Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

SEVEN Royale

Once she made a decision, Miss Temple considered it an absolutely ridiculous waste of time to examine the choice further—and so from the vantage of her coach she did not debate the merits of her journey to the St. Royale Hotel, instead allowing herself the calming pleasure of watching the shops pass by to either side and the people of the city all about their day. Normally, this was not a thing she cared for—save for a certain morbid curiosity about what flaws could be deduced from a person’s dress and posture—but now, as a consequence of her bold separation from the Doctor and Cardinal Chang, she felt empowered to observe without the burden of judgment, committed as she was to action, an arrow in mid-flight. And the fact was, she did feel that merely being in motion had stilled the tempest of feeling that had overtaken her in the Comte’s garden and, even worse, in the street. If she was not up to the challenge of braving the St. Royale Hotel, then how could she consider herself any kind of adventurer? Heroines did not pick their own battles—the ones they knew they could win. On the contrary, they managed what they had to manage, and they did not lie to themselves about relying on others for help instead of accomplishing the thing alone. Would she be safer to have waited for Chang and Svenson—however much of the plan was her own devising—so they could have entered the place in force? It was arguable at the very least (stealth, for one) that she alone was best suited for the task. But the larger issue was her own opinion of herself, and her level of loss, relative to her companions. She smiled and imagined meeting them outside the hotel—she chuckled at how long it would take them to find her—vital information in hand and perhaps the woman in red or the Comte d’Orkancz, now utterly subject, in tow.

Besides, the St. Royale held her destiny. The woman in red, this Contessa Lacquer-Sforza (simply another jot of proof, as if any were needed, of the Italian penchant for ridiculous names) was her primary enemy, the woman who had consigned her to death and worse. Further, Miss Temple could not help wonder at the woman’s role in the seduction—there was no other word—of Roger Bascombe. She knew objectively that the primary engine must be Roger’s ambition, manipulated with ease by the Deputy Minister, to whose opinions, as a committed climber, Roger would slavishly adhere. Nevertheless, she could not but picture the woman and Roger in a room together…like a cobra facing a puppy. She had seduced him, obviously, but to what actual—which is to say literal, physical—degree? One perfect raised eyebrow and a single purse of her rich scarlet lips would have had him kneeling. And would she have taken Roger for herself or passed him along to one of her minions—one of the other ladies from Harschmort House—that Mrs. Marchmoor—or was it Hooke? There were really too many names. Miss Temple frowned, for thinking of Roger’s idiocy made her cross, and thinking of her enemies turning him to their usage with such evident ease made her even crosser.

The coach pulled up outside the hotel and she paid off the driver. Before the man could jump from his box to help her, a uniformed doorman stepped forward to offer his hand. Miss Temple took it with a smile and carefully climbed down to the street. The coach rattled away as she walked to the door, nodding her thanks to a second doorman as he opened it, and into the grand lobby. There was no sign of any person she recognized—all the better. The St. Royale was openly sumptuous, which didn’t quite appeal to Miss Temple’s sense of order. Such places did the work for a person, which she recognized was part of the attraction but disapproved of—what was the point of being seen as remarkable when it was not really you being seen at all, but your surroundings? Still, Miss Temple could admire the display. There were scarlet leather banquettes and great gold-rimmed mirrors on the wall, a tinkling fountain with floating lotus flowers, large pots of greenery, and a row of gold and red columns supporting a curving balcony that hung over the lobby, the two colors twisting around the poles like hand-carved ribbons. Above, the ceiling was more glass and gold mirrors, with a crystal chandelier whose dangling end point, a multifaceted ball of glittering glass, was quite as large as Miss Temple’s head.

She took all of this in slowly, knowing there was a great deal to see, and that such sights easily dazzled a person, encouraging them to ignore what might be important details: like the row of mirrors against the oddly curving left wall, for example, which were strange in that they seemed placed not so much for people to stand before as to reflect the entirety of the lobby, and even the street beyond it—almost as if they were a row of windows rather than mirrors. Miss Temple immediately thought of the odious comment of the still more odious Mr. Spragg, about the cunning Dutch glass—about her own unintentional display in the Harschmort dressing room. Doing her best to shrug off twin reactions of mortification and thrill, she turned her thoughts more directly to her task. She imagined herself still standing in the lobby, trying to get up her nerve, when Chang and Svenson entered behind her, catching up before she had even done anything—she would feel every bit the helpless fool she was trying not to be.

Miss Temple strode to the desk. The clerk was a tall man with thinning hair brushed forward with a bit too much pomade, so the normally translucent hair tonic had creamed over the skin beneath his hair—the effect being not so much offensive as unnatural and distracting. She smiled with the customary crispness that she brought to most impersonal dealings and informed him she had come to call on the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza. He nodded respectfully and replied that the Contessa was not presently in the hotel, and indicated the door to the restaurant, suggesting that she might desire to take a little tea while she waited. Miss Temple asked if the Contessa would be long in arriving. The man answered that, truthfully, he did not know, but that her normal habit was to meet several ladies for a late tea or early aperitif at this time. He wondered if Miss Temple was acquainted with those ladies, for indeed one or more of them might well be in the restaurant already. She thanked him, and took a step in that direction. He called to her, asking if she wanted to leave her name for the Contessa. Miss Temple told him that it was her habit to remain a surprise, and continued into the restaurant.

Before she could even scan the tables for a familiar or dangerous face, a black-coated fellow was standing far too close and asking if she was meeting someone, if she had come for tea or supper or perhaps, his brow twitching in encouragement, an aperitif. Miss Temple snapped—for she did not like to be pestered under any circumstances—that she would prefer tea and two scones and a bit of fruit—fresh fruit, and peeled—and walked past him, looking around the tables. She proceeded to a small table that faced the doorway but was yet some distance into the restaurant, so that she would not be immediately visible from the doorway—or the lobby—and could herself scrutinize anyone who happened to enter. She placed her bag, holding the revolver, onto the next chair, making sure it was beneath the starched tablecloth and unapparent to any passing eye, and sat back to wait for her tea, her mind wandering again to the question of her present solitude. Miss Temple decided that she liked it perfectly well—in fact, it made her feel quite free. To whom was she obliged? Chang and Svenson could take care of themselves, her aunt was packed away—what hold could any enemy now place over her, aside from a threat to her own bodily safety? None at all—and the idea of drawing the revolver and facing down a host of foes right there in the restaurant became increasingly appealing.

She picked at the weave of the tablecloth—it was of quite a high quality, which pleased her—and found she was equally impressed with the St. Royale’s tableware, which, while displaying an elegance of line, did not abjure a certain necessary weight, especially important in one’s knife, even if all one were to do with that knife was split a scone and slather cream into the steaming crease. Despite Miss Temple having had tea that very morning, she was looking keenly forward to having tea again—indeed, it was her favorite meal. A diet of scones, tea, fruit, and, if she must, some beef consommé before bedtime and she would be a happy young lady. Her tea arrived first, and she was busily occupied with scrutinizing her waiter’s handling of the teapot and the hot water pot and the cup and saucer and the silver strainer and the silver dish in which to set the strainer and the little pitcher of milk and the small plate of fresh-cut wedges of lemon. When all had been arranged before her and the man departed with a nod, Miss Temple set about to deliberately re-arrange everything according to her taste and reach—the lemon going to the side (for she did not care for lemon in her tea, but often enjoyed sucking on one or two slices after she had eaten everything else, as a kind of astringent meal-finisher—apart from which, as she had paid for the lemon slices, it always seemed she might as well sample them), the strainer near it, the milk to the other side, and the pot and hot water positioned to allow her to easily stand—which was often, due to their weight, the length of her arms, and the leverage involved with her chair (whether or not its height allowed her feet to touch the floor, as hers presently did just with the toes) required of her in order to pour. Finally, she made sure there was ample space left for the soon-to-arrive scones, fruit, jam, and thick cream.

She stood and poured just a touch of tea into her cup to see if it was dark enough. It was. She then poured in a bit of milk and took up the teapot again, tipping it slowly. For the first cup, if one was careful, it was usually possible to forego the strainer, as most of the leaves would be sodden and at the bottom of the pot. The tea was a perfect pale mahogany color, still hot enough to steam. Miss Temple sat down and took a sip. It was perfect, the kind of hearty, savory brew that she imagined really ought to be somehow cut up with a knife and fork and eaten in bites. Within another two minutes, passed affably with sipping, the rest of her dishes had arrived and she was again pleased to find that the jam was a deeply colored blackberry conserve and that the fruit was, of all things in the world, a lovely orange hothouse mango, arranged on its plate in finger-thick, length-wise slices. She wondered idly how much this tea was going to cost, and then shrugged away her care. Who knew if she would even be alive in the morning? Why begrudge the simple pleasures that might unexpectedly appear?

Though she did make a point, when she remembered, to glance at the restaurant doorway and scrutinize whoever might be entering, Miss Temple spent the next twenty minutes assiduously focused on slicing and preparing the scones with just the right thickness to each half, applying an under-layer of jam, and then on top of that slathering the proper amount of cream. This done, she set these aside and indulged in two strips of mango, one after the other, spearing each with her silver fork on one end and eating her way from the other, bite by bite, down to the tines. After this, she finished her first cup of tea and stood again to pour another, this time using the strainer and also pouring in a nearly equal amount of hot water to dilute the brew that had been steeping all this time. She sampled this, added a bit more milk, and then sat once more and essayed the first half of the first scone, alternating each bite with a sip of tea until it had disappeared. Another slice of mango and she went back to the second half of the first scone, and by the time she had finished that it was also time for another cup of tea, this one requiring just a touch more of the hot water than before. She was down to the final half of her second scone, and the final slice of mango—and trying to decide which of the two to demolish first—when she became aware that the Comte d’Orkancz stood on the opposite side of her table. It was to Miss Temple’s great satisfaction that she was able to smile at him brightly and through her surprise announce, “Ah, it seems you have finally arrived.”

It was clearly not what he had expected her to say. “I do not believe we have been introduced,” replied the Comte.

“We have not,” said Miss Temple. “You are the Comte d’Orkancz. I am Celeste Temple. Will you sit?” She indicated the chair near him—which did not hold her bag. “Would you care for some tea?”

“No thank you,” he said, looking down at her with both interest and suspicion. “May I ask why you are here?”

“Is it not rude to so interrogate a lady? If we are to have a conversation—I do not know where you are from, they say Paris, but my understanding is even in Paris they are not so rude, or not rude in such an ignorant fashion—it would be much better if you would sit.” Miss Temple grinned wickedly. “Unless of course you fear I will shoot you.”

“As you would have it,” answered the Comte. “I have no wish to be…ill-mannered.”

He pulled out the chair and sat, his large body having the odd effect of placing him both near to her and far away at the same time, his hands on the table but his face strangely distant beyond them. He was not wearing his fur coat, but instead an immaculate black evening jacket, his stiff white shirt held with gleaming blue studs. She saw that his fingers, which were disturbingly strong and thick, wore many rings of silver, several of them set with blue stones as well. His beard was heavy but neatly trimmed, mouth arrantly sensual, and his eyes glittering blue. The entire air of the man was strangely powerful and utterly, disturbingly, masculine.

“Would you care for something other than tea?” she asked.

“Perhaps a pot of coffee, if you will not object.”

“There is no evil in coffee,” answered Miss Temple, a bit primly. She raised her hand for the waiter and gave him the Comte’s order when he arrived at the table. She turned to the Comte. “Nothing else?” He shook his head. The waiter darted to the kitchen. Miss Temple took another sip of tea and leaned back, her right hand gently gathered the strap on her bag and pulled it onto her lap. The Comte d’Orkancz studied her, his eyes flicking at her hidden hand with a trace of amusement.

“So…you were expecting me, it seems,” he offered.

“It did not particularly matter who it was, but I knew one of you would arrive, and when you did, that I would meet you. Perhaps I preferred another—that is, perhaps I have more personal business elsewhere—but the substance remains unchanged.”

“And what substance is that?”

Miss Temple smiled. “You see, that is the kind of question one might ask a foolish young woman—it is the kind of question an idiot suitor would ask me when he is convinced that the path to groping my body on a sofa leads through flatteringly earnest conversation. If we are going to get anywhere, Comte, it will aid us both to be reasonable and clear. Do you not think?”

“I do not think too many men have groped you on a sofa.”

“That is correct.” She took a bite of her scone—she had been regretting the interruption for some minutes—and then another sip of tea. “Would it be better if I asked questions of you?”

He smiled—perhaps in spite of himself, she could not tell—and nodded. “As you prefer.”

But here his coffee arrived and she was forced to hold her tongue as the waiter set down the cup, the pot, the milk, the sugar, and their requisite spoons. When he was gone, she gave the Comte time to sample his drink, and was gratified to see that he consumed it black, minimizing the delay. He set down the cup and nodded to her again.

“The woman—I suppose for you there are so many women,” she said, “but the woman I refer to was from the brothel, one Angelique. I understand from Doctor Svenson that you might have been genuinely troubled—even surprised—at the unfortunate results of your…procedure, with her, at the Royal Institute. I am curious—and it is not an idle curiosity, I promise you, but professional—whether you possessed any genuine feeling for the girl, either before or after your work destroyed her.”

The Comte took another sip of coffee.

“Would you object if I smoked?” he asked.

“If you must,” replied Miss Temple. “It is a filthy habit, and I will have no spitting.”

He nodded to her gravely and fished a silver case from an inner pocket. After a moment spent considering its contents, he removed a small, tightly wrapped, nearly black cheroot and snapped the case shut. He stuck the cheroot in his mouth and the case in his pocket and came back with a box of matches. He lit the cheroot, puffing several times until the tip glowed red, and dropped the spent match on his saucer. He exhaled, took another sip of coffee, and looked into Miss Temple’s eyes.

“You ask because of Bascombe, of course,” he said.

“I do?”

“Certainly. He has dashed your plans. When you ask of Angelique, someone from the lower orders we have taken up to join our work, to whom we have offered advancement—social, material, spiritual—you also inquire about our feeling for him, another, if not from such a dubious social stratum, we have embraced. And equally you speculate, indeed are ferociously hungry to know, what reciprocal feeling our work receives from him.”

Miss Temple’s eyes flashed. “On the contrary, Monsieur le Comte, I ask out of curiosity, as the answer will likely dictate whether your fate is a more perfunctory retribution at the hand of objective justice, or lingering, stinging, relentless torment at the hands of vengeance.”

“Indeed?” he replied mildly.

“For my own part—well, it matters only that your intrigue fails and you are powerless to further pursue it—which could equally mean the law, a bullet, or fierce persuasion. Roger Bascombe is nothing to me. And yet, as I must feel about your lady friend who has profoundly wronged me—this, this Contessa—so others feel about you—concerning this very Angelique. Because it is rash to assert there are no consequences when a ‘mere’ woman is at stake.”

“I see.”

“I do not believe you do.”

He did not answer, taking a sip of coffee. He set down the cup and spoke with a certain weariness, as if expanding his opinion even this far involved physical effort. “Miss Temple, you are an interesting young lady.”

Miss Temple rolled her eyes. “I’m afraid it means very little to me, coming from a murderous cad.”

“I have so gathered your opinion. And who is it I have so foully wronged?”

Miss Temple shrugged. The Comte tapped his ash onto the edge of his saucer and took another puff, the cheroot tip glowing red.

“Shall I guess, then? It could well be the Macklenburg Doctor, for indeed through my efforts he was to die, but I do not see him as your sort of wild revenger—he is too much the raisonneur—or perhaps this other fellow, whom I have never met, the rogue-for-hire? He is most likely too cynical and grim. Or someone else still? Some distant wrong from my past?” He sighed, almost as if in acceptance of his sinful burden, and then inhaled again—Miss Temple’s eyes fixed to the spot of glowing tobacco as it burned—as if to re-embrace the infernal urge that drove him.

“Why exactly have you come to the St. Royale?” he asked her.

She took another bite of scone—quite relishing this serious banter—and another sip of tea to wash it down, and then while she was swallowing shook her head, the chestnut-colored curls to either side of her face tossed into motion. “No, I will not answer your questions. I have been interrogated once, at Harschmort, and that was more than enough. If you want to talk to me, we will do so on my terms. And if not, then please feel free to leave—for you will find out why I am here only exactly when I have planned to show you.” She speared the last slice of mango without waiting for his reply and took a bite, licking her lips to catch the juice. She could not help but smile at the exquisite taste of it.

“Do you know,” she asked, swallowing just enough of the fruit to speak clearly, “this is quite nearly as delicious as the mangos one can find in the garden of my father’s house? The difference—though this is very good—is due, I should think, to the different quality of sunlight, the very positioning of the planet. Do you see? There are great forces at play around us, each day of our lives—and who are we? To what do we pretend? To which of these masters are we in service?”

“I applaud your metaphorical thought,” said the Comte dryly.

“But do you have an answer?”

“Perhaps I do. What about…art?”

“Art?”

Miss Temple was not sure what he meant, and paused in her chewing, narrowing her eyes with suspicion. Could he have followed her to the art gallery (and if so, when? During her visit with Roger? More recently? Had he been contacted so quickly by the gallery agent, Mr. Shanck?), or did he mean something else…but what? To Miss Temple, art was a curiosity, like a carved bone or shrunken head one found at a village market—a vestige of unknown territories it did not occur to her to visit.

“Art,” repeated the Comte. “You are acquainted with it…with the idea?”

“What idea in particular?”

“Of art as alchemy. An act of transformation. Of re-making and rebirth.”

Miss Temple held up her hand. “I’m sorry, but do you know…this merely prompts me to ask about your relations with a particular painter, a Mr. Oskar Veilandt. I believe he is also from Paris, and most well known for his very large and provocative composition on the theme of the Annunciation. I understand—perhaps it is merely a cruel rumor—that this expressive masterwork was cut up into thirteen pieces and scattered across the continent.”

The Comte took another drink of coffee.

“I’m afraid I do not know him. He is from Paris, you say?”

“At some point, like so very many people one finds disagreeable.”

“Have you seen his work?” he asked.

“O yes.”

“What did you think of it? Were you provoked?”

“I was.”

He smiled. “You? How so?”

“Into thinking you had caused his death. For he is dead, and you seem to have stolen a great deal from him—your ceremonies, your Process, and your precious indigo clay. How odd for such things to come from a painter, though I suppose he was also a mystic and an alchemist—strange you should just mention that too—though I am told it is the usual way of things in that garret-ridden, absinthe-soaked community. You carry yourself so boldly, and yet one wonders, Monsieur, if you have ever had an original thought at all.”

The Comte d’Orkancz stood up. With his cigar in his right hand he extended his left to her and as a matter of instinctive response Miss Temple allowed her own hand to be taken—her other groping for purchase on the pistol butt. He raised her hand up to kiss it, an odd moist, brushing whisper across her fingers, released her hand, and stepped back.

“You leave abruptly,” she said.

“Think of it as a reprieve.”

“For which one of us?”

“For you, Miss Temple. For you will persist…and such persistence will consume you.”

“Will it indeed?” It was not much of a tart reply as those things go, but the way his eyes glowered it was the best she could do in the moment.

“It will. And that’s the thing,” he said, placing both hands on the table and leaning close to her face, whispering. “When it comes, you will submit of your own accord. Everyone does. You think you battle monsters—you think you battle us!—but you only struggle with your fear…and that fear will shrivel before desire. You think I do not sense your hunger? I see it clearly as the sun. You are already mine, Miss Temple—just waiting for the moment when I choose to take you.”

The Comte stood again and stuck the cheroot in his mouth, his tongue flashing wet and pink against the black tobacco. He blew smoke through the side of his mouth and turned without another word, striding easily from the restaurant and Miss Temple’s view.

She could not tell if he left the hotel or climbed the great stairs to the upper floors. Perhaps he was going to the Contessa’s rooms—perhaps the Contessa had already returned and she had not seen her because of the Comte. But why had he left so abruptly—and after threatening her? She had spoken of the artist, Veilandt. Had that touched a nerve? Did the Comte d’Orkancz have nerves? Miss Temple did not know what she ought to do next. Any plan she might have once imagined had vanished in her moment-by-moment desire to frustrate and best the Comte in conversation—yet what had that achieved? She pursed her lips and recalled her first impression of the man, on the train to Orange Canal, his fearsome bulk seemingly doubled by the fur, his harsh, stark penetrating gaze. He had filled her with dread, and after the strange ritualistic presentation in the medical theatre with a darker dread still. But she was quite satisfied with his reaction to the subject of Oskar Veilandt. Despite the Doctor’s ruthless tale of the stricken woman and of poison, Miss Temple felt that the Comte d’Orkancz was but another man after all—horrid, arrogant, brutal, powerful to be sure, but with his own architecture of vanity that, once studied, would show the way to bring him down.

Thus assured, she used the next minutes to call for her bill and finish what remained of her meal, sucking on a lemon wedge as she dug into her bag for the proper amount of coin. She had contemplated signing the cost over to the Contessa’s rooms, but decided such a mean trick was beneath her. What was more, she felt a profound disinclination to owe the woman for anything (an attitude evidently not shared by the Comte, who had allowed Miss Temple to buy his coffee). Miss Temple stood, collected her bag, and dropped the husk of lemon onto her plate, wiping her fingers on a crumpled napkin. She walked from the restaurant, which was beginning to fill for the early evening service, with a trace of rising anxiety. Chang and Svenson had not arrived. This was good, in that she had not yet accomplished anything of substance and she did truly want to be free of them to work, and yet, did this mean something had happened to them? Had they attempted some particularly foolish scheme without her? Of course they hadn’t—they were merely pursuing their own thoughts, about this Angelique, no doubt, or Doctor Svenson’s Prince. Their not showing up was entirely to the good of their larger mutual goals.

She returned to the main desk, where the same clerk informed her the Contessa was still to arrive. Miss Temple cast a sly look about her and leaned closer to him. With her eyes, she indicated the curved wall with the mirrors, and she asked if anyone had engaged the private rooms for the evening. The clerk did not immediately reply. Miss Temple brought her voice nearer to a whisper, while at the same time adopting an idle innocent tone.

“Perhaps you are acquainted with other ladies in the Contessa’s party of friends, a Mrs. Marchmoor, for one. Or—I forget the others—”

“Miss Poole?” asked the clerk.

“Miss Poole! Yes! Such a sweet creature.” Miss Temple grinned, her eyes conveying to the best of her ability innocence and depravity at the same time. “I wonder if either of them will attend the Contessa, or perhaps the Comte d’Orkancz…in one of your private rooms?”

She went so far as to bite her own lip and blink at the man. The clerk opened a red leather ledger, ran his finger down the page, and then closed it, signaling for one of the men from the restaurant. When the fellow arrived, the clerk indicated Miss Temple. “This lady will be joining the Contessa’s party in room five.”

“There is one other young lady,” the waiter said. “Arrived some minutes ago—”

“Ah, well, even better,” said the clerk, and turned to Miss Temple. “You will have company. Poul, please show Miss…”

“Miss Hastings,” said Miss Temple.

“Miss Hastings to room five. If you or the other lady need anything, simply ring for Poul. I will inform the Contessa when she arrives.”

“I am most grateful to you,” said Miss Temple.

She was led back into the restaurant, where she noticed for the first time a row of doors whose knobs and hinges were cunningly hidden by the patterns in the wallpaper, so they were all but invisible. How had she not seen the previous woman enter—could she have been speaking to the Comte? Could her entry have been what sparked the Comte’s exit—could he have done it just to distract her? Miss Temple was intensely curious as to whom it might be. There had been three women in the coach with her at Harschmort, two of whom she took to be Marchmoor and Poole—though who knew, there could be any number of so-swayed female minions—but she had no idea as to the third. She then thought of the many people who had been in the audience in the theatre—like the woman with the green-beaded mask in the corridor. The question was whether it could be anyone who would know her by sight. Most of the time at Harschmort she had worn a mask—and those who had seen her without it were either dead or known figures like the Contessa…or so she hoped—but who could say? Who else had been behind the mirror? Miss Temple blanched. Had Roger? She held tightly to her bag, reaching into it for a coin to give the waiter and leaving it open so she could take hold of the revolver.

He opened the door and she saw a figure at the end of the table, wearing a feathered mask that matched the brilliant blue-green of her dress—peacock feathers, sweeping up to frame her gleaming golden hair. Her mouth was small and bright, her face pale but delicately rouged, her throat swanishly long, her small fine hands still wearing her blue gloves. She reminded Miss Temple of one of those closely-bred Russian dogs, thin and fast and perpetually querulous, with the unsettling habit of showing their teeth at anything that set off their uninsulated nerves. She pressed the coin into the waiter’s hand as he announced her: “Miss Hastings.” The two women nodded to one another. The waiter asked if they required anything. Neither answered—neither moved—and after a moment he nodded and withdrew, shutting the door tightly behind him.

“Isobel Hastings,” said Miss Temple, and she indicated a chair on the opposite end of the table from the masked blonde woman. “May I?”

The woman indicated that she should sit with a silent gesture and Miss Temple did so, flouncing her dress into a comfortable position without her gaze leaving her companion. On the table between them was a silver tray with several decanters of amber-, gold-, and ruby-colored liquors, and an array of snifters and tumblers (not that Miss Temple knew which glass was for which, much less what the bottles held to begin with). In front of the blonde woman was a small glass, the size of a tulip on a stiff clear stem, filled with the ruby liquid. Through the crystal it gleamed like blood. She met the woman’s searching gaze, the shadowed eyes a paler blue than the dress, and tried to infuse her voice with sympathy.

“I am told that the scars fade within a matter of days. Has it been long?”

Her words seemed to startle the woman to life. She picked up her glass and took a sip, swallowed, and just refrained from licking her lips. She set her drink back on the tablecloth, but kept hold of it.

“I’m afraid you are…mistaken.” The woman’s voice was tutored and precise, and Miss Temple thought a trifle bereft, as if a life of constraint or routine had over time encouraged a certain narrowness of mind.

“I’m sorry, I merely assumed—because of the mask—”

“Yes, of course—that is quite obvious—but no, that is not why—no…I have not—I am here…in secret.”

“Are you an intimate of the Contessa?”

“Are you?”

“I should not say so, no,” said Miss Temple airily, forging ahead. “I am more an acquaintance of Mrs. Marchmoor. Though I have of course spoken to the Contessa. Did you—if I may speak of it openly—attend the affair at Harschmort House, when the Comte made his great presentation?”

“I was there…yes.”

“May I ask your opinion of it? Obviously, you are here—which is an answer in itself—but beyond that, I am curious—”

The woman interrupted her. “Would you care for something to drink?”

Miss Temple smiled. “What are you drinking?”

“Port.”

“Ah.”

“Do you disapprove?” The woman spoke quickly, an eager peevishness entering her voice.

“Of course not—perhaps a small taste—”

The woman dramatically shoved the silver tray toward her, some several feet down the table, clinking the glasses together and jostling the bottles—though nothing fell or broke. Despite the effect of this strange gesture, Miss Temple still needed to stand to reach the tray and did so, pouring a small amount of the ruby port into an identical glass, replacing the heavy stopper, and sitting. She breathed in the sweet, medicinal odor of the liquor but did not drink, for something about the smell made her throat clench.

“So…,” Miss Temple continued, “we were both at Harschmort House—”

“What of the Comte d’Orkancz,” the woman said, interrupting her again. “Do you know him?”

“Oh, certainly. We were just speaking,” replied Miss Temple.

“Where?”

“Just here in the hotel, of course. Apparently he has other urgent business and cannot join us.”

For a moment she thought the woman was going to stand, but she could not tell if her desire was to find the Comte or run away, startled at his being so near. It was the sort of moment where Miss Temple felt the strange injustice of being a young woman of perception and intelligence, for the more deeply her understanding penetrated a given situation, the more possibilities she saw and thus the less she knew what to do—it was the most unfairly frustrating sort of “clarity” one could imagine. She did not know whether to leap up and stop the woman from leaving or launch into a still more nauseating celebration of the Comte’s masculine authority. What she wanted was for the woman to do some of the talking instead of her, and to have an easy minute in which to sample the port. The very name of the beverage had always appealed to her, as an islander, and she had never before tasted it, as it was always the province of men and their cigars after a meal. She expected to find it as vile as it smelled—she found most liquors of any kind vile on principle—but nevertheless appreciated that this one’s name suggested travel and the sea.

The woman did not stand, but after a poised second or two re-settled herself on her seat. She leaned forward and—as if reading Miss Temple’s frustrated mind—took up her delicate glass and tipped it to Miss Temple, who then took up her own. They drank, Miss Temple appreciating the ruby sweetness but not at all liking the burn in her mouth and throat, nor the queasy feeling she now felt in her stomach. She set it down and sucked on her tongue with a pinched smile. The masked woman had consumed her entire glass and stood up to reach for more. Miss Temple slid the tray back to her—more elegantly than it had been sent—and watched as her companion pulled the decanter from the tray and poured, drank without replacing the decanter, and then to Miss Temple’s frank surprise poured yet again. The woman left the decanter where it was and only then resumed her seat.

Feeling cunning, Miss Temple realized with a sly smile that her disapproval was misplaced, for on the contrary, the drunker and more free-speaking her quarry became the better her inquisition would proceed.

“You have not told me your name,” she said sweetly.

“Nor will I,” snapped the woman. “I am wearing a mask. Are you a fool? Are all of you people fools?”

“I do beg your pardon,” said Miss Temple demurely, repressing the urge to throw her glass at the lady’s face. “It sounds as if you have had a rough time of things today—is there another who has caused you annoyance? I do hope there is something I can do to help?”

The woman sighed tremblingly, and Miss Temple was again surprised—even dismayed a little—at the ease with which even a false kindness can pierce the armor of despair.

“I beg your pardon,” the woman said, her voice just over a whisper—and it seemed then that her companion was a person who very rarely in her life had need to say those words, and that she only voiced them now out of utter desperation.

“No no, please,” insisted Miss Temple, “you must tell me what has happened to make your day so trying, and then together we shall find an answer.”

The woman tossed off the rest of her port, choked for a moment, swallowed with difficulty, then poured again. This was getting alarming—it was not even time for supper—but Miss Temple merely wetted her own lips on her glass and said, “It is very delicious, isn’t it?”

The woman did not seem to hear, but began to speak in a low sort of mutter, which when combined with her brittle, sharp voice gave the effect of some circus marvel, one of those disquieting carnival automaton dolls that “spoke” through a strange breathy mix of bladders of air and metal plates from a music box. The sound was not exactly the same, but the spectacle was similar in the way the blonde woman’s voice was disturbingly at odds with her body. Miss Temple knew this was partially because of the mask—she had done a great deal of thinking about masks—and was oddly stirred by the movement of the woman’s coral-pink lips as they opened and shut within a proscenium of vivid feathers…the unsettling spectacle of her pale face, the puffed fleshy lips—though they were thin, they were still quite evidently tender—the glimpse of white teeth and the deeper pink of her gums and tongue. Miss Temple had a sudden impulse to shove two fingers into the woman’s mouth, just to feel how warm it was. But she caught her wandering mind and shook away that shocking thought, for the lady was finally speaking.

“I am actually most agreeable, even tractable, that is the thing of it—and when one is of such a temperament, one is known and thus gets no credit for being so, people take it as assumed and then want more—they always want more, and such is my nature, for I have always strived within the boundaries of polite society to provide what I can to anyone I can, for I have tried not to be proud, for I could be proud, I could be the proudest girl in the land—I have every right to be whatever I want, and it is vexing, for there are times when I feel that I ought to be, that I ought to be another Queen, more than the Queen, for the Queen is old and horrid-looking—and the worst part is that if I just chose to be that way, if I just did start ordering and screaming and demanding, I would get it, I would get exactly that—but now I wonder if that is really true, I wonder if it’s all gone on so long that no one would listen, that they would laugh in my face, or at least behind my back, the way they all laugh behind my back—even though I am who I am—and they would simply do what they are doing already, save more openly and without pretense, with disdain which I do not think I could bear, and my father is the worst of them, he has always been the worst and now he does not see me at all, he does not even attempt to care—he has never cared—and I am expected without question to accept a future chosen for me. No one knows the life I lead. None of you care—and this man, this vulgar man—I am expected—a foreigner—it is appalling—and my only solace is that I have always known that he—whoever he turned out to be—would prove the utter ruin of my heart.”

The woman drank off her fourth glass of port—and who knew how many she’d consumed before Miss Temple’s arrival?—grimaced, and reached at once for the decanter. Miss Temple thought of her own father—craggy, full of rage, impossibly distant, only arbitrarily kind. Her only way of understanding her father was to consider him a natural force, like the ocean or the clouds, and to weather sunny days and storms alike without being personally aggrieved. She knew he had fallen ill, that he would most likely not be living once she returned—if she ever did return—to her island home. It was a thought to prick her conscience with sorrow if she let it, but she did not let it, for she did not really know if the sadness was any different from that she felt at missing the tropical sun. Miss Temple believed that change brought sorrow as a matter of course. Was there particular sadness in her father’s absence—either on account of distance or death? Was there sorrow in the fact that she could not for certain say? Her mother she had never known—a young woman (younger than Miss Temple was now, which was a strange thought) slain by the birth of her child. So many people in the world were disappointing, who was to say the lack of any one more was a loss? Such was Miss Temple’s normal waspish response to the expression of sympathy at her mother’s absence, and if there did exist a tiny deeply set wound within her heart, she did not spend time excavating it for the benefit of strangers, or for that matter anyone at all. Nevertheless, for some reason she could not—or chose not to—name, she found her sympathies touched by the masked woman’s jumbled ranting.

“If you were to see him,” she asked kindly, “what do you guess the Comte d’Orkancz would advise you to do?”

The woman laughed bitterly.

“Then why don’t you leave?”

“And where am I to go?”

“I’m sure there are many places—”

“I cannot leave! I am obliged!”

“Refuse the obligation. Or if you cannot refuse, then turn it to your advantage—you say you ought to be a queen—”

“But no one will listen—no one imagines—”

Miss Temple was growing annoyed. “If you truly want to—”

The woman snatched up her glass. “You all sound the same, with your prideful wisdom—when it only serves to justify your place at my table! ‘Be free! Expand your perceptions!’ A load of mercenary rubbish!”

“If you are so assailed,” replied Miss Temple patiently, “then how have you managed to come here, masked and alone?”

“Why do you think?” The woman nearly spat. “The St. Royale Hotel is the only place I can go to! With two coachmen to make sure I am delivered and collected with no other stop in between!”

“That is ridiculously dramatic,” said Miss Temple. “If you want to go elsewhere, go.”

“How can I?”

“I am sure the St. Royale has many exits.”

“But then what? Then where?”

“Any place you want—I assume you have money—it is a very large city. One simply—”

The woman scoffed. “You have no idea—you cannot know—”

“I know an insufferable child when I see one,” said Miss Temple.

The woman looked up at her as if she had been struck, the port dulling her reactions, her expression tinged with both incomprehension and a growing fury, neither of which would do. Miss Temple stood and pointed to the somewhat isolated swathe of red drapery on the left-hand wall.

“Do you know what that is?” she asked sharply.

The woman shook her head. With a huff, Miss Temple walked over to the curtain and yanked it aside—her ingenious plan momentarily crushed by the flat section of wall that was revealed. But before the woman could speak, Miss Temple saw the indented spots in the painted wood—that it was painted wood and not plaster—where one could get a grip, and then the deftly inset hinges that told her how it opened. She wedged her small fingers into the holes and pried up the wooden shutters to reveal a darkened window, the reverse of the golden-framed Dutch mirror, offering the two of them an unobstructed view of the lobby of the St. Royale Hotel and the street front beyond.

“Do you see?” she said, herself distracted with the strangeness of the view—she could see people who were only three feet away who could not see her. As she looked, a young woman stepped directly to the window and began to nervously pull at her hair. Miss Temple felt a discomfiting shiver of familiarity.

“But what does it mean?” asked the blonde woman in a whisper.

“Only that the world is not measured by your troubles, and that you are not the limit of the intrigue that surrounds you.”

“What—what nonsense—it is like looking into a fish tank!”

Then the woman’s hand went to her trembling mouth and she looked anxiously for the decanter. Miss Temple stepped to the table and pushed the tray from her reach. The woman looked up at her with pleading eyes.

“Oh, you do not understand! In my house there are mirrors everywhere!”

The door behind them opened, causing both to turn toward the waiter Poul as he escorted another lady into their private room. She was tall, with brown hair and a pretty face marred by the dimming traces of a ruddy looping scar around both eyes. Her dress was beige, set off by a darker brown fringe, and she wore a triple string of pearls tied tightly to her throat. In her hand was a small bag. She saw the women and smiled, slipping a coin to Poul and nodding him from the room as she merrily addressed them.

“You are here! I did not know you would each be free to come—an unhoped-for pleasure, and this way you’ve had time to get acquainted by yourselves, yes?”

Poul was gone, the door shut behind him, and she sat at the table, in Miss Temple’s former spot, moving the port glass to the side as she settled her dress. Miss Temple did not recognize her face, but she remembered the voice—in the coach to Harschmort, the woman who’d told the story of the two men undressing her. The scars on her face were fading—she’d been the one in the medical theatre talking of her changed existence, her newfound missions of power and pleasure…this was Mrs. Marchmoor…Margaret Hooke.

“I wondered if we would meet again,” Miss Temple said to her, somewhat icily, intending to alert the blonde woman to the obvious peril this newcomer presented to them both.

“You didn’t wonder at all, I am sure,” Mrs. Marchmoor replied. “You knew, because you knew you would be hunted down. The Comte tells me you are…of interest.” She turned to the masked woman in blue, who had drifted back to the table, though she had not resumed her seat. “What do you think, Lydia—from your observation, is Miss Temple a person worth the time? Is she worthy of our investment, or should she be destroyed?”

Lydia? Miss Temple looked at the blonde woman. Could this be the daughter of Robert Vandaariff, the fiancée of the Doctor’s drunken Prince, the heiress to the largest fortune imagined? The object of her gaze did not respond, save to search again for the decanter, this time catching it, pulling out the stopper, and pouring another glass.

Mrs. Marchmoor chuckled. Lydia Vandaariff downed the contents—her fifth glass?—and positively bleated, “Shut up. You’re late. What are the two of you talking about? Why am I talking to you two when it’s Elspeth I’m supposed to see? Or even more—the Contessa! And why are you calling her Temple? She said her name was Hastings.”

Miss Vandaariff wheeled to Miss Temple, squinting with suspicion. “Didn’t you?” She looked back to Mrs. Marchmoor. “What do you mean, ‘hunted down’?”

“She is making a poor joke,” said Miss Temple. “I have not been found—on the contrary, it is I who have come here. I am glad you spoke to the Comte—it saves me time explaining—”

“But who are you?” Lydia Vandaariff was becoming drunker by the minute.

“She is an enemy of your father,” answered Mrs. Marchmoor. “She is undoubtedly armed, and intends some mayhem or ransom. She killed two men the night of the ball—that we know of, there may be more—and her confederates have plans to assassinate your Prince.”

The blonde woman stared at Miss Temple. “Her? ”

Miss Temple smiled. “It is ridiculous, is it not?”

“But…you did say you were at Harschmort!”

“I was,” said Miss Temple. “And I have tried to be kind to you—”

“What were you doing at my masked ball?” Miss Vandaariff barked at her.

“She was killing people,” said Mrs. Marchmoor tartly.

“That soldier!” whispered Lydia. “Colonel Trapping! They told me—he seemed so fit—but why would anyone—why would you want him dead?”

Miss Temple rolled her eyes and exhaled through her teeth. She felt as if she had become marooned in a ridiculous play made up of one rambling conversation after another. Here she had before her a young woman whose father surely sat at the heart of the entire intrigue, and another who was one of its most subtle agents. Why was she wasting time confirming or denying their trivial questions, when it was in her own power to take control? So often in her life Miss Temple was aware of the frustration that built up when she allowed other people their own way of action when she very clearly knew that their intentions were absolutely not her own. It was a pattern followed endlessly with her aunt and servants, and again now as she felt herself a shuttlecock knocked between the two women and their annoyingly at-odds nattering. She thrust her hand into her bag and pulled out the revolver.

“You will be silent, both of you,” she announced, “except when answering my questions.”

Miss Vandaariff’s eyes snapped wide at the sight of the gleaming black pistol, which in Miss Temple’s small white hand seemed fearsomely large. Mrs. Marchmoor’s reaction was, on the contrary, to adopt an expression of placid calm, though Miss Temple doubted the depths of its serenity.

“And what questions would those be?” Mrs. Marchmoor replied. “Sit down, Lydia! And stop drinking! She has a weapon—do try and concentrate!”

Miss Vandaariff sat at once, her hands demurely in her lap. Miss Temple was surprised to see her so responsive to command, and wondered if such discipline had come to be the only kind of attention she recognized and thus, though her entire rambling rant would seem to contradict the idea, what she craved.

“I am looking for the Contessa,” she told them. “You will tell me where she is.”

“Rosamonde?” Miss Vandaariff began. “Well, she—” She stopped abruptly at a look from the end of the table. Miss Temple glared at Mrs. Marchmoor and then turned back to Lydia, who had placed a hand over her mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Miss Temple.

“Nothing,” whispered Miss Vandaariff.

“I should like you to finish your sentence. ‘Rosamonde?’”

Miss Temple received no answer. She was particularly annoyed to see a small curl of satisfaction at the corner of Mrs. Marchmoor’s mouth. She turned back to the blonde woman with an exasperated snarl.

“Did you not just exclaim to me about the injustice of your position, the predatory nature of those around you, and around your father, the loathsome quality of your intended husband, and the degree to which you—despite your position—are accorded no respect? And here you defer to—to whom? One who has only these weeks shifted her employment from a brothel! One who is an utter minion of the very people you despise! One who quite obviously bears you no good will at all!”

Miss Vandaariff said nothing.

Mrs. Marchmoor’s expression devolved into a grim smile. “I believe the girl plays tricks upon us both, Lydia—it is well known she has been thrown over by Roger Bascombe, the prospective Lord Tarr, and no doubt it is some pathetic attempt to regain his affection that brings this person to our door.”

“I am not here for Roger Bascombe!” spat Miss Temple, but before she could continue, or wrench the conversation back into her control, the mention of Roger had prompted Miss Vandaariff to carom back to her pose of condescending superiority.

“Can it be any surprise he has dropped her? Just look at her! Pistols in a hotel restaurant—she’s a savage! The type that would do well with a whipping!”

“I cannot disagree,” replied Mrs. Marchmoor.

Miss Temple shook her head at this scarcely credible idiocy.

“This is nonsense! First you say I am a murderer—an agent in league against you—and now I am a deluded heartsick girl! Pray make up your mind so I can scoff at you with precision!” Miss Temple confronted Miss Vandaariff directly, her voice rising near to a shout. “Why do you listen to her? She treats you like a servant! She treats you like a child!” She wheeled again to the woman at the end of the table, who was idly twirling a lock of brown hair around a finger. “Why is Miss Vandaariff here? What did you intend for her? Your Process? Or merely the thralldom of debauchery? I have seen it, you know—I have seen you—and him—in this very room!”

Miss Temple thrust a hand into her green bag. She still had one of the Doctor’s glass cards—was it the right one? She took it out, glanced at it and stumbled to her feet—causing Mrs. Marchmoor to menacingly half-rise from the table. Miss Temple recovered her wits—pulling herself out of the blue depths—and brought the revolver to bear, motioning the woman back into her seat. It was the wrong card, with Roger and herself—still the sinister immersion itself might be enough. Miss Temple set the card in front of Miss Vandaariff.

“Have you seen one of these?” she asked.

The querulous blonde looked to Mrs. Marchmoor before answering and then shook her head.

“Pick it up and look into it,” said Miss Temple, sharply. “Be prepared for a shock! An unnatural insinuation into the very mind and body of another—where you are helpless, trapped by sensation, subject to their desires!”

“Lydia—do not,” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor.

Miss Temple raised the revolver. “Lydia…do.”

There was something curious, Miss Temple found, in the ease with which one could impose on another an experience that one knew—first hand—to be disquieting, or frightening, or repugnant, and at the grim satisfaction one took in watching the person undergo it. She had no idea of Miss Vandaariff’s intimate experience, but assumed, from her childish manner, that she had been generally sheltered, and while she was not thrusting her brusquely into the carnal union of Karl-Horst and Mrs. Marchmoor on the sofa—though she would have been happy to do so—she still felt a little brutal in forcing even this less transgressive card upon her at all. She remembered her own first immersion—the way in which she had naïvely assured Doctor Svenson it was nothing she could not bear (though she had been unable to fully meet his eyes afterwards)—and the shocking sudden delicious troubling rush of sensation she’d felt as the Prince had stepped between his lover’s open legs, the lover whose undeniably sweet experience she had herself then shared for that exquisite instant. As a young lady, the value of her virtue had been drilled into her like discipline into a Hessian soldier, yet she could not exactly say where her virtue presently stood—or rather could not separate the knowledge of her body from that of her mind, or the sensations she now knew. If she allowed herself the room to think—a dangerous luxury, to be sure—she must face the truth that her confusion was nothing less than the inability to distinguish her thoughts from the world around her—and that by virtue of this perilous glass her access to ecstasy might be as palpable a thing as her shoes.

Miss Temple had taken out the card as a way to prove to Miss Vandaariff in one stroke the wicked capacity of her enemies and the seductive dangers they might have already offered, to warn her by way of frightening her and so win the heiress to her side, but as she watched the girl gaze into the card—biting her lower lip, quickening breath, left hand twitching on the table top—and then glanced to the end of the table to see Mrs. Marchmoor studying the masked woman with an equally intent expression—she no longer knew if the gesture had been wise. Faced with Lydia’s intensity of expression, she even wondered if somehow she had done it to gain perspective on her own experience, as if watching Miss Vandaariff might be watching herself—for she could too readily, despite the need to pay attention, the obvious danger, imagine herself again in the lobby of the Boniface, eyes swimming into the depths of blue glass, hands absently groping her balled-up dress, and all the time Doctor Svenson knowing—even as he turned his back—what was passing with a shudder through her body.

Miss Temple recalled with shock the words of the Comte d’Orkancz—that she would fall prey to her own desire!

Her hand darted forward and she snatched the card away. Before Miss Vandaariff could do anything but sputter in mortified confusion, it had been stuffed back in the green bag.

“Do you see?” Miss Temple cried harshly. “The unnatural science—the feeling of another’s experience—”

Miss Vandaariff nodded dumbly, and looked up, her eyes fixed on the bag. “What…how could it be possible?”

“They plan to use your place of influence, to seduce you as they have seduced this man, Roger Bascombe—”

Miss Vandaariff shook her head with impatience. “Not them…the glass—the glass!”

“So, Lydia…” chuckled Mrs. Marchmoor from the end of the table, relief and satisfaction in her voice, “you weren’t frightened by what you saw?”

Miss Vandaariff sighed, her eyes shining, an exhalation of intoxicated glee. “A little…but in truth I don’t care about what I saw at all—only for what I felt…”

“Was it not astonishing?” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor, her earlier concern quite forgotten.

“O Lord…it was! It was the most exquisite thing! I was inside his hands, his hunger—groping her—” She turned to Miss Temple. “Groping you!”

“But—no, no—” began Miss Temple, her words interrupted by a glance to Mrs. Marchmoor, who was beaming like a lighthouse. “There is another—with this woman! And your Prince! Far more intimate—I assure you—”

Miss Vandaariff snapped at Miss Temple hungrily. “Let me see it! Do you have it with you? You must—there must be many, many of them—let me see this one again—I want to see them all!”

Miss Temple was forced to step away from Miss Vandaariff’s grasping hands.

“Do you not care?” she asked. “That woman—there!—with your intended—”

“Why should I care? He is nothing to me!” Miss Vandaariff replied, flapping her hand toward the end of the table. “She is nothing to me! But the sensation—the submersion into such experience—”

The woman was drunk. She was troubled, damaged, spoiled, and now yanking at Miss Temple’s arm like a street urchin, trying to get at her bag.

“Control yourself!” she hissed, taking three rapid steps away, raising the pistol—though here she made the realization (and in the back of her mind knew that this was exactly the kind of thing that made a man like Chang a professional, that there were things to learn and remember about, for example, threatening people with guns) that whenever one used a gun as a goad to enforce the actions of others, one had best be prepared to use it. If one was not—as, in this moment, Miss Temple recognized she was not prepared to do against Miss Vandaariff—one’s power vanished like the flame of a blown-out candle. Miss Vandaariff was too distracted to take in anything save her strangely insistent hunger. Mrs. Marchmoor, however, had seen it all. Miss Temple wheeled, her pistol quite thrust at the woman’s smiling face.

“Do not move!”

Mrs. Marchmoor chuckled again. “Will you shoot me? Here in a crowded hotel? You will be taken by the law. You will go to prison and be hanged—we will make sure of it.”

“Perhaps—though you shall die before me.”

“Poor Miss Temple—for all your boldness, still you comprehend nothing.”

Miss Temple scoffed audibly. She had no idea why Mrs. Marchmoor would feel empowered to say such a thing, and thus took refuge in defiant contempt.

“What are you talking about?” whined Lydia. “Where are more of these things?”

“Look at that one again,” said Mrs. Marchmoor soothingly. “If you practice you can make the card go more slowly, until it is possible to suspend yourself within a single moment as long as you like. Imagine that, Lydia—imagine what moments you can drink in again and again and again.”

Mrs. Marchmoor raised her eyebrows at Miss Temple and cocked her head, as if to urge her to give up the card—the implication being that once the heiress was distracted the two of them—the adults in the room—could converse in peace.

Against all her better instincts, perhaps only curious to see if what Mrs. Marchmoor had just said might be true, Miss Temple reached into her bag and withdrew the card, feeling as her fingers touched its slick cool surface the urge to look into it herself. Before she could fully resolve not to, Miss Vandaariff snatched it from her grasp and scuttled away to her seat, eyes fixed on the blue rectangle cupped reverently in her hands. Within moments Lydia’s tongue was flicking across her lower lip…her mind riveted elsewhere.

“What has it done to her?” Miss Temple asked with dismay.

“She will barely hear us, and we can speak clearly,” answered Mrs. Marchmoor.

“She seems not to care about her fiancé.”

“Why should she?”

“Do you care for him?” she demanded, referring to the explicit interaction held fast within glass. Mrs. Marchmoor laughed and nodded at the blue card.

“So you are held within that card…and on another I am…encaptured with the Prince?”

“Indeed you are—if you think to deny it—”

“Why should I? I can well imagine the situation, though I confess I don’t remember it—it is the price one pays for immortalizing one’s experience.”

“You do not remember?” Miss Temple was astonished at the lady’s decadent disregard. “You do not remember—that—with the Prince—before spectators—”

Mrs. Marchmoor laughed again. “O Miss Temple, it is obvious you would benefit from the clarity of the Process. Such foolish questions should nevermore pass your lips. When you spoke to the Comte, did he ask that you join us?”

“He did not!”

“I am surprised.”

“He in fact threatened me—that I should submit to you, being so defeated—”

Mrs. Marchmoor shook her head with impatience. “But that is the same. Listen, you may wave your pistol but you will not stop me—for I am no longer of such a foolish mind to be so occupied with grievance—from asking again that you recognize the inevitable and join our work for the future. It is a better life, of freedom and action and satisfied desire. You will submit, Miss Temple—I can promise you it is the case.”

Miss Temple had nothing to say. She gestured with the revolver. “Get up.”

If Mrs. Marchmoor had convinced her of one thing, it was that the private room was too exposed. It had served her purpose to pursue her inquiries but was truly no place to linger—unless she was willing to risk the law. With the revolver and the card both in her bag, she drove the women before her—Mrs. Marchmoor cooperating with a tolerant smile, Miss Vandaariff, still masked, making furtive glances that revealed her flushed face and glassy eyes—up the great staircase and along to the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza’s rooms. Mrs. Marchmoor had answered the inquiring look of the desk clerk with a saucy wave and without any further scrutiny they passed into the luxurious interior of the St. Royale.

The rooms were on the third floor, which they reached by a second only slightly less grand staircase, the rods and banisters all polished brass, that continued the curve of the main stair up from the lobby. Miss Temple realized that the winding staircases echoed the red and gold carved ribbons around the hotel’s supporting pillars, and found herself gratified by the depth of thought put into the building—that one could expend such effort, and that she had been clever enough to note it. Miss Vandaariff glanced back at her again, now with a more anxious expression—almost as if some idea had occurred to her as well.

“Yes?” asked Miss Temple.

“It is nothing.”

Mrs. Marchmoor turned to her as they walked. “Say what you are thinking, Lydia.”

Miss Temple marveled at the woman’s control over the heiress. If Mrs. Marchmoor still bore the scars of the Process, she could only have been an intimate of the Cabal for a short time, before which she was in the brothel. But Lydia Vandaariff deferred to her as to a long-time governess. Miss Temple found it entirely unnatural.

“I am merely worried about the Comte. I do not want him to come.”

“But he may come, Lydia,” replied Mrs. Marchmoor. “You do well know it.”

“I do not like him.”

“Do you like me?”

“No. No, I don’t,” she muttered peevishly.

“Of course not. And yet we are able to get along perfectly well.” Mrs. Marchmoor threw a smug smile back to Miss Temple, and indicated a branching hallway. “It is this way.”

The Contessa was not in the suite. Mrs. Marchmoor had opened it with her key, and ushered them inside. Miss Temple had removed her revolver in the hallway, once they were off the staircase and out of view, and she followed them carefully, her eyes darting about in fear of possible ambush. She stepped on a shoe in the foyer and stumbled. A shoe? Where were the maids? It was a very good question, for the Contessa’s rooms were a ruin. No matter where Miss Temple cast her gaze it fell across uncollected plates and glasses, bottles and ashtrays, and ladies’ garments of all kinds, from dresses and shoes to the most intimate of items, petticoats, stockings, and corsets—draped over a divan in the main receiving room!

“Sit down,” Mrs. Marchmoor told the others, and they did, next to each other on the divan. Miss Temple looked around her and listened. She heard no sound from any other room, though the gaslight lamps were lit and glowing.

“The Contessa is not here,” Mrs. Marchmoor informed her.

“Has the place been pillaged in her absence?” Miss Temple meant it as a serious question, but Mrs. Marchmoor only laughed.

“The Lady is not one for particular order, it is true!”

“Does she not have servants?”

“She prefers that they occupy themselves with other tasks.”

“But what of the smell? The smoke—the drink—the plates—does she desire rats?”

Mrs. Marchmoor shrugged, smiling. Miss Temple scuffed at a corset on the carpet near her foot.

“I’m afraid that is mine,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor, with a chuckle.

“Why would you remove your corset in the front parlor of a noble lady?” Miss Temple asked, little short of appalled, but already wondering at the answer, the possibilities disorientingly lurid. She looked away from Mrs. Marchmoor to compose her face and saw herself in the large mirror above her on the wall, a determined figure in green, her chestnut curls, pulled to the back and each side of her head, a darker shade in the warm gaslight, and all around her the tattered litter of decadent riot. But behind her head in the reflection, a flash of vivid blue caught her eye and she turned to see a framed canvas that could only be the work of Oskar Veilandt.

“Another Annunciation…” she whispered aloud.

“It is,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor in reply, her voice hesitant and cautious behind her. Hearing it, Miss Temple had the feeling of being watched carefully, like a bird stalked by a slow-moving cat. “You’ve seen it elsewhere?”

“I have.”

“Which fragment? What did it portray?”

She did not want to answer, to acknowledge the woman’s interrogation, but the power of the image drove her to speak. “Her head…”

“Of course—at Mr. Shanck’s exhibition. The head is beautiful…such a heavenly expression of peace and pleasure lives in her face—would you not say? And here…see how the fingers hold into her hips…you see, in the artist’s interpretation, how she has been mounted by the Angel…”

Behind them, Miss Vandaariff whimpered. Miss Temple wanted to turn to her but could not shift her gaze from the near-seething image. Instead, she walked slowly to it…the brushstrokes immaculate and smooth, as if the surface more porcelain than pigment and canvas. The flesh was exquisitely rendered, though the fragment itself—so out of context of the whole, with neither face seen, just their hips and the two blue hands—struck her as at once compelling and somehow dreadful to imagine. She wrenched her eyes away. Both women watched her. Miss Temple forced her voice to a normal tone, away from the sinister intimacy of the painting.

“It is an allegory,” she announced. “It tells the story of your intrigue. The Angel stands for your work with the blue glass, the lady for all those you would work upon. It is the Annunciation, for you believe that the birth—what your plans conceive—will—will—”

“Redeem us all,” finished Mrs. Marchmoor.

“I’ve never seen such blasphemy!” Miss Temple announced with confidence.

“You have not seen the rest of the painting,” said Miss Vandaariff.

“Hush, Lydia.”

Miss Vandaariff did not answer, but then suddenly placed both hands over her abdomen and groaned with what seemed to be sincere discomfort…then doubled over and groaned again, rocking back and forth, a rising note of fear in her moaning, as if this feeling were something she knew.

“Miss Vandaariff?” cried Miss Temple. “What is wrong?”

“She will be fine,” said Mrs. Marchmoor mildly, her hand reaching up to gently pat the stricken woman’s rocking back. “Did you perchance drink any of the port?” she asked Miss Temple.

“No.”

“I did note a second glass…”

“A taste to wet my lips, nothing more—”

“That was very prudent.”

“What was in it?” Miss Temple asked.

Miss Vandaariff groaned again, and Mrs. Marchmoor leaned forward to take her arm. “Come, Lydia, you must come with me—you will feel better—”

Miss Vandaariff groaned more pitifully still.

“Come, Lydia…”

“What is wrong with her?” asked Miss Temple.

“Nothing—she has merely consumed too much of the preparatory philtre. How many glasses did you see her drink?”

“Six?” answered Miss Temple.

“My goodness, Lydia! It is a good thing I am here to help you void the excess.” Mrs. Marchmoor helped Miss Vandaariff to her feet, smiling indulgently. She ushered the young blonde woman in an unsteady shuffle toward an open doorway and paused there to turn back to Miss Temple. “We will return in a moment, do not worry—it is merely to the suite’s convenience. It was known she would drink the port—so the preparatory philtre was added to it in secret. The mixture is necessary for her—but not to such excess.”

“Necessary for what?” asked Miss Temple, her voice rising. “Preparatory for what?”

Mrs. Marchmoor did not seem to have heard her and reached up to smooth Miss Vandaariff’s hair.

“It will do her good to marry, I daresay, and be past such independent revels. She has no head for them at all.”

Miss Vandaariff groaned again, perhaps in protest to this unfair assessment, and Miss Temple watched with annoyance and curiosity as the pair disappeared into the next room—as if she had no revolver and they were no sort of prisoner or hostage! She stood where she was, utterly affronted, listening to the clanging lid of a chamber pot and the determined rustling of petticoats, and then decided it was an excellent opportunity to investigate the other rooms without being watched. There were three doors off of the main parlor she was in—one to the chamber pot, which seemed a maid’s room, and two others. Through one open archway she could see a second parlor. In it was set a small card table bearing the half-eaten remains of an uncleared meal, and against the far wall a high sideboard quite crowded with bottles. As she stared in, trying to piece together some sense of the display—how many people had been at the table, how much had they been drinking—as she presumed a real investigating adventurer ought to do, Miss Temple worried she’d had at least one complete mouthful of the port—had it been enough to inflict the insidious purpose of their horrid philtre onto her body? What fate was Miss Vandaariff being prepared for? Marriage? But it could hardly be that—or not in any normal sense of the word. Miss Temple was reminded of livestock being readied for slaughter and felt a terrible chill.

With a hand against her brow she stepped back into the main room and quickly to the third door, which was ajar, the sounds of groans and scuffling feet still insistent behind her. This was the Contessa’s bedroom. Before her was an enormous four-poster bed shrouded in purple curtains, and across the floor was strewn more clothing—but these objects, large and small, seemed to float in a room where the walls were far away and, like the floor, dark with shadow like the surface of a black, dead-placid pool, the discarded garments floating like clumps of leaves. She pulled aside the bed curtains. With a primitive immediacy Miss Temple’s nostrils flared…a delicate scent the Contessa’s body had left in the bedclothes. Part of it was frangipani perfume, but underneath that flowered sweetness lay something else, steeped gently between the sheets, close to the odor of freshly baked bread, of rosemary, of salted meat, even of lime. The scent rose to Miss Temple and brought to her mind the human quality of the woman, that however fearsome or composed she was a creature of appetite and frailties after all…and Miss Temple had penetrated her lair.

She breathed in again and licked her lips.

Miss Temple quickly wondered if, in such ruinous disorder, the Contessa might have hidden anything of value, some journal or plan or artifact that might explain the Cabal’s secret aims. Behind, the complaining groans of Miss Vandaariff persisted. What had been done to the woman—it was practically as if she was giving birth! Anxiety gnawed at Miss Temple anew, and she felt a glow of perspiration rise upon her brow and between her shoulder blades. Her truest adversaries—the Contessa and the Comte d’Orkancz—must eventually arrive at these rooms. Was she prepared to meet them? She had brazened out her tea with the Comte well enough, but was much less satisfied by her extended interaction with the two ladies, by any estimation less formidable opponents (if opponent was even the proper word for the distressingly unmoored Miss Vandaariff). Somehow a confrontation that ought to have been taut, antagonistic, and thrilling had become mysterious, distracted, sensual, and lax. Miss Temple resolved to find what she could and leave as quickly as possible.

She first swept her hand beneath the voluminous feather pillows at the head of the bed. Nothing. This was to be expected—a quick lift of the mattress and a look under the bed frame revealed the same result—and it was only with the smallest increase of hope that Miss Temple marched to the Contessa’s armoire in search of the drawer containing her intimates. A foolish sort of woman might hide things there, with an idea that somehow the personal nature of the drawer’s contents would ward off inquiry. Ever an enemy to the inquisitive, Miss Temple knew the opposite was true—that such silks and stays and hose and whalebone inspired a feral curiosity in almost anyone—who wouldn’t want to paw through them?—and so the idea of stashing, for example, a tender diary in such a place was tantamount to leaving it in the foyer like a newspaper or, still worse, on the servants’ dining table at mealtime. As she expected, no such items of worth were to be found amongst the Contessa’s undergarments—though she perhaps dallied a moment running her fingers through the quantities of silk and may have also, with a furtive blush, pressed a luscious delicacy or two to her nose—and she shut the drawer. The best hiding places were the most banal—cunningly in plain sight, or cluttered amongst, say, one’s jumbled shoes. But she found nothing save a truly astonishing and expensive range of footwear. Miss Temple turned—did she have time to ransack the entire armoire? Was Miss Vandaariff still groaning?—looking for some ostensibly clever hiding place she could see. What she saw was discarded clothing everywhere…and Miss Temple smiled. There to the side of the armoire, against the dark wall in shadow, was a pile of blouses and shawls that struck her as quite deliberately set aside from any possible foot traffic. She knelt before it and rapidly sorted apart the layers. In no time at all, its glow nested in a yellow Italian damask wrap like an infant in straw, she had uncovered a large book crafted entirely of blue glass.

It was the size of a middling volume from an encyclopedia—“N” or “F”, perhaps—over a foot in height and slightly under that in width, and perhaps three inches thick. The cover was heavy, as if the glass-maker had emulated the embossed Tuscan leather Miss Temple had seen in the market near St. Isobel’s, and opaque, for even though it seemed as if she ought to have been able to see clearly into it, the layers were in fact quite dense. Similarly, at first glance the book appeared to be one color, a deep vivid indigo blue, but upon staring Miss Temple perceived it was riven with rippling streaks where the color fluctuated through an enticing palette, from cerulean to cobalt to aquamarine, every twisting shade delivering a disturbingly palpable impact to her inner eye, as if each bore an emotional as well as a visual signature. She could see no words on the cover, nor, when she looked—placing a hand on the book to shift it—on the spine.

At its touch Miss Temple nearly swooned. If the blue card had exerted a seductive enticement upon a person, the book provoked a maelstrom of raw sensation set to swallow her whole. Miss Temple yanked her hand free with a gasp.

She looked to the open door—beyond it the other women were silent. She really ought to return to them—she ought to leave—for they would no doubt enter the room after her any second, and on their heels must soon be the Comte or the Contessa. She dug her hand under the damask shawl, so to touch the book with impunity, and prepared to wrap it up and take it with her—for surely here was a prize to amaze the Doctor and Chang. Miss Temple looked down and bit her lip. If she opened the book without touching the glass…surely that would protect her…surely then she should have even more understanding to share with the others. With another glance behind her—had Miss Vandaariff fallen into a faint?—she carefully lifted up the cover.

The pages—for she could see down through them, each thin layer overlapping the next with its unique formless pattern of swirling blues—seemed as delicate as wasp wings—square wasp wings the size of a dish plate—and were strangely hinged into the spine so that she could indeed turn them like a normal book. She could not tell at once, but there seemed to be hundreds of pages, all of them imbued, like the cover, with a pulsing blue glow that cast the whole of the room in an unnatural spectral light. She was frightened to turn the page for fear of snapping the glass (just as she was frightened to stare at it too closely), but when she gathered her nerves to do so she found the glass was actually quite strong—it felt more like the thick pane of a window than the paper-thin sheet it was. Miss Temple turned one brilliant page and then another. She stared into the book, blinked, and then squeezed her eyes—could the formless swirls be moving? The worry in her head had transformed into a heaviness, an urge toward sleep, or if not sleep outright a relaxation of intention and control. She blinked again. She should close the book at once and leave. The room had become so hot. A drop of sweat fell from her forehead onto the glass, the surface clouding darkly where it landed, then swirling, the dark blot expanding across the page. Miss Temple gazed into it with sudden dread—an indigo knot opening like an orchid or blood blossoming from a wound…it was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, though she was filled with fear at what would happen when the dark unfurling had covered the entirety of the page. But then it was done, the last bit of shimmering blue blotted out and she could no longer see through to the lower pages…only into the depths of the indigo stain. Miss Temple heard a gasping sound—dimly aware that it came from her own mouth—and was swallowed.

The images writhed around her mind and then with a rush passed through it, the singular point, both terrifying and delicious, being that she did not seem to be present at all, for just as with Mrs. Marchmoor and the card, her awareness was subsumed within the immediacies of whichever sensation had entrapped her. It felt to Miss Temple that she had plunged into the experience of several lifetimes piled up in delirious succession, so wholly persuasive and in such number that they threatened the very idea of Celeste Temple as any stable entity…she was at a masked ball in Venice drinking spiced wine in winter, the smell of the canal water and the dank stone and the hot tallow candles, the hands groping her from behind in the dark and her own delighted poise while she somehow maintained a conversation with the masked churchman in front of her, as if nothing untoward was happening…creeping slowly through a narrow brick passage, lined with tiny alcoves, holding a shuttered lantern, counting the alcoves to either side and then at the seventh on her right stepping to the far wall and slipping aside a small iron disk on a nail and pressing her eye to the hole beneath it, looking into the great bedchamber as two figures strained against each other, a young muscular man, his naked thighs pale as milk, bent over a side table and an older man behind him, face reddened, frothing like a bull…she was riding a horse, her legs gripping the animal with strength and skill, one hand on the reins and another waving a wickedly curved saber, charging across an arid African plain at a flying wedge of horsemen in white turbans, faces dark, she was screaming with fear and pleasure, the red-coated men to either side of her screaming as well, the two lines racing at each other fast as a cracking whip, lowering her body over the neck of her surging mount, saber extended, squeezing the horse between her knees and then one split second of slamming impact—the Arab’s blade lancing past her shoulder and her tip digging into his neck, a quick jet of blood and the hideous wrench on her arm as the horses pulled past, the saber yanked free, another Arab in front of her, screaming with exhilaration at the kill…an ecstatic waterfall the size of two cathedrals, she stood among squat red-skinned Indians with their bows and arrows, black hair cut like a medieval king’s…mountains of floating ice, the smell of fish and salt, a fur collar tickling her face, behind her voices speaking of skins and ivory and buried metals, in her large gloved hand an unsettling carved figure, squat with a leering mouth and one great eye…a dark marble chamber gleaming with gold, small pots and jars and combs and weapons, all golden, and then the casket itself, little more than the body of the boy-king close-shrouded in a thick hammered sheet of gold and knotted with jewels, then her own hand snapping open a clasp knife and bending down to pry out a singularly fetching emerald…an artist’s studio, naked on a divan, reclining shamelessly, looking up into an open skylight, the pearl-grey clouds above her, a man with his skin painted blue between her legs, playfully holding her bare feet in his hands, raising one to his shoulders and then turning, as she also turned, to ask the artist himself about the pose, a figure behind an enormous canvas she could not see as she could not see his face, just his strong hands holding the palette and brush, but before she could hear his answer her attention was drawn pleasantly back to her posing partner who had reached down to luxuriously drag two fingers, just barely making contact, across the length of her shaven labia…a stinking sweltering room crowded with dark, slick bodies in clanking chains, striding back and forth, her boots against the planking of a ship, making notes in a ledger…a banquet amongst tall, pale, bearded uniformed men and their elegant ladies, dripping with jewels, the great silver trays of tiny glasses rimmed with gold leaf, each one with a clear, fiery, licorice-tinged cordial, tossing down glass after glass, a curtain of violins behind the polite conversation, crystal dishes of black roe in ice, platters of black bread and orange fish, a nod to a functionary wearing a blue sash who casually passed her a black leather volume with one page folded down, she would read it later and smiled, wondering which of the assembled guests it would instruct her to betray…crouched before a campfire ringed with stones, the black shadow of a castle dark against the moonlit sky, its high walls rising up from sheer red stone cliffs, feeding piece after piece of parchment to the flames, watching the pages blacken and curl and the red wax seals bubble into nothing…a stone courtyard in the hot evening, surrounded by fragrant blooming jasmine and the sounds of birds, on her back on a silken pallet, others around her unconcerned, drinking and speaking and glancing mockingly at the muscled shirtless turbaned guards, her legs apart and her fingers entwined in the long braided hair of the adolescent girl bent over her pelvis, lips and tongue flicking with a measured dreamy insistence, the rise of sensation gathering across her body, an exquisite wave preparing to break, rising, rising, her fingers gripping harder, the knowing chuckle of the girl who chose at that moment to pull back, the tip of her tongue alone slipping across the fervid, yearning flesh and then plunging forward again, the wave that had dipped surging up, higher, fuller, promising to break like the bloom of a thousand blue orchids over and within every inch of her body…

At this very exquisite moment, in the distant reaches of her mind Miss Temple was aware that she had become lost, and with some difficulty located in her memory—or the memories of so many others—a thin voice against the ecstatic roar, the words of Mrs. Marchmoor to Miss Vandaariff about the card, about concentrating on a moment to relive it, to take control of the sensation, of the experience itself. The girl’s nimble tongue sparked another spasm of pleasure within her loins and Miss Temple—through the eyes of whoever had given her experience to this book—looked down and with excruciating effort focused her mind on the feeling of the girl’s hair between her hands, her fingers pushing against the braids, studded with beads, and then the beads alone, the color…they were blue, of course they were blue…blue glass…she made herself stare into it, deeply, gasping again, thrusting her hips despite herself but somehow pushing her attention past the sweetly searching tongue, driving all other thoughts and sensations from her mind until she saw and felt nothing save the surface of glass and then, in that clear moment, with the force of her entire being, she willed herself elsewhere, pulling free.

Miss Temple gasped again and opened her eyes, surprised to see that her head was against the floor, pressed into the pile of fabric to the side of the book. She felt weak, her skin hot and damp, and pushed herself to her hands and knees, looking behind her. The Contessa’s suite of rooms was silent. How long had she been looking at the book? She could not begin to recall all of the stories she had seen—been a part of. Had it taken hours, lifetimes?—or was it like a dream, where hours could transpire within minutes? She rolled back on her heels and felt the unsteadiness of her legs and, to her discomfort, the slickness between them. What had happened to her? What thoughts were now embedded in her mind—what memories—of ravaging and being ravaged, of blood and salt, male and female? With a dull irony, Miss Temple wondered if she had become the most thoroughly debauched virgin in all of history.

Forcing her drained body to move, Miss Temple carefully wrapped the damask shawl around the book and tied it. She looked around her for her green bag. She did not see it. Had it not been wrapped around her hand? It had been, she was sure…but it was gone.

She stood, taking up the wrapped book, and turned her attention to the still half-open door. As quietly as possible she peered through the gap into the parlor. For a moment she was unsure whether she had truly left the book, so strange was the sight before her, so wholly composed, as if she gazed into a Pompeian grotto recreated in the modern world. Mrs. Marchmoor sat reclining on the slope of a divan, her beige dress unbuttoned and pushed to her hips and her corset removed, upper body naked save for the triple row of pearls that tightly spanned her throat. Miss Temple could not help but look at her left breast, heavy and pale, the fingers of the woman’s left hand idly teasing the nipple, for her right was quite blocked by Miss Vandaariff’s head. Miss Vandaariff, no longer wearing the mask, blonde hair undone down the length of her back, lay fully on the divan next to Mrs. Marchmoor, eyes closed, legs curled, one hand closed in a soft fist in her lap, the other softly supporting the second breast, from which she nursed dreamily, for comfort, like a satiated milk-drunk babe.

Across from them, in an armchair, a cheroot in one hand and his pearl-tipped ebony stick in the other, once more in his fur, sat the Comte d’Orkancz. Behind him, standing in a half-circle, were four men: an older man with his arm in a sling, a short, stout man with a red complexion and livid scars around his eyes, and then two men in uniforms that, from her contact with Doctor Svenson, she knew must be from Macklenburg. One was a severe, hard-looking man with very short hair, a weathered, drawn face, and bloodshot eyes. The other she knew—from the card, she realized, she knew him most intimately—was Karl-Horst von Maasmärck. Her first corporeal impression of the Prince was less than favorable—he was tall, pale, thin, depleted, and epicene, lacking a chin, and with eyes reminiscent of uncooked oysters. But past all of these figures her gaze moved quickly to the second divan, upon which sat the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, her cigarette holder poised perfectly, a thin thread of smoke curling up to the ceiling. The lady wore a tight violet silk jacket with a fringe of small black feathers to frame her pale bosom and throat, and dangling amber earrings. Below the jacket her dress was black and it seemed, as if she were some elemental magic being, to flow down her body and directly into the dark floor…where the previous litter of garments had been joined by the wholly savaged contents of Miss Temple’s slashed and ruined carpet bag.

With the exception of Miss Vandaariff’s, every set of eyes stared at Miss Temple in complete silence.

“Good evening, Celeste,” said the Contessa. “You have returned from the book. Quite impressive. Not everyone does, you know.”

Miss Temple did not reply.

“I am happy you are here. I am happy you have had the opportunity to exchange views with the Comte, and with my companion Mrs. Marchmoor, and also to acquaint yourself with dear Lydia, with whom you must of course have much in common—two young ladies of property, whose lives must appear to be the very epitome of an endless horizon.”

The Comte exhaled a plume of blue smoke. Mrs. Marchmoor smiled into Miss Temple’s eyes and slowly turned the ruddy tip of her breast between her thumb and forefinger. The row of men did not move.

“You must understand,” the Contessa went on, “that your companion Cardinal Chang is no more. The Macklenburg Doctor has fled the city in fear and abandoned you. You have seen the work of our Process. You have looked into one of our glass books. You know our names and our faces, and the relation of our efforts to Lord Vandaariff and the von Maasmärck family in Macklenburg. You even”—and here she smiled—“must know the facts behind the impending elevation of a certain Lord Tarr. You know all of these things and can, because I’m sure you are as clever as you are persistent, guess at many more.”

She raised the lacquered holder to her lips and inhaled, then her hand floated lazily away to again rest on the divan. With a barely audible sigh her lips parted in a wry, wary smile and she blew a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.

“For all of this, Celeste Temple, it is certain you must die.”

Miss Temple did not reply.

“I confess,” the Contessa continued, “that I may have misjudged you. The Comte tells me I have, and as I’m sure you know the Comte is rarely wrong. You are a strong, proud, determined girl, and though you have caused me great inconvenience…even—I will admit it—fury…it has been suggested that I tender to you an offer…an offer I would normally not make to one I have determined to destroy. Yet it has been suggested…that I allow you to become a willing, valuable part of our great work.”

Miss Temple did not reply. Her legs were weak, her heart cold. Chang was dead? The Doctor gone? She could not believe it. She refused to.

As if sensing defiance in her quivering lip, the Comte took the cheroot from his mouth and spoke in his low, rasping, baleful manner.

“It could not be simpler. If you do not agree, your throat will be cut straightaway, in this room. If you do, you will come with us. Be assured that no duplicitous cunning will avail you. Abandon hope, Miss Temple, for it will be expunged…and replaced by certainty.”

Miss Temple looked at his stern expression and then to the forbidding beauty of the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, her perfect smile both warmly tempting and cold as stone. The four men gazed at her blankly, the Prince scratching his nose with a fingernail. Had they all been transformed by the Process, their bestial logic released from moral restraints? She saw the scars on the Prince and on the stout man. It seemed that the older fellow shared their glassy-eyed hunger—perhaps his marks had already faded—only the other soldier bore a normal expression, where certainty and doubt were both at play. On the face of the others was only an inhuman, uncomplicated confidence. She wondered which of them would be the one to kill her. She looked finally to Mrs. Marchmoor, whose blank expression masked what Miss Temple thought was a genuine curiosity…as if she did not know what Miss Temple would do, nor what, once she did submit, might possibly come of it.

“It seems I have no choice,” Miss Temple whispered.

“You do not,” agreed the Contessa, and she turned to the large man seated next to her and raised her eyebrows, as if to signal her part in the matter was finished.

“You will oblige me, Miss Temple,” said the Comte d’Orkancz, “by removing your shoes and stockings.”

She had walked in her bare feet—a simple stratagem to prevent her from running away with any speed through the ragged filthy streets—down the stairs and out of the St. Royale Hotel. Mrs. Marchmoor remained behind, but all of the others descended with her—the soldier, the stout scarred fellow, and the older man going ahead to arrange coaches, the Comte and Contessa to her either side, the Prince behind with Miss Vandaariff on his arm. As she walked down the great staircase, Miss Temple saw a new clerk at the desk, who merely bowed with respect at a gracious nod from the Contessa. Miss Temple wondered that such a woman had need of the Process at all, or of magical blue glass—she doubted that anyone possessed the strength or inclination to deny the Contessa whatever she might ask. Miss Temple glanced to the Comte, who gazed ahead without expression, one hand on his pearl-topped stick, the other cradling the wrapped blue book, like an exiled king with plans to regain his throne. She felt the prickling of the carpet fibers between her toes as she walked. As a girl her feet had once been tough and calloused, used to running bare throughout her father’s plantation. Now they had become as soft and tender as any milk-bathed lady’s, and as much a hindrance to escape as a pair of iron shackles. With a pang of desolating grief she thought of her little green boots, abandoned, kicked beneath the divan. No one else would ever again care for them, she knew, and could not but wonder if anyone would ever again care for her either.

Two coaches waited outside the hotel—one an elegant red brougham and the other a larger black coach with what she assumed was the Macklenburg crest painted on the door. The Prince, Miss Vandaariff, the soldier, and the scarred stout man climbed inside this coach, with the older man swinging up to sit with the driver. A porter from the hotel held open the door of the brougham for the Contessa, and then for Miss Temple, who felt the textured iron step press sharply into her foot as she went in. She settled into a seat opposite the Contessa. A moment later they were joined by the Comte, the entire coach shuddering as it took on his weight. He sat next to the Contessa and the porter shut the door. The Comte rapped his stick on the roof and they set forth. From the time of the Comte’s demand for her shoes to the coach moving, they had not spoken a word. Miss Temple cleared her throat and looked at them. Extended silence nearly always strained her self-control.

“I should like to know something,” she announced.

After a moment, the Comte rasped a reply. “And what is that?”

Miss Temple turned her gaze to the Contessa, for it was she at whom the question was truly aimed. “I should like to know how Cardinal Chang died.”

The Contessa Lacquer-Sforza looked into Miss Temple’s eyes with a sharp, searching intensity.

“I killed him,” she declared, and in such a way that dared Miss Temple to speak again.

Miss Temple was not yet daunted—indeed, if her captor did not want to discuss this topic, it now constituted a test of Miss Temple’s will.

“Did you really?” she asked. “He was a formidable man.”

“He was,” agreed the Contessa. “I filled his lungs with ground glass blown from our indigo clay. It has many effective qualities, and in such amounts as the Cardinal inhaled is mortal. ‘Formidable’ of course is a word with many shadings—and physical prowess is often the simplest and most easily overcome.”

The ease of speech with which the Contessa described Chang’s destruction took Miss Temple completely aback. Though she had only been acquainted with Cardinal Chang for a very short time, so strong an impression had he made upon her that his equally sudden demise was a devastating cruelty.

“Was it a quick death, or a slow one?” Miss Temple asked in as neutral a voice as she could muster.

“I would not call it quick….” As the Contessa answered, she reached into a black bag embroidered with hanging jet beads, pulling out in sequence her holder, a cigarette to screw into the tip, and a match to light it. “And yet the death itself is perhaps a generous one, for—as you have seen yourself—the indigo glass carries with it an affinity for dream and for…sensual experience. It is often observed that men being hanged will perish in a state of extreme tumescence—” she paused, her eyebrows raised to confirm that Miss Temple was following her, “if not outright spontaneous eruption, which is to say, at least for the males of our world, such an end might be preferable to many others. It is my belief that similar, perhaps even more expansive, transports accompany a death derived from the indigo glass. Or such at least is my hope, for indeed, your Cardinal Chang was a singular opponent…truly, I could scarcely wish him ill, apart from wishing him dead.”

“Did you confirm your hypothesis by examining his trousers?” huffed the Comte. It was only after a moment that Miss Temple deduced he was laughing.

“There was no time.” The Contessa chuckled. “Life is full of regrets. But what are those? Leaves from a passing season—fallen, forgotten, and swept away.”

The specter of Chang’s death—one that despite the Contessa’s lurid suggestion she could not picture as anything but horrid, with bloody effusions from the mouth and nose—had spun Miss Temple’s thoughts directly to her own immediate fate.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m sure you must know,” answered the Contessa. “To Harschmort House.”

“What will be done to me?”

“Dreading what you cannot change serves no purpose,” announced the Comte.

“Apart from the pleasure of watching you writhe,” whispered the Contessa.

To this Miss Temple had no response, but after several seconds during which her attempts to glance out of the narrow windows—placed on either side of their seat, not hers, assumedly to make it easier for someone in her position to either remain unseen or, on a more innocent planet, fall asleep—revealed no clear sense of where in the city she might now be, she cleared her throat to speak again.

The Contessa chuckled.

“Have I done something to amuse you?” asked Miss Temple.

“No, but you are about to,” replied the Contessa. “‘Determined’ does not describe you by half, Celeste.”

“Very few people refer to me with such intimacy,” said Miss Temple. “In all likelihood, they can be counted on one hand.”

“Are we not sufficiently intimate?” asked the Contessa. “I would have thought we were.”

“Then what is your Christian name?”

The elegant woman chuckled again, and it seemed that even the Comte d’Orkancz curled his lip in a reluctant grimace.

“It is Rosamonde,” declared the Contessa. “Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza.”

“Lacquer-Sforza? Is that a place?”

“It was. Now I’m afraid it has become an idea.”

“I see,” said Miss Temple, not seeing at all but willing to appear agreeable.

“Everyone has their own plantation, Celeste,…their own island, if only in their heart.”

“What a pity for them,” declared Miss Temple. “I find an actual island to be far more satisfactory.”

“At times”—the Contessa’s warm tone grew just perceptibly harder—“such is the only way those locations may be visited or maintained.”

“By not being real, you mean?”

“If that is how you choose to see it.”

Miss Temple was silent, knowing that she did not grasp the Contessa’s larger point.

“I don’t intend to lose mine,” she said.

“No one ever does, darling,” replied the Contessa.

They rode on in silence, until the Contessa smiled as kindly as before and said, “But you were going to ask a question?”

“I was,” replied Miss Temple. “I was going to ask about Oskar Veilandt and his paintings of the Annunciation, for you had another in your rooms. The Comte and I discussed the artist over tea.”

“Did you really?”

“In fact, I pointed out to the Comte that, as far as I am concerned, he seems to be suspiciously in this fellow’s debt.”

“Did you indeed?”

“I should say so.” Miss Temple did not fool herself that she was capable of angering or flattering either of these two to a point of distraction that might allow her to throw herself from the coach—a gesture more likely than anything to result in her death under the wheels of the coach behind them—and yet, the paintings were a topic that might well produce useful information about the Process that she might use to prevent her ultimate subversion. She would never understand the science or the alchemy—were science and alchemy the same thing?—for she had always been indifferent to theoretical learning, though she knew the Comte at least was not. What was more, Miss Temple knew he was sensitive about the question of the missing painter, and as a rule she was not above being a persistent nuisance.

“And how exactly is that?” asked the Contessa.

“Because,” Miss Temple responded, “the Annunciation paintings themselves are clearly an allegorical presentation of your Process, indeed of your intrigue as a whole—that the imagery itself is a brazen blasphemy is beside the immediate point, save to convey a scale of arrogance—as you see it, of advancement provoked by the effects of your precious blue glass. Of course,” she went on with a side glance at the unmoving Comte, “it seems that all of this—for on the back of the paintings are imprudently scrawled the man’s alchemical secrets—has been taken by the Comte for his own—taken by all of you—at the expense of the missing Mr. Veilandt’s life.”

“You said this to the Comte?”

“Of course I did.”

“And how did he respond?”

“He left the table.”

“It is a serious charge.”

“On the contrary, it is an obvious one—and what is more, after all the destruction and violence you have put into motion, such an accusation can hardly strike any of you as either unlikely or unprovoked. As the work itself is monstrous, and the murder of its maker even more so, I would not have thought the murderer himself so…tender.”

For an answer that perhaps too fully fulfilled Miss Temple’s hopes of agitation, the Comte d’Orkancz leaned deliberately forward and extended his open right hand until he could place it around Miss Temple’s throat. She uselessly pressed her body back into her seat and tried to convince herself that if he was going to hurt her out of anger he would have seized her more quickly. As the strong fingers tightened against her skin she began to have her doubts, and looked with dismay into the man’s cold blue eyes. His grip held her fast but did not choke her. At once she was assailed by hideous memories of Mr. Spragg. She did not move.

“You looked at the paintings—two of them, yes?” His voice was low and unmistakably dangerous. “Tell us…what was your impression?”

“Of what?” she squeaked.

“Of anything. What thoughts were provoked?”

“Well, as I have said, an allegorical—”

He squeezed her throat so hard and so suddenly she thought her neck would snap. The Contessa leaned forward as well, speaking mildly.

“Celeste, the Comte is attempting to get you to think.”

Miss Temple nodded. The Comte relaxed his grip. She swallowed.

“I suppose I thought the paintings were unnatural. As the woman in them has been given over to the angel—she is given over to—to sensation and pleasure—as if nothing else might exist. Such a thing is impossible. It is dangerous.”

“Why is that?” asked the Comte.

“Because nothing would get done! Because—because—there is no border between the world and one’s body, one’s mind—it would be unbearable!”

“I should have thought it delicious,” whispered the Contessa.

“Not for me!” cried Miss Temple.

With a swift rush of fabric the Contessa shifted across the coach next to Miss Temple, her lips pressed close to the young woman’s ear.

“Are you sure? For I have seen you, Celeste,…I have seen you through the mirror, and I have seen you bent over the book…and do you know?”

“Do I know what?”

“That when you were in my room…kneeling over so sweetly…I could smell you…”

Miss Temple whimpered but did not know what she could do.

“Think of the book, Celeste,” hissed the Contessa. “You remember what you saw! What you did, what was done to you—what you became!—through what exquisite realms you traveled!”

At these words Miss Temple felt a burning in her blood—what was happening to her? She sensed her memories of the book like a stranger’s footprints in her mind. They were everywhere! She did not want them! But why could she not thrust them aside?

“You are wrong!” Miss Temple shouted. “It is not the same!”

“Neither are you,” snarled the Comte d’Orkancz. “You’ve already taken the first step in your process of transformation!”

The coach had become too warm. The Contessa’s hand found Miss Temple’s leg and then quickly vanished beneath her dress, the knowing fingers climbing up her inner thigh. Miss Temple gasped. These were not the blunt, stabbing, rude fingers of Spragg but—if still invasive—playful, teasing, and insistent. No one had ever touched her this way, in that place. She could not think.

“No—no—” she began.

“What did you see in the book?” The Comte pressed at her with his insistent, terrifying rasp. “Do you know the taste of death and power? Do you know what lovers feel in their blood? You do! You know all of it and more! It has taken root in your being! You feel it as I speak! Will you ever be able to turn away from what you’ve seen? Will you ever be able to reject these pleasures, having tasted their full intoxicating potency?”

The Contessa’s fingers pushed through the slit of her silken pants and slid across her liquid flesh with a practiced skill. Miss Temple shrank from her touch, but the coach seat was so small and the sensation so delicious.

“I don’t think you will, Celeste,” whispered the Contessa. She softly nuzzled the tips of two fingers, then wetly slipped them deeper while rubbing gently above them with her thumb. Miss Temple did not know what she was supposed to do, what she was fighting against save the imposition of their will upon her—but she did not want to fight, the pleasure building in her body was heavenly, and yet she also longed to hurl herself away from their openly predatory usage. What did her pleasure matter to them? It was but a goad, a tool, an endless source of thralldom and control. The Contessa’s fingers worked slickly back and forth. Miss Temple groaned.

“Your mind is set on fire!” hissed the Comte. “You cannot evade your mind—we hold you, you must give in—your body will betray you, your heart will betray you—you are already abandoned, utterly given over—your new memories are rising—surrounding you completely—your life—your self—has changed—your once-pure soul has been stained by my glass book’s usage!”

As he spoke she felt them, doors opening across her spinning mind directly into her fevered body—the masked ball in Venice, the two men through the spy hole, the artist’s model on the divan, the heavenly seraglio, and then so many, many more—Miss Temple was panting, the Contessa’s fingers deftly plying her most intimate parts, the woman’s lips against her ear, encouraging her pleasure with little mocking moans that nevertheless—the very provocative sound of that woman even counterfeiting ecstasy—served as a concrete spur to further delight…Miss Temple felt the sweetness gathering in her body, a warm cloud ready to burst…but then she shut her eyes and saw herself, in the coach between her enemies, beset, and then Chang dead, his pale face streaked with blood, the Doctor running and in tears, and finally, as if it were the answer she’d been seeking, the hot, clear, open view of barren white sand bordering a blue indifferent sea…she pulled herself from the brink—their brink she decided, not her own—

And in that exact moment, in such a way that Miss Temple knew they had not perceived her interior victory, the Contessa snatched away her hand and returned in smirking triumph to the other seat. The Comte released her neck and leaned back. She felt the sudden ebb of the pleasure in her body and its instinctive protest against the loss of stimulation—and met their eyes, seeing that they had brought her to the edge only to demonstrate her submission. They looked at her with a condescending disdain that seconds earlier might have been shattering—and before she could say a word, the Contessa’s hand—the same hand that had been under her dress—slapped her hard across the face. Miss Temple’s head spun to the side, burning. The Contessa slapped her again just as hard, knocking her bodily into the corner of the coach.

“You killed two of my people,” she said viciously. “Do not ever believe it is forgotten.”

Miss Temple touched her numbed face, shocked and dizzied, and felt the wetness from the Contessa’s hand—which was to say from herself. The spike of rage at being struck was dampened by her mortified realization that the close air in the coach was heavy with the smell of her own arousal. She yanked her dress down over her legs and looked up to see the Contessa wiping her fingers methodically on a handkerchief. Their attempt to demonstrate her helplessness had only solidified Miss Temple’s defiance. She sniffed again, blinking back tears of pain and further emboldened by the glimpse of her green clutch bag poking out of the side pocket of the Comte d’Orkancz’s voluminous fur.

Their coach ride ended at Stropping Station, where once more Miss Temple was made to walk in her bare feet, down the stairs and across the station hall to their train. She was quite certain that her soles would be blackened by the filth of so many travelers and she was not wrong, pausing to scoff at the dirty result with open disgust before she was again pushed forward. Again she was placed between the Comte and the Contessa, the Prince and his fiancée behind them, and the other three men bringing up the rear. Various people they passed gave a polite nod—to the Prince and Miss Vandaariff, she assumed, for they were often recognized—but were nonplussed by the sight of the barefoot young lady who could apparently afford a maid to dress her hair but not even the simplest footwear. Miss Temple gave them no thought at all, even when their questioning looks slipped into open disapproval. Instead, she gazed persistently around her for possible methods of escape but located nothing, dismissing even a pair of uniformed constables—in the company of such elegant nobility, there was no way anyone would credit her account of capture, much less the larger intrigue. She would have to escape from the train itself.

She had just so resolved on this plan when Miss Temple noted with sharp dismay two figures waiting with the conductor on the platform, at the open door of the rearmost car. One, based on the description of Doctor Svenson, she took to be Francis Xonck, sporting a tailcoat worn only on his left arm and buttoned across—the other sleeve hanging free—for his right arm was thickly bandaged. The other, standing tall in a crisp black topcoat, was a man she would no doubt recognize from across the entire station floor until the end of her days. Miss Temple actually stopped walking, only to have her shoulder gently seized by the Comte d’Orkancz and her body carried along for several awkward steps until she had resumed her pace. He released her—never once deigning to look down—and she glanced at the Contessa in time to see her smiling with cruel amusement.

“Ah, look—it is Bascombe and Francis Xonck! Perhaps there will be time on the journey for a lovers’ reunion!”

Miss Temple paused again and again the Comte’s hand shot out to shove her forward.

Roger’s gaze passed over her quite quickly, but she saw, no matter how he hid it behind the fixed face of a government functionary, her presence was no more welcome to him than his to her. When had they spoken last? Nine days ago? Ten? It had still been as engaged lovers. The very word caused Miss Temple to wince—what word could possibly be more changed by the events of her last hours? She knew that they were now separated by a distance she could never have previously imagined, discrepancies of belief and experience that were every bit as vast as the ocean she had crossed to first enter Roger Bascombe’s world. She must assume that Roger had given himself over to the Cabal and its Process, to amoral sensation—to one only imagined, if the book were any indicator, what depravities. He must have conspired in the murder of his uncle—how else would he have the title? Had he even stood by—or, who knew, participated?—while murders and worse were enacted, perhaps even that of Cardinal Chang? She did not want to believe it, yet here he was. And what of her own changes? Miss Temple thought back to her night of distress, weeping in her bed over Roger’s letter—what was this compared to Spragg’s attack, or the Contessa’s menace, or the fiendish brutality of the Process? What was this compared to her own discovered reserves of determination and cunning, of authority and choice—or standing as an equal third with the Doctor and the Cardinal, an adventuress of worth? Roger’s gaze fell to her dirty feet. She had never allowed herself to be less than immaculate in his presence, and she watched him measure her in that very moment and find her wanting—as he must by necessity find her, something he had cast off. For a moment her heart sank, but then Miss Temple inhaled sharply, flaring her nostrils. It did not matter what Roger Bascombe might think—it would never matter again.

Francis Xonck occupied her interest for a brief glance of estimation and no more. She knew his general tale—the wastrel rakish brother of the mighty Henry Xonck—and saw all she needed of his preening peacock wit and manner in his overly posed, wry expression, noting with satisfaction the apparently grievous and painful injury he had suffered to his arm. She wondered how it had happened, and idly wished she might have witnessed it.

The two men then stepped forward to pay their respects to the Contessa. Xonck first bowed and extended his hand for hers, taking it and raising it to his lips. As if Miss Temple had not been enough abased, she was aghast at the discreet wrinkling of Francis Xonck’s nose as he held the Contessa’s hand—the same that had been between her legs. With a wicked smile, looking into the Contessa’s eyes—the Contessa who exchanged with him a fully wicked smile of her own—Xonck, instead of kissing the fingers, ran his tongue deliberately along them. He released the hand with a click of his heels and turned to Miss Temple with a knowing leer. She did not extend her hand and he did not reach out to take it, moving on to nod at the Comte with an even wider smile. But Miss Temple paid him no more attention, her gaze fixed despite herself on Roger Bascombe’s own kiss of the Contessa’s hand. Once more she saw her scent register—though Roger’s notice was marked by momentary confusion rather than wicked glee. He avoided looking into the Contessa’s laughing eyes, administered a deft brush of his lips, and released her hand.

“I believe you two have met,” said the Contessa.

“Indeed,” said Roger Bascombe. He nodded curtly. “Miss Temple.”

“Mr. Bascombe.”

“I see you’ve lost your shoes,” he said, not entirely unkindly, by way of conversation.

“Better my shoes than my soul, Mr. Bascombe,” she replied, her words harsh and childish in her ears, “or must I say Lord Tarr?”

Roger met her gaze once, briefly, as if there were something he did want to say but could not, or could not in such company. He then turned, directing his voice to the Comte and Contessa.

“If you will, we ought to be aboard—the train will leave directly.”

Miss Temple was installed alone in a compartment in a car the party seemed to claim all for itself. She had expected—or feared—that the Comte or Contessa would use the journey to resume the abuses of her coach ride, but when the Comte had slid open the compartment door and thrust her into it she had turned to find him still in the passageway shutting it again and walking impassively from sight. She had tried to open the door herself. It was not locked, and she had poked her head out to see Francis Xonck standing in conversation some yards away with the Macklenburg officer. They turned at the sound of the door with expressions of such unmitigated and dangerous annoyance that Miss Temple had retreated back into the compartment, half-afraid they were going to follow. They did not, and after some minutes of fretful standing, Miss Temple took a seat and tried to think about what she might do. She was being taken to Harschmort, alone and unarmed and distressingly unshod. What was the first stop on the way to Orange Canal—Crampton Place? Gorsemont? Packington? Could she discreetly open the compartment window and lower herself from the train in the time they might be paused in the station? Could she drop from such a height—it was easily fifteen feet—onto the rail bed of jagged stones without hurting her feet? If she could not run after climbing out she would be taken immediately, she was sure. Miss Temple exhaled and shut her eyes. Did she truly have any choice?

She wondered what time it was. Her trials with the book and in the coach had been extremely taxing and she would have dearly loved a drink of water and even more a chance to shut her eyes in safety. She pulled her legs onto her seat and gathered her dress around them, curling up as best she could, feeling like a transported beast huddling in a corner of its cage. Despite her best intentions Miss Temple’s thoughts wandered to Roger, and she marveled again at the distance they had traveled from their former lives. Before, in accounting for his rejection of her, she had merely been one element among many—his family, his moral rectitude—thrown to the side in favor of ambition. But now they were on the same train, only yards away from one another. Nothing stopped him from coming to her compartment (the Contessa was sure to allow it out of pure amusement) and yet he did not. For all that he too must have undergone the Process and was subject to its effects, she found his avoidance demonstrably cruel—had he not held her in his arms? Had he not an ounce remaining of that sympathy or care, even so much as to offer comfort, to ease his own heart at the fate that must befall her? It was clear that he did not, and despite all previous resolve and despite her hidden victories over both the book and her captors—for did these change a thing?—Miss Temple found herself once more alone within her barren landscape of loss.

The door of her compartment was opened by the Macklenburg officer. He held a metal canteen and extended it to her. For all her parched throat she hesitated. He frowned with irritation.

“Water. Take it.”

She did, uncorking the top and drinking deeply. She exhaled and drank again. The train was slowing. She wiped her mouth and returned the canteen. He took it, but did not move. The train stopped. They waited in silence. He offered the canteen again. Miss Temple shook her head. He replaced the cork. The train pulled forward. With a sinking heart she saw the sign for Crampton Place pass by her window and recede from sight. When the train had resumed its normal speed, the soldier gave her a clipped nod and left the compartment. Miss Temple tucked her legs beneath her once again and laid her head against her armrest, determined that she would rather sleep than give in again to tears.

She was woken by the officer’s reappearance as the train stopped at Packington, and again at Gorsemont, De Conque, and Raaxfall. Each time he brought the steel canteen of water and each time remained otherwise silent until the train resumed its full forward momentum, after which he left her alone. After De Conque Miss Temple was no longer inclined to sleep, partially because it annoyed her to be awoken so relentlessly, but more because the impulse had gone. In its place was a feeling she could not properly name, gnawing and unsettling, which caused her to shift in her seat repeatedly. She did not know where she was—which was to say, she realized with the impact of a bullet, she did not know who she was. After having become so accustomed to the dashing tactics of adventure—shooting pistols, escaping by rooftop, digging clues from a stove as if this were the natural evolution of her character (and for a wistful moment Miss Temple occupied herself with a recounting of all the adventurous tasks she had managed in the past few days)—it seemed as if her failure had thrust forward another possibility, that she was merely a naïve and willful young woman without the depth to understand her doom. She thought of Doctor Svenson on the rooftop—the man had been petrified—and yet while she and Chang had leaned over the edge to look into the alley, he had driven himself to walk alone across the top of the Boniface Hotel and the next two buildings—even stepping across the actual (negligible, it was true, but such fear was not born of logic) gaps between structures. She knew what it had cost him, and that the look on his face showed the exact sort of determination recent events had proven she did not possess.

However harsh her judgment, Miss Temple found the clarity helpful, and she began with a clear-eyed grimness—in the irritating absence of a notebook and pencil (oh, how she wished for a pencil!)—to make a mental accounting of her probable fate. There was no telling if she would again be mauled and traduced, just as there was no telling if, despite the Contessa’s words, she would finally be slain, before or after torment. Again she shivered, confronting the full extent of her enemies’ deadly character, and took a deep breath at a likelihood more dire still—her transformation by the Process. What could be worse than to be changed into what she despised? Death and torment were at least actions taken against her. With the Process, that sense of her would be destroyed, and Miss Temple decided there in the compartment she could not allow it. Whether it meant throwing herself into a cauldron or inhaling their glass powder like Chang, or simply provoking some guard to snap her neck—she would never give in to their vicious control. She remembered the dead man the Doctor had described—what the broken glass from the book had done to his body…if she could just get to the book and smash it, or hold it in her arms and leap headlong to the floor—it must shatter and her life be ended with it. And perhaps the Contessa was right, that death from the indigo glass carried with it a trace of intoxicating dreams.

She began to feel hungry—despite her love for tea, it was not an overly substantial meal—and after an idle five minutes where she was unable to think about anything else, she opened her compartment door and again looked into the passage. The soldier stood where he had before, but instead of Francis Xonck, it was the scarred stout man that stood with him.

“Excuse me,” called Miss Temple. “What is your name?”

The soldier frowned, as if her speaking to him was an unseemly breach of etiquette. The scarred man—who it seemed had recovered his sensibilities somewhat, being a bit less glassy about the eyes and more fluid in his limbs—answered her with a voice that was only a little oily.

“He is Major Blach and I am Herr Flaüss, Envoy to the Macklenburg diplomatic mission accompanying the Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck.”

“He is Major Blach?” If the Major was too proud to speak to her, Miss Temple was happy enough to speak about him as if he were a standing lamp. She knew that this was the nemesis of both the Doctor and Chang. “I had no idea,” she said, “for of course I have heard a great deal about him—about you both.” She really had heard nothing much at all about the Envoy, save that the Doctor did not like him, and even this not in words so much as a dismissive half-distracted shrug—still she expected everyone liked to be talked of, Process or no. The Major, of course, she knew was deadly.

“May we be of service?” asked the Envoy.

“I am hungry,” replied Miss Temple. “I should like something to eat—if such a thing exists on the train. I know it is at least another hour until we reach the Orange Locks.”

“In truth, I have no idea,” said the Envoy, “but I will ask directly.” He nodded to her and padded down the passageway. Miss Temple watched him go and then caught the firm gaze of the Major upon her.

“Get back inside,” he snapped.

When the train stopped at St. Triste, the Major entered with a small wrapped parcel of white waxed paper along with his canteen. He gave them both to her without a word. She did not move to open it, preferring to do it alone—there was precious little entertainment else—and so the two of them waited in silence for the train to move. When it did he reached again for the canteen. She did not release it.

“May I not have a drink of water with my meal?”

The Major glared at her. Clearly there was no reason to deny her save meanness, and even that would betray a level of interest that he did not care to admit. He released the canteen and left the compartment.

The contents of the waxed paper parcel were hardly interesting—a thin wedge of white cheese, a slice of rye bread, and two small pickled beets that stained the bread and cheese purple. Nevertheless she ate them as slowly and methodically as she could—alternating carefully small bites of each in succession and chewing each mouthful at least twenty times before swallowing. So passed perhaps fifteen minutes. She drank off the rest of the canteen and re-corked it. She balled up the paper and with the canteen in her hand poked her head back into the passageway. The Major and the Envoy were where they had been before.

“I have finished,” she called, “if you would prefer to collect the canteen.”

“How kind of you,” said Envoy Flaüss, and he nudged the Major, who marched toward her and snatched the canteen from her hand. Miss Temple held up the ball of paper.

“Would you take this as well? I’m sure you do not want me passing notes to the conductor!”

Without a word the Major did. Miss Temple batted her eyelashes at him and then at the watching Envoy down the passageway as the Major turned and walked away. She returned to her seat with a chuckle. She had no idea what had been gained except distraction, but she felt in her mild mischief a certain encouraging return to form.

At St. Porte, Major Blach did not enter her compartment. Miss Temple looked up to the compartment door as the train slowed and no one had appeared. Had she annoyed him so much as to give her a chance to open the window? She stood, still looking at the empty doorway, and then with a fumbling rush began her assault on the window latches. She had not even managed to get one of them open before she heard the clicking of the compartment door behind her. She wheeled, ready to meet the Major’s disapproval with a winning smile.

Instead, in the open door stood Roger Bascombe.

“Ah,” she said. “Mr. Bascombe.”

He nodded to her rather formally. “Miss Temple.”

“Will you sit?”

It seemed to her that Roger hesitated, perhaps because she had been found so evidently in the midst of opening the window, but equally perhaps because so much between them lay unresolved. She returned to her seat, tucking her dirty feet as far as possible beneath her hanging dress, and waited for him to stir from the still-open door. When he did not, she spoke to him with a politeness only barely edged with impatience.

“What can a man fear from taking a seat? Nothing—except the display of his own ill-breeding if he remains standing like a tradesman…or a marionette Macklenburg soldier.”

Chastened and, she could tell from the purse of his lips, pricked to annoyance, Roger took a seat on the opposite side of the compartment. He took a preparatory breath.

“Miss Temple—Celeste—”

“I see your scars have healed,” she said encouragingly. “Mrs. Marchmoor’s have not, and I confess to finding them quite unpleasant. As for poor Mr. Flaüss—or I suppose it should be Herr Flaüss—for his appearance he might as well be a tattooed aboriginal from the polar ice!”

With satisfaction, she saw that Roger looked as if a lemon wedge had become lodged beneath his tongue.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

“I don’t believe I am, but I will let you speak, if that is what you—”

Roger barked at her sharply. “It is not a surprise to see you so relentlessly fixed on the trivial—it has always been your way—but even you should apprehend the gravity of your situation!”

Miss Temple had never seen him so dismissive and forceful, and her voice dropped to a sudden icy whisper.

“I apprehend it very fully…I assure you…Mr. Bascombe.”

He did not reply—he was, she realized with a sizzling annoyance, allowing what he took to be his acknowledged rebuke to fully sink in. Determined not to first break the silence, Miss Temple found herself studying the changes in his face and manner—quite in spite of herself, for she still hoped to meet his every attention with scorn. She understood that Roger Bascombe offered the truest window into the effects of the Process she was likely to find. She had met Mrs. Marchmoor and the Prince—her pragmatic manner and his dispassionate distance—but she had known neither of them intimately beforehand. What she saw on the face of Roger Bascombe pained her, more than anything at the knowledge that such a transformation spoke—and she was sure, in her unhappy heart, that it did—to his honest desire. Roger had always been one for what was ordered and proper, paying scrupulous attention to social niceties while maintaining a fixed notion of who bore what title and which estates—but she had known, and it had been part of her fondness for him, that such painstaking alertness arose from his own lack of a title and his occupation of yet a middling position in government—which is to say from his naturally cautious character. Now, she saw that this was changed, that Roger’s ability to juggle in his mind the different interests and ranks of many people was no longer in service to his own defense but, on the contrary, to his own explicit, manipulative advantage. She had no doubt that he watched the other members of the Cabal like an unfailingly deferential hawk, waiting for the slightest misstep (as she was suddenly sure Francis Xonck’s bandaged arm had been a secret delight to him). Before when Roger had grimaced at her outbursts or expressions of opinion, it had been at her lack of tact or care for the delicate social fabric of a conversation he had been at effort to maintain—and his reaction had filled her with a mischievous pleasure. Now, despite her attempts to bait or provoke him, all she saw was a pinched, unwillingly burdened tolerance, rooted in the disappointment of wasting time with one who could offer him no advantage whatsoever. The difference made Miss Temple sad in a way she had not foreseen.

“I have presumed to briefly join you,” he began, “at the suggestion of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza—”

“I am sure the Contessa gives you all manner of suggestions,” interrupted Miss Temple, “and have no doubt that you follow them eagerly!”

Did she even believe this? The accusation had been too readily at hand not to fling…not that it seemed to find any purchase on its target.

“Since,” he continued after a brief pause, “it is intended that you undergo the Process upon our arrival at Harschmort House, it will arise that, although we have been in the last days sundered, after your ordeal we shall be reconciled to the same side—as allies.”

This was not what she had expected. He watched her, defensively expectant, as if her silence was the prelude to another childish eruption of spite.

“Celeste,” he said, “I do urge you to be rational. I am speaking of facts. If it is necessary—if it will clarify your situation—I will again assure you that I am well beyond all feelings of attachment…or equally of resentment.”

Miss Temple could not credit what she had heard. Resentment? When it was she who had been so blithely overthrown, she who had borne for how many evenings and afternoons in their courtship the near mummifying company of the condescending, starch-minded, middling-fortuned Bascombe family!

“I beg your pardon?” she managed.

He cleared his throat. “What I mean to say—what I have come to say—is that our new alliance—for your loyalties will be changed, and if I know the Contessa, she will insist that the two of us continue to work in concert—”

Miss Temple narrowed her eyes at the idea of what that might mean.

“—and it would be best if, as a rational being, you could join me in setting aside your vain affection and pointless bitterness. I assure you—there will be less pain.”

“And I assure you, Roger, I have done just that. Unfortunately, recent days having been so very busy, I’ve yet had a moment to set aside my virulent scorn.”

“Celeste, I speak for your good, not mine—truly, it is a generosity—”

“A generosity?”

“I do not expect you to see it,” he muttered.

“Of course not! I haven’t had my mind re-made by a machine!”

Roger stared at her in silence and then slowly stood, straightening his coat and, by habit, smoothing back his hair with two fingers, and even then in her heart she found him to be quite lovely. Yet his gaze, quite fixed upon her, conveyed a quality she had never seen in him before—undisguised contempt. He was not angry—indeed, what hurt her most was the exact lack of emotion behind his eyes. It truly made no sense to her—in Miss Temple’s body, in her memory, all such moments were rooted in some sort of feeling, and Roger Bascombe stood revealed to her as no kind of man she had ever met.

“You will see,” he said, his voice cool and low. “The Process will remake you to the ground, and you will see—for the very first time in your life, I am sure—the true nature of your shuttered mind. The Contessa suggests you possess reserves of character I have not seen—to which I can only agree that I have not seen them. You were always a pretty enough girl—but there are many such. I look forward to finding—once you’ve been burned to your bones and then re-made by the very ‘machine’ you cannot comprehend—if any actually remarkable parts exist.”

He left the compartment. Miss Temple did not move, her mind ringing with his biting words and a thousand unspoken retorts, her face hot and both of her hands balled tight into fists. She looked out the window and saw her reflection on the glass, thrown up between her and the darkened landscape of salty grassland racing past outside the train. It occurred to her that this dim, transparent, second-hand image was the perfect illustration for her own condition—in the power of others, with her own wishes only peripherally related to her fate, insubstantial and half-present. She let out a trembling sigh. How—after everything—could Roger Bascombe still exert any sway over her feelings? How could he make her feel so desperately unhappy? Her agitation was not coherent—there was no point from which she could begin to untangle answers—and her heart beat faster and faster until she was forced to sit with a hand over each eye, breathing deeply. Miss Temple looked up. The train was slowing. She pressed her face to the window, blocking the light from the passageway with her hand, and saw through the reflection the station, platform, and white painted sign for Orange Locks. She turned to find Major Blach opening the door for her, his hand inviting her to exit.

Beyond the platform were two waiting coaches, each drawn by a team of four horses. To the first, his fiancée on his arm, went the Prince, followed as before by his Envoy and the older man with the bandaged arm. The Major escorted Miss Temple to the second coach, opened the door, and assisted her climb into it. He nodded crisply to her and stepped away—undoubtedly to rejoin the Prince—to be replaced by the Comte d’Orkancz, who sat across from her, and then the Contessa, who stepped in to sit next to her opposite the Comte, then Francis Xonck, who sat next to the Comte with a smile, and finally, with no expression in particular on his face, Roger Bascombe, hesitating only an instant when he saw that, due to the size of the Comte and the room accorded Xonck’s thickly wrapped arm, the only seat was on the other side of Miss Temple. He climbed into place without comment. Miss Temple was firmly lodged between the Contessa and Roger—their legs pressing closely against hers with a mocking familiarity. The driver shut the door and climbed to his perch. His whip snapped and they clattered on their way to Harschmort.

The ride began in silence, and after a time Miss Temple, who initially assumed this was because of her presence—an interloper spoiling their usual plots and scheming, began to wonder if this was wholly the case. They were wary enough not to say anything revealing, but she began to sense levels of competition and distrust…particularly with the addition of Francis Xonck to the party.

“When can we expect the Duke?” he asked.

“Before midnight, I am sure,” replied the Comte.

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Crabbé has spoken to him,” said the Contessa. “There is no reason for anyone else to do so. It would only confuse things.”

“I know everyone got to the train—the various parties,” added Roger. “The Colonel was collecting the Duke personally, and two of our men—”

“Ours?” asked the Comte.

“From the Ministry,” clarified Roger.

“Ah.”

“They rode ahead to meet him.”

“How thoughtful,” said the Contessa.

“What of your cousin Pamela?” asked Xonck. “And her disenfranchised brat?”

Roger did not reply. Francis Xonck chuckled wickedly.

“And the little Princess?” asked Xonck. “La Nouvelle Marie?”

“She will perform admirably,” said the Contessa.

“Not that she has any idea of her part,” Xonck scoffed. “What of the Prince?”

“Equally in hand,” rasped the Comte. “What of his transport?”

“I am assured it sails to position tonight,” answered Xonck. Miss Temple wondered why he of all people would be the one with information about ships. “The canal has been closed this last week, and has been prepared.”

“And what of the mountains—the Doctor’s scientific marvel?”

“Lorenz seems confident there is no problem,” observed the Contessa. “Apparently it packs away most tidily.”

“What of the…ah…Lord?” asked Roger.

No one answered at once, exchanging subtle glances.

“Mr. Crabbé was curious—” began Roger.

“The Lord is agreeable to everything,” said the Contessa.

“What of the adherents?” asked the Contessa. “Blenheim sent word that they have arrived throughout the day discreetly,” answered Roger, “along with a squadron of Dragoons.”

“We do not need more soldiers—they are a mistake,” said the Comte.

“I agree,” said Xonck. “Yet Crabbé insists—and where government is concerned, we have agreed to follow him.”

The Contessa spoke to Roger across Miss Temple. “Has he any new information about…our departed brother-in-law of Dragoons?”

“He has not—that I know of. Of course we have not recently spoken—”

“Blach insists that it’s settled,” said Xonck.

“The Colonel was poisoned,” snapped the Contessa. “It is not the method of the man the Major wishes to blame—aside from the fact that man assured his employer that he did not do it, when having done so would have meant cash in hand. Moreover, how would he have known when to find his victim in that vulnerable period after undergoing the Process? He would not. That information was known to a select—a very select—few.” She nodded to Xonck’s bandaged arm and scoffed. “Is that the work of an elegant schemer?”

Xonck did not respond.

After a pause, Roger Bascombe cleared his throat and wondered aloud mildly, “Perhaps the Major is overdue for the Process himself.”

“Do you trust Lorenz to have everything aboard?” asked Xonck, to the Comte. “The deadline was severe—the large quantities—”

“Of course,” the Comte replied gruffly.

“As you know,” continued Xonck, “the invitations have been sent.”

“With the wording we agreed upon?” asked the Contessa.

“Of course. Menacing enough to command attendance…but if we do not have the leverage from our harvest in the country—”

“I have no doubts.” The Contessa chuckled. “If Elspeth Poole is with him, Doctor Lorenz will strive mightily.”

“In exchange for her joining him in strenuous effort!” Xonck cackled. “I am sure the transaction appeals to his mathematical mind—sines and tangents and bisected spheres, don’t you know.”

“And what about our little magpie?” asked Xonck, leaning forward and cocking his head to look into Miss Temple’s face. “Is she worthy of the Process? Is she worthy of a book? Something else entirely? Or perhaps she cannot be swayed?”

“Anyone can be swayed,” said the Comte. Xonck paid no attention, reaching forward to flick one of Miss Temple’s curls.

“Perhaps…something else will happen…” He turned to the Comte. “I’ve read the back of each painting, you know. I know what you’re aiming at—what you were trying with your Asiatic whore.” The Comte said nothing and Xonck laughed, taking the silence as an acknowledgment of his guess. “That is the trick of banding with clever folk, Monsieur le Comte—so many people are not clever, those who are sometimes grow into the habit of assuming no one else will ever divine their minds.”

“That is enough,” said the Contessa. “Celeste has done damage to me, and so—by all our agreements—she is indisputably mine.” She reached up and touched the tip of Miss Temple’s bullet-scar with a finger. “I assure you…no one will be disappointed.”

The coach clattered onto the cobblestone plaza in front of Harschmort House and Miss Temple heard the calls of the driver to his team, pulling them to a halt. The door was opened and she was handed down to a pair of black-liveried footmen, the cobbles cold and hard beneath her feet. Before Miss Temple had scarcely registered where she was—from the second coach she saw the Prince and his party descending, Miss Vandaariff’s expression a shifting series of furtive smiles and frowns—the Comte’s iron grasp directed her toward a knot of figures near the great front entrance. Without any ceremony—and without even a glance to see if the others were following—she was conveyed roughly along, doing her best to avoid a stubbed toe on the uneven stones, only coming to a stop when the Comte acknowledged the greetings of a man and woman stepping out from the larger group (a mixture of servants, black-uniformed soldiers of Macklenburg, and red-coated Dragoons). The man was tall and broad, with grizzled and distressingly thick side whiskers and a balding pate that caught the torchlight and made his entire face seem like a primitive mask. He bowed formally to the Comte. The woman wore a simple dark dress that was nevertheless quite flattering, and her affable face bore the recognizable scars around her eyes. Her hair was brown and plainly curled and gathered behind her head with black ribbon. She nodded at Miss Temple and then smiled up at the Comte.

“Welcome back to Harschmort, Monsieur,” she said. “Lord Vandaariff is in his study.”

The Comte nodded and turned to the man. “Blenheim?”

“Everything as ordered, Monsieur.”

“Attend to the Prince. Mrs. Stearne, please escort Miss Vandaariff to her rooms. Miss Temple here will join you. The Contessa will collect both ladies when it is time.”

The man nodded sharply and the woman bobbed into a curtsey. The Comte drew Miss Temple forward and shoved her in the direction of the door. She looked behind her to see the woman—Mrs. Stearne—dipping again before the Contessa and Miss Vandaariff, rising to kiss each of the younger woman’s cheeks and then take her hand. The Comte released Miss Temple from his grip—his attention turned to the words passing between Xonck, Blach, and Blenheim—as Mrs. Stearne took up her hand, Lydia Vandaariff stepping into place on the woman’s other side. The three of them walked—with four liveried footmen falling in place behind them—into the house.

Miss Temple glanced once at Mrs. Stearne, sure that she had finally located the fourth woman from her first coach ride to Harschmort. This was the pirate, who had undergone the Process in the medical theatre, screaming before the audience dressed in their finery. Mrs. Stearne caught her look and smiled, squeezing Miss Temple’s hand.

Lydia Vandaariff’s rooms overlooked a massive formal garden in the rear of the house, what Miss Temple assumed was once the prison’s parade ground. The entire idea of living in such a place struck her as morbid, if not ridiculously affected, all the more when the rooms one lived in were so covered in lace as to seem one great over-flounced pillow. Lydia immediately retreated to an inner closet with two of her maids to change clothes, muttering at them crossly and tossing her head. Miss Temple was installed on a wide lace-fringed settee. This had served to expose her filthy feet, prompting Mrs. Stearne to call for another maid with a basin and a cloth. The girl knelt and washed Miss Temple’s feet carefully one at a time, drying them on a soft towel. Throughout, Miss Temple remained silent, her thoughts still a-swim at her situation, her heart alternating between anger and despondence. She had committed their path from the front door to Lydia’s apartments to memory as best she could, but with only the barest hope of escape for that way was lined with servants and soldiers, as if the entire mansion had become an armed camp. Miss Temple could not but notice that nowhere around her was a single thing—a nail file, a crystal dish for sweets, a letter opener, a candlestick—she might have snatched up for a weapon.

When the girl had finished, collecting her things and nodding first to Miss Temple and then Mrs. Stearne before backing from the room, the two remained for a moment in silence—or near silence, the hectoring comments of Miss Vandaariff to her maids reaching them despite the distance and closed doors.

“You were in the coach,” Miss Temple said at last. “The pirate.”

“I was.”

“I did not know your name. I have since met Mrs. Marchmoor, and heard others speak of Miss Poole—”

“You must call me Caroline,” said Mrs. Stearne. “Stearne is my husband’s name—my husband is dead and not missed. Of course, I did not know your name either—I knew no one’s name, though I think we each assumed the others were old hands. Perhaps Mrs. Marchmoor was an old hand, but I am sure she was as frightened—and thrilled—as the rest of us.”

“I doubt she would admit it,” replied Miss Temple.

“So do I.” Caroline smiled. “I still do not know how you came to be in our coach—it shows a boldness, to be sure. And what you must have done since…I can only guess how hard it was.”

Miss Temple shrugged.

“Of course.” Caroline nodded. “What choice did you have? Yet, to most people, your path would have been plagued with choice—while to you it seems inexorable—quite like my own. However much our characters may be fixed, they are only revealed to us one test at a time. And so we are here together after all, with perhaps more in common than any of us would care to admit—though only a fool does not admit the truth once it is plain to her.”

The woman’s dress was simpler than Mrs. Marchmoor’s, less ostentatious—less like an actor’s idea of how the wealthy dressed, she realized—and she was pained that her heart’s impulse was to think of her captor kindly (this being rare enough in Miss Temple’s life to be a surprise in itself, captor or no). No doubt the woman had been placed for that very purpose, for a natural sympathy that had somehow survived the Process or could at least be readily counterfeited, to worm Miss Temple’s determination that much further from its sticking place.

“I watched you,” she said accusingly, “in the theatre…you were…shrieking—”

“I’m sure I was,” said Caroline. “And yet, perhaps it is most like having a troubling tooth pulled. The act itself is so distressing as to seem in no way justified…and yet, after it is done, the peace of mind…the ease of being—and I speak of a former life of no great difficulty, you understand, merely the fraying worries that are part of every day—I cannot now imagine being without this…well, it is a kind of bliss.”

“Bliss?”

“Perhaps that sounds foolish to you.”

“Not at all—I have seen Mrs. Marchmoor—her sort of—of—spectacle—and I have seen the book—one of your glass books—I have been inside, the sensation, the debauchery—perhaps ‘bliss’ is an applicable word,” said Miss Temple, “though I assure you it is not my choice.”

“You mustn’t judge Mrs. Marchmoor harshly. She does what she must do for her larger purpose. As we all are guided. Even you, Miss Temple. If you have peered into these extraordinary books then you must know.” She gestured toward Miss Vandaariff’s dressing closet. “So many are so tender, hungry, so deeply in need. How much of what you read—or indeed, what you remember—was most singularly rooted in painful loneliness? If a person could rid themselves of such a source of anguish…can you truly find fault?”

“Anguish and loss are part of life,” Miss Temple retorted.

“They are,” Caroline agreed. “And yet…if they need not be?”

Miss Temple tossed her head and bit her lip. “You present kindness…where others…well, they are a nest of vipers. My companions have been killed. I am compelled here by force…I have been and will be violated—as surely as if your finely dressed mob were a gang of Cossacks!”

“I hope that is not the case, truly,” said Caroline. “But if the Process has made anything clear to me, it is that what happens here is only the expression of what you yourself have decided—indeed, what you have asked for.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I do not say it to anger you.” She held up a hand to forestall Miss Temple’s announcement that she was already angry. “Do you think I cannot see the bruises on your pretty neck? Do you imagine I enjoy the sight? I am not a woman who dreams of power or fame, though I know there have been deaths—I do not presume to understand their cause—as a result of those dreams. I know there has been murder, around me and within this house. I know that I do not know what those above me plan. And yet I also know that these dreams—theirs and mine—bring with them…the opposite side of their coin, if you will—a bliss of purpose, of simplicity, and indeed…Celeste…of surrender.”

Miss Temple sniffed sharply and swallowed, determined not to give way. She was not used to hearing her name so freely used and found it unnerving. The woman presented the Cabal’s goals in terms of reason and care—indeed, she seemed a higher level of antagonist altogether for not seeming one at all. The room was unbearable—the lace and the perfumes—so many and so thick—were smothering.

“I would prefer it if you referred to me as Miss Temple,” she said.

“Of course,” said Caroline, with what seemed a gentle, sad sort of smile.

As if by some rotation of the gears of a clock, they no longer spoke, the room settling into silence and subsequently into contemplation. Yet Miss Temple could only think of the oppressive vacuity of the furnishings around her—though she had no doubt they were the heartfelt expression of Miss Vandaariff—and the low ceiling that, despite the luxurious cherry wood, still bespoke confinement. She looked at the walls and decided at least four prison cells had been opened up together for this room alone. Was it inevitable that this luxuriously impersonal lodging was her final refuge as a whole-minded person? As if her burdens had become at once too much to bear, Miss Temple’s tears broke suddenly forward, quite dissolving her face, her small shoulders shaking with emotion, blinking, her pink cheeks heedlessly streaked, her lips quivering. So often in her life, tears were the consequence of some affront or denial, an expression of frustration and a sense of unfairness—when those with power (her father, her governess) might have acceded to her wishes but out of cruelty did not. Now Miss Temple felt that she wept for a world without any such authority at all…and the kind face of Caroline—however much she knew it to represent the interests of her captors—only reinforced how trivial and unanswered her complaints must remain, how insignificant her losses, and how fully removed from love, or if not love, primacy in another’s thoughts, she had become.

She wiped her eyes and cursed her weakness. What had happened she had not already known in her heart to expect? What revelations had challenged her pragmatic, grim determination? Had she not hardened herself to this exact situation—and was not that hardness, that firmness of mind, her only source of hope? Still the tears would not cease, and she covered her face in her hands.

No one touched her, or spoke. She remained bent over—who knew how long?—until her sobbing eased, eyes squeezed shut. She was so frightened, in a way even more than in her deathly struggle with Spragg, for that had been sudden and violent and close and this…they had given her time—so much time—to steep in her dread, to roil in the prospect that her soul—or something, some fundamental element that made Miss Temple who she was—was about to be savagely, relentlessly changed. She had seen Caroline on the stage, limbs pulling against the leather restraints, heard her animal groans of uncomprehending agony. She recalled her own earlier resolve to jump from a window, or provoke some sudden mortal punishment, but when she looked up and saw Caroline waiting for her with a tender patience, she understood that no such rash gesture would be allowed. Standing next to Caroline were Miss Vandaariff and her maids. The young woman was dressed in two white silk robes, the outer—without sleeves—bordered at the collar and the hem with a line of embroidered green circles. Her feet were bare and she wore a small eye-mask of densely laid white feathers. Her hair had been painstakingly worked into rows of sausage curls to either side of her head and gathered behind—rather like Miss Temple’s own. Miss Vandaariff smiled conspiratorially and then put a hand over her mouth to mask an outright giggle.

Caroline turned to the maids. “Miss Temple can change here.”

The two maids stepped forward and for the first time Miss Temple saw another set of robes draped over their arms.

Caroline walked between them, black feathered mask across her eyes, holding hands with each, the three followed by another trio of black-coated Macklenburg troopers with echoing black boots. The marble floor of the corridor—the same great corridor of mirrors—was cold against Miss Temple’s still bare feet. She’d been stripped to her own silk pants and bodice and, as before, given first the short transparent robe, then the longer robe without sleeves, and finally the white feathered mask—all the time aware of the eyes of Miss Vandaariff and Caroline frankly studying her.

“Green silk,” said Lydia approvingly, as Miss Temple’s undergarments were revealed.

Caroline’s eyes met Miss Temple’s with a smile. “I’m sure they must be specially made.”

Miss Temple turned her head, feeling her desires—foolish and naïve—on display every bit as much as her body.

The maids had finished tying the string and then stepped away with a deferent bob. Caroline had dismissed them with a request to inform the Contessa that they awaited her word, and smiled at her two women in white.

“You are both so lovely,” said Caroline.

“We are indeed.” Miss Vandaariff smiled, and then shyly glanced at Miss Temple. “I believe our bosom is the same size, but because Celeste is shorter, hers looks larger. For a moment I was jealous—I wanted to pinch them!” She laughed and flexed her fingers wickedly at Miss Temple. “But then again, you know, I am quite happy to be as tall and slender as I am.”

“I suppose you prefer Mrs. Marchmoor’s bosom above all,” said Miss Temple, her voice sounding just a bit raw, attempting to rally her caustic wit. Miss Vandaariff shook her head girlishly.

“No, I don’t like her one jot,” she said. “She is too coarse. I prefer people around me to be smaller and fine and elegant. Like Caroline—who pours tea as sweetly as anyone I have ever met, and whose neck is pretty as a swan’s.”

Before Caroline could speak—a response that surely would have been an answering praise of Miss Vandaariff’s features—they heard a discreet tap at the door. A maid opened it to reveal three soldiers. It was time to depart. Miss Temple tried to will herself to run at the window and hurl herself through. But she could not move—and then Caroline was taking her hand.

They were not half-way down the mirrored corridor when behind them erupted a clatter of bootsteps. Miss Temple saw the whiskered man, Blenheim, whom she took to be Lord Vandaariff’s chamberlain, racing toward them with a group of red-coated Dragoons in his wake. He carried a carbine, and all of the Dragoons held their saber-sheaths so they would not bounce as they ran.

In a moment his group had passed them by, running ahead to one of the doors on the far right side…a room—she had tried to maintain Harschmort’s geography in her head as they walked—that bordered the exterior of the house. Caroline pulled on her hand, walking more quickly. Miss Temple could see that they were nearing the very door she had gone through with the Contessa, where she had previously found her robes, the room that led to the medical theatre…it seemed a memory from another lifetime. They kept walking. They had reached it—should she try to run?—Caroline did not release her hand but nodded to one of the soldiers to get the door. Just then the door ahead of them—where Blenheim’s party had gone—burst open, spewing a cloud of black smoke.

A Dragoon with a soot-smeared face shouted to them, “Water! Water!”

One of the Macklenburg men turned at once and ran back down the hall. The Dragoon disappeared back through the open door, and Miss Temple wondered if she dared dash toward it, but again before she could move, her hand was squeezed by Caroline and she was pulled along. One of the remaining Macklenburg troopers opened the door to the inner room and the other anxiously shepherded them inside away from the smoke. As the door shut behind them Miss Temple was sure she heard an escalation of shouts and the echoing clamor of more bootsteps in the marble hall.

It was once more silent. Caroline nodded to the first soldier and he crossed to the far door, the one cunningly set into the wall, and vanished through it. The remaining man installed himself at the hallway entrance, hands behind his back, and his back square against the door. Caroline looked around, to make certain all was well, and released her grip on their hands.

“There is no need to worry,” she said. “We will merely wait until the disturbance is settled.”

But Miss Temple could see that Caroline was worried.

“What do you think has happened?” she asked.

“Nothing that Mr. Blenheim has not dealt with a thousand times before,” Caroline replied.

“Is there really a fire?”

“Blenheim is horrid,” said Lydia Vandaariff, to no one in particular. “When I have my way he will be sacked.”

Miss Temple’s thoughts began to race. On the far side of the theatre was another waiting room—perhaps that was where the soldier had been forced to go…she remembered that her own first visit had revealed the theatre to be empty. What if she were to run to the theatre now? If it was empty again might not she climb into the gallery and then to the spiral staircase, and from there—she knew!—she could retrace the path of Spragg and Farquhar across the grounds and through the servants’ passage back to the coaches. And it was only running on floors and carpets and the grassy garden—she could do it with bare feet! All she needed was a momentary distraction….

Miss Temple manufactured a gasp of shock and whispered urgently to Miss Vandaariff. “Lydia! Goodness—do you not see you are most lewdly exposed!”

Immediately Lydia looked down at her robes and plucked at them without finding any flaw, her voice rising in a disquieting whimper. Caroline’s attention of course went the same way, as did the Macklenburg trooper’s.

Miss Temple darted for the inner door, reaching it and turning the handle before anyone even noticed what she was doing. She had the door open and was already charging through before Caroline called out in surprise…and then Miss Temple cried out herself, for she ran headlong into the Comte d’Orkancz. He stood in heavy shadow, fully blocking the doorway with his massive frame, somehow even larger for the thick leather apron over his white shirt, the enormous leather gauntlets sheathing his arms up to each elbow, and the fearsome brass-bound helmet cradled under one arm, crossed with leather straps, great glass lenses like an insect’s eyes and strange metal boxes welded over the mouth and ears. She flung herself away from him and back into the room.

The Comte glanced once, disapprovingly, at Caroline, and then down to Miss Temple.

“I have come myself to collect you,” he said. “It is long past time you are redeemed.”