Ellini tried to sleep, but found she was too curious. Now that she had finally made plans to go back – now that she could stop shrinking away in dread from the mere mention of the word Oxford, she found she wanted to hear its news. And of course, one question led on to another, especially the question, "Are the girls safe?"

Matthi told her about the ring of stone gargoyles around the Academy, about the little mother – the little mother! – opening a door to hell and leading the creatures captive after her like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. How Danvers was her custodian now, and read to her every night from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. She told her about the attack on Lord Elsmere at his London club, how Jack had surprised him with a prostitute who'd been dressed as Ellini and chained to the headboard – how he had, incidentally, invited this prostitute to stay at the Academy without so much as a 'By your leave'. How he had driven Lord Elsmere into the cellars and let the girls tear him limb-from-limb.

Ellini's heart was thudding in her chest. "He made the girls kill-?"

"The girls wanted to kill, Leeny. It was good for 'em. Or, anyway, it couldn't make things no worse."

Ellini might have argued with this if it hadn't been preceded by the image of a woman dressed as her chained to a headboard. She had a feeling that image was going to haunt her nightmares for a long time.

"Is she all right? The other me?"

"She's very attractive," said Matthi. "Caught my eye."

Ellini laughed. "Well, I hope you'll be very happy together."

"Nah, she aint my type. They're 'ard to find."

"Matthi," said Ellini, her smile turning into a sort of loving wince. "I really wish I could..."

"I know you do, love. It's not your fault. We can't 'elp the way we're made."

Ellini sighed. "He really took care of the girls, didn't he?" she said, in what was not quite a change of subject.

"Some of the credit should go to your Miss Manda," said Matthi. "Where there was tact or tenderness required, it seems to've been provided by 'er. We don't get on, mind. Bit of a clash of dominant personalities, I think."

"I've missed her," said Ellini, realizing this for the first time.

Matthi tilted her head. "I've not sounded 'er out on the prospect of your being alive, but I'm guessing she'll be angry."

"Yes," said Ellini heavily. "Everyone will, I expect."

"Not the girls," said Matthi. "If ever anyone understood the need to disappear, it's us."

***

They slept a little, towards morning – morning coming long before dawn in this dark season – and then Matthi climbed out of the window to make plans for their departure, and to speak to Jack. He would listen to her, she said. She had almost killed him, and soldiers were built to respect that kind of thing.

Ellini couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. She was afraid she would lose her courage in her friend's absence. She was even afraid she might yield to the temptation of climbing out of the window herself, and disappearing over the snow-deep rooftops.

But she didn't. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she didn't want to run away this time. Whatever the reason, she dressed in her travelling clothes, dusted some powder over the cuts and scratches on her face, and opened her bedroom door.

This morning, the guard outside was a young woman in an apron, with a shock of fox-coloured hair. She looked less hostile than the others, so Ellini ventured, "Could I have some breakfast, please?"

"Can't let you out," said the woman, with a self-important sniff.

"In that case, can I have some breakfast brought up to me?"

"Wouldn't trust the Inn-keeper's wife to make it," said the woman. "She thinks you're a scarlet Jezebel! She'd gob in yer porridge soon as look at you!"

The woman appeared to be delighted by this pronouncement, but Ellini decided it was more out of general excitement than malice. Northaven was probably quite a dull town if you didn't count the fangs and horns and hooves. And it wasn't every day you got a real, live Scarlet Jezebel staying at your Inn.

"Tell ya what, Miss," said the woman, leaning in. "I'll do you a bacon sandwich. 'Cause I say any problems 'tween a man and a woman can't be all the woman's fault."

"Thank you," said Ellini, tentatively.

"'Ere," she said, nudging Ellini with a bony elbow. "Is it true you were the General's woman? And you left 'im for a fancy man in a silk waistcoat?"

"No," said Ellini. "It's not true."

"Is it true you 'it 'im over the 'ead last night?"

Ellini paused. She probably had hit him over the head last night, even though the actual concussing had been done by Robin. She decided not to answer, on the grounds of uncertainty.

"What'd 'e done to you?" the woman persisted.

"He stabbed me through the chest," said Ellini, with as much haughtiness as she could muster.

"What, last night?"

"No, of course not. Seven months ago. But when I was unarmed, in a church, and kneeling at an altar."

The woman looked suitably impressed. "Really? Why? Were you unfaithful?"

"No," said Ellini, stung. "All right, he thought I was, but even if I had been, you can't do that sort of thing to people. This is England, not-" She paused, but found she couldn't think of a place where she had encountered more barbarism than in England. After all, she had been enslaved in England. Or under it.

"Yeah, but 'e's emotional," said the woman. "'E feels everything in extremes. S'why he's so romantic."

"In that case, I'd rather have someone dull and thoughtless!"

"Careful what you wish for, luvvie. I've got someone dull and thoughtless, and that's like being stabbed by subtle increments every morning for nine years. At least you get to scream and shout about it."

"Surely somewhere out there is a man who won't stab us at all?" said Ellini impatiently.

The woman snorted. "In fairytales, maybe."

Ellini winced, and thought of Elliott. She would have to tell him she was going – which was exactly what she had promised him she wasn't going to do. If she wrote him a letter, would Jack intercept it? Read it? Would that get the poor boy into even worse trouble?

That was the trouble with apologizing. Once you had accepted the need to apologize to one person, it opened up a whole world of apologies, a whole world of little wrongs done every day that you could never hope to redress.

"What was it like, being the General's woman?"

"I enjoyed it at the time," Ellini murmured. The conversation had rather got away from her.

The fox-haired woman leaned even closer, and said, "'E won't 'ave anyone else, you know. 'Alf the unmarried women in the town've been to see 'im – and one or two of the married ones-"

"Um," said Ellini, wishing herself almost anywhere else in the world. "Could I-?"

"Breakfast, yes," said the woman, straightening up and tapping her nose, as if they had come to some kind of understanding. "Can't be all the woman's fault, like I said, and there's some 'oo should consider that anyone oo's been the General's woman once could be the General's woman again. Then what's going to 'appen to those as offended 'er?"

Ellini was feeling too hungry to argue. Even her annoyance at being described so consistently as 'the General's woman' – the way you might refer to 'the General's boots' – was not enough to make her risk getting involved in the conversation again. A bacon sandwich and a nice sit down was what she needed. Then everything would make sense.

The word gradually trickled through over the course of the morning. The Sahiba was being permitted to leave. Matthi's diplomacy must have pacified Jack, although Ellini couldn't quite picture this scene in her head.

She was impatient to get going. She was impatient to see Matthi again. She was afraid the meeting of the night before had just been an illusion generated by her conscience. This morning, nobody seemed to like her. Her absent friend was starting to seem like an apparition under the force of those hostile glares.

But there was one last hurdle of hostility to be overcome.

She couldn't write to Robin, and not only because any note she sent was sure to be intercepted. She had to do it face-to-face. Her guard – which had changed to a formidable woman with an iron-grey bob – wouldn't let her go to his room, but Ellini was allowed to wait in the parlour by the piano, with the occasional nervous prod at the keys, while a message was brought up to him, and he was given permission to come down. Even then, the errand-boy waited stoically by the door, as though he'd been given orders not to leave them alone together.

They needn't have worried. Ellini could tell from the moment Robin entered the room that he was very, very angry with her. She knew this because he was more louche and careless and indifferent than ever before. He was almost a parody of Robin.

And he had taken extraordinary care with his appearance. His jacket was buttoned only at the top, the rest hanging loosely and elegantly over his shoulders like a cape. His cravat had been tied with apparent artlessness, but Ellini knew how long it took to achieve that artless look. And his teeth were whiter than ever – whiter than the snow on those inviting rooftops she could see through the window behind him.

Her heart sank within her. If only he hadn't been locked up in his room! Because Robin – for all his lazy charm – needed to be active. He'd had so long to dwell on everything that had happened last night, and with no occupation, there would have been no way to exorcize the poisons.

He had obviously noticed her cases in the lobby, because his opening words were, "Running away again, are you?"

"No," said Ellini, keeping her hands calmly folded in her lap. "I'm going back to the baby."

"What's the point? The baby came to you. And you couldn't have fawned over him more if he'd been a real baby."

"I don't remember it quite like that."

He didn't sit down. He obviously wanted to deliver this tirade from a standing position. Perhaps he thought that would give it more impact, as though the words would gather momentum as they fell. Ellini sat as still as she could and braced herself.

"And it was stupid – unbelievably stupid – to try and fight him. If you hadn't jiggled around and distracted him with your low-cut dress, he would have laid you out in seconds." He paused, and then said, with cruel, cold emphasis, "But perhaps you wanted him to lay you out."

He started pacing up and down in front of the piano, but he stopped every so often to fix her with that stare, as if he was watching for signs of pain in her. Perhaps she did wince. Perhaps that encouraged him.

"I didn't realize we'd been hiding from Jack so carefully all these months just to give added impact to your flirting when you eventually met," he sneered. "I didn't realize that stabbing you through the chest is apparently the fastest way to your heart. I didn't think you were literal-minded enough for that."

Ellini would have stood up and slapped him if she hadn't been expecting all this from the moment he'd entered the room. She had survived – more or less – through years of acquaintance with Robin by learning to recognize when the cruel fits came upon him. You saw that excitable glint in his eyes and made the mental adjustments necessary to ignore everything he said next. Or take it with a pinch of salt, even if you couldn't ignore it.

"I'm so disappointed in you, Ellie. Thank God we didn't get as far as Myrrha. Now I've seen the way you collapse at your enemies' feet, I know you would have left me to face her on my own. All these months, I thought you were finally learning to stand up for yourself. But you were just learning new ways to submit. I've just taught you how to be a snivelling wretch, and you were already so good at it-"

"I'll go through the details so you can think about them when you're in a better mood," said Ellini, smoothing out the creases in her skirt. "I'm going to Oxford with Matthi, to see my girls and try to make them some amends. You can come with me, if you like, but we'll at least have to leave Northaven separately, for obvious reasons. After Oxford, I am indeed going after Myrrha, for which you may join me, but you need not. And if I never see you again, I will remain grateful for the help you've given me, irrespective of this conversation."

It looked for a moment as though he was going to hit her. He took a half-step forwards, his lips pressed together, his face white. Then the errand-boy coughed – poor boy, what else could he do? – and Robin collected himself. After a while, he took her elbow and stood her up. She could feel his thumb and forefinger pressing tight into her flesh.

"Why will you never shout at anyone but him?" he hissed. "Is there anything I could do? You didn't even shout when – and then last night-"

Ellini felt shaken and shocked – not so much because of his behaviour as because he was articulating exactly what had stunned her so much last night. She did resent Jack more than she resented her family's murderer. She felt as though he had been listening. She felt the blood rise to the surface of her cheeks.

"You're not in love with me, you know," she snapped. "I don't understand how you could think you are. It's the same spell that's been eating away at you since we met – the same spell that made you kill my family. So what if you're not the man you were then? It works on all types of men. I'm willing to concede that you appear to have some sort of conscience now-"

"How long," said Robin slowly, "have you been willing to concede that?"

"Only since last night. You didn't kill Jack when I asked you not to."

"It wasn't because you asked me not to!" he shouted. "You asking me not to made me want to kill him all the more!"

"All right. My point is that your conscience may be real, but your feelings aren't."

"I can't have anything real," said Robin, turning a savage face on her. "Ever since I was born – everything that's happened to me – it's all been part of her plan! You were not part of her plan. She didn't see you coming. I knew it was a lie, but next to Myrrha, an ordinary lie looks like the sodding gospels! You've always been the lesser of two lies. That's why I wanted you."

He turned back to the errand boy, baring his perfect, even teeth. "Did you get all that, boot-boy? Tell Jack I'm not finished with him. When you tell him everything else."

He didn't say another word. He didn't even look back at her. The boot-boy cringed as he went past, but there was no violence. Perhaps he could go back to being an elegant dandy in a silk waistcoat now he'd said his piece.

It was strange to see him go. Fitful and cruel and maddening as he was, he had been her only friend for the past seven months. If he had been any other friend, she might have gone after him, tried to comfort him – but comforting Robin was not to be thought of. It would leave her vulnerable to his attacks, and it just... wasn't done.

She let him go, with some misgivings. And when she tried to think about it, she wasn't actually sure which she dreaded more: that this would be the last time she ever saw him, or that it wouldn't be.

***

Matthi returned, and her good humour propped Ellini's head up. 

It had been decided – by Jack or Matthi, she wasn't sure which – that they would take the stagecoach the whole way, rather than boarding a train at York. From Jack's point of view, this would mean that the driver could keep an eye on them and see that they didn't wander off. And from Matthi's point of view, it would give them a chance to talk. They both needed that. Ellini needed to be bolstered, and Matthi needed to be softened. She'd become hard-edged during her time in the opium dens. She was even talking about executing Anna – talking about it so sensibly that Ellini was sure there had been some kind of mistake.

"Can you imagine anything worse'n betraying your sisters? After suffering alongside 'em? After accepting their comfort? After seeing the bruises they took for you? Isn't that the worst thing you can imagine? Well, that's what she did. She turned Martha and Poppy over to 'im. Not just to the gargoyles, Leeny – to him. And 'e would've taken others if it 'adn't been for Jack's guard. There's nothing worse. You'd condemn yourself to death for something like that."

"Yes," said Ellini, leaning back in her seat. They had the coach to themselves, and this was doubtless due to Jack's influence. Stopping to pick up passengers would create too much uncertainty, too many opportunities for them to slip away. "Yes, all right. But it's because I can't imagine anything worse that I know we can't kill her. It's because the bond between us is so sacred that we couldn't condemn one of our number to death, no matter what she did. You said it yourself, Matthi, we're not perfect. What Anna did is just an extreme example of what you or I did. Besides, she's not right in the head."

"Yeah, and there's no way to make 'er right in the head. She's a risk to our girls as long as she lives. We'd 'ave to keep 'er locked away for the rest of 'er life if we didn't kill 'er. Which is the more merciful?"

This was a rhetorical question, of course. Every slave-girl knew which was the more merciful. Every one of them would rather have had their throat cut on the first day than go through what they went through. The friendships you made sustained you, but were not, in any sense, worth it. You would die for them now because... well, because that was the way things were, but you would give your life to have never met them, or to have met them somewhere else – at a dance, perhaps, or a tea-party. You would give your life to regard them as common acquaintances, without the closeness that shared suffering forced on you.

"You're right," said Ellini. "But I won't give up on her. I know that's not an answer-"

"-Or a plan," Matthi interjected.

"Or, as you say, a plan. But I won't give up on her. Anyway, we're not being hunted anymore. The master's dead, the gargoyles have been turned to stone. We have our own premises, and-"

"And Jack Cade to thank for it," said Matthi grimly.

Ellini sighed. "I do thank him. I will thank him. Just... give me time."