Lila clomped noisily down the stairs, letting her boot strike each stair as loudly as possible. She found herself approaching a small, dimly lit room, each wall made of glass. Fish swam outside it, bobbing and darting in the cloudy water. A sudden bout of claustrophobia struck her as she reached the last few steps.
A woman, not much older than Lila, sat on a white leather couch watching her descend. She wore a floor-length lilac robe, and her jet-black hair fell in loose waves around her face. She had few wrinkles, perhaps because she schooled her face so often that lines had not had time to develop.
“I don’t enjoy being summoned.” Lila plopped down on a plush chair across from the couch. The leather crinkled as she folded an ankle over her knee.
“Summoned isn’t the word that I would use. If I had contacted you directly, then you wouldn’t have come. Not without digging and poking us apart first, though I daresay you’ve already started. It’s how you highborn operate, and you’re the worst of the lot.”
“What makes you think I’ve taken an interest?”
“I’m an oracle, Chief Randolph. I know your father has asked you to look into us, specifically into the disappearances of our young.”
“Is that so?” Only a few trusted servants had access to her father’s apartments and offices in Bullstow and Unity, but workborn tended to be quite loyal to the oracles. It stood to reason that some of them might act as the women’s spies.
“Let’s not waste time with tiresome circling,” she said, waving Lila off before she could get started. “I know, chief.”
“How do you know what you think you know? By poking and prying?”
“I didn’t have to pry, chief. I deduced it by watching the prime minister during our meeting last week and asking a few pointed questions. His thoughts jumped straight to you.”
“So my father has a passing thought about me, and you decide—”
“Deduced, and deduced correctly.”
“Is that how you oracles operate? By making deductions?” Lila shifted in her seat, outwardly calm on the outside, but the room had begun to creep in on her. It was too quiet and too dead, especially with the fish swirling around them, their eyes shifting and unblinking.
“You believe us to be charlatans.”
“Did you also deduce that?”
“Your feelings are obvious. Though in this case, Chef Ana told me how you felt ages ago. She talks about you.
She despairs of how she might bring you to the gods.”
Lila bit the side of her cheek, uncomfortable at the thought of Chef chatting about her with outsiders. She’d never thought of her as a spy before, not with their history.
“Stop fretting. Chef Ana is utterly loyal to the Randolph family. She only requested my help in bringing you and your siblings to the gods, a mighty task after you’d been schooled so heavily against us.”
“How did you reply?”
“I told her not to bother.”
Lila lifted a brow. She hadn’t been expecting that answer.
“I don’t have time to undo years of suspicion, chief. Fate will decide if you should come toward us or not.” The oracle stretched her arms across the back of the couch. “Your father is correct. Our numbers are dwindling. As a result, the oracles have more faithful than we have time for. I hardly need another, no matter how rich or well connected you might be.”
Lila leaned forward. “You know what I think?”
“Enlighten me.”
“I think you and your sisters dabble in psychology and theater, just like fortune tellers. I think that you read people very, very well and tell people exactly what they want to hear, pretending it comes from the so-called gods. I think you’re the most well-paid and well-protected actresses on the planet. What I don’t know is if you actually believe your own hype.”
“Yes, we dabble. And no, not all of us believe.”
Lila chewed on her lip. “Then you don’t deny that you’re a fake?”
“No, but I am an honest fake. As are you. And when I walk back up those stairs, I’ll deny saying that with every breath in my lungs, but I can read you well enough to know I won’t have to. You respect my candor even if you don’t respect my words.”
Lila cocked her head. “People come to you frightened and worried, sometimes sick and in pain or dying. They come to you with questions, and you lie to them. Do you really think I could respect you for that?”