Day by day, Jack became accepted at Pandemonium. Robin took to calling him 'golden boy' because everybody seemed to like him. No one was interested in his past, except to shake their heads and decry the misfortune of his being raised among humans.

And it wasn't until his second month at Pandemonium that anyone stumbled close to his deepest, darkest, dearest memory.

It was one of those calm-but-tense evenings after a training session, when Robin's face was still flushed with exertion, and his eyes hadn't quite lost their bloodthirsty gleam.

He tended to take out his long-handled knife at moments like these, turning it this way and that to watch the play of light on the blade. Some of the men in the barracks said it talked to him.

Tonight, he had taken Jack to the armoury to show him the weapons they'd be training with next week. It was just a long corridor really, lined with sword racks and suits of armour every few yards. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, filling the space with shadowy movement, giving the weapons a burnished, treasure-trove gleam.

Robin sat down on a bench beneath a rack of sabres, but Jack didn't follow him. His muscles were screaming with fatigue, but Robin seemed a touch too quiet—too casual—to be trusted. Maybe the lesson wasn't quite over yet.

"By the way," said Robin, taking out his knife with a practised flourish. "You think I don't remember you. I do."

He was angling his knife so the reflected light from the torches glinted off his teeth. He had to be doing that on purpose. It was more showmanship, just like the genealogist sweeping into his low, bone-creaking bow. Still, it was effective. Jack had to work hard to keep his voice even, his shoulders low and level.

"I should hope so," he said, hovering next to the sabres in case he needed to pull one out at short notice. "We were only introduced a month ago."

"But being introduced isn't the same as meeting someone," Robin muttered. "Is it?"

Jack didn't say anything. He thought he knew what was coming, but he couldn't decide how bad it would be. In theory, he didn't mind Robin knowing that they'd met before. The story didn't cast either of them in a good light, but it wasn't a tragedy. Far from it.

He just wasn't sure what Robin was going to make of it. He could picture him misunderstanding everything, in that brilliant but demented way of his.

"Where did you say you grew up?" Robin asked casually. "Camden?"

"Cheapside."

"But it's close, isn't it?"

Robin picked up a whetstone and dragged it across the blade of his knife. It made a thirsty ringing sound that set Jack's teeth on edge.

"I met Ellini about ten years ago," he said. "You've probably heard the story by now. But there's a bit at the end that people don't talk about so often. After I killed her family, she took shelter in the convent attached to St. Michael's Church in Camden. Do you know it?"

Jack tried to heave his shoulders into a shrug. "Slightly."

"I was at the end of my rope, golden boy, I don't mind telling you. I'd been—" He stopped, as if he was searching for the right word. "—fascinated with her for six months by that point, and the sight of her in a nun's habit was more than I could handle."

Jack said nothing. He wanted to say, 'No, she wasn't wearing a nun's habit—or anyway, not the headgear. Her hair was loose and flowing down her back. How could you forget a detail like that?'

"Seems it was more than other people could handle too," Robin went on, "because I found some drunk and his kid peering in at her through the church windows when she was praying in the middle of the night. I drove the man's head through the window, but the child was a strange one. Doesn't look away while I'm beating up his dad. Watches it with a kind of thirsty look, as if he's impatient for the bloodshed. That look is how I recognized you, golden boy. I didn't have much else to work with. You were a bag of bones back then, tanned all over with bruises. You've gone up in the world since, but you still get that look in your eyes whenever there's a fight on the cards."

"What happened next?" said Jack, as if he didn't know.

Robin seemed unsettled for a moment. Perhaps he'd been expecting pleading or excuses. He was certainly dragging this out as if he thought it would be slow torture for Jack to hear it. But he shifted his shoulders and settled back into his nonchalant pose.

"I haul the drunk and his kid inside. Ellini tries to tell me she doesn't know either of them. Says she's been locked up in a convent for two weeks and hasn't had time for any romantic assignations. She really didn't know them, I think, but I couldn't grasp that idea at the time. After all, convent walls wouldn't stop a determined lover. They didn't stop me."

He stopped and looked up, as if daring Jack to point out how demented that was. Still, Jack said nothing.

"Well, I can't let them live. I've seen how far men will follow Ellini, once she catches their eye. Besides, I can see how scared she is by this time. I know I can make her eyes wider, her breathing faster. I can't resist it."

The light from Robin's knife wobbled, as if his hands were shaking. "I shoot the old man in the head, but she grabs the child and throws him into some back room behind the altar. Then she slams the door shut and leans against it, trying to persuade me that the kid is harmless, that he isn't going to grow up to come after us."

Moving in tiny increments, Jack leaned back against the rack of sabres and reached a hand behind him to grasp one of the weapons by the handle. It couldn't be long now before Robin snapped.

"I wouldn't have been fooled," Robin went on, "but then she tries to attack me on a different front. Says she wants me—wants me to take her away right now, and there's no time for slaughtering children. There's no time for anything except our love. That got to me, as you might imagine. And so, the child survived."

Jack looked back at him, perfectly expressionless. He was scared, of course. The light from Robin's knife was trembling on his forehead. But more than that, he was amazed—amazed that Robin had missed the most crucial detail of the scene, amazed that something which had meant so much to him could be skipped over in Robin's mind.

She hadn't just flung Jack into the room behind the altar as if she was trying to sweep him out of sight. She had folded him up in a kind of panicky embrace—pressed his head to her chest and told him not to look while his father was being shot.

It was the first time he could remember being held by someone.

He couldn't have told her that he wanted to see his father getting shot. He couldn't have explained that William Cade was a child-beating drunk who deserved everything he was getting.

She thought he was innocent. And for the first time in his life, he had wanted to be.

He remembered trying to turn his head, but her hair had fallen over his face like a curtain and prevented him from seeing William's body hit the floor. It was just the darkness, and somebody holding him.

When she had let him go, he'd looked at her face, rather than the dead body. He could see the dead body reflected in her eyes, but that didn't interest him anymore. The strangeness of being held had overcome all the fear, even the curiosity. She was staring straight ahead, registering no more than mild surprise at the atrocity she'd just witnessed. And some of his father's blood had spattered across her forehead.

He would always remember that. He wasn't even sure why it was important, as an image. He just knew that it had changed everything.

"So, I just want to know one thing," said Robin, getting up from his seat and letting the knife hang loosely in his fingers. "Are you here for her, or for revenge?"

"Neither," said Jack, before he could stop himself. The question was so stupid—it was such a Robin-like interpretation of the facts. Hadn't he looked at them? Hadn't he seen the cruelty in William's face? And the desperation in Jack's?

"You said I was a bag of bones, tanned all over with bruises. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why? You think I'd come here to avenge that meathead? The orphan asylum they threw me into wasn't much, but it was better than being Bill Cade's punching bag."

Robin tilted his head, as if he hadn't considered this. But Jack didn't loosen his hold on the sabre. He knew what was coming next.

"So, you're here for her?"

"No," said Jack, being careful to meet his eyes without flinching. "I was eight years old! How could her curse work on an eight-year-old?"

"I've seen it do stranger things, believe me."

Jack still didn't look away. The truth was, he would have come after Ellini sooner if he'd known she was here. Once he'd got out of the orphan asylum, finding the nameless woman who had shown him tenderness for the first time in his life had been one of his highest priorities. But he hadn't known where to find her, hadn't even known her name. Locating her had been such a long, slow, painstaking process that he was half-convinced she had been the one to find him.

"I was wandering the Edinburgh hills half-dead," he protested. "I had a bullet wound in my stomach! Does that sound like something I'd engineer just so I could come after your girlfriend?"

Robin snapped so suddenly that Jack didn't even have time to raise the sabre. He was driven back against the sword-rack, his arm twisted behind him, feeling the prickle of Robin's knife against his throat. It was uncomfortably warm, as if it was a living thing.

"So why didn't you mention any of this?" Robin snarled. "Why didn't you tell us you were that boy?"

"Because I thought you might react like this?" Jack suggested.

Robin's rage flickered for a second. He was surprised. Jack saw his lips move uncertainly, as if he was tempted to laugh. But then the snarl was back in place.

"Why not tell Ellini, then? She doesn't know."

"Why haven't you told Ellini?" Jack demanded.

"Because she'd feel sorry for y—"

There was a strange moment, where Robin seemed to see his own answer echoed in Jack's eyes. For that second, they understood each other—probably more than either of them had ever wanted to. Robin wouldn't tell Ellini because he didn't want her to feel sorry for Jack, and Jack wouldn't tell Ellini because he didn't want her to feel sorry for Jack. He wanted her love, but not that way. He never wanted to be that helpless bag of bones in her mind.

Jack felt the knife turn cold against his skin. Robin drew it away, his shoulders slumping. He looked as though he would have liked to laugh, but he didn't have the energy.

"I like you," he said faintly, replacing the knife in his jacket. "I can't help it."

"Good," said Jack, rubbing the raw, raised skin where the knife had dug into his neck.

"It won't stop me killing you when I need to," Robin added.

"You won't need to. You saved me from that bastard. All the amazing things that have happened to me since have happened because of you."

"You might not be glad they did," said Robin. "In the end."