Ilsa was jolted. Why was he suddenly reluctant? “I asked, din’t I?”
“But… alright. Eventually Gedeon and I wore everyone down. Hester’s never talked about seeing your family killed and I don’t think she ever will, but she allowed Oren to tell Gedeon everything he knew. I wasn’t allowed to be there. I’ll let you imagine how well eight-year-old me dealt with the exclusion, even though I knew Gedeon would repeat it all for me.
“I found him afterwards. There’s a tree in the park with a perfect cradle at the centre of the branches. He used to fly up and hide there. I asked him what Oren had said and he told me. He skimmed over the details of the cellar and your family’s deaths. Maybe it was too overwhelming. Most likely Oren had skimmed over them too, but I clearly remember thinking it was strange how he hardly dwelt on it. He was caught up with you.
“There was no kindness in what happened to your family,” he said roughly. He spoke to his feet as he walked, overcome at the thought of that night the same way he was in the park when they met. “Perhaps that’s why the fact someone had cared for you in your final days always stuck with Gedeon. Oren said Walcott’s housekeeper had done everything she could to save you, and when she failed, she had held you and rocked you until you stopped breathing. The reason I remember it so well is because Gedeon remembers it. He’s repeated it to me since, several times. When he hurts over his sister’s death, he remembers that someone had some kindness for her and that he’s grateful.”
Grateful. The word gutted her. It was everything Miss Mitcham didn’t deserve.
“And now it turns out every word of it was a lie,” said Eliot with a brittle laugh. “It was false comfort.”
Ilsa shook her head. “Comfort’s never false,” she said, even as fresh pain welled up and made her voice shake. She wanted to be a person who could be glad Gedeon had had comfort, even if it meant he’d had goodwill for Miss Mitcham. She wanted to be that person, but she wasn’t sure she could. “Or p’raps it’s always false. It’s just how we choose to think of something, after all, ain’t it? Comfort’s in our heads.”
Eliot was studying her warily. Ilsa could see him warring with his curiosity before he spoke. “After you left the meeting room yesterday, the others were wondering if perhaps she’d grown attached. That she told a foolish lie because she wanted to keep you for her own.”
“There’s an idea. Keep an orphanage open by making orphans.”
Her tone must have given away just how wrong the theory was. Eliot grimaced. “I didn’t think so. She told you nothing of magic or the Witherward, though she knew of Lord Walcott and your parents, and the portal.” He looked at her bleakly. “It’s like I said, children can always sense a bigger truth. If she had cared for you at all, she would have given in and told you eventually. But she let you believe you were alone. It was cruel. And the lie wasn’t foolish, it was malicious.”
Once again, the look he gave her brooked no argument. He had parsed the truth from the few reluctant hints Ilsa had shared and she couldn’t take them back. If she had known he would think on it, she might have been more careful. Only, she hadn’t thought him capable of caring.
“As I said,” Ilsa replied quietly, “she ain’t a good woman.”
“No,” agreed Eliot.
Fearing he might probe further, Ilsa asked something else she had been thinking on. “What was Lord Walcott doing in the Otherworld?”
Eliot raised his eyebrows. “Stars. Fleeing this mess? Making his fortune? I’m afraid I don’t know that much about him.”
“You weren’t curious? Weren’t it strange?”
Eliot laughed; a rare, unpoisoned laugh. “That a person might choose a life in another universe? That they might look at a portal out of here and simply decide to” – he threw up a hand in a gesture that dismissed everything around him – “step through it?”
“Are there a lot of them?” Ilsa said. “People from here living over there?”
Eliot was still disbelieving. He looked at her like he was trying to grasp her meaning. “It must seem a strange decision to you,” he said eventually. “That anyone with magic would choose to live somewhere where it would be sensible to hide it. But that can be a benefit itself. Look what it did for you. You made a career of exploiting the Otherworlders’ ignorance. A Wraith could be the best sportsperson while barely using their magic at all. A Whisperer could be a star detective without anyone ever knowing they could read their suspects’ minds. Besides, some of them have no other choice.”
“What d’you mean?”
“It’s a convenient punishment for those who haven’t earned death,” he said. “We don’t banish our undesirables from the city, we banish them from the world.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Some punishment. You’ve been bad even amongst the terrible, here’s your guilt-free pass to somewhere better.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Ilsa. “People have got… people, you know. Families, homes, jobs. P’raps they don’t want to be somewhere better. And why the hell should they, when their whole life’s here?”
Eliot didn’t reply. She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his gaze; she could hear him drawing breath to speak then changing his mind.
“I did not mean that banishment itself isn’t a bitter punishment,” he said gently. “In fact, being forced into the Otherworld should hardly count. No law in this city means no true authority. If one wished, one could board a ship to the continent and slip back into this dimension there.” Ilsa didn’t miss how his gaze tracked east, as if he could see it if it weren’t for the city around him. He was wistful as he added, “Paris has a portal.”
“Let me guess. It’s at the top of
