Jack went back to the Academy and strolled around outside the ring of gargoyles. He half-suspected that Mathilde's hostility to him would mean he was uninvited, and wouldn't be able to push past the statues, but he was too afraid of being right to give it a try. He didn't want to be one of those male intruders who gawped in at the girls and wasn't welcome.

Eventually, he saw Danvers and Elsie climbing Headington Hill, arm-in-arm. Elsie had her face turned up to the weak, wintery sunlight, as if she was enjoying the feel of it on her skin, and Danvers was trying to tug her shawl tighter about her neck and shoulders.

Jack watched them for a moment, with the same feeling of surreal envy he had felt all those months ago, when Danvers had spoken to Elsie about having a picnic breakfast by the river. Imagine having someone you loved on your arm, and planning days out with them, in complete innocence of the hordes of men who would conspire to take her away from you. Imagine being so boring and respectable that no-one would glance twice at you, and you could live out your life in peace.

It was a momentary thing. He had never wanted a quiet life. Not really. Even now that he was dizzy, shivering, short of breath, and fairly sure he would have to compete with a man who was perfect for Ellini, he was excited. Or anxious. Or angry. Or all three. Either way, the idea of a quiet life did not appeal. Sitting down and doing what he was told was unthinkable.

They spotted him – well, Danvers spotted him, and whispered urgently to Elsie, and soon they were both running. One end of Elsie's shawl slipped off her shoulders and trailed behind her like the tail of a comet.

"Thank goodness," Danvers panted, when they were face-to-face. "We've just been to the Faculty. They said you were horribly injured-"

"Is he all right?" said Elsie, pawing anxiously at Danvers's coat. "Is he dying? What does he look like?"

"Well... well," said Danvers. There was a moment where his tact battled with his honesty, but the honesty won out. "Um. Perhaps not well. Perhaps a little white and shaken. But he looks whole, Elsie. I can't see any scars."

"They're under the shirt and neck-tie," said Jack helpfully.

"But what happened?" Elsie insisted. "The doctor said you had dozens of knife-wounds, but Miss Marron said she didn't touch you. She said she made a point of not touching you."

"Can we go somewhere darker?" said Jack, shaking his head to try and ward off the volley of questions.

"What an extraordinary request!" said Danvers. "Why do you want to be somewhere dark?"

"Because I want to go stargazing."

There was a manhole at the end of the street. Jack seized Elsie's arm and dragged her towards it – which, of course, dragged Danvers too, because it would take a crowbar to separate them.

He bent down and lifted the manhole cover, while Danvers spluttered over this unusual behaviour. 

"What on earth are you doing?"

There was a pause, in which Jack motioned courteously to the uncovered grate, and then the spluttering recommenced. 

"You don't mean – you can't mean for us to go down there? It's far too damp and cold, and Elsie's clothes would be ruined, and what would people say?"

There was a splash beside him, and then a happy, echoing voice. "Come and see, Mr Danvers – it must go on for miles! It's like another city under the city!"

Danvers glared at Jack.

"Come and tell me what it looks like," she went on. "It smells fascinating!"

"For heaven's sake, stay where you are and don't touch anything until I've made sure it's safe," said Danvers. "There could be rats, or broken glass, or loose bricks," he added, with another accusing glance at Jack.

"It's very safe," Jack protested. "I go down there all the time."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Danvers rolled up his shirt-sleeves and lowered himself down beside Elsie. The water was only ankle-deep, and there were dry ledges, like pavements, on either side of the tunnel. By the time Jack had joined them, Danvers had pulled Elsie onto one of these ledges, and was busy emptying the water out of her boots.

"Now will you kindly explain what this is all about?" He paled slightly, and added, "I say, Jack, are you still delirious from the fever? And where have you been? The doctor says you'll suffer a relapse if you go wandering about the city."

Jack sighed. He would have to explain. They had more questions than Martha and Poppy, and they, too, insisted on repeating his name over and over again, until he wasn't sure what it meant anymore. This was worse than being strapped to the operating table, enduring the grave, reproachful gaze of Sergei and Sam. At least he had deserved that. But Elsie could make it better – at any rate, for a moment or two.

"I want to see the North Star," he said to her, ignoring Danvers. "Is it still there?"

"Of course," said Elsie. "It's always there."

"Show me."

She started to unbutton the bodice of her dress, which caused Danvers to splutter himself into incoherence. "What are you-? How could you-? Elsie, this is un-... un-"

"Unseemly?" Jack suggested. "Unconscionable? Unacceptable? Unspeakable?"

"You're unspeakable," Danvers snapped.

"It's all right, Mr Danvers," said Elsie, with what Jack considered to be the patience of a saint. "He just wants to see the lights on my skin."

Down here, it was easy to see them. Little clusters were twinkling on her cheeks like a blush. As she unbuttoned, Danvers turned his face away. This surprised Jack, because it had never occurred to him to look at Elsie like that. She was a sweet little girl or a supernatural goddess, but never a woman to be desired. And then he wondered whether he had looked at anybody like that in the last seven months, and whether he still remembered how.

"I told you," Elsie went on, oblivious to their discomfort, "the star over my heart represents my mother, and it never moves. It's always with me, just like she is." She pulled her dress away from her breastbone, and there it was, twinkling at the top of her corset, under the diaphanous fabric of her chemise. It didn't move, but it didn't seem lifeless either. It pulsed brighter and fainter as though it had some kind of signal to relay.

Jack's heart swelled and then slowed. He didn't know what he had been afraid of, but the steady twinkle soothed his fears.

"Can you tell anything about her?" he asked, his voice suddenly breathy and raw. "Can you tell how she is? What she's feeling?"

"She's very sad," said Elsie. "I can feel it at the centre of me, like a cold current in a warm pool."

"How long has she been sad?"

"I don't know – two nights?"

"Since I almost died?" he asked, without much hope.

"I don't know."

"Am I missing something?" said Danvers peevishly. "Why are you talking as though she's...still with us?"

"I've been trying to tell both of you," said Elsie, with a squelchy stamp of her foot. "She's not really gone. I can't explain it, I just know it."

"Elsie, what are you saying? How could she possibly be alive?"

"I'm not saying 'alive'. I'm just saying 'not dead'."

Jack kept his eyes fixed on the star and let their bickering wash over him. Its calm, constant twinkle was soothing, and yet it also woke him up, made him aware of the sensations of his body, when he'd been spending the past few days trying to drown them out. The pain from his injuries was a dull, repetitive ache, as if someone was trying to beat him into shape with a hammer. Suddenly, the bravado drained out of him, and he staggered against the tunnel wall.

"I say, Jack," said Danvers, reaching out a hand to steady him. "Are you sure you should be out of bed?"

"Bed?" said Jack, through gritted teeth. "He strapped me to the operating table."

"I'm sure he had a good reason," said Danvers diplomatically. "In that case, how did you get out?"

"I spent five tedious years in that place. I can pick every lock, open every safe, wriggle out of every restraint, and squeeze through every window. I can tell you how many blades of grass there are in each painting. I know where Sergei keeps his Schnapps, where Alice keeps her wedding-ring, and where you hid the housekeeping money."

"And yet you never stole any," said Danvers. He flushed, as if he'd made an embarrassing admission, and said, "I – er – was keeping track. Just to be on the safe side."

"What would have been the point?" said Jack. "What would I have spent it on?"

This desolate tone of voice seemed to alarm Danvers even more than the staggering. "Perhaps we could finish this conversation in a more salubrious place?" he suggested. "I'm sure some fresh air would do you good."

Jack shrugged – and even this small action was wearying beyond belief. His shoulders seemed to weigh as much as grand pianos.

"That tunnel comes out near Folly Bridge," he muttered, pointing into the gloom.

"Capital!" said Danvers, in a tone of brisk, forced cheer. "We can get Elsie some clean clothes at the coaching inn. The landlady there is one of her – uh – devotees, shall we say?"

Jack didn't know what Danvers was trying to tactfully avoid saying there, and he was too tired to speculate. He let Elsie tow him down the tunnel. She was sympathetically silent, but he wondered if there was something else behind her quietness. Did she suspect Ellini was alive – really alive? Would he have to tell her? Come to think of it, there was something she could do – something they could both do – for Ellini. It probably wouldn't induce her to forgive him, but it could make life easier on everyone.

When they got out into the sunlight, the wind was up, and Danvers insisted that Elsie change out of her wet clothes before they did anything else. He took her to the coaching inn, where the landlady fussed and tutted and pinched her cheeks, all the time calling her 'little mother', as if it was possible to be a transcendental goddess and a naughty girl at the same time.

While she was changing, Jack walked with Danvers by the river. The wind rumpled the smooth surface of the water and ruffled the feathers of the ducks. 

He was feeling better now. For the first time in days, it seemed as though there was no reason to rush. As much as he dreaded what Ellini and the pianist would do if they were left alone together, there was no train into the north for four hours. And there was no train to Northaven at all. He would have to travel to York, and then take the stage for the rest of the way. He wasn't feeling up to a conversation with her yet – and still less was he ready to talk to the prodigal pianist – but once he had seen her, found out how she'd survived, what she was like now, what she was doing with herself, there would be room to breathe. For now, he had to breathe without room, and content himself with talking to Danvers.

"How are my girls?" he said, half-ashamed that he hadn't asked this question sooner.

"They're just as you left them," said Danvers, "except there's one more." His face fell, as if he'd just remembered something. "Ah. And there may be one less."

Jack stopped in his tracks. "What do you mean, one less?"

"Miss Anna..."

"No, no, no, no, no – I saved Miss Anna! She's back where she belongs, isn't she?"

Danvers was aggravatingly slow to respond to this. "Mathilde says she has to stand trial. She told Lord Elsmere where to find Martha and Poppy – and the other girls that would have been taken if it hadn't been for your guards. Mathilde wants her to be tried."

"You mean, in a law-court?"

"A court of slave-girls. I understand she doesn't want anything to do with the local magistrates. And, um-" Danvers seemed to be bracing himself for something. "If she's found guilty, the penalty would be death."

"She can't do that!" Jack burst out.

There was a grain of defiance in Danvers's worried face. "You killed Miss Violet..."

"That's different. Violet was evil, Anna's just ill-"

"Perhaps evil is a kind of illness."

"Then, for Violet, there was no bloody cure. Believe me. I saw people try to be nice to her."

"Haven't we tried to be nice to Miss Anna?"

Jack rounded on him. "I know you don't want her to be executed," he snapped. "Stop playing she-devil's advocate."

Danvers lapsed into silence, while Jack gnawed his under-lip, wondering how he could argue with someone like Mathilde. She was completely untouchable. He couldn't hope to persuade her or manipulate her, and the idea of liberating Anna by force was out of the question. He'd have to step over too many people he cared about. Perhaps Ellini could overrule her. Ellini would surely not want Anna dead. The thought quite cheered him up, because it was an unselfish reason to go after her.

"You said there was one more," he said at last. "Who's that?"

Danvers cleared his throat uncomfortably. "A young lady of – a young lady who – an unfortunate..."

"A prostitute?" said Jack, in much the same spirit in which he'd listed 'un-' words. "Half-Indian, yes? Skinny? Talks with a strong cockney accent?"

"She's called Mary Stryde. She arrived last night, asking for you. She wandered right through the gargoyles and gave us all a fright, because she looks so much like..." Danvers trailed off, and then shook himself. "In any case, she said she had a mind to improve herself, and could do with a roof over her head and a few free meals while she did so. At first, Mathilde said you didn't have the right to invite people, but-"

"But then she saw her?"

"Yes. And, worse, listened to her story of abominable treatment at the hands of Lord Elsmere."

Jack looked askance at him and wondered how much he knew. Chaining her to the bed and pretending she was Ellini, fine. Perhaps even calling her a filthy harlot. But tossing off in a corner while he did so? That was a detail you wouldn't want to share with someone as innocent as Danvers.

"It's funny how many men feel the need to make a copy of Miss Syal," Danvers went on. "Professor Carver..." He stopped, as if he regretted bringing it up, but plunged on anyway, looking slightly green. "Actually, it's a relief to talk about it. The only other people who knew were Begovitch and poor Miss Violet. And of course, it's not the sort of thing I could confide to Elsie."

"What isn't?" Jack demanded.

"Well, Professor Carver did the same thing. He made himself a copy of Miss Syal. I'm not sure of the exact procedure, but I gather it involved a stock – that's a piece of wood transformed into an image of the beloved – and then calling down an elemental spirit to animate it. The poor creature was kept in a wardrobe at the Chemistry Faculty. She couldn't speak, but she had a slate round her neck with which to communicate basic needs like hunger and thirst. The Professor treated her so unspeakably that the only thing I ever saw written on it was 'Kill me'."

Jack stopped and stared at him, but he was in full flow. He had obviously been wanting to tell someone all this for a long time.

"We liberated her in the end, Begovitch and I. We let her out through the kitchens and watched her make her escape through the playing-fields. And we never saw her again, so she must have got away, but... well, Begovitch said the only way to really liberate her – because she was an elemental spirit trapped in a corporeal body – was to stab her through the heart. I sometimes wonder whether it would have been kinder..."

Jack raised a hand for silence, his head spinning. The disgust came first, of course – another wrench that made him hate his gender and despair of ever feeling guilt-free lust again. But, behind that was the horrible, inevitable sense-making, far too late to do him any good. An exact copy of Ellini wandering around Oxford. A dead body on the steps of the music rooms. A post-mortem report that Sam hadn't kept with the other documents relating to the case, and that he himself had been too scared to look at.

"Why don't people tell me these things?" he said, in a voice that was close to tears.

"Um. Because you used to punch anyone who so much as mentioned her name?"

"Yes, but an exact copy of Ellini – at a time when she turns up dead!"

Danvers stared at him stupidly for a moment, and then frowned. "But it must have been the real Miss Syal you stabbed through the chest. The copy couldn't speak."

Jack waved a hand wildly. "So she survives the wound somehow, and leaves the elemental in her place!"

"Could she survive a wound like that?"

Jack's shoulders sagged. "I don't see how. She'd been bleeding for an hour before I lost sight of her. Nobody could lose that much blood and live, not without a-"

They looked at each other.

"-transfusion."

Danvers clutched his forehead. "God heavens! You mean it worked? When Doctor Petrescu and I-? But how can you be sure? Just because of the star on Elsie's chest? We've seen stranger things, of course, but you seem very certain."

"She told me," said Jack, in a hollow voice. "I know she's alive because she told me."

"You mean you've seen her?"

"Yes and no."

"But why would she let us believe she was dead? I mean, she was angry with you, yes, but Miss Manda? And Doctor Petrescu? And – and me?"

Jack hadn't considered this. She had run away from all her friends – including the slave-girls she'd been quite prepared to die for. And why? Just to get away from him? To get away from Oxford? It was understandable after what she'd been through – what was not understandable after what she'd been through? – but it wasn't quite in-keeping with his picture of her as a selfless martyr. He felt a surge of that same, strange excitement – the one that was so close to anger, he couldn't tell them apart.

She had done all that just to hurt him? Then he mattered to her. She had been cruel and selfish to people who hadn't deserved it? Then she was not so many millions of miles above him as he'd thought.

It was like a transfusion of his own. It gave him more confidence, more energy. After that, things moved quite fast, and he found he was able to move with them. He spoke a few, private words to Elsie – a plan that she was quite excited about – and then took the train to York with a lighter heart than he'd had in years. It made him feel so much better to be angry with Ellini. Although he couldn't have known, then, how angry he was going to get.