Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  Ilsa turned and climbed back into bed, though she wouldn’t have been surprised if Cogna was impervious to social cues too. “What I want is a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, and a meal in the morning, and hot water for my bath, and a little good conversation.”

  She hunkered down into the pillows and pulled the blanket over her head. Cogna had a hand on the doorknob when she sprang back up. “And on the subject of greatness – I’m a great magician, and I’m a great thief, and I’m a great shifter, and I play a bloody mean hand of three-card brag. And I’m a damned great detective, so believe me, I’ll find you out if you breathe a word of this city-saving nonsense to anyone!”

  Ilsa settled down again, but she didn’t hear Cogna leave.

  “We must follow our talents, Ilsa Ravenswood,” they said. “They will lead us down the road to greatness.”

  If that was a riddle, Ilsa was too tired to puzzle it out. She let Cogna leave without another retort.

  It was only after the sound of footsteps had faded that Ilsa noticed Cogna had left something on the dresser. Warily, she climbed out of bed to retrieve it.

  The toy was as familiar as it was unique; the same size, the same wood, but feline rather than canine, with pinhole nicks to resemble a leopard’s spots. It was solid.

  It was Ilsa. Impossibly, she would bet good money that it was carved by the same hand, and it made her throat close. Had Oren made this? She had never asked him about the wooden wolf, never thanked him for the only link she’d had to her family and her world. Hadn’t she decided the person who made it must have cared for her? She imagined a different future, in which he got to give her the leopard himself. Perhaps she would have understood the gesture, understood him, just as well as she did now. Now that he’d died for her family.

  She handled the leopard slowly, turning it over in her hands, weighing it, running her fingers over every part of its sanded skin. She wondered, if Oren had asked, what kind of animal she would have liked. This didn’t match her brother’s, but it wasn’t wearing her memories of the attic either. It didn’t offer any clues or make any promises, but nor was it a vessel for someone else’s secret. It was more hers, and Ilsa liked it better, and she liked it worse.

  In the end, she left the leopard on the dresser where Cogna had deposited it – positioning it carefully like she shouldn’t have disturbed it in the first place – and returned to bed, so that she might finally get some sleep.

  * * *

  But real sleep continued to elude her.

  As her addled mind drifted about in the middle ground between consciousness and rest, she felt the pieces of the Zoo settle like a puzzle. Only, whichever way she arranged them, nothing quite fit.

  She kept seeing them; Eliot, begging, the desperation etched across his face. Hester, with that look of hatred she reserved just for him.

  His queen. Her loyal soldier.

  You don’t hate him, then.

  I don’t know.

  Maybe she did. Maybe she had hated him before.

  Ilsa felt herself climb from the bed, slip her feet into her slippers, and search around for her robe. All the while, a single thought pounded against her skull:

  Had Hester already known?

  She crept down the dark corridor, one hand against the wall. She wondered foggily what time it was. She wondered what she had failed to see because she couldn’t read her cousin’s tells.

  D’you know why he cancelled the trip?

  Eliot, begging. For his life. For forgiveness.

  She had heard them whispering, hadn’t she? Something about… oh, she wished she’d written it down. It was what Oren would have done.

  D’you know why he cancelled the trip?

  She couldn’t remember. She willed her aching eyes to adjust to the dark. Her head swam with grief and fury and exhaustion, and a cloying fear.

  Sometimes a person sees what they expect to see. It was how the Otherworlders remained so oblivious to the flashes of magic that cropped up in their world; the ones Ilsa had spent seventeen years chasing.

  She never saw what she expected to see. She always looked for the truth. Didn’t she?

  Eliot, begging. The prickle on the back of her neck.

  Something had been wrong. She had been wrong. She had seen the obvious, even when her instincts had known otherwise.

  That look. The desperation. He hadn’t been begging Hester for forgiveness. He had been begging her to defend him. And Ilsa should have known why, because Hester had slipped up. She was supposed to have believed the trip was happening on the thirtieth, the day after the attack. But something wasn’t right about what Hester had told her.

  D’you know why he cancelled the trip?

  Cancelled? That was the day of the attack.

  41

  “Was it you?”

  The lamps were out in Hester’s chamber, but the curtains were open. Hester was silhouetted in her usual spot overlooking the rose garden. Ilsa picked her way through the moonlit chamber until she was stood before her. She nearly tripped on an empty whisky bottle by the couch.

  “Was he acting on your orders?” she said. The words were barely a whisper. “Did you betray the Zoo?”

  Hester didn’t look at her; didn’t change the prideful angle of her jaw. She didn’t speak for so long Ilsa began to wonder if she’d said the words aloud. Then Hester shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

  Not a denial. Just regret.

  “And look what it earned me,” she said quietly.

  Ilsa did look. At thirty-one, Hester looked alarmingly worn. She was white, sunless skin hanging from a skeleton, all muscle definition having melted away. Her hair was thin and fraying from the compulsive plucking. Her eyes were bloodshot from the drink and the vemanta.

  To adjust after a loss like hers was a trial enough. But Hester had caused this herself. Looking at her now, it seemed so obvious.

  “You said your memory of the attack was blurry.”

  “It is.”

  “So blurry you din’t realise the rebels were a day early. So when we talked ’bout the Millwater trip, you told me the way it was s’posed to happen. Gedeon and the wolves go to Millwater; the rebels show up. Just like you planned it. Only, I thought you was just confused.”

  Hester looked at her then; a probing, opaque look that laid Ilsa bare. “I’d been wondering when you’d notice,” she said. “You made me think I was losing my mind. Until Eliot who told me what Gedeon had done. We had talked about the trip, but we failed to see the inconsistencies.”

  Was it a comfort that Hester hadn’t intentionally thrown Eliot to the wolves? No. She was doing it now. Eliot loved Hester, his erstwhile queen, and she was exploiting that to save herself.

  “You had him betray his people.” Weak and bone-tired, Ilsa lowered herself onto the couch. “And now you’re letting him take the fall.”

  This last struck like a blade. For a flash, Hester’s pride crumbled into guilt. Then the mask slipped back into place. She tilted her head and examined Ilsa with something like disgust.

  “You think you know me,” she said in a tone of surprise, as if the realisation had hit her over the head. “You think you know what I’ve done.”

  Ilsa wasn’t sure any more. She had never been able to read the woman’s tells, but her pride and her astonishment, her condescension – all felt genuine.

  “He has two brothers. Did you know? The younger is twelve. They idolise him, as they idolised their father. Can you imagine the things a person like Eliot would do to protect his brothers from his mistakes? His widowed mother?”

  There was something opaque in Hester’s words. Ilsa had to turn them over several times before their meaning rearranged itself.

  “You ain’t talking ’bout Eliot’s mistakes. You mean his father’s.”

  “Elijah was a lieutenant to Lyander. He was here when we fled. I saw him myself, and yet I never questioned…” She put shaking fingers to her lips.

  Two of her mother’s three lie
utenants had died alongside her, Cassia had said. “Elijah weren’t in the cellar.”

  Hester shook her head and swallowed her emotion. “It wasn’t until he was killed that I understood he had told the Sage – had told Alitz – where to find us. That was three years ago.”

  For three years. That’s how long Eliot had been colluding with the Heart rebels. There was a connection, Ilsa understood, but she couldn’t see it.

  “How d’you find out? ’Bout Elijah.”

  Hester still did not look at her, yet Ilsa saw something shatter inside her.

  “I didn’t.” She shook her head. “I wish I had. I wish I had waited to make lieutenants of them, as I had wanted. Gedeon was only fifteen, but Elijah, Aelius, and Oren were insistent. They said he had to learn my role before it was given to him. But I struck a bargain. If I had to have Gedeon, I told them, I would have Eliot too. Yes, he was younger, but he was smarter too. He had a mind for strategy. He understood nuances of leadership your brother is still yet to grasp. Like accountability.

  “He had been a lieutenant barely a year when he uncovered a plot that someone was trying to usurp me. But he didn’t know it was Elijah, only that a member of the Zoo was meeting with Sorcerers. Dissent in the Heart was managed with a firmer hand in Fisk’s time” – Hester’s eyes flashed with approval – “but it is always there, in every faction. I instructed Eliot to arrange for our traitor to be followed and… dealt with.” Ilsa shuddered, and Hester saw. She smiled a vicious smile, but there was no humour behind her eyes. “You have learned for yourself that a mercenary Wraith is a remarkably efficient tool. Pay them to slaughter every person at a clandestine meeting, and they will ask no questions.”

  Bile rose in Ilsa’s throat. She didn’t need to hear which Wraith. She had seen for herself that something painful hung between Eliot and Cadell Fowler. She wished she’d never insisted on taking the captain into the Zoo’s confidence. She wished she’d never met him.

  When Hester continued, her voice shook. Her desolate gaze had drifted back to the window. “I only meant to extend my trust. To give Eliot an opportunity to prove himself. I would never have allowed him to suffer this if I’d known what he was instigating. He was… he was fifteen.”

  I don’t know how to mourn somebody I—

  Ilsa thought her heart might break clean in two. Eliot didn’t keep his father’s watch because he missed him. He kept it because he’d killed him.

  “Elijah had courted more allies for his coup than anticipated. Though, perhaps allies is not the right word. They saw, as Elijah did not, that they could weaken the Changelings by removing the family who had united them, and when he was gone they saw a new opening into the Zoo. A new puppet. They uncovered Eliot’s involvement and threatened to reveal his father’s betrayal and murder to the Zoo; to his family.”

  Can you imagine the things a person like Eliot would do to protect his brothers from his mistakes? His widowed mother?

  Ilsa shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You’re telling me Eliot betrayed Camden to protect his family? To save his father’s reputation? I don’t believe it.”

  “The threat of his mother’s broken heart was only one incentive,” said Hester wryly. “I presented him with a second: make working for the rebels work for us.”

  This, Eliot had tried to tell Gedeon. How his backchannel had benefited Camden. “The rebels expected a pawn, so Eliot gave them one. They did not know there was a queen behind him. They’ve never known of my involvement, but together we have fed the rebels innocuous scraps of intelligence while Eliot siphoned off theirs. We have always benefited more than we were hurt. Until.”

  Until.

  “Their first few attempts to raid us, they acted alone,” she continued. “But our defences were too solid. Eliot met with them fortnightly. He told me they would hide their faces, but otherwise they appeared to trust in their power over him.” She smiled reluctantly. “He must have played a far meeker boy than you or I know.

  “One night, he came back and told me their demand: they wanted a window of opportunity to get into the Zoo.”

  Ilsa’s anger flared. “You knew the whole time they were looking for something.”

  “Looking for something, planting something.” Hester waved a hand dismissively. “We decided we could deal with whatever it was later. Eliot believed he was close to identifying some of the highest-ranking rebels; we just needed more time. Gedeon wasn’t supposed to be here. Security was supposed to be light. If that damned trip to Millwater hadn’t been a ruse, it would never have been the fight it turned into.”

  “You can’t blame this on Gedeon,” said Ilsa. “You could have told him what was going on but—”

  Hester laughed derisively. “No, cousin. I have told you the kind of leader your brother is. He knows nothing of hard decisions. Eliot and I are cut from stronger steel. We understand that we must make hard decisions because weaker men and women cannot. That some choices are no choice at all. Your brother believes he can mould the world around him like he can mould himself. But I have learned, as Eliot has, that we can only cut at it. But if our blades are sharp enough, we can leave a scar.”

  “You let him go through all that,” said Ilsa, feeling hot tears on her skin, “you let him carry all that guilt ’round, then you made him take the blame.”

  Hester faltered, her wicked humour vanishing, and swallowed. “It’s better this way.”

  “Better for you?” growled Ilsa. She didn’t know where she was finding the rage. She was shattered.

  “Better for Gedeon. Better for Fyfe.” She closed her eyes like she could block her own words out. “Better for Camden.”

  For Camden.

  They were not her words; they were Eliot’s. Eliot, who had been so accepting of whatever fate Ilsa dealt him when she found him out. Who had left the abbey with his head held high and an air of relief. He had talked her into this, but then he had begged to be saved. He had faltered at the last moment, and Hester had not. Perhaps they were cut from the same steel, but hers was stronger.

  Now Ilsa was the one laughing spitefully. “You talk ’bout Gedeon like he ain’t a good leader, but you won’t even help him be one. You should have told him,” Ilsa repeated. “You should have told Gedeon.”

  Hester shot her a sardonic glare. “You have been lucky again,” she said. “When we plucked you from the Otherworld, Aelius wanted to make you alpha.”

  Ilsa blinked. “But I… that don’t make no sense.”

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. He never expected you to lead. But I chose, at first, not to oblige their whims when they made me warden, and Gedeon was gone. Aelius wanted a figurehead. A show of strength. He wanted to tell all of London that Camden’s lost princess had returned.

  “He was overruled, of course, and you were lucky. If they had made you alpha, you would only have had to give it up again when Gedeon returned. Then, maybe, cousin dearest, you would understand why.”

  “But I don’t want that kind of power.”

  Hester studied her, a tiny crease between her brows, like she saw a lie. “Funny. It seems neither does Gedeon.” Then she smiled. She was frightening when she smiled, just like Eliot. Ilsa wondered if she’d ever been that good at reading people. “I heard you today, in front of the wolves, defending Eliot’s life. You pulled rank on the Prince of Camden.”

  “I din’t mean to—”

  “You pulled rank,” she said more firmly, “and the whole pack let you.”

  Ilsa shook her head, but she wasn’t sure what she was arguing anymore. A sort of dreamy calm was overcoming her, and her fear and indignation were disappearing into it like streetlights in the fog. She could barely concentrate on the problem of getting back to her bed. She was making a half-hearted effort to rise from the couch and take her leave when something struck her.

  “Ain’t you gonna ask me not to tell no one?”

  Hester smiled at that, only faintly. “We both know I don’t need to. We both understand what sort o
f a threat I am to Gedeon now.” She sighed her dramatic, lofty sigh. “Do not fear, cousin dearest. From now on I shall sit in my chair like a good little girl and be nothing and nobody.” She turned her head. Her shaking fingers reached up and brushed the tears away.

  Like that, Ilsa could not leave, not if she had all the energy in the world. Somebody needed to stay with her, to be a buoy should Hester need to grab on. Ilsa knew this, even in her shattered, dozing mind. Because despite the devious game Hester had played, a part of her understood the bitter, hopeless woman like she wished she didn’t. She wanted to take her hand and tell her that she would always be somebody, she would always matter; that maybe, in time, she would remember that. But Hester had gone back to pretending like her cousin wasn’t there, and Ilsa was just too tired. She let herself sink low against the cushions. Some time later, she curled onto her side.

  “Go to sleep, cousin dearest,” she heard Hester say. “The world will still be as it is in the morning.”

  42

  Ilsa wanted to approach Gedeon, but instead she caught herself spying on him from the library. Spying was familiar. Reunions with long-lost siblings were uncharted territory.

  Gedeon was in the garden, and Cassia was with him. He had caught up with her there twenty minutes ago, and now he sat on a bench pouring his heart out while the Sorcerer stood rigidly before him. Her arms were wrapped around her like a shield.

  It was not going well. Cassia had not thawed one iota since the start of the conversation. And while Ilsa couldn’t blame her, she was quietly cheering for her brother, hoping he could transform the doll into the sharp and soft, determined and gentle, dangerous Cassia she liked more.

  But it wasn’t to be. After nearly an hour – and Ilsa kneeling on the window seat with her nose to the glass the whole time – Cassia turned and stalked back to the house, leaving Gedeon on the bench with his head in his hands.

  Ilsa summoned her courage as she scrambled from the seat, straightened her skirt and her hair, and went outside to join him.