“They were ’fraid of me,” Ilsa said, her eyes on her hands. “They… did things.”
With frightening speed, Hester shifted within reach of Ilsa and snatched her wrist. With her other hand, she pulled back the sleeve of Ilsa’s nightgown. “Show me.”
Ilsa didn’t have the wits to disobey, nor to question how Hester knew. She had mastered this one deception so flawlessly that she could literally maintain it in her sleep, but she grappled at its edges now and tore it down. The scars rose from her skin like phantoms from the grave; white, ugly, and with gruesome stories to tell. Coils upon coils of them around each wrist where chains, wires, whatever Miss Mitcham could get her hands on had bitten into her flesh all those years.
“They must have thought you an abomination,” Hester said conversationally, pushing herself back against the wall and toying with her long braid. Ilsa vanished the marks from her wrist and leaned away from her, or tried; even with the alcohol and vemanta calming her nerves, the room was definitely shrinking. “Did they bleed you? Try to exorcise you? Flog you holy?”
“All of it. ’Til I ran away.” Ilsa tentatively reached for the flask and Hester gave it to her.
“And then – what luck? I lose everything and Gedeon goes rogue. He kidnaps the Seer’s apprentice, the Seer puts a bounty on you, and my lieutenants whisk you home like—” She snapped her fingers. Cruel amusement sparkled in her eyes. “Now you have a house full of wolves fighting to protect you, and your biggest worry is a few minutes in here with me. Don’t be sorry I got hurt, cousin dearest. It was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Perhaps she was right. But curled up in that closet-sized hole in the wall, in a house under siege from two kinds of enemy, Ilsa learned to be careful what she wished for. She took another long drag of the spiked whisky, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed to the Witherward’s damned stars that everyone would make it out of this alive.
Especially Eliot. He had a whole other kind of hell waiting for him when Ilsa got free.
Slowly, the sounds of fighting died away, and not long after, the hidden door slid open. Fliss’s hair was falling from its pins, and she was breathing heavily, but she looked unharmed.
“The Zoo is secure,” she told Hester.
“Then get me out of here,” said Hester through gritted teeth.
Ilsa scrambled gratefully out into Hester’s bedroom and gulped down several large breaths. The cocktail she had taken to survive the box was resurging with the fresh air in her lungs, and as she climbed to her feet, a soothing tingle spread through her.
But she was not too afflicted to gasp when a familiar black panther padded into the room, dragging a wailing Oracle man by the arm. Then with one fluid, lightning-quick motion, Eliot was before them. He lifted the man by the collar, and tossed him at Hester’s feet.
“I brought you a gift to make up for hiding you.”
At the sight of the Oracle, something came alive in Hester. “Stars, how many of you people have we killed this week?” she said. “Keep coming at her like this and you’ll be an endangered species. Any others?”
Eliot shook his head. There was blood on his shirt, and it had torn down the arm where he’d been cut. “The Sorcerers were all wearing homing charms. They were vanishing to wherever they came from as quickly as we could wound them. There were only half a dozen Oracles. The rest are all dead.”
“Sorcerers and Oracles?” Eliot nodded. “But the Fortunatae have members in every faction—”
“They’re not here,” said Eliot. “They don’t need to be. They’ve got this rebellion on a string, I guarantee it, and now they have the Docklands too. They’re all working together.”
“So Gedeon has made this easy for them.” Hester tutted and added scathingly: “Well done, little cousin.”
Oren entered, looking just as battle-weary. There was a glint of violence and bloodlust in his eyes as he said, “Three wolves down. The raiders formed groups and fanned out around us. It was a sweep. Or would have been, if they had gotten very far. Aelius was right, they’re looking for something.”
The Oracle on the floor was clutching his arm where Eliot had bitten him and was moaning in pain. Eliot lifted him to his feet. “I think we ought to make the most of this audience, don’t you?” he said, grasping the man by his hair.
Ilsa swallowed. She was about to witness something horrible, but perhaps it would tell her something about her brother, so she was going nowhere.
Hester levelled her lethal glare at the Oracle. “Have you allied with the Fortunatae?”
The man was breathing heavily. He mustered a cruel smile. “The enemy – of my enemy – is my friend.”
“Yes, yes. Oren.”
It was then Ilsa noticed that Oren, pacing like a caged animal, had a knife. “Hold him,” he said in his ever-genial tone. Ilsa tensed as Eliot tightened his grip on the Oracle and tilted his head back. Oren brought the knife up to rest on the man’s cheek.
“I’ve always wondered,” said Hester. She wasn’t even looking at Oren or the knife, but searching her braid for split ends and plucking them out. “If you take an Oracle’s eyes, can they still See?”
Without further preamble, Oren drove the knife into the soft flesh of the Oracle’s eye socket. The man screamed; a high-pitched, agonised sound that sobered Ilsa a little. But the acolytes had attacked her three times now, and they had murdered Martha. She felt surprisingly little urge to turn away as Oren hooked his bloodied fingers around the man’s eyeball and tore it out.
The man trembled and wilted like he would faint, but Eliot forced him upright as Oren calmly wiped his hands on his handkerchief
