In the very corner of one of these rooms was a peculiar sight. A single bed had been set aside, where a little girl was curled up fast asleep. The other beds had been pulled away from the corner, and Dora could not help but notice that the other inmates had refused to share that bed in particular.
Albert stared at that bed, and there came such a wary look on his face that Dora knew he had some knowledge of what was going on. “How long has it been since she woke up?” Albert asked one of the men nearby.
“Not since two days ago,” the inmate replied, and he made a fearful cross over his chest. “Will you be takin’ her out of here, then? She’s got no mother to stop you, doctor, an’ it’d be a great relief.”
Dora took a step towards the bed, but Albert reached out to stop her. “Go and fetch the workhouse master, please,” Albert asked the man.
As soon as he had gone, Dora turned towards Albert. “What is going on?” she asked.
A bleak expression crossed Albert’s features. “A sleeping plague,” he said. “The victims fall asleep and simply never wake. I’ve been encountering it all over the place in the workhouses. We don’t yet know how it spreads, but the children are particularly prone to it, for some reason.”
“We?” Dora repeated.
Albert pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Elias and I,” he said. “I’ll need to send for him. He thinks that the plague has a magical component to it, and I cannot say that I disagree. It’s certainly beyond any treatment I’ve tried so far.”
Dora looked back towards the little girl in the bed. She was not a very pretty little girl. Her hair was lank, oily, and straw-like, and there were pockmarks on her little face. But this was awful in and of itself, and Dora found herself with a hard knot in her stomach as she contemplated the fact that no mother would even miss her.
“Why is she here?” Dora asked Albert quietly. She wanted to ask more than that. She wanted to ask: why was it so awful here? What sort of people could allow a little girl to fall asleep in that condition at all? Was there no one with a heart that might find that girl a proper bed of her own, away from all this hideousness?
“I don’t know,” Albert said. And though he was only answering the obvious question, there was an awful weariness in his voice that suggested he had asked all of the rest of those questions of himself many times already.
Dora stared bleakly at the sleeping girl. And though she could not feel things very keenly, she thought perhaps a tiny sliver of the Lord Sorcier’s bitter anger might have infected her, deep down.
Chapter 8
It took Elias barely an hour to arrive at the workhouse, once the message had been sent off to him. He swept into the sickroom like an unexpected storm, with his hair unkempt and his golden eyes flashing. He was back in half-dress, with his practical brown and black clothing and his loosened neckcloth. He did not wear a scarf around his mouth, but the acrid air did not seem to bother him.
Albert barely had to gesture towards the bed in the back corner—it was perfectly clear just where the other inmates had shoved the girl.
“How long has she been sleeping?” Elias asked brusquely. He had not yet noticed Dora, she thought, given his focus on the matter at hand.
“Perhaps two days, according to the others,” Albert replied.
“That’s slightly earlier than we’ve found them before,” Elias said. He pulled a paper cigarette from his jacket and pressed it between his lips. As he gestured with his other hand, fire flickered up between his fingers, lighting the end of the cigarette.
Dora watched intently, with her brow furrowed. She had not seen the Lord Sorcier indulging in this habit before, and he had certainly never smelled to her of tobacco. But this seemed to be a practical matter rather than a pleasurable one—as Elias exhaled a veil of smoke, it drifted unnaturally about the room, darting into corners like a cat. Where it passed, it left a faint silver glow, which faded slowly away again.
The smoke curled about the sick room, lingering at least a little bit upon every inch. The inmates watched it pass with varying levels of fear and fascination. Some jerked back from it as it touched them—but the silver glow found them all regardless, before inevitably disappearing once again.
Eventually, the smoke dissipated entirely, and Elias frowned. He snuffed the cigarette with his fingers. “Not a trace of black magic,” he said tightly. “Nothing that tobacco might show, anyway. I had hoped we might find a hint of it, this close to the start of the illness.”
Dora sidestepped from where she was, so that she could see past Elias again. “What does that mean?” she asked him.
Elias startled at the question. His golden eyes fixed upon Dora, and he looked suddenly perplexed. “What are you doing here, Miss Ettings?” he asked.
“That is a bit of a story,” Dora admitted. “But you thought the plague might be magical in nature. Does this mean that it isn’t?”
Elias narrowed his eyes. “It means,” he said, “that if magic is indeed involved, then it is of the sort that deals an injury and then departs. But if that’s so, then it fails to explain why the plague sometimes spreads.” The inmates began to murmur at that, and Elias glanced around at them. “To other children,” he emphasized darkly. And then, as though to demonstrate, Elias crossed the last bit of space between him and the bed and pulled back the threadbare covers to lift the
