Eileen Gunn - Questionable Practices

“Keep moving, my dear,” said Mr. Chesterton, between his teeth. “You are under my protection, and protect you I shall. But you must forgive my fierce demeanor — for I am under the protection of no one at all.”

Lord Snow opened a doorway at the end of the passage with a flourish. “Allow me to show you my collection,” he said and passed within.

Perforce they followed. Mr. Chesterton went first and Sasha after.

As she passed through the doorway, however, Sasha felt a sudden flash of heat pass through her flesh. She reached down to steady herself against the doorknob and saw that her hand was no longer her own. It was the hand of an adult woman. Her nails were long and tapered and as red as blood. There was a slim gold watch on her wrist, and rings on her fingers. Suddenly she realized how tall she was — tall enough that her head almost brushed against the top of the doorframe — and how far below her was Mr. Chesterton. Her arms were very long. Her body was. .

. . her own again. Short. Small. A child’s.

Sasha must have made a noise, for Lord Snow said, “Stop that whining. If what you see bothers you, then perhaps we should just pluck out your eyes.”

“Be brave, child,” Mr. Chesterton murmured. “Look about you — can you see Roland?”

“I can’t see a thing. It’s too dark.”

“More of your tricks, Snow? Oh, this is unworthy of you!”

Disdainfully, Lord Snow snapped his fingers. Light flared, briefly blinding Sasha. She stood blinking until she could see again.

They were in a room larger than a railway station, with walls that curled up on either side to meet overhead in a barrel vault. The walls were lined with cages the size of large suitcases, one after the other and stacked all the way to the ceiling. When the light came on, mews and shouts and yelps arose from up and down their length, and paws and small hands were squeezed through the bars imploringly.

“Your brother is in here somewhere,” Lord Snow said. “Find him and he’s yours.”

Sasha was angry and frustrated. If she knew what her brother looked like, maybe she’d have a chance of finding him. But she had no memory of Roland whatsoever.

But Mr. Chesterton did . And Mr. Chesterton was here with her, and on her side. He would take care of everything. He would —

Then she saw that Mr. Chesterton had abandoned his two-legged posture. He was sitting at Lord Snow’s feet, rump down and front legs straight. His tongue lolled and his tail thumped heavily on the floor. Lord Snow, for his part, had unlocked a mahogany liquor cabinet that stood all by itself in the center of the room, and removed from it a cut-crystal double old fashioned glass and a dusty bottle with just a splash of amber liquid sloshing about the bottom.

Lord Snow uncorked the bottle. “This is the last bottle of Fomorian whisky in existence. It predates Scotland. Indeed, it was ancient when Atlantis first emerged from the waters.” The liquor he poured into the glass was a golden-red topaz with hints of flame at its heart. When the bottle was empty, he placed the glass in the back of an empty cage. “It’s yours if you can get it out before the door snaps shut.”

Mr. Chesterton turned his back on the cage. “How little you understand me, Snow. It is true that I enjoy a nip of the good stuff now and again. But my passion is reserved for duty. ‘I could not love hard drink so much, loved I not honor more,’ as the poet said. So, you see —”

All in one blur of an instant, Mr. Chesterton threw his cane directly at Lord Snow, whirled about, and raced full-tilt into the cage. Simultaneously, the cane shattered into a thousand shards of glass and the cage rattled with the force of him hitting its back. Faster than lightning, he pushed off against the wall and out to freedom again — almost.

The door snapped shut and Mr. Chesterton was caught.

He looked up at Sasha, his expression stricken. Tears of guilt and shame ran down his cheeks and into the glass of whisky he still held.

Lord Snow reached through the bars and took the glass from him. He held it up to the light, admiring its color, now a granular and undistinguished grey. Then he drank it down in one gulp. “Humbug and humiliation! What could taste better?” He turned to Sasha. “This was your second test and you failed it, miserable child. Such a pathetic little whelp you are.”

“What test? I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly. Your task, whether you knew it or not, was to keep Chesterton away from the drink, and you failed.” His disdain was absolute. “Had it been my job, and my dog, I would not have failed to control him, dissolute and dipsomaniac though he be. Mr . Chesterton, as you call him, is now my chattel.” He grabbed Sasha by the back of her dress, just behind her neck, and hoisted her painfully to her tiptoes. “As are you. Later, I will take you to the Terminus. But for now — ”

He thrust her into a cage, halfway up one of the walls. A snap of his fingers summoned two liveried servants, who wheeled away the cage that held Mr. Chesterton.

The cage into which Sasha had been shoved smelled bad and it was very dim. Sasha wasn’t sure what was in the cage above her, but it snarled a warning when she bumped her head against the overhead bars. There was a stiff rug on the bottom of the cage overhead, which was just as well, although that undoubtedly was what smelled. She was livid with anger and frustration, and now she had no hope that Mr. Chesterton would take charge. She wanted to throw herself against the bars and thrash her arms and kick at the lock and scream and make everyone within earshot miserable. But before she could do so, a voice from the lightless cage beside hers said, “Hello. My name is Roland, what’s yours?”

“Roland?” Reason told Sasha the name could have been mere coincidence. The way her heart leapt up at the sound of his voice assured her it was not. “I’m your sister, Sasha.”

“I have a sister?”

“Yes,” Sasha said firmly. “Me. I came all the way up the Winter Tree to rescue you.” Her heart sank again. “Not that I’ve done a very good job of it. Now we’re both locked in these cages and unable to get out.”

“Oh, I figured out how to get out of these cages a long time ago.”

“What? Then why are you still here?”

“Well, I have no place else to go, and no way to get there either. Do you?”

Into Sasha’s mind flashed the friendly face of the Pullman porter who had promised her a ride home. Surely Mr. Big Bill — or his Brotherhood — wouldn’t mind extending the courtesy to her brother as well?

“I do,” she said.

“Okay, wait.”

Sasha waited. After a time, there came a glimmer of light from her brother’s cage. Slowly it grew, and by it she could see that he had plunged his hand into his own chest and was now extracting something from within. It was so large that his hand could barely hold it and it seemed to be made of light. It looked like a heart and it beat like a heart, but somehow Sasha knew it was something more.

“It’s my soul,” Roland explained. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be able to do this, but I figured out how anyway.”

His soul was free now. He touched it to the lock.

The door flew open.

Roland touched the soul to Sasha’s lock and the door of her cage opened as well. He cupped the soul in his hands for a few seconds, staring at it intently. Then he patted it and put it back into his chest, which glowed with a dim and lessening light. He smiled shyly at Sasha. “Lead the way.” He seemed to be a nice boy.

They climbed down the wall of cages, while the children within cursed and spat at them. There didn’t seem to be any good children in the cages, which simultaneously made Sasha feel better for not freeing them as well, and made her wonder if maybe she wasn’t as good a girl as she’d always thought — else, why would she be there? She was glad when they reached the doorway out and could put the child-kennels behind them.