Chương 40: Interlude I: Eleanor (Part One)

The moment she was out of sight and secure of her privacy, Eleanor touched her face. The porcelain came away in one clean piece, a faint suction, a small resistance, and then release, the painted features of Nell the match-girl resting cool and hollow in her palms. She was rather indifferent about its appearance for it was not hers. The freckles weren't hers. The small mouth, the eyes that were painted a shade lighter than her own… nothing about this ceramic mask was hers.

She set it in its velvet-lined box carefully, for she was not one to misuse her tools, then allowed herself to look properly into the glass. Her hair, freed now from its plain kerchief, kept the same deep, unruly curl it must have had since the day she was made. It was a dark shade of brown gone nearly black in the low candlelight, and still inclined to escape whatever pins tried to hold it in place.

Her eyes were quite large, a warm, deep brown, fringed with lashes so thick they looked painted on even from this close, and they set beneath brows that arched a fraction higher than a living person's would, thus giving her an expression of perpetual, faintly startled attention even now, alone, with no one left to perform for. Her mouth held, even in stillness, the barest upward tilt at its corners. It was not quite a smile, not quite a pout.

Her cheeks still had a measure of youthful softness but were placed somewhat high, the skin catching the candlelight in a way that made her look lit faintly from within. It was pale and unnaturally even, without freckle or blemish anywhere across it. This face was hers. Eleanor noted with curiosity that had been borne only since she had been assigned her recent role, that her true face required more effort from her to animate than the borrowed one did.

In particular, smiling as herself took a deliberate act of will that Nell's smile never seemed to need. She did not choose otherwise now; there was no one here to perform warmth for, and performing without cause struck her as a waste of the very small store of emotions that were genuinely her own. But it was not simply the lack of performance that set this face apart from others. It would take only one careful look to give her away as something non-human entirely.

The painted mask was far better at deceiving than her own face ever could be. A living face wore its history in small imperfections. Hers wore none at all. It was, she thought, turning her chin slightly to catch the light differently, a rather obvious tell for anyone who ever troubled themselves to look this near. A doll's face, in the end, however finely made, however easy to mistake for something warmer in poor light. Eleanor did not resent the word.

She had seen enough of the world by now to know precisely how rare true beauty was among the living, how much of it was mere accident, poorly treated and cared for, spent on people who never learned to use it and denied to people who might have. Hers had been chosen. With intention and purpose, by the one hand in this world she trusted absolutely with every part of her being.

Every measurement and brushstroke of this face, the tilt of the mouth, the particular shade of brown in the eyes, the exact height at which the cheek caught the light, had been decided for her, by Maker, because he had thought her worth making beautiful. Eleanor had always found, turning her face once more in the glass, that she was rather fond of it for exactly that reason.

She dressed with more care than the evening had required of Nell, with a walking dress of deep plum wool, the bodice fitted close and pointed at the waist, and the sleeves gathered full at the shoulder and narrowing to the wrist in the current fashion. She put on a cloak in a darker shade still, lined in grey silk against the cold, with a proper collar that framed rather than hid her throat.

Her new gloves were of soft kidskin, unmarked by matchwood or phosphorus, and her boots of good black leather, polished, soled thickly enough for the cobblestones but never meant to stand in actual mud. She brushed out her hair until it fell just as it was intended to fall, dark, yet unremarkable no longer, pinned back from her face but left to curl loose past her shoulders. By the time she left the small rented room behind Pell Street, nothing remained of the woman who sold matches on a corner.

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The carriage let her down at the edge of Kensington proper, where the city's noise finally gave way to hedgerows and the quiet stillness of the Londinium countryside. Eleanor walked the rest of the way on foot, past gates no ordinary visitor would have thought to look twice at, rather than the common entrance, and toward the pale bulk of the Palace rising up out of the dark. She entered without ceremony, a side door opening after just one knock, and made her way down a corridor she was quite familiar with.

Maker was in the library, as he so often was at this hour, his back to her, moving along the shelves, searching for one particular volume among ten thousand others. She crossed the room and knelt, the motion as natural to her as breath was natural to the living, and waited.

"Eleanor," he said and turned. He was, as always, exactly as she remembered him between visits, tall, silver-haired though his face carried none of the years that should have gone with it, with piercing dark eyes, set on plainer features. He dressed far more simply than his standing would have demanded, as though ceremony were a courtesy he extended to others rather than something he ever wanted for himself. When he looked at her, his expression softened, and she couldn't help being pleased by it.

"Rise, my dear. Report." She obeyed.

"All is well, Maker," she said.

"The subject remains unaware and I believe I have some measure of her confidence now." He nodded, unsurprised, for she never failed him, and waited for her to continue.

"The mental interference I reported before has continued," Eleanor said.

"Twice more, by my count, since I last spoke with you. I believe I know the cause now, or believe it strongly enough to say so," after an encouraging smile, she continued.

"The surgeon, the one known as the Devil's Physician, I think it is his doing. The exact circumstances… I have not yet fully reconstructed, however his influence over Alice Darling's mind is undeniable." Maker seemed to mull this over in silence for a few seconds.

"There is a further matter," she added, his attention once again solely on her. Even mere omission, when it came to her Maker, always felt blasphemous.

"He has taken a particular interest in her. A rather public interest that has garnered the attention of many parties. The man barely hides who he is and his… favor." Something crossed Maker's face at that. He hummed, low, a sound he made often when deep in thought.

"That man," he said, "has destroyed one of my daughters once already. Alongside half a dozen puppets now." Eleanor felt something tight in her chest. Not quite alarm, for she did not think alarm was the right word for what she was built to feel, but something adjacent to it, cold and sudden.

"Destroyed?"

"Do not engage with him." Maker's voice did not rise, but it was clear that this was not a topic up for discussion.

"He will do it to himself in time, in any case. He is chasing a daughter long dead, and a man chasing the dead rarely notices what he tramples in his wake. Stay clear of him, Eleanor."

"Understood, Maker," she said and inclined her head, accepting without the reflexive need for further justification that, in some distant way, she understood other beings seemed to require of the people they trusted. He studied her a moment longer than usual.

"You are hesitating over something else," he said gently.

"Speak plainly. You know I prefer it." She had not meant to hesitate visibly. She noted the failure down to reflect on it later, even as she corrected for it.

"The subject," she said.

"Alice Darling. Is she truly dangerous? Or her connections? Is that the reason I am to watch her so closely… or is there something else intended for her that I have not been told? Something I ought to be preparing myself for?" She heard the phrasing of her own question only after she spoke it, and understood, a second too late, precisely what it had revealed.

It was a question built entirely around what might happen to Alice, asked by a doll who was meant, above all things, to remain unattached to the outcome of her own assignments. Eleanor bowed her head, the mistake sitting heavy on her.

"My apologies."