‘Are you—’ my mouth was dry. ‘Are you Liss’s mother?’
‘Close enough. Her aunt. Elspeth Lin is my name.’ She returned to the cushion and poured herself a drink. ‘You ken my niece, then?’
The truth would hurt her, but I had to tell it. It wasn’t fair to leave her with false hope. ‘I’m sorry you have to hear this from a stranger, Elspeth,’ I said. ‘Liss is . . . in the ?ther.’
Elspeth’s smile receded.
‘I feared she was lost,’ she murmured. ‘I read my own cards a few weeks ago. Four of Swords. I saw Liss in a pool of colours, drifting far away.’ She took a deck of tarot cards from inside her shirt. ‘I saw you, too, Paige. A great wave washed around your feet, and dark wings lifted you away. This card represents both a beginning and an end. Answering a call.’
She shuffled through her deck and passed me a card titled JUDGEMENT. It showed a fair-haired angel sounding a trumpet, surrounded by billows of smoke. The grey dead rose from their graves, lifting their hands, while high waves reared against a pale blue sky.
‘A powerful card,’ she said. ‘You’re going to make an important decision, Paige. Very soon.’
I held it for a long while. Readings always troubled me, but perhaps it was time I faced my future.
‘You must tell me what happened to Liss.’ The muscles in her neck stood out. ‘Tell me it was swift, at least.’
My throat seemed to grow smaller. ‘She died in September, in a prison camp just north of London, after ten years of imprisonment. I was with her.’ Each word strained. ‘I said the threnody.’
Elspeth bowed her head a little. I took a slug of the honeyed drink. It still hurt that Liss, who had given me the strength to bite my tongue and play the game when all I’d wanted was to kick and scream, had never set foot outside her prison. She should have been here.
‘I see.’ A heavy sigh lifted her chest. ‘We canna grieve for those who’ve gone. Not before we’ve fought to change the world that took them. If you were a friend to someone as sweet and goodhearted as Liss, that gives us all the more reason to help you.’
I handed back the Judgement card.
‘Liss did an ellipse reading for me before she died,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you can help me understand it.’
Elspeth presented me with her deck, and I took her numen from her hand with care. It was a sign of great trust and respect for a soothsayer to allow another voyant to handle the very thing that connected them to the ?ther. Delicately, I shuffled through the deck and laid out the six cards in order: Five of Cups, King of Wands inverted, the Devil, the Lovers, Death inverted, and Eight of Swords.
‘An ellipse spread uses seven cards,’ Elspeth said.
‘The last one was lost.’
‘Hm. Liss was always far better at the art than any of the other Lin women. She could see visions. No one else in the family had that power.’ She tapped her finger on each of the cards. ‘Do you know what any of them mean?’
‘The first two, I think.’
Five of Cups was my father in mourning, presumably for my mother. The King of Wands, I was sure, was Jaxon, and referred to the hold he had once had over my life.
‘That makes sense. Your past and your present. The third card would have indicated your future at the time of the reading.’ Elspeth plucked it from the deck. ‘The Devil.’
‘Liss said it represented hopelessness and fear, but that I’d chosen that path willingly,’ I said. ‘That it’s something I can escape, even if I don’t know it.’
Elspeth held the card up to the light.
‘You’re moving against Hildred Vance. She’s certainly a force of hopelessness and fear, and it seems she was in all our futures,’ she said darkly, ‘but nobody gives into her willingly – certainly not the Underqueen of the Mime Order. So it can’t refer to her.’ She studied the card as if, by the sheer force of her will, the Devil would peel off its face and reveal its true identity. ‘Notice the other figures in the image. The Devil looms over a man and a woman.’
She flipped it to face me. The painted, horned head was as sinister as its name insinuated, with its downturned mouth and staring white eyes. Two naked figures were on either side of the pedestal, bound to it, and by extension, to each other, by a silver chain.
‘The two figures in the Devil card closely resemble the couple in the Lovers card, which comes next. They could almost be the Lovers. Look closely. The Devil controls them. Manipulates them.’
The words left a fine sweat on my brow.
Controls them. Manipulates them. The Devil could be Terebell. Both Warden and I were chained to her: Warden by his loyalty, me by my need for her money. And we were also bound to each other by a chain, albeit a chain of gold.
‘Someone stands over the pair in the Lovers card, too, though there’s no chain.’ Elspeth pointed to a winged figure above the man and woman. ‘I’m not certain what this figure represents in this instance, but . . . someone is always watching this couple.’
Liss had given little detail on the Lovers, except that it would show me what to do. There’s tension between spirit and flesh, she had told me. Too much. I hadn’t understood her at the time, but I had since collided with a lover – or someone who might have become one, at least.
As a Rephaite, Warden was the pivot between spirit and flesh. We had always felt watched, knowing the consequences of discovery. If he represented the path I should be taking, then by trying to distance myself from him, by telling him we had to part, I had gone astray; I had turned my back on the counsel of the cards.
And yet . . . he could so easily be the Devil himself . . . or a puppet-master in its service, keeping me chained to it, to Terebell.
Was he meant to be my lover or my downfall?
‘The way I see it,’ Elspeth said, ‘you must follow the path of the Lovers. Stay close to the person you think the card might represent, and make sure you’ve identified that person correctly. If you stray from whoever it is, I suspect you’ll be vulnerable to the Devil.’ She gathered the deck back together. ‘I hope the answers soon become clear to you, Paige.’
My brow was knitted. I had more questions now than I’d had before.
I shook myself. I couldn’t dwell on this, not when I was getting so close to solving the mystery of what might power Senshield. And not when another devil could be watching us, preparing to cast another net around me – a devil named Hildred Vance.
‘There’s a reason I came to find you,’ I said. I looked between the voyants. ‘I need to know exactly where the Edinburgh Central Depot is.’
Elspeth’s expression was guarded. ‘Why?’
‘I – I can’t explain now. But it’s important.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You’ll not find the depot on any map,’ she said, ‘but those of us who have lived here for years know fine well where it is. It’s in Leith – a military district beside the port, off-limits to denizens. Don’t try to get in. You’ll wind up dead or captured.’
Just going outside put me at risk of winding up dead or captured. If I let that daunt me, I’d never do anything.
17