Eliot. He shifted, eyes sweeping the room diligently for the threat, even as he made straight for Ilsa and knelt beside her. He scowled at the shattered glass like it was his enemy, but his touch was gentle as he scooped an arm around Ilsa to lift her out of it. Ilsa tried to gesture at her throat, then at the teapot, but her motions were too sloppy. Panic made them worse.
“Poison.” It was Aelius, who had transformed from a ragged, battle-worn mountain lion into his elegant self. He was stood above Alitz and the shattered teacup.
Eliot’s fierce, livid gaze met that of the nearest wolf.
“Liesel, find Cassia,” he ordered. “The rest of you secure the perimeter. No one leaves.”
Liesel didn’t move. She looked between Eliot and the pack, her ears flat to her skull. Eliot growled. “I don’t give a damn who you answer to. Do as I say or I’ll make you the first to pay for this.”
The wolf didn’t dare argue. She dispersed with the rest of the animals but two. One, a bear, became Oren. The other cycled through several increasingly small, increasingly ugly dogs before revealing itself to be Fyfe, who stumbled to Alitz’s side and took her hand seriously. He inspected the tips of her fingers, her mouth, her eyes, felt her palm and pinched the skin between two nails.
Only a moment had passed before Cassia appeared from thin air, the whole crate of antidotes Ilsa had seen in her lab cradled in her arms. “Fyfe?”
“It’s a smokeweed draught,” said Fyfe. “Paralysis, numbness. No taste or odour. Do you have the antidote?”
Cassia was already fumbling with the stopper of a clear bottle of milky liquid. She knelt among the shards of glass and porcelain, shoving Eliot aside, and tugged Ilsa’s limp head onto her lap. Ilsa tried to tell her to give it to Alitz first, which Cassia understood, but she only made a tutting noise and opened Ilsa’s mouth with surprising roughness.
Ilsa choked on the first dribble of the liquid, but the feeling came back to her throat instantly, and she was able to swallow the second sip. It tasted like sloe berries, bitter and dry, but as Cassia trickled more of the antidote between her lips, the pressure on her lungs eased. A tingling told her the sensation was coming back to her hands too.
Cassia moved on to Alitz, who evidently had not drunk as much of the poisoned tea as Ilsa, but whose breathing was also laboured. Eliot pulled Ilsa to her feet and supported her to the couch, calling for someone to fetch some iodine for the cuts the broken glass had made. Now that Ilsa thought about it, getting feeling back had brought with it a lot of pain.
“Who brought the tea?” said Oren.
“It was out when we got here, like always,” said Ilsa, her voice thick. Someone handed her a glass of water, but Oren plucked it from her fingers.
“Aelius, you round up the servants, I’ll deal with the guard,” he said, already sweeping towards the door. “We question everybody. Someone who knows about this is still here.”
“No, they ain’t,” said Ilsa. Oren turned. She gestured with a freshly mobile hand for him to give back the water but he didn’t move.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“It was Pyval.”
Every eye was suddenly on her, but Ilsa was looking at Alitz. The Whisperer was testing the effects of the antidote by curling and uncurling her fingers, but her hands fell into her lap at Ilsa’s words.
“I beg your pardon?” she rasped.
“Ilsa, why would Pyval hurt Alitz?” said Cassia, shaking her head.
“P’raps he’s done helping you help Changelings.” Now that Ilsa had her voice back, she couldn’t keep it down.
Alitz’s mouth fell open. “That is absolutely—”
“Tell me he was ever happy to come here and teach me,” challenged Ilsa. “Tell me he don’t resent every second he’s in the same room as one of us.”
Alitz’s lips were a thin line. Her previously rod-straight posture had collapsed with the poison, and she had too much dignity to struggle to right herself. She looked spent, and older than her years. “Pyval has his reservations about my aligning myself with the Zoo, yes.”
“Because?” pressed Ilsa. She knew she wasn’t wrong. She’d known that kind of hatred before, at the orphanage.
Alitz hesitated. “He is, unfortunately, a separatist at heart. His prejudices are not reserved for the Changelings, I can assure you, and they have never caused him to do harm. He was not compelled to do this.”
“He’s with the Fortunatae.”
“Miss Ravenswood, please!” Alitz snapped. Even half-prone, she had that way about her that made Ilsa feel reprimanded, but she wouldn’t be cowed. “Not everyone who would wish you dead is aligned with that group, or do you forget the world you have become a part of?”
“What kind of enemy is he, then?” shot Ilsa. “We have tea here every day with our lesson. Pyval knows it. And the one day we get poisoned, he ain’t here. Gedeon’s gone, p’raps forever. Hester don’t leave her room. The Fortunatae want my family exterminated like rats, right? And I’m the only one left standing. It don’t take a detective to figure it out.”
Alitz didn’t reply. Now she was the one who wasn’t sure of herself. Ilsa looked to the others, who were in various stages of disbelief and hard understanding. Eliot met her gaze, his expression harsh but not judgemental. He believed her.
“Professor Dicer,” began Oren in his unnervingly even tone. He handed the glass of water back to Ilsa and poured a second for Alitz. “We will speak to every wolf, servant, and resident of this house to develop a picture of what has happened here, but here is what I expect to find: that a kitchen maid we trust made tea. That a butler we trust delivered it. That wolves who have proven themselves to us have guarded our walls vigilantly, and the
