“Nothing bloody, I assure you. Let’s get a drink.”
Ilsa blinked in surprise as he slipped past her and out onto the High Street. She hurried to catch him up as he made for an open-fronted tent that had been erected on one side of the street.
“What’s the occasion?” Ilsa asked the captain as she dodged a gentleman with a tray of beer.
Fowler glanced over his shoulder at her. “Camden’s foremost astrologer told them to.”
“Come again?”
“Every lunar cycle, she reads Camden’s stars. This month, she told them to throw a party.”
Ilsa shot a bemused glance at the scene around her; streamers, dancing, heaps of food on giant platters, all because someone told them the stars willed it. “Do people here do everything astrologers tell them?”
“Some do,” said the captain. “Most probably discard whatever asks too much of them and keep what they like. As guidance from the stars goes, I doubt throw a party rustled many feathers.” He glanced at one of the rainbow-bright birds still dancing through the air, then at her, his eyes sparkled at his own joke. “Do the people in the Otherworld not take their fun where they can find it? Life is trying here sometimes. We like to remember that it can be good too.”
That much was clear. Ilsa saw no trace of the violent chaos that threatened every moment of her life among the lieutenants and militia. She wondered how well these people understood what the Zoo did to protect them.
Inside the tent was a long table in front of a rack of ale casks; a makeshift bar. The Changelings shot the captain glances as he accepted two mugs of beer and handed one to Ilsa, but no one challenged his presence. Ilsa also drew attention just by being beside him. Perhaps they thought she’d invited her assassin beau to drink and dance with them. She checked her disguise was still in place and averted her eyes from all who glanced their way.
Fowler found a spot near the entrance of the tent, right in a corner. It would have been an inconspicuous place to stand if he hadn’t been a six-foot-two Wraith clad in black and accessorised with a small armoury.
“How’d I know you was there?” Ilsa asked. Fowler quirked a brow in question. “Back in the street, I knew you was watching me. I knew exactly where you was.”
“Ah. Something about slipping through solid objects creates a feeling of unease in those nearby, if they’re attuned enough to their surroundings. That sense of being watched. You wouldn’t have noticed it when we first met. You had, ah, other concerns at the time.”
Martha. The acolytes.
“I did in the theatre though,” Ilsa said, suddenly understanding the prickle on the back of her neck the moment before she’d first seen the captain.
“The sensation’s not often so acute,” said Fowler, studying her. “You knew precisely where I was.”
“Caution’s a force of habit too,” Ilsa shrugged. She took a long sip of her beer and studied Fowler over the rim of her mug. He had fixed his gaze intently on the dancing outside the tent. Ilsa followed his line of sight to a smiling, dimpled young man, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his neck scarf askew as he spun his pretty dance partner in his arms.
“Who’s that?” said Ilsa, an inexplicable thrill of fear coursing through her at the way Fowler watched him.
“His name’s Edgar Dawson,” said the captain, his eyes still on the man. “He’s a con artist.”
“We’re Changelings,” she said. “Ain’t we all con artists after a fashion?”
Fowler pursed his lips, and Ilsa got the impression he was trying not to smile. It made her oddly proud, to draw a reaction from the stone-faced assassin, and she swallowed more beer to hide her own smile.
“This particular con artist,” said the Wraith, “has a lover in the Underground, a wealthy merchant’s son, who’s packing his belongings and his considerable fortune and preparing to leave on a ship tonight with our man here. All Dawson’s taking with him is a single suitcase and a vial of poison.”
Ilsa’s gaze snapped back to the dancing; to the laughing, carefree Edgar Dawson. He didn’t look like a killer, but for all Ilsa knew, he didn’t look like that at all.
“His lover’s friends have pooled their gold to have me put a stop to the affair. They suspected foul play. I doubt they suspected a murder plot.”
“You gonna kill him?” Ilsa whispered, though she was afraid to know the answer.
Fowler tore his eyes from his mark and looked at her wryly. “If I have to. But I won’t. Tonight will be the second time Dawson’s seen me. He’ll get the idea.”
Sure enough, after a few minutes of Fowler’s eyes burning into the back of his head, Edgar Dawson glanced towards the tent, and his smile, his dimples, his carefree glee all dropped from his face. He careened to a halt in the middle of the dance. His partner tripped and caught herself on his arm, but Edgar didn’t notice. Ever so subtly, Fowler raised his cup to his mark and nodded. With his bewildered partner staring after him, the man stumbled away, looking like he might be sick.
Studying the captain – his predatorial stare, the casual way his hand rested on the hilt of his long knife – Ilsa wasn’t sure she blamed him.
“You really would kill him, wouldn’t you?” she said, though she already had the answer.
Fowler nodded. “If my contract required it,” he replied nonchalantly. He turned that stare on Ilsa. She could feel him reading her every reaction. Not wanting to appear cowed, she met his stare.
“I s’pose it might be the right thing to do, if it saved another’s life,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she believed that. She only wanted to see him react too.
He downed his beer in one long swallow. “My job this time is not to save anyone’s life,” he said to
