Ilsa found she wasn’t breathing. Suddenly, she had an answer she had sought her whole life. She turned wide eyes towards the captain.
“Changelings,” he said.
Yes. That is what he’d called her. A changeling.
“Welcome to Camden Town,” said Captain Fowler, turning north, “the territory of the Changelings.”
Ilsa was fast learning how little she knew, but if this London was like the one she had left behind, she knew its geography. “Camden’s north of here.”
“The borough, yes. The Changeling quarter that shares its name is vaster. Though it’s small compared to all the others.”
The Changeling quarter; the home of people like her. Ilsa’s heart was hammering hard enough to break free.
They crossed the street and found a group of three more guards ahead. Each wore a red sash or neck scarf or armband, as had those at the abbey; a makeshift livery. They shot wary glances at the captain, even when he lowered his hood to appease them, and as Ilsa and the captain came level, the guards stood across their path.
“What business?” said one, as the others spread out to surround them. Again, they were all unarmed, but their tense, ready stance and squared shoulders were intimidating.
The captain scowled as he withdrew the document. “Read it quick,” he snapped. “At this rate, it’ll be a miracle if we reach the Zoo by dusk.”
The guard scanned the page, then returned it with the same astonished chagrin as the man in the abbey. “Apologies, captain. Take Whitehall. There are fewer wolves that way.”
“We will.” And they were on their way again, Ilsa taking two steps for every one of his.
Through the descending whisky haze, she tried to arrange her scraps of knowledge so they made sense – another London, an “Alpha Hester” who was looking for her – but each new piece of information only left her more at sea. “Wolves?”
“Camden’s militia. Look for the men and women marked with something red.”
A memory tugged at Ilsa – a wolf somewhere in her childhood – but she dismissed it. “Who’d they work for?”
The captain thought for a moment, then laughed mildly. “I suppose they work for you.”
As far as understanding went, this was a step in the wrong direction. “Me?”
“While I said I would try to explain, there are some gaps in my knowledge about Camden business. You shall have to ask Alpha Hester who the wolves answer to these days.”
Ilsa was trying to decide on her next most pressing question when a glaring difference between this world – the Witherward – and the other became apparent.
“There ain’t no Big Ben!”
“Who?” He followed her line of sight. “Ah, the clock tower. The Otherworld have their parliament. We have the Trade House, the only neutral ground in the city.”
Indeed, the missing clock tower was not the only difference to the Palace of Westminster. The building was similar, but it was like someone had taken the frame and finished it with bigger windows, steeper roofs and gilt moulding. It had an imposing stateliness that reminded Ilsa of religion instead of law, but certainly not of trade.
“What ’bout Buckingham Palace?” Ilsa asked. “St Paul’s? The Tower?”
“Some of those places exist,” said the captain. “Few serve the same purpose.”
As they walked, Ilsa continued to spot Changelings in animal form. The frequent enormous wolves, she took to be the militia. Then there was a man who transformed into a monkey to climb a lamppost and find his wandering young son in the crowd. A woman waiting to board an omnibus was whispering seductively to a black snake draped around her neck. The driver charged her for two fares without batting an eye, but Ilsa struggled to look away.
She had never dared imagine a place where she could shift freely. In all the stories she had told herself about how she got her magic, she was an outcast. To find she was so very normal in this other realm was so hard to fathom, she was tempted to run the other way; back to the “Otherworld”.
She attributed her fierce overheating to this anxiety – and the long walk. That is, until they reached the southern perimeter of Regent’s Park, where the grass was lush and green, the trees were cloaked in frothy foliage, and the hydrangeas were in full bloom. The warmth suddenly made sense in a backward way.
“It ain’t winter here, is it?” she said.
“When are we – early February? This is the hot season. We have a few weeks left before the leaves start turning.” He suddenly snatched Ilsa’s elbow and drew her closer. “Just keep walking.”
She followed his line of sight to a figure among the pedestrians ahead of them, and her blood chilled. She was young, and frail-looking, but she had the orb-like, white eyes and sickly pallor of the beings who had slain Martha.
She did as the captain said and kept walking – partly because he was dragging her along even as she slowed, and partly because the girl looked so powerless. She swayed slightly as she stumbled along, and even with her empty eyes, it was clear she was nearly oblivious to her surroundings. Other pedestrians gave her a wide berth, or turned their faces like she wasn’t even there.
They passed close by her, and she paused in the middle of the pavement and cocked her head to one side. Some kind of awareness had struck her; awareness of them.
“Keep walking,” repeated the captain.
Ilsa did, but she watched the girl over her shoulder as they retreated. She tracked them with her empty eyes like she was following their scent. After a moment, she turned around again and stumbled on.
“Was that an Oracle?” said Ilsa.
“Yes.” He released her arm.
“But I thought you said this was the Changeling quarter.”
He shot her a look. “You ask tenacious questions for one in your position,” he said, eyes travelling to the blood spatters on the hem of her dress: to her dishevelled curls and the lazy sway in
