Tall, excited Fyfe had walked home. Ilsa had jogged.
“I think so,” said Eliot, barely disguising a smirk as his eyes travelled over her. “There are about a dozen Seers down there.”
“Is one of them Hetepheres Emeryat?”
These were two of the words Ilsa had failed to understand the first and second time Fyfe had said them, but Eliot’s gaze snapped to Fyfe. He raised an eyebrow. “The seventh Seer?”
Fyfe made a wild gesture Ilsa thought was acquiescence. “Yes!” he said vehemently, and turned to Ilsa. “The seventh Seer’s amulet. That’s what the legend’s called. That’s what I was trying to say.”
Ilsa nodded. She was still catching her breath. “Right. What legend?”
“It’s a folk tale, really. Hester used to tell it to me when I was little, which means she probably told it to Gedeon too. Nearly two thousand years ago, when the city was founded, the Oracles built their temple by the river and brought the Seer of Esfa Kala to live there. She was only the seventh Seer to rule in the modern age, which is when Oracle customs changed and the Seer went from a leader to a slave. The previous six had all been denounced by their people in a matter of years and executed, so she was considered to be doomed to an untimely death.
“But when the different peoples of London were brought together, the Seer met a Wraith general who fell in love with her. Back then, the Wraiths were feared and even worshipped by the people of the other factions and he was the wealthiest and most powerful leader in all of London. He waged war on the Oracles to try to free his lover from her indenture, and slaughtered hundreds of them. Ironically, this bloodshed is what eventually brought a death sentence on the Seer. Her people blamed her for failing to protect them from the Wraiths.
“But before the sentence could be passed, the Wraith general’s grief and anguish led him to swallow his pride and turn to a Sorcerer who was able to help him. He paid the Sorcerer in land and gold and anything the Wraiths had, making his people nearly destitute, and the Sorcerer crafted for him an amulet that would protect his lover when her people came to execute her. All he had to do was unfasten a clasp and put a drop of his blood inside the amulet.
“So he did, and he smuggled the amulet to his lover. The moment she let the chain fall around her neck, she was imbued with the Wraith’s power. She was still an Oracle, but with the unstoppable speed, strength, and senses of a Wraith.”
The hairs on Ilsa’s arms stood on end. An amulet that could replicate a Wraith’s power, just like Fyfe’s experiments.
“What the general failed to learn until too late,” Fyfe went on, “was that the amulet took the power of the person whose blood it held and gave it to the wearer. In making the Seer practically invincible, he had been made helpless. When she tore apart her prison with her bare hands, her people thought her a goddess, and she was restored to her position. When she learned that her new-found powers were stolen, she betrayed her lover, kept the amulet for herself and wrought vengeance against the Wraiths for the slaughter of her people to win their favour. The helpless, mortal general was burned at the stake, a sacrifice to the Oracle gods, but when he died, the amulet’s power was lost. The Seer grew sick and died as well.” Fyfe rubbed his hair. “Hester used to tell me the cosmos brought it on her as punishment for her sins. But, then, Hester also told me Wraiths eat Changeling children who misbehave. Who knows what happened.”
“Gedeon must have thought the amulet was buried with the Seer,” said Ilsa.
“It was,” said Eliot, turning both their heads. He had listened to Fyfe tell the story with stoic patience. “I mean, it might have been.” He ran a hand over his face, frustrated. “An hour ago, I would have said there was no way Gedeon would be acting on some fairy tale.”
“Legend,” corrected Fyfe.
“But… well, come with me.”
By a chair in a hidden nook up on the balcony, there was a pile of books. The top few lay open, and Ilsa picked one of them up. It was a history of magical artefacts, open on a page about the supposed existence of the legendary seventh Seer’s amulet.
“I saw some sections of the history shelves had been pillaged, including all the books I needed,” said Eliot. “At first I thought some raiders had helped themselves, but then I found them all here. All of them reference the legend or Hetepheres Emeryat, or the amulet itself.”
“How d’you know it was Gedeon what had them?” said Ilsa.
“Because he folds the pages when he reads.” She let out a small sound of disapproval as Eliot showed her the mangled corner of a page. “I know. Never lend him your books. Or anything, for that matter. The man is a bull in a china shop.”
“Please don’t use that phrase,” said Fyfe, a haunted look coming over him. “It was such an expensive dare.”
Eliot gently smoothed the page corner and put the book down.
“The question is,” said Fyfe, “what does Gedeon even want with this amulet? From a scientific standpoint, it’s an intriguing piece of magic, and certainly powerful but… it can’t be worth all this trouble.”
“Well.” Eliot shifted some of the books and held up a tome bound in green leather. “This fellow says that if the amulet could be studied, it would be a simple matter for another Sorcerer to replicate its magic.” He flicked through the book, glowering at it in a way Ilsa wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of. “Somebody
