The Gates of Sleep

they had found her in. Evidently Margherita, Thomas, and Sebastian were considered disreputable at best, and immoral at worst.

The Trinity would not have come as they had and acted as they had done if her new guardian had any intention of allowing her contact with the old ones, that much was blindingly clear from the way she had been handled—or, rather, manhandled. Whatever they had expected when they arrived, her situation had evidently fed right into their prejudices and preconceptions. They had expected to find a loose, disreputable, eccentric household quite beyond the pale of polite society, and that was exactly what they’d seen. Which probably contributed to the speed with which they bundled her out of there… their narrow little minds must have been near to splitting, and they must have been frantic to get her away.

And if Aunt Arachne ever finds out I was posing for Uncle Sebastian, she’ll use that as a further weapon against my family.

Given how quickly she’d been hustled away, she could well picture the absolute opposition to any attempt on her part to return. She could see no way that she could win back home—not until she was of age and could do what she wanted.

Horrible little respectable minds!

Three years—it seemed an eternity. She stared into the blackness in front of her nose and tried to think. What to do? Was there, in fact, anything that she could do?

No. And imprisoning me is going to be “for my own good.” How can you possibly argue with that? Worse, everyone, absolutely everyone, would agree with them! Taking me away from “corrupting and decadent influences,” because everyone knows what artists are like.

More tears flowed down her face, and her throat and chest were so tight she had trouble breathing.

It took her a moment to realize that the carriage was slowing; moment later, it came to a stop. A hand tapped her elbow peremptorily.

“Miss Roeswood, we have paused for a moment at a post-tavern,” a cold voice said distantly, its tone one of complete indifference. “Have you any—ah—urgent requirements? Do you need food or drink?”

She shook her head, refusing to turn to look at him.

“Then each of us will take it in turn to remain to keep you company while the others refresh themselves,” the lawyer said, and settled back into his seat next to her, springs creaking, while the other two clambered out of the coach. Since she was wedged into the corner furthest from the door, and facing away from it, all that she saw was the reflection of a little lamplight on the curtains as the door opened. There was a little, a very little, sound of voices from the tavern itself, then the door shut again. She might have been alone, but for the breathing of her unwelcome companion.

She wondered what they would have done if she had needed to use a water closet. Probably escorted me to the door and locked me inside, she thought bitterly.

Her guard was shortly replaced by one of the other two, who had brought food and drink with him by the smell of it. She wasn’t interested in anything like eating; in fact, the strong aromas of onion and cold, greasy beef from his side of the carriage made her feel ill and faint. He ate and drank with much champing of jaws and without offering her any, which (even though she had refused to move and had indicated she had no needs) was hardly gentlemanly.

Her stomach turned over, and she put one hand to her throat to loosen the collar of her cape. Her head ached; her eyes were sore, her cheeks and nose felt as if the skin on them was burned or raw. She shut her eyes and tried to shut her ears to the sound of stolid jaws chewing away at a Ploughman’s lunch and a knife cutting bits off the onion and turnip that were part of it.

They were not going to stop for long, it seemed. The second lawyer returned to the carriage as well in a few moments, and then, hard on his heels the third joined his compatriots. Once he was inside, the third banged on the roof of the conveyance by way of telling the unseen coachman to move on, and the carriage lurched back into motion again. They really weren’t wasting any time in getting her away.

She rested her burning forehead on the side of the carriage and pulled her warm cloak tighter around her shoulders, not against the chill of the night, but against the emotional chill within the walls of the carriage. Were they going to travel all night?

Evidently, they were.

The next stop, a few hours later, brought the same inquiry, which she answered with the same headshake. It also brought a change of horses, as if this carriage was a mail coach. No expense was being spared, it seemed, to make sure she was brought directly into the control of her new guardian.

I hope she’s paying these horrible men next to nothing. From the type of food they’d brought into the carriage—the cheapest sort of provender, a Ploughman’s lunch of bread, pickle, onion, a raw turnip, and a bit of greasy beef or strong cheese—it seemed that might be the case.

I hope it turns to live eels in their stomachs. I hope the carriage makes them sick. She wondered, at that moment, if there was something she could do magically to make them ill, or at least uncomfortable. But she hadn’t been taught anything like that—probably because Elizabeth wouldn’t approve of doing something that unkind even to automatons like these three.

Her spirits sank even further, if that was possible, when she realized that she couldn’t even use magic to communicate with her former guardians. She hadn’t been taught the direct means. There were indirect means, messages sent via Elemental creatures, but hers weren’t theirs. The Undines, in particular, wouldn’t approach Uncle Sebastian—theirs was the antagonist Element.

But—what about Elizabeth?

Surely she could send to Elizabeth for help, with the Undines as intermediaries—

But not until spring. Not until the water thawed again. The Sylphs might move in winter, but not the Water Elementals, or at least, not the ones she knew. And she couldn’t count on the Sylphs—in fact, she hadn’t even seen any since that odd nightmare. She could call them, but they wouldn’t necessarily come.

Hope died again, and she stopped even trying to think. She simply stared at the darkness, endured the pain of her aching head, and braced herself against the pitching and swaying of the carriage.

Eventually, snoring from the opposite side told her that somehow at least two of her captors had managed to fall asleep. She hoped, viciously, that the coach would hit a particularly nasty pothole and send them all to the floor, or knock their heads together.

But in keeping with the rest of the day, nothing of the sort happened.

Hours later, they changed horses again. By this time she was in a complete fog of grief and fatigue, and couldn’t have put a coherent thought together no matter how hard she tried. And she didn’t try very hard. In all that time she hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept, but this time when the rude tap on her shoulder came, she asked for something to drink.

One of them handed her a flask, and she drank the contents without thinking. It tasted like cold tea, heavily creamed and sugared—but it wasn’t very long before she realized that there had been something else in that flask besides tea. Her muscles went slack; foggy as her mind had been, it went almost blank, and she felt herself slipping over sideways in her seat to be caught by one of the repellent lawyers.

Horribly, whatever it was didn’t put her to sleep, or not entirely. It just made her lose all conscious control over her body. She could still hear, and if she’d been able to get her eyes open, she’d have been able to see. But sensation was at one remove, and as she went limp and was picked up and laid out on the carriage seat, she heard the Unholy Trinity talking openly, but as if they were in the far distance. And although she could hear the words, she couldn’t make sense of them.

She heard the crowing of roosters in farmyards that they passed, and knew that it must be near dawn. And shortly after that, the carriage made a right-angle turn, and the sound of the wheels changed.

Then it stopped.

The lawyers got out.

She fought to open her eyes, to no avail.

Someone else entered the carriage, and picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She heard the sound of gravel under heavy boots, then the same boots walking on stone. It felt as if the person carrying her was going up a set of stairs, but though she tried once again to regain control of her body, or at least open her eyes, her head lolled against his shoulder—definitely a he—and she could do nothing.

A door opened in front of them, and closed behind them. “She drank it all?” asked a cool, female voice.