The fair-haired man, Elias, shot the other man the sort of withering look that only good friends could manage without risking a duel. “If I were going to bother with a summoning, Albert,” he said. “I’m quite sure I could think of better things to call upon than some half-drenched maid.”
The brown-haired man, Albert, only gave him another rueful smile. “If you were a gentleman, Elias,” he said, “you would offer her your coat. I’m sure the lady must be quite chilled.”
Elias glanced away from both Dora and his friend Albert, his inquiry about the mirror suddenly forgotten. “You are perhaps the only man who might accuse me of being a gentleman without being turned into a frog,” he told Albert acidly. “Take back that awful insult, before I think of an alternative animal.”
Albert ignored Elias and shrugged off his own coat, offering it out to Dora. “On my friend’s behalf,” he told her politely. “Since he is grumpy today.”
Dora took the coat from Albert, more out of automatic politeness than anything else. But as she did, her eyes caught on his hand. What she had at first taken for some sort of glove on his right hand was in fact nothing of the sort. It was instead a hand made entirely of silver, which moved with all the fluidity of a normal human appendage. A momentary glance was enough to assure her that Albert’s left hand was quite normal by comparison. Dora returned her gaze to the silver right hand with an openly curious look, forgetting about the coat that she still clutched.
Albert looked down at his hand and shot her a half-smile. “The Lord Sorcier’s work,” he explained. “I lost my real hand to shrapnel, I’m afraid. But this one is quite something, isn’t it?”
The Lord Sorcier, Dora thought. Elias Wilder. She flicked her eyes back towards the fair-haired man. If she wasn’t mistaken, he seemed mildly embarrassed by the subject of conversation, though he quickly hid the emotion behind a bored affectation.
“I’m quite sure it’s impolite to stare at cripples,” Elias told Dora in a droll tone.
“I don’t mind,” Albert said cheerfully. “Besides which, I’m quite sure it’s even worse to call a man a cripple, Elias.”
The Lord Sorcier scoffed at this, but soon fell silent. A moment later, a short, wiry man bustled out from the back room, carrying a full stack of books. “Just as you asked!” said the shorter man, as he set the books down on the counter. “Everything I could find on the various humours. Some of these were quite difficult to track down.”
The Lord Sorcier reached out to open the front cover of the book on top of the stack. Inside, Dora saw a set of diagrams, marked up with scribbled, handwritten notes. She leaned curiously around the man’s elbow, conscious not to let her hair drip onto the pages. The notes, she saw, were all in some very formal sort of French which she couldn’t immediately puzzle out. Given time, she was certain she could put together a translation—
“You know,” Elias said conversationally, “the last woman to come so close to me caught her hair on fire. It was a dreadful mess. I’m quite sure she still has a scar.”
Dora glanced up at him. Elias was watching her with an arched eyebrow, which confused her. His tone suggested that he was trying to be friendly, but if she wasn’t mistaken, his expression was one of faint disgust—oh.
I’m acting strangely again, Dora thought. She backed away from him quickly.
“My apologies,” Dora said. “I was very curious about your book.”
“You were very curious?” Elias repeated, in that low, sonorous voice. He added a soft laugh, which also seemed friendly, but now Dora wasn’t quite sure whether she ought to take it as such. “Well then. That makes it all better. Was there anything else you were curious about, while we’re at it? Shall I take off my trousers and let you take my measure?”
Dora knitted her brow. “Take your measure?” she asked. “What ought I to be measuring, sir?”
Albert sighed heavily and reached out to snatch the jacket that still dangled from Dora’s fingers. He tucked it around her shoulders. “Do ignore him,” he said. “I always do, when he gets this way.”
The man behind the counter groaned, and Dora saw that his face had gone red. “Oh, please don’t do this in my shop, Lord Sorcier,” he begged Elias. “Perhaps your reputation can’t possibly get any worse, but you know I have a business to run!”
Dora considered the fair-haired man next to her more closely, exerting herself so that she might focus on him. This was indeed the Lord Sorcier, then? The man she’d heard so much about? The one that Dora had accidentally inspired Vanessa to go chasing after for a fleeting glimpse?
He was indeed quite handsome, she had to admit. Even in half dress, the Lord Sorcier was resplendently wild, with his wind-tossed hair and his arresting golden eyes. Only once before had Dora seen such an ethereal visage—and that had belonged to a cruel and noble faerie.
It was a shame, she thought, that so many beautiful things were also so ugly on the inside.
The Lord Sorcier straightened, looking down upon Dora with an expression that she did know very well. It was the same one her aunt had used on her many times before—the one that said she was too foolish even to understand when she was being insulted. “It’s quite all right, John,” Elias addressed the man behind the counter. “The little chit is nearly as dull as a Sunday morning service. You can come and find me if she ever realises what I meant.”
“Elias,” Albert warned his friend reprovingly.
Dora tilted her head at Elias, considering. “I’m not certain what I did to insult you, my lord,” she said. “Have I offended you somehow, or am I simply conveniently-placed while you are otherwise upset?”
Her even, curious tone made the Lord Sorcier knit his
