“The same way you can tell if I’m lying,” he said, surprising both Ilsa and Fyfe. “You read my tells.”
He signalled for them to continue and they hurried past. When they were out of hearing range, Fyfe said, “I think he liked you. Ceric doesn’t open his mouth for anyone.”
“I did terribly! He knew I read people’s tells.”
“He let us through, so he can’t have seen the worst of it.” He frowned. “Do you read my tells?”
“Let’s just say you wouldn’t win a penny ’gainst me at cards.”
He led them through the streets of Whitechapel. Rows of sagging mews on narrow cobbled lanes; tree-lined streets of immaculate white townhouses; and featureless terraces of red brick, all among one another like a shuffled deck of cards.
Fyfe was right; a relentless hush filled the air like a smog of its own. It got thicker as they ventured deeper into the quarter. Birds still sang, leather soles still struck the pavement, a child’s pull-along train still grumbled along with a wooden churning. But the sounds didn’t harmonise to become the signs of a living, breathing city. Each pierced the ear-splitting silence like an intrusion, no matter how small and soft a sound. Ilsa couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched, or heard, and she doubled her efforts to protect her thoughts.
“There’s something you ought to understand about Oracles,” said Fyfe, rubbing his hair. “You’re about to learn that despite all your training with Alitz” – he hesitated, before evidently deciding against mentioning Pyval – “coming face to face with a skilled Oracle isn’t all that less invasive, and there’s no protection to be had. You see, even talented, trained Oracles, like Jorn, have the whole knowledge of the universe to contend with when they See. It can make searching for what they’re after a long, exhausting process, unless they have an anchor. A starting point. Like a person for example. In Jorn’s presence, anything he wishes to See relating to you or me will be at the forefront of his divination.”
But that wasn’t true of the Oracles Fyfe had told her she would meet in Whitechapel. Sure enough, an Oracle man bearing a tower of parcels to the post office came into view. He wore a servant’s clothes and had the lazy, fluid gait of a typical pipe-smoker, but something was different. His steps were sure and didn’t drag. His fingers gripped the parcels without fidgeting. But his head did loll forward like a guilty dog’s, and as he drew closer, his face had an alarming vacancy about it. Ilsa had thought of all Oracle’s eyes as expressionless chasms, until she was looking into this man’s. They had none of the life of Lila or Freddie Hardwick’s. The only people who appeared as absent as this man were dead.
Some Oracles spent years mastering their skill so that it wouldn’t drive them mad. Some dulled the onslaught of eternity with vemanta. And a third group, like this man, gave up their minds to a Whisperer. They lived as slaves, mindlessly compelled to do their master’s bidding in exchange for the peace it brought them. The only thing an enslaved Oracle was capable of thinking of was their work. Their histories, their families, even their own names, all ceased to exist for them.
“But the Principles banned slavery,” Ilsa had said when Fyfe explained.
“And the arrangement between the Whisperers and the Oracles was part of the Principles,” said Fyfe. “Whitechapel wanted it. The Docklands wanted it. They installed Jorn to administrate and guard against abuses and let them get on with it.” He laughed. “That part was your mother’s idea. I believe she said the sure-fire way to know a person is serious about what they’re after is to put a bureaucrat in their way.”
Ilsa tried not to shudder as the Oracle man passed by them, but she recognised it as a death of sorts, and this man was a corpse. All the same, she could understand his choice.
Ilsa had imagined the ambassador’s home as an official-looking building on a well-to-do street; perhaps bearing a flag of the Docklands, if such a thing existed. But while there were poorer districts in London – and Ilsa had lived in some of them – the cobbled street Fyfe led her to was far from upper class. It was permanently shaded by the colourless, three-storey terraced houses crammed too close together on either side. The terrace end sagged, like someone had removed a bookend and the whole row was about to slide. A glance at several windows revealed that most of the houses had been partitioned into flats. If this was the level of luxury that could distract an Oracle away from the faction war, Ilsa wondered what the Docklands must be like.
When they rang Jorn’s doorbell, a bashful servant girl – not an Oracle; probably a Whisperer, thought Ilsa – answered the door and led them to a parlour. At least inside, the house was exceedingly comfortable. The parlour was hung with colourful fabric, and a cluster of ornate brass lanterns hung from the ceiling. Under foot was, indeed, a reassuringly expensive carpet in an intricate pattern of colourful flora and fauna. The room was thick with the cloying scent of rose.
“Is Jorn Moroccan?” muttered Ilsa.
“I believe some of his ancestors were, but Jorn’s as cockney as they come.” Fyfe frowned. “You meant Marauccan, didn’t you?”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
Before Ilsa could wedge the unlikely image of a cockney ambassador from a country she still believed was Morocco into her already shaken expectations, a bead curtain rattled behind her, and an Oracle entered the room.
“Well, if it
