“What the bloody hell was that about?” Ilsa snapped.
For an endless moment Eliot didn’t move or say a word. Then he sank his hand into his pocket with aching slowness.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Ilsa’s anger was dampened under a worse feeling. She didn’t know what it was about Eliot’s anguish; why it always felt fresh, like virgin snow, like she was the first to brush up against it. She reached out a hand to touch his arm and his head snapped up in surprise, like he’d forgotten she was there.
“It was nothing,” he said. He removed her hand, but squeezed it before he let go. “I’ll round up the wolves, tell them we found you.”
Before Ilsa could blink, the raven was lost to her against the vast night’s sky.
20
Ilsa’s escapade into Camden had taught her a great deal, but provided no clues to the whereabouts of her brother. She continued to pore over Lila’s riddle to no success and to turn Cassia’s account over in her mind, but she feared she was hurtling towards a dead end.
To combat her frustration, Ilsa had taken to practising her snow leopard form every morning with Georgiana and Rye. It left her feeling a little less useless to see her mastery of the leopard’s most lethal qualities improve day on day; to know that, if her life was threatened again, hiding wouldn’t be her only option. Plus she suspected that, for Georgiana and Rye, putting Ilsa in her place when they sparred took the sting out of losing to her whenever they played cards in the guard room.
Progress was also being made in her lessons with Alitz. The Whisperer and her assistant came to the Zoo for two hours every day to run drills with her. They began with some breathing and relaxation exercises that Alitz said allowed her better control of her own mind, and which Ilsa riled against with a passion.
“Why’ve I got to relax my mind to protect it?” she challenged, arms folded. “I’ve got to be sharp and concentrate, not half asleep and picturing a calm sea and that. I won’t do it!”
“Tell me, little expert,” Alitz said, “what were you thinking about when I saw you in the rose garden just now?”
“All kinds of things,” Ilsa said loftily.
“Recount them for me. Every one.” Ilsa was silent, and chewed the inside of her cheek. “No? Your sharp mind got away from you, and you don’t remember. You chose none of those thoughts because you are not in control. So, you will start at the very beginning, as if you had never once used your brain before, which I am tempted to say you have not.”
So Ilsa reluctantly submitted to Alitz’s methods, and by the end of their first week of lessons, Ilsa could perform card tricks, hold a conversation with Fyfe, or play “Three Blind Mice” clumsily on the piano while guarding her mind.
“You will never be able to hide everything from a Whisperer,” Alitz declared. “Decisions to act, observations, impressions of the present moment – these things appear so close to the surface of your conscious mind, it is not much different to reading them on a person’s face.” Her owl’s eyes wandered Ilsa’s face. “I understand that is how non-Whisperers make sense of one another.”
Tone of voice too, said Ilsa in her head, with a pointed glare, so that Alitz would know her derision hadn’t gone unnoticed. Alitz smirked knowingly. The Whisperer was fond of such speeches; assertions of her own power, thinly disguised as warnings. It was the price she exerted for her wisdom.
She was particularly insistent about the relative weakness of Changelings against Whisperers, as was the focus of one afternoon’s lesson.
“As an animal, a Changeling’s mind is different, is it not?”
Ilsa shrugged. “A little. And it depends on the animal. Generally, everything’s sort of… clearer, but less deep.”
“Blunter,” said Alitz unequivocally, though it wasn’t what Ilsa had been trying to say. “Smaller. And far less capable of resisting telepathy, regardless of one’s training. You must remember this.” Alitz’s mouth quirked smugly. “Your particular brand of magic makes you weak against a Whisperer. Allow us to demonstrate.”
“Us?” said Ilsa, glancing pointedly at Pyval.
The younger Whisperer had limited his part in their lessons to consulting privately with Alitz, and he and Ilsa had not exchanged words since the first incident with his nightmarish manipulation. As much as she was loath to admit it, and never would out loud, the experience had kept her on her toes and made her sharp.
“Manipulation is Mr Crespo’s speciality, not mine,” said Alitz. “But you have no reason to be afraid. Nothing you will experience is real, after all.”
Ilsa almost asked whether Pyval had ever thrown her into a dread-filled void, but she bit her tongue.
“Now, if you would, become an animal.”
None of it was real. That was true. She clung to this knowledge as she dropped to all fours, as the coat of dappled fur prickled across her skin and her bones grew and shifted with exquisite pain, until her body was that of a massive snow leopard.
Pyval wasn’t the only one who could show off.
He took in the size of her as she stalked closer, her ears twitching in warning, but he wasn’t cowed. No, for the first time since entering the Zoo, he smiled.
And then he seized her. The darkness rushed in. The sentient horror in the void made the impression of sound this time too; an unearthly clicking all around her and moving ever closer. The sound, the smell, the sight of it; none were real, and so she could block none of them out. They were things she knew without sensing them, like in a dream, and they burrowed
