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
