Half a Soul

by Olivia Atwater

  Albert shook his head ruefully at that for some reason. “I prefer surgery,” he said. “I know my physician’s credentials are considered more respectable—but truly, Miss Ettings, proper physicians have the strangest medical ideas. Their obsession with bleeding confuses me terribly. I have never known bleeding to improve a patient... though I suppose it certainly quiets them.” He considered this very seriously, and then added: “On that note, I might prescribe bleeding for Elias one of these days. But only because he could sometimes use quieting.”

  Dora snorted, but did not otherwise respond.

  Their rounds went on, even into other rooms. Dora soon realised that there were multiple sick rooms—in fact, it seemed that there were almost more sick and injured people here than there were healthy ones. None of them were in very good condition, and Dora felt a moment of empathy for Miss Jennings, who had taken on a task of even greater enormity than she knew.

  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 there, 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?” he asked one of the men nearby.

  “Not since two days ago,” the man 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,” he asked the man.

  As soon as he had gone, Dora turned towards Albert. “What is going on?” she asked.

  A bleak expression crossed his 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 barely seemed 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 he 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.

  He startled at the question. His golden eyes fixed upon her, and he looked suddenly perplexed. “What are you doing here, Miss Ettings?”

  “That is a bit of a story,” she admitted. “But you thought the plague might be magical in nature. Does this mean that it isn’t?”

  Elias narrowed his eyes. “It means 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.” A few murmurs started up at that, and Elias glanced around at the inmates. “To other children,” he emphasized darkly. And then, as though to demonstrate, he crossed the last bit of space between him and the bed and pulled back the threadbare covers to lift the little girl into his arms.

  Albert stepped aside, and Dora realised that Elias meant to simply take the girl with him. She began to follow him, without being entirely conscious of it. “Where will you be going?” she asked.

  Elias turned his head, and again she saw a flicker of confusion cross his face—as though he’d nearly forgotten she was there. “Elsewhere,” he said. “Somewhere I can investigate further, in peace.”

  Dora’s eyes dropped to the little girl in his arms. She was small and light enough that Elias had her nearly upright, with her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She did not look like a feverish, suffering patient, so much as a listless puppet with cut strings.

  “I would like to come with you,” Dora said.

  Elias frowned. “Why?” he asked. His tone was more distracted than confrontational, and Dora thought he must have really desired an answer.

  Dora thought on it for another moment. But whatever instinct had prompted her to ask was like a lily pad floating on the water without any sort of root. It existed, but it had no discernible cause. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  Albert gave her a strange look at this. But Elias accepted the answer with a nod, aware as he was of her condition. “If you like, then,” the Lord Sorcier said. “But I am not Albert. I will not be coddling you.”

  “I am well enough aware of your nature not to expect as much,” Dora said dryly. She looked towards Albert. “You will not be upset if I desert you, I expect, given that you did not want me here in the first place.”

  Albert coloured at the direct observation. “I will not stop you, certainly,” he said. “But I would like to retract my earlier worries, Miss Ettings. You have indeed been of practical help today, and I would not decline if you wished to accompany me
again.” He frowned. “Though you may need to bring your much-absent chaperone, if you wish to go with Elias. Where has she gotten off to now?”

  “Miss Jennings is ahead of us by one room, I believe,” Dora said absently. “I suppose I will fetch her.” She went to do so, and found Miss Jennings arguing with a recalcitrant patient, who had accused her of wanting to steal his bedding.

  “We will be leaving,” Dora told her. “The Lord Sorcier is removing a sick child from the premises.” Then, on afterthought, she added: “Mr Lowe has suggested that we should accompany him.” This was an outright lie, but she hoped that Albert would not grudge her the escape, given that she had apparently been somewhat useful that day.

  Miss Jennings glared at the old man in the bed. “Someone shall need to pry your dirty sheets from you,” she informed him. “But it seems that it shall not be me.” She turned on her heel, and took Dora by the arm. “It is already early afternoon, unless I miss my mark,” Miss Jennings said. “We will need to have you home well before dark, Miss Ettings.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dora said. Miss Jennings had not reacted badly to the mention of the Lord Sorcier, which Dora supposed to mean that Auntie Frances and the countess had not mentioned their aversion to the man. That, at least, was a helpful oversight.

  The two of them had to walk quickly to catch up with Elias, who had started for a hired hackney outside. Miss Jennings eyed the small car with a frown.

  “That will be an unsuitably close fit for all of us,” the ex-governess noted.

  Elias glanced back towards her with a look of distaste. “Your chaperone, I presume?” he asked Dora, who nodded minutely. He shrugged at Miss Jennings. “You can always walk, if you prefer,” Elias said. He gave an address to the driver and stepped up into the cab. Dora got in after him, which necessitated that Miss Jennings hurry to follow suit.

  The cab did not take them too terribly far. It was only ten minutes or so before it came to a stop outside a small, run-down building, still located within the Strand. This one had at least a tiny garden in the front, and even a few bright flowers. Elias paused at the front door, still holding onto his sleeping charge, so Dora knocked at it for him.

  An older, matronly-looking woman in a dress and apron answered in short order. She seemed so unsurprised to see the Lord Sorcier that she didn’t even bother with a greeting. Instead, her dark eyes glanced down at the little girl, and she sighed. “Oh no,” she said. “Another one?”

  “I presume the upstairs room is still free, Mrs Dun?” Elias said, by way of reply.

  “It is,” she said softly. Her eyes glanced past him, towards Dora and Miss Jennings, and she frowned in surprise. Clearly, Mrs Dun was not used to the Lord Sorcier coming with company. Still, she said nothing as the two of them followed him inside.

  The building was light and airy, with many open windows. Dora thought it might have been some well-to-do merchant’s house, once upon a time. Now, however, she could see children peeking out at them through bedroom doors as they passed. It was hard to see much of them, as they stayed carefully out of sight, but they did not seem dirty or miserable, like the children in the workhouse had been. Mrs Dun stopped to shoo these children gently back, closing the doors as they went. She led Elias up the stairs towards a remote sort of room that had been marked in paint with a red X.

  Dora might have expected something ominous to be beyond that door—but as Mrs Dun opened it for them, she was surprised to see that it was simply a small, relatively pleasant bedroom. It had another broad, sunny window and two child-sized beds, both currently empty.

  Elias carried the little girl over to one of those beds. Mrs Dun pulled down the covers, and he laid her very gently down.

  Dora watched this with a peculiar feeling in her chest. Everything had begun to feel very dizzy and uncertain, ever since she’d swallowed down that fragment of confusing anger. But it occurred to her as she watched Elias tuck the little girl into bed that she had been furiously wishing that someone might come along and put the girl somewhere nicer, at least. And now, Dora thought, someone had.

  There was an unmistakable look of grief and frustration on the Lord Sorcier’s face as he looked down at that bed. Dora felt a dull pain in her heart as she watched him.

  “What can I do?” Dora asked, before she could think better of it.

  Elias glanced her way. The fire in his eyes was now tired and subdued, but he considered her question regardless. “I must take a bit to prepare,” he said. “But she does not look terribly comfortable. You might help Mrs Dun clean her up and find her something less filthy to wear while I am busy.”

  He left the room, and it was then only Dora, Mrs Dun, and Miss Jennings crowded into the small space.

  “The gentleman could have at least taken the time to make introductions,” Miss Jennings murmured, with a crinkle of her nose.

  “Do not call him a gentleman,” Dora told her automatically. “He really does not like it.”

  Mrs Dun smiled at Dora as she said it. The matronly woman inclined her head towards them both. “I am Mrs Martha Dun,” she told them. “I run this house on behalf of the charitable ladies’ board. It is normally an orphanage, but the Lord Sorcier had need of a place to isolate these patients. Since he supplies such a sizeable portion of our funds, I did not see the harm in obliging him.”

  Dora blinked. “He has never mentioned anything of the sort before,” she said. For some reason, the revelation mixed that pain in her heart with a strange, fluttery feeling. Albert did say that Elias hates admitting to charitable impulses, she thought.

  Mrs Dun‘s smile turned wry. “That does not surprise me in the least,” was all that she said.

  Dora introduced herself and Miss Jennings to Mrs Dun. At that point, they turned themselves to the task of cleaning up the sleeping girl—who, in lieu of another name, Dora decided to call Jane. The task might have been unwieldy with only one or two of them, but three was just enough to make much lighter work of it. The workhouse had not been clean at all, and from the way that Mrs Dun handled Jane’s old clothes, Dora suspected that the woman might intend to burn them whole. They wiped her down and put her into a simple, clean cotton shift instead.

  Jane’s straw-like hair was such a matted mess when they got down to it that Mrs Dun sighed and declared that they would have to cut the bulk of it off. At this point, poor Miss Jennings was beginning to visibly flag—she had been doing so much running about at the workhouse that now her hands had started to tremble. Dora took pity on the poor woman, who had been told after all that she was merely to be a chaperone today, and asked if Mrs Dun might take her down for some tea. “I have my own scissors,” she told them both. “I keep them quite sharp, for reasons of my own. I can see to Jane’s hair.”

  Miss Jennings accepted this suggestion with great relief, and the two of them descended the stairs, leaving Dora alone with the girl. She pulled free the scissors that Vanessa had given her so long ago, and began to cut away at the worst of the tangles.

  Elias knocked politely at the door partway through, and Dora called him inside. As he came to stand behind her, she felt his gaze keen upon her back.

  “What are you feeling, Dora?” Elias asked quietly. “Have you thought on it?”

  Dora blinked down at the scissors in her hand. “It’s quite a mess,” she said softly. “Back in the workhouse, there was a moment where... I was so deeply furious. The kind with a long tail, Elias. It is still making me nauseous. If I were normal, I think that I might want to yell at someone, or cry. But those things don’t come naturally to me, and they do not give me any relief.”

  Silence fell between them. Dora swallowed and felt a knot in her throat. “I was very relieved when you brought her here. But I am still frustrated. Why are the workhouses like that? I thought they were a matter of charity.”

  A hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. “This place is a matter of charity,” Elias said. “The workhouses are a matter of sweeping undesirable things from sight
.”

  Tears pricked at Dora’s eyes, but they were only the surface of that very deep well of misery that lingered inside her. “That George Ricks man. I think he really hated all those people he takes care of. It was like he didn’t even see them. I didn’t know that it was possible to be so callous.”

  Elias tugged her gently around to face him. His arm slid around her shoulders entirely, and Dora found herself pressed against his chest, much as Jane had been before. He was very warm, up close, and he had the sweet scent of myrrh on his clothing, beneath the hint of tobacco smoke from earlier.

  Dora could not remember ever having been so sick with anger before. But she had been sad or tired sometimes, and Vanessa often held her when this was the case, until her lantern warmth could banish those dull feelings. There was a lantern warmth to Elias too, she realised now. It was hotter, and not as soft as Vanessa’s, but it was somehow even more comforting because of that. Dora knew that he was angry too, and it relieved her to know that there was even one other person in the world who found such things obviously intolerable.

  “There is such a thing as evil in this world,” Elias told her quietly. “It does not help to look away from it. It does not even help, necessarily, to look at it.” His fingers brushed through her hair, and she shivered. “But sometimes, when you cannot force the world to come to its senses, you must settle only for wiping away some of the small evils in front of you.”

  Those few, inadequate tears soaked into his waistcoat. Dora nodded dully—but much as she wanted to pull away and let him do his work, she found she couldn’t bring herself to move. There was a unique comfort in leaning against him like this, and she knew that she would probably never have that comfort again, once she stopped.

  They lingered like that for a few minutes. And maybe Dora was imagining it, but she thought that perhaps Elias was thinking something similar—that he gained some small comfort from holding onto her, and that it would be difficult to set aside.