“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 lieutenants 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
