She made to follow the girl down the steps, but Eliot stepped into her path. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to talk to her.”
Eliot laughed incredulously. “You can’t go down there.”
Ilsa crossed her arms to keep from punching him, and scowled. “I’ll do what I please.”
“Stars, Ilsa, you want to put yourself amongst a group of lowlifes whose leaders want you dead,” he said, exasperated. “If anyone in there Sees that, we’ll be surrounded. It’s pointless anyway. Oracles are very superstitious, the pipe-smoking type especially. It violates the laws of their faith to share knowledge with non-Oracles.”
“For one thing,” countered Ilsa, “these pipe-smoking types ain’t gonna know me from Queen Victoria. It’s an opium den. And for another, going places what upsets you proper speaking, feather bed, afternoon tea rich folk is how I’m gonna to be the one to find Gedeon.” With that, she turned into a blackbird, zipped over Eliot’s head, and landed at the bottom of the stairs. “You coming or not?”
Eliot glared and prowled down the steps. “You know they speak in riddles?”
“Guess you won’t be able to understand her then. Let me handle it.” She lifted the latch and they slipped inside.
The flat was oppressively quiet, in a way that evoked the muffle of thick fabric or heavy snow. Smoke hung thickly in the air. It curled in a shaft of light that reached for them from the end of the corridor, where a sheet imperfectly shrouded the back door. Low lights in red sconces guided them through a bead curtain and into a room carpeted with thin mattresses, most of which were unoccupied. Gedeon’s raids must have disturbed the supply all over the city – just as he had intended.
Not everyone in the den was an Oracle. A black cat Ilsa took for one of her own kind was sprawled limply on a low couch, their tail twitching lazily. A Psi stared dreamily at a teacup that was revolving and bobbing in front of him, the saucer hovering below, while the whorls on his face glowed in pulses.
Crouched against the wall in the next room, defeated and empty-handed, was the girl. Even as Ilsa cast a dim shadow over her, she seemed oblivious to anything but her gnawing want. Brushing off Eliot’s murmured objections, Ilsa smoothed her white skirt and slid down the wall until she was sitting next to the Oracle on the grimy floorboards.
Still, the girl barely registered her presence – until Ilsa unfastened her bag, removed the single tin of vemanta they had procured that day, and placed it on the floor between them.
Ilsa repressed a shiver as the empty orbs of the girl’s eyes met hers. She had a rounded, upturned nose and a spattering of dark freckles.
Tiny pale hands snatched for the tin, but Ilsa was quicker.
“What’s your name?”
“Lila Hardwick, miss,” whispered the girl.
Such an ordinary name. Such an ordinary voice. “Lila, I—”
“You got a bargain for me,” she cut in, furiously shaking her head. “No. No. Can’t help.” She gathered herself to get up, but the little cylindrical tin must have chosen that moment to make its siren call, and she froze, staring at it.
Ilsa wrapped a hand around Lila’s forearm; gently, but she was ready to grip tight if Lila broke free of the vemanta’s spell and tried to leave. “You know what I’m going to ask?” she said.
“Yours not to Know,” she said sharply, her jaw tight, but she didn’t struggle away. From the corners of the dark flat, several voices echoed her words, and a chill ran down Ilsa’s spine. She decided to dispense with the preamble.
“Where can you get vemanta cheap? Tell me and I’ll give you this,” she said, holding forth the tin.
“Yours not…” Lila started saying again, but without conviction. She was looking at the vemanta with a fearful expression, like it was hurting her. “It ain’t cheap. Not really.”
“What’s that mean?” said Ilsa, dousing any notes of frustration in her voice with sweetness and sorority.
“Yours not to Know,” said Lila in a distracted whisper, and Ilsa blocked out the murmured echoes. Lila shuddered violently and started worrying her fingers along her shawl. Ilsa took her little hand in hers.
“S’alright,” she said. “Could you tell me something I can know? Anything, and I’ll give it you.”
“They’re paying with their Sight. My brother Freddie…”
This was it; what Ilsa needed to know. “Freddie’s getting vemanta for cheap, in exchange for information? Yes?” Lila shot a nervous glance at Ilsa, then the tin, and back again, and nodded. “Where?”
“You don’t know the city.”
“Try me.”
“You don’t know it,” whimpered Lila. She was such a pathetic thing that Ilsa nearly took pity, but when the girl extended a hand again for the vemanta, she pulled it out of reach.
“Lila, please.”
“You know another place.” Her eyes stayed trained on the tin. She was on the verge of tears. “You ain’t from this world, or that world. You don’t know the city.” Her head snapped up. Her orb-like eyes fixed on Ilsa, and she could tell the girl was Seeing something. “There’s a shop on Moorgate. On Marin Street.”
At last, something Ilsa understood – and something she didn’t. She loosened her hold on the vemanta, and with a determined burst Lila snatched it from her.
“But you named two roads. Is Marin Street off Moorgate?”
“Not the street, the station. I told you, you don’t know the city.” She stood shakily and edged away, the little tin pressed tightly to her breast. But she spoke again as she retreated, hateful venom in her voice.
“Yours not to Know.”
15
She had been warned that Oracles spoke in riddles.
“Don’t they mind ’bout finding the bloody Seer’s apprentice?” she grumbled. “If they’re so up in arms to come kill me over it, p’raps they should think ’bout helping me instead.” She kicked a stone into the road with the soft toe of her new leather boots, and swore when it bruised her foot.
“There’s little use in appealing to an Oracle’s reasoning,”
