hell up and walk the hell away. “Just read my damned fortune.”
She turned over a card. It showed a body lying face down on a riverbank, ten swords sticking haphazardly into its back. “An ending,” she said. “Sudden and inevitable, although perhaps unlooked-for.”
Great.
Another card. A woman on a wooden throne, still at the water’s edge, an ornate chalice in her hand and pebbles strewn at her feet. “A lady of situations,” said the fortune teller.
“Yeah, pretty much all my ladies are ladies of situations.”
A final card. A man facing out over the sea, a staff in his hand and two more beside him. “A journey underway. A land in ruin that must be healed.”
I sighed. “Is that it?”
“I can only show you the signs. It is for you to act on them.”
“Thanks, this has been spectacularly unhelpful.”
The old lady gave me a worryingly knowing smile. “The fates help those who help themselves.”
Well, at least she hadn’t told me to fear death by water. I pressed on, passing under the sleek, steel tubes of the Millennium Bridge, which had probably seemed incredibly futuristic when they were designing it in the ‘90s but had now dated much like the word Millennium had, past incongruous urban greenery and joyless signs prohibiting busking, because obviously the trendy, artsy atmosphere of the South Bank would be ruined if people could play music on it.
The weird thing about London—well, one of the many weird things about London—was that it was terrifyingly enormous in some ways and incredibly tiny in others. It was so sprawling that when you looked at satellite pictures of England it smeared grey-brown across the whole South-East like a skidmark on the crotch of the country, but if you walked for twenty minutes through the middle of it you’d pass almost every famous landmark in the whole place. You could stand outside Shakespeare’s Globe and look at St Paul’s across the river. You could lean on the side of London Bridge, look out across the water and see the bridge that you always thought was London Bridge because it’s the one with the big towers, but which is actually Tower Bridge because of course it is. The giveaway, and stop me if this gets complicated, is the towers.
When I finally got to the hospital where Nim was … staying? … resting? … in a coma? … I honestly wasn’t sure I had the right address. It was one of those incredibly private-healthcarey places that looks like a hotel from the outside and charges accordingly. It wasn’t until I was rocking up at reception that I realised I had no idea what name she’d be booked under. I didn’t think it was likely she’d be down as Nimue, but then I also didn’t think she’d be under her real name either, whatever that was. Then again, maybe this place was posh enough that people booked in under mononyms all the time. Like Lorde, only less from New Zealand.
The reception desk was manned by a respectable-looking bespectacled man with slightly greying hair. “Yes?” I was probably imagining the what’s the likes of you doing here tone, but then to be fair to the guy I had just wandered in off the street and obviously had zero clue what was going on.
“I’m looking for a woman you might have here long-term?” I tried. “Comatose? Would have come in from somewhere in Bromley a couple of years back—might be missing an eye.”
He surveyed me suspiciously. Which was fair, I did kind of look like I was a hitman coming to finish the job. Although if I was, I’d have been mega behind schedule. “Name?”
“Mine or hers?”
“Both.”
“Kane. Kate Kane. Is me. And she’s …” This was going to sound monumentally implausible but fuck it. “She goes by Nimue?”
The man got a glazed look and nodded. “Upstairs,” he said. “Follow the birdsong and the scent of apple blossom.”
Nim, Nim, Nim. Couldn’t you even get hospitalised like a normal person? I followed the corridor around to a lift, and was only slightly surprised when tendrils of white mist spilled out of it. In a roundabout way that explained how she was paying for all this—if she was still exerting enough magical influence to make weather happen inside a hospital, she could probably make their systems overlook little things like bills, at least as long as the symbolism added up.
On the top floor the air really did smell of apple blossom and I really could hear birds singing just ahead of