Several contraptions bigger than herself took up most of the floor space, but there was also a table crammed with glass beakers and jars containing liquids in vibrant colours – sky blue, violet, luminescent green – some connected with glass tubes; some producing steam; one sat on a wind-up apparatus that was revolving slowly so that the contents churned. More surfaces were piled with open books and yet more unreadable papers. A human skeleton, like Ilsa had once seen in a curiosity show, hung upright in one corner, but the space was littered with other vaguely macabre objects she couldn’t identify. Above, on the iron mezzanine, was what Ilsa guessed was a telescope, though she’d never seen one in person, and above that, a domed glass ceiling revealed a view of the sky.
“What kind of scientist are you?” she said, failing to mask the excitement in her voice; the room was like nothing she’d ever seen.
“I don’t think I’m any kind,” said Fyfe, haphazardly scooping up armfuls of the books and papers that littered the floor. “I prefer to think of myself as an investigator. It’s more broad.”
As Fyfe made an effort to tidy that was more just shifting clutter into new piles, Ilsa inspected an alarming glass cube. The walls of the cube contained a pattern of tubes carved into the glass, and a greenish smoke flowed gently through them. Reams of copper wire surrounded a plate at the centre, above which a single oak leaf was held in the jaws of a clamp. “What’s this do?”
“Ah!” Fyfe leapt over some of the debris, looking graceless with his awkwardly long limbs, and landed beside her. Ilsa didn’t know if her excitement was feeding his or vice versa, but when he beamed his huge smile, Ilsa beamed back. “I’ve been experimenting with increasingly complex organic matter to see if I can cause another object to pass through it, the way Wraiths can become ethereal.”
Fyfe opened a hatch in one side of the cube, took a pen from behind his ear and reached in to wave it through the leaf like it was nothing but a mirage.
“I haven’t found a way to replicate their other skills yet, though. And this device is really only theoretical. I tried it with a feather and only succeeded in setting it alight.”
“And what ’bout that one?” Ilsa pointed to an eccentric mess of copper and vulcanised rubber on a wooden platform. Within the main frame of the apparatus were a series of cogs and belts, a row of vials of emerald liquid, and two polished copper globes in a space at the centre.
“That,” said Fyfe with a self-conscious laugh, “doesn’t work, but the principle is the same. Transference. Harnessing the power of another people. It’s supposed to extract a person’s thoughts.”
Ilsa took a large step away from the machine. “That sounds… painful.”
“No, no, no! I mean psychically. It reads their mind.”
“D’you mean like a Whisperer? Eliot told me they was mind readers.”
Fyfe grinned his approval. “Exactly like that! A Whisperer can see inside your mind if you don’t know how to keep them out, and they can manipulate it too. They can be quite dangerous.” He flicked one of the vials of emerald liquid suspended between a set of tongs, and it made a delightful ringing sound. “See, I rendered this liquor from the brain matter of a Whisperer – already deceased of course. My theory is that I can channel its properties by running an electrical current through it.”
Ilsa eyed him sceptically. “And that’ll work?”
Fyfe rubbed his hair. “I don’t see that magic and science are all that different. If a Sorcerer can manipulate pure magic to do what they want it to, then perhaps there’s a way for me to do so too.”
It sounded like a big dream, a long shot. But Ilsa knew a thing or two about those. She’d never wanted someone else to succeed at something so badly. “But can Sorcerers… shift and read minds and that?”
“Well, no. They can channel magic in a limited number of ways. Through objects and substances, with words, or through their bodies – corporeal magic, they call it – but not the way you and I can.” Fyfe laughed an awkward laugh. “Or you, at least. I’m, ah, not a very capable shifter.”
“That why you’re so interested in…” what had he called it?
“Transference? I suppose, yes. And no.” He threw himself into an armchair and swung his legs over the side. When he continued, it was with a seriousness that seemed uncharacteristic. “The implications are so much more important. If I can replicate the way the other factions use magic, there’s no end to the ways Changelings could defend themselves.”
Ilsa felt the weight she was carrying press heavier on her shoulders. “You mean against the Fortunatae.” Fyfe’s head snapped up and he eyed her curiously. “Cassia told me ’bout them. ’Bout what the Sage did to my family.”
“To my family too.” Fyfe slumped deeper in his chair, and was silent a long while before he added, “Hester was there. In the cellar where the Fortunatae found them.” Ilsa drew in a breath. Cassia had mentioned Hester’s father, but not Hester. It hadn’t occurred to her that the woman had seen first-hand the things Cassia described. “She was fifteen. Gedeon was two. She saw her father and her whole family die, one by one, to protect the place they were hiding, knowing Gedeon might cry at any moment and give them away. She lost everything, and then she was alpha, and she had to pick the whole of Camden back up and beat back the Fortunatae and the Sage. At fifteen! People used to tell me all about what Hester had done but it never hit me, not until I was her age. A week before my fifteenth birthday I was drawing up a design for rigged billiard balls so I could win a stupid tournament against Aelius and Cassia and Gedeon.”
Fyfe buried his face in the crook of his elbow. “And now Hester can’t shift or walk and it’s my fault.”
Ilsa made several incoherent sounds of protest before she settled on a response. “How could it be your fault?”
“The last time the rebels attacked, they came straight for my laboratory. She was helping me defend all this,” he said, gesturing around him. “Some of my technology is decades ahead of what anyone else in London has achieved. Things our enemies would be attacking us for every day if they knew they existed. But it wasn’t that. She could have had the wolves guard my lab if that was all it was. She had to be here herself because she knew I couldn’t bear to let them tear it apart.”
Ilsa pictured the woman she had met the day before, with her sardonic glare and hostile demeanour. Then she thought of the fish market and the fear that had held her in place as those Oracles took hold of Martha. Hester was spiteful, but she had saved Gedeon’s life as her own was destroyed, and then risked herself again for her own brother. It was better to be spiteful, thought Ilsa, with a stab in the gut, than a coward. She had nothing to judge Hester for.
“That ain’t your fault, Fyfe. You din’t hurt nobody. Them rebels did that all by themselves. ’Sides, I’d have done the same as Hester if it was me.” Fyfe looked up in surprise. She gestured at the lab. “P’raps you’ll save all of Camden with what’s in here. Show me the rest.”
Fyfe’s cheeks pinked, and Ilsa was relieved to coax that smile back to his face. He obligingly followed Ilsa around the laboratory and explained some of his myriad inventions; a clock that told the positions of the stars; a locking mechanism designed to open only at the owner’s touch. There was a canteen that stored liquids at a fraction of their former volume. Fyfe demonstrated it by pouring nearly a gallon of water into the ordinary-looking, hand-held canteen.
“The weight of the canteen stays the same,” he said, grinning at the way Ilsa stared, open-mouthed, as he emptied it again in a seemingly endless stream. “And it keeps coffee perfectly hot! Should any desert wanderers prefer coffee to water.”
Ilsa was also awed by an array of brightly coloured pellets that, Fyfe explained, released a smoke that inhibited the breather’s magic for a limited duration.
“I call them dampeners. Hester calls them science weapons.” He rolled his eyes in affectionate amusement. “Their effect is very short-term, and I’m still working on several varieties, but I’ve perfecte
d these three. The yellow are for Sorcerers, the magenta are for Psi, and the dark blue are for Whisperers.”
Fyfe’s most recent invention was something he called a pocket forge. It was a complicated cylinder, one or two inches in diameter to fit in the palm of the hand, and made of dull metal. At one end was a cap with a switch on one side and a tip like a gas light. Fyfe held the pocket forge at arm’s length and pointed the end away from them both. When he pressed the switch a fierce, violet flame roared from the tip, making Ilsa jump. Even Fyfe flinched.
“Watch,” said Fyfe over the rumble of the flame, and he jabbed the pocket forge at a point on the desk before them. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the point where the flame had touched the wood caved in on itself, dropping charred wood to the floor below and leaving a gaping hole the exact diameter of the flame. As Fyfe switched off the device, Ilsa bent close to the desk. There were two dozen such holes, each above a pale mound of something that used to be wood.
“You melted it!” said Ilsa, awed.
“The pocket forge will melt anything,” said Fyfe gleefully. “It will even melt through enchanted materials, spelled to be indestructible.”
No wonder Fyfe held the thing so far from himself when he turned it on.
When they reached the corner shaded by the mezzanine, Ilsa found a pinboard with a map of London. Only, it wasn’t London as she knew it. This one had been split up; coloured outlines divided the city into quarters labelled The North, The Heart, Camden Town, Whitechapel, and The Docklands.
“This is your London,” she said as Fyfe joined her.
“It’s your London too.”
Ilsa jolted to realise he was right. Her London.
“And these are all the quarters?” she asked, running a finger along the coloured lines.
“As of right now,” said Fyfe wryly. “I have it here to keep track of any changes to the borders.”
“Who lives where?”
“Well, this is us,” said Fyfe, indicating the quarter outlined in red. Captain Fowler had been right; the area she knew as the borough of Camden was about half of the Changeling quarter, which also encompassed the park, a thin sliver of land between Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road, and a chunk of Westminster at the southern end. It was small compared to some of the other quarters, and wedged in like an afterthought. “And Whitechapel is the Whisperers’.”
Whitechapel, outlined in midnight blue, was also misleadingly named. In the Otherworld, it was a district far east of where they were, but the Changelings and the Whisperers shared a border. Their quarter stretched several miles along the river and went as far north as the Euston-Pentonville-Hackney Road line, sweeping around Victoria Park in the east.
“And then there’s the Oracles. Theirs is the Docklands.”
The Docklands were marked in green, and corresponded with what Ilsa knew as The Isle of Dogs – sure enough, the docks – and the area south of the river, as well as a stretch of the north bank.
“Oracles.” Ilsa ran her finger along the green line. “And they see… everything, right?”
Fyfe nodded. “The past. The present. The future too, but that’s more complicated. It’s a formidable magic if the individual can learn to control it, and a curse if they can’t. Imagine a library containing all the knowledge of the universe, but no index cards.” Fyfe seemed to reconsider his analogy and frowned. “Then imagine someone is throwing the books at you. A lot of Oracles never master their magic, and it ruins their lives.”
Ilsa nodded, though she wasn’t sure she understood, and turned back to the map.
“The Heart belongs to the Sorcerers,” said Fyfe, and he indicated the quarter outlined in gold; everything west and south of Camden Town. It was three or four times the size of the Changeling quarter. “It’s a conceited name, but the Callicans were a Sorcerer empire.” He caught Ilsa’s nonplussed stare. “The Callican empire? They founded London?”
“The Romans founded London.”
“Agree to disagree. And then the North. That’s the Wraiths’.”
The North was also very large. The black line of their southern border ran the width of the Heart, Camden, and Whitechapel.
Ilsa frowned at the map. Let’s just say we’re surrounded by enemies on every side. “So then, that means the Psi…”
“Ah.” Fyfe reached above the pinboard, and unrolled another map over the first. This one was made of a very thin, semi-transparent parchment, and though it fit perfectly over the other, it barely resembled it at all. The river and roads were sketched in very finely, but another set of lines crawled across the city like a spiderweb. Instead of borders in red, blue, green, gold, and black, a single magenta line ran around most of the map. “The Underground. The territory of the Psi. These are their streets,” said Fyfe, indicating the new set of lines, “and their homes are carved into the earth around them. Much of what’s beneath us is hollow.”
Ilsa had forced herself into the tunnels of the Metropolitan Railway a few times, and never stayed for long: that panic she couldn’t name or control emerged when she couldn’t see her way out, merely the thought of a whole people spending their lives in the Underground made her hot and dizzy right there in the lab.
“Don’t they worry the whole thing’ll cave in?” said Ilsa, but Fyfe only smiled.
“That’s not a danger to the Psi.” He smiled wider, his eyes lighting up with excitement. “They can move objects with the power of their minds. Those with the strongest magic can do incredible things. I’ve seen a Psi sketch a portrait without touching the canvas. A Psi man last year held a collapsing bridge together until the traffic got to safety.” He scrubbed at his hair. “Of course, the bridge only came down because the Psi and the Sorcerers and the Oracles were fighting on it.”
He straightened as if something had caught his attention, and glanced around until his eyes found the carriage clock on his desk.
“Stars! I’m going to be late.” He bounded into the bedchamber, letting out a string of muttered curses as something clattered to the floor. A few moments later, he emerged in a clean shirt, and began collecting up books. “I’m sorry, Ilsa. I have a class.”
Ilsa frowned. “What kind of class?”
“This morning it’s geology, but I’m a student of, well” – he gestured around the lab – “everything, I suppose. I’m trying to get my bachelor’s degree.”
“Ain’t you kind of young to be a university student?”
“I’m young to be a lot of things,” he said with an unapologetic grin. “Precocious, Hester says.”
As Ilsa picked her way through the maze of Fyfe’s eclectic creations, she had to agree. “Alright. I’ll come back when Eliot’s here.”
Fyfe halted his bustling and grimaced. “Ah, Eliot is here.”
“What?”
“He’s in his rooms. I wouldn’t take it personally. He prefers to keep to himself these days.”
Cassia was taciturn when she spoke of Eliot, Aelius was unashamedly rude, and Oren seemed loath to acknowledge him at all. But there was something different in Fyfe’s voice. Ilsa thought it might be hurt.
Her own feeling was irritation.
“P’raps I’ll stay here after all,” she whispered. She put her finger to her lips, then gestured at the door, and hoped Fyfe would catch her meaning.
His stifled giggle told her that he did. “I’ll show you out then,” he said loudly from the doorway for Eliot’s benefit. “You’re welcome in my lab any time, Ilsa.”
Then he pulled the door to with a theatrical thunk, only to open it again silently. His grinning face appeared in the gap and he winked at her, before disappearing down the corridor.
Satisfied that Eliot would believe she was gone, Ilsa chose a book, sat down in Fyfe’s armchair, and settled in.
13
She didn’t have to wait long.
About an hour after Fyfe left for his class, Ilsa heard the tinkle of china, and peeked around the doorframe to see a butler with a tray at Eliot�
��s door. He must have rung for tea.
The butler knocked, a key rattled in the lock, and he was admitted.
Ilsa discerned the murmur of a voice rough and vulnerable with sleep, and forgot all of Eliot’s hard edges and sharp words. She crept silently into the hall, where she became a mouse again, and pressed her little body to the skirting board right by Eliot’s door. When the butler emerged, he pulled the door closed and Eliot swiftly locked it behind him, but Ilsa was already inside.
He turned at the sound of her shifting.
“Oh, heaven, earth and all the damned constellations,” Eliot groaned. Vexed, certainly, but not surprised. Ilsa was disappointed.
“Morning.”
“Well, please, do come in.”
The corner room was large, but it had been divided in two by a partition wall. The bigger space was an office, and had an impressive amount of clutter for the sparseness of the room; the furnishings were minimal, the walls were bare, and no opulent rugs lay over the floorboards.
There were maps, however. A large desk and a lot of floor space had been given over to them. A vast map above the fireplace depicted a land Ilsa thought she knew. On studying it she realised that it vaguely resembled the British Isles. The large lettering above said they were the Isles of Albia.
The mantel beneath bore a layer of undisturbed dust, and in the fireplace was a heap of ash that must have been there since the colder months. Perhaps Eliot did not let the household staff in to clean, or perhaps they refused to venture into his lair. Either was plausible.
Through an archway was a rather slapdash bedchamber. The bed was pushed up against one wall, and bore no coverlet, no runner, no decorative pillows. The covers were rumpled, like Eliot, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his hair mussed up. She was suddenly a little bashful to be so close to Eliot’s recently vacated bed.
If he noticed where her eyes were, he gave nothing away. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb, a scowl on his face. She would have to play this right. She dropped her best smile and used her sweetest voice.
Witherward Page 14
