A Lease on Wonderland

To Steal Oneself Away

"I tell you," Hakuto went on. "It's just not possible that it can have been stolen! Who in all of Heartland could possibly steal it?"

Pom was impassive to Hakuto's consternation with anything but mild annoyance.

"If a thing can exist," she said simply, "it can be stolen, Mr. White, and if it was not a Heartland citizen then a thief from out of Heartland has stolen Lise. Unless it was a denizen. I have thought of the queen's knave..."

"Oh, despite what people say, doctor, I find more often than not that Sir Nevin is tardier than he is tart...y— Oh! Whatever," sighed Hakuto impatiently and shook his head. "Couldn't it have simply wandered off or been misplaced?"

Wringing his paws, he resisted the urge to look at his watch again. Instead he was ushered by the beefy hand of Pom inside before he could so much as think to protest.

"Wandered off?" laughed Pom humorlessly. "You don't seriously believe that a clockwork person can just wander off without anyone knowing?"

Hakuto paused and thought a moment. "Perhaps if no one was looking..." he began.

"And as for being misplaced? Well, if you were anyone else, Mr. White, I'd beat you to a pulp for such nonsense. For someone who can't stand nonsense you certainly don't stand for much sense."

"It must be the steam," muttered Hakuto following Pom.

She did not slow her pace at all in the steamy place up towards the mechanical staircase.

"Nonsense again, Mr. White," said Pom. "We haven't even got to the steam."

Hakuto snorted. "Well, perhaps if your maid hadn't—"

"I'm sure I've told you before that she isn't a maid," interrupted Pom. She looked over her wide shoulder severely. "She's the Steamstress, and as long as she controls the steam she does as she will within the confines of the law."

Hakuto only snorted the more.

"You're starting to sound like my son..." chortled Pom, so that Hakuto said nothing more until, after many seemingly pointless inclines and declines on many mechanical steps, they reached down into the chamber that Pom meant to take him to.

It was much like the other rooms in this place, filled with steam, gears, and clockwork; though it was a little quieter and it had a great window in the floor as this was the bottom story. Through it there was not much to see but more white fluff. Clouds or steam, it mattered little, but what lay below the cottony blanket was completely shrouded in mystery if one had the fancy enough to consider the obscurity something worth calling a mystery down that misty well. Hakuto had not. To this lens of this inverted skylight like some giant telescope to an underbelly of non-existent stars, he barely glanced, except to think it as a useless obstruction to the room like so many things in this ridiculous building.

After all, he thought. So much of the valves in here are only for looks and do nothing but add to the steam just as much as so many of the gears do nothing but turn for the sake it, and as for the steps—

He shook his head.

"So is this the last place Lise was seen, doctor?" asked Hakuto.

"Indeed. This is her bedroom, if you want to have it that way," Pom said hastily. "This is her bed over here."

She pointed to a stand much like a doll's stand, except life-sized and with mechanisms attached to it for making it rise and fall and for easy maintenance on the doll itself. Each of these mechanisms Hakuto inspected in turn. He was very precise about his work despite his impatience, but there was nothing unexpected about any of it.