In the mind of the beast, Ilsa’s rage and despair purified into something merciless and instinctual, until the bloodshed she was about to face felt almost right.
“They’re Oracles. They know what you’ll do,” Cassia said. “Don’t hesitate.”
Then they appeared. Two pallid faces with dead, empty eyes filled the doorway. They were snarling, their teeth bared, and armed with pistols.
Before they could shoot, Cassia extended her hands and cast a shielding spell like the one she had used to protect them from Fyfe’s projectile. A bubble formed around her with Ilsa safe behind it. It repelled the Oracles’ bullets with a sound like tin.
But more of them were appearing, and edging around Cassia’s bubble. Two ducked behind the couch where Bill still lay and took aim at Ilsa. Just when she thought her only hope was to lunge and hope she was faster, their pistols flew from their hands with an explosion of light. Cassia’s bubble had vanished, and she was aiming her palm at one Oracle after another, and firing something like lightning at their weapons.
So, that was what Oren meant about watching for spells.
But the Oracles were still coming. Eight all together had poured into the room and separated them.
Ilsa turned on one to find him moved already. Another made to lunge at her, but at the last minute targeted Cassia instead, and tackled her to the ground.
They know what you’ll do, she had said. Don’t hesitate.
They could see her every move before she knew she would make it.
Without a thought in her head she leapt at Cassia, caught the leg of the Oracle on top of her in the vice of her jaw, and pulled him off his feet. He went down with a thud, but he was only dazed for a heartbeat before he started to push himself up. Ilsa reared up and landed her front paws on his back. The second time his head hit the ground there was a crack, and the Oracle went limp. Without pause, she turned; a haphazard, sweeping movement to catch anything in her vicinity, and knocked another to the ground. She leapt at anything and everything that moved, lashing out with her claws. One Oracle was crushed when he charged at her, his momentum helping Ilsa throw him against a wall with her full weight. Another, she bit into at the neck, until she could feel hot blood spraying onto her tongue. Cassia wielded her magic ruthlessly. There seemed to be no limit to the speed with which she could let her spells fly. Some of her hits elicited cries, some sent weapons flying. One met its mark right between the eyes and he crumpled, dead, against the wall.
The last two Oracles fled. Or, at least, Ilsa had thought they were the last two. As she dropped onto all four paws, something leapt at her from behind, nearly buckling her. The Oracle dug his fingers down into her fur, to her skin. Ilsa thrashed and twisted, consumed by panic, but she couldn’t shake him. She heard him unsheathe a blade.
“Duck!”
Cassia, stood over a body, was brandishing the dead Oracle’s pistol at her.
Ilsa ducked.
Cassia fired, her arm steady, her gaze straight down the line of the barrel.
10
There was a clatter of furniture breaking as the Oracle fell. The gunshot – louder than she expected, and so close to her sensitive canine ears – shook Ilsa enough that she shifted, and as she fell to the floor, her own arms stretched out to brace her.
“Thank you,” she gasped. The tang of blood coated the inside of her mouth and clung to her chin, hot and sticky. As a dog, it hadn’t seemed so awful to draw blood with her teeth, but before she knew it she was running to the kitchen to vomit into a bowl. Cassia found a cloth and helped her get the worst of it out of her mouth and off her face. She had tucked the pistol into the waistband of her coat.
“We need to find Oren,” she said. “We can’t wait for him here. There’ll just be more of them.”
With an aching weight in her chest, Ilsa forced herself back to the couch and knelt beside her magician. “Bill.”
The last time they had spoken, she had called him a bad teammate, but how would she know? He was the only person who truly knew her; next to Martha, the only teammate she’d ever had. They were supposed to see each other again that evening, when they would pretend like nothing happened, but be a little kinder to each other than normal.
But his eyes stared through her. His skin was colder still. The blood had left him through several clean wounds in his chest and abdomen.
There would be no kinder words; not ever.
Bill Blume was dead.
“Ilsa, I’m so sorry.”
A delicate hand rested on her shoulder, but Ilsa shook it off. The violence she’d already done suddenly wasn’t enough. She wanted to leap out that window after Oren and track down whoever had done this.
But Cassia was right – they needed to leave.
“What ’bout…” the bodies. The scene was worse than the fish market. Ilsa had killed three of them; the one slumped against the wall, the one face down near the kitchen, and the bloodied mess by the couch. She stared unwaveringly at Cassia to keep from looking at them.
“I’m sure the other tenants are already fetching the police, what with the commotion. They’ll take care of it,” said Cassia. Her fingers grazed each of the Oracles’ bodies in turn, then the couch, the table, the doorframe. Everything she touched rippled like heat haze and then righted itself. When she reached for Bill, Ilsa blocked her path.
“What are you doing?”
Cassia’s eyes were sympathetic, but her tone was matter-of-fact. “It’s a glamour. So no one will find anything unusual about this.”
Ilsa gave a soundless, caustic laugh and stood aside. Why wouldn’t a girl who could magic herself from place to place also be able to cast a glamour? All she knew was that she hardly knew anything.
When Cassia had cast her magic, Ilsa closed Bill’s eyes, folded his hands atop his chest, and wiped the blood from his face. Was there something else he would want? A token for the afterlife? An instruction for the coroner? No; it was her, and not Bill, who was not ready, so Ilsa blinked back her tears and cast about the room. Bill’s coat hung on a hook by the door, his paisley scarf draped over it. She had found the scarf in the auditorium, left behind by a punter, and had wrapped it in paper and given it to Bill for his birthday one year. As she took it off the hook and folded it small, she tried not to think of Bill hanging it there, oblivious to the fact he would never wear it again. She tried not to think of what happened after. Then she nodded to Cassia that she was ready, and with the scarf tucked under Ilsa’s arm, they made their way back out into the street.
The sleet continued, but she no longer felt the cold. A different kind of numbness had taken hold.
The two girls stood side by side in the street, their third companion nowhere to be seen. In the dark and the sleet, no passer-by seemed to notice the gun, or the blood.
“P’raps they fought,” Ilsa said. “P’raps…”
“Oren can take care of himself.” Cassia nodded to the knife still in Ilsa’s hand. “And they’re not armed. I just hope—”
At that moment, Oren emerged from the alley. They ran for him. Cassia took him by the shoulders and looked him up and down. He was clearly unharmed, but there was something dull in his expression.
“Who…” began Cassia, but he shook his head.
“I couldn’t look,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t stop them. They wouldn’t let me.”
“A Whisperer,” said Cassia.
“A what?”
“The Whitechapel faction. They can read minds. Manipulate thoughts.”
Ilsa drew a breath as Eliot’s words came back to her. They can wipe a mind clean and refill it with whatever, and whomever, they choose.
“They… got in your head?” she said, shivering.
“They were too quick. They had me before…” He trailed off, and reached a hand into his inside breast pocket. He produced a knife; unremarkable at first glance, and dull with blood. “Cassia, they dropped this.”
Cassia took the dagger and held it delicately in both hand
s for them all to see. The light of a nearby streetlamp just illuminated a column of symbols along the hilt. They looked like the letters of a foreign alphabet.
Oren and Cassia exchanged a meaningful look.
“What’s it mean?”
“It means this belongs to one of the Fortunatae,” said Cassia. “It means we might know who’s behind the Sorcerer rebellion.”
11
For the second time in days, Ilsa was washing off blood.
She sat with her knees pulled up to her chin in a bathtub that was still magically steaming and clean after thirty minutes. It was a good thing too – Cassia knocked every once in a while, and Ilsa would tell her five more minutes. She needed the bath; needed to focus on nothing but the water hugging her, the solid sides of the tub keeping her from the world beyond.
But this time, when Ilsa dismissed her, Cassia let herself in anyway, only to hover hesitantly by the door.
“You gonna talk to me now?” Ilsa tried to keep the bite out of her tone and failed. Neither Cassia nor Oren had explained what the Fortunatae was, or what it meant. Every time she asked, they had looked at her pityingly and hurried her along. Truthfully, Ilsa knew she was only clinging to her irritation to stop other feelings from surfacing; to keep herself from thinking about Martha, and about Bill.
Cassia came and perched on the edge of the tub, her back to her. “You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened to that man. It was our fault. Perhaps we couldn’t have predicted what happened, but we ought to have been more prepared for everything the Oracles might do at least. But I promise, Ilsa, we shan’t let anyone else you care about be harmed.”
Ilsa made a mental list of the people she knew. The other girls at her boarding house. The performers from the variety show. If the Oracles looked at her life, was there anyone they would think to target the way they had Bill? The answer was all too clear. “There ain’t no one else.”
“Oh.” Cassia lapsed into silence, and Ilsa couldn’t blame her. What did you say to someone who had lost their last friend? Ilsa hugged her knees tighter to her chest and rested her head on them as she fought back tears.
“Will you stay?” Cassia said.
Ilsa looked up. Cassia was watching her hesitantly.
“You’re not a prisoner, Ilsa. None of us want to keep you here against your will. But we do want to protect you, and we’ll do everything we can to keep you safe if you stay. Besides, it sounds an awful lot like…”
She trailed off, but Ilsa knew what she meant to say.
“Like I ain’t got nothing left to go back to.”
Nothing left to lose. The desire to run – to put everything she had learned back in a box and close the lid – was still there, but Ilsa saw it for what it was now. She was afraid of feeling unmoored and out of her depth. She couldn’t be the cleverest and the quickest in a world she knew nothing about.
She needed to learn. And fast.
“I’ll stay,” she said, “but I got a condition.”
Cassia frowned, but nodded.
“I want to know about the Fortunatae.”
“Alright.”
“Right now.”
“But…” Concern flickered across Cassia’s face. “I thought, with everything we’ve thrown at you – about Gedeon, the Oracles, our history…”
“You already tried to coddle me once and now Mr Blume is dead,” Ilsa said, meeting the other girl’s eye. “How am I s’posed to stay safe without all the information?”
Cassia looked away. For a moment she appeared to deliberate it, then she stood and fetched a dressing gown, which she brought to the tub and held open. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I ought to call for some tea.”
* * *
Cassia must have remembered that Ilsa had skipped breakfast, as when the tea arrived at her room, it was accompanied by crumpets and jam. Not in the habit of refusing food, Ilsa buttered a crumpet, but the thought of it was churning her stomach before she could bring it to her mouth. Instead, she sipped the tea. She should not have needed warming up, what with the steaming bath and the summer sun beating down outside, but as the hot tea slipped down her throat, she felt her shivering abate. Her stomach welcomed it, as did her heart. She took another sip.
They were sat in the silk-upholstered armchairs in Ilsa’s chamber, she was still wrapped in a dressing gown, a blanket around her shoulders. Cassia had also changed and washed off the blood. She looked tired, but nowhere near as shaken as Ilsa. Perhaps fighting for her life was a common occurrence for her.
“The history of the Changelings in London is long,” Cassia said, warning in her voice. “And complicated.”
Ilsa understood she was being given her last chance to refuse this story. Given what she already knew about the Witherward, and what had happened to Bill, she didn’t expect it would be pleasant. But to know was better than to wonder. She nodded.
Cassia stirred her tea. “Everybody fights in this city,” she said. “If it’s not about borders, it’s money or power, or some violation of an arbitrary code. And if we can’t find reasons, we invent them. So you can imagine why we can’t trust what the Docklands are saying about Gedeon.
“Every people can trace its origins back to the celestial event which formed them or gave them their unique magic. The original Oracles, for example, were the witnesses of the Blinding Light, a solar eclipse many thousands of years ago. The Wraiths fell to earth in a meteor shower.” Cassia looked at her then, and the ghost of a smile brushed her mouth. “My ancestors evolved from the Ancients – elemental magicians – when they were touched by an aurora. We were the first of the modern people.
“And the Changelings were born under a red moon on the vernal equinox. The Shift, we call it. They transformed, from animals, across a vast swath of the Erro-Azian continent. But the epicentre was here. In London.”
Ilsa had been enraptured by thoughts of celestial magic and ancient beings, but when Cassia paused, she remembered what they were supposed to be talking about. “What’s this got to do with the Fortunatae?”
Cassia gestured for Ilsa to wait. “Five magics had founded London. They had always lived in separate quarters and already mistrusted one another. And then the Shift. Imagine it. Every single animal in the city – horses, dogs, cats, every bird, every bit of livestock – became a Changeling. In a single moment, the population was… perhaps ten times what it had been. It was cataclysmic, Ilsa. It destabilised any pretence of goodwill among the factions. It ended the Sorcerers’ rule. They call it the Century of Slaughter, or sometimes the Long Plague. Suffice to say after many decades the population righted itself. But they say three things brought London back from the Shift: slaughter, sickness… and Morgan Ravenswood.
“You know of her, of course. She led a bloody war to take Camden, mainly from the Sorcerers and the Whisperers. You can imagine what her legacy is beyond the borders. London never found even a false peace again after the Shift, and settling the Changelings in their own quarter brought some semblance of order, but the damage was done. The other magics had all the reason they needed to hate the Changelings as they hated each other. But even after decades of bloodshed, was there any moral high ground to be claimed over people who didn’t choose to be there, who only wished to be allowed to stay where they’d been born?” Cassia’s normally rigid posture was a little deflated. Her sad eyes stared intently at her teacup. “That’s what the Fortunatae wanted: a justification. They’re a secret society founded at a small college in Whitechapel – the Whisperer quarter – just after Morgan Ravenswood became the leader of the Changelings and made Camden your territory. There were fourteen of them at first, radical philosophers of five factions who believed that Changelings’ origins raised an important question.” She looked up. “Are you people who can change into animals… or merely animals, who are sometimes people?”
Ilsa stiffened. It was absurd, to hear her magic talked about like that. She had been animal, and she had been human, and she knew which she was inside
. Only a person who had never known what it was like could think it a valid question.
“The members of the Fortunatae have little respect for your kind, Ilsa,” said Cassia weakly. “But for centuries they were a society of intellectuals concerned with theory. Thinkers, not activists. And then a decade or so before the Principles were drafted, they went to ground. Someone had taken over as their head; someone they called the Sage. He had… new ideas. Plans of action.” She drew a shaking breath. “When the Principles solidified in writing that Camden belonged to the Changelings, the Sage courted chaos and rebellion and manipulated it for the Fortunatae’s means.”
Propagandists. That’s what Eliot had called them. She could picture it now; how easy it would be to rile members of every faction against the people who had brought about the Century of Slaughter.
“It’s how they’ve operated before. If they are fuelling the fire of this revolt in the Heart, then they’re after the same thing they wanted seventeen years ago: five quarters. Five factions. A London with no place for the Changelings.”
Ilsa shivered. She understood what Cassia did not want to say, and when she forced the words past her lips, they were a whisper. “They killed my parents.”
The Sorcerer shook her head. “Not just your parents. The Sage believed that if they ended the Ravenswoods’ rule, Camden and its people would fall. They rallied enough of an insurgence against Camden that your family were forced to abandon the Zoo. They were hiding in a wine merchant’s cellar in Soho when your mother gave birth. Oren was just a young wolf at the time, but your mother chose him to smuggle you to the portal. He left the cellar with you just in time.”
Witherward Page 12
