Blume had imbibed his heart with liquor rather than feel it break when his wife had run away. How much further would he sink if Ilsa didn’t show up the following evening? If she squandered his final chance to salvage his career? If only she had known Captain Fowler would find her again, she never would have chased him when she should have been completing the finale. Then perhaps Blume would have had a second chance. Instead, she’d doomed him.
“Mr Blume paid his landlady to put me up in her flat for a few years,” she went on. “When I was fifteen I moved into a boarding house. We’ve been performing at the Isolde nearly two years now. The Great Balthazar, the show’s called. ’Course, now that you’ve taken me prisoner, he’ll probably be fired.”
She glanced at Eliot, wanting to catch his eye. He had made her think she was free to leave. His eyes were on his teacup, but the corner of his mouth twitched up into a sardonic smile. Ilsa balled her fists under the table.
“You are far from a prisoner here,” said Oren, shaking his head.
“You told me I can’t leave, din’t you?”
Aelius chuckled. “Oren only meant if you want to live, Ilsa my darling. There are plenty more acolytes where they came from.”
“And why? Why’d them Oracles try to kill me?”
Oren cleared his throat. “Because of something that may have happened four days ago. The Docklands – the Oracles’ quarter – doesn’t have a ruler as such, but the most senior among them is an appointed Oracle of exceptional power: the Seer. It’s a sort of religious appointment, and in fact carries no authority. They are entirely at the mercy of the people and their wishes. Every Seer has an apprentice, who is to take their place should the Seer be found unsuitable. This apprentice, the Oracles tell us, has been kidnapped.”
Ilsa remembered something Captain Fowler had said: They were provoked.
“Are you telling me that you… kidnapped someone?”
“Not us, exactly,” said Aelius carefully. He toyed with the wolf head of his cane. “Our alpha.”
“Hester?” said Ilsa sceptically. The woman recovering from a life-changing injury, who refused her duties and took to bed at eight in the morning, did not strike her as a likely suspect.
“Hester was our alpha once.” Cassia’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Her reappointment was an emergency measure.”
“Our true leader is Gedeon Ravenswood,” said Aelius. “The Prince of Camden. Your brother.”
8
Her brother.
In Ilsa’s endless imaginings, there were some versions of her story in which she had a sibling. They were invariably the worst versions; the ones in which her parents picked another over her. She’d done her best not to dwell on the possibility of a sibling, and so, she was unprepared for the news.
Unprepared for a lightness to come over her. It was like Aelius had told her something she already knew; like something missing had been put back. A brother fit the empty space inside her.
Quick on the heels of that happy yearning was rage again.
She turned on Cassia. So this was what she had been nervous of Ilsa learning. “I asked if I got relations here,” she said quietly, hearing the quiver in her voice. “You din’t say I had a brother.” She shot a glare at Aelius. “You din’t say nothing all the time you were showing me ’round.”
Ilsa threw another look to the far end of the table, but Eliot appeared lost in thought, and he didn’t catch it.
“They both had good reason,” Oren interjected with a sigh. “It’s not happy news. We decided we would discuss it together. We’re sorry to say… he’s disappeared. Over a month ago. We couldn’t even be sure he was alive. Even now, we don’t know that this was his doing. The group who visited to accuse Gedeon of the apprentice’s abduction were incredibly hostile. They refused to answer most of our questions. We have no proof of what they’re claiming and no reason to trust them.”
“It’s difficult to know what to believe when it comes to Oracles,” Fyfe said gently. “They’re capable of knowing everything, but so few do, and even fewer will be forthcoming. It conflicts with their beliefs to share knowledge with non-Oracles.”
“They claim Gedeon found a way to penetrate the temple without being detected, which is a tall tale if ever I heard one,” added Aelius sarcastically. Ilsa remembered something else the captain had said: that Oracles could see anything observable.
“It has put us in quite a predicament,” said Oren. “We can’t let all of London know that we’re without our leader. Rumours abound, but a trusted-few wolves are taking turns impersonating him about Camden in order to stem them. We can’t afford to look weak at a time like this.”
“Because of the attack?” Ilsa glanced at Cassia. “The attack what hurt Hester?”
“The most recent in a string of such attacks,” said Aelius. “You know the way of things around here, what with your perspicacious interrogation of young Captain Fowler.” Ilsa was certain she saw him shoot a look towards the other end of the table and its occupant. “Our relations with our neighbours are less than friendly. The Changelings forced their way into this most minuscule sliver of London, and there will always be those who insist on taking it back. Our recent adversaries are a group of Sorcerers rebelling against their faction’s alliance with Camden.”
“So the Oracles are attacking me because Gedeon kidnapped their apprentice… whatever…”
“Seer,” said Fyfe.
“… and these rebel Sorcerers are attacking you because they want more territory?”
Oren hesitated. He took
