Cassia looked away. For a moment she appeared to deliberate it, then she stood and fetched a dressing gown, which she brought to the tub and held open. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I ought to call for some tea.”
* * *
Cassia must have remembered that Ilsa had skipped breakfast, as when the tea arrived at her room, it was accompanied by crumpets and jam. Not in the habit of refusing food, Ilsa buttered a crumpet, but the thought of it was churning her stomach before she could bring it to her mouth. Instead, she sipped the tea. She should not have needed warming up, what with the steaming bath and the summer sun beating down outside, but as the hot tea slipped down her throat, she felt her shivering abate. Her stomach welcomed it, as did her heart. She took another sip.
They were sat in the silk-upholstered armchairs in Ilsa’s chamber, she was still wrapped in a dressing gown, a blanket around her shoulders. Cassia had also changed and washed off the blood. She looked tired, but nowhere near as shaken as Ilsa. Perhaps fighting for her life was a common occurrence for her.
“The history of the Changelings in London is long,” Cassia said, warning in her voice. “And complicated.”
Ilsa understood she was being given her last chance to refuse this story. Given what she already knew about the Witherward, and what had happened to Bill, she didn’t expect it would be pleasant. But to know was better than to wonder. She nodded.
Cassia stirred her tea. “Everybody fights in this city,” she said. “If it’s not about borders, it’s money or power, or some violation of an arbitrary code. And if we can’t find reasons, we invent them. So you can imagine why we can’t trust what the Docklands are saying about Gedeon.
“Every people can trace its origins back to the celestial event which formed them or gave them their unique magic. The original Oracles, for example, were the witnesses of the Blinding Light, a solar eclipse many thousands of years ago. The Wraiths fell to earth in a meteor shower.” Cassia looked at her then, and the ghost of a smile brushed her mouth. “My ancestors evolved from the Ancients – elemental magicians – when they were touched by an aurora. We were the first of the modern people.
“And the Changelings were born under a red moon on the vernal equinox. The Shift, we call it. They transformed, from animals, across a vast swath of the Erro-Azian continent. But the epicentre was here. In London.”
Ilsa had been enraptured by thoughts of celestial magic and ancient beings, but when Cassia paused, she remembered what they were supposed to be talking about. “What’s this got to do with the Fortunatae?”
Cassia gestured for Ilsa to wait. “Five magics had founded London. They had always lived in separate quarters and already mistrusted one another. And then the Shift. Imagine it. Every single animal in the city – horses, dogs, cats, every bird, every bit of livestock – became a Changeling. In a single moment, the population was… perhaps ten times what it had been. It was cataclysmic, Ilsa. It destabilised any pretence of goodwill among the factions. It ended the Sorcerers’ rule. They call it the Century of Slaughter, or sometimes the Long Plague. Suffice to say after many decades the population righted itself. But they say three things brought London back from the Shift: slaughter, sickness… and Morgan Ravenswood.
“You know of her, of course. She led a bloody war to take Camden, mainly from the Sorcerers and the Whisperers. You can imagine what her legacy is beyond the borders. London never found even a false peace again after the Shift, and settling the Changelings in their own quarter brought some semblance of order, but the damage was done. The other magics had all the reason they needed to hate the Changelings as they hated each other. But even after decades of bloodshed, was there any moral high ground to be claimed over people who didn’t choose to be there, who only wished to be allowed to stay where they’d been born?” Cassia’s normally rigid posture was a little deflated. Her sad eyes stared intently at her teacup. “That’s what the Fortunatae wanted: a justification. They’re a secret society founded at a small college in Whitechapel – the Whisperer quarter – just after Morgan Ravenswood became the leader of the Changelings and made Camden your territory. There were fourteen of them at first, radical philosophers of five factions who believed that Changelings’ origins raised an important question.” She looked up. “Are you people who can change into animals… or merely animals, who are sometimes people?”
Ilsa stiffened. It was absurd, to hear her magic talked about like that. She had been animal, and she had been human, and she knew which she was inside. Only a person who had never known what it was like could think it a valid question.
“The members of the Fortunatae have little respect for your kind, Ilsa,” said Cassia weakly. “But for centuries they were a society of intellectuals concerned with theory. Thinkers, not activists. And then a decade or so before the Principles were drafted, they went to ground. Someone had taken over as their head; someone they called the Sage. He had… new ideas. Plans of action.” She drew a shaking breath. “When the Principles solidified in writing that Camden belonged to the Changelings, the Sage courted chaos and rebellion and manipulated it for the Fortunatae’s means.”
Propagandists. That’s what Eliot had called them. She could picture it now; how easy it would be to rile members of every faction against the people who had brought about the Century of Slaughter.
“It’s how they’ve operated before. If they are fuelling the fire of this revolt in the Heart, then they’re after the same thing they wanted seventeen years ago: five
