Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

Their next destination was a shop called McCormick & Castor. In a coincidence she couldn’t fathom, Ilsa knew it well, due to there being a duplicate in the Otherworld – a shop by the name of McConnell & Castor.

  “It’s called a weak spot,” said Eliot when Ilsa voiced her astonishment. “The thinner the fabric between the two worlds, the stronger the similarities. London sits on a weak spot, and patches of it” – he gestured to the shop – “are weaker still. Then there are the portals, where the fabric breaks entirely.”

  “Portals? There’s more than one?”

  “There are five. Only the Psi don’t have one in their quarter.”

  They were about to cross the street and enter the chemist’s when an Oracle rounded the corner, and Ilsa tugged Eliot to a halt.

  Ilsa recognised her; it was the girl she and Captain Fowler had passed on the street the day she arrived. Her fuzzy, violently orange hair formed a halo underneath her bonnet, and her sunken cheeks gave her the appearance of a ventriloquist’s puppet; the clunky jaw too pronounced beneath the hollows. She was shrouded beneath a threadbare shawl, but still she trembled with cold. Ilsa knew enough working girls with a weakness for the pipe to recognise this as a symptom.

  If the girl noticed Ilsa and Eliot, she thought nothing of them. Her gaze was on her hands, wringing at her breast, her chin tucked tightly to her neck. She stepped into the chemist’s, and the door swung closed behind her, bell tinkling.

  “Let’s wait until she leaves,” said Eliot, leaning back against the wall. “It’s better if you don’t get too close.”

  “Why?”

  “An Oracle’s visions of someone or something are stronger when that person or thing is close. Places, too.”

  Did that explain the way the girl had noticed her on the street the day she arrived in the Witherward? “But she’s a vemanta user, ain’t she? Don’t that mean she’s… living in the Glare or whatever?”

  Eliot leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “That’s exactly why it’s best to keep your distance. A trained Oracle would be better able to suppress visions concerning the things or people they touched, unless they wished to see them. Suppressing their magic is the first thing Oracles learn.”

  Knowing what she did about the curse of Oracle magic, Ilsa found this unsurprising. She nodded at the chemist. “And she ain’t learned that?”

  Eliot grimaced. “It’s ironic. One would think a people with such an unparalleled grasp of the mechanisms of fate would have less affinity for the self-fulfilling prophecy. The Oracles believe their magic is sacred, and those who can wield it are chosen by the gods. When an Oracle is born, another will See into their future and determine their capacity for controlling their magic. Those deemed to have little capacity – more than half, most likely including the girl in there – are forsaken. They’re abandoned to a lifetime in the Glare. They’re the ones who often turn to vemanta. If they’re deemed to have adequate strength and mental acuity, they are taught how to not use their magic; how to amplify the here and now and minimise the Glare in the hopes of leading a halfway normal existence. Only if they’re exceptional will they start to learn a specific skill. The acolytes, for example. They’re trained in combat, so they learn how to concentrate on the immediate future and See their opponent’s next move. It’s an inexact science, of course. Every time they use their magic in combat, they change the fight.”

  “How?”

  Eliot ran a hand over his face. “It’s… complex.”

  “Try me,” said Ilsa, folding her arms. “I ain’t simple.”

  Eliot was quiet a moment as he considered it. “You and I can’t act to change the future directly,” he said slowly. “We’re destined to take whatever course it is we’re going to take, but if an Oracle Sees that course, they can try to change it. If their magic tells them you’re going to lunge for their right, they can step left, but then you will react to the change they’ve made, you see?”

  “I ain’t gonna lunge for their right if it ain’t there no more.”

  “Exactly. So as the acolyte steps left, the future changes. And perhaps they’ll See that too…”

  “But in the meantime, I’ve whipped them off their feet with my tail.”

  Eliot smiled. “So you see the bind. Fighting takes presence and concentration, and Seeing demands their focus is elsewhere, on the moment ahead. Yes, their magic can grant an advantage, but balancing the two introduces plenty of room for error.” He laughed sardonically. “If you ask me, acolytes are fodder. They teach them nothing but combat, out of fear they could turn against them. When your militia’s family are all poverty-stricken addicts because you refuse to care for them, you don’t run the risk of arming them with the full strength of their own magic. An eternity of knowledge – past, present, and future – and all an acolyte knows how to See is the next few seconds.

  “Of course, Seeing further into the future becomes even more fraught. There are countless Oracles out there making changes according to what they See, then others make changes to those changes and so on. Some are small, some have implications that stretch on for centuries. Those Oracles skilled in prophecy tend to spend their days studying what might have been and writing furious scripture about who among them should be allowed to act against the future.

  “But among the most highly prized Oracles are the ones who study the present moment.”

  “What’s so special ’bout that? I can see the present moment just fine and I ain’t even an Oracle.”

  “You can see the present moment here,” said Eliot. “Imagine the value of Seeing what the Sage was up to this very moment.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly. But the difficulties in using that type of Sight are manifold. Simply keeping their grasp on the thing they wish to See is a challenge. The present is in motion. It’s much harder to stay focused on it than it is to look into the past.”

  “I’ll say,” muttered Ilsa, whose head was starting to hurt. She looked at the chemist. “So you reckon if I get too close, she might know her militia friends are looking for me?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “That’s unfortunate, ’cause I got an idea. Make yourself invisible.”

  He looked at her like she’d gone mad. “I don’t know what kind of Changeling you are, but invisible isn’t in my repertoire.”

  “Not like that. Watch me.”

  A couple of shops down was a greengrocer, and Ilsa concealed herself in the shadow of its striped awning, where she made herself invisible. It didn’t take much; in both Londons, people in the street barely paid attention to each other anyway. She dulled the shine from her hair, leached the pink from her cheeks and lips, and made herself a couple of inches shorter. The rest was just misdirection, the kind she used on stage when she wanted the audience to look elsewhere. Hunched shoulders, eyes downcast, no large or sudden movements. Looking awed and confused, Eliot followed suit.

  When the girl re-emerged from the chemist, empty-handed, she passed them like they weren’t even there, and did not look around when they started following at a distance.

  “I have no idea where you’re going with this and it still feels like a bad idea,” Eliot said under his breath.

  “I got us this far, din’t I?” Ilsa said in a whisper, as the girl made a right turn and descended the steps to a basement flat.

  Even from street level, Ilsa knew where they were. No curtain hung in the front windows, but what looked like blankets had been strung up to keep out the light; the ramshackle door had a latch but no handle or lock, for ease of coming and going; and a beguiling floral scent with an undertone of human grime clung to the air.

  This was an opium den. Or rather, a vemanta den.

  She made to follow the girl down the steps, but Eliot stepped into her path. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to talk to her.”

  Eliot laughed incredulously. “You can’t go down there.”

  Ilsa crossed her arms to keep fr
om punching him, and scowled. “I’ll do what I please.”

  “Stars, Ilsa, you want to put yourself amongst a group of lowlifes whose leaders want you dead,” he said, exasperated. “If anyone in there Sees that, we’ll be surrounded. It’s pointless anyway. Oracles are very superstitious, the pipe-smoking type especially. It violates the laws of their faith to share knowledge with non-Oracles.”

  “For one thing,” countered Ilsa, “these pipe-smoking types ain’t gonna know me from Queen Victoria. It’s an opium den. And for another, going places what upsets you proper speaking, feather bed, afternoon tea rich folk is how I’m gonna to be the one to find Gedeon.” With that, she turned into a blackbird, zipped over Eliot’s head, and landed at the bottom of the stairs. “You coming or not?”

  Eliot glared and prowled down the steps. “You know they speak in riddles?”

  “Guess you won’t be able to understand her then. Let me handle it.” She lifted the latch and they slipped inside.

  The flat was oppressively quiet, in a way that evoked the muffle of thick fabric or heavy snow. Smoke hung thickly in the air. It curled in a shaft of light that reached for them from the end of the corridor, where a sheet imperfectly shrouded the back door. Low lights in red sconces guided them through a bead curtain and into a room carpeted with thin mattresses, most of which were unoccupied. Gedeon’s raids must have disturbed the supply all over the city – just as he had intended.

  Not everyone in the den was an Oracle. A black cat Ilsa took for one of her own kind was sprawled limply on a low couch, their tail twitching lazily. A Psi stared dreamily at a teacup that was revolving and bobbing in front of him, the saucer hovering below, while the whorls on his face glowed in pulses.

  Crouched against the wall in the next room, defeated and empty-handed, was the girl. Even as Ilsa cast a dim shadow over her, she seemed oblivious to anything but her gnawing want. Brushing off Eliot’s murmured objections, Ilsa smoothed her white skirt and slid down the wall until she was sitting next to the Oracle on the grimy floorboards.

  Still, the girl barely registered her presence – until Ilsa unfastened her bag, removed the single tin of vemanta they had procured that day, and placed it on the floor between them.

  Ilsa repressed a shiver as the empty orbs of the girl’s eyes met hers. She had a rounded, upturned nose and a spattering of dark freckles.

  Tiny pale hands snatched for the tin, but Ilsa was quicker.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lila Hardwick, miss,” whispered the girl.

  Such an ordinary name. Such an ordinary voice. “Lila, I—”

  “You got a bargain for me,” she cut in, furiously shaking her head. “No. No. Can’t help.” She gathered herself to get up, but the little cylindrical tin must have chosen that moment to make its siren call, and she froze, staring at it.

  Ilsa wrapped a hand around Lila’s forearm; gently, but she was ready to grip tight if Lila broke free of the vemanta’s spell and tried to leave. “You know what I’m going to ask?” she said.

  “Yours not to Know,” she said sharply, her jaw tight, but she didn’t struggle away. From the corners of the dark flat, several voices echoed her words, and a chill ran down Ilsa’s spine. She decided to dispense with the preamble.

  “Where can you get vemanta cheap? Tell me and I’ll give you this,” she said, holding forth the tin.

  “Yours not…” Lila started saying again, but without conviction. She was looking at the vemanta with a fearful expression, like it was hurting her. “It ain’t cheap. Not really.”

  “What’s that mean?” said Ilsa, dousing any notes of frustration in her voice with sweetness and sorority.

  “Yours not to Know,” said Lila in a distracted whisper, and Ilsa blocked out the murmured echoes. Lila shuddered violently and started worrying her fingers along her shawl. Ilsa took her little hand in hers.

  “S’alright,” she said. “Could you tell me something I can know? Anything, and I’ll give it you.”

  “They’re paying with their Sight. My brother Freddie…”

  This was it; what Ilsa needed to know. “Freddie’s getting vemanta for cheap, in exchange for information? Yes?” Lila shot a nervous glance at Ilsa, then the tin, and back again, and nodded. “Where?”

  “You don’t know the city.”

  “Try me.”

  “You don’t know it,” whimpered Lila. She was such a pathetic thing that Ilsa nearly took pity, but when the girl extended a hand again for the vemanta, she pulled it out of reach.

  “Lila, please.”

  “You know another place.” Her eyes stayed trained on the tin. She was on the verge of tears. “You ain’t from this world, or that world. You don’t know the city.” Her head snapped up. Her orb-like eyes fixed on Ilsa, and she could tell the girl was Seeing something. “There’s a shop on Moorgate. On Marin Street.”

  At last, something Ilsa understood – and something she didn’t. She loosened her hold on the vemanta, and with a determined burst Lila snatched it from her.

  “But you named two roads. Is Marin Street off Moorgate?”

  “Not the street, the station. I told you, you don’t know the city.” She stood shakily and edged away, the little tin pressed tightly to her breast. But she spoke again as she retreated, hateful venom in her voice.

  “Yours not to Know.”

  15

  She had been warned that Oracles spoke in riddles.

  “Don’t they mind ’bout finding the bloody Seer’s apprentice?” she grumbled. “If they’re so up in arms to come kill me over it, p’raps they should think ’bout helping me instead.” She kicked a stone into the road with the soft toe of her new leather boots, and swore when it bruised her foot.

  “There’s little use in appealing to an Oracle’s reasoning,” said Eliot. He sounded smug. “The more incensed and frustrated you are, the better they feel they’re protecting their knowledge.”

  Ilsa threw her hands up, though she wasn’t oblivious to the irony of letting Eliot’s words rile her. “But…”

  “All we can do is try and make sense of what we have. Moorgate and that other street.”

  “You weren’t listening?” cried Ilsa.

  “You led us into a vemanta den,” said Eliot. “I was a little preoccupied with the three wretched souls beyond your sight lines who were looking at you like your teeth or your hair might buy them some relief.”

  “Oh.” She shuddered, mumbled a thank you, and kept her complaints to herself for the rest of the journey back to the Zoo.

  They were just about to step inside when Eliot stopped her. “Ilsa.” He glanced about to check if they were being observed. “We’ve been looking for Gedeon for weeks. I’ve tried to help but everything I’ve said and done has been met with nothing but suspicion from the other lieutenants. I’ve a feeling Hester’s told them not to trust me.”

  “Why’d she do that?” said Ilsa before he could continue.

  Eliot hesitated a moment, meeting her eye as if in defiance. “It’s just a feeling. My point is, telling them anything we did or discussed today will only end badly.”

  From the way the other lieutenants were with Eliot, Ilsa could believe it. If they thought that he knew where Gedeon was, anything less than a full confession would read as misdirection.

  “I ain’t gonna tell them,” she said, taking note of the way his shoulders relaxed and he smiled.

  As they parted ways Ilsa wondered, not for the first time, if the other lieutenants were onto something. Whether or not Hester had warned them about trusting Eliot, nobody got that good at dodging questions without having something to hide.

  * * *

  Afternoon tea might have been a luxury entirely new to Ilsa, but she doubted she would tire of it any time soon. Very little had passed her lips in the aftermath of the scene in Bill’s flat, and now she was ravenous. The strawberry jam she could barely look at the day before was disappearing on scone after scone.

  Fyfe had joined her,
and they sat at a table in the conservatory, which was surprisingly cool despite the sun beating down. The location was Ilsa’s choice. On her tour of the house, she had been fascinated with the Zoo’s very own tropical jungle under glass. Palms and ferns and plants she couldn’t identify crowded together, climbed the walls, and otherwise vied to be more eye-catching than the next. A pond stood in the centre, with red, orange, and silver fish circling beneath the surface, among banana plants that reached to the ceiling.

  Hanging low above Ilsa’s head and brushing up against her were dozens of waxy leaves bigger than dinner plates, and Fyfe laughed every time she was distracted by one.

  “A lot of the specimens in here require a climate hotter and more humid than this,” Fyfe explained eagerly, “but thanks to a combination of a chemical coating on the glass – my own creation – and an enchantment on the plants, thanks to Cassia, the conservatory stays comfortable whatever the weather and the plants thrive perpetually.”

  “You learn how to do that in one of them books?” said Ilsa, nodding to the stack of tomes Fyfe had brought with him.

  “These?” He brushed a hand over the topmost book like he was petting a beloved cat. “These are on aerodynamics, astrology and Erropean history. I have some more classes after tea. I’m sorry to abandon you yet again.”

  “S’alright. Where are the others?”

  “Cassia’s negotiating dividends with the high-ranking wolves, since the militia have been working so much harder, what with the raids and looking for Gedeon. Aelius is probably pressing his contacts to try and find out who sent that messenger; the one who told us you were alive. Oren will be at the town hall. He usually hears petitions in the morning but he’s awfully busy without Gedeon to make the final decision on anything, and Hester has left him to it. And Eliot. Well, we both know Eliot was in his room this morning. And then he was out with you.”

  There was a note of accusation at the end. She didn’t think he’d meant for it to come out that way.

  Fyfe cleared his throat and forced a smile. “What, ah, were the two of you doing?”