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It was still beating, very weakly.

Clarimonde closed her eyes and wavered on her feet.

“What has happened to us?” she whispered. “How did we come to be here, Elias? How has everything been so badly broken?”

Tertia would not have liked the things that the old Lord Sorcier might have said to her, if he had been awake. But Clarimonde knew that he would have replied to her, if he could do so. She struggled, briefly, to imagine what he might have said.

You know better than that, Miss Betony, the Elias in her imagination told her. The world has always been this broken. And it has always been up to us to fix what little bit of it we can.

CHAPTER 18

Once upon a time, a woman left her daughter behind at a workhouse in London.

She did so tearfully, and with obvious reluctance. But even as her daughter cried and begged for her to stay, she pulled herself away.

“You must stay here, Clarimonde,” she said. “Only for a little while. I will be back, I swear it, as soon as I can find a home for us.” She smiled at her daughter as best she could. “I will come back for you. Be good for everyone here; I know you can be good.”

This did not stop the weeping on either side, of course. But Clarimonde Betony promised her mother that she would be the very best behaved girl in the entire workhouse while she waited.

It was not a good place for a little girl to live. It was loud and crowded and uncomfortable, and sickness was a constant companion to the people there. But Clarimonde had promised to be on her best behaviour, and she tried very hard to keep that promise at all times.

“My mother will be back for me,” she told the other inmates. “She is working hard to find a home for us.”

The other children laughed at Clarimonde when she said this, or else shook their heads at her with pity. But she had heard the desperation in her mother’s voice; she knew that it had been the truth, even if no one else believed her when she said it.

There was a lovely little girl named Winifred at the workhouse, only a little bit older than Clarimonde. The two girls did not get along very well; Winifred thought that she was better than the other girls, because her father might have had a title. But Clarimonde was always careful to be kind to Winifred regardless, because she had promised her mother to be good, and being kind to awful people was necessary in order to be good.

“No one ever actually comes back for us,” Winifred told Clarimonde one day. “It does not matter how good you are, Clarimonde; you will not be rewarded.”

That night, the other children cut off all of Winifred’s long and lovely hair while she slept. Clarimonde thought, perhaps, she ought have stopped them… but instead she stayed silent, and later watched with guilty satisfaction as Winifred screamed and sobbed at them.

Winifred was not any better off in the workhouse than the rest of them though, and as the workhouse master showed her more and more uncomfortable attention, Clarimonde’s guilt grew deeper. Finally, as Winifred wept, Clarimonde whispered her the story of a cruel and lovely faerie who might one day drag away the workhouse master.

In the many years that followed, Clarimonde would remember that Winifred had the capacity to turn stories into truth—for soon, the workhouse master was gone, and the inmates whispered that the Hollow Lady had finally come for him after all.

Winifred was wrong in other ways—for someone did come for her, in order to take her away from the workhouse. For a while, Clarimonde was bitter—for Winifred had not been terribly good, and she did not deserve to leave the workhouse first. But then a noble carriage arrived, and a man asked for Clarimonde by name, and she thought with great hope that her mother must have married well indeed.

The man who brought her to his carriage was tall and fair and very grumpy. But Clarimonde did her best to think charitably of him, as she assumed that he was supposed to be her new father.

He introduced himself as Lord Elias Wilder, England’s first (and possibly only) Lord Sorcier. “I have taken Winifred to Mrs Dun’s orphanage,” Elias said. “But she insisted that I must come back for you as well. There is very little room there; you will need to share a bed with her. But it is clean, and there is proper schooling there for you.”

Clarimonde realised too late that Lord Elias Wilder was not her father. It was soon a very awkward carriage ride as she began to cry, knowing that her mother was not waiting for her at their destination. But though he was not very fatherly, he did his best to comfort her.

“I must go back,” Clarimonde insisted tearfully. “My mother will come back for me. She won’t know where it is I’ve gone.”

“I will make certain that the workhouse keeps a record of where it is you’ve gone,” Elias reassured her. “And I will search for your mother as best I can. If I find her, I will see that she is given work so that she is able to take you back.”

This satisfied Clarimonde enough that she allowed herself to be taken to Mrs Dun’s orphanage, where Winifred was glad to see her. They cried to one another, and embraced, and Clarimonde admitted that she had looked away while other children tormented Winifred, and Winifred admitted that she had thought herself much better than Clarimonde, and she had said terrible things about her to other people.

“I hope that His Lordship finds your mother,” Winifred said. But though she spoke the words with a kinder mien, Clarimonde knew that Winifred still did not believe them.

As time went by, Clarimonde took interest in magic, and Lord Elias Wilder began to teach her more of it. Each year, she asked him whether he had found her mother, and each year he told her that he hoped to soon have news for her. Eventually, though, the day came when she was old enough to take employment and leave for her own lodgings, and she realised that her mother was not coming.

“You have lied to me!” she accused Elias. “You never searched for her at all.”

This was, perhaps, an uncharitable accusation. But Clarimonde was injured and angry and humiliated, and Elias was a simple target for her emotions.

“I have lied by omission,” Elias admitted to her wearily. “Which is nearly as terrible as lying to you directly. I must apologise, Clarimonde, though it means very little. I suppose… I hoped that if I waited long enough, the lie would someday come to truth, and I would never need to hurt you.”