She had just reached her limit, pulled Eliot almost to a standstill, and opened her mouth to beg that they turn back at once, when the tunnel before her opened up.
They were at the top of another set of stairs, but these ones weren’t bracketed by polished tiles. Instead, they looked down on an entire city.
“Oh my…”
Ilsa instantly forgot that she was underground. The Psi quarter wasn’t formed of a warren of train-track tunnels like she had imagined, but of broad, cavernous boulevards, the height of which stretched several storeys above and below. Enormous turrets carved from the stone acted as supports, and wrapped around them were staircases leading from the surface. Some of the buildings – also carved from the cave and taller than Ilsa had ever seen – also reached to the roof, and bridges cut between them at every level; some so wide they were streets themselves, with shops and houses along them.
It could have been an oppressive mess, but every bridge, every turret, and every winding set of stairs was so thoughtfully, perfectly placed, like the pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle, that this city beneath the city was nothing short of a wonderland.
“Not what you were expecting?” said Eliot, tugging her down the broad spiral stairs.
“No,” was all she managed, her relief hitting her so hard that her head spun.
The stifling staleness of the tunnel was gone, and by some magic, a cool breeze tickled her skin. Golden light hovered over them, like low clouds, but she couldn’t make out the source, and above that the ceiling of the cave was doused in translucent sky blue. The effect was that of a perpetual dawn; the pale stone all around her was tinged pink and orange and dappled in long shadows. If she couldn’t feel free and unbound in a place like this, could she ever?
Eliot released her to hail a cab as a wondrous kind of magic went on around them. The Psi, it seemed, used their talents for everything. Crates and baskets of goods and deliveries soared through the air above her; mothers pushed their prams ahead of them with the power of their minds; and the carriage that pulled up in front of Ilsa and Eliot had no horse. A driver sat in the usual place above and behind the cab, but the axle extended before the passenger seat, bearing a second smaller pair of wheels.
As the cab pulled into traffic, so did another twenty yards behind them. Eliot didn’t notice it, but Ilsa sat at a slight angle to keep it in the corner of her eye.
“This must be the biggest quarter of them all,” she said as she watched the Underground go by, her view unimpeded by a horse’s backside.
“I believe it is, but not by much. It doesn’t span the entire area of the city above.”
“I hope these people catch the sunlight every so often.”
Eliot let out a small laugh. “Don’t worry for them,” he said. “The Psi are the most employable people in this city and the one above. They get about.”
They instructed their driver to make for the Moorgate entrance to the Underground, and once there, it didn’t take them long to find the only chemist Lila could have meant. It was a corner shop called Brecker & Sons, on a junction bustling with the commerce of a farmer’s market.
Eliot was about to enter the chemist’s when Ilsa took his arm. “What’re you doing?”
“What we’re here to do, of course.”
“And what’s that? March into the place and demand to know where Gedeon Ravenswood is? He probably ain’t going to know jack. We need the customers, not the chemist.” Eliot was scrutinising her, his expression stuck part-way between irritated and impressed, but he didn’t argue. Ilsa nodded across the street. “Look, there’s a café right there. We can get out of sight and keep an eye on the place. The thing ’bout a habit is it’s regular, right? I bet you someone’s gonna come along any minute.”
So they went to the café as Ilsa suggested. As Eliot went to the counter to order tea, Ilsa took a seat by the window and sat on the left-hand side, where she would be able to see both the chemist’s and the street in the direction they had come. The cab that had been following them had dropped its passenger an inconspicuous distance from them; inconspicuous for anyone less observant than Ilsa. She only looked in quick glances, so as not to be seen noticing, but she realised their tail had followed them from the surface. She decided not to mention him to Eliot.
When their tea arrived, Ilsa’s also came with a huge slice of a cake she had been delighted to discover in the Witherward; a spiced sponge with sour cherries and buttery icing.
“You ordered this for me?” she asked, blinking.
“You’re always hungry,” said Eliot, his eyes on the corner shop. When she continued to stare dumbly at him, he glanced over, and his face fell. “I thought it was your favourite. Orlagh said you’re in the kitchen two or three times a day asking for some.”
“It is my favourite.” And, yes, she had started wondering about her elevenses on the cab ride.
“Then what’s wrong?”
She forced a flirtatious grin. “You asked Orlagh ’bout me?”
Eliot’s expression hardened. “I overheard. She likes feeding you.”
When Ilsa continued to study him, he rolled his eyes and went back to watching the shop.
She picked up her fork. “Thank you.”
The cake was rich and moist and even better than Orlagh’s. A little sound of pleasure escaped her lips as she took another bite. And another. She had all but forgotten where she was and what she was meant to be doing when she looked up and found Eliot’s attention was no longer on the chemist’s.
He watched her mouth as she brought the fork to her lips, her throat as
