Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

NINE Provocateur

As a surgeon, Doctor Svenson knew that the body did not remember pain, only that an experience had been painful. Extreme fear however was seared into the memory like nothing else in life, and as he pulled himself, hand over agonizing hand, toward the metal gondola, the dark countryside spinning dizzily below him, the freezing winds numbing his face and fingers, the Doctor’s grasp on his own sanity was tenuous at best. He tried to think of anything but the sickening drop below his kicking boots, but he could not. The effort denied him the breath to scream or even cry out, but with each wrenching movement he whimpered with open terror. All his life he had shrunk away from heights of any kind—even climbing ladders aboard ship he willed his eyes to look straight ahead and his limbs to move, lest his mind or stomach give way to even that meager height. Despite himself he scoffed—a staccato bark of saliva—at the very notion of ladders. His only consolation, feeble in the extreme, was that the noise of the wind and the darkness of the sky had so far hidden him from anyone looking out of a window. Not that he knew for certain he had not been seen. The Doctor’s own eyes were tightly shut.

He had climbed perhaps half-way up the rope and his arms felt like burning lead. Already it seemed all he could do to hold on. He opened his eyes for the briefest glimpse, shutting them at once with a yelp at the vertigo caused by the swinging gondola. Where before he’d seen a face at the circular window there was only black glass. Had it truly been Elöise? He had been sure on the ground, but now—now he barely knew his own name. He forced himself upwards—each moment of letting one hand go to stab above him for the rope was a spike of fear in his heart, and yet he made himself do it again and again, feeling his way, his face locked in a shocking rictus of effort.

Another two feet. His mind assailed him—why not stop? Why not let go? Wasn’t this the underlying dread behind his fear of heights to begin with—the actual impulse to jump? Why else did he shrink away from balconies and windows, but for the sudden urge to hurl himself into the air? Now it would be so simple. The grassy pastures below would be as good a grave as any sea—and how many times had he contemplated that, since Corinna’s death? How many times had he grown cold looking over the iron rail of a Baltic ship, worrying—like a depressive terrier with a well-gnawed stick—the urge to throw himself over the side?

Another two feet, gritting his teeth and kicking his legs, driving himself by pure will and anger. That was a reason to live—his hatred for these people, their condescension, their assumption of privilege, their unconscionable appetite. He thought of them in the gondola, away from the freezing cold, no doubt wrapped in furs, soothed by the whispering wind and the whistling buzz of the rotors. Another foot, his arms slack as rope. He opened his hand and snatched for a new grip…kicked his boots…again…again. He forced his mind to think of anything but the drop—the dirigible—he’d never seen anything like it! Obviously full of some gas—hydrogen, he assumed—but was that all? And how was it powered? He didn’t know how it could bear the weight of the gondola much less a steam engine…could there be some other source? Something with Lorenz and the indigo clay? In the abstract Svenson might have found these questions fascinating, but now he threw himself into them with the mindless fervor of a man reciting multiplication tables to stave off an impending crise.

He opened his eyes again and looked up. He was closer than he thought, hanging some ten yards below the long iron cabin. The upper end of the rope was secured to the steel frame of the gasbag itself, just behind the cabin. The rear of the cabin had no window that he could see…but did it have a door? He closed his eyes and climbed, three agonizing feet, and looked up again. Doctor Svenson was suddenly appalled…climbing with his eyes closed he hadn’t realized…and for a moment he simply clung where he was. Below and to each side of the cabin were the rear rotors—each perhaps eight feet across—and his path on the rope led right between them. Between the wind and his own exertions, the rope swung back and forth—the blades themselves were turning so fast he couldn’t tell how wide the gap really was. The higher he got, the more any exertion might send him too far in either direction—and straight into the blades.

There was nothing he could do except drop, and the longer he delayed out of fear, the less strength was in his arms. He pulled himself up, clamping shut his eyes, and gripped the cable more firmly between his knees to steady the swinging. As he inched higher he could hear the rotors’ menacing revolutions more clearly, a relentless chopping of air. He was just beneath them. He could smell the exhaust—the same sharp tang of ozone, sulphur, and scorched rubber that had nearly made him sick in the attic of Tarr Manor—the flying vehicle was another emanation of the Cabal’s insidious science. He could sense the rotors near to him, invisibly slicing past. He extended a hand up the rope, then another, and then hauled his entire body into range, braced for the savage impact that would shear off a limb. The blades roared around him but he remained somehow unscathed. Svenson inched higher, his entire body shaking with the effort. The gondola was right in front of him—some three feet out of reach. Any attempt to nudge the rope toward it—if he didn’t catch hold—would send him straight into the rotors on the backswing. Even worse, there was nothing on the rear of the gondola to grab on to even if he risked the attempt. He looked up. The cable was attached to the metal frame by an iron bolt…it was his only option. Another two yards. His head was above the rotors. He could almost touch the bolt. He inched up another foot, gasping, his body expending itself in a way he could not comprehend. Another six inches. He reached up in agony, felt the bolt, and then above it the riveted steel strut. A spasm of fear shot through him—he was only holding to the rope with one hand and his knees. He swallowed, and fixed his grip on the strut. He was going to have to let go and pull himself up. It should be possible to wrap his legs around the strut and creep over the rotors to the top of the gondola. But he would have to let go of the rope. Suddenly—it was perhaps inevitable—his nerves got the best of him and his rope hand slipped. At once Doctor Svenson thrust both arms toward the metal strut and caught hold, his legs flailing wildly. He looked down to see the rope disappear into the right side rotor, flayed to pieces. He pulled his knees to his chest with a whimpering cry—before the rotors hacked off his feet—and kicked them over the metal bar. He looked up at the canvas gasbag just above his head. Directly below him was death—by dismemberment if not by impact. He slowly slid along the strut, painfully shifting his grip on the freezing metal around the intervening cross-pieces. His hands felt numb—he was gripping as tightly with his forearms as his fingers.

It took him ten minutes to crawl ten feet. The gondola was directly beneath him. As gently as he could he let down his legs and felt the solid metal beneath his feet. His eyes were streaming—whether with tears or the wind, Doctor Svenson hadn’t a clue.

The gondola was a smooth metal box of blackened steel, suspended some three feet below the massive gasbag by metal struts bolted to its frame at each corner. The surface of the roof was slick from the cold and the moisture in the foggy coastal air, and Doctor Svenson was both too paralyzed with fear and too numbed by exertion to allow himself so near the edge to cling to one of these corner struts. Instead, he crouched in the center of the roof with his arms wrapped around the same metal brace he’d used to climb forward. His teeth chattered as he forced his staggered mind to examine his circumstances. The gondola was perhaps twelve feet across and forty feet in length. He could see a round hatch set into the rooftop, but going to it would require him to release his hold on the metal brace. He shut his eyes and focused on breathing, shivering despite his greatcoat and his recent exertion—or even because of it, the sweat over his body and in his clothing now viciously chilling his flesh in the bitter wind. He opened his eyes at a sudden lurch, holding on to the metal brace for his life. The dirigible was turning and Svenson felt his grip inexorably weakening as the force of the turn pulled him away. With an insane bark of laughter he saw himself—in a desperate attempt to manage his grip on a swiftly turning airship—in comparison to his lifelong anxiety at climbing ladders. He remembered just the day before—was it so recently?—emerging on his hands and knees onto the rooftop of the Macklenburg compound! If he’d only known! Svenson tightened his grip and cackled again—the rooftop! He was clinging to the very answer to the mystery of the Prince’s escape—they’d come for him with the dirigible! The rotors would be silent at a lower speed—they could have easily drifted into position and lowered men to liberate the Prince with no one being the wiser. Even the crimped cigarette butt made sense—discarded by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza as she watched from a gondola window. What still made no sense however, was why the Prince had been stolen without the other Cabal members—Xonck and Crabbé at the least—being aware of it. Like the death of Arthur Trapping, it lay between his enemies without explanation…if he could just unravel either mystery…he might understand it all.

The dirigible straightened out of the turn. The fog thickened around Svenson, and he moved forward on the strut, careful not to step too heavily—the last thing he wanted was for anyone below to know he was there. He shut his eyes once more and tried to ease his heaving breath to mere gasps and chattering teeth. He would not move until his arms fell off or until the dirigible found its destination, whichever happened first.

When he opened his eyes the dirigible was making another turn, less precipitous than before and—he hadn’t realized, but now saw through ragged gaps in the fog—at a lower altitude, some two hundred feet above what looked like a low fennish grassland, with scarcely a single tree in sight. Were they possibly crossing the sea? He saw lights through the gloom, first dim and winking, but as they went on emerging with a growing clarity that allowed him to sketch out the entirety of their destination—for indeed, as he studied it the dirigible continued to descend.

It was an enormous structure, but relatively low to the ground—Svenson’s guess was two or three stories—giving out an impression of massive strength. The place as a whole was shaped something like a disconnected jawbone, with the center space taken up by some sort of ornamental garden. As they soared closer he could hear a variation in the sound of the rotors—they were slowing down—as he saw more detail: the large open plaza in front, thronged with coaches and dotted with the ant-like (or as they neared, mouse-like) figures of drivers and grooms. Svenson looked to the other side and saw a pair of waving lanterns on the rooftop and behind the lanterns a group of men—no doubt waiting to wrangle the mooring ropes. They drifted closer…a hundred feet, seventy feet…Svenson was suddenly concerned about being seen, and against all his better wishes dropped down to hang on to the hatch handle, flattening his body over the roof of the gondola. The steel plate was freezing. He had one hand on the handle and the other spread out across the roof for balance, with each boot splayed toward a different corner. They sank lower. He could hear shouts from below, and then the pop of a window being opened and an answering shout from the gondola.

They were landing at Harschmort House.

Doctor Svenson shut his eyes again, now more out of dread at being discovered than at his still-precarious altitude, as all around him he heard the calls and whistles of the craft coming in to land. No one came up through the hatch—apparently the mooring cables were lowered from the front of the gondola. Perhaps once the rotors stopped the cables were re-attached to the bolt where he’d climbed. He had no idea—but it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. He forced his mind to think about his situation, and his immediate odds.

He was unarmed. He was physically spent—as well as his ankle twisted, head battered, and hands raw from the climb. There was on the rooftop a gang of assuredly burly men more than willing to take him in hand, if not fling him to the plaza below. Within the gondola lurked another handful of enemies—Crabbé, Aspiche, Lorenz, Miss Poole…and in their power, in who knew what state—or, if he was perfectly honest, with what loyalties—Elöise Dujong. Below him he heard another popping sound and then a loud metallic rattle that ended in a heavy ring of steel striking stone. He suppressed the urge to raise his head and peek. The gondola began to rock slightly as he heard voices—Crabbé calling out and then after him Miss Poole. Someone answered them from below and then the conversation grew to too many voices for him to follow—they were descending from the gondola via some lowered ladder or staircase.

“At long last,” this was Crabbé, calling to someone across the rooftop, “is everything ready?”

“A most delightful time,” Miss Poole was saying to someone else, “though not without adventure—”

“Damnable thing,” Crabbé continued. “I’ve no idea—Lorenz says he can, but that is news to me—yes, twice—the second straight through the heart—”

“Gently! Gently now!” This was Lorenz calling out. “And ice—we’re going to need a washtub full at once—yes, all of you—take hold! Quickly now, there is no time!”

Crabbé was listening as someone speaking too low for Svenson to hear briefed him on events elsewhere—could this be Bascombe?

“Yes…yes…I see…” He could picture the Deputy Minister nodding along as he muttered. “And Carfax? Baax-Saornes? Baroness Roote? Mrs. Kraft? Henry Xonck? Excellent—and what of our illustrious host?”

“The Colonel has injured his ankle, yes,” Miss Poole chuckled—was there ever a thing that woman did not find amusing?—“in battle against the dread Doctor Svenson. I am afraid the poor Doctor’s death was hard—my complexion is quite ashen at the prospect!”

Miss Poole—and joining her with a bellowing “haw haw haw” was Colonel Aspiche—erupted in laughter at her pun. In Svenson’s spent emotional state, it was something of an abstraction to realize that the object of their sport was his being burnt in an oven.

“This way—this way—yes! I do declare, Miss Poole, the ride does not seem to have suited her!”

“And yet she seemed so recently tractable, Colonel—perhaps the lady merely requires more of your kind attention.”

They were taking Elöise away—she was alive. What had they done to her? Worse, what did Miss Poole mean by “tractable”? He tormented himself with the image of Elöise on the wooden staircase, the confusion in her eyes…she had come to Tarr Manor for a reason, no matter that it was gone from her memory. Who was Svenson to say who she truly was? Then he remembered the warm press of her lips against his and had no idea what to think at all. Still Svenson’s fear at being discovered would not let him look up. The seconds crawled by and he muttered to himself, fervently wishing the pack of them off the rooftop as quickly as possible.

Finally the voices were gone. But what of the men mooring the craft, or guarding it? Doctor Svenson heard a muffled clicking from the hatch beneath him, then felt the handle turning in his hand. He scuttled back as the handle caught the bolt. The hatch rose, and directly after it appeared the grease-smeared face of a man in coveralls. He saw Svenson and opened his mouth in surprise. Svenson drove the heel of his boot into the man’s face with all his strength, grimacing at the crunch of impact. The fellow abruptly dropped back through the open hatch, Svenson scrabbling after him. He thrust both legs through the round hole, ignoring the line of iron rungs bolted to the wall, and launched himself down onto the groaning, stunned body sitting at its feet. Svenson landed squarely on the man’s shoulders, flattening him hard against the floor with a meaty thud. He stumbled from his unmoving victim and grabbed on to the rungs for balance. Sticking out from a pocket of the man’s coveralls was an enormous, greasy wrench. Weighing it in his hand, Svenson recalled both the wrench with which he had doomed Mr. Coates at Tarr Village, and the candlestick with which he had murdered the unfortunate Starck. Had such mayhem become so necessary, so natural a tactic? Was it only the night before when the Comte had brought to mind Svenson’s guilt upon poisoning the fellow—the villain, did it matter—in Bremen? Where were those tender scruples now?

He stepped carefully through the gondola, which was divided up into smaller cabins like the cramped yet well-appointed interior of a yacht. Against the wall were leather upholstered benches and small inset tables and what seemed to be a drinks cabinet—the lashed-down bottles visible through the secured glass front. Svenson’s numbed fingers fumbled with the leather straps across the cabinet door. His hands were still half-frozen and raw and he could not get them to perform such fine work as unbuckling a simple clasp. He whimpered with impatience and snatched up the wrench. He swung it once against the glass panel and then jammed it through the shattered hole to clear away the jagged fragments from the edge. He carefully extricated a bottle of cognac and pried out the cork with stiff, claw-like fingers. He took a deep swig, coughing once and happy for the warmth, and then took another. He exhaled fiercely, tears at the corner of each eye, and then took another swig. Svenson put the bottle down—he wanted to be warm and revived, not insensible.

On the opposite wall was another, taller wooden cabinet. He stepped to this and tried to pull it open. It was locked. Svenson raised the wrench and with one solid blow smashed in the wood around the lock. He pulled apart cabinet doors to reveal a well-oiled row of five gleaming carbines, five polished cutlasses, and hanging from hooks behind them, three service revolvers. Svenson tossed the wrench onto a leather seat and quickly availed himself of a revolver and a box of cartridges, snapping open the cylinder to load. He looked up, listening as his fingers went about sliding shell after shell into the gun and, after six, snapping the cylinder home. Was someone else outside? He reached for one of the cutlasses. It was a ridiculously vicious weapon, rather like thirty inches of razor-sharp butcher’s cleaver, with a shining brass bell hilt that covered his entire hand. He had no idea how to use it, but the thing was so fearsome he was nearly convinced it would kill by itself.

The man in coveralls was not moving. Svenson took a step toward the front, paused, sighed, and then quickly knelt by the man, stuffing the revolver in his pocket. He felt for a pulse at the carotid artery…it was there. He sighed again at the man’s clearly broken nose, and shifted his position so the blood would drain without choking him. He wiped his hands and stood up, pulling out the revolver. Now that he was sure he retained his humanity, he set forth for revenge.

Doctor Svenson advanced through the next smaller cabin to the doorway—another hatch with a collapsible metal staircase opened out to the surface of the roof some ten feet below. Another staircase led up to the cockpit of the dirigible. He made sure no one at the base of the stairs could see him and listened once more. This center cabin seemed much like the other—benches and tables—when his eye caught an innocuous litter of rope on the floor beneath a metal wall brace. Svenson knelt with dismay. The fragments were cut on one end and bloody…Elöise’s bonds, her hands, her feet, her mouth. Whoever had confined her had done so without scruple—tight enough to draw blood. Svenson felt a chill at what she had endured, and an answering glimmer of rage in his veins. Did this not demonstrate her virtue? He sighed, for of course it showed nothing other than the Cabal’s cruelty and thoroughness. Just as they sacrificed potential adherents at Tarr Manor, so they would hardly scruple to make sure of a new adherent’s loyalty—and, of course, any true adherent would undergo every trial without protest. If only he knew what they had said to her, what urgings and temptations, what questions…if only he knew how she had replied.

He pulled the revolver from his pocket. With a deep breath—he was not so transformed that he could descend such a thing, trusting to balance with a weapon in each hand, without some tangle of anxiety—he stepped through the hatch and as swiftly as possible climbed (or careened) down the gangway. He whipped his gaze across the rooftop, looking for any other guard. But as far as he could see he was alone. The craft was moored to the roof by two cables attached to the underside of the gondola, but otherwise unattended. He decided he should not tempt his fate further and strode toward the only way his quarry could have gone—a small stone shed some twenty yards off, its door propped open by a brick.

As Doctor Svenson walked he looked down at his hands—the cutlass in the left, the revolver in the right. Was this the proper arrangement? He was no particular shot at anything but short range, nor had he any experience with the cutlass. For each, using his right hand would make for a more effective weapon—but which would be least hampered in his left? He thought who he might be struggling against—his own Ragnarok troopers or Colonel Aspiche’s Dragoons—all of whom would be carrying sabers and savagely trained in their use. With the cutlass in his left hand he hadn’t a prayer to parry a single blow. And yet, if the thing was in his right—did he still have any chance—or, more importantly, did he have a better chance than shooting at them? He did not. He kept each weapon where it was.

He opened the door and looked to an empty staircase with smooth white plaster walls and flagstone steps. He heard nothing. Svenson eased the door to its brick stop and stepped back, crossing quickly, swallowing the rising fear in his throat, to the far edge of the rooftop overlooking the garden. This edge was lined, like an ornamental castle, with a low wall of defensive crenellations from which he could both hang on and peer out simultaneously. The fog was still thick, but below him he could see the massive garden as through a veil, with conical tops of formally trimmed fir trees, tips of statuary and decorative urns, and then moving torches all piercing the lurking gloom. The torches seemed to be carried by Dragoons, and he heard cries, but it was difficult to place where they’d come from, as clearly not all the men in the garden had torches. Then the shouts were louder—somewhere near the center? This was followed by a shot and then a strangled cry. Two more shots rang out in direct succession and Svenson could see the torches converging and he scanned ahead of them to find their quarry. The fog was still too thick—yet the fact that they were in motion told him that whoever had been shot was not sufficiently wounded—or not alone.

Suddenly Doctor Svenson saw a movement, nearly below him, as a figure crept from the line of hedges to the grass border of the garden, preparing to dash across the strip of gravel to the house itself. The fog clung to the moist vegetation and dissipated at its border…it was Cardinal Chang. The Dragoons were hunting Chang! Svenson waved his arms like a lunatic, but Chang was looking instead at some window—the fool! Svenson wanted to scream, but what good would that do—aside from getting a squadron of Dragoons running directly to the roof?

Then Chang was gone, darting back into the shadow of the garden—creeping who knew where—a pair of Dragoons arriving at the spot only moments later. Svenson realized with a shudder that if he had succeeded in catching Chang’s attention, the man would most likely be dead. The Dragoons looked around them with suspicion—and then glanced up, forcing Svenson to duck behind the wall.

What was Chang doing here? And how could none of these running men have noticed the arrival of the airship? Svenson supposed it was the fog and dirigible’s dark color and counted himself lucky to have arrived so secretly…if only he could turn it to his advantage.

At the sharp crack of breaking wood in the garden Svenson looked back down and to his surprise found Chang at once, visible from the waist up through the fog—which meant he stood well off the ground—kicking at something inside a massive stone urn. The torches converged around him—there were shouts. With a sudden impulse Svenson leaned over the edge of the roof and flung the cutlass with all his might toward a ground-floor window beneath him. He ducked into cover just as the sound of breaking glass cut through the cries of pursuit. At once there was a confused crossing of shouts and then charging footsteps on the gravel below. At least some men had been diverted to the window, giving Chang that much more time to do whatever it was he was doing…hiding in an urn? Svenson risked one more glimpse but could no longer see him. There was nothing else to do—and the more he stayed in one place, the more vulnerable he was to capture. He dashed back to the staircase door and began his descent into the house. He might attribute some of this energy to the cognac, but the knowledge that—somehow, somewhere—he was not alone, gave his mission a new hope.

The staircase led him ten steps down to the third-floor landing and went no farther, being for roof access alone. Svenson listened at the door and gingerly turned the knob, releasing a breath he had not realized he had been holding when it was not locked. He wondered idly at these people’s confidence—but with the exception of three ragged random individuals, who had they not been able to sway? He thought again of Chang—what had brought him? With a jolt—and another snarl of recrimination—he knew it must be Miss Temple. Chang had found her—had traced her to Harschmort. And now Chang was doing his best to survive capture. But Svenson’s presence was unknown to them. While they occupied themselves with hunting Cardinal Chang—Svenson could only trust in his comrade’s ability to evade them—he himself must supply Miss Temple’s rescue.

And what of Elöise? Doctor Svenson sighed in spite of himself. He did not know. Yet, if she was who he hoped—the smell of her hair still sang in his memory—how could he leave her? The house was very large—how could he hope to accomplish both of these goals? Svenson paused and placed a hand over his eyes, balancing in his exhaustion the pull of his heart against that of his mind—for what were these rescues next to his unquestioned larger aim—to reclaim the Prince and the honor of Macklenburg itself? He did not know. He was one man, and for the moment at least, quite alone.

Svenson slipped silently from the staircase onto an open landing. To either side extended corridors to each wing, and before him was the highest point of the splendid main staircase of the house, and a marble balcony that, should he care to look over its edge (which he did not), would allow him to see down to the main entrance two floors below. Both side corridors were empty. If Miss Temple or Elöise had been stashed into a room for safe-keeping, he was certain there would be a guard at the door. He would need to go down another floor.

But what was he looking for? He tried to focus on what he knew—what plans were in motion that might guide his steps? As far as he could tell, the Cabal had used Tarr Manor to gather and refine a massive quantity of the indigo clay—either to make more of the malevolent glass, or to build and house the dirigible, or for something still more sinister…the alchemical genius of Oskar Veilandt as exploited by the Comte d’Orkancz. A second purpose had been to gather—to capture in glass—personal information from the discontented intimates of the highly placed and powerful. So armed, there would be small limit to the Cabal’s powers of compulsion and subversion. Who did not have such secret shames? Who would not do what they could to preserve them? This specter of raw power brought to Svenson’s mind the fallen Duke of Stäelmaere. The third purpose had been his introduction—in relative isolation—to the Cabal, an attempt to gain his favor and participation. With the Duke dead, at least Crabbé’s Palace intrigues had been thrown into disarray.

And what did it mean for Elöise, the author of his death? Perhaps, he thought with a chill, her loyalties did not matter at all—having demonstrated such boldness the Cabal would give her over to the Process and make her theirs forever. As soon as the thought formed he knew it was true. And if his logic was right—and Svenson was dreadfully certain it was—the exact same fate awaited Miss Temple.

The Doctor slipped down the wide oaken staircase, his back against the wall, head craned for the first glimpse of any guard below. He reached the inter-floor landing and looked down. No one. He slid to the far wall and crept on to the second floor proper. He heard voices rising up from the main foyer below, but a quick glance back and forth showed the second-floor corridors empty of guards. Where was everyone from the dirigible? Had they just gone straight to the main floor? How could he follow into the thick of the household?

He had no idea, but crossed the landing to the final staircase leading down—this flight being even wider and more ostentatious than the others, as it was part of a visitor’s first impression of the house from the main entrance. Svenson swallowed. Even from his partial perspective he could see a knot of black-coated footmen and a steady passage of elegantly dressed guests coming in from the front. A moment later he heard a clatter of boots and saw a furious-faced balding man with heavy whiskers march through his frame of vision at the head of a line of Dragoons. The footmen snapped to attention at his appearance and saluted like soldiers, calling out his name—Plengham?—all of which the man ignored. Then he was gone and Svenson sighed bitterly—looking down at a mere five or six men he’d have to overcome in the presence of a hundred onlookers.

He whipped his head around at a noise behind him and startled a squeak from each of a pair of girls dressed in black with white aprons and white caps—housemaids. Svenson took in the ingrained deference on their fearful faces and wasted no time in exploiting it—the more time they had to think, the more likely it was they’d scream.

“There you are!” he snarled. “I’ve just arrived with Minister Crabbé—they directed me here to clean up—I’ll need a basin and my coat brushed—just do what you can—quickly now, quickly!”

Their eyes were wide on the revolver in his hand as he thrust it back into his coat pocket and then pulled the coat from his shoulders as he walked, driving the two girls back down the hall where they’d come. He tossed the filthy coat over the arms of one and nodded curtly at the other.

“I’ll be speaking with Lord Vandaariff—vital information—extraordinary activity. You’ve seen the Prince, of course—Prince Karl-Horst? Speak when you’re spoken to!”

Both girls bobbed on their knees. “Yes, Sir,” they said nearly in unison, one of them—without the coat, dirty brown hair escaping from her cap near her ear, perhaps a bit stouter than her companion—adding, “Miss Lydia’s just gone to meet the Prince, I’m sure.”

“Excellent,” snapped Svenson. “You can tell by my accent, yes—I’m the Prince’s man—vital information for your master, but I can hardly meet him like this, can I?”

The girl with the coat darted forward to open a door. The other hissed at her with dismay, and the first hissed back, as if to ask where else they were to take him. The second gave in—all of this happening too rapidly for Svenson to complain at the delay—and they ushered him into a washroom whose trappings dripped with white lace and whose air was a near-suffocating mélange of scented candles and dried flowers doused with perfume.

All business, the girls directed Doctor Svenson to the mirror, where it was all he could do not to flinch bodily at what greeted him. As one maid brushed ineffectually at his coat, the other soaked a cloth and began to dab at his face—but he could see the arrant futility of either task. His face was a mask of dirt, sweat, and dried blood—from his own lacerations or his victims’, he could not say until the rough surface of the cloth either cleaned it away or caused him to wince. His ice blond hair, normally plastered back in a respectable manner, had broken forward, matted with blood and grime. His intention had been to merely use the maids to get out of sight and find information, but he could not help but take some action at his wretched state. He brushed the fussing hands aside and slapped at his dusty jacket and trousers.

“Attend to my uniform—I’ll manage this.”

He stepped to the basin and plunged his head directly in it, gasping despite himself at the cold water. He brought up his dripping head, groped for a towel which the girl thrust into his hand, and then stood, vigorously rubbing his hair and face, pressing repeatedly at his re-opened cuts, dappling the towel with tiny red spots. He threw the towel aside, exhaled with some pleasure and smeared his hair back as best he could with his fingers. He caught the maid with his coat watching his face in the mirror.

“Your Miss Lydia,” he called to her. “Where is she now—she and the Prince?”

“She went with Mrs. Stearne, Sir.”

“Captain,” the other corrected her. “He’s a Captain, aren’t you, Sir?”

“Very observant,” answered Svenson, forcing an avuncular smile. He looked again at the basin and licked his lips. “Excuse me…”

Svenson leaned over to the copper pitcher and held it up to his mouth, awkwardly drinking, splashing water on his collar and jacket. He didn’t care, any more than he cared what the maids might think—he was suddenly parched. When had he last had a drink—at the little inn at Tarr Village? It seemed half a lifetime past. He set down the pitcher and picked up another towel to wipe his face. He dropped the towel and dug his monocle from his pocket, screwing it into place.

“How is the coat?” he asked.

“Begging your pardon, Captain, but your coat is very unkempt,” replied the maid meekly. He snatched it from her hands.

“Unkempt?” he said. “It is filthy. You have at least made it recognizable as a coat, if not a presentable one—and that is quite an achievement. And you”—he turned to the other—“have turned me into a recognizable officer, if not an entirely respectable one—but that fault lies entirely with me. I thank you both.” Svenson dug into his trouser pocket and came up with two silver coins, giving one to each girl. Their eyes were wide…even suspiciously so. It was too much money—did they think he required some additional unsavory service? Doctor Svenson cleared his throat, his face reddening, for now they were smiling at him coyly. He adjusted his monocle and thrashed his way awkwardly into the greatcoat, his haughty tone giving way to an uncomfortable stammer.

“If you would be kind enough to point me in the direction taken by this M-Mrs. Stearne?”

Doctor Svenson was happily directed by the maids’ pointing fingers to a side staircase he never would have seen, reached through a bland-looking door next to a mirror. Still Svenson was unsure as to his responsibility, his best intention. He followed the path of Karl-Horst and his fiancée—yet might it not just as well lead to that of Miss Temple or Elöise? The Cabal would strive to keep the likes of Miss Temple from the sight of its guests—or “adherents” as Miss Poole might arrogantly term them—for as long as possible, as she was sure to give the impression of a prisoner under guard. As they were not on this floor or the one above, this was at least a way for him to descend unseen. But what if he found the Prince before either woman—would that end his search entirely? For an instant he imagined a successful return to Macklenburg, to that life of arid duty, idiot successfully in tow, his heart as ever in its fog of despair. Yet what of the compact he had made on the rooftop of the Boniface, with Chang and Miss Temple? How could he choose between these paths? Svenson left the maids looking after him in the hallway, their heads a-tilt like a pair of curious cats. He fought the urge to wave good-bye and strode on to the staircase.

It was smaller than the main stairs, but only as if to say the Sphinx is smaller than the Pyramids, for it was still magnificent. Every step was intricately inlaid wood of many colors, and the walls were painted with an extremely credible copy, in miniature, of the Byzantine mosaics of Justinian and Theodora at Ravenna. Svenson suppressed an appreciative whistle at the amount Robert Vandaariff must have spent to refinish this one side staircase, and then attempted without success to extrapolate from that imagined sum the cost of fitting out Harschmort Prison into Harschmort House. It was a fortune whose vastness stretched beyond the Doctor’s ability with numbers.

At the foot of the steps he had expected to see a door to the first-floor hallway, but there was none. Instead, he found an unlocked door, like a kitchen door on a spring. Was he near the kitchens? He frowned for a moment, placing himself in the house. On his previous visit, he had come in the front entrance with the Prince and spent his entire time in the left wing—around the ballroom—and then in the garden, where he’d seen Trapping’s body. He was now in unknown territory. He pushed the swinging door gently until there was enough of a gap to peek through.

It was a room of bare wooden tables and a plain stone floor. Around one table were two men and three women—two sitting, and a younger woman pouring beer from a jug into wooden cups—all five in plain, dark woolen work clothes. Between them on the table was an empty platter and a stack of wooden bowls—servants taking a late repast. Svenson threw his shoulders back and marched forward in his best impression of Major Blach, deepening his accent and worsening his diction for maximum haughtiness.

“Excuse me! I am requiring after the Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck—he has come this way? Or—excuse me—this way he shall be found?”

They stared at him as if he were speaking Chinese. Again Doctor Svenson assumed the natural actions of Major Blach, which was to say he screamed at them.

“The Prince! With your Miss Vandaariff—this way? One of you tells me at once!”

The poor servants shrank back in their chairs, the pleasant end of their evening meal ruined by his insistent, threatening bellow. Three of them pointed with an abject eagerness at the opposite door and one of the women actually stood, nodding with cringing deference, indicating the same door.

“That way, Sir—not these ten minutes—begging your pardon—”

“Ach, it is very kind of you I am sure—please and be back to your business!” snapped Svenson, stepping to the door before anyone thought to question who in the world he was and why a man in such a filthy, unkempt state was following the Prince in such a hurry. He could only hope that the demands of the Cabal were as oblique, and the figures just as imperious.

It was not difficult to believe.

Once through the swinging door, Svenson stopped again, reaching behind him to still its movement. He stood at one end of a wider, open drawing room—a sort of servants’ corridor with a low overhanging ceiling, designed to allow passage without it being intrusive to the room at large. Above him was a musicians’ balcony from which Svenson could hear the delicate plucking of a harp. Directly across the corridor was another swinging door, perhaps ten yards away, but the way across was fully open to the larger room. He threw himself against the small abutment of wall that hid the swinging door and listened to the raised voices of those people directly beyond it.

“They must choose, Mr. Bascombe! I cannot suspend the natural order indefinitely! As you know, beyond this immediate matter looms the Comte’s transformations, the initiations in the theatre, the many, many important guests identified for collection—to all of which my personal attention is crucial—”

“And as I have told you, Doctor Lorenz, I do not know their wishes!”

“One way or the other—it is very simple! He is made use of at once or he is given over to putrefaction and waste!”

“Yes, you have made those choices clear—”

“Not clear enough that they will act!” Lorenz began to sputter with the condescending pedantry of a seasoned academic. “You will see—at the temples, at the nails, at the lips, the discoloration—the seepage—you will no doubt, even you, discern the smell—”

“Berate me as you please, Doctor, we will wait for the Minister’s word.”

“I will berate you—”

“And I remind you that the fate of the Queen’s own brother is not for you to decide!”

“I say…what was that noise?”

This was another voice. One that Svenson felt he knew but could not place.

More importantly, it referred to the sound of his own entry through the swinging door. The others stopped their argument.

“What noise?” snapped Lorenz.

“I don’t know. But I thought I heard something.”

“Aside from the harp?” asked Bascombe.

“Yes, that lovely harp,” muttered Lorenz waspishly. “Exactly what every slaughtered Royal needs when lying in state in a leaking tub of ice—”

“No, no…from over there…” said the voice, quite clearly turning to the side of the room where Svenson stood, quite minimally concealed.

The voice of Flaüss.

The Envoy was with them. He would name Svenson and that would be the end of it. Could he run back through the servants? But where after that—up the stairs?

His thoughts were broken by the sound of a large party entering from the far doors, near the others—many footsteps…or more accurately bootsteps. Lorenz called out a greeting in his flat, mocking voice.

“Excellent, how kind of you to finally arrive. You see our burden—I will require two of your fellows to collect a supply of ice, I am told there is an ice house somewhere on the premises—”

“Captain,” this was Bascombe cutting smoothly through the Doctor’s words, “could you make sure we are not troubled by any unwanted visitors from the servants’ passage?”

“As soon as you send two men for more ice,” insisted Lorenz.

“Indeed,” said Bascombe, “two men for ice, four men for the tub, one man to respectfully ask the Minister if there is further word, and one to check the passage. Does that satisfy us all?”

Svenson slipped back to the door and pushed gently against it, straining for silence. It held fast. The door had been bolted from the inner side—the servants making sure he’d not again trespass upon their meal. He shoved again, harder, to no avail. He quickly fished out the pistol—for within the noises of scraping metal and scuffling feet from his enemies across the room came the rapping of deliberate bootsteps advancing directly toward him.

Before he was prepared the man was looking right at him, not two yards away: a tall fellow with hanging lank brown hair, Captain of Dragoons, red coat immaculate, brass helmet under one arm, drawn saber in the other. Svenson met his sharp gaze and tightened his grip on the revolver, but did not fire. The idea of killing a soldier went against the grain—who knew what these fellows had been told, or what they’d been ordered to do, especially by a government figure like Crabbé or even Bascombe? Svenson imagined Chang’s lack of hesitation and raised the revolver to fire.

The man’s eyes flicked up and down, taking in Svenson’s uniform, his rank, his unkempt person. Without any comment he turned to look in the other direction and then casually took a step toward Svenson, ostensibly—for the purpose of anyone watching from the room—to examine the door behind him. Svenson flinched—but still could not pull the trigger. Instead, the Captain leaned near to Svenson, reaching past him to the door and confirming it was locked. Svenson’s revolver was nearly pressed against the Captain’s chest, but the Captain’s saber had been deliberately dropped to his side.

“Doctor Svenson?” he whispered.

Svenson nodded, unprepared to form actual words.

“I have seen Chang. I will take these people to the center of the house—please go in the opposite direction.”

Svenson nodded again.

“Captain Smythe?” called Bascombe.

Smythe stepped back. “Nothing unusual, Sir.”

“Were you speaking to someone?”

Smythe gestured vaguely toward the door as he walked back, out of Svenson’s sight.

“There are servants in the next room. They’ve seen no one—perhaps their movement was what the Envoy heard. The door is now locked.”

“Undoubtedly,” agreed Lorenz, impatiently. “May we?”

“If you will follow me, gentlemen?” called Smythe. Svenson heard the doors opening, the scuffle and creak of the men lifting the fallen Duke, the thwop of water slopping out of the tub, the scuffle of footsteps and finally the closing of the door. He waited. There was no sound. He sighed and stepped around the corner, shoving the revolver back into his coat pocket.

Herr Flaüss stood just inside the far doorway, grinning smugly. Svenson dragged out the revolver. Flaüss snorted.

“What will you do, Doctor, shoot me and announce yourself to every soldier in the house?”

Svenson began to walk deliberately across the wide room toward the Envoy, his aim never wavering from the man’s chest. After all the torments he had passed through, it was bitter to imagine his downfall at the hands of this petty and puling creature.

“I knew what I had heard,” smiled Flaüss, “just as I knew Captain Smythe was not telling the truth. I’ve no idea why—and I am indeed curious what power you might have over an officer of Dragoons, especially in your present wholly decrepit state.”

“You’re a traitor, Flaüss,” answered Svenson. “You always have been.”

He was within two yards of the Envoy, the main door perhaps a yard beyond that. Flaüss snorted again.

“How can I be a traitor when I do my own Prince’s bidding? It is true I did not always understand that—it is true that I have been assisted to my present level of clarity—but you are as wrong about me, and the Prince, as you have always been—”

“He’s an idiot and a traitor himself,” spat Svenson hotly, “betraying his own father, his own nation—”

“My poor Doctor, you are quite behind the times. Much has changed in Macklenburg.” Flaüss licked his lips and his eyes gleamed. “Your Baron is dead. Yes, Baron von Hoern—his feeble network of operatives was well known—why else should I attend the every move of an obscure naval physician? And of course the Duke himself is also very unwell—your brand of patriotism is passé—very soon Prince Karl-Horst will be the nation, and perfectly placed to welcome the cooperative financial ventures of Lord Vandaariff and his associates.”

Flaüss wore a plain black half-mask across his eyes. With grim recognition Svenson could see the lurid scarring peeking out from the edges.

“Where is Major Blach?” he asked.

“Somewhere about, I am sure—as I am sure he will be most happy at your capture. He and I finally see eye to eye, of course—another blessing! It really is a matter of looking beyond to deeper truths. If, as you say, the Prince is not especially gifted in matters of policy, it is all the more important that those who support him are able to make up that lack.”

It was Svenson’s turn to scoff. He looked behind him. Adding another bizarre touch to his confrontation with the mentally altered Envoy, the concealed harpist continued to play. He turned back to Flaüss.

“If you knew I was there, why didn’t you say anything to your masters, to Lorenz or Bascombe?” He gestured with the revolver. “Why give me the upper hand?”

“I’ve done nothing of the kind—as I say, you can’t shoot me without dooming yourself. You’re no more a fool than you are a brawler—if you want to stay alive, you’ll give me your weapon and we shall walk together to the Prince—and I will establish myself as trustworthy in my new role. Especially so, I should say—for to get this far, I imagine you must have avoided a great number of ostensible foes.”

The Envoy’s smug expression demonstrated for Dr. Svenson the extent and the limit of the Process’s transformation. Never before would the man have been so bold as to risk an open confrontation—much less so brazen an admission of his secret plans. Flaüss had always been one for honeyed agreement followed by backhanded plotting, for layered schemes and overlapping patronage. He had despised the blunt arguments of Major Blach and Svenson’s own diffident independence as quite equal levels of defiance—and, indeed, personal offense. There was no doubt that the man’s loyalty had—as he put it—been “clarified” by his alchemical ordeal and his hesitancies weakened, but Svenson saw that his conniving, narcissistic nature remained quite whole.

“Your weapon, Doctor Svenson,” repeated Flaüss, his voice pointedly yet somehow comically stern. “I have you boxed with logic. I do insist.”

Svenson flipped his grip on the revolver, holding on to its barrel and cylinder. Flaüss smiled, as this seemed the first step to politely handing him the butt of the gun. Instead, feeling another uncharacteristic surge of animal capacity, Svenson raised his arm and cracked the pistol butt across the Envoy’s head. Flaüss staggered back with a squawk. He looked up at Svenson with an outraged glare of betrayal—as if in flouting the man’s “logic” Svenson had broken all natural law—and opened his mouth to scream. Svenson stepped forward, arm raised for another swing. Flaüss darted away, quicker than his portly frame would seem to allow, and Svenson’s blow went wide. Flaüss opened his mouth again. Svenson abruptly switched his grip on the revolver and aimed it directly at the Envoy’s face.

“If you scream, I will shoot you! I’ll have no more reason for silence!” he hissed.

Flaüss did not scream. He glared at Svenson with hatred and rubbed the welt above his eye. “You are a brute,” he insisted. “An outright savage!”

Svenson padded quietly down the hallway—now sporting the Envoy’s black silk mask, the better to blend in with the locals—following Smythe’s directions away from the center of the house, with no idea if this path brought him anywhere near his ostensible targets of rescue. Most likely he was squandering what time he had to save them—he scoffed aloud—like so much else in his life had been squandered. His mind bristled with questions about the Dragoon Captain—he “had seen” Chang (though hadn’t Chang been fleeing Dragoons in the garden?), but how had he known him? If only there had been time to actually speak—it was more than likely the man knew the location of Elöise or Miss Temple. For a moment he’d entertained the idea of interrogating Flaüss, but his skin crawled at the man’s physical presence. Leaving him gagged and trussed behind a divan was more than enough time spent with such a toad. Yet he knew Flaüss would be missed—it was frankly odd he’d not been looked for already—and that his period of anonymity inside Harschmort was severely limited. But at the same time, the house was massive, and blundering senselessly through its hallways would only waste his temporary advantage.

The hallway ended at a T junction, with a path to either side. Svenson stood, undecided, like a figure in the forest of a fairy tale, knowing that the wrong choice would lead to the equivalent of a malevolent ogre. One way led to a succession of small parlors, following one to the next like links in a chain. The other opened onto a narrow corridor whose walls were plain, but whose floor was strikingly laid with black marble. Then as he stood, Doctor Svenson quite clearly recognized a woman’s scream…dimly, as if the cry passed through a substantial intervening wall.

Where had it come from? He listened. It was not repeated. He strode into the black corridor—less comfortable, less wholesome, and altogether more dangerous—for if he chose wrong, the sooner he knew it the better.

The corridor was pocked with small niches for statuary—mostly simple white marble busts on stone pillars with the occasional limb-free torso. The heads were copies (though, given Vandaariff’s wealth, who knew?) from antiquity, and the Doctor recognized the varyingly vacant, cruel, or thoughtful heads of Caesars high and low—Augustus, Vespasian, Gaius, Nero, Domitian, Tiberius. As he passed this last, Svenson stopped. Dimly—though louder than the scream—he heard…applause. He spun to place the source of the noise, and saw, cut into the white wall behind the bust of that pensive, bitter emperor, regular grooves running up to the ceiling…rungs. Svenson edged behind the pillar and looked up. He looked around him and—taking a breath and shutting his eyes—began to climb.

There was no hatch. The ladder continued into darkness before his hands found a new surface to grasp. The Doctor opened his eyes and blinked, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. He was gripping a piece of wooden scaffolding, the end of a low catwalk. He heard distant voices…and then again the whisper, like a sudden rustle of leaves, of an audience’s applause. Was he backstage at some sort of theatre? The Doctor swallowed, for the dizzying heights from which stagehands operated the lifts and curtains always made him queasy (and his compulsion was to look up again and again, just to torment himself with vertigo). He recalled a performance of Bonrichardt’s Castor und Pollux where the triumphant finale, the titular pair ascending to heaven—an excruciatingly extended duet as they were raised (the twins operatically portly, the ropes audibly protesting) some hundred feet from view—had him near to heaving with dread into the lap of the unfortunate dowager seated next to him.

Doctor Svenson clambered onto the catwalk and crept along it quietly. Ahead he saw a thin glimmer of light, perhaps a distant door set ajar, allowing a single beam to fall into the darkness. What performance might be hosted in Harschmort on a night like this? The engagement party had been a dual event—a public celebration of the engagement of Karl-Horst and Lydia and a private occasion for the Cabal to transact its private business. Was tonight a similarly double-edged event—and could this performance be the respectable side of whatever other malevolence was at work elsewhere in the house?

Svenson continued forward, wincing at a tightness in his legs and a renewed pain from his twisted ankle. He thought of Flaüss’s boasting words—the Baron was dead, the Duke to follow. The Prince was a fool and a rake, eminently subject to manipulation and control. Yet if the Doctor could prise the Prince from the clutches of the Cabal—Process or no—might there not be yet some hope, providing the ministers around him were responsible and sane?

But then with a grim snort he recalled his own brief conversation with Robert Vandaariff over Trapping’s corpse. Such was the great man’s irresistible influence that any unfortunate or scandalous occurrence—like the Colonel’s death—was made to disappear. The grandson of Robert Vandaariff—especially if inheriting as a child and requiring a regent—would be the best return the financier could realize on the investment of his daughter. After the child’s birth Karl-Horst would be unnecessary—and, given everything, wholly unregretted at his death.

But what were Svenson’s choices? If Karl-Horst were to die without issue, the Macklenburg throne would pass to the children of his cousin Hortenze-Caterina, the oldest of whom was but five. Wasn’t this a better fate for the Duchy than being swallowed by Vandaariff’s empire? Svenson had to face the deeper truth of his mission from the Baron. Knowing what he did of the forces in play, if he could not prevent the marriage, which seemed impossible, he would have to shoot Prince Karl-Horst down—to be a traitor in service to a larger patriotism.

The reasoning left the taste of ash in his mouth, but he could see no other way.

Svenson sighed, but then, like the shift of a mountebank’s con-trick, the line of light in front of him—which he had, in the darkness, taken to be a distant door—was revealed for what it was: the thin gap between two curtains, not two feet in front of his face. He gently pushed it aside, both light and sound flooding through the gap, for the fabric was actually quite heavy, as if it had been woven with lead to prevent fire. But now Doctor Svenson could see and hear everything…and he was appalled.

It was an operating theatre. His catwalk door was perched just to the right of the audience and led across the stage itself at the height of the ceiling—some twenty feet above the raised table and the white-robed, white-masked woman bound to its surface with leather straps. The gallery was steeply raked and full of well-dressed, masked spectators, all gazing with rapt attention at the masked woman who spoke from the stage. Doctor Svenson recognized Miss Poole at once, if only by the woman’s irrepressible glow of self-satisfaction.

Behind them all, on a large blackboard, were inscribed the words “AND SO THEY SHALL BE REBORN”.

Standing unsteadily next to Miss Poole was another masked woman in white, her blonde hair somewhat disturbed, as if from physical exertion. As she stood Svenson noticed, distracted and disapproving, the very thin and clinging nature of the nearly transparent silk, making plain every contour of her body. To her other side stood a man in a leather apron, ready to support her if she fell. Behind, next to the woman on the table, stood another such man, wearing leather gauntlets and holding under his arm what looked like a brass and leather helmet—just what the Comte d’Orkancz had worn when Svenson had taken the Prince at pistol-point from the Institute. The man by the table set down his helmet and began to remove pieces of machinery from a nest of wooden boxes—the same boxes they’d seen taken from the Institute by Aspiche’s Dragoons. The man attached several lengths of twisted copper wire to mechanical elements within the boxes—from his vantage Svenson could only see that they were bright steel with glass dials and brass buttons and knobs—and then to either side of a pair of black rubber goggles, taking a moment to get the wire properly attached. Svenson realized—the electrified rubber mask, the facial scars—that they were about to perform the Process on the woman on the table, as they had no doubt just done to the woman standing with Miss Poole (the cause of the screams!).

The man finished with the wires and raised the hideous mask to the woman’s face, pausing quickly to remove one of the white feathers that she presently wore. She shook her head from side to side, a futile bid to avoid his hands—her eyes wide and her mouth—which he saw was blocked with a gag—working. Her eyes were riveting, a cold, glittering grey…Svenson gasped. The man strapped and then brutally tightened the device across her face, his body blocking the Doctor’s view. Svenson could not determine her state—was she drugged? Had she been beaten? He knew he had only until Miss Poole was finished with the blonde woman—who was she, he wondered?—until their vicious intent was worked irrevocably upon Miss Temple.

Miss Poole stepped to a small rolling side table—intended, Svenson knew, to hold a tray of medical implements—and took up a glass-stoppered flask. With a knowing smile she uncorked the flask and took a step to the front row of the gallery, holding the open flask up for her spectators to sniff. One after another—and always to Miss Poole’s delight—the elegant masked figures recoiled with immediate disgust. After the sixth person, Miss Poole stepped back to the brighter light and her blonde charge.

“A challenge to the most sturdy of sensibilities—as I believe all of you that have smelled this mixture will attest—yet such is the nature of our science and our need that this lovely subject, a veritable arrow in flight toward a target of destiny, has been made to consume it not once, but daily, for twenty-eight consecutive days, until her cycle is completely prepared. Before this day, such a task could not have been accomplished save by forcibly holding her down, or—as it has actually been managed—hiding tiny amounts of the substance in chocolate or an aperitif. Now, witness the strength of her new-minted will.”

Miss Poole turned to the woman and held out the flask.

“My dear,” she said, “you understand that you must drink this, as you have in these past weeks.”

The blonde woman nodded, and reached out to take the flask from Miss Poole.

“Please smell it,” asked Miss Poole.

The woman did. She wrinkled her nose, but showed no other response.

“Please drink it.”

The woman put the flask to her lips and tossed off the contents like a sailor quaffing rum. She primly wiped her mouth, held her body still for a moment, as if to better keep the substance down, and then returned the flask.

“Thank you, my dear.” Miss Poole smiled. “You’ve done very well.”

The audience erupted into fervent applause, and the young blonde woman shyly beamed.

The Doctor looked ahead of him on the catwalk. Bolted to an iron frame suspended from the ceiling—and in reach, for he realized that the catwalk’s sole purpose was to tend them—hung a row of metal-boxed paraffin lamps, as in a theatre. The front of each box was open, to aim the light in one direction, and fixed with a ground-glass lens to focus the light onto a more precise area. For a moment he considered—if he were able to climb out unseen—the possibility of blowing out each lamp and throwing the theatre into darkness…but there were at least five lamps over a fifteen-foot length of the iron grid. He could not reach them all before he was seen and most likely shot. But what else could he do? Moving as delicately and as quickly as he could, Doctor Svenson crawled through the curtain and into view of anyone who happened to look up.

Miss Poole whispered in her blonde charge’s ear and then led her closer to the audience. The young woman sank into a curtsey, and the audience politely applauded once more. Svenson could swear she was blushing with pleasure. The woman rose again and Miss Poole handed her to one of the Macklenburg soldiers, who offered an arm with a click of his heels. The blonde woman draped her arm in his and with a distinct brightening of her step they disappeared down one of the rampways.

From the same rampway emerged two more Macklenburg soldiers propelling between them a third masked woman in white. Her feet dragged in awkward steps and her head dipped—she was either drugged or injured. Her brown hair unspooled behind her back and around her shoulders, obscuring her features. Again, despite his best intentions, Doctor Svenson found his gaze falling to the lady’s body, the white silk clinging across the curve of her hips, her pale arms sticking from the balled-up sleeves.

At their entrance, Miss Poole whipped around in annoyance. Svenson could not hear what she hissed to the soldiers, nor what they deferentially whispered in return. In the moment of disturbance he looked to Miss Temple, the hideous mask in place across her face, twisting ineffectually against her bonds.

Miss Poole gestured to the new arrival.

“It is a different sort of case I present to you here—perhaps one emblematic of the dangers attending our great enterprise, and of the corrective power of this work. The woman here before you—you see her ragged appearance and lowly condition—is one who had been invited to participate, and who then took it upon herself, in league with our enemies, to reject this invitation. More than this, her rejection took the form…of murder. The woman before you has killed one of our blameless number!”

The audience whispered and hissed. Svenson swallowed. It was Elöise Dujong. He hadn’t recognized her—her hair had been back in a braid and now it wasn’t—such a foolish detail, but it nearly caused his heart to crack. All his doubts as to her loyalty fell away before this sudden pang of emotion. Seeing her hair down should have been an intimacy given to him from her, and now she was insensible, vulnerable, the intimacy blithely trammeled. He crawled quickly to the next lamp and dug in his pocket for the revolver.

“And yet,” continued Miss Poole, “she has been brought before you to demonstrate the greater wisdom—and the greater economy—of our purpose. For despite everything this woman’s actions carry with them undenied qualities of resilience and courage. Should these be destroyed simply because she lacks the will or the vision to see her true avenue of advantage? We say it shall not be—and so we will welcome this woman into our very bosom!”

She gestured to her attendant. He bent over Miss Temple once more to make sure of his electrical connections and then knelt at the boxes. Svenson looked wildly about him. In a moment it would be too late.

“Both these women—I promise you, more determined villains you could not find outside the Thuggee cult!—will join us, one after the next, by way of the clarifying Process. You have seen its effect with a willing subject. Now see it transform a defiant enemy to the fiercest adherent!”

The first shot crashed out from the darkness above the theatre. The man near Miss Temple abruptly stumbled back, and then dropped beneath the blackboard, the blood from his wound pooling in the leather apron. Screams erupted from the gallery. The figures on the stage looked up, but straight into the lamps and could not—at least for another precious moment—see past the glare. The second shot tore through the shoulder of the other aproned man, spinning him away from Elöise and to his knees.

“He is there!” shrieked Miss Poole. “Kill him! Kill him! ”

She pointed up at Svenson, her face an emblem of fury. The Macklenburg trooper had been pulled off balance by the second man’s fall, suddenly taking up the whole of Elöise’s weight. He released her—she dropped at once to her hands and knees—and swept out his saber. Svenson ignored him. He was well out of reach of the blade, and knew the Ragnarok troopers did not carry firearms. He aimed the revolver at Miss Poole, but then—what was he thinking! How could he forget her cruelty at the quarry?—hesitated to pull the trigger.

The catwalk behind him lurched. Svenson turned to see two hands grabbing hold of the edge. He shifted on his knees and rapped the gun butt down on each hand one after the other, dropping the man back into the seats. The catwalk lurched again. Now three sets of hands pulled on the edge, tipping the Doctor into the wooden rail. For a moment he looked helplessly down into the outraged crowd—men on each other’s shoulders, women shrieking at him as if he were a witch. He shot a foot forward and smashed it down on the nearest hand—but now there were men on either side of him, hefting themselves above the edge. To his left was an athletic young man in a tailcoat, no doubt an ambitious second son of a Lord determined to take an inheritance away from an older brother. Svenson shot him through the upper leg and didn’t wait to watch him fall before turning to the second man—a wiry fellow in his shirtsleeves (thoughtful enough to doff an encumbering coat before climbing)—who leapt the rail and crouched like a cat not three feet away. Svenson fired again, but more hands jostled the catwalk. The bullet flew wide and directly into one of the paraffin lanterns, shattering it completely. A shower of hot metal, broken glass, and burning paraffin spattered onto the stage.

The shirtsleeved man launched himself at Svenson, knocking him flat. A woman screamed from the stage—there was smoke—the paraffin—did he smell burning hair? The man was younger, stronger, fresher—an elbow across Svenson’s jaw stunned him. He thrust a hand ineffectually at the fellow’s eyes, and the catwalk careened as more hands pulled at them and more men climbed aboard—a creak, a popping snap of wood—it could not hold. The woman still screamed. The shirtsleeved man took hold of Svenson’s coat with both hands and raised him up—face-to-face with a triumphant leer—as a prelude to flattening the Doctor’s nose with his fist.

The catwalk gave way, tipping toward the stage and dumping them both over the rail and into the row of lamps—Svenson hissing with pain at the hot metal against his skin—and then (in one ghastly moment of weightless terror that convulsed Svenson from the top of his spine to his genitals) to the theatre floor.

The impact jarred the Doctor to his teeth and for a moment he merely lay where he was, dimly aware of a great deal of activity around him. He blinked. He was alive. There were screams and shouts from every direction…smoke…a great deal of smoke…and heat—in fact, everything pointed to the theatre being on fire. He tried to move. To his surprise he was not on the floor—he was not on anything smooth. He rolled on one shoulder and saw the waxen face of the shirtsleeved man, neck folded unnaturally to the side, tongue blue. Svenson heaved himself to his hands and knees—realizing as it hit the floor with a clunk that he still held the revolver.

The fallen lamps had set a line of flame between the stage and the gallery, effectively blocking one from the other. Through the rising wall of smoke he could see figures and hear their screams and shouts, but he quickly turned away at another scream, much nearer. It was Elöise, terrified but still dulled by the drug, kicking weakly at the flames that licked her smoking silken robe. Svenson stuffed the revolver into his belt and tore off his greatcoat. He lurched forward on his knees and threw it over her legs, patting out any flames, and then quickly pulled her clear of the fire. He turned to the table and felt his way to Miss Temple’s hand. Her fingers took hold of his arm—a desperate silent plea—but he was forced to wrench himself away in order to reach the buckle for her leather straps. He fumbled to free her arms and that done was gratified to see her own hands shoot up to the infernal mask around her face. He released her feet and then helped her from the table, once more—for Svenson was never one to become used to the matter—surprised at the meager weight of such an enterprising person. As she tore the wadded gag from her mouth he bent to her ear and shouted above the roar of flame and popping wood.

“This way! Can you walk?”

He pulled her down below the line of smoke and saw her eyes widen at the identity of her rescuer.

“Can you walk?” he repeated.

Miss Temple nodded. He pointed to Elöise, just visible, hunched against the curved wall of the theatre.

“She cannot! We must help her!”

Miss Temple nodded again, and he took her arm—wondering idly if he might not be in the more shattered physical condition. Svenson looked up at a rush of footsteps within the gallery, and then a crashing hiss and a cloud of steam. Men had arrived with buckets. They raised Elöise between them—Miss Temple a good six inches shorter than the woman she supported. Svenson called to her.

“I have seen Chang! There is a flying machine on the roof! The Dragoon officer is a friend! Do not look into the glass books!”

He was babbling—but there seemed so much to say. More water was flung from above—the steam clouds now rivaled the smoke—and more bootsteps. Svenson turned to face them. He raised the revolver and shoved behind him at the ladies, pushing them on.

“Go! Go at once!”

The Macklenburg trooper had returned with a host of others. Svenson aimed the revolver just as more water flew down from the gallery and a plume of ash and steam rose in front of the other rampway. He felt suddenly nauseous at the mix of exhaustion and light-headed recklessness—he’d just shot three men and wrestled a fourth to his death in what seemed like as many seconds. Was this how men like Chang spent their lives? Svenson gagged. He took a step backwards and tripped over the carcass of a shattered lamp, sprawling headlong onto his back with a grunt, smacking the back of his head into the floorboards. Pain exploded across Doctor Svenson’s body—all of his injuries from the quarry and Tarr Manor brought back to vivid life. He opened his mouth but could not speak. He would be taken. He moved feebly on his back like a tortoise. The room was nearly dark—only one of the lights remained, its cover dislodged and blocking the beam, sending an eerie orange glow through the murk.

He expected to be swarmed by his enemies, slit like a pig by five sabers at once. Around him were the sounds of flame and water, the shouts of men and, more distant, the cries of women. Had they not seen him? Were they only fighting the fire? Had the flames so cut them off from pursuit? With an effort Svenson rolled over and began to crawl through the glass and metal after the women. He was coughing—how much smoke had he inhaled? He kept going, his right hand still holding the revolver. With a dull apprehension he remembered that the box of cartridges was in the pocket of his greatcoat, which he had given to Elöise. If he did not catch up to her, he was left with just two shells remaining in the gun—against all of the forces of Harschmort.

Svenson reached the ramp and crawled down. The path turned and he felt something in the way—a boot…and then a leg. It was the man he’d shot in the shoulder. In this light there was no telling if the man was dead, dying, or merely overcome by smoke. Svenson had no time. He stumbled to his feet and past the fellow and found a door. He pushed his way through and took a heaving lungful of clean air.

The room was empty. Thickly carpeted and lined with wooden cabinets and mirrors, it reminded him of a dressing room for the opera—or, as if there was any real difference, of Karl-Horst’s own attiring room at the Macklenburg Palace. The idea that it was connected to a theatre for demonstrations of surgery was perhaps all the more sickening for what it said about Robert Vandaariff. The cabinets were open and in disarray, various garments spilling onto the floor. He took several steps, brushing glass and ash from his uniform, his feet sinking deeply into the luxurious carpet, and stopped. On the floor near the cabinets, in ruins and quite clearly cut from her body, was the dress Elöise had been wearing at Tarr Manor. He looked behind him. Still no sounds of pursuit. Where were the women? His throat was aching. He pushed himself across the room to another door and turned the handle carefully, peering out with one eye through the gap.

He closed it at once. The corridor was full of activity—servants, soldiers, cries for buckets, cries for help. There was no possible way he would not be taken. But could the women have had any better hope? He turned again to the rampway door. His enemies would be coming through it any moment—someone—he had caused too much damage to ignore. Svenson was wracked with regret for the men he had shot, for the injury—flame? falling debris?—that had stricken Miss Poole, despite his hatred for her. But what else could he have done? What else would he yet be forced to do?

There was no time for any of this. Could the women be hiding in the room? Feeling a fool, he whispered aloud.

“Miss Temple? Miss Temple! Elöise?”

There was no reply.

He crossed to the wall of opened cabinets to quickly sort through them, but got no farther than Elöise’s dress on the floor. Svenson picked it up, fingering with a distressed intimacy the ripped edges of her bodice and the sliced, dangling bits of lacing. He pressed it to his face and breathed in, and sighed at his own hopeless gesture—the dress smelled of indigo clay—acrid, biting, offensive—and dried sweat. With another sigh he let the dress fall to the floor. He was bound to find the women—of course he must—but—he wanted to cry aloud with distress—what of the Prince? Where was he? What could Svenson possibly do aside from killing him before the wedding? This thought brought the words of Miss Poole back to his mind, in the theatre with the blonde woman and the loathsome potions. She had mentioned the girl’s monthly cycle…“until the cycle is prepared”…obviously this was more of the Comte’s (or Veilandt’s) alchemical evil. Svenson was chilled—Miss Poole had also mentioned the woman’s “destiny”—for he was suddenly sure the pliant blonde woman, proven to be the passive instrument of the Cabal, was Lydia Vandaariff. Could Vandaariff be so heartless as to sacrifice his own daughter? Svenson scoffed at the obviousness of the answer. And if the Lord’s own flesh meant so little, what would he possibly care for the Prince—or the succession?

He shook his head. His thoughts were too slow. He was wasting time.

Svenson stepped toward the cupboard and felt his boot crunch on broken glass. He looked down—this was not where he’d brushed it from himself—and saw the carpet littered with bright shards…glittering…reflective…he looked up…a mirror? The doors of two nearby cupboards were opened toward each other…the open panels blocking whatever might be behind. He pulled them apart to reveal a large jagged hole in the wall, punched through what had been a full-length mirror with an ornate gold-leaf frame. He stepped carefully over the shards. The glass was slightly odd…discolored? He picked up one of the larger pieces and turned it side to side in his hand, then held it up to the light. One side was a standard mirror—but the other side was somehow, granting a slightly darker cast to the image, transparent. It was a spy mirror—and one of the women (it could only be Miss Temple) had known of it and smashed it through. Svenson dropped the shard and stepped through the gap—taking care to pull the cupboards to behind him, to slow any pursuit—and then over a wooden stool that she had evidently used to break the glass, for he could see tiny glittering needles embedded in the wooden seat.

The room on the other side of the mirror confirmed all that Doctor Svenson feared about life in Harschmort House. The walls were painted a bordello red, with a neat square of Turkish carpet that held a chair, a small writing table, and a plush divan. To the side was a cabinet that held both notebooks and inks, but also bottles of whisky, gin, and port. The lamps were painted red as well, so no light would give the game away through the mirror. The experience of standing in the room struck the Doctor as both tawdry and infernal. On one hand, he recognized that there were few things more ridiculous than the trappings of another person’s pleasure. On the other, he knew that such an arrangement only served to take cruel advantage of the innocent and unsuspecting.

He knelt quickly on the carpet, feeling for any bloodstains, in case either woman had cut a foot making her way through the glass. There were none. He stood and continued after them—a poor shambling trot. The way was lined with the same red-painted lamps, and twisted and turned without any reason he could see. How long would it take to truly understand the ways of this house? Svenson wondered how often the servants got lost, or for how long—and further what the punishment might be for the wrong servant mistakenly stumbling into an extremely sensitive room, such as this. He half-expected to find a caged skeleton, set up as a sign to warn off all curious maids and footmen.

He stopped—this tunnel just went on—and risked another whisper.

“Miss Temple!” He waited for a reply. Nothing. “Celeste! Elöise! Elöise Dujong!”

The corridor was quiet. Svenson turned behind him and listened. He could scarce credit their pursuit had not reached him already. He tried to flex his ankle and winced with pain. It had been twisted again in his fall from the catwalk and soon it would be all he could do to drag it, or lapse again into his absurd hopping. He steadied himself with a hand on the wall. Why hadn’t he had more to drink in the airship? Why had he walked right past the bottles in the first red room? By God, he wanted another swallow of brandy. Or a cigarette! The urge fell onto him like a wave of agitated need. How long had it been without a smoke? His case was in the inner pocket of his greatcoat. He wanted to swear out loud. Just a bit of tobacco—hadn’t he earned that much? He stuffed a knuckle into his mouth to stifle the urge to scream and bit down, hard as he could bear. It didn’t help in the least.

He limped ahead to a crossroads. To his left the corridor went on. Ahead it dead-ended at a ladder going up. To the right was a red cloth curtain. Svenson did not hesitate—he’d had his fill of ladders and his fill of walking. He whipped aside the curtain and extended the revolver. It was a second observation chamber, its far wall another transparent mirror. The red chamber was empty, but the room beyond the mirror was not.

The spectacle before him was like a medieval pageant, a Danse Macabre of linked figures from all walks of life being led away by Death and his minions. The line of figures—a red-coated churchman, an admiral, men in the finest topcoats, ladies dripping with jewelry and lace—shambled into the room one after another, assisted by a crew of black-masked functionaries, guiding each to a chaise or chair where they slumped unceremoniously, obviously insensible. If he were a native of the city Svenson was sure he would have known them all—as it was he could pick out Henry Xonck, the Baroness Roote (a salon hostess who had invited Karl-Horst once and then never again after he’d spent the entire time drinking—and then sleeping—in his corner chair), and Lord Axewithe, chairman of the Imperial Bank. Such a gathering was simply unheard-of—and a gathering where they had all been so overborne was unthinkable.

In the center of the room was a table, upon which one of each pair of functionaries would—while the other settled their personage—deposit a large brilliant rectangle of blue glass…another glass book…but how many were there? Svenson watched them pile up. Fifteen? Twenty? Standing at the table and watching it all with a smile was Harald Crabbé, hands tucked behind his back, eyes darting with satisfaction between the growing stack of books and the procession of vacant luminaries arranged around the steadily more crowded room. Next to Crabbé, as expected, stood Bascombe, making notes in a ledger. Svenson studied the young man’s expression as he worked, sharp nose and thin earnest lips, hair plastered into position, broad shoulders, perfectly schooled posture, and nimble fingers that flipped the ledger pages back and forth and stabbed his pencil in and out of them like an embroidery needle.

Doctor Svenson had seen Bascombe before of course, at Crabbé’s side, and had overheard his conversation with Francis Xonck in the Minister’s kitchen, yet this was the first time he’d observed the man knowing he had been Celeste Temple’s fiancé. It was always curious what particular qualities might bring two people together—a shared taste for gardening, a love of breakfast, snobbery, raw sensual appetite—and Svenson could not help but ask the question about these two, if only for what it revealed about his diminutive ally, to whom he felt a duty to protect (a duty naggingly compromised by the memory of the thin silk robes hanging closely around her body…the suddenly soft weight of her limbs in his arms as he helped her from the table…even the animal spate of effort as she pulled the gag from her stretched lips). Svenson swallowed and frowned anew at Bascombe, deciding then that he very much disliked the man’s proud manner—one could just tell by the way he ticked his notebook. He’d seen enough naked ambition in the Macklenburg Palace to make the man’s hunger as plain to his trained eyes as the symptoms of syphilis. More, he could imagine how Bascombe had been served by the Process. What before must have been tempered with doubt or deference had been in that alchemical crucible hardened to steel. Svenson wondered how long it would be before Crabbé felt the knife in his back.

The last functionaries laid the final victim on a divan, next to the uncaring elderly churchman—a handsome woman with vaguely eastern features in a blue silk dress and a fat white pearl dangling from each ear. The last book was set down—the whole pile had to number near thirty!—and Bascombe made his final jabs with the pencil…and then frowned. He flipped back through the notebook and repeated his calculations, by his darkening frown coming up with the same unsatisfactory answer. He spoke to the men quickly, sorting through their responses, winnowing their words until he was looking at the somnolent figure of a particularly lovely woman in green, with a mask woven of glass beads that Svenson guessed would be Venetian and extremely expensive. Bascombe called again, as clearly as if Svenson could hear the words, “Where is the book to go with this woman?” There was no answer. He turned to Crabbé and the two of them whispered together. Crabbé shrugged. He pointed to one of the men who then dashed from the room, obviously sending him back to search. The rest of the books were loaded carefully into an ironbound chest. Svenson noted how all of them wore leather gloves to touch the glass and treated them with deliberate and tender care—their efforts reminding him keenly of sailors nervously stacking rounds of ammunition in an armory.

The clear association of particular books with specific individuals—individuals of obvious rank and stature—had to relate to the Cabal’s earlier collection of scandal from the minions of the powerful, at Tarr Manor. Was it merely another level of acquisition? In the country, they had gathered—had stored within those books—the means to manipulate the powerful…could the aim have merely been to blackmail those powerful figures into journeying to Harschmort, and then forcing this next step upon them? He shook his head at the boldness of it, for the next step was to seize hold of the knowledge, the memories, the plans, the very dreams of the most mighty in the land. He wondered if the victims retained their memories. Or were they amnesiac husks? What happened when—or was it if?—they awoke to full awareness…would they know where they were…or who?

Yet there was more to it, if only in simple mechanics. The men wore gloves to touch the glass—indeed to even look within it was perilous, as those who had died at Tarr Manor made clear. But how then did this precious information serve the Cabal—how was it read? If a person could not touch a book without risking their life or sanity, what was the point? There must be a way…a key…

Svenson glanced behind him. Had there been a noise? He listened…nothing…merely nerves. The men finished loading the chest. Bascombe tucked the notebook under his arm and snapped his fingers, issuing orders: these men to take the chest, these to go with the Minister, these to stay. He walked with Crabbé to the doors—and had the Minister handed something to his assistant? He had…but Svenson could not see what it was. And then they were gone.

The two remaining men stood for the barest moment and then, with a palpable relaxation of their manner, stepped one to the sideboard and the other to a wooden cigar box on a side table. They spoke smilingly to one another, nodding at their charges. The one at the sideboard poured two tumblers of whisky and crossed to the other, who was even then spitting out a bitten tip of tobacco. They swapped gifts—tumbler for cigar—and lit up, one after another. Their masters not gone for ninety seconds, they were smacking their lips and puffing away like princes.

Svenson looked around him for ideas. This observation room was less fully appointed than the other—there was no drink and no divan. The two men walked around the room, making a circuit of the furniture and commenting on their charges, and it was only another minute before they were fumbling through the pockets of a tailcoat or a lady’s handbag. Svenson narrowed his eyes at the actions of these scavengers, and waited for them to come nearer. Right before him was the divan holding the churchman and the Arabic woman—with her head lolling back (eyes dreamily half-open to the ceiling) the pearl earrings shone brightly against her dark skin…they would have to notice them.

As if they had heard his thought, one man looked up, saw the pearls and ignored the five victims in between to hurry directly to them. The other followed, sticking the cigar in his mouth, and soon they were both leaning over the passive woman, their black backs facing Svenson, not two feet away from the glassy barrier.

He placed the barrel flat against the mirror and pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the back of the nearest man and then, with an unexpected flourish, out his chest to shatter the tumbler in his hand, sprawling him across the unfortunate cleric. His companion wheeled at the shot and stared without comprehension at the round hole in the mirror. Svenson fired again. The glass starred at this second puncture, a sudden spider’s web clouding his vision. He quickly stuffed the revolver into his belt and reached for a small side table of inks and paper, tipping them brusquely to the floor. Three strokes with the table, swinging it like an axe, and the mirror fell away.

He dropped the table and looked behind him. The sound of the shots would have traveled for the most part back through the tunnels, not forward into the house, and he had to trust that they’d been well-insulated for secrecy’s sake. Why was no one following? On the carpet at his feet the second man was breathing heavily, shot through the chest. Svenson sank to his knees to find the entry-point and quickly concluded the wound was mortal—it would be a matter of a minute. He stood, unable to bear the gaze of the gasping man, and stepped to his fellow, quite dead, rolling him off of the elderly churchman. Svenson shifted the body to the floor, already assailed by feelings of guilt and recrimination. Could he not have wounded them? Shot once and bluffed them into submission, tied with curtain cords like Flaüss? Perhaps…but such niceties—had human life become a nicety?—left no time to find the women, to secure his Prince, to stop these fellows’ masters. Svenson saw that the dead man still held a burning cigar between his fingers. Without a thought he reached down and took it, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes with long-missed pleasure.

The men were unarmed, and with no weapons to pillage Svenson resigned himself to more stealth and theatre, holding the empty revolver as he walked. He’d left the room’s other occupants as they were and picked his way through an empty string of parlors, watching for any trace of Bascombe or Crabbé, but hoping it was Bascombe that he found. If what he had guessed of the books from Tarr Manor was true, that they were capable of absorbing—of recording—memories, then the chest of books rivaled an unexplored continent for value. He also realized the particular worth of Bascombe’s notebook, where the contents of each book—of each mind!—were cataloged and detailed. With those notes as a guide, what question could not be answered from that unnatural library? What advantage not be found?

Doctor Svenson looked around him with annoyance. He’d walked through another sitting room to an airy foyer with a bubbling fountain whose sound obscured any distant footfalls that might point him in the right direction. The Doctor wondered idly if the labyrinth of Harschmort had a Minotaur. He crossed heavily to the fountain and looked into the water—could one ever not look into the water?—and laughed aloud, for the Minotaur was before him: his own haggard, soot-smudged, battered visage, cigar in his face, weapon in hand. To the guests of this gala evening, was he not their determined, monstrous nemesis? Svenson outright cackled at the idea—and cackled again at the antic hoarseness of his voice, a raven trying to sing after too many cups of gin. He set down his smoke and stuffed the pistol into his belt, and reached into the fountain’s pool, scooping water first to drink and then to splash across his face, and to once again smooth back his hair. He shook his hands, the droplets breaking his reflection to rippling pieces, and looked up. Someone was coming. He threw the cigar into the water and pulled out the gun.

It was Crabbé and Bascombe, with two of their functionaries walking behind, and between them, unmistakably, his posture characteristically sharp as a knife-point, Lord Robert Vandaariff. Svenson scrambled to the other side of the fountain and dropped to the floor, for all his fear and fatigue feeling caught out like a character in a comic operetta.

“It is astonishing—first the theatre, and now this!” The Minister was speaking, and with anger. “But the men are now in place?”

“They are,” answered Bascombe, “a squad of Macklenburgers.”

Crabbé snorted. “That lot has been more trouble than they are worth,” he said. “The Prince is an idiot, the Envoy’s a grub, the Major’s a Teuton boor—and the Doctor! Did you hear? He is alive! He is at Harschmort! He must have come with us—but honestly, I cannot imagine how it was accomplished. He can only have been stowed away—hidden by a confederate!”

“But who could that be?” hissed Bascombe. When Crabbé did not reply, Bascombe ventured a hesitant guess. “Aspiche?”

Crabbé’s answer was lost, for they had moved through the foyer to the edge of his hearing. Svenson rose to his knees, relieved they had not seen him, and carefully followed. He did not understand it…though Vandaariff walked between the two Ministry conspirators, they paid him no attention at all, speaking across his body…nor did the Lord take part in the plotting. What was more, what had happened to Bascombe’s treasure chest of blue glass books?

“Yes, yes—and it’s for the better,” Crabbé was saying, “both of them are to take part. Poor Elspeth has lost a quantity of hair, and Margaret—well, she was keen to press ahead. She is ever keen, but…apparently she had a confrontation with this Cardinal at the Royale—she—well, I cannot say—she seems in a mood about it—”

“And this is along with the…ah…other?” Bascombe politely cut in, bringing the conversation back to its subject.

“Yes, yes—she is the test case, of course. In my own opinion, it all goes too fast—too much effort in too many places—”

“The Contessa is concerned about our time-table—”

“As am I, Mr. Bascombe,” Crabbé replied sharply, “but you will notice for yourself—the confusion, the risk—when we have tried to simultaneously manage initiations in the theatre, the Comte’s transformations in the cathedral, the collections in the inner parlors, the harvest from Lord Robert”—he gestured casually to the most powerful man in five nations—“and now because of that blasted woman, the Duke—”

“Apparently Doctor Lorenz is confident—”

“He is always confident! And yet, Bascombe, science is pleased if one experiment out of twenty actually succeeds—the mere confidence of Doctor Lorenz is not enough when so much hangs at risk—we need certainty!”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Just a moment.”

Crabbé stopped, and turned to the two retainers walking behind—prompting Svenson to abruptly crouch behind a molting philodendron.

“Dash ahead to the top of the tower—I don’t want any surprises. Make sure it’s clear, then one of you return. We will wait.”

The men ran off. Svenson peeked through the dusty leaves to see Bascombe in the midst of a deferent protest.

“Sir, do you really think—”

“What I think is that I prefer not to be overheard by anyone.”

He paused to allow the two men to fully vanish from sight before going on.

“Before anything,” began the Deputy Minister, glancing once at the figure of Robert Vandaariff, “what book do we have for Lord Vandaariff, here? We need something as a place-holder, yes?”

“Yes, Sir—though for now it can be the one missing, from Lady Mélantes—”

“Which must be recovered—”

“Of course, Sir—but for the moment it may also stand in as the keeper of Lord Vandaariff’s secrets—until such time as we have occasion to irreparably damage another.”

“Excellent,” muttered Crabbé. His eyes darted around them and the small man licked his lips, leaning closer to Bascombe. “From the beginning, Roger, I have offered you this opportunity, have I not? Inheritance and title, new prospects for marriage, advancement in government?”

“Yes, Sir, I am well in your debt—and I assure you—”

Crabbé waved away Bascombe’s obsequiousness as if he were brushing off flies. “What I have said—about there being too many elements in motion at once—is for your ears alone.”

Again, Svenson was astonished to find neither man referring in the slightest to Lord Vandaariff, who stood not two feet away.

“You are intelligent, Roger, and you are cunning as any person in this business—as you have well proven. Keep your eyes open, for both our sakes, for any out of place comment or action…from anyone. Do you understand? Now is the sticking point, and I find myself brimming with suspicion.”

“Do you suggest one of the others—the Contessa, or Mr. Xonck—”

“I suggest nothing. Yet, we have suffered these…disruptions—”

“But these provocateurs—Chang, Svenson—”

“And your Miss Temple,” added Crabbé, a tinge of acid in his tone.

“Including her only strengthens the truth, Sir—which they each have sworn—that they have no master, nor any plan beyond plain antagonism.”

Crabbé leaned closer to Bascombe, his voice dropping to an anxious hiss. “Yes, yes—and yet! The Doctor arrives by way of the airship! Miss Temple penetrates our plans for Lydia Vandaariff and somehow resists—without assistance, which one can scarcely credit—submersion in a glass book! And Chang—how many has he killed? What havoc has he not set off? Do you flatter these so much that they have done all this without aid? And where else, I ask you, Roger, could that aid have come from, save within our number?”

Crabbé’s face was white and his lip shaking with rage—or fear, or both, as if the very idea of being vulnerable set off the Minister’s fury. Bascombe did not answer.

“You know Miss Temple, Roger—possibly better than anyone in this world. Do you think she could have killed those men? Shrugged off that book? Located Lydia Vandaariff and quite nearly spirited her from our grasp? If it was not for Mrs. Marchmoor’s arrival—”

Bascombe shook his head.

“No, Sir…the Celeste Temple I know is capable of none of those things. And yet—there must be some other explanation.”

“Yet do we have it? Is there an explanation for Colonel Trapping’s death? All three of our provocateurs were in this house that night, yet it is impossible that they would know to kill him without some betrayal from within our ranks!”

They fell silent. Svenson watched them, and with patient slowness reached up to scratch his nose.

“Francis Xonck was burned by Cardinal Chang.” Bascombe began to speak quickly, sorting out their options. “It is unlikely he would undergo such an injury on purpose.”

“Perhaps…yet he is extremely cunning, and personally reckless.”

“Agreed. The Comte—”

“The Comte d’Orkancz cares for his glass and his transformations—his vision. I swear that in his heart he considers all of this but one more canvas—a masterwork, perhaps—but still, his thought is to my taste a bit too…” Crabbé swallowed with some discomfort and brushed his moustache with a finger. “Perhaps it is simply his horrid plans for the girl—not that I even trust those plans have been fully revealed…”

Crabbé looked up at the young man, as if he had said too much, but Bascombe’s expression had not changed.

“And the Contessa?” Bascombe asked.

“The Contessa,” echoed Crabbé. “The Contessa indeed…”

They looked up, for one of their men was returning at a jog. They let him arrive without any further conversation. Once he reported the way ahead was clear, Bascombe nodded that the man should rejoin his companion ahead of them. The man crisply turned and the Ministry men again waited for him to disappear before they followed in silence—evidently not finished with their brooding. Svenson crept after them. The possibility of mistrust and dissension within the Cabal was an answer to a prayer he had not dared to utter.

Without the trailing men to block his view, he could see the Minister more clearly—a short determined figure who carried a leather satchel, the sort one might use for official papers. Svenson was sure it was not present when they had collected the books, which meant Crabbé had acquired it since—along with his acquisition of Lord Vandaariff? Did that mean the satchel carried papers from Lord Vandaariff? He could still make no sense of the Lord’s apparent participation—his unforced accompaniment—at the same time they utterly ignored him. Svenson had assumed Vandaariff to be the plot’s prime mover—for not two days before the man had quite deliberately manipulated him away from Trapping’s body. However long the Cabal might have planned to spring their trap, whatever control they had established, whatever somnambulism…it had been recently done—for surely they had drawn on the full resources of the Lord’s house and name to achieve their ends, which only could have been begun with his full participation and approval. And now he followed along—in his own house—as if he were an affable pet goat. Yet Svenson’s first glimpse of the man, as he crouched behind the fountain, had shown his face free of the scars of the Process. How else was he compelled? By way of a glass book? If it were only possible to get Vandaariff to himself for five minutes! Even that much time would afford a quick examination, would give the Doctor some insight into the corporeal effects of this mind control, and who could say…some insight into its reversal.

For now however, unarmed and outnumbered, he could only follow them deeper into the house. He could hear from the rooms around them a growing buzz of human activity—footsteps, voices, cutlery, wheeled carts. So far their path had skirted any open place or crossroads—undoubtedly to keep Vandaariff from public view. Svenson wondered if the servants of the house knew of their master’s mental servitude, and how they might react to the knowledge. He did not imagine Robert Vandaariff to be a kindly employer—perhaps the household did know, and happily celebrated his downfall—perhaps the Cabal had dipped into Vandaariff’s own riches to purchase his people’s loyalty. Either possibility kept Svenson from trusting the servants…but he knew his opportunity was quickly slipping away. With each step they traveled closer to the other members of the Cabal.

Svenson took a deep breath. The three men were perhaps ten yards ahead of him, just turning the corner from one long corridor into—he presumed—another. As soon as they disappeared he dashed ahead to make up ground, reached the corner and peeked—five yards away, and onto a thin runner of carpeting! Svenson stepped out, revolver extended, and rapidly advanced, his padded footfalls mixing with theirs—ten feet away, then five, and then he was right behind them. Somehow they sensed his presence, turning just as Svenson reached out and took rough hold of Vandaariff’s collar with his left hand, and pressed the revolver barrel against the side of the Lord’s temple with his right.

“Do not move!” he hissed. “Do not cry out—or this man will die, and then each of you in turn. I am a crack shot with a pistol, and few things would give me more pleasure!”

They did not cry out, and once again Svenson felt the disquieting capacity for savagery creeping up his spine—though he was no particular shot at all even when his gun was loaded. What he didn’t know was the value they placed on Vandaariff. With a sudden chill he wondered if they might actually want him killed—something they desired but shrank from doing themselves—especially now that Crabbé had the satchel of vital information.

The satchel. He must have it.

“That satchel!” he barked at the Deputy Minister. “Drop it at once, and step away!”

“I will not!” snapped Crabbé shrilly, his face gone pale.

“You will!” snarled Svenson, pulling back the hammer and pressing the barrel hard into Vandaariff’s skull.

Crabbé’s fingers fidgeted over the leather handle. But he did not throw it down. Svenson whipped the gun away from Vandaariff and extended his arm directly at Crabbé’s chest.

“Doctor Svenson!”

This was Bascombe, raising his own hands in a desperate conciliatory gesture that was still for Svenson too much like an attempt to grab his weapon. He turned the barrel toward the younger man, who flinched visibly, then back toward Crabbé who now hugged the satchel to his body, then again to Bascombe, pulling Vandaariff a step away to give himself more room. Why did he not get better at this sort of confrontation?

Bascombe swallowed and took a step forward. “Doctor Svenson,” he began in a hesitant voice, “this cannot stand—you are inside the hornets’ nest, you will be taken—”

“I require my Prince,” said Svenson, “and I require that satchel.”

“Impossible,” piped Crabbé, and to the Doctor’s great exasperation the Deputy Minister turned and spun the satchel like a discus down the length of the corridor. It bounced to a stop against the wall some twenty feet beyond them. Svenson’s heart sank—God damn the man! If he’d possessed a single bullet he would have put it straight between Harald Crabbé’s ears.

“So much for that,” Crabbé bleated, babbling fearfully. “How did you survive the quarry? Who helped you? Where were you hidden on the airship? How are you still tormenting my every plan?”

The Minister’s voice rose to a high-pitched shout. Svenson took another step back, dragging Vandaariff with him. Bascombe—though frightened the man had courage—again stepped forward in response. Svenson put the gun back against Vandaariff’s ear.

“Stay where you are! You will answer me—the whereabouts of Karl-Horst—the Prince—I insist…”

His words faltered. From somewhere below them in the house Svenson heard a screaming high-pitched whine, like the brakes of a train slamming down at high speed…and within it, like the silver thread run through a damask coat made for a king, a desperate woman’s shriek. What had Crabbé said about the Comte’s activity…“the cathedral”? All three stood fixed as the noise rose to an unbearable peak and then just as suddenly cut away. He dragged Vandaariff back another step.

“Release him!” hissed Crabbé. “You only make it worse for yourself!”

“Worse?” Svenson sputtered at the man’s arrogance—O for one bullet! He gestured at the floor, at the hideous noise. “What horrors are these? What horrors have I already seen?” He tugged Vandaariff. “You will not have this man!”

“We have him already,” sneered Crabbé.

“I know how he is afflicted,” stammered Svenson. “I can restore him! His word will be believed and damn you all!”

“You know nothing.” Despite his fear, Crabbé was tenacious—no doubt a valuable quality in negotiating treaties, but to Svenson galling as all hell.

“Your infernal Process may be irreversible,” announced Svenson, “I have had no leisure to study it—but I know Lord Vandaariff has not undergone that ritual. He bears no scars—he was perfectly lucid and in his own mind but two evenings ago, well before such scars would fade—and what is more, I know from what I have just observed in your theatre that if he had been so transformed he would be fighting my grip quite violently. No, gentlemen, I am confident he is under the temporary control of a drug, for which I will locate an antidote—”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried Crabbé, and he turned his words to Vandaariff, speaking in a sharp, wheedling tone that one would use to order a dog. “Robert! Take his gun—at once!”

To Svenson’s dismay, Lord Vandaariff spun and dove for the pistol with both arms. The Doctor stepped away but the Lord’s insistent grasping hands would not let go and it was instantly apparent that the automaton Lord was more vigorous than the utterly spent surgeon. The Doctor looked up to see Crabbé’s face split with a wicked smile.

It was the last stroke of arrogance that Doctor Svenson could bear. Even as Vandaariff grappled him—a hand across his throat, another stabbing at the weapon—Svenson wrenched the pistol away and thrust it at the Minister’s face, drawing back the hammer.

“Call him off or you die!” he shouted.

Instead, Bascombe leapt for Svenson’s arm. He slashed the gun at Bascombe as he came, the jagged sight at the end of the barrel digging a raw line across the younger man’s cheekbone, knocking him off his feet. At that moment Vandaariff’s hand clamped over Svenson’s, squeezing. The hammer clicked forward. Svenson desperately looked up and met Bascombe’s gaze. They both knew the gun had not fired.

“He has no bullets!” cried Bascombe and he pitched his voice to the far end of the corridor. “Help! Evans! Jones! Help!”

Svenson turned. The satchel! He threw himself away from Vandaariff and ran for it, though it carried him straight toward the returning escorts. His boots clattered against the slippery polished wood, his ankle spasmed in protest, but he reached the satchel, scooped it up, and began his hobbling run back toward Bascombe and Crabbé. Crabbé screamed to the men who—he had no doubt—were all too close behind him.

“The satchel! Get the satchel! He must not have it!”

Bascombe had regained his feet and came forward, hands out, as if to bar Svenson’s way—or at least tackle him until the rest could dash his brains out. There were no side doors, no alcoves, no alternatives but to charge the man. Svenson recalled his days at university, the drunken games played inside the dormitories—sometimes they would even manage horses—but Bascombe was younger and angry, with his own foolish game-playing to draw upon.

“Stop him, Roger—kill him!” Even enraged, Crabbé managed to sound imperious.

Before Bascombe could tackle him Svenson swung the satchel at his face, an impact more ignominious than painful, but it caused Bascombe to turn his head at the moment of collision. Svenson dropped his shoulder and knocked Bascombe backwards. The man’s hands grabbed at his shoulders, but he bulled himself free and Bascombe’s grip slipped down his body. Svenson was nearly past, stumbling, when Bascombe caught both hands on his left boot and held fast, pulling him off balance and sending him to the floor. He rolled on his back to see Bascombe sitting in a heap, his face red and blood-smeared. Svenson raised his right boot and kicked it at Bascombe’s face. The blow landed on Bascombe’s arm—both men crying out at the impact, for this was the Doctor’s twisted ankle. Two more hideous kicks and he was free.

But the men in black were there—he had no chance. He scrabbled to his feet—and then in a sudden moment of joy saw that the two men had by instinct and deference stopped to aid both Crabbé and Bascombe. On a sudden urge, Doctor Svenson ran right at them, the satchel in one hand and the revolver in the other. He could hear Crabbé’s protests—“No, no! Him! Stop him!” and Bascombe’s cries of “Satchel! Satchel!”—but he was on them and swinging just as the men looked up. Neither blow—pistol or satchel—landed, but both caused their targets to flinch, and he gained yards of valuable space as he dashed past them down the hall. They were following, but despite his fear and his ankle Doctor Svenson’s game-playing spirits were high.

He raced down the corridor, boots slipping, wincing at the impact of each step. Where had Crabbé sent the two men to wait—the “top of the tower”? He frowned—his view from the airship had shown him quite clearly that there was no tower to speak of at Harschmort. What was more, the men had come quite quickly at Bascombe’s call for help—that is, they could not have scaled any height. Unless…he rounded a corner into a wide marble foyer, the floor a black and white checkerboard, the far wall marked by a strange iron door, wide open onto a dark spiral staircase…this place marked the top of a tower leading down. Before he could even fully process the thought, Doctor Svenson lost his footing completely and crashed to the floor, sliding all the way across the marble to the far wall. He shook his head and tried to stand. He was dripping with…blood! He’d stepped into a wide scarlet pool and with his fall smeared it across the width of the marble, soaking the right side of his body in gore.

He looked up. His two pursuers appeared in the far doorway. Before anyone could move, another piercing mechanical shrieking rose from beyond the open tower door, rising to a head-splitting level of loathsome discomfort. His ears did not deceive him, there was definitely the voice of a woman within the shriek.

Svenson threw the pistol with all his strength at the men, catching one dead on the knee. The man groaned and slumped back against the doorframe, the pistol spinning away across the floor. The second man dove after the gun and snatched it up as Svenson broke for the only other door—a wide hallway leading away from the tower (the last thing he wanted was to go nearer to the screaming). He could hear the clicking of the hammer on empty chambers behind him and then a snarl of anger from the man—as Svenson again stretched his lead.

He rounded a corner into another small foyer, with doors to each side. Quickly and quietly, Doctor Svenson stepped through a swinging door, easing it shut behind him so the door was still, careful not to leave any smear of blood. He had entered some part of the kitchens. The Doctor stepped past barrels and lockers toward an inner door. He had just reached it when the door swung open. He ducked swiftly behind it as it did, hiding him from the rest of the room. A moment later, the far door opened—where he’d come in—and he heard the voice of his pursuer.

“Did anyone come in here?”

“When?” asked a gruff voice not ten inches from where the Doctor presently skulked.

“Just now. Bony fellow, foreigner, covered in blood.”

“Not in here. Do you see any blood?”

There was a scuffling pause as both men looked around them. The man nearest him leaned against the door as he looked, causing Svenson to shrink further into the wall.

“Don’t know where else he could’ve run,” muttered the man from the hallway.

“Across the way—that goes to the trophy room. Full of guns.”

“I’ll be damned,” hissed his pursuer, and Svenson heard the blessed sound of the door swinging shut. A moment later he heard a locker being opened, the man rooting around in it, and what seemed like the spilling sound of gravel. This done, as quickly as that the man walked back out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Svenson breathed a sigh of relief.

He looked at the wall—quite covered in blood from his pressing against it. He sighed—nothing to be done—and wondered if there was anything to drink in one of the lockers. He was hardly safe—enemies but yards away in either direction—but that was becoming a common condition. What was more…gravel? Curiosity got the better of him, and Svenson crept to the largest of the lockers—fully large enough to stand in—where he was sure the man had gone. He pulled it open and winced as the frigid air inside flowed over his face. It had not been gravel at all, but ice. A bag of chipped ice poured over the body of the Duke of Stäelmaere, skin blue, reptilian eyes half-open, lying in grisly state in an iron tub.

Why were they keeping him? What did Lorenz think he could do—bring him back to life? That was absurd. Two bullets—the second of which had blown out his heart—had inflicted grievous damage, and now for so many hours, the blood would be cooled and pooling, the limbs stiffened…what did they possibly intend? Svenson had a sudden urge to dig out a penknife and do more mischief to the body—open the jugular, perhaps?—to further frustrate Lorenz’s unnatural plans, but such actions seemed too unsavory. Without concrete reason, he was not going to stoop to desecrating even this disreputable corpse.

But as he looked down at that corpse, Doctor Svenson felt the nearness of his own despair. He hefted the satchel in his hands—did it bring him any nearer the Prince, any closer to saving the lives of his friends? The corners of his mouth flicked with a wan smile at the word. He did not really remember the last time he’d made what he could call a friend. The Baron was—had been—an employer and gouty mentor to his life in the Palace, but they shared no confidences. Officers he’d served with, in port or shipboard, became companions for that tour of duty, but rarely came to mind once subsequent postings had split them apart. His friends from university were few and mostly dead. His family relations were cast under the shadow of Corinna and quite out of mind. The idea that in these few days he had thrown his lot—not just his life, but whatever that life stood for—with an unlikely pair (or was it now three?) that had he passed them on the street would not have turned his head…well, that was not completely true. He would have smiled knowingly at Miss Temple’s contained willfulness, shaken his head at Chang’s garish advertisement of mystery…and contented himself with a tactful appraisal of Elöise Dujong in her no doubt demure dress. And he would have perilously undersold them all—as their own first impressions of him might not have allowed for his present achievements. Svenson winced at this, glancing down at the sticky blood congealing down the side of his uniform. What had he achieved, at the end? What had he ever achieved at all? His life was a fog since Corinna’s death…must he fail these others as he had failed her?

He was tired, dangerously so, standing without the first idea of his next step, in the doorway of a meat locker, enemies waiting on the other side of a door whichever way he went. Hanging from a metal pole that went across above his head were a number of wicked metal hooks, set at the end with a small wooden cross-piece for a handle. Intended for handling large cuts of meat, one in each hand would suit him very well indeed. Svenson reached up and selected a pair and smiled. He felt like a pirate.

He looked down at the Duke, for something had caught his eye…it did not seem as if anything had changed—the corpse was no more animated and no less blue. He realized that was it…the blue was not the normal color of icy dead flesh, of which he had seen more than his share in his Baltic service. No, this was somehow brighter…bluer. The ice shifted, slipping down as it melted, and Svenson’s eye was drawn to the water in the tub…the ice and the water…the ice was piled at the edge of the tub and over the Duke’s lower body, while the water, which must be the center of melting, was pooled over his chest, over his wound. With a sudden curiosity, Svenson stepped behind the Duke and placing his hooks under each of the man’s arms lifted him some inches out of the tub, until he could see the actual wound. As the torn flesh broke the surface, he was astonished to see it had been patched—and the wound cavity filled—with indigo clay.

The door in the room opened and with a start Svenson let go of the body, which slid back into the tub, ice and water spilling loudly onto the floor. He looked up—whoever had entered would have heard the sound as they saw the locker door was open—and quickly freed his two hooks. The satchel! Where was the satchel? He’d put it down when he’d reached up for the hooks. He cursed himself for a fool, dropped one hook into the tub and snatched up the satchel just as the locker door began to move. Svenson threw himself forward, driving his shoulder into the door and, with a satisfying thud, the door into whoever stood behind it. Another of the black-coated functionaries tottered backwards, his hands laden with another burlap sack of broken ice, and fell. The sack split and ice slid across the floor in a gleaming sheet. Svenson charged over the man, stepping on him rather than risking a slip on the ice, and burst through the swinging door, leaving a wide red smear on its butter-cream paint as he passed.

This was a kitchen room proper—a wide long table for preparation, an enormous stone hearth, stoves, racks of pots and pans and metal. On the other side of the table stood Doctor Lorenz, black cloak thrown back over his shoulders, thick glasses on the end of his nose, peering at a page of densely written parchment. To the savant’s right was spread a cloth roll of metal tools, picks and knives and tiny sharp shears, and to his left was a row of glass vials connected to one another by distilling coils. Svenson saw the bandolier of metal flasks slung over a chair—the Doctor’s store of refined indigo clay from the quarry.

On the side of the table nearer to Svenson sat another functionary smoking a cigar. Two others stood by the hearth, tending several metal vessels hanging over the fire, unsettling combinations of a tea kettle and a medieval helmet, vaguely round, banded and bolted with steel, with shiny metal spouts that spat steam. These men wore heavy leather gauntlets. All four men looked up at Svenson in surprise.

As if he was born to it, fear and fatigue curling in an instant into brutal expedience, Svenson took two steps to the table, swinging with all his strength before the man in the chair could move. The hook landed with a thwock, pinning his right hand to the table top. The man screamed. Svenson released the hook and kicked the chair out from under the man, who cried out again as he fell to the floor and drove more weight against his pinioned hand. Svenson dropped the satchel and swung the chair as hard as he could at the nearest man from the fire, already charging at him. The chair struck the man’s outstretched arms cruelly and broke his momentum. Stepping aside like a bullfighter—or how he imagined a bullfighter might step—Svenson swung again, this time across the fellow’s head and shoulders. The chair snapped to pieces and the man went down. The first man was still shrieking. Lorenz was bawling for help. The second man from the fire had charged. Svenson dashed away toward the rack of pans—beyond the rack was a heavy butcher block. Svenson dove to it as he felt the man’s hands take hold of his jacket. There was a row of knives but his grasping hand could not reach them. The man pulled him away and spun him around, driving an elbow across his jaw. Svenson was knocked into the butcher block with a grunt, the edge slamming across his arching back with a vicious impact. His hand groped behind him and caught some handle, some tool, and he whipped it forward at the man, just as a fist slammed into his stomach. Svenson doubled over, but his own blow struck hard enough to cause his opponent to stumble back. The Doctor looked up, gasping for breath. He was holding a heavy wooden mallet for tenderizing meat, the flat hammer head cut into sharp wooden spikes for quicker, deeper work. Blood trickled down the staggered fellow’s head. Svenson swung again, landing square on the ear, and the man went down.

He looked to Lorenz. The man at the table was still pinned, his face white and drawn. Doctor Lorenz dug furiously at his cloak, glaring at Svenson with hatred. If he could get that bandolier! Svenson heaved himself back toward the table, raising the mallet. The pinned man saw him coming and dropped to his knees with another scream. Lorenz’s face contorted with effort and he finally freed his prize—a small black pistol! The Doctors stared at each other for a brief suspended moment.

“You’re as persistent as bed lice!” hissed Lorenz.

“You’re all doomed,” whispered Svenson. “Every one of you.”

“Ridiculous! Ridiculous! ”

Lorenz extended his arm, taking aim. Svenson threw the hammer into the line of glass vials, smashing them utterly, and flung himself to the floor. Lorenz cried out with dismay—both at the ruined experiment and the broken glass flying up at his face—and the bullet sailed across the room to splinter the far door. Svenson felt the satchel under his hand and once more snatched it up. Lorenz fired again but Svenson had the luck to trip on a pan (screaming himself at yet another searing jolt to his ankle) and so was no longer where Lorenz had aimed. He reached the door and burst through—a third shot splitting the wood near his head—stumbled into the hall, slipped, and sat down hard in a heap. Behind him Lorenz bellowed like a bullock. Svenson lurched across the main hall to another passage, in hopes that he might find Lord Vandaariff’s trophy room…before his stuffed head took up a place of honor in it.

He limped blindly down the corridor, seeing no doors, his anxiety rising toward paralysis as he realized what he had just done—the compressed savagery, the calculated mayhem. What had happened to him—potting men from the catwalk as if they were unfeeling targets, murdering the helpless fellows through the mirror, and now this awful slaughter in the kitchens—and he had done it all so easily, so capably, as if he were a seasoned killer—as if he were Cardinal Chang. But he was not Chang—he was not a killer—already his hands were shaking and face slick with cold sweat. He stopped, leaning heavily against the wall, his mind suddenly assailed by the image of the poor man’s hand, pinned like a pale flipping fish. Doctor Svenson’s throat rose and he looked about him for an urn, a pot, a plant, found nothing, and forced his gorge down by strength of will, the taste of bile sharp in his mouth. He could not go on, careening from collision to collision, with no longer the slightest idea of what he sought. He needed to sit, to rest, to weep—any respite, however brief. All around him were the sounds of guests and preparations, music, footsteps—he must be very near the ballroom. With a grateful groan he spied a door, small, plain, unlocked, prayed with all his bankrupt faith that the room was empty, and slipped inside.

He stepped into darkness, closed the door and immediately barked his shin, tripped, and set off an echoing clatter that seemed to take minutes to die. He froze, waiting…breathed in the silent dark…there were no other noises from within the room…and nothing from the hallway. He exhaled slowly. The clatter was wooden, wooden poles…mops, brooms…he was in a maids’ closet.

Doctor Svenson carefully set down the satchel and groped around him to either side. He felt shelves—one of which he’d kicked—and his hands moved cautiously, not wanting to knock anything else to the floor. His fingers sought quickly, moving from shelf to shelf until his right hand slipped over and then into a wooden box, full of slick, tubular objects…candles. He plucked one from the box and then continued his search for a box of matches—surely they would be in the same place. In fact, the box was on the next shelf down, and crouching, Svenson carefully struck a match by feel—how often had he done the same in the darkness of a ship at night?—in a stroke transforming his little chamber of mystery into a mundane catalog of house management: soap, towels, brass polish, buckets, mops, brushes, brooms, dusters, pans, smocks, vinegar, wax, candles…and, he blessed the thoughtful maid who put it there, a tiny stool. He shifted his body and turned, sitting so he faced the door. A very thoughtful maid…for stuck into the wall near the door was a small loop of chain on a nail, made to slip around the knob and serve as a lock—but only usable from within the closet. Svenson made the chain fast and saw, near the box of matches, a cleared foot of shelf marked with melted wax—the place for occupants to place their candles. He’d ducked into someone’s sanctuary, and made it his own. Doctor Svenson shut his eyes and allowed his fatigue to slump his shoulders. If only the maid had left a stash of tobacco.

It would be terribly simple to fall asleep, and he knew it was a real possibility. With a grimace he forced himself to sit up straight, and then—why did it keep slipping his mind?—he remembered the satchel, fetching it onto his lap. He untied the clasp and fished out the contents, a thick sheaf of parchment, densely covered with finely written notes. He leafed through the stack…angling the pages so they caught more candlelight.

He read, quickly, his eyes skimming from line to line, and then from that page to the next, and to the next again. It was a massive narrative of acquisition and subterfuge, and clearly from the pen of Robert Vandaariff. At first Svenson recognized just enough of the names and places to follow the geographical path of finance—money houses in Florence and Venice, goods brokers in Vienna, in Berlin, fur merchants in Stockholm, then diamond traders in Antwerp. But the closer he read—and the more he flipped back and forward between the pages to re-sort out the facts (and which initials stood for institutions—“RLS” being Rosamonde Lacquer-Sforza not, as he’d first suspected, Rotterdam Liability Services, a major insurer of overseas shipping)—the more he understood it was a narrative with two conjoined threads: a steady campaign of leverage and acquisition, and a trail of unlikely individuals, like islands in a stream, determining each in their way how the money flowed. But more than anything what cried out to the Doctor were the many references to his country of Macklenburg.

It was quite clear that Vandaariff had undergone protracted negotiations, both openly and through a host of intermediaries, to purchase an enormous amount of land in the Duchy’s mountain district, with an ever-present emphasis on mining rights. This confirmed what Svenson had guessed from the reddish earth at the Tarr Manor quarry, that the Macklenburg hills were even richer in deposits of indigo clay. It also confirmed Vandaariff’s knowledge of this mineral as a commodity—its special properties and the insidious uses to which they might be put. Finally, it convinced him again, as he had thought two days ago, that Robert Vandaariff had been very much personally involved in this business.

Bit by bit Doctor Svenson identified the other major figures in the Cabal, noting how each one entered Vandaariff’s tale of conquest. The Contessa appeared by way of the Venetian speculation market, and it was through her that Lord Robert became acquainted in Paris with the Comte d’Orkancz as someone who could initially—and discreetly—advise him on the purchase of certain antiquities from a recently discovered underground Byzantine monastery in Thessalonika. But this was a ruse, for the Comte was truly enlisted to study and verify the characteristics of certain mineral samples that Lord Vandaariff had apparently acquired in secret from the same Venetian speculators. Yet he was surprised to see no mention, as far as he could tell, of Oskar Veilandt, from whose alchemical studies so much of the conspiracy’s work seemed to spring. Could Vandaariff have known Veilandt (or suborned him) for so long that he saw no need to mention the man? It made no sense, and Svenson flipped ahead to see if the painter was mentioned later, but the narrative quickly branched out to tales of exploration and diplomacy, from scientists and discoverers at the Royal Institute who were also invited to study these samples, the resources of industry given over to certain experiments in fabrication (here Doctor Lorenz and Francis Xonck first appeared), and then to Macklenburg proper, with the subtle interactions between Lord Vandaariff, Harald Crabbé, and their Macklenburg contact—of course, Svenson rolled his eyes—the Duke’s dyspeptic younger brother, Konrad, Bishop of Warnemünde.

With these agents in motion and his money behind them, Vandaariff’s plans moved ahead seamlessly, using the Institute to locate the deposits, Crabbé to negotiate for the land with Konrad, who acted as an agent for the cash-poor aristocratic property holders. But in a twist he saw there was more to it, for instead of gold, Konrad was selling the land in exchange for contraband munitions supplied by Francis Xonck. The Duke’s brother was amassing an arsenal—to assert control of Karl-Horst upon his inheritance. Svenson smiled at the irony. Unbeknownst to Konrad the Cabal had used him, enabling him to essentially import a secret army that, once they ruled by proxy through the Prince’s soon-to-arrive infant son (and necessarily managed Konrad’s death), they could use themselves to defend their investment—whereas bringing in foreign troops would have provoked an uprising. It was exactly the sort of stratagem that made Vandaariff’s reputation. And moving between them all were the Comte and the Contessa. For Svenson could see what Vandaariff had not, that as much as the financier imagined himself the architect of this scheme, in fact he was merely its engine. The Doctor had no doubt the Contessa and the Comte had set it all in motion from the start, manipulating the great man. The exact point where they joined forces with the others—whether they had been in league before or after Vandaariff had recruited them—was unclear, but he sensed immediately why they had all agreed to turn on their benefactor. Vandaariff uncontrolled could dictate the profit to them all…with him in thrall, the whole of his wealth lay at their disposal.

There was much Svenson didn’t understand—still no mention of Veilandt, for one, and how exactly had the Cabal managed to overcome Vandaariff, who was fully his powerful self the night of the engagement party? Could that have been why Trapping had been killed—that he had threatened to tell Vandaariff what was in store for him? But then why did at least some of the Cabal seem ignorant of Trapping’s killer? Or did Trapping threaten to tell Vandaariff about the Comte’s plans for Lydia, if Lord Robert had not known already? But no, what did Vandaariff’s feelings matter if the man was going to be made their slave in any case? Or had Trapping discovered something else—something that implicated one member of the Cabal against the others? But which one—and what was their secret?

Svenson’s head was already swimming with too many names and dates and places and figures. He returned to the pages of tightly scrawled text. So much had happened within Macklenburg itself that he’d never even glimpsed. The roots of the conspiracy had worked their way deeper and deeper, amassing property and influence and, he shook his head to read it, doing whatever they needed to acquire more. There were fires, blackmail, threats, even murder…even…how long had this been going on? It seemed like years…he read of experiments—“usefully serving both scientific and practical purposes”—where disease had been introduced into districts where the tenants would not sell.

Doctor Svenson’s blood went cold. Before him were the words “blood fever.” Corinna…could it be that these people had killed her…killed hundreds…infected his cousin…in order to drive down the price of land?

He heard steps outside his door. Quickly and quietly he stuffed the pages back into the satchel and blew out the light. He listened…more steps…was that speaking? Music? If only he knew where exactly he was in the house! He scoffed—if only he had a loaded weapon, if only his body was not a painful wreck—he might as well wish for wings! Doctor Svenson covered his eyes with his palm. His hand trembled…his own immediate danger…the need to find the others…the Prince—but it was all thrown to pieces with the idea—no, the truth, he had no doubt at all—that this same business, these same people, had—casually, offhandedly, uncaringly—murdered his Corinna. It was as if he could no longer feel his own body, but was somehow suspended above it, commanding his limbs but not inhabiting them. All this time spent wrestling and railing against cruel destiny and a heartless world—and now to find these forces embodied not in the dispassionate course of a disease but in the deliberate handiwork of men. Doctor Svenson put his hand over his mouth to stifle a sob. It had been preventable. It needn’t have happened at all.

He wiped his eyes and exhaled with a shuddering whisper. It was too much to bear. Certainly it was too much to bear in a closet. He unlooped the chain from the knob and opened the door, stepping out into the corridor before his nerves got the better of him. All around—visible to either side through open archways—were guests, masked, cloaked. He met the eyes of a cloaked man and woman and smiled, bowing his head. They returned the bow, their expressions a mix of politeness and horror at his appearance. Taking advantage of the moment, the Doctor quickly beckoned them to him with a finger. They paused, the traffic continuing to flow about them, all in the direction of the ballroom. He motioned again, a bit more conspiratorial, with an inviting smile. The man took a step closer, the woman holding his hand. Svenson gestured once more, and the man finally left the woman’s grasp and came near.

“I beg your pardon,” whispered Svenson. “I am in the service of the Prince of Macklenburg, who you must know is engaged to Miss Vandaariff”—he indicated his uniform—“and there has been an intrigue—indeed, violence—you will see it on my face—”

The man nodded, but it was clear this seemed as much a reason to run from Svenson as to trust him.

“I need to reach the Prince—he will be with Miss Vandaariff and her father—but as you can see, there is no way for me to do this in such a crowd without causing distress and uproar, which I assure you would be dangerous for everyone concerned.” He looked either way and dropped his voice even lower. “There may still be confidential agents at large—”

“Indeed!” replied the man, visibly relieved to have something to say.

“I am told they have captured one!”

Svenson nodded knowingly. “But there may be others—I must deliver my news. Is there any way—I am dreadfully hesitant to ask—but is there any way you could see fit to lend me your cloak? I will certainly mention your name to the Prince—and his partners, of course, the Deputy Minister, the Comte, the Contessa—”

“You know the Contessa?” the man hissed, risking a guilty glance back to the woman waiting in the archway.

“O yes.” Svenson smiled, leaning closer to the man’s ear. “Would you care for an introduction? She is incomparable.”

With the black cloak covering his uniform and its stains of blood, smoke, and orange dust, and the black mask he’d taken from Flaüss, the Doctor plunged into the crowd moving toward the ballroom, shouldering through as brusquely as he dared, responding to any complaint in muttered German. He looked up and saw the ballroom ceiling through the next archway, but before he could reach it heard raised voices—and then above them all a sharp, commanding cry.

“Open the doors!”

The Contessa’s voice. The bolts were pulled and then a sharp hiss of alarm came from those up front who could see…and then an unsettled, daunted silence. But who had arrived? What had happened?

He shoved forward with even less care for decorum until he passed the final archway and entered the ballroom. It was thronged with guests who pushed back at him as he came, as if they made room for someone in the center of the chamber. A woman screamed, and then another—each cry quickly smothered. He threaded his way through the palpably disturbed crowd to reach a ring of Dragoons, and then through a gap between red-coated troopers saw the grim face of Colonel Aspiche. Doctor Svenson immediately turned away and found, in the circle itself, the Comte d’Orkancz. He twisted past one more ring of spectators and stopped dead.

Cardinal Chang crouched on his hands and knees, insensible, drooling. Above him stood a naked woman, for all the world like an animated sculpture of blue glass. The Comte led her by a leather leash linked to a leather collar. Svenson blinked, swallowing. It was the woman from the greenhouse—Angelique!—at any rate it was her body, it was her hair…His mind reeled at the mere implications of what d’Orkancz had done—much less how he had done it. His eyes went back to Chang with dismay. Was it possible he’d seen greater distress than Svenson himself? The man was a ruin, his flesh slick and pale, spattered with blood, his garish coat slashed and stained and burned. Svenson’s gaze darted past Chang to a raised dais…all of his enemies in a row: the Contessa, Crabbé (but no Bascombe, that was odd), Xonck, and then his own Karl-Horst, arm in arm with the blonde woman from the theatre—as he had feared, Lydia Vandaariff was as much a tool for the Cabal’s cruel usage as her father.

Another rolling whisper, like the hiss of incoming surf, and the crowd parted to allow two more women to enter the circle behind Chang. The first was simply clad in a dark dress, with a black mask and black ribbon in her hair. Behind her was a woman with chestnut hair wearing the white silk robes. It was Miss Temple. Chang saw her and pushed himself up on his knees. The woman in black pulled away Miss Temple’s mask. Svenson gasped. She bore the scars of the Process vividly imprinted on her face. She said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye Svenson saw Aspiche, a truncheon in his hand. His arm flashed down and Chang fell flat to the floor. Aspiche motioned to two of the Dragoons and pointed them toward where the women had entered.

Chang was dragged away. Miss Temple did not pay him a single glance.

His allies were shattered. One overborne physically, the other mentally, and—he had to face it—both beyond hope of rescue or recovery. And if Miss Temple had been taken, what but death or the same servitude could have been dealt to Elöise? If only he hadn’t abandoned them—he had failed again—all one disaster after another! The satchel…if he could get the satchel into the hands of some other government—at the least someone else would know…but standing in the thick of the crowded ballroom, Doctor Svenson knew this was just one more vain hope. There was scant chance of escaping the house much less of reaching the frontier or a ship…he had no idea what to do. He looked up at the dais, narrowing his eyes at the simpering Prince. If he’d a pistol he would have stepped forth to blaze away—if he could kill the Prince and another one or two of them, it would have been enough…but even that sacrificial gesture was denied.

The voice of the Contessa broke into his thoughts.

“My dear Celeste,” she called, “how fine it is that you have…joined us. Mrs. Stearne, I am obliged for your timely entrance.”

The woman in black sank into a respectful curtsey.

“Mrs. Stearne!” called the rasping voice of the Comte d’Orkancz. “Do you not wish to see your transformed companions?”

The great man gestured behind him and Svenson was jostled as his fellow guests twisted and craned to see two more gleaming blue women, also naked, also wearing collars, step slowly and deliberately into view, their feet clicking against the parquet floor. Each woman’s flesh was shining and bright, transparent enough to show darker streaks of murky indigo within its depths. Both women held in their hands a folded-up leash, and as they neared the Comte each extended her hand for him to take…and, once he did, stood gazing over the crowd with clinical dispassion. The woman nearest him…he swallowed…the hair on her head—in fact, as he looked, he realized with an uncomfortable frisson up the back of his neck that this was the only hair on her body—had been burned above her left temple…the operating theatre…the paraffin…he was looking at Miss Poole. Her body was both beautiful and inhuman—the splendid tension of its surface, glassy yet somehow soft—Svenson’s skin crawled to look at it, yet he could not turn away, and, appalled, felt his lust begin to stir. And the third woman—it was hard to read their features, but it could only be Mrs. Marchmoor.

The Comte tugged lightly on Miss Poole’s leash, and she advanced toward the woman in black. Suddenly that woman’s head lolled to the side and she staggered, her eyes dulled. What had happened? Miss Poole turned toward Svenson’s side of the crowd. He inched away from her strange eyes, for it was as if they could see to his bones. At once his knees trembled and for a terrible moment the entire room fell away. Svenson was on a settee in a darkened parlor…his hand—a delicate woman’s hand—was stroking Mrs. Stearne’s unbound hair as, on that lady’s other side, a masked man in a cloak leaned over to kiss her mouth. The gaze of Miss Poole (the vision was from her experience, like the blue glass cards, or like the books…she was a living book!) turned slightly as, with her other hand, she reached for a glass of wine—her arm in a white robe like Miss Temple’s, in fact, both women wore the same silk robes of initiation!—but then the parlor snapped away and Svenson was back in the ballroom, fighting the first stirrings of nausea in his throat. All around him, the other guests were shaking their heads, dazed. What violation was this—the effect of the glass cards projected across the audience at large—into every mind!

Doctor Svenson desperately groped to make sense of it—the cards, the Process, the books, and now these women, like three demonic Graces—there was no time! He thought he understood the rest, the Process and the books, for blackmail and influence were standard things, even on such an evil scale, but this—this was alchemy, and he could not comprehend it any more than he could imagine why anyone would give themselves over to such—such—abomination!

The Comte was saying something else to Mrs. Stearne—and to the Contessa, and the Contessa was replying—but he could not follow their words, the insistent vision still muddied his brain. Svenson stumbled into the equally disoriented people behind him, then turned to force his way through the crowd, away from his enemies, away from Miss Temple. He did not get seven steps before his mind reeled with another vision…a vision of himself!

He was back at Tarr Manor, facing Miss Poole on the quarry steps, Crabbé scuttling free, the men racing at him, beating aside his feeble blows and snatching him bodily up—and then hurling him over the rail. Again, he was plunged into Miss Poole’s experience—of watching his own defeat!—and so immediate that he felt in his nerves the ethereal glide of Miss Poole’s amusement at his pathetic efforts.

Svenson gasped aloud, coming back to his senses, on his hands and knees on the parquet floor. People were backing away from him, making room. This is what had happened to Chang. She had sensed him somehow in the crowd. He scrambled wildly to rise, but was rebuffed by the hands around him and propelled against his will toward the center of the room.

He slipped again and fell, flailing with the satchel. It was over. Yet—something…he fought to think—ignoring everything—there were shouts, steps…but Doctor Svenson shook his head, holding on—to—to what he had just seen! In Miss Poole’s first vision—of Mrs. Stearne—the man on the settee had been Arthur Trapping, his face marked with the fresh scars of the Process. The memory was of the evening he had died—the very half hour before his murder…and as Miss Poole turned her head to collect her wine, Svenson had seen on the far wall a mirror…and in that mirror, watching from the shadow of a half-open doorway…the unmistakable figure of Roger Bascombe.

He could not help it. He turned his desperate face to Miss Temple, his heart breaking anew to meet her flat indifferent gaze. Aspiche ripped the satchel from his hand and Dragoons took fierce hold of his arms. The Colonel’s truncheon swept savagely down and Doctor Svenson was dragged without ceremony to his doom.