not everyone can See there’s a midnight visit from a shady little scoundrel in their future.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cogna, not sounding it in the least, “but you wanted to talk to me.” A little frown of concentration appeared between Cogna’s eyes, then was smoothed away again. “No. My mistake. You will want to talk to me when you hear what I have to say.”

  Ilsa gritted her teeth. “Out with it, then.”

  Cogna hopped down from the dresser. “It hasn’t escaped my notice that the only two witnesses of our conversation at the orphanage are dead,” the Oracle said matter-of-factly. “I’m sure it hasn’t escaped yours either.”

  They were right, it hadn’t, though Ilsa had not decided what to do with this information yet. “So?”

  “So,” said Cogna, rocking back and forth on the spot, “I have spent the last six months studiously not telling people that Ilsa Ravenswood will save the city.” Ilsa flinched. “If you like, I can continue not telling people.”

  Ilsa narrowed her eyes at Cogna. She only knew two things for sure about the little Oracle: they were powerful, and they were devious. It didn’t make for a person she wanted to play this game with.

  “And what possible motive you got for doing that for me?” she said.

  Cogna’s expression suggested this was a stupid question. “Because I want to be on the right side of history. Your side.”

  Ilsa’s nostrils flared. “Then you better get comfortable, kid, because I ain’t picked no sides. I’ll be damned if I let some strangely confident thirteen-year-old with a questionable sense of loyalty dictate my fate to me.”

  “I’m dictating nothing,” said Cogna. The child’s imperviousness to insults only made Ilsa want to try harder. “Your fate lies ahead of you whether I See it or not, and whether I tell it to the world or keep it between us. Don’t you want to be destined for greatness, Ilsa Ravenswood?”