He did not confide in Nils. He was probably wasting his time anyway. Linus’s idea was a good one but impractical, exactly the sort of thing a Citizen would suggest. Maybe Vikram should stop trying to decipher the bizarre world of the Rechnovs and go back to what he knew: to protests and waterway violence. He understood violence. Its mechanics, its randomness. Its lack of mercy. He thought of Drake’s casual hello to Rikard and wondered if there might be anything more to the connection than she claimed. He dismissed the idea. They’d known a lot of people back then; it was impossible to avoid running into a face from the past.
He began to work out the practicalities of the plan. His pass had expired, he would have to sneak across the border. By Undersea or by boat? Either way he’d have to bribe someone.
Night, then. Night held his best chance. From a practical viewpoint, there would be fewer people about. But he also reasoned that Adelaide, on some level, must be like everyone else. At four or five in the morning, furthest from the warmth of the sun, her body would be at its lowest ebb. Her heart would slow, her lungs shallow. In those hours, dark thoughts often invaded the mind. This was the time to find her, when she was vulnerable.
13 ¦ ADELAIDE
The curtain, a waterfall of white velvet, was lifted at one side by an invisible hand. The assistant extended his arm silently, inviting them to go through. Adelaide folded her arms and gave Jannike a pointed look.
“Off you go.”
“Come on, Adie. I paid three hundred lys for this appointment.”
“Three hundred lys! For a single consultation! It says here she’s only been Guild ratified for the last five years.” Adelaide pointed to the Teller’s certificate, prominently displayed on a stand. “You’ve been conned, Miss Ko.”
“I haven’t, she’s the best. She has contacts outside Osiris.”
“Who with, the ghosts?”
“No! Anyone can contact the ghosts. She finds living souls, on land.”
“Then she’s definitely a fraud.”
“What if she could contact Axel?” Jannike said boldly. Adelaide stared at her, so intensely that she might have unnerved another woman. Jannike’s brown eyes gazed back, unperturbed. There was little that could rattle Jan. The hidden hand holding the curtain jostled it, a reminder that time was booked and bookings were money.
Adelaide and Jannike stared at one another for a fraction longer. Then both girls ducked under the curtain. It swung back into place behind them. Adelaide blinked, surprised by an intense brightness.
There was only one visible source of light. It was star-shaped, sunk into the floor, and emitted a silvery glow that steeped the tent. As Adelaide’s eyes adjusted, she realized they were in a triangular enclosure lined with the same velvet drapes. Sitting on the other side of the star-light was the Teller. Her legs were crossed. She was clothed in a pyramid of folds.
“Sit,” she said.
The two girls perched obediently, echoing the Teller’s pose.
“There are two of you,” said the Teller.
“I’ve just come to watch,” Adelaide said.
“Your hand,” instructed the Teller, and Jannike put hers forward promptly. The Teller reached for it. Her hand brushed past Jan’s before connecting with it. As she leaned forward over the star-light Adelaide saw her eyes. They were milky white, blank inside of blank. Adelaide had an unnerving sense of pitching forward into water. Her vision grew cloudy, as though she had swum into the unplumbed depths of a kelp forest, chasing the tail of a fish which each time she neared it shot further away into the weed.
The woman was blind. She was young, too, without lines or wrinkles, the youngest Teller Adelaide had ever seen.
Beside her, Jan tensed as her hand was enclosed.
“There will be deceit,” said the Teller.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Look to those close to you. Your friends shall become stronger but so shall your enemies.”
“How about me?” said Jan. “How about all the beautiful sirens out there waiting for me to swim into their lives?”
“You are impatient,” said the Teller.
“Yes I am.”
Adelaide half listened as the Teller predicted Jannike’s near future; read her palm lines and the channels of her wrist veins, then handed her a salt vial and told her to scatter the grains. The whited out tent was soporific.
“And you, my sister.” The Teller’s hand trembled, midair, seeking what her eyes could not. “You have already been told your fate.”
Adelaide realized she was being addressed.
“I’ve been told many fates,” she said. “None of them match.”
“It has been spoken, sister, spoken in the salt. The place you shall go to. Not yet, perhaps. It cannot be forced. But when you are ready, you shall go willingly.”
“Where’s she going?” Jannike asked. The Teller’s head bowed.
“It has been spoken.”
“What about Axel?” Jan nudged Adelaide. “Go on, ask!”
“For the boy, nothing.”
Adelaide was taken aback by the abruptness of the response.
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, eager now, and gripped the woman’s hand. It was incredibly thin. She could feel the web of bones shifting in the scoop of the palm. “Can you see where my brother is?”
The Teller’s eyelids lowered in a mockery of demureness.
“Has Axel left Osiris?”
“Nobody leaves Osiris.” The Teller’s voice took on a chanting quality, and a higher harmonic pierced the low hum, eerily, so that it sounded as though two voices emerged from her swathed throat. “Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her. Thus it was ordained, thus it is.”
“That old rant,” said Jannike. Adelaide knew that Jan’s eyes were rolling upwards, although she also sensed the other girl’s interest in what had not been said. Adelaide was equally annoyed by the retreat into seer speech.
“If he hasn’t left, then where is he?” she pressed. She turned to Jan. “I want to see her alone.”
“I thought she was a fraud?”
Adelaide stared at her. Jannike got awkwardly to her feet. Adelaide waited until the white curtain had descended behind her friend’s back.
“I’ll pay you double what she did. Triple. A thousand lys, untaxed credit. Tell me what you know about my brother.”
“My knowledge is no greater than yours.”
“I’m a Rechnov. I’m ordering you.”
“Tellers obey a higher order.”
“Just tell me if he’s alive, at least tell me that. Please, I need to know.”
But the Teller would say no more. She shook off Adelaide’s grasp with an irritated gesture and her hands disappeared into the folds of her garments. The curtain lifted behind Adelaide. The brightness inside the enclosure diminished and she had a brief glimpse of the Teller under normal electric light, the shadows of tiredness on her young face. The man who had ushered Adelaide in beckoned her out.
Adelaide’s scarab was glowing. She checked the screen, looked for Jannike and spotted her friend browsing salt tins at a craft stand. Adelaide walked over to the opposite side of the hall where a plasma display depicted the history of Tellers through the ages.
“Yes?” she spoke into the scarab.
“I hear you’ve been staking out Sanjay Hanif’s office.”
Adelaide spoke sharply. “I’ve been trying to contact you.”
“At first I thought you were being extraordinarily stupid, but then I decided it may work in our favour. After all, if they know you were camping out across the way, it detracts from any possible connection with me.”