Jane, she thought, had not been the first victim to lie in this room. Mrs Dun had told them that Elias had brought more than one child here, to try and understand their condition. He had given each child a soft, quiet bed and a bit of sunlight—but he had failed, each time, to stop their inevitable deterioration as they slept away the last of their lives.
Dora reached out towards Elias’ hand, on the arm of the chair. Her fingers met some sort of resistance as she touched him, but there was an odd numbness to the sensation that suggested neither of them could feel it much at all. She held on still, for lack of anything better to offer.
Elias curled his fingers around hers, though it was rather like grasping for the hand of a ghost.
I wish that I was here again in-person, Dora thought.
“You will be at this until the end, then,” Dora said, breaking the bleak silence that had descended. “You will be here, or searching for more books, or researching new ideas?”
Elias nodded slowly. “I will not give up and leave her be,” he murmured.
Dora tried to squeeze his hand—but she knew that the gesture had done nothing from his lack of reply. “You are the best person to try, of course,” she said. “But perhaps while you are trying your magic, Mr Lowe and I can search for answers by other means. Have all of the afflicted children so far come from the workhouses?”
Elias frowned at that. Dora saw him fighting against the glazed defeat in his eyes. “They have,” he said slowly. “But that is not necessarily significant. Albert sees the workhouses often, which is how he came upon this plague. It is quite possible that if he more often saw the countryside, he might have brought the first cases to me from there.”
Dora thought on this. “Either way,” she said. “You have never seen an adult with this strange disease. If we speak to the children at the workhouses and watch them closely, perhaps we might find a commonality between the ones who fall prey. If the plague is magic, as you suspect, then they must all come into contact with its source at some point.”
Elias took in a deep breath. Some of the awful malaise cleared from his posture, and Dora’s own helplessness retreated as she realised she had been the cause. “That is... quite a good idea,” he said. “I would be obliged to both of you if you might pursue it further.” He turned to look at her, and his golden eyes flickered with uncertainty. “I fear that I will be unable to research your curse for a time, however, now that there is another victim. I am sorry, Dora.”
Dora shook her head clearly. “What good would it do to have all of my feelings again, if I must use them only to look on all this misery?” she asked. “I would rather see this done before you spend another moment on me. My troubles are not pressing.”
Elias managed a small, wry smile at that. “Do you know, Dora,” he murmured. “I have known many human beings with a full soul to their name who do not have half so much compassion or practicality as you. On a poor day, I might assume this to be a kind of indictment of the human soul. But today, I believe that you might simply have an overabundance of both qualities.” He met Dora’s eyes, and she felt his warmth seep into her soul, like a balm around its ragged edges. “In short, though I am terrible at saying it... I am glad that you are here.”
The gratitude in his face gave Dora pause. It was yet another expression that she had not ever expected to see upon the Lord Sorcier. How different she found him in that moment from the man that had first tried to startle her in the magic shop on Berkeley Square! Yet it was not the man himself who had changed, so much as her perspective on him. Elias was still disagreeable to all proper society and politeness. But as Dora inspected herself, she found that he had claimed a warm spot in her heart that she normally did not lease to anyone but her fondest cousin. That Elias seemed to have found a similar fondness for her, even for an instant, started up again those distant, confusing flutterings for which she yet had no name.
“I think you are a good person, Elias,” Dora told him, by way of reply. In public, she might have censored the thought—but doing so took an uncommon effort for her, and she had started to find that effort to be pleasantly unnecessary around him. “And whether we should succeed this time or not, I think that Jane is lucky to have your effort.” Dora glanced towards the girl in the bed, and was reminded of the undercurrent of dread that still played beneath the surface of her mind, thinking of how little time she might have left. “If you require any more translations, and Mr Lowe is otherwise engaged,” she added, “I hope that you will let me know.”
An odd confusion played about the magician’s features as she spoke. Dora wasn’t quite sure of the cause—in fact, she thought that she had spoken rather too bluntly, so that her meaning could not possibly be mistaken.
Elias smoothed his face again, however, and he returned to his more usual sardonic smile. “I am sure that I will take you up on your offer,” he informed Dora. “Though it may require me to bypass the dragon that guards
