Ilsa’s stomach twisted. She could see it now; the chain of events her own mother had started that led to her family’s downfall. She had been trying to make a better world for her son. Eliot stopped in front of Edward Kelley’s Dispensary and motioned her to follow him inside. “This is it.”
There was a queue for the counter, but at a glance, it was obvious none of the patrons were Oracles. Was this a discouraging sign?
Eliot leaned over her shoulder to whisper as they waited. “Remember, we’re just here to buy a tin of vemanta and be on our way. Don’t do anything to draw attention.”
Ilsa turned around, affronted by Eliot’s insinuation, a few choice words on the tip of her tongue. At the same moment, the bell above the door jingled as a woman entered. The queueing patrons shuffled to make room in the small shop, squeezing together until Eliot was pressed close enough that, despite his best efforts, Ilsa felt the brush of his chest against hers.
Her breath caught at the unexpected shiver that skittered across her skin; her eyes met Eliot’s at the moment she realised he had noticed.
Ilsa staggered back. Her heel caught the hem of her dress, and she would have lost her balance, but Eliot’s hands shot out to grasp her firmly, warm fingers closing around her hands.
“Anything like that,” he said roughly, eyes sliding to the woman who was tutting at their inappropriate display.
Ilsa huffed as she freed herself and turned to face the counter. It was hardly her fault the chemist’s was too cramped. Far too cramped. And too warm. Warmer still when Eliot pressed close again and brought his mouth near her ear. “I thought magician’s assistants were supposed to be graceful.”
He was taunting her now; she could hear the cruel amusement in his whisper. She was about to risk a reprimand a second time when the person ahead of her stepped aside and they reached the front of the queue, where the sign on the counter was impossible to miss:
WE DO NOT STOCK VEMANTA
THANK YOU
Recovering, Ilsa placed her hands on her hips. Perhaps this was a lead after all. “There a secret passcode or something?”
“Don’t,” muttered Eliot, but she ignored him. The clerk was sweeping his gaze over her. He broke into a grin.
“For you?” he said, leaning across the counter. “Perhaps we can work something out.”
Ilsa mirrored his body language and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I can pay extra. Only, I heard there might be a supply surfacing somewhere ’round here.”
“Stars,” said Eliot under his breath, exasperated, and the clerk’s eyes darted to him. Ilsa cursed inwardly. She didn’t need to follow his gaze to know what he saw: hard lines, intimidating eyes, and a disapproving scowl. She’d bet he had his hands in his pockets like some common thug. The clerk straightened formally, any designs on her repressed, and shook his head. “Sorry, miss. Mr Kelley decided to run his supply down and wait out the burglaries.”
Ilsa scrutinised him. “That the truth?”
He frowned. “’Course it’s the truth.”
“Fine. Thanks for your time, then.”
She turned on her heel and made for the door, not waiting for Eliot to catch her up.
* * *
The second chemist Eliot thought likely was just north of Euston Road, in a glass-topped arcade near St Pancras Station.
“You’d think a Changeling boy’d be more suspicious of the way a girl looks,” Ilsa said as they weaved through the shoppers in the arcade. “My right eye was twitching like mad and he din’t even notice.”
“He saw the way you look. I don’t think he cared if it was your true form.”
Ilsa lowered her voice. “But ain’t everyone making themselves prettier than they are?” She squinted at an attractive young couple, trying to ascertain if their skins were their own.
“Working girls, maybe.”
“Know all ’bout that, do you?” She took his affronted expression as a no. “You telling me you’re just less vain this side of the portal?”
“When everyone can have a perfect face, one starts to see the beauty in a normal one. Or a strange one, even. I’m sure even in the Otherworld, beauty quickly loses its shine. Unfortunately for the likes of you.”
Eliot’s expression turned stony as he heard what he’d said too late, and Ilsa grinned. It was her turn to taunt.
“What’s that ’bout my perfect face?” she said with exaggerated sweetness.
“That’s what you took from that warning?” He countered quickly. “Wait a second.” He glanced left and right, then pulled her around a corner so they were alone. “Take the disguise off a moment.”
“You said I had to wear it.”
“I know.”
“You said not to hand no one the proof of what they think they know.”
“Are you a parrot often? Just take it off.”
Eliot’s smile made her do it. She hadn’t imagined the boy she’d woken that morning was capable of taking a teasing as well as he could dish it out, and yet her teasing had somehow coaxed a less cautious, more human Eliot from inside the monster, and she liked it.
He stood before her real face and looked at her straight on. Really looked at her, like he was deciphering a cryptic puzzle in the paper. Ilsa suddenly wasn’t sure who was teasing whom. She didn’t feel like the one in control.
“Your eyes are too big,” he said after too long. “And you only have one dimple.” He shrugged. “Your face is rather strange, come to think of it.”
“Guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ilsa said, finding her voice had gone liquid and warm. She slipped back into her disguise. “You look like I’d cut myself on you, and that’s just your normal face. Don’t get me started on your smile.”
Eliot did smile, in full force. He smiled like a boy who knew just how ferocious a full grin made him look. “And it serves me well.”
* * *
They had more luck at their second destination, though they paid a premium for one of the stockist’s very last tins. But once outside the shop, they examined the tin and concluded, to Eliot’s renewed irritation, that it was the chemist’s own.
“Alright, where else would he go?” said Ilsa.
“I’m out of ideas.” Eliot rubbed his eyes, then looked skyward. “How many chemists in Camden? A dozen? Two dozen maybe?”
Ilsa nodded seriously. “I can flirt with that many shop boys if I got to.”
Eliot continued to frown. “If we still don’t have a lead once we’ve swept the quarter…”
“Then we make a new plan. Which way?”
Eliot nodded, but he didn’t look reassured. “North. It’s not far. We can walk.”
They left the arcade and headed back in the direction of the park. Ilsa was glad to be walking. It gave her a chance to talk.
“You said something that night in the park,” she said once she’d built up the courage. “’Bout when you all thought I was dead.”
Eliot shot her a wary glance. “I told you, most of what I said was second hand.”
“Right. Which is why I kept thinking ’bout this one thing. You said you remembered it specifically.”
His paced slowed. “Oh. I told you that Walcott’s housekeeper had said she was holding Ilsa Ravenswood when she died.” Ilsa didn’t have to ask her next question: how he knew. Eliot sighed and ran a hand over his face. “When we were very young, Gedeon asked about his family a lot. Hester was never his guardian officially, she was too young, but she’s always made herself impossible to say no to, and she wouldn’t have him coddled. He knew his mother and father had been murdered, and that he’d had a sister who died in infancy. But you know the way children can be when they develop a fixation, especially when they can sense a bigger truth. Gedeon was always pushing Hester or Oren over some minor detail of the story. It was such an obsession that it rubbed off on me too. At the ages of seven and eight, our main pastime was unravelling the things we hadn’t been told about what happened to you all. It became a game.” He hesit
ated. “Perhaps you don’t want to hear this.”
Ilsa was jolted. Why was he suddenly reluctant? “I asked, din’t I?”
“But… alright. Eventually Gedeon and I wore everyone down. Hester’s never talked about seeing your family killed and I don’t think she ever will, but she allowed Oren to tell Gedeon everything he knew. I wasn’t allowed to be there. I’ll let you imagine how well eight-year-old me dealt with the exclusion, even though I knew Gedeon would repeat it all for me.
“I found him afterwards. There’s a tree in the park with a perfect cradle at the centre of the branches. He used to fly up and hide there. I asked him what Oren had said and he told me. He skimmed over the details of the cellar and your family’s deaths. Maybe it was too overwhelming. Most likely Oren had skimmed over them too, but I clearly remember thinking it was strange how he hardly dwelt on it. He was caught up with you.
“There was no kindness in what happened to your family,” he said roughly. He spoke to his feet as he walked, overcome at the thought of that night the same way he was in the park when they met. “Perhaps that’s why the fact someone had cared for you in your final days always stuck with Gedeon. Oren said Walcott’s housekeeper had done everything she could to save you, and when she failed, she had held you and rocked you until you stopped breathing. The reason I remember it so well is because Gedeon remembers it. He’s repeated it to me since, several times. When he hurts over his sister’s death, he remembers that someone had some kindness for her and that he’s grateful.”
Grateful. The word gutted her. It was everything Miss Mitcham didn’t deserve.
“And now it turns out every word of it was a lie,” said Eliot with a brittle laugh. “It was false comfort.”
Ilsa shook her head. “Comfort’s never false,” she said, even as fresh pain welled up and made her voice shake. She wanted to be a person who could be glad Gedeon had had comfort, even if it meant he’d had goodwill for Miss Mitcham. She wanted to be that person, but she wasn’t sure she could. “Or p’raps it’s always false. It’s just how we choose to think of something, after all, ain’t it? Comfort’s in our heads.”
Eliot was studying her warily. Ilsa could see him warring with his curiosity before he spoke. “After you left the meeting room yesterday, the others were wondering if perhaps she’d grown attached. That she told a foolish lie because she wanted to keep you for her own.”
“There’s an idea. Keep an orphanage open by making orphans.”
Her tone must have given away just how wrong the theory was. Eliot grimaced. “I didn’t think so. She told you nothing of magic or the Witherward, though she knew of Lord Walcott and your parents, and the portal.” He looked at her bleakly. “It’s like I said, children can always sense a bigger truth. If she had cared for you at all, she would have given in and told you eventually. But she let you believe you were alone. It was cruel. And the lie wasn’t foolish, it was malicious.”
Once again, the look he gave her brooked no argument. He had parsed the truth from the few reluctant hints Ilsa had shared and she couldn’t take them back. If she had known he would think on it, she might have been more careful. Only, she hadn’t thought him capable of caring.
“As I said,” Ilsa replied quietly, “she ain’t a good woman.”
“No,” agreed Eliot.
Fearing he might probe further, Ilsa asked something else she had been thinking on. “What was Lord Walcott doing in the Otherworld?”
Eliot raised his eyebrows. “Stars. Fleeing this mess? Making his fortune? I’m afraid I don’t know that much about him.”
“You weren’t curious? Weren’t it strange?”
Eliot laughed; a rare, unpoisoned laugh. “That a person might choose a life in another universe? That they might look at a portal out of here and simply decide to” – he threw up a hand in a gesture that dismissed everything around him – “step through it?”
“Are there a lot of them?” Ilsa said. “People from here living over there?”
Eliot was still disbelieving. He looked at her like he was trying to grasp her meaning. “It must seem a strange decision to you,” he said eventually. “That anyone with magic would choose to live somewhere where it would be sensible to hide it. But that can be a benefit itself. Look what it did for you. You made a career of exploiting the Otherworlders’ ignorance. A Wraith could be the best sportsperson while barely using their magic at all. A Whisperer could be a star detective without anyone ever knowing they could read their suspects’ minds. Besides, some of them have no other choice.”
“What d’you mean?”
“It’s a convenient punishment for those who haven’t earned death,” he said. “We don’t banish our undesirables from the city, we banish them from the world.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Some punishment. You’ve been bad even amongst the terrible, here’s your guilt-free pass to somewhere better.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Ilsa. “People have got… people, you know. Families, homes, jobs. P’raps they don’t want to be somewhere better. And why the hell should they, when their whole life’s here?”
Eliot didn’t reply. She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his gaze; she could hear him drawing breath to speak then changing his mind.
“I did not mean that banishment itself isn’t a bitter punishment,” he said gently. “In fact, being forced into the Otherworld should hardly count. No law in this city means no true authority. If one wished, one could board a ship to the continent and slip back into this dimension there.” Ilsa didn’t miss how his gaze tracked east, as if he could see it if it weren’t for the city around him. He was wistful as he added, “Paris has a portal.”
“Let me guess. It’s at the top of the Eiffel Tower.” Eliot looked at her strangely. “What, no Eiffel Tower?”
“There’s an Eiffel Dam – I haven’t heard of any tower.”
Once again, this new information raised more questions than it answered. “You ever seen it?”
“When would I have seen it, pray tell? In one of the months when the Changelings haven’t needed a militia force, perhaps?”
“Looks to me like the Changeling’s militia force don’t need you no more,” Ilsa teased.
To Eliot’s credit, he looked like he tried to resist glowering in response. “I hold out hope that this reprieve will be too short for a tour of the continent.” His words made the claim, but his tone told another story. Eliot would see the continent, and probably beyond, on both sides of the portal if he could.
He slowed, something snagging his attention, and he smirked. “Look.”
Ilsa followed his line of sight to a building under construction across the street. “That where we’re going?”
“That’s a building site, Ilsa. Just look at it.”
Ilsa did. The building had been partly raised, its frame climbing five of six storeys and shrouded on all sides by scaffolding. The walls of the first floor were complete, and those of the second were under way. Above them, beams were being hoisted – albeit with impressive speed – but there was nothing else to see.
Except for the builders. The mechanisms of manual labour were nowhere to be seen: no lifting, no motion, not a trowel or shovel or hammer in sight. Instead, ten or fifteen men stood, sat, and lounged on the frame and walls of the building – doing nothing. And yet the work continued around them. Ilsa almost stepped into traffic to get closer to the ropeless beams floating upwards, and the self-assembling bricks as they piled on top of one another. The building was making itself.
“Is this sorcery?” she said, entranced.
Eliot laughed softly. “The Sorcerers can only dream of psychokinetic power like this. In their centuries of study, they have never been able to replicate what the Psi can do.” The Psi. The dwellers of the Underground. “The work of these Psi builders is cerebral. Watch them. Watch their faces.”
The nearest man was perched between a vertical beam and a diagonal one like a child in a tree. His leg swung casually, and his head rested
on the wood behind him, but his eyes were focused. They followed a succession of bricks as they floated from a barrow and rested in the mortar of the wall he was building. Ilsa’s eyes widened and her heart rate spiked, the wonder of it almost too much to bear.
The builder angled his head towards the sun, and a flash of white light reflected off his brow like sunlight on the ripples of the Thames. Ilsa got closer, and as the Psi man worked, a pattern of silver swirls pulsed across his brow, his temples, his cheekbones. It appeared inlaid, as if an artist had carved his skin and poured molten metal into the grooves. She turned her attention to another of the builders. He had similar markings, but his appeared as scars; he was not using his psychokinetic power.
“The markings exist from birth,” said Eliot. “They say no two are identical.”
Ilsa was barely listening any more. Something she had always wished to understand was falling into place. Bill Blume’s wife had needed to cover her face when she performed.
Because she had been Psi.
A nostalgic grief wrapped itself around her, but there was comfort too. She suddenly knew her magician better than ever before, even though he was gone. She wondered what Blume would think if he could see where she was now, and that she had found the answers she’d been looking for.
Her parents had left plenty of things to learn about them too, and one of them was Gedeon. No, it didn’t matter if they couldn’t find this chemist in Camden. Ilsa would find a way. She had to.
“Ilsa?”
Her head snapped to Eliot, who was watching her with grim concern. She had almost forgotten he was there.
“It’s nothing.” She shook her head. “Let’s go.”
Witherward Page 16
