Mari Lloyd was still sitting composedly behind her desk. You could almost believe she hadn't moved since the previous evening.

Where Ellini had dressed up, Miss Lloyd had dressed down. She was wearing a dressing-gown over her night clothes, as though she had scarcely considered this contest worth staying out of bed for. Her hair was hanging loose – although 'hanging' implied more gravity than it really had. It was drifting loose, like bright red seaweed.

She had placed a chess set on the desk between them, in what Ellini suspected was a satirical gesture – a reminder that this was hardly a cool, logical battle of wits.

Ellini didn't mind. It would be good to have something to fix her eyes on besides Mari Lloyd's scornful, sunshine face. And it was a lovely chess set: ivory and mahogany, with gilt inlay. Her head was so full of the Brothers Grimm that she imagined the pieces as parts of the stories she'd been reading that day. That rook was Rapunzel's tower – that knight was the severed horse's head which had revealed the Goose Girl's identity when she herself had been unable to speak out.

Mari Lloyd saw her looking at the board, and mistook her curiosity for professional interest. "Do you play, Miss Syal?"

"No," said Ellini, with a nervous smile. "My father and sister did, though. I used to sit with them and make up stories about their game. Each piece was a character, even the pawns. Sometimes they got so involved that they tried not to capture the pieces they'd become attached to. They said it added an extra challenge to the game."

"That's sweet," said Miss Lloyd, although she didn't seem to have been listening.

Ellini was relieved. She couldn't imagine why she'd said that. It was the first time she'd mentioned her father in six years, and she never spoke about Sita. 'Sita' was too painful a word to hold in her mouth. She felt as though she was unravelling.

Well, unravel into the story, she told herself. That way, no-one will notice.

Mari Lloyd clapped her hands together briskly. "Well? How do we begin this transformation combat? Should we cut our palms open and shake hands? Or will saliva be sufficient?"

Ellini gave her a wan smile. "There's no need to be scornful, madam. You're the one who routinely casts spells on your friends and acquaintances. As you well know, having read everything I've read, we simply curtsy to each other and promise to take the consequences."

Mari Lloyd got up and bobbed her a swift, contemptuous curtsy. "At my school, we bow," she said, sitting down again. "It's so much more dignified."

Ellini sank into an extra-deep curtsy just to infuriate her. She suddenly realized that Miss Lloyd hated magic – that she burned at the indignity of muttering incantations and reciting the names of demons. She would have expected this from a scientist, but Miss Lloyd was a classical scholar.

"There are plenty of sorceresses in ancient Greek literature," she said, following this train of thought. "Myrrha strikes me as rather like Circe. Turning men into beasts."

"She only made their outsides match their inside," said Miss Lloyd.

"Are women not also animals? Mr Darwin seems to think we are."

In fact, Darwin and his fellow scientists seldom mentioned females, except as objects of desire. They were thought to be pleasantly immune to desire themselves. Ellini wondered that no woman had thought to correct them there. Unless it was just her – unless it was her own demonic heritage and questionable morals that made her want men.

"We're less beastly animals," said Mari Lloyd.

"Less obvious ones, perhaps."

And suddenly, Ellini did feel like a beast – one that had scented blood. Mari Lloyd hated magic. She could win this.

"I've chosen the theme for our story," said Mari, with a haughty sniff. "As the hostess, I can do that, yes? I choose the theme and you choose the first line?"

Ellini nodded.

"Then the theme is the beastliness of man."

"Man as in mankind, or man as in men?"

"We'll see where the story takes us," she said, with great dignity. "What is the first line?"

Ellini turned her gaze back to the chess board. "Once upon a time, there was a young couple who were in love."

Mari Lloyd rolled her eyes – but with a slight smile, as though she had been expecting this.

"Very well," she said. "Once upon a time, there was a young couple who were in love. They knew nothing about the world, or each other. They weren't even sixteen. But their heads had been filled with fatuous stories, and they fancied themselves made for one another. The man was called..." She looked around for inspiration, until her eyes lighted on a book in the case beside her desk. "Kai. That's a typical fairytale name, isn't it? If Hans Christian Andersen didn't turn up his nose at it, why should we? What shall we call the woman, Miss Syal? Helen?"

Ellini cast around for something else. She couldn't stand Helen, for obvious reasons, and she knew Miss Lloyd had only chosen the name to exasperate her.

"Chandrakala," she said. It had been Sita's middle name. "That means 'little moonbeam'."

Mari Lloyd tilted her head impassively and motioned for Ellini to continue.

"Kai and Kala, the townsfolk called them," said Ellini. "They were born within an hour of each other, and were always to be found hand-in-hand along the forest tracks, or in the town square, sitting on the lip of the fountain. As the years passed, Kai grew into a fine young man, and Chandrakala into a dark and elegant beauty, but they were still always hand-in-hand."

Mari snorted. "Now, this Chandrakala had a brain in her head, but no idea what to do with it. From her childhood, she had been taught – by Kai as well as others – that women had no purpose in life but to love men, so her only ambition was to marry."

"She wanted to marry Kai," said Ellini, taking advantage of the first pause, "but he had no money, and her family was so poor that they had little choice but to marry Chandrakala to a rich man. She was the eldest of seven sisters, her mother was dead, and her father was only a poor woodcutter. And when a fat, florid merchant saw her at market and took a liking to her, they promised him he could marry her on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. That gave Kai just over six months to amass a fortune greater than the merchant's."

"So, of course, he bundled his meagre possessions into a sack, slung it over his shoulder, and left town to seek his fortune," said Mari, dripping scorn, "because his head was full of the aforementioned stories. He expected to trick a miserly dwarf out of his gold, or save a king's daughter and be given half the kingdom – when, in reality, he was far more likely to come home with leprosy than with a fortune. Meanwhile, Chandrakala, who had twice his brains, had to sit at home and twiddle her thumbs."

"As you say," said Ellini, "being a woman, she had no options. She was forced to stay at home and hope that Kai would save her from a terrible fate."

"Or condemn her to an equally terrible one if he succeeded."

Ellini didn't endorse this comment, but she didn't contradict it. Neither of them were qualified to speculate on what the happy ending was really like. They had both been denied it by some interfering woman trying to teach them a lesson. The only difference was, Mari Lloyd had learned her lesson, and Ellini had refused.

"So Kai trudged along the muddy roads for two weeks," she said, "sleeping anywhere he could find shelter, eating whatever he could forage, or whatever his fellow travellers would share, until he came to the capital city. Once there, he found that some kind of festival was going on. It seemed that the Queen had acquired a beautiful diamond – bigger than the Koh-i-Noor, or Mr Collins's Moonstone-"

"Hah," said Mari Lloyd. "Rank sensationalism!"

"It was as big as a human heart," Ellini went on, ignoring the interruption, "and clear as the cleanest chunk of ice. The Queen was offering to give it away to anyone who could show her something equally pure and precious. Merchants and dignitaries were arriving from all over the world, with saffron and cinnamon, silks from China, rubies from Afghanistan. One had even brought a pure white tiger – snowy and stripeless, with sapphire eyes. The Queen admired them all, but still declared that her diamond was the most precious."

"Oh, I see where you're going with this," said Mari. Her tone was a little less bored now. "Kai goes to her, doesn't he? And says he doesn't have any gold or jewels, but he has true love, and that's the most precious thing of all?"

Ellini didn't smile, but her heart exulted. The woman was actually asking her how the story was supposed to go! She motioned courteously for Mari to continue.

"The Queen listened to all his tedious descriptions of his love for Chandrakala – platitudes that could have come straight out of a book, if he'd ever read any – and said that this would indeed be very precious if it were so, but she would have to put it to the test. If he could prove his love was as pure as he said, she would give him the diamond."

"So the Queen transformed him into a dark, towering beast," said Ellini. "Somewhere between a wolf and a bear, with grey-black fur and amber eyes. She put the diamond on his collar to remind him of their bargain, and led him by a gold chain back to Chandrakala."

She paused to give Miss Lloyd a chance to speak. She knew she had wasted her turn on atmospheric details, but she couldn't help it. She was enjoying herself too much. She could see the beast with the jewel on his collar, and all thoughts of the contest had to take second-place.

"All this would have been fine fairytale fare if he was simply a beast on the outside," said Mari. "But he was a beast in mind and manners as well as appearance. The Queen explained to Chandrakala – while he snarled and scratched the furniture – that all men were beasts in essence. They couldn't help it. They were driven by animal impulses. And there was nothing really wrong with that. The wrongness was in what they pretended to be, the lies they told women about constancy and faithfulness. She said if they could prove her wrong – if they could share a true love's kiss while he was in his bestial form – then the spell would be broken, and Chandrakala could have Kai as well as the diamond."

"She listened quietly and respectfully," said Ellini. "She was not filled with the same confidence as Kai, but it was obvious that things had gone too far to be called off now. Besides, she was talking to a Queen. She thanked her humbly, and led Kai to a shelter at the back of the garden where her father kept his log-piles dry. But he didn't know her – he couldn't love her-"

"She spent months trying to tame him," Mari put in eagerly. "Stroking him, feeding him, talking to him, showing a gentle face when he snarled and scratched her. Meanwhile, he did what beasts do. He rutted with female beasts, he bit her loving hand when he was hungry or out of temper, he disappeared for days at a time and came back with fleas."

"And yet, for all that, she pitied him," said Ellini, as eager as Mari, in her own way. "There was something so poignant in his eyes. Perhaps it was nothing more than the ghost of the ideals that had once animated him-"

"It was nothing more than that," Mari retorted.

"But she could spend hours looking into those eyes, wondering if there was some kind of trapped humanity staring back at her."

"But then there came a day when this foolish contemplation made her vulnerable," said Mari. "He didn't like the way she was looking at him, perhaps – or he was hungry, or simply bored. Either way, he threw her to the ground and snapped at her ankles, and Chandrakala knew he was going to kill her. Now, any other fairytale heroine would have let her lover claw her to pieces – they would have been faithful and gentle to the end. But this girl wanted to live. Besides, she was tired of her thankless treatment. So she took her father's axe and buried it deep in her lover's chest."

Mari left that sentence vibrating significantly in the air – just like the axe – and motioned for Ellini to continue. Perhaps she thought it was a cruel thing to do, but Ellini leapt at the chance.

"As soon as he was dead, the Queen appeared to reclaim her diamond," she said. "In the horrible confusion of the moment, Chandrakala could only remember her duty, and knelt down before the Queen in a puddle of blood. She flinched, but didn't raise her head, as it soaked into her skirts."

"But the Queen was kindly," said Mari Lloyd. "She lifted the girl's head and told her not to despair. She had not lost a jewel, but gained one. That jewel was knowledge of the true nature of man. It was the only thing as precious as her diamond – as she had always known. The Queen then offered Chandrakala a job in her great library, cataloguing and restoring ancient manuscripts. She said she would pay Chandrakala a wage, which could feed her family and prevent her having to marry that fat merchant. And she took Kai's body away and made a beautiful, sable coat from the fur, to remind Chandrakala of her triumph over the beastliness of man."

Ellini stared at her. It would have been quite an impressive ending if it hadn't been for that last detail. A little insensitive to Chandrakala's feelings, perhaps, to assume she'd be worried about the loss of the diamond when she had just axed her lover to death. But nevertheless, it was neat, it was moral, it called back to the theme. She had read many a fairytale with worse endings than that.

But what a detail she had finished on! Could she really think Chandrakala would want to wear her ex-lover's skin? In triumph? If it hadn't been for that vindictive little flourish, she would have won. As it was, she had lit a path to her own annihilation. And since there was no thunderclap, or divine hand coming down from the sky to take away Ellini's magic, she cleared her throat and resumed.

"Over the years, Chandrakala became very learned, and was renowned for her wisdom. She could study where and what she pleased, get out of bed when she chose, and generally live to suit her own convenience. She was happy among her books, but whenever she had to go among people, she couldn't help being uneasy. They were all Kai turned inside out. On the outside, she saw the civilized ideals, and on the inside, she saw the beast. She couldn't believe in anyone anymore. She couldn't trust them. And she realized that all she had really learned, in her years of study, was how to see the beast. If that knowledge was a jewel, it was one that carried a curse, just like the Koh-i-noor. Every bearer would end up dead, or worse than dead. So she wore the coat of sable fur – but not to revel in her triumph over the beastliness of man. She wore it to keep out the cold."

Ellini had been keeping her eyes on the chess board, but she saw a movement from Mari – perhaps a stifled shudder – out of the corner of her eye. And when she looked up, there was something like recognition on her face. Of course, Ellini thought, they were both Chandrakala, weren't they? They both had to battle with the cold.

Mari opened her mouth to say something scornful and clever, but no words came out.

She tried again. She clutched her throat. Her lips were forming the outline of the words – the sinews in her neck were straining – but no sound emerged. She couldn't even scream.

"Oh dear," said Ellini.

Mari opened her mouth in a snarl – if there could be such a thing as a silent snarl. Then she leapt onto the desk, scattering chess pieces, and made a grab for Ellini's throat.

Ellini fell back in her chair, rolled over, and staggered to her feet, pulling her skirts away from the woman's flailing fingers. "It might only be temporary-"

Mari Lloyd dived for her legs and tackled her to the floor. Ellini grabbed for the book-case on her way down, and pulled a shower of heavy, leather-bound volumes on top of them. But Mari swatted them away like mosquitos, scratching at Ellini's face, snapping the buttons off her dress. It was quite frightening, being attacked in perfect silence, with only the rasp of heavy breathing and your own feeble protests to accompany you.

Eventually, Mari got a decent handful of Ellini's collar, lifted her head, and hammered it against the floor.

It didn't occur to Ellini to fight back. This was too civilized a place, too absurd a situation. She wanted to remind Mari Lloyd that she had an ornamental garden on the premises, that she and her teachers read a novel a week and met up in the evenings to discuss it.

She wrestled free, got to her feet, and backed away again, until she came to rest against the long glass case. "Miss Lloyd, this is beneath you..."

That turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

Miss Lloyd leapt for her, grabbed her by the hair, and drove her head into the glass. Ellini tried to protest – tried to remind her how old and precious the scroll was – but the shattering glass was too loud. And in any case, there was blood in her mouth.

She kicked backwards and managed to scythe Mari's legs out from under her. She fell to the side, hit her head against the desk, and then collapsed in a heap of skirts and disordered red hair. It took a long time for the hair to settle, but when it did, there was no movement at all. No sound of running footsteps from the genteel school-mistresses. No more thudding books or tinkling glass.

Ellini leaned against the wreckage of the glass case and tried to catch her breath. But the sight of the scroll – spangled with blood and bits of glass – just made her nausea worse, so she knelt down where she wouldn't have to look at it.

As soon as she felt able to, she went to Mari Lloyd and rolled her over. There was a little bloom of blood on her temple, as if she had tucked a red flower behind her ear. But she was alive – the first Wylie to have survived an encounter with her – and Ellini wanted it to stay that way. Head wounds could be tricky, as she herself was probably going to discover later tonight, so she shouldn't be left alone.

She rang the tea-bell and then fled, hoping against hope that she wouldn't run into any teachers or servants on the way out. She made her way to the square, following the sound of music, occasionally smearing the nearby walls with bloody handprints. She knew she was walking unsteadily – she knew there was blood streaming down the side of her face and soaking into her collar – but this was Northaven, wasn't it? If they accepted luminous skin, surely a bloody face wouldn't be worth remarking on?

If she hadn't hit her head so many times, she would have thought it odd that she didn't knock into anyone. She staggered a few times, but the people she was sure she was going to collide with were never there when she fell. Nor did anyone offer to help her up again. It was as though she was in her own magical charmed circle. There was a circumference around her that no-one seemed to want to cross.

She went to Robin's room before tidying herself up. She knew he would look smug when he saw her bedraggled appearance. She knew he would take great pleasure in telling her that she looked a mess, and that he had told her Mari Lloyd would be violent. But she wanted to boast that the woman was still alive – that she hadn't needed to resort to the thuggish techniques he had taught her – although they had come in handy, in the end.

She also wanted to hint that she couldn't have been obsessed with Jack's imminent arrival, because she had been able to spare the mental room to take part in a story-telling contest, and win it. Clearly, he was not that important to her. Clearly, she could be trusted not to faint or burst into tears or set fire to the furniture when she saw him.

Robin's door was ajar, and there was light spilling round it, but she still knocked, because he would be twice as smug if she walked in on him in a state of undress. When he didn't answer, she peeped round the door, eyes half-closed, until she was satisfied there was no naked man in sight.

Odd for him to have left the lamp on. And left his door unlocked. Perhaps he was in the bathroom, planning to walk out naked and then look at her as though she was the one who had engineered this situation. It was probably best to get in and out as soon as possible.

Happy that she was clear-headed enough to strategize like this, she went in and fumbled about on his dressing-table for iodine and gauze. Her reflection was dimly visible in the mirror in front of her. It moved in an odd, underwater way that she didn't feel responsible for.

She found a piece of card on top of the box that housed his long-handled knife, and was on the point of tossing it away when she realized her name was written on it.

The writing was familiar. She didn't know why it was familiar. Jack had never written her letters. She wasn't sure, now she came to think about it, that she had ever seen him write anything at all. But that didn't matter. She knew his hand because she knew his hands. They had traced out loving patterns on her back in the middle of the night. They had cupped her breasts. They had lifted her chin to pull her in for a kiss. They had driven an arrow through her chest. When someone's hands had meant that much to you, the squiggles they made on a piece of paper could never be entirely mysterious.

It said:

Come and get him then, if he's so important to you. The warehouse at the end of Cantonment Walk. Bring your finest explanations.

Ellini lowered the card and focused instead on her reflection in the mirror.

"Oh dear," she said again.