“I’m escaping.”
He halted. Ilsa thought she heard him sigh. When he turned around and emerged fully from the dark, the impression wasn’t much better than being set upon by the panther. Cold, storm-blue eyes looked out from a face carved in sharp lines, like his sculptor had made the first rough cuts and found a cruel perfection worth preserving. His hair had probably been combed neatly back from his face at one time – it had the gloss of oil where a shaft of moonlight caught the inky-black strands – but that time was long past. He had harassed and overhandled it; swept it to one side and let it fall across his forehead. It made Ilsa think of raven’s feathers, then of razor-sharp talons.
His hands were buried in his pockets, giving nothing away, and the cuffs of his wrinkled shirt were rolled up to the elbow. Whatever the hour, he hadn’t slept yet.
“Escaping,” he said, wearily.
Ilsa readied herself to shift; she wouldn’t freeze a second time. “I’m a Changeling too,” she said. “You can’t stop me.”
The tight set of his mouth relaxed into a smile. It was the kind a hyena might give its prey before it tore their gullet out. “You’re in one of the most heavily guarded buildings in London,” he said, strolling to the window and gesturing to the garden below. “I don’t need to stop you.”
Still poised to fight or flee, Ilsa approached the window and looked down, though she knew what she would see. More enormous shapes shifted in the dark like shadow puppets. He was right; she was surrounded by soldiers with fearsome magic. Even with her own talent to match, she didn’t stand a chance of besting them.
Her sudden flash of helplessness must have been plain, for the boy who looked like a blade lost his humour in an instant and reverted back to bored. “You shouldn’t be so easy to tease.” His callous gaze went back to the garden, then to the park beyond. “The wolves aren’t there to keep you in.” Ilsa shot him a look, and he rolled his eyes and reached to open the window. “You can cobble together a bird of some description I trust? Since you are a Changeling too.” He swept an arm in the direction of the open window, like an invitation. “Then grant both our wishes and be gone.”
Ilsa hesitated, too overcome to grasp his game but sure there was one.
“No?” the boy demanded.
“For all I know, you want to see me torn to shreds by them wolves. You were baring your own teeth at me a moment ago – why should I believe a word you say?”
In a flash, Ilsa knew her challenge would not go unmet. He hardened like ice, the look he gave her as searing as it was cold. It took all she had not to flinch away.
“So you don’t trust me,” he said with another bitter smile. Ilsa missed the joke. “No matter. Come with me.”
For reasons Ilsa couldn’t put her finger on, she knew she couldn’t be the first to relent, so when he turned on his heel and swept off down the corridor, she followed, trying to step lightly, quietly, as he did. Perhaps she could still turn this situation to her advantage; if she could parse some knowledge she could trust from this boy, it might aid her escape. If nothing else, she might discover what had brought him to that corridor, that painting, in the dead of night.
After several twists and turns, the corridor opened on one side to look down over a grand entrance hall, slightly better lit by the lamps burning low along the walls. Ilsa followed the boy down a wide staircase to a black and white marbled floor, so brilliantly polished that Ilsa felt as if she were looking down into its depths like a pool of clear, still water. Her companion peered warily around every doorframe as they crossed the hall and followed a passage to a set of doors leading to a terrace. Ilsa couldn’t help noticing how he turned the handle and pushed the door wide with the unique muscle memory of someone who knew how not to make a sound; pulling the door tight against the frame as he turned the handle; gripping it by the edge as he swung it open.
He kept close to the wall of the house as he crossed the terrace, so Ilsa did too, stepping as he did until he crouched in a flower bed between a pair of blooming hydrangeas and beckoned her to join him. With nothing to lose and a surplus of curiosity, Ilsa lifted her skirts about her ankles and dropped to her knees in the flower bed beside him.
“You wish to leave and you believe the wolves will stop you. Fine. Then watch.” He nodded to a shadowed corner of the garden and Ilsa followed his line of sight. She was prepared this time when a giant beast emerged from the shadows to prowl along the edge of the wall. The boy leaned close to her and spoke under his breath. “Ferrien keeps very regular time. He will complete every turn of the garden in just under two minutes, all night, every time he’s assigned to this watch. When he rounds the east wing, this stretch of wall before us will be beyond his sights.”
He gestured past Ilsa to a pavilion near the west corner of the house, beyond which a second shape was moving like a spectre. With his other hand he produced an ornate silver watch from his trouser pocket and clicked it open. “Georgiana guards the west gate to the park. That lookout is a straight line, back and forth, and you’ll catch her eye if you make your move when she’s facing north.” Sure enough, the wolf at the west gate changed direction and doubled back on herself,
