Jack had no time to enjoy his sudden immunity to Robin, because, within a matter of hours, his new worst nightmare turned up. 

Elliott Blake had been terrifying enough before: perfect in all the ways Jack was not perfect, tuneful and soulful and good – like a bloody Galahad who was after your Holy Grail. But now he'd added an extra weapon to his arsenal. He wanted Jack's help.

He turned up on the steps of the Faculty, asking for Jack and refusing to come in, very early on the morning after they'd spoken at the Academy. Jack came to the door in his dressing-gown, which made him feel vulnerable and somehow uncivilized, as if he was predestined to punch the boy by the state of his dress.

"I obviously know he's worse," said Elliott, as if they were resuming a conversation that had only been dropped five minutes ago. "Obviously a long campaign of family-murder is worse than a single stab-wound in the chest – worse for her, anyway. I was just incoherent with rage because you had the presumption to touch her."

Jack stepped back warily. He didn't want to speak in case he said something provocative. Fortunately, Elliott seemed happy to supply the conversation on his own.

"But she won't have you, will she?" he went on. "She won't have anyone, because she's determined to go to Edinburgh and fight this sorceress. And we're supposed to believe that he's her friend – that he's going to help her – even though he murdered her family, and the sorceress in question is his wife."

"Yes," said Jack, in a leaden voice. "That's about the size of it."

"Do you know he sabotaged the piano at the Academy? Someone's been in there with garden shears or something and cut all the strings!"

Jack thought about this. It was exactly what he would have done if he'd been desperate, and that was generally a good indicator of Robin's actions, but... "But Robin can't get in to the Academy," he pointed out. 

Elliott gave an affronted shrug. "So he's got someone on the inside – probably a slave-girl with a crush on him. You're the one who's equipped to fathom how his demented mind works – you tell me."

Jack ignored this. He wanted to be offended on behalf of his girls, though. He wanted to launch into a Danvers-like speech on their loyalty, and proclaim that they knew better than to listen to a handsome reprobate. But he had a good idea of Robin's charms, and of what his girls would do for a man who was clever enough to make them feel desirable again.

"I'm not saying it's impossible," he said, staring into space. "But they're loyal to each other – traditionally. They've had to be. It would take time to persuade one of them to betray her sisters, and Robin hasn't had time."

Elliott dismissed this objection with a wave of his hand. "He's planning something worse, I know it."

"Is Magda safe?"

The boy shook his head impatiently. "It's not just me he wants to hurt – it's her. Ellini. He feels like she's made a fool of him or something."

Jack's heart plummeted at this. That was Robin all over. He would need to find a way of re-establishing his power over her. How could he talk down to her, or be coolly amused at her antics, when she had slept with his worst enemy? When she had made him lose his composure? He would need to find some way of making her feel stupid, uncertain – making her feel like she needed him again.

"But she won't listen to reason," Elliott went on. "She keeps running away from me-"

Jack gave a dark chuckle. "Oh, she'll do that, yes."

"How can I make her stop?"

"You can't."

"You could," said Elliott, just as the door was beginning to close on him. Jack froze. The boy was looking as though he regretted his outburst, because he back-tracked a little, closing his eyes. "That is, if you weren't... who you are. And you hadn't – done what you did..."

"What are you here for?" said Jack. He felt as though cold realization was stealing over him one drip at a time. "What do you want from me?"

"Look," said Elliott. "It obviously doesn't matter which one of us she chooses, as long as she doesn't choose him, agreed? Only there are problems with each of us. I don't know her well enough, and you stabbed her through the chest. Now, the first of these situations can be amended, whereas-"

"You want me to help you understand her?" said Jack, mesmerised by the boy's audacity. "So that you can take her away-?"

"From Robin," he said quickly. "From Myrrha – from the threats to her life!"

"But also from me?"

"It's that or Robin."

"I refuse to believe," he said, half-laughing now, "that those are the only options! For starters, she would never-"

He stopped. No, he wasn't sure of that. She thought she deserved Robin, and her self-hatred had to be factored in to any prediction of her behaviour.

He wanted to say: 'But she loves me – she does. She gave me that night, and then the morning after. It's the reason why I can stand here on this step not killing you. It's the reason why Robin doesn't scare me anymore, why I can see him for what he is – just a rather sad, stabby pervert. It's the reason my scars sank back into my skin. Do you think all that happened just so that I could give up? But I'm worried and scared and desperate, and you know that, don't you, you bastard? You're counting on it.'

He closed his eyes tight and tried to hush his inner monologue. Elliott was speaking again.

"You'll never have her, Mr Cade. Of course she loves you – she'll always love you – but how could she ever trust you? How could she wake up next to you without fearing-?"

"You know what you have to do to get her, Elliott?" Jack snapped, taking a step forwards. "Keep your hands to yourself and play the fucking piano. That's not so hard, is it? You have to do one in order to do the other, yes?"

"Well, I can play exceptionally well one-handed, but-"

Jack shut the door in his face. He didn't know what else to do. All he could think was that he wasn't allowed to hit him, and that he had to remove himself, as fast as possible, from temptation.

But Elliott started hammering on the closed door. And Sarah was in the hall with a mop and bucket, ready to wash the front steps, wondering why he thought this well-bred American was such a problem.

Jack groaned and opened the door again.

"I was going to say 'but I take your point'," Elliott protested, red-faced.

"Do you? Could you take it somewhere else? China, perhaps?"

"I don't understand why this is so difficult for you. Don't you want what's best for her? She could have a new life with me. She could have peace, and music, and green mountains-"

"Come back tomorrow," said Jack, talking over him, because he didn't dare let him finish that sentence.

"Why?" said Elliott, partially mollified. "What's going to be different tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, I might not kill you. I can spend some time preparing myself. Today, you've taken me by surprise."

"You think I'm afraid of you?"

"No," said Jack, through clenched teeth. "I don't think you're afraid of me, that's the problem. If you were afraid of me, you might spend some time thinking about what you said before you said it, so as not to provoke me. Since you're not going to do that, I need to spend some time ensuring I don't get provoked. Come back tomorrow."

"Very well. But you're responsible for any mischief Robin gets up to in the meantime. I'll be rehearsing at the Turl Street Music Rooms tomorrow morning. You can drop in on me any time between nine and twelve."

Jack shut the door again. He leaned his back against it and closed his eyes, heart thudding in his mouth, until he heard Elliott's sullen footfalls on the steps. For a moment there, his vision had blurred – he had felt a sudden, sickening lurch of adrenaline – he had teetered on the edge of lunacy.

"You 'andled that well," Sarah ventured. She was leaning against the banister, with her mop and bucket in her hands, giving him an encouraging smile. 

Jack resisted the urge to dunk her head in the bucket, and went back upstairs to bed.

***

When he could finally bring himself to venture out, he headed for the sparring ring at The Six Bells, hoping to get all the punching out of his system. But the regular fighters perhaps recognized the look of murder in his eyes, and pretended they had colds, or injuries, or dinner engagements. He ended up pounding a sack of flour that had been hung in the outhouse as a makeshift punching bag. Some previous pugilist had drawn a face on it, but it simply didn't look enough like Elliott to satisfy Jack.

Why was he doing this, anyway? Why was he even thinking about going to see the boy tomorrow? He was not giving up on Ellini. He was not going to despair again. 

But if Elliott really could persuade her not to go after Myrrha... Of course, he'd have to play the whole time – all the way across the Atlantic until she was safely ensconced in Franconia, probably. But if he could...

Elliott exercised a morbid fascination over Jack anyway. He wanted to see exactly what he'd never be. He wanted to imagine the boy's future happiness. He wanted to hear that music again, even though it felt like a scalpel deftly picking at his chest.

In any case, he was at the bottom of the steps leading up to the Turl Street Music Rooms the next morning. This was an extra punishment, and one that he hadn't considered before now. Walking past these steps was hard enough, but climbing them would be like climbing up a waterfall. A waterfall that was pouring with blood and doing its best to sweep him off his feet.

And at the top was the perfect musician he would never be, and he was not allowed to punch him.

Besides, he ought to have been watching Robin, not Elliott. Robin was the disgruntled, knife-wielding maniac. But Robin was behaving like a model citizen. Jack had appointed some of his men to watch him, even before he'd heard about the sabotaged piano at the Academy, but their reports were reassuring to the point of boredom. He didn't hang around outside the Academy, he didn't meet with anyone except the Sahiba, he didn't send letters or telegrams or coded signals. Jack could almost believe he was doing it just to spite him.

He had hoped to find Elliott seated at the instrument, with his back to him. But he was standing up, pacing between the music stands which littered the room like bare, stubby trees. He seemed to have been waiting for Jack to arrive.

"What kept you?"

"A dogged instinct for self-preservation," Jack muttered.

When this met with nothing but a puzzled frown, he said, "I'm sorry, could you play? I think it might be easier if you played."

Still frowning suspiciously, Elliott sat down at the piano stool and flexed his fingers. He shifted them, and the notes fell like drops of water from a shaken tree – an effortless, rolling pitter-patter. 

Jack liked to see pianists putting some passion into their playing – he liked to see them wiping sweat from their brows, or letting it drip heedlessly onto the keys. He liked to hear them thumping away with the kind of desperation that suggested they were trying to resuscitate a dead loved one. Elliott's composure was unnerving.

"Okay, no, that's worse," he said, raising a hand to his temple. "Could we go back to silence?"

"I assume you mean 'could we go back to just talking'?" said Elliott. He swivelled round on his stool and looked at Jack. "You don't play anymore, do you? Why not?"

"Because now I kill people," said Jack briskly. "You can either play, or you can kill people. You can't do both."

"You think Franz Liszt never shot anybody?" said Elliott, leafing through the sheet-music on a nearby stand. "Who did you kill, then? Before you stopped being able to play the piano?"

"An innocent man, woman, and unborn child," said Jack. He tried to sound breezy as he said it, but there's only so much breeze you can get through clenched teeth.

"Were there extenuating circumstances?"

"Not extenuating enough."

"I see." Elliott continued to examine the sheet-music, infuriatingly composed. "So it's psychological, then? You can't play because you hate yourself?"

Jack didn't answer. His fingers were starting to curl into fists, so he shoved them into his pockets.

"Hold on," said Elliott, looking up. "I know this, don't I? She told me. She first fell in love with you when she saw you play at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. And then you came to Pandemonium when you'd been shot in a duel. Was that the innocent man?"

Jack grunted. It could have meant anything, but Elliott didn't seem to be listening in any case.

"So you found out she loved you for your playing and then you couldn't play anymore. Seems like you always knew you didn't deserve her."

Jack had a vivid mental image of seizing him by the hair and banging his head against the keys, making the most satisfying discord imaginable.

"And that's why you're here," said Elliott, with a slow-dawning smile. "That's why everything. That's why you thought she'd left you for Robin – that's why you agreed to forget her-"

And somehow the mental image was making itself come true. He could see himself walking forwards. He could see himself grasping Elliott by the hair and wrenching his head back.

In a desperate effort to avert the inevitable, Jack swung his other hand up and thumped the piano. Since this produced the desired clanking sound, and the desired release, he thumped it again and then again, spouting a stream of incoherent swear-words, until his knuckles were bleeding and numb.

Then pain and sound rushed in on him all at once, and he realized Elliott was shouting.

"-oing, you fucking barbarian, that's a fucking Steinway!"

And there seemed nothing else to do but laugh.

***

Later, when he thought about it, he realized that Elliott had been quite correct in his analysis. If he could only believe that he deserved Ellini – if he could only stop hating himself – he could be happy.

What would it take, he wondered, to convince himself he deserved her? How did you keep despair at bay? With a bloody great sword? With a fire-breathing dragon? How could you ever become even with the universe after you'd killed people? By saving more lives than you'd taken, as if it was a mere matter of numbers? Could you kill a child, say, and explain to its parents that you had saved the lives of hundreds of other children, so you were entitled to kill just the one?

No, murder was a debt you could never pay. You just had to learn to live with it. But how could you ask someone you loved to live with it? Someone you thought was perfect? Someone who had a chance to start a new life in a new country, with music so bewitching it could take all her pain away? 

Jack didn't have an answer. He tried telling himself that it was some measure of progress just to ask the question, but he wasn't really convinced.

That was why he endured Elliott's visits. He told the boy pointblank that he was never going to advise him on how to win Ellini over. He was not going to play Cyrano de Bergerac for anyone. 

"I'll help you with Robin, but I am not giving up on Ellini. For she had eyes, and chose me." 

Elliott glared out from behind his spectacles. "You know, a man who violently stabbed his loved one in the chest has no business quoting Othello." 

Jack couldn't help smiling at that, even though the sentiment stung.

In different circumstances, perhaps, he would have liked Elliott. For a young man taking lessons from a mass-murdering General, he was not in the least over-awed. He had a dry, wicked sense of humour, and a contempt for violence that reminded Jack of Alice Darwin. 

And he was quite at home with rudeness. Jack even got the impression that it reassured him. He bore little resemblance to that charming, socially-graceful sister.

But in his way, he was just as clever and persistent as her. He had a quiet way of getting exactly what he wanted from his visits to the Faculty. He would pretend to be interested in Robin's murderous habits, and then gently steer the conversation towards Ellini. 

"Is that why she shrinks away from affectionate gestures? Because Robin made so many?" 

Jack paused in his pacing of the Faculty Lounge. He knew exactly what Elliott was doing, but he couldn't stop himself from answering. His urge to criticize the boy was just too great. 

"Well, anyone with an ounce of common sense would know that you don't go grabbing the hand of a woman who's been violently abused when she's not expecting it," he retorted. "Besides, it suggests you're not in control. That's why you don't say things like you're dying for her, or she's driving you crazy. That is exactly what she's afraid of." 

Elliott leaned forwards in his chair. "But if I can't – that is, if someone couldn't show her how they felt, or tell her how they felt, wouldn't it take forever for her to notice them?" 

Jack blinked. "It could take a while, I suppose. So what?" 

"I can't wait-"

"You're twenty four!" Jack wailed, unable to contain himself. "You can wait! At twenty-four, waiting is just about all you can do – wait for time and experience to turn you into less of a dickhead."

Elliott regarded him in stony silence for a moment. "You think this going well, don't you?"

Jack scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "It's not going well, because I am here to tell you about Robin, not Ellini. It is going well, because I haven't hit you yet." 

"You set yourself such low standards," said the boy. "No wonder you gave up the piano."

"Okay," said Jack brightly, hitching his face up into a smile. "Let's pick this up again tomorrow, shall we?"