Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

TEN Inheritrix

The Comte d’Orkancz had led them all—Miss Temple, Miss Vandaariff, Mrs. Stearne, and the two soldiers—up the darkened rampway into the theatre. It was as desolate of good feeling as Miss Temple had remembered and her gaze fell upon the empty table with its dangling straps and the stack of wooden boxes beneath it, some pried open, spilling sheets of orange felt, with a dread that nearly buckled her knees. The Comte’s iron hand had kept hold of Miss Temple’s shoulder and he looked behind to confirm they had all arrived before he passed her off with a nod to Mrs. Stearne, who stepped forward between the two white-robed women, taking a hand from each and squeezing. Despite her deeply rooted anger, Miss Temple found herself squeezing back, for she was finally very frightened, though she prevented herself from actually glancing at the woman. The Comte set his monstrous brass helmet onto one of the table’s rust-stained cotton pads (or was that dried blood?) and crossed to the giant blackboard. With swift broad strokes he inscribed the words in bold capital letters: “AND SO SHALL BE REBORN”. The writing struck Miss Temple as strangely familiar, as if she recognized it from some place other than this same blackboard on her previous visit. She bit her lip, for the matter seemed somehow important, but she could not call up the memory. The Comte dropped the chalk into the tray and turned to face them.

“Miss Vandaariff shall be first,” he announced, his voice again sounding crafted of rough minerals, “for she must take her place in the celebration, and to do so must be sufficiently recovered from her initiation. I promise you, my dear, it is but the first of many pleasures on your card for this gala evening.”

Miss Vandaariff swallowed and did her best to smile. Where a few moments ago her spirits had been gay, the combination of the room and the Comte’s dark manner had obviously rekindled her worry. Miss Temple thought they would have kindled worry in the iron statue of a saint.

“I did not know this room was here,” Lydia Vandaariff said, her voice quite small. “Of course there are so many rooms, and my father…my father…is most occupied—”

“I’m sure he did not think you’d an interest in science, Lydia.” Mrs. Stearne smiled. “Surely there are storerooms and workrooms you’ve never seen as well!”

“I suppose there must be.” Miss Vandaariff nodded. She looked out beyond the lights to the empty gallery, hiccuped unpleasantly and covered her mouth with one hand. “But will there be people watching?”

“Of course,” said the Comte. “You are an example. You have been such all your life, my dear, in the service of your father. Tonight you serve as one for our work and for your future husband, but most importantly, Miss Vandaariff, for your self. Do you understand me?”

She shook her head meekly that she did not.

“Then this is still more advantageous,” he rasped, “for I do assure you…you will.”

The Comte reached under his leather apron and removed a silver pocket watch on a chain. He narrowed his eyes and tucked the timepiece away.

“Mrs. Stearne, will you stand away with Miss Vandaariff?”

Miss Temple took a breath for courage as Caroline released her hand and ushered Lydia to the table. The Comte looked past them to nod at the two Macklenburg soldiers.

Before Miss Temple could move the men shot forward and held her fast, raising her up so she stood on the very tips of her toes. The Comte removed his leather gauntlets, tossing them one after the other into the upturned brass helmet. His voice was as deliberate and menacing as the steady strop of a barber’s razor.

“As for you, Miss Temple, you will wait until Miss Vandaariff has undergone her trial. You will watch her, and this sight will increase your fear, for you have utterly, utterly lost your very self in this business. Your self will belong to me. And worse than this, and I tell you now so you may contemplate it fully, this gift, of your autonomy to my keeping, will be made willingly, happily…gratefully…by you. You will look back with whatever memories you keep at the willful gestures of these last days and they will seem the poor antics of a child—or not even, the actions of a disobedient lap-dog. You will be ashamed. Trust this, Miss Temple, you will be reborn in this room, contrite and wise…or not at all.”

He stared at her. Miss Temple did not—could not—reply.

The Comte snorted, then reached for the pocket watch again and frowned, stuffing it back behind the apron.

“There was a disturbance in the outer hallway—” Mrs. Stearne began.

“I am aware of it,” rumbled the Comte. “Nevertheless, this…lateness—the prospective adherents are sure to be waiting already. I begin to think it was a mistake not to send you—”

He turned at the sound of an opening door from the opposite rampway and strode to it.

“Have you an inkling of the time, Madame?” he roared into the darkness, and marched back to the table, crouching amidst the boxes beneath it. Behind him, stepping up from the darkened rampway, was the figure of a short curvaceous young woman with curling dark brown hair, a round face, and an eager smile. She wore a mask of peacock feathers and a shimmering pale dress the color of thin honey, sporting a silver fringe around her bosom and her sleeves. Her arms were bare, and in her hands she carried several dull, capped metal flasks. Miss Temple was sure she had seen her before—it was an evening for nagging suspicions—and then it came to her: this was Miss Poole, the third woman in the coach to Harschmort, initiated to the Process that night.

“My goodness, Monsieur le Comte,” Miss Poole said brightly. “I am perfectly aware of it, and yet I assure you there was no helping the delay. Our business became dangerously protracted—”

She stopped speaking as she saw Miss Temple.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Celeste Temple—I believe you have met,” snapped the Comte. “Protracted how?”

“I shall tell you later.” Miss Poole let her gaze drift to Miss Temple, indicating none too subtly the reason she preferred not to speak openly of her delay, then turned to wave girlishly at Mrs. Stearne. “Suffice it to say that I simply had to change my dress—that orange dust, don’t you know—though before you rail at me, it took no more time than Doctor Lorenz took to prepare your precious clay.”

Here she handed the flasks to the Comte and once again danced away from the man toward Miss Vandaariff, lighting up with another beaming smile.

“Lydia!” she squeaked, and took the heiress by the hands as Mrs. Stearne looked on with what to Miss Temple seemed a watchful, veiling smile.

“O Elspeth!” cried Miss Vandaariff. “I came to see you at the hotel—”

“I know you did, my dear, and I am sorry, but I was called away to the country—”

“But I felt so ill—”

“Poor darling! Margaret was there, was she not?”

Miss Vandaariff nodded silently and then sniffed, as if to say that she did not prefer to be soothed by Margaret, as Miss Poole was well aware.

“Actually, Miss Temple was there first,” observed Mrs. Stearne rather coolly. “She and Lydia had quite some time to converse before Mrs. Marchmoor was able to intervene.”

Miss Poole did not reply, but looked over to Miss Temple, weighing her as an adversary. Returning this condescending gaze, Miss Temple remembered the petty struggle in the coach—for it was Miss Poole’s eyes she had poked—and knew that humiliation would remain, despite the Process, in the woman’s mind like a whip mark turned to scar. For the rest of it, Miss Poole had just that sort of willfully merry temperament Miss Temple found plain galling to be around, as if one were to consume a full pound of sweet butter at a sitting. Both Mrs. Marchmoor (haughty and dramatic) and Mrs. Stearne (thoughtful and reserved) appeared to be informed by injuries in their lives, where Miss Poole’s insistence on gaiety seemed rather a shrill denial. And to Miss Temple’s mind all the more repellent, for if she posed as Lydia’s true friend, it was only to better ply their awful philtre.

“Yes, Lydia and I got on quite well,” Miss Temple said. “I have taught her how to poke the eyes of foolish ladies attempting to rise beyond themselves.”

Miss Poole’s smile became fixed on her face. She glanced back at the Comte—still occupied with the boxes and flasks and lengths of copper wire—and then called to Mrs. Stearne, loud enough for all to hear.

“You did miss so much of interest at Mr. Bascombe’s estate—or should I say Lord Tarr? Part of our delay involved the capture and execution of the Prince’s physician, Doctor—O what is his name?—a strange fellow, now quite dead, I’m afraid. The other part was one of our subjects; her reaction to the collection was averse but not fatal, and she ended up causing, as I say, rather an important problem—though Doctor Lorenz is confident it may be remedied…”

She glanced back to the Comte. He had stopped his work and listened, his face impassive. Miss Poole pretended not to notice and spoke again to Mrs. Stearne, a sly smile gracing the corners of her plump mouth.

“The funny thing, Caroline—and I thought you would be particularly interested—is that this Elöise Dujong—is tutor to the children of Arthur and Charlotte Trapping.”

“I see,” said Caroline, carefully, as if she did not know what Miss Poole intended with this comment. “And what happened to this woman?”

Miss Poole gestured to the darkened rampway behind her. “Why, she is just in the outer room. It was Mr. Crabbé’s suggestion that such spirited defiance be put to use, and so I have brought her here to be initiated.”

Miss Temple saw she was now looking at the Comte, pleased to be giving him information he did not have.

“The woman was intimate with the Trappings?” he asked.

“And thus of course the Xoncks,” Miss Poole said. “It was through Francis that she was seduced to Tarr Manor.”

“Did she reveal anything? About the Colonel’s death, or—or about—” With an uncharacteristic reticence, the Comte nodded toward Lydia.

“Not that I am aware—though of course it was the Deputy Minister who interrogated her last.”

“Where is Mr. Crabbé?” he asked.

“Actually, it is Doctor Lorenz you should be seeking first, Monsieur le Comte, for the damage the woman has done—if you will remember who else was attending our business at Tarr Manor—is such that the Doctor would very much appreciate your consultation.”

“Would he?” snarled the Comte.

“Most urgently.” She smiled. “If only there were two of you, Monsieur, for your expertise is required on so many fronts! I do promise that I will do my best to ferret out any clues from this lady—for indeed it seems that a good many people might have wished the Colonel dead.”

“Why do you say that, Elspeth?” asked Caroline.

Miss Poole kept her gaze on the Comte as she replied. “I only echo the Deputy Minister. As someone in between so many parties, the Colonel was well-placed to divine…secrets.”

“But all here are in allegiance,” said Caroline.

“And yet the Colonel is dead.” Miss Poole turned to Lydia, who listened to their talk with a confused half-smile. “And when it is a matter of secrets…who can say what we don’t know?”

The Comte abruptly snatched up his helmet and gloves. This caused him to step closer to Miss Poole—who quite despite herself took a small step backwards.

“You will initiate Miss Vandaariff first,” he growled, “and then Miss Temple. Then, if there is time—and only if there is time—you will initiate this third woman. Your higher purpose here is to inform those in attendance of our work, not to initiate per se.”

“But the Deputy Minister—” began Miss Poole.

“His wishes are not your concern. Mrs. Stearne, you will come with me.”

“Monsieur?”

It was quite clear that Mrs. Stearne had thought to remain in the theatre.

“There are more important tasks,” he hissed, and turned as two men in leather aprons and helmets came in dragging a slumped woman between them.

“Miss Poole, you will address our spectators, but do not presume to operate the machinery.” He called up to the dark upper reaches of the gallery. “Open the doors!”

He wheeled and was at the rampway in two strides and was gone.

Mrs. Stearne looked once at Miss Temple and then to Lydia, her expression tinged with concern, and then met the smiling face of Miss Poole whose dashing figure had just—in her own opinion at least—somehow turned Mrs. Stearne, in her plain severe dark dress, from her place.

“I’m sure we shall speak later,” said Miss Poole.

“Indeed,” replied Mrs. Stearne, and she swept after the Comte.

When she was gone Miss Poole flicked her hand at the Comte’s two men. Above them all the door had opened and people were flowing into the gallery, whispering at the sight below them on the stage.

“Let us get dear Lydia on the table. Gentlemen?”

Throughout Miss Vandaariff’s savage ordeal the two soldiers from Macklenburg held Miss Temple quite firmly between them. Miss Poole had stuffed a plug of cotton wadding into Miss Temple’s mouth, preventing her from making a sound. Try as she might to shift the foul mass with her tongue, her efforts only served to dislodge moistened clots at the back of her mouth that she then worried she might swallow and choke upon. She wondered if this Dujong woman had been with Doctor Svenson at the end. At the thought of the poor kind man Miss Temple blinked away a tear, doing her best not to weep, for with a sniffling nose she’d have no way to breathe. The Doctor…dying at Tarr Manor. She did not understand it—Roger had been on the train to Harschmort, he was not at Tarr Manor. What was the point of anyone going there? She thought back to the blue glass card, where Roger and the Deputy Minister had been speaking in the carriage…she had assumed Tarr Manor was merely the prize with which Roger had been seduced. Was it possible it was the other way around—that the need for Tarr Manor necessitated their possession of Roger?

But then another nagging thought came to Miss Temple—the last seconds of that card’s experience—metal-banded door and the high chamber…the broad-shouldered man leaning over the table, on the table a woman…that very card had come from Colonel Trapping. The man at the table was the Comte. And the woman…Miss Temple could not say.

These thoughts were driven from her head by Lydia’s muffled screams, the shrieking machinery, and the truly unbearable smell. Miss Poole stood below the table, describing each step of the Process to her audience as if it were a sumptuous meal—every moment of her smiling enthusiasm belied by the girl’s arching back and clutching fingers, her red face and grunts of animal pain. To Miss Temple’s lasting disgust, the spectators whispered and applauded at every key moment, treating the entire affair like a circus exhibition. Did they have any idea who lay in sweating torment before them—a beauty to rival any Royal, the darling of the social press, heiress to an empire? All they saw was a woman writhing, and another woman telling them how fine a thing it was. It seemed to her that this was Lydia Vandaariff’s whole existence in a nutshell.

Once it was over however, Miss Temple chided herself bitterly. She did not think she actually could have broken from the two soldiers, but she was certain that this period of sparking, ghastly chaos was the only time she might have had a chance. Instead, as soon as the Comte’s men unstrapped Lydia and eased her limp form from the table—the unctuous Miss Poole whispering eagerly into the shattered girl’s ear—the soldiers stepped forward and hefted Miss Temple into her place. She kicked her legs but these were immediately caught and held firmly down. In a matter of helpless seconds she was on her back, the cotton pads beneath her hot and damp from Lydia’s sweat, the belts cinched close across her waist, neck, and bosom and each limb tightly bound. The table was angled so those in the gallery could see the whole of her body, but Miss Temple could only see the glare of the hot paraffin lamps and an indistinct mass of shadowed faces—as uncaring to her condition as those waiting with empty plates are to the frightened beast beneath the knife.

She stared at Lydia as the tottering young woman—sweat-sheened face, hair damp against the back of her neck, eyes dull and mouth slack—was briskly examined by Miss Poole. With a tremor Miss Temple thought of the defiant course of her short life—itself a litany of governesses and aunts, rivals and suitors, Bascombes and Pooles and Marchmoors…she would now join them, edges stripped away, her velocity set to their destinations, her determination yoked like an ox to work in someone else’s field.

And what had she wanted instead? Miss Temple was not without insight and she saw how genuinely free the Process had made both Marchmoor and Poole, and—she did not frankly doubt it—how Lydia Vandaariff would now find her will of steel. Even Roger—her breath huffed around the gag with a plangent whine as his visage crossed her inner eye—she knew had been formerly restrained by a decency rooted in fear and timid desire. It did not make them wise—she had only to recall the way Roger could not reconcile her present deeds with the fiancée he had known—but it made them fierce. Miss Temple choked again as the cotton wadding nudged the slick softness at the back of her throat. She was already fierce. She required none of this nonsense, and if she’d carried a man’s strength and her father’s horsewhip these villains would as one be on their knees.

But in addition Miss Temple realized—barely listening to Miss Poole’s disquisition—that so much of this struggle came down to dreams. Mrs. Marchmoor had been released from the brothel, Mrs. Stearne from fallow widowhood, and Miss Poole from a girlish hope to marry the best man within reach…which was all to say that of course she understood. What they did not understand—what no one understood, from her raging father to her aunt to Roger to the Comte and the Contessa with their wicked violations—was the particular character of her own desires, her own sunbaked, moist-aired, salt-tinged dreams. In her mind she saw the sinister Annunciation fragments of Oskar Veilandt, the expression of astonished sensation on Mary’s face and the gleaming blue hands with their cobalt nails pressing into her giving flesh…and yet she knew her own desire, however inflamed at the rawness of that physical transaction, was in truth elsewhere configured…her colors—the pigments of her need—existed before an artist’s interposition—crumbled, primal minerals and untreated salts, feathers and bones, shells oozing purple ink, damp on a table top and still reeking of the sea.

Such was Miss Temple’s heart, and with it beating strong within her now she felt no longer fear, but near to spitting rage. She knew she would not die, for their aim was corruption—as if to skip the act of death completely and leap ahead to the slow decomposition of her soul, through worms that they would here place in her mind. She would not have it. She would fight them. She would stay who she was no matter what—no matter what—and she would kill them all! She snapped her head to the side as one of the Comte’s attendants loomed over her and replaced her white mask with the glass and metal goggles, pushing them tight so the black rubber seal sucked fast against her skin. She whined against the gag, for the metal edges pressed sharply and were bitter cold. Any moment the copper wires would surge with current. Knowing that agony was but seconds away, Miss Temple could only toss her head again and decide with all the force of her will that Lydia Vandaariff was a weakling, that it would not be difficult at all, that she should thrash and scream only to convince them of their success, not because they made her.

Into the theatre two soldiers brought this Miss Dujong, slumped and unresponsive, and deposited her onto the floor. The unfortunate woman had been bundled into the white robes, but her hair hung over her face and Miss Temple had no clear picture of her age or beauty. She gagged again on the wadding in her mouth and pulled at the restraints.

They did not pull the switch. She cursed them bitterly for toying so. They would die. Every one of them would be punished. They had killed Chang. They had killed Svenson. But this would not be the end…Miss Temple was not prepared to allow—

The straps around her head were fast, but not so tight that she did not hear the gunshots…then angry shouts from Miss Poole—and then more shots and Miss Poole’s voice leapt from outrage to a fearful shriek. But this was shattered by a crash that shook the table itself, another even louder chorus of screams…and then she smelled the smoke and felt the heat of flame—flame!—on her bare feet! She could not speak or move, and the thick goggles afforded only the most opaque view of the darkening ceiling. What had happened to the lights? Had the roof fallen in? Had her “gunshots” actually been exploding joists from an unsound ceiling? The heat was sharper on her feet. Would they abandon her to burn alive? If they did not, if she pretended to be injured they would not hold her tightly—a stout push and she could run the other way…but what if her captors had already fled and left her behind to burn?

A hand groped at her arm and she twisted to take hold of whoever it was—she could not turn her head, she could not see through the thickening smoke—and squeeze—they must free her, they must! She curled her toes away from the rising flames, biting back a cry. The hand pulled away and her heart fell—but a moment later hands fumbled at the belt. She was a fool—how could the fellow free her if she held his arm? After another desperately distended moment the strap gave way and her hands were free. Her rescuer’s attention dropped to her feet and without a thought Miss Temple’s hands flew to her face, ripping at the mask. She found the release screw—for she had felt the point from which the thing was tightened—and scraped her finger tearing it loose. The goggles fell away and Miss Temple caught a handful of copper wire and sat up, dangling the contraption behind her like a medieval morning star, ready to bring it down on the head of whatever conscience-stricken functionary had thought to save her.

He’d managed the other straps and she felt the man’s arms snake under her legs and behind her back to scoop her from the table and set her feet down on the floor. Miss Temple snorted at the presumption—the silk robes might as well have been her shift, a shocking intimacy no matter the circumstance—and raised her hand to swing the heavy goggles (which bore all sorts of jagged metal bolts that might find vicious purchase), while with her other hand she pried the sopping gag from her mouth. The smoke was thick—across the table the flames flickered into view, an orange line dividing gallery from stage and blocking off the far rampway, where she could hear shouts and see figures looming in the murk. She took a lungful of foul air and coughed. Her rescuer had his hand around her waist, his shoulder leaning close. She took aim at the back of his head.

“This way! Can you walk?”

Miss Temple stopped her swing—the voice—she hesitated—and then he pulled her down below the line of smoke. Her eyes snapped open, both in unlooked-for delight at the man she found before her, and at the desperately stricken image that man presented, as if he had indeed crawled up through hell to find her.

“Can you walk?” Doctor Svenson shouted again.

Miss Temple nodded, her fingers releasing the goggles. She wanted to throw her arms around his shoulders and would have done that very thing had he not then pulled her arm and pointed to the other woman—Dujong?—who had come from Tarr Manor and was now hunched against the curved wall of the theatre with the Doctor’s coat thrown across her legs.

“She cannot!” he shouted above the roaring flames. “We must help her!”

The woman looked up to them as the Doctor took her arm and duty-bound Miss Temple took her other side. They lifted her with an awkward stumble—in the back of her mind Miss Temple was entirely unsure—in fact, annoyed—about the choice to adopt this new companion, though at least now the woman was able to move and mutter whatever she was muttering to Doctor Svenson. Hadn’t Miss Poole described her as “seduced by Francis Xonck”? Wasn’t she some sort of adherent possessing privileged information? The last thing Miss Temple desired was the company of such a person, any more than she appreciated the Doctor’s earnest frown of concern as he brushed the hair from the woman’s sweat-smeared face. Behind them she heard steps and a piercing wave of sharp hissing—buckets emptied into the fire—and then coughed at the roiling smoky steam that billowed into their faces. The Doctor leaned across the Dujong woman to call to her.

“—Chang! There is a—machine—the Dragoon—do not—glass books!”

Miss Temple nodded but even apart from the noise the information was too thick to make sensible in her mind—too many other sensations crowded for her attention—hot metal and broken wood beneath her bare feet, with one hand under the woman’s arm and the other out before her, feeling in the gloom. What had happened to the lights? From the once-blazing array she saw but one distracted orange glow, like a weak winter sun unable to reach through fog—what had happened to Miss Poole? Doctor Svenson turned—there was motion behind them—and thrust his half of the woman wholly onto Miss Temple, who stumbled forward. His hand was shoving at her, driving her on. In the shadows she saw Doctor Svenson extend a revolver toward their pursuers and heard him shout.

“Go! Go at once!”

Never one to misunderstand her own immediate needs, Miss Temple dipped her knees, threw the burdensome woman’s arm over her shoulder and then stood straight with a grunt, Miss Temple’s other hand around her waist, doing her best to carry what weight she could, rolling on her tiptoes away from the wall to stumble down the rampway, hoping the slope would create enough momentum to keep Miss Dujong propelled. They slammed into the far wall at the curve, both of them crying out (the bulk of the impact absorbed by the taller woman’s shoulder), careened backwards and wavered, nearly toppling, until Miss Temple managed to angle them along the next part of the pitch-black passage. Her feet caught on something soft and both women went down in a heap, their fall broken by the inert body that had tripped them. Miss Temple’s groping hand fell onto leather—the apron—this was one of the Comte’s attendants—and then into a sticky trail on the floor that must be his blood. She wiped her hand on the apron and got her feet beneath her and her hands under the arms of Miss Dujong, heaving her over the body. She heaved her again—Miss Temple huffed with the knowledge that she simply was not meant for this sort of work—and felt in front of her for the door. It was not locked, nor did the fallen man block its opening. With another gasp she pulled Miss Dujong through its bright archway, into light and cool sweet air.

She dragged the woman as far as she could onto the carpet with one sustained burst of effort, until her legs caught beneath her and she tripped, sitting down. On her hands and knees Miss Temple crawled back to the open door and looked for any sign of Doctor Svenson. Smoke seeped into the room. She did not see him, and slammed the door, leaning against it to catch her breath.

The attiring room was empty. She could hear the commotion in the theatre behind her, and racing footsteps in the mirrored hall on the other side. She looked down to her charge, presently attempting to rise to her hands and knees, and saw the blacked soles of the woman’s bare feet and the singed, discolored silk at the hem of her robes.

“Can you understand me?” Miss Temple hissed impatiently. “Miss Dujong? Miss Dujong.”

The woman turned to her voice, hair across her face, doing her best to move in the awkward robe that, with Doctor Svenson’s greatcoat, was tangling her legs. Miss Temple sighed and crouched in front of the woman, doing her best to give an impression of kindness and care, knowing well there was precious little time—or, to be honest, feeling—for either.

“My name is Celeste Temple. I am a friend of Doctor Svenson. He is behind us—he will catch up, I am sure—but if we do not escape his efforts will be wasted. Do you understand me? We are at Harschmort House. They are keen to murder us both.”

The woman blinked like a rock lizard. Miss Temple took hold of her jaw.

“Do you understand?”

The woman nodded. “I’m sorry…they…” Her hand fluttered in a vague and indefinite gesture. “I cannot think…”

Miss Temple snorted and then, still gripping her jaw, sorted the woman’s hair from her face with brisk darts of her fingers, tucking away the wisps like a bird stabbing together its nest. She was older than Miss Temple—in her presently haggard condition it was unfair to guess by how many years—and as she allowed herself to be held and groomed, there emerged in her features a delicate wholeness with which Miss Temple grudgingly found a certain reluctant sympathy.

“Not thinking is perfectly all right.” Miss Temple smiled, only a little tightly. “I can think for the pair of us—in point of fact I should prefer it. I cannot however walk for the pair of us. If we are to live—to live, Miss Dujong—you must be able to move.”

“Elöise,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Elöise.”

“Excellent. That will make everything much easier.”

Miss Temple did not even risk opening the far door, for she knew the corridor beyond would be full of servants and soldiers—though why they did not come at the fire through this room she had no idea. Could the prohibition against entering such a secret room—one that so obviously loomed in the Cabal’s deepest designs—carry over in the staff to even this time of crisis? She turned back to Elöise, who was still on her knees, holding in her arms a savaged garment—no doubt the dress she had arrived in.

“They have destroyed it,” Miss Temple told her, crossing past to the open cabinets. “It is their way. I suggest you turn your head…”

“Are you changing clothes?” asked Elöise, doing her best to stand.

Miss Temple pushed aside the open cabinet doors and saw the wicked mirror behind. She looked about her and found a wooden stool.

“O no,” she replied, “I am breaking glass.”

Miss Temple shut her eyes at the impact and flinched away, but all the same the destruction was enormously satisfying. With each blow she thought of another enemy—Spragg, Farquhar, the Contessa, Miss Poole—and at every jolting of her arms her face glowed the more with healthy pleasure. Once the hole was made, but not yet wide enough to pass through, she looked back at Miss Dujong with a conspiratorial grin.

“There is a secret room,” she whispered, and at Miss Dujong’s hesitant nod wheeled round to swing again. It was the sort of activity that could easily have occupied another thirty minutes of her time, chipping away at this part and at that, knocking free each hanging shard. As it was, Miss Temple called herself to business, dropped the stool, and carefully stepped back to Elöise’s tattered dress. Between them they spread it across their path to absorb at least what fallen glass it could, and made their way through the mirror. Once in, Miss Temple gathered the dress and, balling it in her hands, threw it back across the room. She looked a last time at the inner door, her worry grown at the Doctor’s non-arrival, and reached for the cabinet doors on either side, pulling them to conceal the open mirror. She turned to Elöise, who clutched the poor man’s coat close to her body.

“He will find us,” Miss Temple told her. “Why don’t you take my arm?”

They did not speak as they padded along the dim carpeted passageway, their pale, smoke-smeared faces and their silken robes made red in the lurid gaslight. Miss Temple wanted to put as much distance as she could between themselves and the fire, and only then address escape and disguise…and yet at each turn she looked back and listened, hoping for some sign of the Doctor. Could he have effected their rescue only to sacrifice himself—and what was more, maroon her with a companion she neither knew nor had reason to trust? She felt the weight of Elöise on her arm and heard again his urgent words to go, go at once…and hurried forward.

Their narrow path came to a crossroads. To the left it went on, the dead-end wall ahead of them was fitted with a ladder rising into a darkened shaft, while to the right was a heavy red curtain. Miss Temple cautiously reached out with one finger and edged the curtain aside. It was another observation chamber, looking into a rather large, empty parlor. If she truly wanted to evade pursuit, the last thing she needed to do was leave a second broken mirror in her trail. She stepped back from the curtain. Elöise could not climb the ladder. They kept walking to the left.

“How do you feel?” Miss Temple asked, putting as much hearty confidence as she could into a stealthy whisper.

“Palpably better,” answered Elöise. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Not at all,” said Miss Temple. “You know the Doctor. We are old comrades.”

“Comrades?” Miss Dujong looked at her, and Miss Temple saw disbelief in the woman’s eyes—her size, her strength, the foolish robes—and felt a fresh spike of annoyance.

“Indeed.” She nodded. “It would perhaps be better if you understood that the Doctor, myself, and a man named Cardinal Chang have joined forces against a Cabal of sinister figures with sinister intent. I do not know which of these you know—the Comte d’Orkancz, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Francis Xonck”—this name offered rather pointedly with a rise of Miss Temple’s eyebrows—“Harald Crabbé, the Deputy Foreign Minister, and Lord Robert Vandaariff. There are many lesser villains in their party—Mrs. Marchmoor, Miss Poole—whom I believe you know—Caroline Stearne, Roger Bascombe, far too many Germans—it’s all quite difficult to summarize, of course, but there is apparently something about the Prince of Macklenburg and there is a great deal to do with a queer blue glass that can be made into books, books that hold—or consume—actual memories, actual experiences—it’s really quite extraordinary—”

“Yes, I have seen them,” whispered Elöise.

“You have?” Miss Temple’s voice was tinged with disappointment, for she found herself suddenly eager to describe her own astonishing experience to someone else.

“They exposed each of us to such a book—”

“Who ‘they’?” asked Miss Temple.

“Miss Poole, and Doctor…Doctor Lorenz.” Elöise swallowed. “Some of the women could not bear it…they were killed.”

“Because they would not look?”

“No, no—because they did look. Killed by the book itself.”

“Killed? By looking in the books?”

“I do believe it.”

“I was not killed.”

“Perhaps you are very strong,” answered Elöise.

Miss Temple sniffed. She rarely discredited flattery, even when she knew the point of the moment lay elsewhere (as when Roger had praised her delicacy and humor at the same time that his hand around her waist sought to wander exploratively southward), but Miss Temple had pulled herself from the book, by her own power—an achievement even the forever condescending Contessa had remarked upon. The idea that the opposite was possible—that she could have been swallowed utterly, that she could have perished—sent a brittle shiver down her back. It would have been absolutely effortless, true—the contents of the book had been so seductive. But she had not perished—and what was more, Miss Temple felt fully confident that should she look into another of these books its hold would be even weaker, for as she had pulled free once, she would know she could do so again. She turned back to Elöise, still unconvinced of the woman’s true character.

“But you must be strong as well, of course, as a person our enemies sought to add to their ranks—just as you were brought to Tarr Manor to begin with. For this is why we wear these robes, you know—to initiate our minds into their insidious mysteries, a Process to bend our wills to their own.”

She stopped and looked down at herself, plucking at the robes with both hands.

“At the same time, though I would not call it practical, the feel of silk against one’s body is nevertheless…well…so…”

Elöise smiled, or at least made the attempt, but Miss Temple saw the woman’s lower lip hesitantly quiver.

“It is just…you see, I do not remember…I know I went to Tarr Manor for a reason, but for my life I cannot call it to mind!”

“It is best we keep on our way,” Miss Temple said, glancing to see if the quivering lip had been followed by tears, and breathing with relief that it had not. “And you can tell me what you do remember of Tarr Manor. Miss Poole mentioned Francis Xonck, and of course Colonel Trapping—”

“I am tutor to the Colonel’s children,” said Elöise, “and known to Mr. Xonck—indeed, he has been most attentive ever since the Colonel disappeared.” She sighed. “You see, I am a confidante of Mr. Xonck’s sister, the Colonel’s wife—I was even present here, at Harschmort House, the night the Colonel disappeared—”

“You were?” asked Miss Temple, a bit abruptly.

“I have asked myself if I inadvertently witnessed some clue, or overheard some secret—anything to entice Mr. Xonck to curiosity, or that he might use against his siblings, or even to conceal his own part in the Colonel’s death—”

“Is it possible you knew who had killed him or why?” asked Miss Temple.

“I have no idea!” cried Elöise.

“But if those memories are gone, then it follows they must have been worth taking,” observed Miss Temple.

“Yes, but because I learned something I should not have? Or because I was—there is no other word—seduced to even take part?”

Elöise stopped, her hand over her mouth, tears gleaming in each eye. The woman’s despair struck Miss Temple as real, and she knew as well as anyone—after her experience of the book—how temptation might sway the sternest soul. If she could not remember what she’d done, if she was here stricken with regret, did the truth of it really matter? Miss Temple had no idea—no more than she might parse the relative state of her own bodily innocence. For the first time she allowed a gentle nudge of pity to enter her voice.

“But they did not enlist you,” she said. “Miss Poole told the Comte and Caroline that you were quite a nuisance.”

Elöise exhaled heavily and shrugged Miss Temple’s words away. “The Doctor rescued me from an attic, and then was taken. I followed, with his gun, and tried to rescue him in turn. In the process—I’m sorry, it is difficult to speak of it—I shot a man. I shot him dead.”

“But that is excellent, I’m sure,” replied Miss Temple. “I have not shot anyone, but I have killed one man outright and another by way of a cooperative coach wheel.” Elöise did not reply, so Miss Temple helpfully went on. “I actually spoke of it—well, as much as one speaks of anything—with Cardinal Chang, who you must understand is a man of few words—indeed, a man of mystery—the very first time I laid eyes upon him I knew it was so—granted, this was because he was wearing all red in a train car in the very early morning holding a razor and reading poetry—and wearing dark spectacles, for he has suffered injury to his eyes—and though I did not know him I did remark him, in my mind, and when I saw him again—when we became comrades with the Doctor—I knew who he was at once. The Doctor said something about him—about Chang—just now, I mean to say, in the theatre—I didn’t make sense of any of it for that abominable shouting and the smoke and the fire—and do you know, it is a queer thing, but I have noticed it, how at times the extremity of, well, information, assaulting one of our senses overwhelms another. For example, the smell and the sight of the smoke and flames absolutely inhibited my ability to hear. It is exactly the sort of thing I find fascinating to think on.”

They walked for a moment before Miss Temple recalled the original drift of her thought.

“But—yes—the reason I spoke to Cardinal Chang—well, you see, I must explain that Cardinal Chang is a dangerous man, a very deadly fellow—who has probably killed a man more often than I have purchased shoes—and I spoke to him about the men I had killed, and—well, honestly it was very difficult to talk about, and what he ended up telling me was exactly how someone like myself ought to use a pistol—which was to grind the barrel as tightly into the body of your target as you can. Do you see my point? He was telling me what to do as a way of helping me sort out how to feel. Because at the time, I had no idea how to talk of anything. Yet these things that have happened—they tell us what kind of world we are in, and what sort of actions we must be prepared to take. If you had not shot this fellow, would either yourself or the Doctor be still alive? And without the Doctor to take me off that table, would I?”

Elöise did not answer. Miss Temple saw her wrestling with her doubts and knew from experience that to overcome those doubts and accept what had occurred was to become a significantly less innocent person.

“But this was the Duke of Stäelmaere,” Elöise whispered. “It is assassination. You do not understand—I will assuredly hang!”

Miss Temple shook her head.

“The men I killed were villains,” she said. “And I am sure this Duke was the same—most Dukes are simply horrid—”

“Yes, but no one will care—”

“Nonsense, for I care, as you care, as I am sure Doctor Svenson cared—it is the exact heart of the matter. What I do not give a brass farthing for is the opinion of our enemies.”

“But—the law—their word will be believed—”

Miss Temple gave her opinion of the law with a dismissive shrug.

“You may well have to leave—perhaps the Doctor can take you back to Macklenburg, or you can escort my aunt on a tour of Alsatian restaurants—but there is always a remedy. For example—look how foolish we are, waltzing along who knows where without a second’s thought!”

Elöise looked behind them, gesturing vaguely. “But—I thought—”

“Yes, of course.” Miss Temple nodded. “We will surely be pursued, but have either of us had the presence of mind to look through the Doctor’s pockets? He is a resourceful man—one never knows—my father’s overseer would not step foot from his door, as a rule, without a knife, a bottle, dried meat, and a twist of tobacco that could fill his pipe for a week.” She smiled slyly. “And who can say—in the process it may afford a glimpse into the secret life of Doctor Svenson…”

Elöise spoke quickly. “But—but I am sure there is no such thing—”

“O come, every person has some secrets.”

“I do not, I assure you—or at least nothing indecent—”

Miss Temple scoffed. “Decent? What are you wearing? Look at you—I can see your legs—your bare legs! What use is decency when we have been thrust into this peril—treading about without even a corset! Are we to be judged? Do not be silly—here.”

She reached out and took the Doctor’s coat, but then wrinkled her nose at its condition. The ruddy light might hide its stains but she could smell earth and oil and sweat, as well as the strongly unpleasant odor of indigo clay. She batted at it ineffectually, launching little puffs of dust, and gave up. Miss Temple dug into the Doctor’s side pocket and removed a cardboard box of cartridges for his revolver. She handed it to Elöise.

“There—we now know he is a man to carry bullets.”

Elöise nodded impatiently, as if this were against her wishes. Miss Temple met her gaze and narrowed her eyes.

“Miss Dujong—”

“Mrs.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Mrs. Mrs. Dujong. I am a widow.”

“My condolences.”

Elöise shrugged. “I am well accustomed to it.”

“Excellent. The thing is, Mrs. Dujong,” Miss Temple’s tone was still crisp and determined, “in case you had not noticed, Harschmort is a house of masks and mirrors and lies, of unscrupulous, brutal advantage. We cannot afford illusion—about ourselves least of all, for this is what our enemies exploit most of all. I have seen notorious things, I promise you, and notorious things have been done to me. I too have undergone—” She lost her way and could not speak, taken unawares by her own emotion, gesturing instead with the coat, shaking it. “This is nothing. Searching someone’s coat? Doctor Svenson may have given his life to save us—do you think he would scruple the contents of his pockets if they might help us further—or help us to save him? It is no time to be a foolish woman.”

Mrs. Dujong did not answer, avoiding Miss Temple’s gaze, but then nodded and held out her hands, cupping them to take whatever else might come from the coat pockets. Working quickly—despite the pleasure it gave her, Miss Temple was not one to continue with criticism once her point was made—she located the Doctor’s cigarette case, matches, the other blue card, an extremely filthy handkerchief, and a mixed handful of coins. They gazed at the collection and with a sigh Miss Temple began to restore them to their places in the coat—for that seemed the simplest way to carry them.

“After all of that, it appears you are right—I do not think we have learned a thing.” She looked up to see Elöise studying the silver cigarette case. It was simple and unadorned save for, engraved in a simple, elegant script, the words “Zum Kapitänchirurgen Abelard Svenson, vom C. S.”

“Perhaps it commemorates his promotion to Captain-Surgeon,” whispered Elöise.

Miss Temple nodded. She put the case back in its pocket, knowing they were both wondering at who had given it to him—a fellow officer, a secret love? Miss Temple draped the coat over her arm and shrugged—if the last initial was “S” it needn’t be interesting at all, most likely a dutiful token from some dull sibling or cousin.

They continued down the narrow red-lit passage, Miss Temple dispirited that the Doctor had not caught up, and a bit curious that no one else had pursued them either. She did her best not to sigh with impatience when she felt the other woman’s hand on her arm, and upon turning tried to present a tolerant visage.

“I am sorry,” Elöise began.

Miss Temple opened her mouth—the last thing she appreciated after berating a person was that they should then waste her time with apology. But Elöise touched her arm again and kept on speaking.

“I have not been thinking…and there are things that I must say—”

“Must you?”

“I was taken aboard the airship. They asked me questions. I do not know what I could have told them—in truth I know nothing that they cannot already know from Francis Xonck—but I do remember what they asked.”

“Who was it asking?”

“Doctor Lorenz gave me the drug, and bound my arms, and then he and Miss Poole made certain I was under their influence by the most impertinent demands…I was powerless to refuse…though I am ashamed to think of it…”

The woman’s voice dipped deeper in her throat. Miss Temple thought of her own experience at the mercy of the Comte and Contessa, and her heart went out—yet she could not help speculating on the exact details of what had happened. She patted the woman’s silk-covered arm. Elöise sniffed.

“And then Minister Crabbé interrogated me. About the Doctor. And about you. And about this Chang. And then about my killing the Duke—he would not believe I had not been put up to it by another party.”

Miss Temple audibly scoffed.

“But then he asked me—and in a voice that I do not think was heard by the others—about Francis Xonck. At first I thought he meant my employment by Mr. Xonck’s sister, but he wanted to know about Mr. Xonck’s plans now. Was I in service to him now. When I replied that I was not—or at least did not know—he asked about the Comte and the Contessa—especially about the Contessa—”

“It seems a long list,” replied Miss Temple, who was already impatient. “What about them exactly?”

“If they had killed Colonel Trapping. He was particularly suspicious of the Contessa, for I gather she does not always tell the others what she plans to do, or does things without caring how it may ruin their plans.”

“And what did you tell Deputy Minister Crabbé?” Miss Temple asked.

“Why, nothing at all—I knew nothing.”

“And his response?”

“Well, I do not know the man, of course—”

“If you were to hazard a guess?”

“That is just it…I should say he was frightened.”

Miss Temple frowned. “I do not mean to insult your former employer,” she said, “but from all accounts…well, it seems the Colonel is not exactly missed for his good qualities. Yet as you describe Deputy Minister Crabbé’s curiosity, so I heard the Comte d’Orkancz pressing Miss Poole for the same information—and indeed the Contessa and Xonck asking as well, in a coach from the station. Why should all of them care so much for such a, well…such a wastrel?”

“I cannot think they would,” said Elöise.

Whoever killed the Colonel defied the rest of the Cabal in doing so…or was it that they had already defied the Cabal—already planned to betray them? Somehow Trapping knew and was killed before he told the others! The Colonel still breathed when Miss Temple had left him: either he had just been poisoned or was poisoned directly afterwards. She had been on her way to the theatre…by the time she got there, the Comte was in the theatre…as was Roger—she’d watched Roger climb the spiral staircase before her. She had not seen Crabbé or Xonck—she’d no idea then who Xonck was—nor any of the Macklenburgers. But behind her—behind everyone and alone in the corridor…had been the Contessa.

Their passage came to an end. To one side was a third curtained alcove, and to the other was a door. They peeked around the curtain. This viewing chamber was dominated by a larger chaise draped with silken quilts and furs. In addition to the drinks cabinet and writing desk they had seen before, this room was fitted with a brass speaking tube and a metal grille that must allow for instructions to be relayed between each side of the mirror. It was not a room for observation alone, but for interrogation…or a more closely directed private performance.

The room that lay beyond the wall of glass was like no other Miss Temple had seen at Harschmort, but it might have disturbed her even more than the operating theatre. It was a pale room with a simple floor of unvarnished planking, lit by a plain hanging lamp that threw a circle of yellow light onto the single piece of furniture, a chaise identical to the one before them, distinguished by both an absence of silks and furs and the metal shackles bolted to its wooden frame.

But it was not for the chaise that upon looking through the mirror Miss Temple’s breath stopped fast, for in the open doorway of the room, looking down at its single piece of furniture, stood the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, red jewel-teared mask over her face and a smoking cigarette holder at her lips. She exhaled, tapped her ash to the floor and snapped her fingers at the open door behind her, stepping aside to allow two men in brown cloaks to carry in between them one of the long wooden boxes. She waited for them to pry open the box top with a metal tool and leave the room, before snapping her fingers again. The man who entered, his manner an awkward mix of deference and amused condescension, wore a dark uniform and a gold-painted mask over the upper half of his face. His pale hair was thin and his chin was weak, and when he smiled she saw his teeth were bad as well. On his finger however was a large gold ring…Miss Temple looked again at the uniform…the ring was a signet…this was Doctor Svenson’s Prince! She had seen him in the suite at the Royale—and had not recognized him at once in a more formal uniform and different mask. He sat on the chaise and called back to the Contessa.

They could not hear. Moving quietly to the brass grille, Miss Temple saw a small brass knob fitted to it. The knob did not pull, so she tried to turn it, moving ever so slowly if it should squeak. Its movement was silent, but suddenly they could hear the Prince.

“—gratified of course, most enthusiastically, though not surprised, you must know, for as the mighty among animals will recognize one another across an expanse of forest, so those in society matched by a natural superiority will similarly gravitate, it being only fitting that spirits united in an essential sympathy be followed by a sympathy of a more corporeal nature—”

The Prince was in the midst of unbuttoning the collar of his tunic. The Contessa had not moved. Miss Temple could not readily credit that such a man could be so shamelessly describing to such a woman the destined aspect of their imminent assignation—though she knew one could scarcely underestimate the arrogance of princes. Still, she pursed her lips with dismay at his droning prattle, as he all the while dug at the double row of silver buttons with a pale hooked finger. Miss Temple looked to Mrs. Dujong, whose expression was equally unsteady, and leaned her lips quite close against her ear.

“That is the Doctor’s Prince,” she whispered, “and the Contessa—”

Before she could say more the Contessa took another step into the room and closed the door behind her. At the sound the Prince paused, interrupting his words with an unhealthily gratified leer that revealed a bicuspid gone grey. He dropped a hand to his belt buckle.

“Truly, Madame, I have longed for this since the moment I first kissed your hand—”

The Contessa’s voice was loud and sharp, her words spoken clearly and without regard for sense.

“Blue Joseph blue Palace ice consumption.”

The Prince went silent, his jaw hanging open, his fingers still. The Contessa stepped closer to him, inhaled thoughtfully from her lacquered holder and let the smoke pour from her mouth as she spoke, as if upon exercising her hidden power she had become that much more demonic.

“Your Highness, you will believe you have had your way with me in this room. Though it would very much give you pleasure, you will be unable to convey this information to anyone else under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

The Prince nodded.

“Our engagement will have occupied your time for the next thirty minutes, so it will be impossible that I have in this time seen either Lydia Vandaariff or her father. During our encounter I have also confessed to you that the Comte d’Orkancz prefers the erotic companionship of boys. You will be unable to convey this information to anyone else either, though because of it you will not begrudge any request the Comte might have for unaccompanied visits to your bride. Do you understand?”

The Prince nodded.

“Finally, despite our encounter this evening, you will believe that upon this night you have taken the virginity of Miss Vandaariff, before you are married, so rapacious is your sexual appetite, and so little can she resist you. In the event she conceives, it is therefore entirely as a result of your own impulsive efforts. Do you understand?”

The Prince nodded. The Contessa turned, for at the door behind her came a gentle knock. She opened it a crack, and then, seeing who it was, wide enough for that person to enter.

Miss Temple put her hand over her mouth. It was Roger Bascombe.

“Yes?” asked the Contessa, speaking quietly.

“You wanted to know—I am off to collect the books from this night’s harvest, and meet the Deputy Minister—”

“And deliver the books to the Comte?”

“Of course.”

“You know which one I need.”

“Lord Vandaariff’s, yes.”

“Make sure it is in place. And watch Mr. Xonck.”

“For what?”

“I’m sure I do not know, Mr. Bascombe—thus the need to watch him closely.”

Roger nodded. His eyes glanced past the Contessa to the man on the chaise, who followed their words with an ignorant curiosity, like a cat captivated by a beam of light thrown from a prism. The Contessa followed Roger’s gaze and smirked.

“Tell the Comte this much is done. The Prince and I are in the midst of a torrid assignation, do you see?”

She permitted herself a throaty chuckle at the ridiculousness of that prospect and then sighed with contemplative pleasure, as if she were in the midst of a thought.

“It is a terrible thing when one is unable to resist one’s impulses…” She smiled to Bascombe and then called to the Prince. “My dear Karl-Horst, you are having your way with my body even now—your mind is writhing with sensation—you have never felt such ecstasy and you never will again. Instead you will always measure your future pleasure against this moment…and find it lacking.”

She laughed again. The Prince’s face was pink, his hips twitching awkwardly on the chaise, his nails scratching feebly at the upholstery. The Contessa glanced at Roger with a wry smile that to Miss Temple was confirmation that her ex-fiancé was just as much subject to this woman’s power as the Prince. The Contessa turned back to the man on the chaise.

“You…may…finish,” she said, teasing him as if he were a dog awaiting a treat.

At her words the Prince went still, breathing air in gulps, whimpering, both hands clutching the chaise. After what seemed to Miss Temple a very brief time, he exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagged from his effort, and the unpleasant smile returned to his face. He absently plucked at his darkening trousers and licked his lips. Miss Temple scoffed with abhorrence at the entire spectacle.

Her eyes snapped to the Contessa and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. The Contessa glared directly into the mirror. The speaking tube—the knob had been turned. Miss Temple’s scoff had been heard.

The Contessa barked harshly at Roger. “Someone is there! Get Blenheim! Around the other side—immediately!”

Miss Temple and Elöise stumbled back to their curtain as Roger dashed from sight and the Contessa strode toward them, her expression dark with rage. As she passed, the Prince attempted to stand and take her into his arms.

“My darling—”

Without a pause she struck him across the face, knocking him straight to his knees. She reached the mirror and screamed as if she could see their startled faces.

“Whoever you are—whatever you are doing—you will die!”

Miss Temple dragged Elöise by the hand through the curtain and to the nearby door. It did not matter where it went, they had to get out of the passage at once. Even wearing a half-mask the fury on the Contessa’s face had been that of a Gorgon, and as her hand tore at the doorknob Miss Temple felt her entire body trembling with fear. They barreled through the door and slammed it behind—and then both squealed with alarm at the brooding figure that loomed suddenly over them. It was only the back side of the door, covered by a striking, somber portrait in oils of a man in black with searching eyes and a cold thin mouth—Lord Vandaariff, for behind the figure rose the specter of Harschmort House. And yet, even as she continued to run, her heart in her mouth, Miss Temple recognized the painting as the work of Oskar Veilandt. But—was he not dead? And Vandaariff only in residence at Harschmort for two years? She groaned at the annoyance of not being able to pause and think!

As one she and Elöise cut through a strange ante-room of paintings and sculpture, its floor inlaid with mosaic. They could already hear approaching footsteps and dashed heedlessly in the other direction, careening around one corner and then another, until they reached a foyer whose flooring was slick black and white marble. Miss Temple heard a cry. They had been seen. Elöise ran to the left, but Miss Temple caught her arm and pulled her to the right, to a formidable dark metal door she thought they might close behind them to seal themselves off from pursuit. They rushed through, bare feet pattering across the marble and onto a landing of cold iron. Miss Temple thrust the coat at Elöise and shoved the woman toward a descending spiral staircase of welded steel while she tried to close the door. It did not move. She heaved again without success. She dropped to her knees, pried out the wooden wedge that had held it and then thrust the heavy door shut just as she heard footsteps echoing off the marble. The latch caught and she quickly dropped to her knees again and with both hands drove the wedge back under the door. She leapt after Mrs. Dujong, her pale feet soft and moist against the metal steps.

Being a spiral staircase, as the steps reached the iron column in the center they became quite narrow, and so because she was smaller Miss Temple felt it only fair she take the inside going down, half a step behind Elöise but holding on to her arm—as Elöise with her other hand held on to the rail. The metal staircase was very cold, especially so on their feet. Miss Temple felt as if she were scampering around the scaffolds and catwalks of an abandoned factory in her nightdress—which was to say it felt very like one of those strange dreams that always seemed to end up in unsettling situations involving people she but barely knew. Racing down the stairs, still genuinely amazed at this dark metal tower’s very existence—under the ground—Miss Temple wondered what new peril she had launched them into, for the pitiless tower struck her as the most unlikely wrinkle yet.

Was there someone behind—a noise? She pulled Elöise to a stop, patting her arm to indicate urgency and silence, and looked back up the stairs. What they heard was not footsteps from within the tower, but what seemed very much like footsteps—and scuffles and snippets of talk—outside of it. For the first time Miss Temple looked at the tower walls—also welded steel—and saw the queer little sliding slats, like the ones sometimes seen between a coach and driver. Elöise slid the nearest open. Instead of an open window, it revealed an inset rectangle of smoked glass through which they could see…and what they saw quite took their breath away.

They looked out and down from the top of an enormous open chamber, like an infernal beehive, walls ringed with tier upon tier of walled prison cells, into which they could gaze unimpeded.

“Smoked glass!” she whispered to Elöise. “The prisoners cannot see when they are spied upon!”

“And look,” her companion answered, “are these the new prisoners?”

Before their eyes, the upper tier of cells were filling up like theatre boxes with the elegantly dressed and masked guests of the Harschmort gala, climbing down through hatches in the cell roofs, setting out folding chairs, opening bottles, waving handkerchiefs to one another across the open expanse through fearsome metal bars—the whole as unlikely, and to Miss Temple’s mind inappropriate, as spectators perched in the vault of a cathedral.

So high were they that even pressing their faces angled down against the glass did not allow them to see the floor below. How many cells were there? Miss Temple could not begin to count how many prisoners the place might hold. As for the spectators, there seemed to be at least a hundred—or who knew, numbers not being her strongest suit, perhaps it was three—their mass emitting a growing buzz of anticipation like an engine accelerating to speed. The only clue to the purpose of the gathering, or indeed the cathedral itself, was the bright metal tubing that ran the height of the chamber, lashed together in bunches, emerging from the walls like creeping vines the width of a tree trunk. While Miss Temple was sure that the layers of cells covered the whole of the chamber, she could not see the lower tiers for all the metal pipes—which told her sensible mind that the pipes, not the cells, had become the main concern. But where were the pipes going and whatever substance did they hold?

Miss Temple’s head spun back, where a grating shove echoed down to them like a whip crack—someone was opening the wedged door. At once Miss Temple took Elöise’s arm and leapt ahead.

“But where are we going?” hissed Elöise.

“I do not know,” whispered Miss Temple, “take care we do not get tangled in that coat!”

“But”—Elöise, annoyed but obliging, shifted the coat higher in her arms—“the Doctor cannot find us—we are cut off! There will be people below—we are marching directly to them!”

Miss Temple simply snorted in reply, for about no part of this could anything be done.

“Mind your feet,” she muttered. “It is slippery.”

As they continued their descent, the noise above them grew, both from the spectators in their cells and then, with another sharp scraping exclamation of the door being forced, from their pursuers at the top of the tower. Soon there were hobnails clattering against the steel steps. Without a word to each other the women increased their speed, racing around several more turns of the tower—how far down could it extend?—until Miss Temple abruptly stopped, turning to Elöise, both of them out of breath.

“The coat,” she panted, “give it to me.”

“I am doing my best to carry it safely—”

“No no, the bullets, the Doctor’s bullets—quickly!”

Elöise shifted the coat in her arms, trying to find the right pocket, Miss Temple feeling with both hands for the bulky box, and then desperately digging it out and prying up the cardboard lid.

“Get behind me,” hissed Miss Temple, “keep going down!”

“But we have no weapon,” whispered Elöise.

“Exactly so! It is dark—and perhaps we can use the coat as a distraction—quickly, remove whatever else—the cigarette case and the glass card!”

She pushed past Elöise, and working as quickly as she could began to scatter the bullets across the metal steps, emptying the box and covering perhaps four steps with the metal cartridges. The bootsteps above them were audibly nearer. She turned to Elöise, impatiently motioning her to go on—quickly!—and snatched away the coat, spreading it out some three steps lower than her bullets, plumping and plucking at the sleeves to make as intriguing a shape as possible. She looked up—they could only be a turn above—and leapt down, lifting up her robes, legs flashing pale, darting away from view.

She had just caught up to Elöise when they heard a shout—someone had seen the coat—and then the first crash, and then another, the cries, and the echoing clamor of scattered bullets, flailing blades, and screaming men. They stopped to look above them, and Miss Temple had just an instant to apprehend a swift metallic slithering and see the merest flash of reflected light. With a squeak she flung herself at Elöise with all her strength, lifting their bodies just enough that they each sat on the handrail, buttocks poorly balanced but feet clear of the disembodied saber that scythed at them, as if the steps were made of ice, then bounced past to ring and spark its way to the bottom of the steps. The women tumbled off the rail, amazed at their own sudden escape, and continued down, the rage of confusion and gruesome injury clamorous above them.

The saber was a problem, Miss Temple thought with a groan, for its arrival below would surely alert whoever was there that something was wrong. Or perhaps not—perhaps it would run them through! She snorted at her own unquenchable optimism. She had no more clever ideas. They came round the final turn of the spiral and faced a landing as cluttered with boxes as a holiday foyer. To the right, leading out to the base of the great chamber, was an open door. To the left, another man with a brass helmet and leather apron crouched near an open hatchway, perhaps the size of a large coal furnace, set directly into the steel column that rose through the center of the staircase. The man carefully examined a wooden tray of bottles and lead-capped flasks that he had obviously pulled from the hatch and set down on the floor. Next to the hatch, affixed into the column, was a brass plate of buttons and knobs. The column was a dumbwaiter.

In the middle of the floor, its blade imbedded—presumably in silence, given the man’s inattention—in a discarded heap of packing straw, was the saber.

From the doorway marched a second helmeted man, walking directly past the pile of straw, to gather two wax-capped bottles, one bright blue, the other vibrant orange, and rush back through the door without another word. The women stood still, unconvinced they had yet to be seen—could the helmets so impede the men’s peripheral vision and muffle their hearing? Through the open door Miss Temple heard urgent commands, the sounds of work, and—she was quite certain—the voices of more than one woman.

From above them came the deliberate pinging of a kicked bouncing bullet, striking the steps and the wall in turn. The men above had resumed their descent. The bullet flew past them and bounced off of the stack of crates on the far wall, coming to rest on the floor near the man’s feet. He cocked his head and registered its unlikely presence. They were ruined.

Outside the door a man’s voice erupted into speech at such a volume that Miss Temple was bodily startled. She had never before heard such a human noise, not even from the roaring sailors when she’d crossed the sea, but this voice was not loud because of any extremity of effort—its normal tone was mysteriously, astonishingly, and disturbingly exaggerated. The voice belonged to the Comte d’Orkancz.

“Welcome to you all,” the Comte intoned.

The man in the helmet looked up. He saw Miss Temple. Miss Temple leapt down the final steps, dodging past.

“It is time to begin,” cried the Comte, “as you have been instructed!” From the cells above them—incongruously, fully the last thing Miss Temple would have ever expected—the gathered crowd began to sing.

She could not help it, but looked through the open door.

The tableau, for it was framed as such by the door in front and the silver curtain of bright shining pipes behind, was the operating theatre writ large, the demonic interests of the Comte d’Orkancz given full free rein—three examination tables. At the foot of each rose a gearbox of brass and wood, into which, as if one might slide a bullet into the chamber of a gun, one of the helmeted men inserted a gleaming blue glass book. The man with the two bottles stood at the head of the first table, pouring the blue liquid into the funneled valve of a black rubber hose. Black hoses coiled around the table like a colony of snakes, slick and loathsome, yet more loathsome still was the shape that lurked beneath, like a pallid larva in an unnatural cocoon. Miss Temple looked past to the second table and saw Miss Poole’s face disappear as an attendant strapped a ghoulish black rubber mask in place…and then to the final table, where a third man attached hoses to the naked flesh of Mrs. Marchmoor. Looking up at the cells was a final figure, mighty and tall, the mouth of his great mask dangling a thick, slick black tube, like some demonic tongue—the Comte himself. Perhaps one second had passed. Miss Temple reached out and slammed the door between them.

And just as suddenly she knew, this echoing vision provoking her memory of the final instant of Arthur Trapping’s blue glass card…the woman on its table had been Lydia Vandaariff.

Behind her Elöise screamed. The helmeted man’s arms took crushing hold around Miss Temple’s shoulders and slammed her into the newly shut door, then threw her to the ground.

She looked up to see the man holding the saber. Elöise seized one of the bottles of orange liquid from the tray and hefted her arm back, ready to hurl it at him. To the immediate shock of each woman, instead of running her through, the man stumbled back and then sprinted up the stairs as fast as the awkward helmet and apron would allow. All he needed was a set of bat’s wings, Miss Temple thought, to make a perfect shambling imp of hell.

The women looked at each other, baffled at their near escape. The platform door was shaken again from the outside, and the stairwell above them echoed with shouts from the running man—shouts that were answered as he met their initial pursuers. There was no time. Miss Temple took Elöise brusquely by the arm and shoved her toward the open hatch.

“You must get in!” she hissed. “Get in!”

She did not know if it had room for two, or even if the lift would carry their weight if there was, but nevertheless leapt to the brass plate of controls, forcing her tired mind—for her day had been more than full, and she had not eaten or drunk tea in the longest time—to make sense of its buttons…one green, one red, one blue, and a solid brass knob. Elöise folded her legs into the hatch, her mouth a drawn grim line, one hand a tight fist and the other still holding the orange bottle. The shouting above had turned and someone pounded on the outside door. At the green button the dumbwaiter lurched up. At the red, it went down. The blue did not seem to do a thing. She tried the green again. Nothing happened. She tried red, and it went down—perhaps a single inch, but all the way to the end.

The door to the platform shook on its hinges.

She had it. The blue button meant the dumbwaiter must continue its course—it was used to prevent needless wear on the engines caused by changing directions mid-passage. Miss Temple stabbed the blue button, then the green, and dove for the hatch, Elöise’s arms around her waist, gathering her quickly in, Miss Temple’s wriggling feet just barely slipping through the narrowing hatchway before they rose into the pitch-black shaft, their last view the black boots of Macklenburg soldiers limping down the final steps.

The fit was incredibly awkward and, after the initial relief that first they were indeed climbing and second the men had not stopped their way and third that she had not been sheared of any limbs, Miss Temple attempted to shift herself to a more comfortable position only to find that the effort ground her knees into her companion’s side, and Elöise’s elbow sharp against her ear. She turned her face the other way and found her ear pressed flat on the other woman’s chest, Elöise’s body warm and damp with perspiration, her flesh soft and the cushioned thrum of her heartbeat reaching Miss Temple despite the dumbwaiter’s clanking chains, like a precious secret risked by whisper in a crowded parlor. Miss Temple realized that her torso was curled between the other woman’s legs, legs drawn tightly up to Elöise’s chin, while her own legs were cruelly bent beneath them both. There had not been time to shut the hatch, and Miss Temple held her feet tucked with one arm—the other close around Elöise—so they did not, with the jarring of the dumbwaiter, accidentally pop out into the shaft. They did not speak, but after a moment she felt the other woman tug free an arm and then Miss Temple, already grateful despite herself for the comfort afforded by the unintended and therefore unacknowledged close contact with her companion’s body, felt the other woman’s hand smoothing her hair with soft and gentle strokes.

“At the top, they will try to reverse it before we can get out,” she whispered.

“They will,” agreed Elöise quietly. “You must get out first. I will push you.”

“And then I shall pull your feet.”

“That will be fine, I am sure.”

“What if there are more men?”

“It’s very possible.”

“We will surprise them,” observed Miss Temple quietly.

Elöise did not answer, but held the younger woman’s head to her bosom with an exhalation of breath that to Miss Temple was equal parts sweetness and sorrow, a mixture she did not completely understand. Such physical intimacy with another woman was unusual for Miss Temple, much less any emotional intimacy—but she knew that their adventures had already hastened a connection to each other, as a telescope eliminated the distance between a ship and the shore. It was the same with Chang and Svenson, men who she in truth knew not at all yet felt were the only souls in the world she could rely on or even—and this surprised her, for to form the thought was to place the events of the recent days within the context of her whole life—care about. She had never known her mother. Miss Temple wondered—self-conscious and rapidly becoming less sure of herself, as this was no time to drift into reckless contemplation or indulgent feeling—if her present sensations of warm flesh, of life, of contact, and, for the space of their isolated climb at least, unquestioned care resembled what having a mother might be like. Her cheeks flushing at the exposure of her frailty and her desire, Miss Temple burrowed her face into the crook between the woman’s arm and bosom and let out a sigh that by its end left her entire body shuddering.

They rose in the darkness until the car lurched to a stop without warning. The door slid open and Miss Temple saw the astonished faces of two men in the black servants’ livery of Harschmort, one having slid open the door and the other holding another wooden tray of flasks and bottles. Before they could close the door and before the men below could call the car back down, she kicked both feet—the soles of which she knew were filthy as any urchin’s—vigorously in their faces, driving them back out of disgust if not fear. With Elöise shoving her from behind, Miss Temple shot out the door, screaming at the men like a mad thing, hair wild, face smeared with soot and sweat and then, her eyes desperately looking for it, lunged to the brass control panel, stabbing the green button that kept the car in place.

The men looked at her with their mouths open and expressions darkening, but their response was cut short as their gaze was pulled to Elöise clambering out, feet first, silk robes rising up to the very tops of her pale thighs as she scooted forward and revealing her own pair of small silk pants, the split seam gaping for one dark, flashing instant that rooted both men to the spot before she slid her upper body free and landed awkwardly on her knees. In her hand was the bottle of bright orange fluid. At the sight of it the men took another step back, their expressions shifting in a trice from curious lust to supplication.

The moment Elöise was clear Miss Temple released the button and stepped directly to the man without the tray and shoved him with both of her hands and all of her strength back into the man who held it. Both servants retreated tottering through the metal door and onto the slick black and white marble, their attention focused solely on not dropping any of their precious breakables. Miss Temple helped Elöise to her feet and took the orange bottle from her. Behind them the dumbwaiter clanked into life, disappearing downward. They dashed into the foyer, but the servants, recovered somewhat, would not let them past.

“What do you think you’re doing?” shouted the one with the tray, nodding urgently at the bottle in Miss Temple’s hand. “How did you get that? We—we could—we all could have—”

The other simply hissed at her. “Put that down!”

“You put it down,” Miss Temple snapped. “Put down the tray and leave! Both of you!”

“We will do no such thing!” snapped the man with the tray, narrowing his eyes viciously. “Who are you to give orders? If you think—just because you’re one of the master’s whores—”

“Get out of the way!” the other man hissed again. “We have work to do! We will be whipped! And you’ve made us wait again for the dumbwaiter!”

He tried to edge around them toward the tower door, but the man with the tray did not move, glaring with a rage that Miss Temple knew arose from injured pride and petty stakes.

“They will not! They’re not going anywhere! They need to explain themselves—and they’ll do it to me or to Mr. Blenheim!”

“We don’t need Blenheim!” his partner hissed. “The last thing—for God’s sake—”

“Look at them,” said the man with the tray, his expression growing by the moment more ugly. “They’re not at any of the ceremonies—they’re running away—why else was she screaming?”

This thought penetrated the other man, and in a pause both studied the two less-than-demurely-clad women.

“If we stop them I wager we’ll be rewarded.”

“If we don’t get this work done we’ll be sacked.”

“We have to wait for it to come back up anyway.”

“We do…do you reckon they’ve stolen those robes?”

Throughout this fatiguing dialog, Miss Temple debated her course, edging farther from the door, half-step by half-step, as the two men hesitated and bickered—but she could see that they were about to be ridiculous and manly, and so she must act. In her hand was the orange bottle, which evidently held some appallingly violent chemical. If she broke it over one of their heads, it was probable that both men would be incapacitated and they could run. At the same time, the way everyone flinched from it, like schoolgirls from a spider, she could not depend that once shattered it might not—by fumes, perhaps—afflict herself and Elöise. Further, the bottle was an excellent weapon to keep for a future crisis or negotiation, and anything of value Miss Temple much preferred to possess rather than spend. But whatever she did must be decisive enough to forestall these fellows’ pursuit, for she was deeply annoyed at all this seemingly endless running.

With a dramatic gesture Miss Temple drew back the bottle and with a cry brought her arm forward, as if to break it over the head of the man who held the tray and who—because of the tray—could not raise his own hands to ward off the blow. But such was the threat of the bottle that he could not stop his hands from trying and as Miss Temple’s arm swept down he lost his grip on the tray, which dropped to the marble floor with a crash, its contents of bottles and flasks smashing and bursting against each other with an especially satisfying clamor.

The men looked up at her, both hunched at the shoulders against the impact of her blow, their faces gaping at the fact that Miss Temple had never released—had never intended to release—the orange bottle. At once the gazes of all four dropped to the tray, whose surface erupted with hissing and steaming and a telltale odor that made Miss Temple gag. This odor was not, as she would have anticipated, the noxious indigo clay, but one that brought her back to the coach at night as she struggled free of Spragg’s heavy spurting body—the concentrated smell of human blood. Three of the broken flasks had pooled together and in their mixture transformed—there was no other way to say it—into a shining bright arterial pool that spilled from the tray onto the floor in a quantity larger than the original fluids—as if the combination of chemicals not only made blood, but made more of it, gushing like an invisible wound across the marble tile.

“What is this nonsense?”

All four looked up at the flatly disapproving voice that came from the doorway behind the two men, where a tall fellow with grizzled whiskers and wire spectacles stood holding in his arms an army carbine. He wore a long dark coat, whose elegance served to make his balding head appear more round and his thin-lipped mouth more cruel. The servants immediately bowed their heads and babbled explanations.

“Mr. Blenheim, Sir—these women—”

“We were—the dumbwaiter—”

“They attacked us—”

“Fugitives—”

Mr. Blenheim cut them off with the finality of a butcher’s cleaver.

“Return this tray, replace its contents, and deliver them at once. Send a maid to clean this floor. Report to my quarters when you are finished. You were told of the importance of your task. I cannot answer for your continued employment.”

Without another word the men snatched up the dripping tray and trotted past their master, hanging their heads obsequiously. Blenheim sniffed once at the smell, his eyes flitting over the bloody pool and then back to the women. His gaze paused once at the orange bottle in Miss Temple’s hand, but betrayed no feeling about it either way. He gestured with the carbine.

“You two will come with me.”

They walked in front of him, directed at each turn by blunt monosyllabic commands, until they stood at an aggressively carved wooden door. Their captor looked about him quickly and unlocked it, ushering them through. He followed them in, showing a surprising swiftness for a man of his size, and once more locked the door, tucking the key—one of many on a silver chain, Miss Temple saw—back into a waistcoat pocket.

“It will be better to speak in isolation,” he announced, looking at them with a cold gaze that in its flat and bland nature belied a capacity for pragmatic cruelty. He shifted the carbine in his hand with dangerous ease.

“You will put that bottle on the table next to you.”

“Would you like that?” asked Miss Temple, her face all blank politeness.

“You will do it at once,” he answered.

Miss Temple looked about the room. Its ceilings were high and painted with scenes of nature—jungles and waterfalls and expansively dramatic skies—that she assumed must represent someone’s idea of Africa or India or America. On each wall were display cases of weapons and artifacts and animal trophies—stuffed heads, skins, teeth, and claws. The floors were thickly carpeted and the furniture heavily upholstered in comfortable leather. The room smelled of cigars and dust, and Miss Temple saw behind Mr. Blenheim an enormous sideboard bearing more bottles than she thought were made in the civilized world, and reasoned that, given the exploratory nature of the decor, there must among them be many liquors and potions from the dark depths of primitive cultures. Mr. Blenheim cleared his throat pointedly, and with a deferent nod she placed her bottle where he had indicated. She glanced to Elöise and met the woman’s questioning expression. Miss Temple merely reached out and took hold of Elöise’s hand—the hand that held the blue glass card—effectively covering it with her own.

“So, you’re Mr. Blenheim?” she asked, not having the slightest idea what this sentence might imply.

“I am,” the man answered gravely, an unpleasant tang of self-importance clinging to his tone.

“I had wondered”—nodded Miss Temple—“having heard your name so many times.”

He did not reply, looking at her closely.

“So many times,” added Elöise, striving to push her voice above a whisper.

“I am the manager of this household. You are causing trouble in it. You were in the master’s passage just now, spying on what you shouldn’t have been like the sneaks you are—do not bother to deny it. And now I’ll wager you’ve disrupted things in the tower—as well as having made a mess of my floor!”

Unfortunately for Mr. Blenheim, his litanies—for he was clearly a man whose authority depended on the ability to catalog transgression—were only damning to those who felt any of this was a source of guilt. Miss Temple nodded to at least acknowledge the man’s concerns.

“In terms of management, I should expect a house this size is rather an involving job. Do you have a large staff? I myself have at various times given much thought to the proper size of a staff in relation to the size of a house—or the ambition of the house, as often a person’s social aim outstrips their physical resources—”

“You were spying. You broke into the master’s inner passage!”

“And a wicked inner passage it is,” she replied. “If you ask me, it is your master you should call a sneak—”

“What were you doing there? What did you hear? What have you stolen? Who has paid you to do this?”

Each of Mr. Blenheim’s questions was more vehement than the one before, and by the last his face was red, quite accentuating the amount of white hair in his grizzled whiskers, making him appear to Miss Temple even more worth mocking.

“My goodness, Sir—your complexion! Perhaps if you drank less gin?”

“We were merely lost,” Elöise intervened smoothly. “There was a fire—”

“I am aware of it!”

“You can see our faces—my dress—” and here Elöise helpfully drew his eyes to the blackened silk that fell about her shapely calves.

Blenheim licked his lips. “That means nothing,” he muttered.

But to Miss Temple it meant a great deal, for the fact that the man had not by this time delivered them to his master told her that Mr. Blenheim had ideas of his own. She indicated the animal heads and the display cases of weapons with a vague wave and a conspiratorial smile.

“What a curious room this is,” she said.

“It is not curious at all. It is the trophy room.”

“I’m sure it must be, but that is to say it is a room of men.”

“And what of that?”

“We are women.”

“Is that of consequence?”

“That, Mr. Blenheim”—here she batted her eyes without shame—“is surely our question to you.”

“What are your names?” he asked, his mouth a tightly drawn line, his eyes flicking quickly as he stared. “What do you know?”

“That depends on who you serve.”

“You will answer me directly!”

Miss Temple nodded sympathetically at his outburst, as if his anger were at the uncooperative weather rather than herself. “We do not want to be difficult,” she explained. “But neither do we want to offend. If you are, for example, deeply attached to Miss Lydia Vandaariff—”

Blenheim waved her past the topic with a violently brusque stab of his hand. Miss Temple nodded.

“Or you had particular allegiances with Lord Vandaariff, or the Contessa, or the Comte d’Orkancz, or Mr. Francis Xonck, or Deputy Minister Crabbé, or—”

“You will tell me what you know no matter what my allegiance.”

“Of course. But first, you must be aware that the house has been penetrated by agents.”

“The man in red—” Blenheim nodded with impatience.

“And the other,” added Elöise, “from the quarry, with the airship—”

Again Blenheim waved them to another topic. “These are in hand,” he hissed. “But why are two adherents in white gowns running through the house and defying their masters?”

“Once more, Sir, which masters do you mean?” asked Miss Temple.

“But…” he stopped, and nodded vigorously, as if his own thoughts were confirmed. “Already, then…they plot against each other…”

“We knew you were not a fool.” Elöise sighed, hopelessly.

Mr. Blenheim did not at once reply, and Miss Temple, though she did not risk a glance at Elöise, took the moment to squeeze her hand.

“While the Comte is down in the prison chamber,” she said, speaking with bland speculation, “and the Contessa is in a private room with the Prince…where is Mr. Xonck? Or Deputy Minister Crabbé?”

“Or where are they thought to be?” asked Elöise.

“Where is your own Lord Vandaariff?”

“He is—” Blenheim stopped himself.

“Do you know where to find your own master?” asked Elöise.

Blenheim shook his head. “You still have not—”

“What do you think we were doing?” Miss Temple allowed her exasperation to show. “We escaped from the theatre—escaped from Miss Poole—”

“Who came with Minister Crabbé in the airship,” added Elöise.

“And then made our way to overhear the actions of the Contessa in your secret room,” resumed Miss Temple, “and from there have done our best to intrude upon the Comte in his laboratory.”

Blenheim frowned at her.

“Who have we not troubled?” Miss Temple asked him patiently.

“Francis Xonck,” whispered Mr. Blenheim.

“You have said it, Sir, not I.”

He chewed his lip. Miss Temple went on. “Do you see…we have not divulged a thing…you have seen these things for yourself and merely deduced the facts. Though…if we were to help you…Sir…might it go easier with us?”

“Perhaps it would. It is impossible to say, unless I know what sort of help you mean.”

Miss Temple glanced to Elöise, and then leaned toward Blenheim, as if to share a secret.

“Do you know where Mr. Xonck is…at this very moment?”

“Everyone is to gather in the ballroom…,” Blenheim muttered, “…but I have not seen him.”

“Is that so?” replied Miss Temple, as if this were extremely significant. “And if I can show you what he is doing?”

“Where?”

“Not where, Mr. Blenheim—indeed, not where…but how?”

Miss Temple smiled and, slipping it from Elöise’s grasp, held up the blue glass card.

Mr. Blenheim snatched at it hungrily, but Miss Temple pulled it from his reach.

“Do you know what this—” she began, but before another word could be uttered Blenheim surged forward and took hard hold of her arm with one hand and wrenched the card free from her grip with the other. He stepped back, and licked his lips again, glancing back and forth between the card and the women.

“You must be careful,” said Miss Temple. “The blue glass is very dangerous. It is disorienting—if you have not looked into it before—”

“I know what it is!” snarled Blenheim, and he took two steps away from them, toward the door, blocking it with his body. He looked up at the women a last time, then down into the glass.

Blenheim’s eyes dulled as he entered the world of the glass card. Miss Temple knew this card showed the Prince and Mrs. Marchmoor, no doubt more entrancing to Mr. Blenheim than Roger ogling her own limbs on the sofa, and she reached out slowly, not making a sound, to the nearest display case to take up a sharp short dagger with a blade that curved narrowly back and forth like a silver snake. Mr. Blenheim’s breath caught in his throat and his body seemed to waver—the cycle of the card had finished—but a moment later he had not moved, giving himself over to its seductive repetition. Taking care to position her feet as firmly as she could and recalling Chang’s advice for practical action, Miss Temple stepped to the side of Mr. Blenheim and drove the dagger into the side of his body to the hilt.

He gasped, eyes popping wide and up from the card. Miss Temple pulled the dagger free with both hands, the force of which caused him to stagger in her direction. He looked down at the bloody blade, and then up to her face. She stabbed again, this time into the center of his body, shoving the blade up under his ribs. Mr. Blenheim dropped the card onto the carpet and wrestled the dagger from Miss Temple’s grasp, tottering backwards. With a grunt he dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his abdomen. He could not draw breath nor—happily for the women—make noise. He toppled onto his side and lay still. Miss Temple, gratified to see that the carpet bore a reddish pattern, knelt quickly to wipe her hands.

She looked up to Elöise, who had not moved, fixed on the fading breaths of the fallen overseer.

“Elöise?” she whispered.

Elöise turned to her quickly, the spell broken, eyes wide.

“Are you all right, Elöise?”

“O yes. I am sorry—I—I don’t know—I suppose I thought we would creep past—”

“He would have followed.”

“Of course. Of course! No—yes, my goodness—”

“He was our deadly enemy!” Miss Temple’s poise was suddenly quite fragile.

“Of course—it is merely—perhaps the quantity of blood—”

Despite herself, the prick of criticism had punctured Miss Temple’s grim resolve, for after all it was not as if murder came to her naturally or blithely, and though she knew she had been clever, she also knew what she had done—that it was murder—not even strictly a fight—and once more she felt it all had moved so quickly, too fast for her to keep her hold on what she believed and what her actions made of her. Tears burned the corners of each eye. Elöise suddenly leaned close to her and squeezed her shoulders.

“Do not listen to me, Celeste—I am a fool—truly! Well done!”

Miss Temple sniffed. “It would be best if we dragged him from the door.”

“Absolutely.”

They had each taken an arm, but the effort of transporting the substantial corpse—for he had finally expired—behind a short bookcase left them both gasping for breath, Elöise propped against a leather armchair, Miss Temple holding the dagger, wiping its blood on Mr. Blenheim’s sleeve. With another sigh at the burdens one accepted along with a pragmatic mind, she set the dagger down and began to search his pockets, piling all of what she found in a heap: banknotes, coins, handkerchiefs, matches, two whole cigars and the stub of another, pencils, scraps of blank paper, bullets for the carbine, and a ring of so many keys she was sure they would answer for every door in the whole of Harschmort. In his breast pocket however was another key…fashioned entirely of blue glass. Miss Temple’s eyes went wide and she looked up to her companion.

Elöise was not looking at her. She sat slumped in the chair, one leg drawn up, her face open, eyes dull, both hands holding the blue card in front of her face. Miss Temple stood with the glass key in her hand, wondering how long her work had taken…and how many times her companion had traveled through the sensations of Mrs. Marchmoor on the sofa. A little gasp escaped Elöise’s parted lips, and Miss Temple began to feel awkward. The more she considered what she had experienced by way of the blue glass—the hunger, the knowledge, the delicious submersion, and of course her rudely skewed sense of self—the less she knew how she ought to feel. The attacks upon her person (that seemed to occur whenever she set foot in a coach) she had sorted out—they filled her with rage. But these mental incursions had transfigured her notions of propriety, of desire, and of experience itself, and left her usual certainty of mind utterly tumbled.

Elöise was a widow, who with her marriage must have found a balance with these physical matters, yet instead of reason and perspective Miss Temple was troubled to see a faint pearling of perspiration on the woman’s upper lip, and felt a certain restless shifting at her thighs at being in the presence of someone else’s unmediated desire (a thing she had never before faced, unless one could count her kisses with Roger and Roger’s own attempts to grope her body, which now—by force of absolute will—she refused to do). Miss Temple could not, for she was both curious and proud, but wonder if this was how she had looked as well.

The widow’s cheeks were flushed, her lower lip absently plucked between her teeth, her fingers white with pressure as they squeezed the glass, her breath shot through with sighs, the silk robe sliding as she moved, soft and thin enough to show the stiffened tips of each breast, the barely perceptible rocking of her hips, one long leg stretched out to the carpet, its toes flexing against some hidden force, and on top of all of this, to Miss Temple’s discomforting attraction, was the fact that Elöise still wore her feathered mask—that, to some degree, Miss Temple felt she was not gazing at Elöise at all, but simply a Woman of Mystery, as she had made of herself in the Contessa’s Dutch mirror. She continued to stare as Elöise repeated the cycle of the card, Miss Temple now able to locate, at the same slight inhalation of breath, the moment of Mrs. Marchmoor pulling the Prince’s body into hers, hooking her legs around his hips and pressing him tight…and she wondered that she herself had been able to remove her attention from the card without difficulty—or without difficulty beyond her own embarrassment—where Elöise seemed quite trapped within its charms. What had she said about the book—about people being killed, about her own swooning? With a resolve that, as perhaps too often in her life, cut short her fascination, Miss Temple reached out and snatched the card from her companion’s hands.

Elöise looked up, quite unaware of what had happened and where she was, mouth open and her eyes unclear.

“Are you all right?” Miss Temple asked. “You had quite lost yourself within this card.” She held it up for Elöise to see. The widow licked her lips and blinked.

“My heavens…I do apologize…”

“You are quite flushed,” observed Miss Temple.

“I’m sure I am,” muttered Elöise. “I was not prepared—”

“It is the same experience as the book—quite as involving, if not as deep—for as there is not as much glass, there is not as much incident. You did say the book did not agree with you.”

“No, it did not.”

“The card seems to have agreed with you perhaps too well.”

“Perhaps…and yet, I believe I have discovered something of use—”

“I blush at what it must be.”

Elöise frowned, for despite her weakness she was not ready to accept the mockery of a younger woman so easily, but then Miss Temple smiled shyly and patted the woman’s knee.

“I thought you looked very pretty,” Miss Temple said, and then adopted a wicked grin. “Do you think Doctor Svenson would have found you even prettier?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” muttered Elöise, blushing again.

“I’m sure he doesn’t either,” answered Miss Temple. “But what have you discovered?”

Elöise took a breath. “Is that door locked?”

“It is.”

“Then you had best sit down, for we must reason.”

“As you know,” Elöise began, “my position is—or at least was—tutor to the children of Arthur and Charlotte Trapping, Mrs. Trapping being the sister of Henry and Francis Xonck. It is generally held that Colonel Trapping’s rapid advancement was due to the machinations of Mr. Henry Xonck, though I see now that in fact Mr. Francis Xonck manipulated it all to engineer—by way of his new allies—a way to wrest the family business from his brother, and all of it arranged—because the Colonel became privy to all sorts of useful government secrets—with that same brother’s blessing. The unwitting key to this had been Colonel Trapping, who would report faithfully back to Henry—passing on both the information and mis-information that Francis could supply. Further, it was Francis who persuaded me to visit Tarr Manor with whatever secrets I might supply—again, designed to give him the leverage of blackmail over his siblings. But this was made suddenly necessary exactly because the Colonel had been killed—do you see? He was killed despite the fact that, either willingly or in ignorance, he was serving the Cabal.”

Miss Temple nodded vaguely, perched on the arm of the chair, feet dangling, hoping that a larger point would soon emerge.

Elöise went on. “One wonders why precisely because the Colonel was so very unremarkable.”

“The Doctor did find the second blue card on the Colonel’s person,” replied Miss Temple, “the one drawn from the experience of Roger Bascombe. It was evidently sewn into the lining of his uniform. But you said you discovered—”

But Elöise was still thinking. “Was there anything within it that seemed particularly…secret? That would justify concealing it—protecting it—so?”

“I should say not, save for the part containing me—except—well, except the very final moment, where I am sure one can glimpse Lydia Vandaariff on an examination table with the Comte d’Orkancz—well, you know, examining her.”

“What?”

“Yes,” said Miss Temple. “I only realized it now—when I saw the tables, and then of course I remembered seeing Lydia—and at the time I saw the card I did not know who Lydia was—”

“But, Celeste”—Miss Temple frowned, as she was not entirely sure of her companion even now, and certainly not comfortable with being so familiar—“that the card remained sewn into the Colonel’s coat meant that no one had found it! It means that what he knew—what the card proved—died with him!”

“But it did not die at all. The Doctor has the card, and we the secret.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly what?”

Elöise nodded seriously. “So what I’ve found may be even more important—”

Miss Temple could only bear this for so long, for she was not one who stinted from absolutely shredding the wrapping paper around a present.

“Yes, but you have not said what it is.”

Elöise pointed to the blue card on Miss Temple’s lap. “At the end of the cycle,” she said, “you will recall that the woman—”

“Mrs. Marchmoor.”

“Her head turns, and one sees spectators. Among them I have recognized Francis Xonck, Miss Poole, Doctor Lorenz—others I do not know, though I’m sure you might. Yet beyond these people…is a window—”

“But it is not a window,” said Miss Temple, eagerly, inching forward. “It is a mirror! The St. Royale’s private rooms are fitted with Dutch glass mirrors that serve as windows on the lobby. Indeed, it was recognizing the outer doors of the hotel through this mirror that sent the Doctor to the St. Royale in the first place—”

Elöise nodded impatiently, for she had finally reached her news.

“But did he note who was in the lobby? Someone who had quite obviously stepped out of the private room for a chance to speak apart from those remaining in it, distracted by the, ah, spectacle?”

Miss Temple shook her head.

“Colonel Arthur Trapping,” whispered Elöise, “speaking most earnestly…with Lord Robert Vandaariff!”

Miss Temple placed a hand over her mouth.

“It is the Comte!” she exclaimed. “The Comte plans to use Lydia—use the marriage, I can’t say exactly how—in another part of Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical scheme—”

Elöise frowned. “Who is—”

“A painter—a mystic—the discoverer of the blue glass! We were told he was dead—killed for his secrets—but now I wonder if he lives, if he might even be a prisoner—”

“Or his memories drained into a book!”

“O yes! But the point is—do the others know what the Comte truly intends for Lydia? More importantly, did her father know? What if Trapping found Roger’s card and recognized Lydia and the Comte? Is it possible that the Colonel did not understand the truth of his associates’ villainy and threatened them with exposure?”

“I am afraid you never met Colonel Trapping,” said Elöise.

“Not to actually exchange words, no.”

“It is more likely he understood exactly what the card meant and went to the one person with even deeper pockets than his brother-in-law.”

“And we have not seen Lord Vandaariff—perhaps even now he weaves his own revenge against the Comte? Or does he even know—if Trapping promised him information but was killed before he could reveal it?”

“Blenheim had not seen Lord Robert,” said Elöise.

“And the Comte’s plan for Lydia remains in motion,” said Miss Temple. “I have seen her drinking his poisons. If Trapping was killed to keep her father in ignorance—”

“He must have been killed by the Comte!” said Elöise.

Miss Temple frowned. “And yet…I am certain the Comte was as curious as anyone as to the Colonel’s fate.”

“Lord Robert must at least be warned by his secret agent’s demise,” reasoned Elöise. “No wonder he is in hiding. Perhaps it is he who now holds this missing painter—seeking some sort of exchange? Perhaps he now weaves his own plot against them all!”

“Speaking of that,” said Miss Temple, casting her eyes down to the heavy shoes of Mr. Blenheim, just visible behind a red leather ottoman, “what do we make of Mr. Blenheim’s possession…of this?”

She held the key of blue glass to the light and studied its gleam.

“It is the same glass as the books,” said Elöise.

“What do you think it opens?”

“It would have to be extremely delicate…something else made of the glass?”

“My exact conclusion.” Miss Temple smiled. “Which leads me to a second point—that Mr. Blenheim had no business carrying this key at all. Can you imagine any of the Cabal trusting such a thing—which must be priceless—to someone not of their direct number? He is the overseer of the house, he can only figure in their plots as much as these Dragoons or Macklenburg stooges. Who would trust him?”

“Only one person,” said Elöise.

Miss Temple nodded. “Lord Robert Vandaariff.”

“I believe I have an idea,” Miss Temple announced, and hopped off the armchair. Taking care to step over the darkened smear on the carpet—it had been difficult enough to shift the body, they agreed not to concern themselves with stains—she made her way to the cluttered sideboard. Working with a certain pleasurable industry, she found an unopened bottle of a decent age and a small sharp knife to dig past the wax seal and into the crumbling cork beneath, at least enough to pour through—for she did not mind if the cork dust crept into the liquid, for it was not the liquid that she cared for. Selecting a largely empty decanter, Miss Temple began, tongue poking from her mouth in concentration, to pour out the deep ruby port, doing her best to empty the bottle. When at last she saw the first bits of muddy sediment, she left off the decanter and reached for a wineglass, emptying the rest of the port bottle, sediment and all, into this. She then took another wineglass and, using the little knife as a dam, poured off the liquid until all that remained in her first glass were the ruddy, softened dregs. She looked up with a smile at Elöise, whose expression was tolerant but baffled.

“We cannot proceed with our investigations trapped within this room, nor can we rejoin the Doctor, nor can we escape, nor can we gain revenge—for even carrying sacrificial daggers we must be taken captive or killed once we attempt to leave.”

Elöise nodded, and Miss Temple smiled at her own cunning.

“Unless, of course, we are clever in our disguise. The fire in the operating theatre was a site of great confusion and, I am willing to wager, one that prevented any clear account of exactly what occurred—too much smoke, too many shots and screams, too little light. My point being”—and here she waved her hand across the maroon dregs in the wineglass—“no one quite knows whether we underwent the Process or not.”

They walked down the corridor in their bare feet, backs straight, unhurried, doing their level best to appear placid of character while paying attention to the growing turmoil around them. Miss Temple held the serpentine dagger in her hand. Elöise held the bottle of orange fluid and had tucked the cigarette case, the blue glass card and the glass key into her shift, as it had thoughtfully been made with pockets. They had pulled their masks around their necks to give everything a bit more time to dry, for meticulously applied and patted and smeared and dabbed around their eyes and across their noses, in as exact an imitation of the looping scars of the Process as they could manage, were the reddish-ruddy dregs of port. Miss Temple had been quite satisfied looking into the sideboard mirror, and only hoped that no one leaned so near as to smell the vintage.

During their time in the trophy room the traffic of guests and servants had increased dramatically. At once they found themselves amongst men and women in cloaks and topcoats and formal gowns, masked and gloved, all nodding to the white-robed pair with the calculated deference one might show to a tomahawk-bearing red Indian. They answered these greetings not at all, imitating the post-Process stupor that Miss Temple had seen in the theatre. The fact that they were armed only served to make room around them, and she realized the guests accorded them a higher status—acolytes of the inner circle, so to speak. It was all she could do not to shake the dagger in each obsequious set of faces and growl.

The traffic drove them toward the ballroom, but Miss Temple was not convinced it was where they ought to go. It seemed more likely that what they really needed—clothing, shoes, their comrades—would be found elsewhere, in some back room like the one where she’d met Farquhar and Spragg, the furniture covered with white sheets, the table littered with bottles and food. She reached for Elöise’s hand and had just found it when a noise behind caused them both to turn and break the grip. Marching toward them, driving the hurrying guests to either side of the corridor, an action marooning Miss Temple even more obviously in its middle, was a double line of red-jacketed Dragoons in tall black boots, a scowling officer at their head. She nodded Elöise urgently into the crowd but was herself jostled back into the soldiers’ path, ridiculously in their way. The officer did his best to stare her down, and she looked again to Elöise—vanished behind a pair of waspish gentlemen in oyster grey riding cloaks. The guests around them stopped to watch the impending collision. The officer snapped his hand up and his men immediately stamped themselves to a concise, orderly halt. The corridor was suddenly silent…a silence that allowed Miss Temple to hear what would have been a previously inaudible chuckle, somewhere behind her. She slowly turned to see Francis Xonck, smoking a cheroot, head cocked in an utterly contemptuous bow.

“What pearls are found,” he drawled, “unexpected and unlooked-for, in the wilds of Harschmort House…”

He stopped speaking as he took in the markings on her face. Miss Temple did not reply, merely inclining her head to acknowledge his authority.

“Miss Temple?” he asked, curious and warily skeptical. She dropped into a simple, bobbing curtsey, and rose again.

He glanced once at the officer, and reached out to take hold of her jaw. She passively allowed him to move her head around however he liked, never making a sound. He stepped away, staring at her evenly.

“Where have you come from?” he said. “You will answer me.”

“The theatre,” she said, as thickly as she could. “There was a fire—”

He did not let her finish, sticking the cheroot into his mouth and reaching forward with his one unbandaged hand to fondle her breast. The crowd around them gasped at the cold determination of his face as much as his brazen action. With the sternest resolve Miss Temple’s voice did not shift in the slightest, nor did she pause as he continued to forcefully grope across her body.

“—from the lamps, there was smoke, and shooting…it was Doctor Svenson. I did not see him…I was on the table. Miss Poole—”

Francis Xonck slapped Miss Temple hard across the face.

“—disappeared. The soldiers took me off the table.”

As she spoke, just as she had seen in the theatre, and with pleasure, her hand shot out toward Francis Xonck, doing her level best to stab him in the face with the serpentine dagger. Unfortunately, he had seen the blow coming. He parried the blow with his arm against her wrist, then took hold of her wrist and squeezed. As it would give her away to struggle, Miss Temple released the dagger, which hit the floor with a clang. Francis Xonck lowered her hand to her side, and stepped away. She did not move. He looked past her at the officer, flared his nostrils in a sneer—which she was sure meant the officer had shown his disapproval of what he’d just witnessed—and picked up the dagger. He stuck it in his belt and turned on his heels, calling airily over his shoulder.

“Bring the lady with you, Captain Smythe—and quickly. You’re late.”

Miss Temple could only risk the barest glance for Elöise as she walked away, but Elöise was gone. Captain Smythe had taken her by the arm, not roughly but with insistence, enforcing her compliance with their speed. She allowed herself a look at the officer, masking herself with an expression of bovine disinterest, and saw a face that reminded her of Cardinal Chang, or of the Cardinal beset with the burdens of command, hated superiors, fatigue, self-disgust, and of course without the disfigurement of his eyes. The Captain’s eyes were dark and warmer than the bitter lines around them seemed to merit. He glanced down at her with brisk suspicion and she returned her attention to the receding, well-tailored back of Francis Xonck, parting the crowds ahead of them with the imperious ease of a surgeon’s scalpel.

He led them through the thickest knots of the gathering crowd, their passage a spectacle for whispers and gawking—Xonck reaching to either side for handshakes and hearty back-slaps to particular men and brief kisses to similarly high-placed or beautiful women—and then beyond them, skirting the ballroom proper to an open space at the meeting of several corridors. Xonck gave Miss Temple one more searching stare, crossed to a pair of wooden doors, opened them, and leaned his head from view, whispering. In a moment he had pulled his head back and shut the door, ambling again to Miss Temple. He pulled the cheroot from his mouth and looked at it with distaste, for he was nearing the stub. He dropped it to the marble floor and ground it beneath his shoe.

“Captain, you will position your men along this corridor in either direction, specifically guarding access to these”—he pointed to two doors farther down the hall away from the ballroom—“inner rooms. Colonel Aspiche will provide further instructions upon his arrival. For now, your task is one of waiting, and making sure of this woman’s continued presence.”

The Captain nodded crisply and turned to his men, detailing them along the length of the corridor and at each inner door. The Captain himself remained within saber’s reach of Miss Temple, and, for that matter, Francis Xonck. Once he had spoken however, Xonck paid the officer no further mind, his voice dropping to a whisper as coiled with menace as the hiss of a snake preparing to strike.

“You will answer me quickly, Celeste Temple, and I will know if you lie—and if you do lie, do know it means your head.”

Miss Temple nodded blankly, as if this meant nothing to her either way.

“What did Bascombe tell you on the train?”

This was not what she’d expected. “That we should be allies,” she replied. “That the Contessa desired it.”

“And what did the Contessa say?”

“I did not speak to her aboard the train—”

“Before that—before! At the hotel—in the coach!”

“She said I must pay for the deaths of her men. And she put her hands upon me, quite indecently—”

“Yes, yes,” snapped Xonck, impatiently waving her on, “about Bascombe—what did she say about him?”

“That he would be Lord Tarr.”

Xonck was muttering to himself, glancing over his shoulder at the wooden doors. “Too many others must have been there…what else, what else—”

Miss Temple tried to recall what the Contessa had said to her, or anything provocative that might inflame Xonck’s obvious suspicions…

“The Comte was there too—”

“I am aware of that—”

“Because she did ask him a question.”

“What question?”

“I do not think I was supposed to hear it—for I’m sure it made no sense to me—”

“Tell me what she said!”

“The Contessa asked the Comte d’Orkancz how he thought Lord Robert Vandaariff had discovered their plan to alchemically impregnate his daughter—that is, who did he think had betrayed them?”

Francis Xonck did not reply, his eyes boring into hers with a palpably dangerous intent, doing his best to measure the true degree of her compliance. Miss Temple somehow kept the fear from her face, concentrating upon the patterns of shadow on the ceiling beyond his shoulder, but she could tell that Xonck was so provoked by these last words that he was about to slap her again, or launch into an even more debasing physical assault—when behind them, topping his rising agitation as an erupting whistle announces the boiling of a kettle, the wooden doors opened and the Macklenburg Envoy’s freshly scarred and deferential face poked through.

“They are ready, Mr. Xonck,” the man whispered.

Xonck snarled and stepped away from Miss Temple, his fingers tapping the handle of the dagger in his belt. With one more searching stare at her face he spun on his heels to follow the Envoy into the ballroom.

It was perhaps the length of two minutes before Miss Temple concluded, with the rise of different voices piercing murkily through the doors, that the members of the Cabal were holding forth to their assembled guests. She was aware of the silent Captain Smythe behind her and the general presence of his soldiers, within direct call however distant their posts might be. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She could only hope that eagerness for information had blinded Xonck to her disguise—which was more designed to fool ignorant guests in the hall than seasoned members of the Cabal. With a sudden urge toward self-preservation, Miss Temple restored her feathered mask into position. She sighed again. She could not go anywhere…but perhaps she could measure the strength of her cage. She turned to Captain Smythe and smiled.

“Captain,…as you have seen me interrogated…may I ask you a question?”

“Miss?”

“You seem unhappy.”

“Miss?”

“Everyone else at Harschmort House seems…well, eminently pleased with themselves.”

Captain Smythe did not answer, his eyes flicking back and forth between his nearest men. Accordingly, Miss Temple dropped her voice to a demure whisper.

“One merely wonders why.”

The Captain studied her closely. When he spoke it was near to a whisper.

“Did I hear Mr. Xonck correctly…that your name is…Temple?”

“That is so.”

He licked his lips and nodded to her robes, the slight gaping around her bosom that allowed a glimpse of her own silk bodice showing through the layers of translucent white.

“I was informed…you did favor the color green…”

Before Miss Temple could respond to this truly astonishing comment, the doors behind her opened again. She turned, composing her face to a suitable blandness, and met the equally distracted Caroline Stearne, so preoccupied and so surprised to see Miss Temple in the first place as to pay no attention whatsoever to the officer behind her.

“Celeste,” she whispered quickly, “you must come with me at once.”

Miss Temple was led by the hand through a silent crowd that parted for them impatiently, each person begrudging the distraction from what held their attention in the center of the room. She steeled herself to be calm, expecting that at the words of Francis Xonck she must now submit to public examination by the entire Cabal in front of hundreds of masked strangers, and it was only this preparation that forestalled her gasp of shock at the sight, as she was pulled so briskly onto the open floor by Caroline Stearne, of Cardinal Chang, on his knees, spitting blood, his every inch the image of a man who had passed through the pits of hell. He looked up at her, and with his gaze, his face pale and bloodied, his movements slow, his eyes blessedly veiled behind smoked glass, came the gazes of those other figures before her—Caroline, Colonel Aspiche, and the Comte d’Orkancz, who stood in his great fur holding a leash that went to the neck of a small figure—a lady of perhaps Miss Temple’s own height and shape—distinguished first by her nakedness and secondly, and more singularly, by the fact that she seemed to be completely fabricated of blue glass. It was when this statue turned its head to look at Miss Temple, its expression unreadable and its eyes as depthless as a Roman statue’s, slick, gleaming, and swirled indigo marbles, that Miss Temple understood the woman—or creature—was alive. She was fully rooted to the ground with amazement, and could not have cried out to Chang if she had wanted.

Caroline Stearne pulled Miss Temple’s white mask down around her neck. She waited through agonizing seconds of silence, sure that someone would denounce her…but no one spoke.

Chang’s mouth opened haltingly, as if he could not form words or gather breath to speak.

Then, as if everything was happening too quickly to see, Colonel Aspiche was swinging his arm and whatever he held in it smashed down onto Cardinal Chang’s head, knocking him flat in a stroke. With a brusque nod from their Colonel, two Dragoons detached themselves from the ring of men keeping back the crowd and took hold of Chang’s arms. They dragged him past her, his body utterly lifeless. She did not turn to follow his passage, but made herself look up, despite her racing heart and the pressing nearness of her tears, into the intelligent, searching face of Caroline Stearne.

Behind, the voice of the Contessa snapped through the air like the crack of a particularly exultant whip.

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

Caroline, who was already facing the Contessa, 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?”

Caroline turned along with everyone else in the ballroom, for the Comte’s gesture was one of grand showmanship, to see two more glass women stalking into the open circle with their deliberate, clicking gait, arms strangely floating, their uncovered bodies an arrogant assertion of ripe, ghastly, unsettling allure. It took Miss Temple a moment—what had the Comte said to Caroline, “companions”?—to recognize with shock Mrs. Marchmoor and, some new disfiguring scorch across her head, Miss Poole. What did it mean that her enemies had—willingly?—been transformed, transfigured, into such…such things?

The Comte gathered up Miss Poole’s leash and flicked her toward Mrs. Stearne. Miss Poole’s lips parted ever so slightly with a chilling smile and then Caroline staggered where she stood, her head lolling to the side. An instant later, as the effect spread to the first rank of the crowd like a rippling pool, Miss Temple felt herself swallowed up and thrust into a scene so enticingly real that she could scarcely remember the ballroom at all.

She was on a plush settee in a dark, candlelit parlor and her hand was occupied with stroking Caroline Stearne’s lovely, soft unbound hair. Mrs. Stearne wore—as Miss Temple saw that she (that is, Miss Poole) wore as well—the white robes of initiation. On the other side of Mrs. Stearne sat a man in a black cloak and a tight mask of red leather, leaning over to kiss her mouth, a kiss to which Mrs. Stearne responded with a passionate moan. It was like Mrs. Marchmoor’s story of the two men in the coach, only here it was a man and two women. Mrs. Stearne’s hunger caused Miss Poole to condescendingly chuckle as she turned to reach for a glass of wine…and with this action her shifting gaze took in an open door and a lurking figure half-visible in the light beyond…a figure whose shape Miss Temple knew at once as that of Roger Bascombe.

The vision was withdrawn from Miss Temple’s mind, like a blindfold whipped from her eyes, and she was back in the ballroom, where every person she could see was blinking with confusion, save for the Comte d’Orkancz, who smiled with a smug superior pleasure. He called again to Caroline—some vulgar jest about sisterhood and opportunities for taking the veil—but Miss Temple did not mark their conversation, so provoked were her thoughts by what she’d just beheld….

Miss Poole and Caroline Stearne had been wearing their white robes, and the man with them on the settee—she had seen him, she had taken that very cloak for her own!—was none other than Colonel Trapping. Miss Temple groped to make sense of it, as if she were in a hurry to open a door and could not get the right key in the hole…it had been that same night at Harschmort…and just before the Colonel’s murder, for the women had changed into their white robes but not yet undergone the Process. This meant it had been while she was creeping through the hall of mirrors and past the queer man with the boxes—only minutes before she herself had entered Trapping’s room. She had already worked out that Roger and the Contessa were the Cabal members nearest to the Colonel at his death…could these women have killed him instead—on instructions of the Comte? If the Colonel had been in secret agreement with Lord Vandaariff…but why, she suddenly wondered, had Miss Poole chosen to share this memory—one that must obviously stir up questions about the murdered Colonel—with Caroline Stearne? There had been a rivalry between them in the theatre—was it merely to mock Caroline’s affections for a dead man, and what was more a dead traitor to the Cabal? In front of everyone?

She was startled—was she an idiot? She must pay attention—by a hoarse cry and then the total immersion without warning into another vision: a tall wooden staircase, lit by orange torchlight under a blackened sky, a sudden rush of men, a scuttling figure in a black topcoat—Minister Crabbé!—and then the mob converging upon and raising up a kicking figure in a steel-blue greatcoat, a flash of his drawn face and ice-pale hair confirming him as Doctor Svenson an instant before, with a heaving surge, the crowd of men launched him without ceremony over the rail.

Miss Temple looked up—just piecing together that this must be an image from the quarry at Tarr Manor—back in the ballroom again, to see a disturbance in the crowd, an undulating progress toward the center that with a lurch deposited the haggard figure of Doctor Svenson, breathless and battered, onto his hands and knees—exactly where Chang had been. Svenson looked up, his wild eyes searching for some escape but instead finding her face, the sight of which stopped him cold. Colonel Aspiche stepped forward, ripping a leather satchel from the Doctor’s grasp with one hand, and then bringing his truncheon down pitilessly with the other. It was a matter of seconds. Like Chang before him, Doctor Svenson was dragged past Miss Temple from the room.

Unable to watch him go without giving herself away, Miss Temple instead found her gaze rooted to the gleaming glass women. As disturbing as they were—and the sight of Miss Poole, if this unconscionably animated statue could still so be named, licking her lips with the slick, livid tip of a cerulean tongue caused Miss Temple to shiver with an unnameable dismay—it nevertheless put off the moment when she must face the Contessa’s piercing violet eyes. But then Caroline took her hand, spinning her to the raised dais where the members of the Cabal stood—the Contessa, Xonck, Crabbé, and then the Prince and Lydia Vandaariff, still in her mask and white robes, and behind this pair, like a furtive eavesdropping child, lurked the Envoy, Herr Flaüss. Against all reason Miss Temple’s eyes went straight to the Contessa, who met her glance with an implacably cold stare. It was to her great relief when it was Harald Crabbé, and not the Contessa, who stepped forward to speak.

“Assembled guests…devoted friends…faithful adherents…now is the time when all our plans are ripe…hanging like fruit to be plucked. It is our present labor to harvest that fruit, and prevent it from falling fallow and uncared-for to the insensate ground. You all understand the gravity of this night—that we in truth usher in a new epoch—who could doubt it, when we see the evidence before us like angels from another age? Yet tonight all rests in the balance—the Prince and Miss Vandaariff will depart for their Macklenburg wedding…the Duke of Stäelmaere is appointed head of the Queen’s Privy Council…the most mighty figures of this land have in this house given over their power…and all of you—perhaps most importantly of all!—all of you will execute your own assignments—achieve your own destinies! Thus shall we here construct our common dream.”

Crabbé paused and met the eyes of first Colonel Aspiche—who rapped out a sharp command that cut through the buttery flattering tone of the Deputy Minister’s speech, at which point every door to the ballroom was slammed shut with a crash—and next of the Comte d’Orkancz, who flicked his leashes like an infernal circus master, sending each glass creature stalking toward a different portion of the crowd. The impression was very much of lions in an arena sizing up an impressive number of martyrs, and Miss Temple was no less unsettled to find it was the third woman—the one of her own size and shape—the Comte had sent toward her. The creature advanced to the end of its leash and having pulled it taut stood flexing its fingers with impatience, the people nearest inching away with discomfort. Miss Temple felt a pressing on her thoughts—thoughts clouded now with sensations of ice-blue cold…

“You will all accept,” continued Crabbé, “that there is no room for risk, no place for second thoughts. We must have certainty—every bit as much as all of you, having pledged yourselves, must have it of each man and woman in this ballroom! No one in this room has not undergone the Process, or submitted their interests to one of our volumes, or otherwise demonstrated total allegiance…or such is our assumption. As I say…you will understand if we make sure.”

The Comte tugged the leash of Mrs. Marchmoor, who arched her back and swept her gaze across the crowd. The men and women before her were staggered and stunned, they went silent, they whimpered or cried, they lost their balance and fell—all as their minds were scoured for any deception. Miss Temple saw that the Comte had his eyes shut as well in concentration…could Mrs. Marchmoor be sharing with him what she saw? Then the Comte abruptly opened his eyes. One of the two men in the oyster grey riding cloaks had dropped to his knees. The Comte d’Orkancz gestured to Colonel Aspiche and two Dragoons dragged the fallen man, now sobbing with fear, without mercy from the room. The Comte shut his eyes again and Mrs. Marchmoor continued her silent inquisition.

After Mrs. Marchmoor came Miss Poole, moving just as remorselessly through her portion of the crowd, isolating two more men and a woman who were given swift cause to regret their decision to attend. For a moment Miss Temple wondered if these could be people like herself—desperate enemies of the Cabal’s villainy—but as soon as they were pulled from their places by the soldiers it was clear the exact opposite was the case. These were social climbers who had managed to forge an invitation or bluff their way into what they hoped was an especially exclusive soirée for the bright lights of society. As much as she was rattled by their pleas, she did not spare their fates another thought…for Miss Poole had finished, and the Comte had snapped the third woman’s leash.

The invisible wave of the woman’s scrutiny inched toward her like a fire, or like a burning fuse whose end must mean her death. Closer and closer; Miss Temple did not know what to do. She must be found out completely. Should she run? Should she try to push the woman over in hopes that she might shatter? Miss Temple’s exposure was but seconds away. She took a breath for courage and tensed herself as if for a blow. Caroline stood straight, also waiting, and glanced once quickly at Miss Temple, her face more pale—Miss Temple realized suddenly that Caroline was terrified. But then the woman’s gaze went past Miss Temple’s shoulder. There was a noise—the door?—and then the sudden sharp voice of Deputy Minister Crabbé.

“If you please, Monsieur le Comte, that is enough!”

Quite directly behind Miss Temple an astonishing party had entered the room. All around, people in the crowd lowered their heads with respect for the tall man, deathly pale with long iron-grey hair, with medals on his coat and a bright blue sash across his chest. He walked with great stiffness—he walked rather like the glass women, actually—with one hand clutching a black stick and the other the arm of a small, sharp-faced man with greasy hair and glasses who did not strike her as any kind of normal companion for a royal personage. Given the Deputy Minister’s speech she knew it must be the Duke of Stäelmaere, a man who, if the rumors were true, only employed impoverished aristocrats as his servants, so much did he abhor the presence of common folk. What was such a man doing at so large—and so common—a gathering? Yet this was but the half of it, for walking directly next to the Duke—almost as if they were a bride and groom—was Lord Robert Vandaariff. Behind him, and supporting Lord Robert’s near arm, walked Roger Bascombe.

“I do not believe we had quite finished with the examinations,” said Francis Xonck, “which as you have said, Minister, are most crucial.”

“Indeed, Mr. Xonck.” Harald Crabbé nodded, and spoke loud enough for the crowd to hear him. “But this business cannot stay! We have before us the two most eminent figures in the land—perhaps the continent!—one of them our very host. It strikes me as prudent, as well as polite, to allow their urgent needs to trump our own.”

Miss Temple saw Francis Xonck glance once her way, and knew that he had been watching very closely for the results of her inquisition. She turned toward the new arrivals—as much as she did not want to see Roger she wanted to see Xonck and the Contessa even less—and realized, with the dull deliberate clonk of a brick hitting the floor, that Crabbé’s halt of the examinations had nothing to do with her at all, but these figures, for the glass woman’s scrutiny must have swept them up as well, revealing their inner minds to the waiting Comte d’Orkancz. But who was Harald Crabbé protecting? The Duke? Vandaariff? Or his own aide Bascombe—and the secret plans they’d hatched between them? And why had Caroline been so frightened? She wanted to stamp her foot with frustration at all she did not know—was Vandaariff the leader of the Cabal or not? Was he locked in a struggle with the Comte to save his daughter? Did Crabbé’s action—and Roger’s presence—indicate an allegiance with Vandaariff? But then what did she make of Roger being in the doorway just before Trapping must have been killed? Suddenly Miss Temple remembered her fiancé’s appearance in the secret room, where the Contessa had tormented the Prince—could Roger have a secret allegiance of his own? If Roger had killed Trapping (her mind could scarcely accept it—Roger?) was it to serve the Contessa?

The Duke of Stäelmaere began to speak, his voice halting and dry as a mouthful of cold cinders.

“Tomorrow I become head of the Queen’s Privy Council…the nation is in crisis…the Queen is unwell…the Crown Prince is without heir and without merit…and so he has this night been given the gift of his dreams, a gift which must ensnare his weakened soul…a glass book of wonders in which he will drown.”

Miss Temple frowned. This did not sound like any Duke she’d ever heard. She glanced carefully behind her and saw the glass woman’s attention fully fixed on the Duke, and behind her, his bearded lips moving ever so slightly with each word that issued from the Duke of Stäelmaere’s mouth, the Comte d’Orkancz.

“The Privy Council will govern…our vision, my allies,…will find expression…will be written on the world. Such is my promise…before you all.”

The Duke then turned to the man next to him with a glacial nod.

“My Lord…”

While Robert Vandaariff’s voice was not so openly sepulchral as the Duke’s, it nevertheless served to further chill Miss Temple’s blood, for before he spoke a single word he turned to Roger and accepted a folded piece of paper, passed with all the deference of a clerk…yet the Lord had only turned at a squeeze from Roger on his arm. Vandaariff unfolded the paper and at another squeeze—she was watching for it—began to read, in a hearty voice that rang as hollow to her ear as footfalls in an empty room.

“It is not my way to make speeches and so I ask forgiveness that I rely upon this paper—yet tonight I send my only child, my Princess, Lydia, to be married to a man I have taken to my heart like a son.”

At a third subtle squeeze from Roger—whose face, she saw, was directed at the floor—Lord Robert nodded to the Prince and his daughter on the dais. Miss Temple wondered what emotions about her father remained beneath the girl’s mask…how the Process had rarefied her depthless need and her rage at being abandoned, and what effect these vacant formal words could have. Lydia bobbed in a curtsey and then curled her lips in a grin. Did she know her father was Roger Bascombe’s puppet? Could that be why she smiled?

Lord Robert turned back to the assembled guests, and located his place on the page. “Tomorrow it must be as if this night had never been. None of you will return to Harschmort House. None of you will acknowledge you have been here, any more than you will acknowledge each other, or news from the Duchy of Macklenburg as anything other than unimportant gossip. But the efforts here of my colleague the Duke will be mirrored in that land, and from that nation to nations beyond. Some of you will be placed among my agents, traveling where necessary, but before you leave tonight, all will be given instructions, in the form of a printed cipher book, from my chamberlain,…Mr. Blenheim.”

Vandaariff looked up, instructed here to point out Blenheim from the crowd…but Blenheim was not there. The pause drifted toward confusion as faces glanced back and forth, and there were frowns on the dais and sharp glances in the direction of Colonel Aspiche, who answered them with haughty shrugs of his own. With a deft—and therefore to Miss Temple equally galling and impressive—display of initiative, Roger Bascombe cleared his throat and stepped forward.

“In Mr. Blenheim’s absence, your instructive volumes can be collected from me in the chamberlain’s offices, directly after this gathering adjourns.”

He glanced quickly to the dais, and then whispered into Lord Robert’s ear. Roger returned to his place. Lord Robert resumed his speech.

“I am gratified to be able to aid this enterprise, as I am thankful to those who have most imagined its success. I beg you all to enjoy the hospitality of my home.”

Roger gently took the paper from his hands. The crowd erupted into applause for the two great men, who stood without any particular expression whatsoever, as if it were the rain and they insensible statues.

Miss Temple was astonished. There was no struggle between Vandaariff and the Comte at all—Lord Robert had been utterly overcome. Trapping’s news had never reached him, and Lydia’s fate—whatever hideous design had been in motion—was sealed. It did not matter if Oskar Veilandt was prisoner in the house, just as it no longer mattered who had killed Trapping—but then Miss Temple frowned. If Vandaariff was their creature, then why had Crabbé stopped the examinations? If the members of the Cabal themselves did not know Trapping’s killer, could things be so settled? Could the struggle for Lydia’s fate be just one fissure between her enemies? Could there be others?

At the same time, Miss Temple wondered who this performance by the Duke and Lord Robert was expected to fool—she had heard more elevating and persuasive words from half-drunken fishwives on the pier. Taking her cue from Caroline Stearne, she lowered her head as the two luminaries and their assistants—or should she say puppet-masters?—advanced across the ballroom. As they passed she looked up and met the eyes of Roger Bascombe, who frowned with a typically veiled curiosity at the scars across her face. As they reached the far side she was surprised to see the Comte hand Mrs. Marchmoor’s leash to Roger and that of Miss Poole to the shorter sharp-faced man. As the doors were opened by the Dragoons—for she could only with difficulty shift her eyes from Roger for any length of time—she saw her fiancé step close to Colonel Aspiche and snatch—there was no gentler word for it—a leather satchel from the Colonel’s grasp. A satchel, she realized, that had arrived in the possession of Doctor Svenson…

Behind her, the Contessa called out to the crowd, just before either Xonck or Crabbé could do the same, for each man’s mouth was poised for speech, their expressions giving out just a flicker of frustration before they were agreeably nodding along with her words.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard the words of our host. You know the preparations you must make. Once these duties are satisfied you are released. The pleasures of Harschmort House this night are yours, and after this…for every night…the pleasures of the world. I give you all good night…I give you all our victory.”

The Contessa stepped forward and, beaming at her listeners, began to applaud them all. She was joined by every person on the dais, and then by the entirety of the crowd, each person eager to register delight at the Contessa’s favor and to bestow—from that enhanced position—their own approval upon each other. Miss Temple clapped along, feeling like a trained monkey, watching the Contessa speak quietly to Xonck and Crabbé. At some silent agreement, the members of the Cabal swept off the dais and toward the doors. Before Miss Temple could react Caroline Stearne’s voice was in her ear.

“We are to follow,” she whispered. “Something is wrong.”

As they walked toward the open doors, attracting inquisitive glances from the guests who were all gaily exiting in the opposite direction in the wake of Vandaariff and the Duke, Miss Temple felt someone behind her aside from Caroline. Though she dared not look—curiosity of that sort did not become the staid confidence born of the Process—the sound of clicking steps told her it was the Comte and the last remaining of the three glass Graces, the woman she did not know. This was some blessing at least—a fresh slate was better than the knowing sneers and penetrating disbelief she could expect from Marchmoor and Poole—but in her heart she knew it did not matter which of them ransacked her mind, her pose would be revealed. Her only hope was that the same instinct that had led Crabbé to prevent the examination of the Duke or Lord Vandaariff would prevent them from risking the woman’s talents in such close quarters—for surely the rest of the Cabal would not choose to deliver their open minds to the Comte…at least not if they were betraying one another…

She entered the open foyer where she had waited with Captain Smythe, who had withdrawn some yards away so as not to intrude on the deliberations of his betters, betters who in turn waited in impatient silence for the last of their number to arrive, at which point the doors in every direction were closed, shielding their words from the tender ears of any passing adherent. As the latches caught and bolts were shot, Miss Temple wondered wistfully what had happened to Elöise, and whether Chang or Svenson might be alive, thoughts brusquely smothered by the figure of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza lighting a cigarette in her shining black holder, puffing on the thing three times in succession before she spoke, as if each ascending inhalation stoked the fires of her rage. Perhaps even more disturbingly, not one of the powerful men around her presumed to interrupt this openly menacing ritual.

“What was that?” she finally snarled, fixing her gaze on Harald Crabbé.

“I do beg your pardon, Contessa—”

“Why did you interfere with the examinations? You saw yourself how at least five interlopers were revealed—any one of whom might have undone our plans while we are in Macklenburg. You know this—you know this work is not finished.”

“My dear, if you felt so strongly—”

“I did not say anything because Mr. Xonck did say something, only to be overruled—in front of everyone—by you. For any of us to disagree further would have presented the exact lack of unity we have—with some great effort, Deputy Minister—managed to avoid.”

“I see.”

“I don’t believe you do.”

She spat out another mouthful of smoke, her eyes burning into the man like a basilisk. Crabbé did his best to clear his throat and start fresh, but before he spoke a single word she’d cut him off.

“We are not fools, Harald. You stopped the examinations so certain people would not be revealed to the Comte.”

Crabbé made a feeble gesture toward Miss Temple, but again whatever words he might have said were halted by the Contessa’s condescending scoff.

“Do not insult me—we’ll get to Miss Temple in time—I am speaking of the Duke and Lord Vandaariff. Both of whom should have presented no difficulty at all, unless of course, we are misled as to their true status. Enough of us have seen the Duke’s corpse that I am willing to say that Doctor Lorenz has done his work fairly—work that perforce was done in cooperation with the Comte. This leaves us with Lord Robert, whose transformation I believe was your own responsibility.”

“He is absolutely under our control,” protested Crabbé, “you saw yourself—”

“I saw no proof at all! It would have been simple to counterfeit!”

“Ask Bascombe—”

“Excellent—of course, we shall rely on the word of your own trusted assistant—now I shall sleep soundly!”

“Do not take anyone’s word,” snapped Crabbé, growing angry in his turn. “Call Lord Robert back—go see him yourself, do whatever you like, you’ll see he is our slave! Exactly as planned!”

“Then why,” said Francis Xonck in a calm dangerous tone, “did you interrupt the examination?”

Crabbé stammered, gesturing vaguely with his hands. “Not for the precise reason I stated at the time—I admit that—but so as not to compromise the apparent authority of the Duke and Lord Robert by publicly degrading them with scrutiny! Much rests on our remaining invisible behind these figureheads—including them in the examinations would have revealed them for what they are, our servants! So much is in turmoil already—Blenheim was to escort his master to begin with, to maintain appearances—if it were not for Roger’s quick thinking to step forward—”

“Where is Blenheim?” snapped the Contessa.

“He seems to have vanished, Madame,” answered Caroline. “I have questioned the guests as you asked, but no one has seen him.”

The Contessa snorted and looked past Miss Temple to the door, where Colonel Aspiche stood, having entered last of all.

“I do not know,” he protested. “My men searched the house—”

“Interesting, as Blenheim would be loyal to Lord Robert,” observed Xonck.

“Lord Robert is under our control!” insisted Crabbé.

“The control of your man Bascombe, at least,” said Xonck. “And what were those papers?”

This was to Aspiche, who did not understand the question.

“A satchel of papers!” cried Xonck. “You took them from Doctor Svenson! Bascombe took them from you!”

“I have no idea,” said the Colonel.

“You’re as bad as Blach!” scoffed Xonck. “Where is he anyway?”

The Comte d’Orkancz sighed heavily. “Major Blach is dead. Cardinal Chang.”

Xonck took this in, rolled his eyes, then shrugged. He turned back to Colonel Aspiche.

“Where is Bascombe now?”

“With Lord Robert,” said Caroline. “After Mr. Blenheim—”

“Where else ought he to be?” cried Crabbé, growing exasperated, “Where else? Distributing the message books—someone had to do it in Blenheim’s absence!”

“How fortunate he thought to step in,” said the Contessa icily.

“Mrs. Marchmoor is with him—surely you trust her as much as I trust Bascombe!” sputtered Crabbé. “Surely they have both proven their loyalty to us all!”

The Contessa turned to Smythe. “Captain, send two of your men to collect Mr. Bascombe as soon as he is finished. Bring him here, along with Lord Robert, if necessary.”

Smythe gestured immediately to his men, and the Dragoons clattered off.

“Where is Lydia?” asked Xonck.

“With the Prince,” answered Caroline, “saying good-bye to the guests.”

“Thank you, Caroline,” said the Contessa, “at least someone is paying attention.” She called to Smythe. “Have your men collect them as well.”

“Bring them to me,” rasped the Comte d’Orkancz. “Their part of our business is not finished.”

The Comte’s words hung balefully in the air, but the others remained silent, as if to speak at all would restart a now-settled disagreement. The Captain detailed two more Dragoons and returned to his place on the far wall, looking at his boots as if he could not hear a word.

“All this can be settled with ease,” announced the Deputy Minister, turning to the Comte d’Orkancz, “if we consult the book wherein Lord Robert’s thoughts have been stored. That book will make it perfectly clear that I have done what we agreed. It should contain a detailed account of the Lord’s participation in this entire affair—facts that only he could know.”

“At least one book was destroyed,” rasped the Comte.

“Destroyed how?” asked the Contessa.

“Chang.”

“Damn his bloody soul!” she snarled. “That really is the limit. Do you know which book it was?”

“I cannot know until I compare those remaining against the ledger,” said the Comte.

“Then let us do so,” said Crabbé waspishly. “I would be exonerated as soon as possible.”

“The books are in transit to the rooftop,” said the Comte. “As for the ledger, as you well know it remains in the possession of your assistant.”

“My goodness!” cried Xonck. “It seems Bascombe’s become a powerfully valuable fellow!”

“He will bring it with him!” protested Crabbé. “It will be settled. All of this is a ridiculous waste of our time—it has divided our efforts and created dangerous delays—and the most likely explanation for all these questions stands before us.” He thrust his chin toward Miss Temple.

“She and her comrades have caused no end of trouble! Who is to say it was not they who have killed Blenheim!”

“Just as Cardinal Chang slew Mr. Gray…,” observed Xonck quietly, turning his gaze to the Contessa. Crabbé took in his words, blinked and then, heartened by the shift of inquiry, nodded with agreement.

“Ah! Yes! Yes! I had forgotten it—it had been quite blown from my mind! Contessa?”

“What? As Chang is a murderer and Mr. Gray gone missing, I have no doubt the man was killed. I know not where—my instructions for Mr. Gray were to assist Doctor Lorenz with the Duke.”

“Yet Chang says they met underground—near the pipes!” cried Crabbé.

“I had not heard this…,” rasped the Comte d’Orkancz.

The Contessa looked up at him and pulled her spent cigarette from the holder, dropping it to the floor and stepping on the smoking butt while she screwed a new one in its place.

“You were occupied with your ladies,” she replied. Miss Temple perceived just a whisper of discomfort cross the Contessa’s face as she took in the small glass woman, standing placidly as a tamed leopard, careless of their bickering, her brilliant indigo color more striking for her proximity to the Comte’s dark fur. “Chang claimed Mr. Gray had been tampering with your works—at my instruction. The clearest evidence of this, of course, would be if something had gone wrong with your efforts—however, as far as I can tell, you have produced three successful transformations. As this is a process I quite freely admit I do not understand in the slightest, I offer your results as evidence that Cardinal Chang is a liar.”

“Unless he killed Gray before he could do his damage,” said Crabbé.

“Which is idle, baseless speculation,” growled the Contessa.

“Which does not mean it is not true—”

The Contessa swept to the Deputy Minister and her hand—apparently occupied with replacing her cigarette case in her bag—was now wrapped with the bright band. Its glittering spike was hard against Crabbé’s throat, digging at a visibly throbbing vein.

Crabbé swallowed.

“Rosamonde…,” began the Comte.

“Say it again, you bothersome little man,” hissed the Contessa, “and I will rip you open like a poorly sewn sleeve.”

Crabbé did not move.

“Rosamonde…,” said the Comte again. Her attention did not shift from Crabbé.

“Yes?”

“Might I suggest…the young lady?”

The Contessa moved two quick steps away from Crabbé—clear of any counter-stroke from a weapon of his own—and wheeled to Miss Temple. The woman’s face was flushed—with open pleasure, it seemed—and her eyes flared with excitement. Miss Temple doubted she had ever been in such peril.

“You underwent the Process in the theatre?” The Contessa smiled. “Is that it? Yes, directly after Lydia Vandaariff?”

Miss Temple nodded quickly.

“What a shame Miss Poole cannot confirm it. But here we are not helpless…let me see…orange for Harschmort…attendant whore…hotel, I suppose…and of course, doomed…”

The Contessa leaned forward and hissed into Miss Temple’s ear.

“Orange Magdalene orange Royale ice consumption!”

Miss Temple was taken by surprise, stammering for a response, then recalling—too late—the Prince in the secret room—

The Contessa took hold of Miss Temple’s jaw, wrenching her head so the women stared at each other. With a cold deliberate sneer the Contessa’s tongue snaked from her mouth and smeared its way across each of Miss Temple’s eyes. Miss Temple whimpered as the Contessa licked again, pressing her tongue flat over her nose and cheek, digging its narrow tip along her lashes. With a triumphant scoff the Contessa shoved Miss Temple stumbling into the waiting arms of Colonel Aspiche.

Miss Temple looked up to see the elegant lady wiping her mouth with her hand and mockingly smacking her lips.

“ ’Thirty-seven Harker-Bornarth, I should say…excellent vintage…shame to waste it on a savage. Get her out of here.”

She was dragged without ceremony down a nearby hallway and thrown, there was no other word for it, like a sack of goods into a dimly lit room guarded by two black-coated soldiers of Macklenburg. She sprawled to her knees and wheeled back to the open door, hair hanging in her eyes, in time to see Aspiche abruptly slam it shut. A moment later it was locked, and his bootsteps retreated into silence. Miss Temple sank back on her haunches and sighed. She dabbed at her face, still sticky with saliva and port, with the sleeve of her robe, and looked around her.

It was, as she had speculated earlier, the exact sort of dusty, disused parlor where she had met Spragg and Farquhar, but with a cry Miss Temple saw that she was not alone. She leapt to her feet and lunged at the two figures sprawled facedown on the floor. They were warm—both warm and—she whimpered with joy—they breathed! She had been reunited at last with her comrades! With all her available strength, she did her best to turn them over.

Miss Temple’s face was wet with tears, but she smiled as Doctor Svenson erupted into a fearsome spate of coughing, and she did her best to wedge her knees under his shoulders and help him to sit up. In the dim light she could not see if there was blood, but she could smell the pungent odors of the indigo clay infused throughout his clothing and his hair. She shoved again and swiveled his body so he could lean back against a nearby settee. He coughed again and recovered so far as to cover his mouth with a hand. Miss Temple brushed the hair from his eyes, beaming.

“Doctor Svenson—” she whispered.

“My dear Celeste—are we dead?”

“We are not, Doctor—”

“Excellent—is Chang?”

“No, Doctor—he is right here—”

“Are we still at Harschmort?”

“Yes, locked in a room.”

“And your mind remains your own?”

“Oh yes.”

“Capital…I am with you in a moment…beg pardon.”

He turned away from her and spat, took a deep breath, groaned, and heaved himself to a full sitting position, his eyes screwed tightly shut.

“My suffering Christ…,” he muttered.

“I have just been with our enemies!” she said. “Absolutely everything is going on.”

“Imagine it must be…pray forgive my momentary lapse…”

Miss Temple had scuttled to the other side of Cardinal Chang, doing her best not to cry at the spectacle he presented. If anything, the noxious smell was even more intense, and the dried crusts of blood around his nose and mouth and his collar, and the deathly paleness of his face, made clear the extremity of his health. She began to wipe his face with her robe, her other hand holding his head, when she realized that his dark glasses had come off as she’d rolled him over. She stared at the truly vicious scars across each eye and bit her lip at the poor man’s torment. Chang’s breath rattled in his chest like a shaken box of jumbled nails. Was he dying? Miss Temple pulled his head to her bosom and cradled it, whispering gently.

“Cardinal Chang,…you must come back to us…it is Celeste…I am with the Doctor…we cannot survive without you…”

Svenson heaved himself from his place and took hold of Chang’s wrist, placing his other hand upon the man’s forehead. A moment later his fingers were probing Chang’s throat and then Svenson had placed his ear against Chang’s chest, to gauge his ragged breath. He raised himself, sighed, and gently disengaged Miss Temple and searched with deliberate fingers along the back of Chang’s skull, where he’d been struck by the Colonel’s truncheon.

She stared helplessly at his probing fingers, stalking pale through Chang’s black hair.

“I thought you’d undergone their Process,” he observed mildly.

“No. I was able to counterfeit the scars,” she said. “I’m sorry if—well, I did not mean to disappoint you—”

“Hush, it sounds an excellent plan.”

“The Contessa found me out nevertheless.”

“That is no shame, I’m sure…I am happy to find you whole. May I ask—I am almost afraid to say it—”

“Elöise and I became separated. She bore the same false scars—I do not think she has been taken, but do not know where she is. Of course I am not entirely sure I know who she is.”

The Doctor smiled at her, rather lost and wan, his eyes achingly clear. “Nor am I…that is the strangest part of it.” He looked pointedly at Miss Temple with the same troubling open gaze. “Of course, when does one ever know?”

He pulled his eyes from hers and cleared his throat.

“Indeed,” sniffed Miss Temple, moved by this unexpected glimpse into the Doctor’s heart, “still, I am terribly sorry to have lost her.”

“We have each done our best…that we are alive is a marvel…these things are equal between us.”

She nodded, wanting to say more but having no idea what those words might be. The Doctor sighed, thinking, and then with an impulsive gesture reached out to pinch tight Chang’s nose with one hand and cover his mouth with the other. Miss Temple gasped.

“But what—”

“A moment…”

A moment was all it took. Like a man brought back to life Chang’s eyes snapped open and his shoulders tensed, his arms groped at Svenson and the rattle in his lungs redoubled in strength. The Doctor removed his hands with a flourish and the Cardinal erupted with his own fit of coughing, dauntingly moist and accompanied by sprays of bloody saliva. Svenson and Miss Temple each took one of the Cardinal’s arms and raised him to his knees where he could more easily vent his body’s distress and its attendant discharge.

Chang wiped his mouth with his fingers and smeared them on the floor—there was no point in wiping them on his coat or trousers, Miss Temple saw. He turned to them, blinked, and then groped quickly at his face. Miss Temple held out his glasses with a smile.

“It is so very good to see you both,” she whispered.

They sat for a moment, giving each other time to gather their strength and wits, and in Miss Temple’s case to wipe away her tears and regain control over her tremulous voice. There was so much to say and so many things to do, she scoffed at her own indulgence, even if the scoff was half-heartedly blown through a sniffling nose.

“You have the advantage, Celeste,” muttered Chang hoarsely. “From the blood in the Doctor’s hair, I assume we both lack any knowledge of where we are, who guards us…even the damned time of day.”

“How long since we were taken?” asked Svenson.

Miss Temple sniffed again.

“Not long at all. But so much has happened since we spoke, since I left you—I am so sorry—I was childish and a fool—”

Svenson waved away her concerns.

“Celeste, I doubt there is time—nor does it matter—”

“It matters to me.”

“Celeste—” This was Chang, struggling to rise.

“Be quiet, the both of you,” she said, and stood up so she was taller than either of them. “I will be brief, but I must first apologize for leaving you at Plum Court. It was a foolish thing to do and one that nearly ended my life—and nearly finished both of yours as well.” She held up a hand to stop Doctor Svenson from speaking. “There are two Macklenburg soldiers outside the door, and down the corridor at least ten Dragoons with their officer and their Colonel. The door is locked, and—as you both can see—our room is without windows. I assume we have no weapons.”

Chang and Svenson patted their pockets somewhat absently, not finding a thing.

“We will acquire them, it does not signify,” she said quickly, not wanting to lose her place.

“If we get out the door,” said Svenson.

“Yes, of course—the important thing is stopping our enemies’ plan.”

“And what exact plan is that?” asked Chang.

“That is the issue—I only know a portion of it. But I trust you’ve each seen a portion of your own.”

Keeping her promise to be brief, Miss Temple breathlessly launched into her tale: the St. Royale, Miss Vandaariff’s potion, the painting in the Contessa’s room, her battle with the book, her battle—in a strictly abbreviated version—with the Comte and Contessa in the coach, her train ride to Harschmort, and her journey to the theatre. Both Chang and Svenson opened their mouths to add details but she hushed them and went on—the secret room, the Contessa and the Prince, the killing of Blenheim, Elöise’s discovery in the blue card, Trapping, Vandaariff, Lydia, Veilandt, the ballroom, and, finally, the vicious argument between the Contessa and her allies not ten minutes before. The entire narrative took perhaps two hurriedly whispered minutes.

When she was finished, Miss Temple took a deep breath, hoping she hadn’t forgotten anything vital, though of course she had—simply too much had happened.

“So…” The Doctor pushed himself up from the floor onto the settee.

“They have taken control of this government with the Duke—who I promise you was killed—and are on their way to taking over that of Macklenburg—”

“If it is not offensive to you, Doctor,” said Miss Temple, “I do not understand the to-do about one amongst so many German kingdoms.”

“Duchy, but yes—it is because our mountains hold more of this indigo clay than a hundred Tarr Manors put together. They have been acquiring the land for years…” His voice caught and again he shook his head. “In any case—if they journey tonight to Macklenburg—”

“We will need to travel—” muttered Chang. His words were followed by another wracking cough he did his best to ignore, digging into each side pocket of his coat. “I have carried these quite a way, for this exact moment…”

Miss Temple squeaked with happy surprise, blinking again at a new tickling of tears in each eye. Her green boots! She sat down on the floor without the slightest hesitation or thought of modesty and snatched them up, working her lost treasures joyfully onto each foot. She looked up at Chang, who was smiling—though still coughing—and set to tightening the laces.

“I cannot tell you what this means,” she said, “you will laugh at me—you’re laughing now—I know they are only shoes, and I have many shoes, and to be honest I should not have given a pin for these four days before, but now I would not lose them for the world.”

“Of course not,” said Svenson quietly.

“O!” Miss Temple said. “But there are things of yours—from your greatcoat, which we lost, but as I said, we took the card, and there was also a silver case, for your cigarettes! Well, now that I say it, I do not have it—Elöise does, but once we find her, you shall have it back.”

“Indeed…I…that is excellent—”

“It seemed as if it might be precious to you.”

The Doctor nodded, but then looked away, frowning, as if he did not want to say more. Chang coughed again, congestion echoing wetly in his chest.

“We must do something for you,” said Svenson, but Chang shook his head.

“It is my lungs—”

“Powdered glass,” said Miss Temple. “The Contessa explained how she’d killed you.”

“I am sorry to disappoint the Lady…” He smiled.

Svenson looked at Chang quite soberly. “The glass alone would be harmful to your lungs—that it bears such toxic properties as well, it is a marvel you have not succumbed to hypnotic visions.”

“I should prefer them to this coughing, I assure you.”

“Is there any way to get it out?” asked Miss Temple.

The Doctor frowned in thought. The Cardinal spat again, and began to speak.

“My story is simple. When we did not know where you went, we split up, the Doctor to Tarr Manor and I to the Ministry, neither of us guessing correctly. I met Bascombe and the Contessa, witnessed the Process in action, fought Xonck, nearly died, then tracked you—too late—to the St. Royale—thus the boots—and made the train for Harschmort. Once here I have seen the most powerful figures overborne, their minds drained into these books, and Robert Vandaariff, mindless as an ape, filling page after page with a narrative of his secrets. I was unable to prevent the transformation of the three women…” Chang paused for a moment—Miss Temple was becoming steadily aware of the degree to which each man had pressed the limit of not only his strength but also his heart, and her own went out to them utterly—and then cleared his throat. “Though I did kill your Major Blach. But the rest was capture and failure—except I also managed to kill the Contessa’s man, Mr. Gray—”

“O! They were arguing about it fiercely!” exclaimed Miss Temple.

“He was on some errand—secret from the others, I am sure. I do not know what it was.” He looked up at Miss Temple. “Did you say our guards were Dragoons?”

“Not directly outside the door, no—but in the corridor, yes—perhaps a dozen men with their officer, Captain Smythe, and their Colonel—”

“Smythe, you say!” Chang’s face visibly brightened.

“I met him,” said Svenson. “He saved my life!”

“He knows me too, somehow,” said Miss Temple. “It was actually rather unsettling…”

“If we can get rid of Aspiche then Smythe will come to our cause, I am sure of it,” said Chang.

Miss Temple glanced back at the door. “Well, if that is all we require, then we will soon be on our way. Doctor?”

“I can speak as we go—save to say that there is an airship on the roof—it is how we came from Tarr Manor. They may use it to reach a ship at the canal, or farther up the coast—”

“Or go all the way to Macklenburg,” said Chang. “These machines I have seen are prodigiously powerful.”

Svenson nodded. “You are right—it is ridiculous to undervalue their capacity in any way—but this too can wait. We must stop the marriage. We must stop the Duke.”

“And we must find Elöise,” exclaimed Miss Temple, “especially as she has the glass key!”

“What glass key?” rasped Chang.

“Did I not mention it? I believe it is the way to safely read the books. We got it from Blenheim’s pocket.”

“How did he have it?” asked Chang.

“Exactly!” Miss Temple beamed. “Now, both of you—back on the floor—or, all right, I’m sure it is fine if you are on a settee—but you must shut your eyes and remain inert.”

“Celeste, what are you doing?” asked Svenson.

“Managing our escape, naturally.”

She knocked on the door and called out as sweetly as she could to the guards on the other side. They did not answer, but Miss Temple kept knocking and although she was forced to switch several times from one hand to the other as her knuckles became tender, at last the lock was turned and the door cracked open a single suspicious inch, through which Miss Temple glimpsed the pale, cautious face of a young soldier from Macklenburg—younger than herself, she saw, which only increased the sweetness of her smile.

“I do beg your pardon, but it’s very important that I see the Colonel. I have information for the Contessa—the Contessa, you understand—that she will be most anxious to have.”

The trooper did not move. Did he even understand her? Miss Temple’s smile hardened as she leaned forward and spoke more loudly, with a sharp, unmistakable intent.

“I must see the Colonel! At once! Or you will be punished!”

The trooper looked to his comrade, out of view, clearly unsure of what he should do. Miss Temple barked past him at the top of her lungs.

“Colonel Aspiche! I have vital news for you! If the Contessa does not get it, she will cut off your ears!”

At her scream the guard slammed the door and fumbled for the lock, but Miss Temple could already hear the angry stride of heavy boots. In a moment the door was flung wide by Aspiche, face crimson with rage, cheroot in one hand and the other on the hilt of his saber, glaring down at her like a red-coated schoolmaster ready to deal out a whipping.

“Thank you so much,” said Miss Temple.

“What information are you screeching about?” he snarled. “Your manners are quite unbecoming—even more so if I find this is a lie.”

“Nonsense,” said Miss Temple, shivering for the Colonel’s benefit and slipping a theatrical quaver into her voice. “And you do not need to scare me so—the state of my allies and the Contessa’s power have left me helpless. I am only trying to save my own life.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“What information?” repeated Aspiche.

Miss Temple glanced behind him at the guards, who were staring with undisguised curiosity, and then leaned forward with a whisper.

“It is actually rather sensitive…”

Aspiche leaned forward in turn with a tight, put-upon expression. Miss Temple brushed his ear with her lips.

“Blue…Caesar…blue…Regiment…ice…consumption…”

She looked up and saw the Colonel’s eyes did not move, gazing at a point just beyond her shoulder.

“Perhaps we ought to be alone,” she whispered.

Aspiche wheeled on the guards with fury.

“Leave me with the prisoners!” he barked. The guards stumbled back, as Aspiche reached out with both hands and slammed the door. He turned back to Miss Temple, his face without any expression at all.

“Cardinal,…Doctor,…you may rise…”

She kept to her whisper, not wanting the guards to hear. Chang and Svenson stood slowly, staring at the Colonel with morbid curiosity.

“Everyone who undergoes the Process is instilled with some sort of control phrase,” Miss Temple explained. “I overheard the Contessa use one on the Prince, and again when she attempted to use one on me—to prove I had not been converted. I wasn’t able to work it all out—it was a guess—”

“You risked this on a guess?” asked Svenson.

“As it was a good guess, yes. The phrase has several parts—the first is a color, and I deduced that the color was about where the Process was administered. You remember that the different boxes had different colors of felt packing—”

“Orange at Harschmort,” said Chang. “Blue at the Institute.”

“And seeing as he was converted before they moved the boxes from the Institute, the color for the Colonel was blue.”

“What was the rest of the phrase?” asked Svenson.

“The second word is about their role, using a Biblical metaphor—I’m sure it is all part of the Comte’s ostentation. For the Prince it was Joseph—for he will be the father to someone else’s child, as poor Lydia must be Mary—for me it would have been Magdalene, as for all of the white-robed initiates—and for the Colonel, as the representative of the state, I guessed correctly it would be ‘Caesar’…the rest follows the same way—‘Regiment’ instead of ‘Palace’ or ‘Royale’—”

“Is he understanding this?” asked Svenson.

“I think so, but he is also waiting for instructions.”

“Suppose he should cut his own throat?” suggested Chang, with a moist chuckle.

“Suppose he tells us if they’ve captured Elöise,” said Svenson, and he spoke slowly and clearly to Colonel Aspiche. “Do you know the whereabouts of Mrs. Dujong?”

“Shut your filthy hole before I shut it for you!” Aspiche roared.

Svenson darted back a step, his eyes wide with surprise.

“Ah,” Miss Temple said, “perhaps only the person who speaks the phrase can command.” She cleared her throat. “Colonel, do you know where we can find Mrs. Dujong?”

“Of course I don’t,” snapped Aspiche, sullenly.

“All right…when did you last see her?”

The Colonel’s lips curled into an unabashed and wicked smile. “Aboard the airship. Doctor Lorenz asked her questions, and when she did not answer Miss Poole and I took turns—”

Doctor Svenson’s fist landed like a hammer on the Colonel’s jaw, knocking him back into the door. Miss Temple turned to Svenson—hissing with pain and flexing his hand—and then to Aspiche, sputtering with rage and struggling to rise. Before he could, Chang’s arm shot forth and snatched the Colonel’s saber from its sheath, a wheeling bright scythe that had Miss Temple scampering clear with a squeak. When she looked back, the Cardinal had the blade hovering dangerously in front of the man’s chest. Aspiche did not move.

“Doctor?” she asked quietly.

“My apologies—”

“Not at all, the Colonel is a horrid beast. Your hand?”

“It will do fine.”

She stepped closer to Aspiche, her face harder than before. She had known Elöise endured her own set of trials, but Miss Temple thought back to her own irritation at how the woman, drugged and stumbling, had slowed their progress in escaping the theatre. She was more than happy to expend the sting of her guilt and regret on the villain before her.

“Colonel, you will open this door and take us into the hall. You will order both of these guards into this room and then lock the door behind them. If they protest, you will do your level best to kill them. Do you understand?”

Aspiche nodded, his eyes wavering between her own and the floating tip of the saber.

“Then do it. We are wasting time.”

The Germans gave them no trouble, so inured were they to following orders. It was only a matter of moments before they stood again in the open foyer where the members of the Cabal had argued with one another. The Dragoons lining the corridor were gone, along with their officer.

“Where’s Captain Smythe?” she asked Aspiche.

“Assisting Mr. Xonck and the Deputy Minister.”

Miss Temple frowned. “Then what were you doing here? Did you not have orders?”

“Of course—to execute the three of you.”

“But why were you waiting in the corridor?”

“I was finishing my cigar!” snapped Colonel Aspiche.

Chang scoffed behind her.

“Every man reveals his soul eventually,” he muttered.

Miss Temple crept to the ballroom doors. The enormous space was empty. She called back to her prisoner.

“Where is everyone?” He opened his mouth to answer but she cut him off. “Where are each of our enemies—the Contessa, the Comte, Deputy Minister Crabbé, Francis Xonck, the Prince and his bride, Lord Vandaariff, the Duke of Stäelmaere, Mrs. Stearne—”

“And Roger Bascombe,” said Doctor Svenson. She turned to him, and to Chang, and nodded sadly.

“And Roger Bascombe.” She sighed. “In an orderly manner, if you please.”

The Colonel had informed them—sullen twitches around his mouth evidence of a useless struggle against Miss Temple’s control—that their enemies had split into two groups. The first occupied themselves with a sweeping progress through the great house, gathering up their guests and collecting the stupefied luminaries whose minds had been drained into the glass books on the way, to send off the Duke of Stäelmaere with ceremony suitable to his imminent coup d’état. Accompanying the Duke’s progress would be the Contessa, the Deputy Minister, and Francis Xonck, as well as Lord Vandaariff, Bascombe, Mrs. Stearne, and the two glass women, Marchmoor and Poole. The second group, about which Aspiche could provide no information as to their errand, consisted of the Comte d’Orkancz, Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck, Lydia Vandaariff, Herr Flaüss, and the third glass woman.

“I did not recognize her,” said Miss Temple. “By all rights the third subject ought to have been Caroline.”

“It is Angelique, the Cardinal’s acquaintance,” replied Doctor Svenson, speaking delicately. “The woman we searched for in the greenhouse. You were right—she did not perish there.”

“Instead, the Comte kept her alive to use as a test subject,” rasped Chang. “If his transformation failed, then he need not sacrifice the others—if it worked and made moot the issue of her damaged body, then all the better. All in all you see, it is an admirable expression of economy.”

Neither Miss Temple nor the Doctor spoke, letting Chang’s bitterness and anger have their sway. Chang rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and sighed.

“The question is what they are doing, and which group we ought to follow. If we agree that stopping the Duke and the Prince’s marriage are both vital, it is of course possible that we split up—”

“I should prefer not to,” said Miss Temple quickly. “In either place we shall find enemies en masse—it seems there is strength in numbers.”

“I agree,” said the Doctor, “and my vote is to go after the Duke. The rest of the Cabal journeys to Macklenburg—the Duke and Lord Vandaariff are their keys to maintaining power here. If we can disrupt that, it may upset the balance of their entire plot.”

“You mean to kill them?” asked Chang.

“Kill them again, in the case of the Duke,” muttered the Doctor, “but yes, I am for assassinations all round.” He sighed bitterly. “It is exactly my plan for Karl-Horst, should his neck ever come within reach of my two hands.”

“But he is your charge,” said Miss Temple, a little shocked by Svenson’s tone.

“My charge has become their creature,” he answered. “He is no more than a rabid dog or a horse with a broken fetlock—he must be put down, preferably before he has a chance to sire an heir.”

Miss Temple put her hand over her mouth. “Of course! The Comte is using his alchemy to impregnate Lydia—it is the height of his part of this plan—it is Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical Annunciation made flesh! And they are doing it tonight—even now!”

Doctor Svenson sucked on his teeth, wincing, looking back and forth between Miss Temple and Chang.

“I still say we stop the Duke. If we do not—”

“If we do not, mine and Miss Temple’s lives in this city are ruined,” said Chang.

“And after that,” asked Miss Temple, “the Prince and Lydia?”

Svenson nodded, and then sighed. “I’m afraid they are already doomed…”

Chang abruptly cackled, a sound as pleasant as a gargling crow. “Are we so different, Doctor? Save some of your pity for us!”

At Miss Temple’s command Aspiche led them toward the main entrance of the house, but it became quickly clear they could not go far that way, so thronged had it become with the many, many guests gathered for the Duke’s departure. With a sudden inspiration, Miss Temple recalled her own path with Spragg and Farquhar through the gardener’s passage between the wings of the house and around to the carriages. Within two minutes—Aspiche huffing as sullenly as his conditioning allowed—they had arrived, their breath clouding in the chilly air, just in time to watch a procession flow down the main stairs toward the Duke’s imperious, massive black coach.

The Duke himself moved slowly and with care, like a particularly delicate, funereal stick insect, guided on one side by the small greasy-haired man—“Doctor Lorenz,” whispered Svenson—and on the other by Mrs. Marchmoor, no longer with a leash around her neck, her gleaming body now covered in a thick black cloak. Behind in a line came the Contessa, Xonck, and Deputy Minister Crabbé, and behind them, stopping at the steps and waving the Duke on his way, stood the similarly aligned knot of Robert Vandaariff, Roger Bascombe, and Mrs. Poole, also leashless and cloaked.

The Duke was installed in his coach and joined a moment later by Mrs. Marchmoor. Miss Temple looked to her companions—now was clearly the time to dash for the coach if they were going to do so—but before she could speak she saw with dismay, boisterously shouting to the Duke and to each other as they sought their own amongst the many coaches, the rest of the guests all preparing to leave. Any attack on the Duke’s coach was all but impossible.

“What can we do?” she whispered. “We are too late!”

Chang hefted the saber in his hand. “I can go—one of us alone, I can move more quickly—I can track them to the Palace—”

“Not in your condition,” observed Svenson. “You would be caught and killed—and you know it. Look at the soldiers! They have a full escort!”

As he pointed Miss Temple now saw that it was true—a double rank of mounted Dragoons, perhaps forty men, moving their horses into position ahead and behind the coach. The Duke was completely beyond their reach.

“He will convene the Privy Council,” rasped Chang hollowly. “He will make whatever they want into law.”

“With the Duke’s power, and Vandaariff’s money, the Macklenburg throne, and an inexhaustible supply of indigo clay…they’ll be unstoppable…” whispered Svenson.

Miss Temple frowned. Perhaps it was a futile gesture, but she would make it.

“On the contrary. Cardinal Chang, if you would please return the Colonel’s saber—I do insist.”

Chang looked at her quizzically, but carefully passed the weapon to Aspiche. Before the man could do a thing with it, Miss Temple spoke to him quite firmly.

“Colonel Aspiche, listen to me. Your men protect the Duke—this is excellent. No one else—no one, mind—is to come within reach of the Duke during his journey back to the Palace. You will go now, collect a horse, and join his train—immediately, do not speak to anyone, do not return to the house, take the mount of one of your men if you must. Once you reach the Palace, being very particular to avoid the scrutiny of Mrs. Marchmoor, you will find time—the appropriate time, for you must succeed—but nevertheless before the Privy Council can meet—to hack the Duke of Stäelmaere’s head clean from his body. Do you understand me?”

Colonel Aspiche nodded.

“Excellent. Do not breathe a word of this to anyone. Off you go!”

She smiled, watching the man stride into the crowded plaza, possessed by his mission, toward the nearest stand of horses, pretending not to see the astonished expressions of Svenson and Chang to her either side.

“Let’s see them stick it back on with library paste,” she said. “Shall we find the Prince?”

The Colonel had not known exactly where the Comte and his party had gone, merely that it was somewhere below the ballroom. From his own journeys through Harschmort House, Cardinal Chang was convinced he could find the way, and so Miss Temple and Doctor Svenson followed him back through the gardener’s passage and then indoors. As they walked, Miss Temple looked up at Chang, daunting despite his injuries, and wished for just a moment that she might see inside his thoughts like one of the glass women. They were on their way to rescue—or destroy, but the goal was the same—the Prince and Lydia, but the Cardinal’s lost woman, Angelique, would be there as well. Did he hope to reclaim her? To force the Comte to reverse her transformation? Or to put her out of her misery? She felt the weight of her own sadness, the regret and pain of Roger’s rejection, of her own habitual isolation—were these feelings, feelings that because they were hers felt somehow small, however keenly they plagued her, anything like the burdens haunting a man like Chang? How could they be? How could there not be an impassable wall between them?

“The two wings mirror each other,” he said hoarsely, “and I have been up and down the lower floors on the opposite side. If I am right, the stairway down should be right…about…here…”

He smiled—and Miss Temple was struck anew, perhaps by his especially battered condition, of what a provocative mix of the bodily compelling and morally fearsome Cardinal Chang’s smile actually was—and indicated a bland-looking alcove covered with a velvet curtain. He whisked it aside and revealed a metal door that had boldly been left ajar.

“Such confidence”—he chuckled, pulling it open—“to leave an open door…you’d think they might have learned.”

He spun to look behind them, his face abruptly stern, at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Or we would have…,” muttered Doctor Svenson, and Chang hurriedly motioned them through the door. He closed it behind them, letting the lock catch. “It will delay them,” he whispered. “Quickly!”

They heard the door being pulled repeatedly above them as they followed the spiral staircase for two turns, reaching another door, also ajar, where Chang eased past Miss Temple and Svenson to peek through first.

“Might I suggest we acquire weapons?” whispered the Doctor.

Miss Temple nodded her agreement, but instead of answering Chang had slipped through the door, his footfalls silent as a cat’s, leaving them to follow as best they could. They entered a strange curving corridor, like an opera house or a Roman theatre, with a row of doors on the inner side, as if they led to box seats, or toward the arena.

“It is like the Institute,” Svenson whispered to Chang, who nodded, still focused on the corridor ahead. They had advanced, walking close to the inner wall, just so the staircase door was no longer visible behind them, when a scuffling noise beyond the next curve caused Chang to freeze. He held his open palm to indicate that they should stay, then carefully moved forward alone, pressed flat against the wall.

Chang stopped. He glanced back at them and smiled, then darted forward in a sudden rush. Miss Temple heard one brief squawk of surprise and then three meaty thuds in rapid succession. Chang reappeared and motioned them on with a quick toss of his head.

On the ground by another open door, his breathing labored, blood flowing freely from his nose, lay the Macklenburg Envoy, Herr Flaüss. Near his feebly twitching hand lay a revolver, which Chang snatched up, breaking it open to check the cylinder and then slamming it home. While Doctor Svenson knelt by the gasping man, Chang extended the weapon for Miss Temple to take. She shook her head.

“Surely you or the Doctor,” she whispered.

“The Doctor, then,” replied Chang. “I am more useful with a blade or my fists.” He looked down to watch Svenson briskly ransack the Envoy’s pockets, each search answered by an ineffectual gesture of protest from the injured man’s hands. Svenson looked up, behind them toward the staircase—footsteps. He stood, abandoning the Envoy. Chang pressed the pistol into Svenson’s hands and took hold of the Doctor’s sleeve and Miss Temple’s arm, pulling them both farther down the corridor until they could no longer see the Envoy. Svenson whispered his protest.

“But, Cardinal, they are surely inside—”

Chang tugged them both into an alcove and pressed a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough. Down the corridor Miss Temple heard rushing steps…that suddenly fell silent. She felt Chang’s body tense, and saw the Doctor’s thumb moving slowly to the hammer of the pistol. Someone was walking toward them, slowly…the footsteps stopped…and then retreated. She strained her ears…and heard a woman’s haughty, angry hiss.

“Leave the idiot…”

Chang waited…and then leaned close to them both.

“Without getting rid of the body, we could not enter in secret—at this moment they are searching the room, assuming we have entered. This alone will halt whatever is happening inside. If we enter now, there is a chance to take their rearmost by surprise.”

Miss Temple took a deep breath, feeling as if she had somehow in the last five minutes become a soldier. Before she could make sense of—or more importantly, protest against—this wrong-headed state of affairs Chang was gone and Doctor Svenson, taking her hand in his, was pulling her in tow.

The Envoy remained in the doorway, raised to a sitting position but still incapacitated and insensible. They stepped past with no reaction from Herr Flaüss save a snuffle of his bleeding nose, into a dim stone entryway with narrow staircases to either side to balconies that wrapped around the room. Chang swiftly ducked to the left, with Svenson and Miss Temple directly behind him, crowding as quietly as possible out of sight. Miss Temple wrinkled her nose with distaste at the harsh reek of indigo clay. Ahead of them, through the foyer, they heard the Contessa.

“He has been attacked—you heard nothing?”

“I did not,” answered the dry, rumbling voice of the Comte. “I am busy, and my business makes noise. Attacked by whom?”

“I’m sure I do not know,” replied the Contessa. “Colonel Aspiche has cut the throats of each likely candidate…thus my curiosity.”

“The Duke is away?”

“Exactly as planned, followed by those selected for book-harvest. As agreed, their distraction and loss of memory have been blamed on a virulent outbreak of blood fever—stories of which will be spread by our own adherents—a tale with the added benefit of justifying a quarantine of Harschmort, sequestering Lord Robert for as long as necessary. But that is not our present difficulty.”

“I see,” grunted the Comte. “As I am in the midst of a very delicate procedure, I would appreciate it if you explained what in the depths of hell you are all doing here.”

Miss Temple did her best to follow the others up the narrow stairs in silence. As her head cleared the balcony floor, she saw a domed stone ceiling above, lit by several wicked-looking iron chandeliers that bristled with spikes. Miss Temple could never see a chandelier under the best of circumstances without imagining the destructive impact of its sudden drop to the floor (especially if she was passing beneath), and these instinctive thoughts, and these fixtures, just made the Comte’s laboratory that much more a chamber of dread. The balcony was stacked with books and papers and boxes, all covered by a heavy layer of dust. Svenson indicated with a jab of his finger that she could inch forward to peek through the bars of the railing.

Miss Temple had not been to the Institute, but she had managed a powerful glimpse of the hellish platform at the base of the iron tower. This room (as the walls were lined with bookshelves it seemed to have once been some sort of library) was a strange mix of that same industry (for there were tables cluttered with steaming pots and boiling vials and parchment and wickedly shaped metal tools) and a sleeping chamber, for in the center of the room, cleared by pushing aside and stacking any number of tables and chairs, was a very large bed. Miss Temple nearly gagged, covering her mouth with her hand, but she could not look away. On the bed, her bare legs dangling over the side, lay Lydia Vandaariff, her white robes around her thighs, each arm outstretched and restrained by a white silk cord. Her face shone with exertion, and each of her hands tightly gripped its cord, as if the restraint were more a source of comfort than punishment. The bedding between Lydia’s legs was wet, as was the stone floor beneath her feet, a pooling of watered blue fluid streaked with curling crimson lines. The embroidered hem of Lydia’s robe had been flipped down in a meager gesture toward modesty, but there was no ignoring the flecks of blue and red on her white thighs. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking.

Slumped in a nearby chair, a half-full glass in his hand and an open bottle of brandy on the floor between his legs, sat Karl-Horst von Maasmärck. The Comte wore his leather apron, his black fur slung over a pile of chairs behind him, and cradled a bizarre metal object, a metal tube with handles and valves and a pointed snout that he wiped clean with a rag.

On the walls behind them, hung on nails hammered carelessly into the bookcases, were thirteen distinct squares of canvas. Miss Temple turned to Chang and pointed. He had seen them as well, and made a deliberate gesture to flatten his hand and then turn it over, as to turn a page. At the St. Royale, Lydia had muttered something about the rest of the Annunciation fragments—indicating that she had seen them collected. Miss Temple knew the squares of canvas represented the entire reconstituted work, but she had not expected the Comte to hang each painting face to the wall, for what she saw was not the complete blasphemous image (which she was frankly by now more than a little curious to see), but its canvas backing—Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical formulae as they traveled across every piece, for which the painting was but a decorative veil, a detailed recipe for his own Annunciation, the unspeakable impregnation of Lydia Vandaariff by way of his twisted science. Around each canvas were pasted scores of additional notes and diagrams—no doubt the Comte’s own attempts to understand Veilandt’s blasphemous instructions. Miss Temple looked down at the girl on the bed and bit her knuckle to keep silent…

She heard an impatient sigh below her and the flicking catch of a match. Miss Temple scooted forward on her belly and gained a wider view of the room. With a tremor of fear she saw, almost directly beneath, the Contessa’s large party. How had they not heard them in the corridor? Next to the Contessa—smoking a fresh cigarette in her holder—stood Francis Xonck and Crabbé, and behind them at least six figures in black coats, carrying cudgels. She glanced again to Chang and Svenson and saw Chang’s attention focused elsewhere, underneath the opposite balcony. Glittering in the shadows, as the orange flames from the Comte’s crucibles reflected off her skin, stood the third glass woman, Angelique, silently waiting. Miss Temple stared at her, and was just beginning to examine the woman’s body with the new understanding that it was the object of Chang’s ardent affection—and in fact, its consummation, for the woman was a whore—which meant…Miss Temple’s face became flushed, suddenly jumbling her memories from the book with thoughts of Chang and Angelique—when she shook her head and forced her attention to the rather agitated conversation below.

“We would not have bothered you,” began Xonck, his eyes drawn with some distaste to the spectacle before them, “save we are unaccountably unable to locate a workable key.”

“Where is Lorenz?” asked the Comte.

“Readying the airship,” replied Crabbé, “and surrounded by a host of soldiers. I would prefer to leave him be.”

“What of Bascombe?”

“He accompanies Lord Robert,” snorted the Contessa. “We will meet him with the trunk of books and his ledger—but he does not have a key either, and for any number of reasons I would prefer not to involve him.”

Crabbé rolled his eyes. “Mr. Bascombe is absolutely loyal to us all—”

“Where is your key?” the Comte asked, glaring pointedly at the Deputy Minister.

“It is not my key at all,” replied Crabbé somewhat hotly. “I do not believe I am even the last to have it—as the Contessa says, we were collecting the books, not exploring them—”

“Who was the last to have it?” cried the Comte, openly impatient. He shifted his grip on the repulsive metal device in his hand.

“We do not know,” snapped the Contessa. “I believe it was Mr. Crabbé. He believes it was Mr. Xonck. He believes it was Blenheim—”

“Blenheim?” scoffed the Comte.

“Not Blenheim directly,” said Xonck. “Trapping. I believe Trapping took it to look at one of the books—perhaps idly, perhaps not—”

“Which book?”

“We do not know,” said the Contessa. “We were indulging him—I am still not satisfied as to his death. Blenheim either took it from Trapping’s pocket when the body was moved, or he was given it by Lord Robert.”

“I take it Blenheim is still missing?”

The Contessa nodded.

“The question is whether he is dead,” said Crabbé, “or independent?”

“Perhaps we can query Lord Robert,” said the Comte.

“We could if he retained his memory,” observed Xonck. “But as you know it has been put into a book—a book we cannot find. If we did find it, we could not safely read it without a key! It is ridiculous!”

“I see…” said the Comte, his brooding face dark with thought. “And what has happened to Herr Flaüss?”

“We do not know!” cried Crabbé.

“But don’t you think we should?” asked the Comte, reasonably. He turned to Angelique and clapped his hands. At once she stepped into the light like a tamed tiger, drawing the wary attention of every other person in the room.

“If there is someone hiding here,” the Comte said to her, looking up to the balconies, “find them.”

Miss Temple spun to Chang and Svenson, her eyes wide. What could they do? She searched around them—there was no other place to hide, to shield themselves! Doctor Svenson silently rolled back on his heels and pulled out the gun, his eyes measuring the distance to Angelique. Chang put a hand on the Doctor’s arm. The Doctor shrugged it off and eased back the hammer. Miss Temple felt the strange blue coldness approaching her mind. Any moment they would be found.

Instead, the pregnant silence in the room was broken by a crash from the opposite balcony, directly above Angelique. In an instant Xonck had the serpentine dagger in his hand and was sprinting to the narrow stairs. Miss Temple heard a scuffle and then a woman’s gasping protests as Xonck dragged her twisting body brusquely down the staircase and thrust her to her knees before the others. It was Elöise.

Miss Temple looked to Svenson and saw his frozen expression. Before he could do a thing she reached for his hand that held the pistol, gripping it tightly. This was no time for reckless impulse.

Xonck backed away from Elöise, indeed as did they all, for at a nod from the Comte Angelique stepped forward, her feet clicking against the stone floor like a new-shod pony’s. Elöise shook her head and looked up, utterly bewildered by the splendid, naked creature, and screamed. She screamed again—Miss Temple squeezing the Doctor’s arm as tightly as she could—but it died in her throat, as the expression of terror on her face faded to a quivering passivity. The glass woman had savagely penetrated her mind and was rummaging through its contents with pitiless efficiency. Again, Miss Temple saw the Comte d’Orkancz had closed his eyes, his face a mask of concentration. Elöise did not speak, her mouth open, rocking back and forth on her knees, staring helplessly into the cold blue eyes of her inquisitor.

Then it was done. Elöise dropped in a heap. The Comte came forward to stand over her, looking down.

“It is Mrs. Dujong,” whispered Crabbé. “From the quarry. She shot the Duke.”

“Indeed. She escaped from the theatre with Miss Temple,” said the Comte. “Miss Temple killed Blenheim—his body is in the trophy room. Blenheim did have the key—she herself wondered why. It is tucked in Mrs. Dujong’s shift, along with a silver cigarette case and a blue glass demonstration card. Both were acquired by way of Doctor Svenson.”

“A glass card?” asked the Contessa. Her gaze darted judiciously across the room. “What does it happen to show?”

Elöise was panting with exertion, groping to rise to her hands and knees. The Comte shoved his hand roughly into her shift, feeling for the objects he’d described. He stood again, peering at the cigarette case, all the time not answering the Contessa’s question. Xonck cleared his throat. The Comte looked up and tossed the silver case to him, which Xonck awkwardly managed to catch.

“Also Svenson’s,” he said, and glanced over at the Prince, who was still in his chair, watching it all through a veil of drunken bemusement. “The card is imprinted with an experience of Mrs. Marchmoor, within a room at the St. Royale…an encounter with the Prince. Apparently it made quite an impression on Mrs. Dujong.”

“Is that…all?” asked the Contessa, again rather carefully.

“No.” The Comte sighed heavily. “It is not.”

He nodded again to Angelique.

To the immediate dismay of the other members of the Cabal, the glass woman turned toward them. They shrank back, as Angelique began to walk forward.

“W-what are you doing? ” sputtered Crabbé.

“I am getting to the bottom of this mystery,” rasped the Comte.

“You cannot finish this without our help,” hissed Xonck. He waved a hand at the girl on the bed. “Haven’t we done enough for you—haven’t we all accommodated your visions?”

“Visions at the core of your profit, Francis.”

“I have never denied it! But if you think to turn me into a husk like Vandaariff—”

“I think nothing of the kind,” answered the Comte. “What I am doing is in our larger interest.”

“Before you treat us like animals, Oskar,…and make me your enemy,” said the Contessa, raising her voice and speaking quite fiercely, “perhaps you could explain what you intend.”

Miss Temple clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling like a fool. Oskar! Was it so stupidly obvious? The Comte had not stolen the works of Oskar Veilandt, the painter was no prisoner or mindless drone…the two men were one and the same! What had Aunt Agathe told her—that the Comte was born in the Balkans, raised in Paris, an unlikely inheritance? How was that incompatible with what Mr. Shanck had said of Veilandt—school in Vienna, studio in Montmartre, mysteriously disappeared—into respectability and wealth, she now knew! She looked over to Chang and Svenson, and saw Chang shaking his head bitterly. Svenson had eyes for nothing but Elöise’s slumped figure, glaring down at the poor woman with helpless agitation.

The Comte cleared his throat and held up the glass card.

“The encounter is attended by spectators—including you, Rosamonde, and you, Francis. But the clever Mrs. Dujong has perceived, through the viewing mirror, a second encounter, in the lobby…that of Colonel Trapping speaking most earnestly with Robert Vandaariff.”

This revelation was met with silence.

“What does that mean?” asked Crabbé.

“That is not all,” intoned the Comte.

“If you would simply tell us, Monsieur!” protested Crabbé. “There is no great amount of time—”

“Mrs. Dujong’s memory tells of a second card—one the Doctor cut from the lining of Arthur Trapping’s uniform. Evidently his body was not fully searched. Among other things this card conveys an image of myself performing a preparatory examination on Lydia.”

“Arthur intended to give it to Vandaariff,” said Xonck. “The greedy fool would not have been able to resist…”

Crabbé stepped forward, narrowing his eyes.

“Is this your way of informing us that you killed him?” he hissed at the Comte. “Without telling anyone? Risking everything? Pushing forward our entire time-table? No wonder Lord Robert was so agitated—no wonder we were forced to—”

“But that is the point, Harald,” rumbled the Comte. “I am telling you all this exactly because I did not harm a hair on Arthur Trapping’s head.”

“But—but why else—” began Crabbé, but he then fell silent…as every member of the Cabal studied one another.

“You said she had this from Svenson?” the Contessa asked. “Where did he get it?”

“She does not know.”

“From me, of course,” drawled a sluggish voice from the other side of the room. Karl-Horst was attempting to pour himself more brandy. “He must have found it in my room. I never even noticed Trapping, I must say—more interested in Margaret! It was the first bit of glass I’d ever seen—a present to entice my participation.”

“A present from whom?” asked Francis Xonck.

“Lord knows—is that important?”

“It is perhaps crucial, Your Highness,” said the Contessa.

The Prince frowned. “Well…in that case…”

It seemed to Miss Temple that each member of the Cabal watched the Prince with the barest restraint, every one of them wishing they could slap his face until he spat out what he knew, but none daring to show the slightest impatience or worry in front of the others…and so they waited as he pursed his lips and scratched his ear and sucked on his teeth, all the time enjoying their undivided attention. She was beginning to get worried herself. What if Angelique were to continue her search? Who was to say the glass woman could not somehow smell the presence of their minds? Miss Temple’s leg tingled from being crouched so long, and the dusty air was tickling her nose. She glanced at Chang, his lips pressed shut, and realized he had controlled his cough this entire time. She’d not given it a second thought, but suddenly the possibility—the inevitability!—of him exposing their presence terrified her. They must take some action—but what? What possibly?

“I suppose it must have been Doctor Lorenz, or—what was his name?—Mr. Crooner, from the Institute, the one who died so badly. They were the ones working the machines. Gave it to me as a sort of keepsake—don’t know how that villain Svenson found it unless he had help—I stashed it most brilliantly—”

The Contessa cut him off. “Excellent, Your Highness, that’s very helpful.”

She crossed to the Comte and relieved him of the items he’d taken from Elöise, speaking with a barely veiled anger.

“This gets us nowhere. We have what we came for—the key. Let us at once return to the books, to find what we can from Lord Robert’s testimony. Perhaps we will finally learn why the Colonel was killed.”

“You don’t believe it was Chang?” asked Crabbé.

“Do you?” scoffed the Contessa. “I would be happy to hear it—my life would be simpler. But no—we all remember the delicacy and risk involved in our final swaying of Robert Vandaariff, who up to that point quite believed the entire campaign was his own conception. We know the Colonel was brokering secrets—who can say how many secrets he knew?” She shrugged. “Chang’s a killer—this is politics. We will leave you, Monsieur, to your work.”

The Comte nodded to Lydia. “It is done…save for the settling.”

“Already?” The Contessa looked down at Miss Vandaariff’s spent body. “Well, I don’t suppose she would have taken pleasure in drawing things out.”

“The pleasure is in the final outcome, Rosamonde,” the Comte rasped.

“Of course it is,” she replied, her gaze drifting to the spattered bedding. “We have intruded enough. We will see you at the airship.”

She turned to leave but stopped as Xonck stepped forward and nodded at Elöise.

“What will you do with her?”

“Is it up to me?” asked the Comte.

“Not if you’d prefer it otherwise.” Xonck smiled. “I was being polite…”

“I would prefer to get on with my work,” snarled the Comte d’Orkancz.

“I am happy to oblige you,” said Xonck. He pulled Elöise to her feet with his good hand, and dragged her from the room. A moment later the Contessa, Crabbé, and their retinue followed.

Miss Temple looked to her companions and saw that Chang’s hand was clapped across Svenson’s mouth. The Doctor was in torment—yet if they made any noise at all, Angelique would sense their presence and overcome them as easily as she had Elöise. Miss Temple leaned forward again, peeking down into the laboratory. The Comte had watched the others depart, and then returned to his table. He glanced over to Lydia and to Angelique, ignored the Prince, and unscrewed a small valve that stuck out from the metal implement’s side. With more delicacy than she would have credited a man of his size, Miss Temple watched the Comte pour steaming liquid from one of the heated flasks into the valve, never spilling a drop, and then screw the valve closed. He lifted the metal implement and walked back to the bed, setting it down next to Lydia’s leg.

“Are you awake, Lydia?”

Lydia nodded. It was the first time Miss Temple had seen the girl move.

“Are you in pain?”

Lydia grimaced, but shook her head. She turned, distracted by movement. It was the Prince, pouring more brandy.

“Your fiancé will not remember any of this, Lydia,” said the Comte. “Neither will you. Lie back…what cannot be reversed must be embraced.”

The Comte picked up the implement and glanced up to their balcony. He raised his voice, speaking generally to the room.

“It would be better if you descended willingly. If the lady brings you down, it will be by dragging you over the edge.”

Miss Temple turned to Chang and Svenson, aghast.

“I know you are there,” called the Comte. “I have obviously waited to speak to you for a reason…but I will not ask a second time.”

Chang took his hand away from Svenson’s mouth and looked behind for some other way out. Before either could stop him, the Doctor shot to his feet and called out over the balcony to the Comte.

“I am coming…damn you to hell, I am coming down…”

He turned to them, his eyes a fierce glare, his hand held out for their continued silence. He made a loud stomping as he reached the staircase, but as he passed thrust the pistol into Miss Temple’s hands and leaned close to her ear.

“If they never marry,” he whispered, “the spawn is not legitimate!”

Miss Temple bobbled the gun and looked up at him. Svenson was already gone. She turned to Chang, but he was stifling a vicious cough—a thin stream of blood dripping down his chin. She turned back to the balcony rail. The Doctor stepped into view, his hands away from his body and open, to show he was unarmed. He winced with disgust at this new closer view of Lydia Vandaariff, then pointed to the glass woman.

“I suppose your creature sniffed me out?”

The Comte laughed—a particularly objectionable sound—and shook his head. “On the contrary, Doctor—and appropriately, as we are both men of science and inquiry. My glimpse through Mrs. Dujong’s mind showed no memory of an attack on Herr Flaüss. It was mere deduction to assume the true culprit was still in hiding.”

“I see,” said Svenson. “Yet I do not see why you waited to expose me.”

“Do you not?” the Comte said, with a smug condescension. “First…where are your companions?”

The Doctor groped for words, his fingers flexing, then let them burst forth with scorn and rage.

“Damn you, Sir! Damn you to hell—you heard for yourself! Their throats have been cut by Colonel Aspiche!”

“But not yours?”

Svenson scoffed. “There is no virtue in it. Chang was half-dead already—his dispatch was a matter of seconds. Miss Temple”—here Svenson passed a hand across his brow—“you will not doubt how she fought him. Her struggles woke me, and I was able to break the Colonel’s skull with a chair…but not, to my undying shame, in time to save the girl.”

The Comte considered the Doctor’s words.

“A moving tale.”

“You’re a bastard,” spat Svenson. He waved a hand at Lydia without taking his eyes from the Comte. “You’re the worst of the lot—for you’ve wasted gifts the others never had. I would put a bullet through your brain, Monsieur—send you to hell right after Aspiche—with less remorse than I would squash a flea.”

His words were met with laughter, but it was not from the Comte. To Miss Temple’s surprise, the Prince had roused himself from his chair and taken a step toward his one-time retainer, the snifter still cradled in his hand.

“What shall we do with him, Monsieur? I suppose the task is mine—he is my traitor, after all. What would you suggest?”

“You’re an ignorant fool,” hissed Svenson. “You’ve never seen it—even now! For God’s sake, Karl, look at her—your fiancée! She is given someone else’s child!”

The Prince turned to Lydia, his face as blandly bemused as ever.

“Do you know what he means, darling?”

“I do not, dearest Karl.”

“Do you, Monsieur?”

“We are merely ensuring her health,” said the Comte.

“The woman is half-dead!” roared Svenson. “Wake up, you idiot! Lydia—for heaven’s sake, girl—run for your life! It is not too late to be saved! ”

Svenson was raving, shouting, flailing his arms. Miss Temple felt Chang take hold of her arm and then—chiding herself again for being one step behind the game—she realized that the Doctor was making noise enough to cover their way down the stairs. They descended quickly to the lowest steps, just out of sight of the room. She looked down at the pistol—why in the world had the Doctor given it to her? Why did he not try to shoot the Prince himself? Why not give it to Chang? She saw Chang look down at the weapon as well, then up to meet her eyes.

She understood in an instant, and despite everything, despite the fact she could not even see his eyes, felt the sting of tears in her own.

“Doctor, you will calm down!” cried the Comte, snapping his fingers at Angelique. In an instant Svenson cried out and staggered, dropping to his knees. The Comte held up his hand again and waited just long enough for the Doctor to regain his wits before speaking.

“And I will hear no more disparagement of this work—”

“Work?” barked Svenson, waving his arms at the glass beakers, at Lydia. “Medieval foolery that will cost this girl’s life!”

“Enough!” shouted the Comte, stepping forward ominously. “Is it foolery that has created the books? Foolery that has eternally captured the very essence of how many lives? Because the science is ancient, you—a doctor, with no subtlety, no sense of energy’s nuance, of elemental concepts—reject it out of hand, in ignorance. You who have never sought the chemical substance of desire, of devotion, of fear, of dreams—never located the formulaic roots of art and religion, the power to remake in flesh myths most sacred and profane!”

The Comte stood over Svenson, his mouth a grimace, as if he were angry for having spoken so intimately to such a person. He cleared his throat and went on, his words returned to their customary coldness.

“You asked why I waited to expose you. You will have overheard certain disagreements amongst my allies—questions for which I would have answers…without necessarily sharing them. You may speak willingly, or with the aid of Angelique—but speak to me you will.”

“I don’t know anything,” spat Svenson. “I was at Tarr Manor—I am outside your Harschmort intrigues—”

The Comte ignored him, idly fingering the knobs on his metal implement as it lay next to Lydia’s pale leg.

“When we spoke in my greenhouse, your Prince had been taken from you. At that time neither you nor I knew how or by whom.”

“It was the Contessa,” said Svenson, “in the airship—”

“Yes, I know. I want to know why.”

“Surely she gave you an explanation!”

“Perhaps she did…perhaps not…”

“The falling-out of thieves,” sneered the Doctor. “And the two of you seemed such particular friends—”

The Prince stepped forward and boxed Svenson’s ear.

“You will not speak so to your betters!” he announced, as if he were making polite conversation, then snorted with satisfaction. Svenson looked up at the Prince, his face hot with scorn, but his words were still for the Comte.

“I cannot know, of course—I merely, as you say, deduce. The Prince was taken mere hours after I had rescued him from the Institute. You—and others—were not told. Obviously she wanted the Prince for her own ends. What is the Prince to your plans? A dupe, a pawn, a void in the seat of power—”

“Why, you damned ungrateful rogue!” cried the Prince. “The audacity!”

“To some this might seem obvious,” said the Comte, impatiently.

“Then I should think the answer obvious as well,” scoffed Svenson. “Everyone undergoing the Process is instilled with a control-phrase, are they not? Quite by accident the Prince was taken by me before any particular commands could be given to him—the Contessa, knowing that, and knowing the Prince’s character would predispose everyone to think of him as an imbecile, seized the opportunity to instill within his mind commands of her own, to be invoked at the proper time against her putative allies—something unexpected, such as, let us say, pushing you out of an airship. Of course, when asked, the Prince will remember none of it.”

The Comte was silent. Miss Temple was amazed at the Doctor’s presence of mind.

“As I say…fairly obvious,” sniffed Svenson.

“Perhaps…it is your own fabrication…yet credible enough that I must waste time scouring the memory of the Prince. But before that, Doctor—for I think you are lying—I will first scour you. Angelique?”

Svenson leapt to his feet with a cry, but the cry was cut to a savage choking bark as Angelique’s mind penetrated his. Chang burst forth from the stairwell, running forward, Miss Temple right behind him. Svenson was on his knees holding his face, the Prince above him, raising a boot to kick the Doctor’s head. To the side stood Angelique. The Prince looked up at them with a confused resentment at being interrupted. The Comte wrenched his attention from Svenson’s mind with a roar. Angelique turned, a little too slowly, and Miss Temple raised the revolver. She was perhaps ten feet distant when she pulled the trigger.

The shot smashed into the glass woman’s outstretched arm at the elbow, shearing through with a spray of bright shards and dropping the forearm and hand to the floor, where they shattered in a plume of indigo smoke. Miss Temple saw Angelique’s mouth open wide but heard the scream within her mind, indiscriminately flaying the thoughts of every person in the room. Miss Temple fell to her knees, tears in her eyes, and fired again. The bullet pierced the cuirass of Angelique’s torso, starring the surface. Miss Temple kept squeezing the trigger, each hole driving the cracks deeper, lancing into each other to form fissures—the scream redoubled and Miss Temple could not move, could barely see, flooded with random memories stabbing her mind like daggers—Angelique as a child at sea, the rank perfume of the brothel, silks and champagne, tears, beatings, bruises, distant embraces, and a piercingly tender hope, more than anything, that her desperate dreams had come true. Before Miss Temple’s eyes the torso split wide below the ribs and gave, the upper body breaking against the lower in a cloud of indigo smoke and glimmering deadly dust, the pieces smashing apart as they struck the stone.

Miss Temple could not tell whether the silence was due to a shared inability to speak, or if the scream had made her deaf. Her head swam with the fumes in the air and she put a hand before her mouth, wondering if she’d already inhaled blue glass dust. The steaming ruins of Angelique lay scattered across the floor, blue shards in an indigo pool. She looked up and blinked. Chang lay with his back against the wall, staring. Svenson was on his hands and knees, groping to crawl free. Lydia was on the bed, whimpering and pulling at her ropes. The Prince lay on the ground near Svenson, hissing with pain and swatting feebly at his hand, where a splinter of glass cut open a patch of skin that had since turned blue. The Comte alone still stood, his face pale as ash.

Miss Temple turned the pistol toward him and pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the chemical works on his table, spraying more glass and spattering his apron with steaming liquid. The sound woke the room. The Comte surged forward and swept up his metal implement from the bed, raising it up like a mace. Miss Temple aimed another shot at his head, but before she could fire felt Chang seize her arm. She grunted with surprise—his grip was painful—and saw that with his other hand he held Svenson’s collar, pulling them both to the door with all his fading strength. She looked back at the Comte, who despite his rage took care to step around the sea of broken glass, and did her best to aim. Svenson got his feet beneath them as they reached the door but Chang did not let him go. Miss Temple extended her arm to fire, but Chang yanked her back and into the corridor.

“I must kill him!” she cried.

“You are out of bullets!” Chang hissed. “If you pull the trigger he will know!”

They’d not gone two more steps before the Doctor turned, struggling against Chang’s grip.

“The Prince—he must die—”

“We’ve done enough—” Chang pulled them both forward, his voice thick, coughing with the effort.

“They will be married—”

“The Comte is formidable—we are unarmed and weak. If we fight him one of us—at least—will die.” Chang could barely talk. “We have more to accomplish—and if we stop the others, we stop your idiot Prince. Remember Mrs. Dujong.”

“But the Comte—” said Miss Temple, looking behind her for pursuit.

“Cannot chase us alone—he must secure the Prince and Lydia.” Chang cleared his throat with a groan and spat past Svenson. “Besides…the Comte’s vanity has been…wounded…”

His voice was raw. Miss Temple risked a glance, now finally running with the others on her own two feet, and saw with a piercing dismay the line of tears beneath Chang’s glasses, and heard the terrible sobs within his heaving breath. She wiped at her own face and did her best to keep up.

They reached the stairwell and closed the door behind them. Chang leaned against it, his hands on his knees, and surrendered to another bout of coughing. Svenson looked at him with concern, his hand on Chang’s shoulder for comfort. He looked up at Miss Temple.

“You did very well, Celeste.”

“No more than anyone,” she answered, a bit pointedly. She did not want to speak of herself in the presence of Chang’s distress.

“That is true.”

Miss Temple shivered.

“Her thoughts…at the end, in my mind…”

“She was cruelly used,” said Svenson, “by the Comte…and by the world. No one should undergo such horror.”

But Miss Temple knew the true horror for Angelique had not been transformation, but her untimely death, and her terrible silent scream was a protest as primal and as futile as the last cry of a sparrow taken by the hawk. Miss Temple had never been in the presence, been possessed by such fear—held tight to the very brink of death—and she wondered if she would die the same horrible way when it came to it—which it might this very night. She sniffed—or day, she had no idea what time it was. When they’d been outside watching the coaches it had still been dark, and now they were underground. Was it only a day since she’d first met Svenson in the Boniface lobby?

She swallowed and shook the dread from her mind. With a perhaps characteristic keenness Miss Temple’s thoughts shifted from death to breakfast.

“After this is settled,” she said, “I should quite enjoy something to eat.”

Chang looked up at her. She smiled down at him, doing her level best to withstand the hardness of his face and the black vacuum of his glasses.

“Well…it has been some time…,” said Svenson politely, as if he were speaking of the weather.

“It will be some while more,” managed Chang, hoarsely.

“I’m sure it will,” said Miss Temple. “But being as I am not made of glass, it seemed like a reasonable topic of conversation.”

“Indeed,” said Svenson, awkwardly.

“Once this business is settled of course,” added Miss Temple.

Chang straightened himself, his face somewhat composed. “We should go,” he muttered.

Miss Temple smiled to herself as they climbed, hoping her words had served to distract Chang at least into annoyance, away from his grief. She was well aware that she did not understand what he felt, despite her loss of Roger, for she did not understand the connection between Chang and the woman. What sort of attachment could such transacted dealings instill? She was smart enough to see that bargains of some sort ran through most marriages—her own parents were a joining of land and the cash to work it—but for Miss Temple the objects of barter—titles, estates, money, inheritance—were always apart from the bodies involved. The idea of transacting one’s own body—that this was the extent—involved a bluntness she could not quite comprehend. She wondered what her mother had felt when she herself had been conceived, in that physical union—was it a matter of two bodies (Miss Temple preferred not to speculate about “love” when it came to her savage father), or was each limb bound—as much as Lydia’s had been in the laboratory—by a brokered arrangement between families? She looked up at Chang, climbing ahead of her. What did it feel like to be free of such burdens? The freedom of a wild animal?

“We did not see Herr Flaüss on our way out,” observed Doctor Svenson. “Perhaps he went with the others.”

“And where are they?” asked Miss Temple. “At the airship?”

“I think not,” said Svenson. “They will be settling their own disagreements before they can go on—they will be interrogating Lord Vandaariff.”

“And perhaps Roger,” said Miss Temple, just to show she could say his name without difficulty.

“Which leaves us the choice of finding them or reaching the airship ourselves.” Svenson called ahead to Chang. “What say you?”

Chang looked back, wiping his red-flecked mouth, out of breath. “The airship. The Dragoons.”

Doctor Svenson nodded. “Smythe.”

The house was disturbingly quiet when they reached the main floor.

“Can everyone be gone?” asked Svenson.

“Which way?” rasped Chang.

“It is up—the main stairs are simplest if they are free. I must also suggest, again, that we acquire weapons.”

Chang sighed, then nodded with impatience.

“Where?”

“Well—” Svenson clearly had no immediate idea.

“Come with me,” said Miss Temple.

Mr. Blenheim had been moved, though the stain on the carpet remained. They took a very brief time, but even then she smiled to see the curiosity and greed on the faces of her two companions as they plundered Robert Vandaariff’s trophy chests. For herself, Miss Temple selected another serpentine dagger—the first had served her well—while Chang selected a matching pair of curved, wide-bladed knives with hilts nearly as long as the blade.

“A sort of macheté,” he explained, and she nodded agreeably, having no idea what he meant but happy to see him satisfied. To her amusement, Doctor Svenson pulled an African spear from the wall, and then stuck a jeweled dagger in his belt.

“I am no swordsman,” he said, catching her curious expression and Chang’s dry smirk. “The farther I keep them from me, the safer I’ll remain. None of which makes me feel any less ridiculous—yet if it helps us survive, I will wear a cap and bells.” He looked over at Chang. “To the rooftops?”

As they walked to the front stairs, the dagger’s unfamiliar weight in her hand, Miss Temple felt a troubling lightness in her breath and a prickling of sweat across her back. What if Captain Smythe did not reject his orders? What if Captain Smythe was not there at all? What if instead of soldiers they were met by the Contessa and Xonck and Crabbé? What must she do? A failure of nerve while she was alone was one thing, but in the company of Chang or Svenson? With every step her breathing quickened and her heart became less sure.

They reached the main foyer, an enormous expanse of black and white marble where Miss Temple had first met the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza so long ago, now empty and silent save for their own echoing steps. The great doors were closed. Svenson craned his neck to look up the stairs and Miss Temple followed his gaze. From what she could tell, there was not a soul between the ground floor and the top.

Behind them in the house the dead air was split by a gunshot. Miss Temple gasped with surprise. Chang pointed to the far wing.

“Vandaariff’s office,” he whispered. Svenson opened his mouth but Chang stopped his words with an open hand. Could they have shot Elöise? Another few seconds…a door slam from the same direction…then distant footsteps.

“They are coming,” snapped Chang. “Hurry!”

They were to the third floor when their enemies reached the foyer below. Chang motioned Miss Temple closer to the wall and lowered himself into a crouch. She could hear the Contessa, but not her words. Above, the Doctor groped his way to an unobtrusive door. Miss Temple dashed to meet him, bobbing past him in the doorway and trotting up the narrower steps to where Chang waited. Chang caught her arm and leaned his face close to hers, waiting until the Doctor had caught up to whisper.

“There will be a guard on the other side of the door. It is vital we not harm any Dragoon until we reach Smythe. His men ought to outnumber our other enemies—if we can but get his attention, we have a chance to sway him.”

“Then I should be the one who goes,” said Miss Temple.

Chang shook his head. “I know him best—”

“Yes, but any Dragoon will take one look at either of you and start swinging. He will not do so to me—giving me the time to call for the Captain.”

Chang sighed, but Svenson nodded immediately.

“Celeste is right.”

“I know she is—but I do not like it.” Chang stifled another cough. “Go!”

Miss Temple opened the door and stepped through, the dagger tucked into her bodice, and winced at the bitter wind blowing across the rooftop, carrying the sharp salt tang of the sea. A red-jacketed Dragoon stood to either side of the door. Some twenty yards away was the dirigible, hovering ominously, like an unearthly predatory creature, an enormous gasbag dangling a long bright metal cabin, near the size of a sea-ship but all gleaming black metal like a train car. Dragoons were loading boxes into the cabin, handing them up to several black-uniformed Macklenburgers posted at the top of the gangway. Inside the cabin, through a gas-lit window, she saw the sharp-faced Doctor Lorenz, goggles around his neck, busy flipping switches. The rooftop was a hive of activity, but nowhere could she locate Smythe.

It took perhaps another second for the two Dragoons to cry out at her presence and take insistent hold of her arms. She did her best to explain herself above the whipping wind.

“Yes—yes, excuse me—my name is Temple, I am looking—I beg your pardon—I am looking for Captain—”

Before she could finish the one to her right was bawling toward the airship.

“Sir! We’ve got someone, Sir!”

Miss Temple saw Doctor Lorenz look up through the window, and the shock upon his face. At once he darted from view—no doubt coming down—and she took up the trooper’s cry.

“Captain Smythe! I am looking for Captain Smythe!”

Her handlers exchanged a look of confusion. She did her best to exploit it and charge from their grasp but they kept hold, despite her kicking feet. Then, at the top of the gangplank, standing next to each other, appeared the figures of Captain Smythe and Doctor Lorenz. Miss Temple’s heart sank. The pair began to walk down—Smythe’s face too far away in the dim light to read his expression—when the door behind her slid open and Cardinal Chang laid a blade to the throat of each Dragoon. Miss Temple turned her head—surely this was an unwanted complication—to see Doctor Svenson, spear tucked under his arm, holding the doorknob fast by force.

“They are below us,” he whispered.

“Who have we here?” called Doctor Lorenz, in a mocking tone. “Such a persistent strain of vermin. Captain—if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Captain Smythe!” shouted Miss Temple. “You know who we are! You know what’s been done tonight—you heard them speaking! Your city—your Queen!”

Smythe had not moved, still next to Lorenz on the gangway.

“What are you waiting for?” snapped Lorenz, and he turned to the Dragoons on the rooftop—a band of perhaps a dozen men. “Kill these criminals at once!”

“Captain Smythe,” cried Miss Temple, “you have helped us before!”

“What?” Lorenz rounded on Smythe and the Captain, without hesitation, shot out his arm and shoved Doctor Lorenz cleanly off the gangplank to fall with a grinding thud on the graveled rooftop, some ten feet below.

At once Chang whipped back the blades and pulled Miss Temple free. The Dragoons leapt the other way and drew their sabers, facing Chang but glancing at their officer, unsure of what to do. Smythe descended the rest of the way, one hand on his saber hilt.

“I suppose this had to happen,” he said.

Doctor Svenson grunted aloud as the door was pulled, testing his grip. He held it closed, but looked anxiously at Chang, who turned to Smythe. Smythe glanced at the top of the ramp, where two confused Macklenburg troopers stood watching. Satisfied they were not going to attack, Smythe called sharply to his men.

“Arms!”

As one the rest of the 4th Dragoons drew their sabers, Svenson let go of the door and leapt to join Miss Temple and Chang.

The door shot open to reveal Francis Xonck, a dagger in his hand. He stepped onto the rooftop, took in the drawn blades and the unguarded status of his enemies.

“Why, Captain Smythe,” he drawled, “is something the matter?”

Smythe stepped forward, still not drawing his own blade.

“Who else is with you?” he called. “Bring them out now.”

“I would be delighted.” Xonck smiled.

He stepped aside to usher through the other members of the Cabal—the Contessa, the Comte, and Crabbé—and after them the Prince, Roger Bascombe (notebooks tucked under his arm), and then, helping the unsteady Lydia Vandaariff, Caroline Stearne. After Caroline came the six functionaries in black, the first four manhandling a heavy trunk, the last two dragging Elöise Dujong between them. Miss Temple breathed a sigh of relief—for she was sure the shot they heard had meant the woman’s death. As this crowd spread from the door the Dragoons withdrew, maintaining a strict cushion of space between the two groups. Xonck glanced toward Miss Temple and then stepped out into this borderland to address Smythe.

“Not to repeat myself…but is something wrong?”

“This can’t go on,” said Smythe. He nodded to Elöise and Lydia Vandaariff. “Release those women.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Xonck, grinning as if he could not quite believe what he heard, yet found the possibility deeply amusing.

“Release those women.”

“Well,” Xonck said, smiling at Lydia, “that woman does not wish to be released—for she would fall down. She’s feeling poorly, you see. Excuse me—have you spoken to your Colonel?”

“Colonel Aspiche is a traitor,” announced Smythe.

“To my eyes, the traitor here is you.”

“Your eyes are flawed. You are a villain.”

“A villain who knows all about your family’s debts, Captain,” sneered Xonck, “all secured against a salary you may not live to collect—the price of disloyalty, you know, or is it idiocy?”

“If you want to die, Mr. Xonck, say one more word.”

Smythe drew his saber and stepped toward Xonck, who retreated, his fixed smile now radiating malice.

Miss Temple groped for her dagger but did not pull it out—the air felt heavy and thick. Surely the Cabal would retreat in the face of Smythe and his men—how could they hope to withstand professional troops? It was clear that Captain Smythe was of the same opinion, for rather than pursuing Xonck, he pointed generally at the crowd around the doorway with his saber.

“Throw down your weapons and return to the house. We will settle this inside.”

“That will not happen,” answered Xonck.

“I am not looking for bloodshed, but I am not afraid of it,” called Smythe, pitching his voice to the others around Xonck—the women particularly. “Throw down your weapons and—”

“It really is not possible, Captain.” This was Harald Crabbé. “If we are not in Macklenburg in two days, our entire effort is undone. I do not know what this rabble has told you”—he gestured vaguely to Miss Temple, Svenson, and Chang—“but I can tell you they are unscrupulous killers—”

“Where is Mr. Blenheim?” Smythe interrupted Crabbé without care.

“Ah! An excellent question!” cried Crabbé. “Mr. Blenheim has been murdered—and by that young woman!”

He pointed an accusing finger at Miss Temple, and she turned her eyes to Smythe, wanting to explain, but before she could get the words from her mouth the Captain tipped his brass helmet toward her in salute. He looked back to the Deputy Minister, whose condemnation clearly had not had the expected result.

“Then she has saved me the trouble—for Mr. Blenheim murdered one of my men,” answered Smythe, and then he bawled at them with a harshness of command that made Miss Temple jump. “Put down your weapons! Get back in the house! Your effort is undone as of this minute!”

The crack of the pistol echoed flatly from the roof into the open air, the sound somehow less intrusive than the impact of its bullet, which spun Captain Smythe and knocked him forward to his knees, his helmet bouncing from his head. Miss Temple spun to see Doctor Lorenz, a smoking revolver in his hand, standing underneath the gangway. Without an instant’s hesitation Xonck strode forward and landed a sweeping kick on the Captain’s jaw, knocking him sprawling on his back. He turned back to the men behind and screamed aloud, his eyes disturbingly bright.

“Kill them!”

The rooftop exploded into mayhem. Lorenz fired again, bringing down the nearest Dragoon. The two Macklenburg troopers clattered down the gangplank, sabers drawn, with a clotted German war cry. The men in black dashed forward after Xonck, cudgels raised, some with pistols, snapping off shots where they could. The Dragoons, stunned by the attack on their officer and taken wholly wrong-footed, finally leapt to their own ragged defense. Blades swung wickedly through the air and errant bullets whipped past Miss Temple’s ears. She fumbled for the dagger at the same time Chang seized her shoulder and thrust her toward the airship. She caught her footing and turned to see Chang parry a cudgel with one of his blades and bring the other down deep into the shoulder joint of one of the black-coated men.

He turned to her and shouted, “Cut the ropes!”

Of course! If she could shear through the cables, the craft would rise by itself, drifting derelict across the sea—there was no way they could reach Macklenburg inside two weeks! She dashed to the nearest mooring and dropped to her knees, sawing away with the dagger. The cable was thick hemp, black and clotted with tar, but the blade was sharp and soon clumps were twisting away, the gap she opened straining wider as the weight of the airship exerted its pull. She looked up, tossing the curls from her eyes, and gasped aloud at the hellish bloody confusion.

Chang fought one of the Macklenburgers, trying without success to work his shorter blades past the much longer saber. Xonck’s face was spattered in blood as—now with a saber—he traded vicious blows with a Dragoon. Doctor Svenson waved his spear like a madman, keeping his assailant at bay. Then Miss Temple’s eye was drawn to the Comte…and the flickering flash of blue beneath his arm. The Dragoon facing Xonck stumbled and his blade arm sagged, as if it had suddenly become too heavy. In an instant Xonck’s blade flashed forward. A second Dragoon abruptly dropped to his knees—only to take a bullet from Doctor Lorenz. Miss Poole stood in the door, shrouded in her cloak, overwhelming the Dragoons one at a time on the Comte’s instruction. Miss Temple screamed for help and desperately sawed at the cable.

“Cardinal Chang! Cardinal Chang!”

Chang did not hear, still dueling with the German soldier and fighting for his life—his cough piercing through the din. Another man went down, dispatched by Xonck. The remaining Dragoons saw what was happening and charged the knot of figures at the door, cutting down two more of the black-coated men in their way. At once the Cabal scattered—Crabbé and Roger stumbling into Caroline and Elöise, the Contessa screaming at Xonck, the Prince and Lydia dropping to their knees, hands over their heads, and the Comte thrusting Miss Poole forward to stop the attack. The Dragoons—perhaps six men—tottered in place, like saplings in the wind. Xonck stepped forward and hacked the nearest man across the neck. There was no stopping him—she had never seen such dispassionate savagery in her life.

Miss Temple’s attention caught a swirl of movement at the corner of her eye. An instant later she was facedown on the gravel, shaking her head, blinking her eyes, and feeling for the dagger. She pushed herself up to her elbows, completely dazed, realizing that the concussive impact had burst within her mind. Like an answered prayer she saw Doctor Svenson’s ridiculous spear sticking out from Miss Poole’s back, pinning her to the wooden door. The stricken woman—creature—struggled like a fish in the air, but each twisting movement only worsened the damage. With a snapping lurch she stumbled and the pole ripped up several inches to her shoulder. Her breaking body was still hidden beneath the cloak and Miss Temple could only see her arching neck and snapping mouth—the Comte helplessly trying to still her movement to preserve her, but she would not or could not heed him. With a final crack she fell again. The spear tore from her body altogether, splitting her collapsing torso as she fell, jumbled on the ground like a broken toy.

Across the rooftop stunned faces groped for comprehension, for Miss Poole’s silent screaming had battered them all, but the lull did not last, with Xonck and one of the Macklenburg men hurling themselves at the remaining Dragoons, Chang slashing away at his own opponent, and, most strangely, Roger Bascombe running to tackle Doctor Svenson. Miss Temple leapt back to her task, gripping the dagger with both hands.

The cable gave without warning, knocking her back on her seat. She scrambled up and ran at the other cable—but the suddenly tilting airship and careening gangway had alerted the others to her effort. She saw Lorenz take aim and, before she could do a thing, fire—but his gun was empty! He swore and broke it open, knocking out the empty shells and digging for fresh bullets in his coat. A Dragoon loomed up at Lorenz from behind, but Lorenz noticed her look and spun, firing the two shots he’d loaded straight into the soldier’s chest. He snarled with satisfaction and wheeled back to Miss Temple, rushing again to reload. She did not know what to do. She sawed at the cable.

Lorenz watched her as he deliberately slotted in new shells. He glanced over his shoulder. Xonck had killed another Dragoon—there were only three left on their feet—one running for Xonck, the others charging the Cabal. Svenson and Roger were a kicking knot of bodies on the ground. The cable was coming apart. She looked up at Lorenz. He inserted the final bullet and slapped the pistol closed. He pulled back the hammer and aimed, striding toward her.

She threw the dagger, end over end—she had seen this done at carnivals—directly at his face. Lorenz flinched and fired the gun harmlessly, squawking as the dagger hilt caught his ear. Miss Temple ran the other way as she threw, back to the others. Another shot cracked out behind her, but she was small and dodging to each side, fervently hoping Lorenz was less interested in shooting a woman than protecting the cable.

Chang wheezed on one knee over the fallen Macklenburg trooper, Svenson held off Roger with his jeweled dagger, Xonck stood, his boot on the neck of a struggling Dragoon, and near the door were the two Dragoons who had charged the Cabal—one with his arm around the Contessa’s neck holding off the Comte and the Prince. The other stood between Elöise and Caroline Stearne, both on their knees. Neither Macklenburger nor any man in black was visible. Everyone was out of breath, panting clouds in the cold air, and all around the fallen groaned. She tried to locate Smythe in the carnage but could not—either he had moved or was covered with another body. Miss Temple felt herself near tears, for she had not accomplished her task, but then saw the relief on Chang’s face—and then as he too turned, on Svenson’s—simply to see her still alive.

“What do you say, Sir?” called out Doctor Lorenz. “Should I shoot the girl or the men?”

“Or should I step on this man’s neck,” responded Xonck, as if the Dragoons by the door did not exist. “Issues of etiquette are always so difficult…my dear Contessa, what would you suggest?”

The Contessa answered with a shrug toward the Dragoon who seemed to hold her fast. “Well, Francis,…I agree it is difficult…”

“Damned shame about Elspeth.”

“My thoughts exactly—I must admit to underestimating Doctor Svenson once again.”

“It cannot work,” called out Chang, his voice hoarse with exertion. “If you kill that man—or if Lorenz shoots us—these Dragoons will not scruple to kill the Contessa and the Comte. You must retreat.”

“Retreat?” scoffed Xonck. “From you, Cardinal, this comes as a shock—or perhaps it is merely the perspective of a ruffian. I’ve always doubted your courage, man to man.”

Chang spat painfully. “You can doubt what you like, you insufferable, worm-rotted—”

Doctor Svenson cut him off, stepping forward. “A great number of these men will die if they are not helped—your men as well as ours—”

Xonck ignored them both, calling out to the two Dragoons. “Release her, and you’ll live. It is your only chance.”

They did not answer, so Xonck bore down his foot on the fallen man’s throat, driving out a protesting rattle like air from a balloon.

“It is your choice…,” he taunted them. Still they did not move. At once he wheeled and called to Lorenz. “Shoot someone—whoever you please.”

“You’re being stupid!” shouted Svenson. “No one need die!”

“Reason not the need, Doctor.” Xonck chuckled, and he very deliberately crushed the man’s windpipe beneath his boot.

In a blur of movement the Contessa’s hand flew across the face of the Dragoon who held her, its pathway marked by a spurting line of blood—once more she wore her metal spike. Xonck hacked at the final stunned trooper, who could only parry the blow and then disappear beneath a crush of bodies as Caroline Stearne kicked his knee from behind, and the Comte himself grappled his sword arm. At once Miss Temple felt strong arms take hold of her waist and lift her off the ground. Chang flung her in the air toward the gangway, high enough to land on top of it. Lorenz’s pistol cracked once, the bullet whistling past.

“Go on—go on!” shouted Chang, and Miss Temple did, realizing the airship held their only possible refuge. Again she was bundled up by stronger arms, this time it was Svenson, as she plunged into the cabin. He thrust her forward and wheeled to pull up Chang—bullets sending splinters of woodwork through the air. She raced ahead through one doorway and another, and then a third which was a dead end. She turned with a cry, the others colliding into her, and was knocked off her feet into a cabinet. With a desperate coordination Chang slammed the door and Svenson shot the bolt.

Somehow they had survived the battle, only to be imprisoned.

Miss Temple, on the floor, out of breath, face streaked with sweat and tears, gazed up at Svenson and Chang. It was hard to say which of them looked worse, for though his exertions had brought fresh blood to Chang’s mouth and nose, the Doctor’s glistening pallor was abetted by the utterly stricken cast of his eyes.

“We have left Elöise,” he whispered. “She will be killed—”

“Is anyone injured?” asked Chang, cutting the Doctor off. “Celeste?”

Miss Temple shook her head, unable to speak, her thoughts seared by the savage acts she’d just witnessed. Could war possibly be worse? She squeezed shut her eyes as, unbidden, her mind recalled the grinding gasping crush of Francis Xonck bringing down his boot. She sobbed aloud and, ashamed, stuffed a fist in her mouth and turned away, her tears flowing openly.

“Get away from the door,” muttered Chang hoarsely, shifting Svenson to the side. “They may shoot out the lock.”

“We are trapped like rats,” said Svenson. He looked at the dagger in his hand, useless and small. “Captain Smythe—all his men—all of them—”

“And Elspeth Poole,” replied Chang, doing his best to speak clearly. “And their lackeys, and the two Germans—our position could be worse—”

“Worse?” barked Svenson.

“We are not yet dead, Doctor,” said Chang, though his drawn, bloody face would not have seemed out of place in a graveyard.

“Neither is the Prince! Nor the Comte, nor the Contessa, nor that animal Xonck—”

“I did not cut the ropes,” sniffed Miss Temple.

“Be quiet—the pair of you!” hissed Chang.

Miss Temple’s eyes flashed—for even in these straits she did not appreciate his tone—but the Cardinal was not angry. Instead, his mouth was grim.

“You did not cut the ropes, Celeste. But you did your best. Did I kill Xonck? No—as pathetic as it sounds, it was all I could do to bring down one Macklenburg farmboy swinging an oversized cabbage-cutter. Did the Doctor save Elöise? No—but he preserved all of our lives—and hers—by destroying Miss Poole. Our enemies on the other side of this door—and we must assume they all are here—are less in number than they would have been, less confident, and just as unhappy—for we are not dead either.”

That he followed this speech with a wrenching, racking cough, bent with his head between his knees, did not prevent Miss Temple from wiping her nose on her sleeve and brushing the loosened curls from her eyes. She sniffed and whispered to Doctor Svenson.

“We will save her—we have done it before.”

He had no answer, but wiped his own eyes with his thumb and forefinger—any lack of outright scoffing she read as agreement. She pushed herself to her feet and sighed briskly.

“Well, then—”

Miss Temple grabbed at the cabinet to avoid falling back to the floor, squeaking with surprise as the entire cabin swung to the left and then back again with a dizzying swiftness.

“We are going up…,” said Svenson.

Miss Temple pushed herself to the one window, round like the porthole of a ship, and peered down, but already the roof of Harschmort House receded below her. Within seconds they were in dark fog, the rooftop and the brightly lit house swallowed up in the gloom below. With a brusque sputtering series of bangs the propellers sparked into life and the craft’s motion changed again, pushing forward and steadying the side to side rocking, the low hum of the motors creating a vibration Miss Temple could feel through her hands on the cabinet and the soles of her boots on the floor.

“Well,” she said, “it looks as if we shall visit Macklenburg after all.”

“Unless they throw us into the sea on the way,” observed the Doctor.

“Ah,” said Miss Temple.

“Still wanting your breakfast?” muttered Chang.

She turned to glare at him—it not being a fair thing to say at all—when they were interrupted by a gentle knock at the door. She looked at both men, but neither spoke. She sighed, and called out as casually as she could.

“Yes?”

“Miss Temple? It is Minister Crabbé. I am wondering if you might open this door and join our conversation.”

“What conversation is that?” she answered.

“Why, it is the one where we decide your lives, my dear. It would be better had not through a door.”

“I am afraid we find the door convenient,” replied Miss Temple.

“Perhaps…yet I am forced to point out that Mrs. Dujong does not share your partition. Further, while I would prefer to avoid unpleasantness, the door is made of wood, and its lock must be subject to the force of bullets—it is in fact an illusory convenience. Surely there is much to discuss between us all—need this excellent oak panel be ruined for a conclusion you cannot dispute?”

Miss Temple turned to her companions. Svenson looked past her to the cabinet she leaned against. He stepped across and forced it open with a quick prying thrust of his dagger under its lock, but inside was merely a collection of blankets, ropes, candles, woolen coats, and a box of hats and gloves. He turned back to Chang, who leaned against the doorframe and shrugged.

“We cannot go out the window,” Svenson said.

“You have the only weapon,” said Chang, nodding to the Doctor’s dagger, for he had dropped his own to throw Miss Temple on the gangway, “perhaps it were best stowed away.”

“I agree, but surely by you.”

Svenson passed the blade to Chang, who stuffed it in his coat. The Doctor reached for Miss Temple’s hand, squeezed it once, and nodded to Chang, who unlocked the door.

The next room was the largest of the three in the dirigible’s cabin, and was ringed with cabinets and inset settees, now occupied by the various members of the Cabal, all watching their entrance quite closely. On one side sat the Prince, Harald Crabbé, and Roger Bascombe, on the other the Comte, the Contessa, and in the far doorway, a saber in his hand, blood spoiling his once-white shirt, stood Francis Xonck. Beyond him lurked other figures and movement, and Miss Temple tried to deduce who was missing. Had more of them been brought down in the final struggle? Her questions were answered a moment later by the appearance of Lydia Vandaariff, changed from her robes to a brilliant blue silk dress, bobbing under Xonck’s arm and stepping—still unsteadily—toward the Prince, prompting Roger to leave his place to make room. Emerging directly after Lydia—no doubt helping with her stays—was the ever-attentive Caroline Stearne, who slipped to an empty seat next to the Comte.

“I assume Doctor Lorenz pilots our craft?” asked Chang.

“He does,” answered Harald Crabbé.

“Where is Mrs. Dujong?” asked Doctor Svenson.

Xonck nodded vaguely to the room behind him. “She is quite secure…something of a return to form, I’m told.”

Svenson did not reply. Aside from Xonck, no one brandished any weapon—though, given Xonck’s prowess and the small size of the room, Miss Temple doubted whether anyone else needed one. Yet if their immediate dispatch was not their enemies’ intent, Miss Temple was mystified as to what their plan then was.

At the same time, simply where they sat revealed divisions among them: on one side Crabbé and Roger, and under their arm the Prince (though the Prince would go with whoever was ascendant), and on the other the Comte and Contessa, with Caroline under their sway (though how much she counted, Miss Temple had no clue—did she, Lorenz, and Roger make up a second tier of the Cabal, or were they simply three more drones of the Process?)—and then in the middle and unallied to either, Francis Xonck, his capacity for slaughter quite balancing, especially in these close quarters, the cunning of Crabbé, the knowledge of the Comte, and the provocative charm of the Contessa.

Crabbé looked across to the Contessa and raised his eyebrows in question. She nodded in agreement—or did she grant permission?—and Crabbé cleared his throat. He indicated a cabinet next to Mrs. Stearne.

“Before we start, would any of you care for some refreshment? You must be tired—I know I am tired, and the mere sight of you three—well, it amazes that you can stand. Caroline can get it—there is whisky, brandy, water—”

“If you are drinking,” said Chang, “by all means.”

“Excellent—of course, drinks all round—and my apologies, Caroline, for turning you into a barmaid—Roger, perhaps you will assist. Perhaps for simplicity it can be brandy for everyone.”

There followed an awkward near silence where by tacit agreement all conversation paused until the business of pouring and handing out glasses was accomplished. Miss Temple watched Roger step to Chang and Svenson with a glass in each hand, his face a mask of professional diffidence that never once glanced her way. Her study was broken by Caroline’s touch on her arm, as she was offered her own glass. Miss Temple shook her head, but Caroline pressed the glass hard into her hand, leaving Miss Temple the choice to hold on or let it drop. She looked down at the amber liquid and sniffed, detecting the familiar biting scent she associated with so much that was tiresome and foul.

The entire scene was strange—especially following the rooftop carnage, for she had braced herself for a second deadly struggle, yet here they stood, as sociably arrayed as any dinner party—save the men and women were drinking together—and all of it so patently false that Miss Temple narrowed her eyes. With an audible snort she set her glass on a nearby shelf and wiped her hands.

“Miss Temple?” asked Crabbé. “Would you prefer something else?”

“I would prefer you state your business. If Mr. Xonck will kill us, then let him try.”

“Such impatience.” Crabbé smiled, unctuous and knowing. “We will do our best to satisfy. But first, I give you all the Prince of Macklenburg and his bride!”

He raised his glass and tossed off the contents, as the others followed suit amidst mutters of “the Prince!” and “Lydia!” The Prince smiled heartily and Lydia grinned, her small white teeth showing over her glass as she too drank, but then erupted into a fit of coughing to rival Cardinal Chang. The Prince patted her shoulder as she strove to breathe, her stomach now heaving unpleasantly with the stress. Roger stepped forward and offered a handkerchief which the young lady hurriedly snatched and held before her mouth, spitting into it wetly. The fit finally subsided and, face pale and out of breath, Lydia returned the cloth to Roger with an attempt at a smile. Roger deftly refolded the handkerchief before returning it to his pocket…but not before Miss Temple noticed the fresh, brilliant blue stain.

“Are you quite well, my dear?” asked the Prince.

Before Lydia could speak, Chang threw back his glass and gargled loudly before swallowing the brandy. Doctor Svenson poured his glass on the floor. Crabbé took all this in and exhaled sadly.

“Ah well…one cannot always please. Caroline?” Mrs. Stearne collected their glasses. Crabbé cleared his throat and gestured vaguely at the room around them.

“So we begin.”

“Through your determined efforts at destruction, we are no longer able to easily determine what you know of our plans, or in whom you might have confided. Mrs. Marchmoor is well on her way to the city, Angelique and poor Elspeth are no more.” He held up his hand. “Please know that I am speaking to you as the one most able to control my rage—if it were any of my associates, a recitation of even these facts would result in your immediate deaths. While it is true we could subject you to the Process, or distill your memories within a book, both of these endeavors demand time we do not have, and facilities beyond this craft. It is also true we could do both these things upon arrival in Macklenburg, yet our need for your knowledge cannot wait. Upon arrival we must know where we stand, and if…within our ranks…there is a Judas.”

He held out his glass to Roger for more brandy, and continued speaking as it was poured.

“This latest confrontation on the rooftop—wasteful and distressing, I trust, to all—only reinforces our earlier decision that we would have been best served with your talents incorporated to our cause—via the Process. Thank you, Roger.” Crabbé drank. “Do not bother to protest—we no longer expect any such conversions, nor—given the grief you have inflicted—would they now be accepted. The situation could not be clearer. We hold Mrs. Dujong. You will answer our questions or she will die—and I’m sure you can imagine the sort of death I mean, the time it will take, and how distressing such prolonged screams will be in such an enclosed place as this. And if she does manage to expire, then we shall merely move on to one of you—Miss Temple, perhaps—and on and on. It is inevitable as the dawn. As you have opened that door to avoid its being needlessly broken, I offer you the chance to avoid that same breaking of your comrades’ bodies—and, indeed, their souls.”

Miss Temple looked at the faces opposite her—Crabbé’s smug smirk, the Prince’s bemused disdain, Lydia’s fox-faced hunger, Roger’s earnest frown, Xonck’s leer, the Comte’s iron glare, the Contessa’s glacial smile, and Caroline’s sad patience—and found nowhere a suggestion that the Minister’s words were anything but true. Yet she still saw the factions between them and knew their deeper interest lay no longer in what she and the others had discovered, but only in how those discoveries spelled out betrayals within the Cabal’s circle.

“It would be easier to believe you, Sir,” she said, “if you did not so blatantly lie. You ask us to talk to prevent our torture, yet what happens when we reveal some morsel of deduction that points to one among you—do you expect that person to accept our open word? Of course not—whoever is denounced will demand that your cruelties be brought to bear in any case, to confirm or disprove our accusations!”

The Deputy Minister’s eyes twinkled as he shook his head, chuckling, and took another sip of brandy.

“My goodness—Roger, I do believe she is more than you’d perceived—Miss Temple, you have caught me out. Indeed, it is the case—so much for my attempts to save the woodwork! All right then—you will, all four, be killed at length, quite badly. If any of you have something to say, all the better—if not, well, we’re rid of your damned stinking disruptions at last.”

Xonck stepped forward, the saber dancing menacingly in the air before him. Miss Temple retreated, but a single step brought her flat against the wall. Once more the Doctor squeezed her hand, and then cried out in as hearty a voice as he could.

“Excellent, Minister—and perhaps Mr. Xonck will kill us before we talk—would that suit you even better?”

Crabbé stood up, impatient and angry. “Ah—here it comes! The vain attempt to turn us against one another—Francis—”

“By all means, Francis—kill us quickly! Serve the Minister as you always have! Just as when you sank Trapping in the river!”

Xonck paused, the tip of his blade within lunging range of Svenson’s chest. “I serve myself.”

Svenson looked down at the saber tip and snorted—even as Miss Temple could feel the trembling of his hand. “Of course you do—just pardon my asking—what has happened to Herr Flaüss?”

For a moment, no one answered, and Crabbé was glaring at Xonck to keep going when the Contessa spoke aloud, picking her words carefully.

“Herr Flaüss was found to be…disloyal.”

“The gunshot!” exclaimed Miss Temple. “You shot him!”

“It proved necessary,” said Crabbé.

“How could he be disloyal?” croaked Chang. “He was your creature!”

“Why do you ask?” the Contessa pointedly demanded of the Doctor.

“Why do you care?” hissed Crabbé to her, behind Xonck’s back. “Francis, please—”

“I just wonder if it had to do with Lord Vandaariff’s missing book,” said Svenson. “You know—the one where his memory was—what is the word?—distilled?”

There was a pause. Miss Temple’s heart was in her mouth—and then she knew the momentum toward their destruction had been stalled.

“That book was broken,” rasped the Comte. “By Cardinal Chang in the tower—it killed Major Blach—”

“Is that what his ledger says?” Svenson nodded contemptuously to Roger. “Then I think you will find two books missing—one with the Lady Mélantes, Mrs. Marchmoor, among others—and another—”

“What are you waiting for?” cried Crabbé. “Francis! Kill him!”

“Or you would,” crowed Svenson, “if there was a second book at all! For to distill Robert Vandaariff’s mind into a book—a mind holding the keys to a continent—to the future itself!—would have opened those riches to any one of you who owned it, who possessed a key! Instead, the man given the task to do just that did not create a book—so yes, there is one book broken, and another never made at all!”

The Contessa called out firmly to Xonck—“Francis, keep watching them!”—before turning to Crabbé. “Harald, can you answer this?”

“Answer? Answer what? Answer the—the desperate—the—”

Before the Minister could stop sputtering Chang called out again, a challenge to Roger. “I saw it myself, in Vandaariff’s study—he wrote it all down on parchment! If I hadn’t smashed a book they would have had to do it themselves—convincing you all that Vandaariff’s memories were gone, when they held the only copy!”

“A copy I took from the Minister himself,” cried Svenson, “in a leather satchel—and which Bascombe took from me in the ballroom. I’m sure he still has it with him—or is that what Flaüss noticed when he joined you at Lord Vandaariff’s study…and why he had to die?”

In the silence Miss Temple realized she had been holding her breath. The words had flown so quickly back and forth, while in between stood Francis Xonck, eyes shifting warily, his blade an easy thrust from them all. She could feel the fearful state of Svenson’s nerves, and knew Chang was tensed to futilely spring at Xonck—but she could also sense the changing tension in the room, as the Minister and Roger groped to refute their own prisoners.

“Aspiche took the satchel from Svenson in the ballroom,” announced Xonck, not turning to the others. “And Bascombe took it from him…but I did not see it when we met up in the study.”

“It was packed away,” said Caroline Stearne, speaking quietly from her place. “When all was being readied for the journey—”

“Is the satchel here or isn’t it?” snapped Xonck.

“I have its contents with me,” said Roger smoothly. “As Caroline says, safely stowed. Doctor Svenson is wrong. They are Lord Vandaariff’s planning papers—notes to himself for each stage of this enterprise. I do not know where this idea of Lady Mélantes’s book comes from—two books—no books—”

“Doctor Lorenz identified the missing book as Lady Mélantes’s,” spat Svenson.

“Doctor Lorenz is wrong. Lady Mélantes’s book—also containing Mrs. Marchmoor and Lord Acton—is safely stowed. The only book missing—the one broken in the tower—is that of Lord Vandaariff. You can check my ledger, but anyone is more than welcome to look in the books themselves.”

It was an effective speech, with just the right amount of protest at being accused and an equally moving touch of professional superciliousness—a Bascombe specialty. And it seemed as if his upset superiors, perhaps persuaded by his own subservience via the Process, were convinced. But Miss Temple knew, from the way Roger’s thumb restlessly rubbed against his leg, that it was a lie.

She laughed at him.

He glared at her, furiously willing her to silence.

“O Roger…” She chuckled and shook her head.

“Be quiet, Celeste!” he hissed. “You have no place here!”

“And you have surely convinced everyone,” she said. “But you forget how well I know your ways. Even then you might have convinced me—for it was a fine speech—if it wasn’t you who actually shot Herr Flaüss, after convincing everyone of his disloyalty, I am sure…or was it to keep him quiet? But it was you who shot him, Roger,…wasn’t it?”

At her words the cabin went silent, save for the low buzz of the rotors outside. Xonck’s saber did not waver, but his mouth tightened and his eyes flicked more quickly back and forth between them. The Contessa stood.

“Rosamonde,” began Crabbé, “this is ridiculous—they are coming between us—it is their only hope—”

But the Contessa ignored him and crossed the cabin slowly toward Roger. He shrank away from her, first striking the wall and then seeming to retreat within his own body, meeting her gaze but flinching, for her eyes were empty of affection.

“Rosamonde,” rasped the Comte. “If we question him together—”

But then the Contessa darted forward, sharp as a striking cobra, to whisper in Roger’s ear. Miss Temple could only catch the odd word, but when she heard the first—“blue”—she knew the Contessa was whispering Roger’s own control phrase, and that by speaking it before any of the others, the woman had made sure Roger must answer her questions alone. The Contessa stepped away and Roger sank down to sit on the floor, his expression empty and his eyes dulled.

“Rosamonde—” Crabbé tried again, but again the Contessa ignored him, speaking crisply down to Roger, his head at the level of her thighs.

“Roger…is what Doctor Svenson tells us true?”

“Yes.”

Before Crabbé could speak the Contessa pressed Roger again.

“Were Lord Robert’s memories distilled into a book?”

“No.”

“They were written down.”

“Yes.”

“And those papers are on board?”

“Yes. I transferred them to the Prince’s bag to hide them. Flaüss insisted on managing the Prince’s bag and realized what they were.”

“So you shot him.”

“Yes.”

“And in all of this, Roger,…who did you serve? Who gave the orders?”

“Deputy Minister Crabbé.”

Crabbé said nothing, his mouth open in shock, his face drained of any color. He looked helplessly to the Comte, to Xonck, but could not speak. Still facing Roger, the Contessa called behind her.

“Caroline, would you be kind enough to ask Doctor Lorenz exactly where we are on our route?”

Caroline, whose gaze had been fixed on Roger Bascombe’s slumped form, looked up with surprise, stood at once, and left the cabin.

“I say,” muttered the Prince, aggrieved. “He put those papers in my bag? And shot my man because of it? Damn you, Crabbé! Damn your damned insolence!” Lydia Vandaariff patted her fiancé’s knee.

“Your Highness,” hissed Crabbé urgently, “Bascombe is not telling the truth—I do not know how—it could be any of you! Anyone with his control phrase! Anyone could order him to answer these questions—to implicate me—”

“And how would that person know what these questions were to be?” snarled the Contessa, and then pointed toward the captives. “At least one of them has been provided by Doctor Svenson!”

“For all any of us know, whoever has tampered with Bascombe’s mind could be in league with these three!” cried Crabbé. “It would certainly explain their persistent survival!”

The Contessa’s eyes went wide at the Deputy Minister’s words.

“Bascombe’s mind! Of course—of course, you sneaking little man! You did not halt the examinations in the ballroom for Lord Robert or the Duke—you did it because Roger was suddenly forced to accompany Vandaariff! Because otherwise the Comte would have seen inside his mind—and seen all of your plotting against us plain as day!” She wheeled to the Comte, and gestured to Bascombe on the floor. “Do not believe me, Oskar—ask your own questions, by all means—some questions I will not have anticipated! Or you, Francis—help yourself! For myself I am satisfied, but do go on! Roger—you will answer all questions put to you!”

The Comte’s face betrayed no particular expression, but Miss Temple knew he was already suspicious of the Contessa and so perhaps was genuinely curious, unsure which—or was it both? Or all?—of his confederates had betrayed him.

“Francis?” he rasped.

“Be my guest.” Xonck smiled, not even moving his eyes as he spoke.

The Comte d’Orkancz leaned forward. “Mr. Bascombe,…to your knowledge, did Deputy Minister Crabbé have anything to do with the murder of Colonel Arthur Trapping?”

The Contessa spun to the Comte, her expression wary and her violet eyes dauntingly sharp.

“Oskar, why—”

“No,” said Roger.

The Comte’s next question was interrupted by Caroline Stearne, whose return had brought Doctor Lorenz into the doorway.

“Contessa,” she whispered.

“Thank you, Caroline—would you be so good as to fetch the Prince’s bag?” Caroline took in the tension of the room, her face pale, bobbed her head once and darted from the cabin. The Contessa turned to Lorenz.

“Doctor, how good of you to come—though I do trust someone remains at the wheel?”

“Do not trouble yourself, Madame—I have two good men aloft,” he answered, smiling at his nautical reference. The Doctor’s smile faded as he took in that it was Bascombe on the floor being questioned, and not the prisoners.

“Our position?” the Contessa asked him crisply.

“We are just over the sea,” Lorenz replied. “From here, as you know, there are different routes available—remaining over water, where there is less chance of being seen, or crossing straight to shadow the coast. In this fog it may not matter—”

“And how long until we reach Macklenburg proper?” asked the Comte.

“With either route it will be ten hours at the least. More if the wind is against us…as it presently is…” Lorenz licked his thin lips. “May I ask what is going on?”

“Merely a disagreement between partners,” called Xonck, over his shoulder.

“Ah. And may I ask why they are still alive?”

The Contessa turned to look at them, her eyes settling at last upon Miss Temple. Her expression was not kind.

“We were waiting for you, Doctor. I would not have any bodies found on land. The sea will take them—and if one does happen to wash up on a beach, it will only be after days in the water. By that time even the lovely Miss Temple will be as grey and shapeless as a spoiled milk pudding.”

Caroline appeared again, the bag in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.

“Madame—”

“Excellent as always, Caroline,” said the Contessa. “I am so glad you retain your flesh. Can you read them?”

“Yes, Madame. They are Lord Vandaariff’s writings. I recognize his hand.”

“And what does he write about?”

“I cannot begin—the account is exhaustive—”

“I suppose it would be.”

“Madame—would it not be better—”

“Thank you, Caroline.”

Caroline bobbed her head and remained in the doorway with Lorenz, both of them watching the room with nervous fascination. The Comte frowned darkly, beads of sweat had broken out on Xonck’s forehead, and Crabbé’s face had gone so pale as to seem bloodless. Only the Contessa smiled, but it was a smile that frightened Miss Temple more than all the others rolled to one, for above her scarlet lips and sharp white teeth the woman’s eyes glittered like violet knife-points. She realized that the Contessa was pleased, that she looked forward to what would come with the bodily hunger of a mother embracing her child.

The Contessa drifted to Xonck, placing her face next to his.

“What do you think, Francis?” she whispered.

“I think I should like to put down this sword.” He laughed. “Or put it in someone.” His eyes settled on Chang. The Contessa leaned her head against Xonck’s, somewhat girlishly.

“That’s a very good idea. But I wonder if you have ample room to swing.”

“I might like more, it’s true.”

“Let me see what I can do, Francis.”

In a turn as elegant as if she were dancing, the Contessa spun toward Deputy Minister Crabbé, the razor-sharp spike in place across her hand, and drove it like a hammer into the side of his skull, just in front of his ear. Crabbé’s eyes popped open and his body jerked at the impact…then went still for the four long seconds it took for his life to fade. He collapsed onto Prince Karl-Horst’s lap. The Prince hopped up with a cry and the Deputy Minister bounced forward and onto the cabin floor with a thud.

“And no blood to mop.” The Contessa smiled. “Doctor Lorenz, if you would open the forward hatchway? Your Highness? If you might assist Caroline with the Minister’s remains?”

She stood, beaming down as they bent over the fallen diplomat, his eyes wide with the shock of his dispatch, doing their awkward best to drag him to where Lorenz knelt in the cabin beyond. On the sofa, Lydia watched the corpse’s progress with a groan, her stomach once more heaving. She erupted wetly into her hands and with a disgusted sigh the Contessa shoved a small silk handkerchief at the girl. Lydia snatched it gratefully, a smeared pearl of blue at each corner of her mouth.

“Contessa—” she began, her voice a fearful quaver.

But the Contessa’s attention turned at the clicking of a bolt, as Lorenz raised an iron hatchway from the floor. A burst of freezing air shot through the cabin, the grasping paw of winter. Miss Temple looked through at the open hatch and realized that something seemed wrong…the clouds outside…their pallid veneer of light. The round windows in the cabin were covered by green curtains…she had not noticed the dawn.

“It seems we divide the future in ever expanding portions,” observed the Contessa. “Equal thirds, gentlemen?”

“Equal thirds,” whispered the Comte.

“I am agreeable,” said Xonck, a bit tightly.

“Then it’s settled,” she announced. The Contessa reached out to Xonck’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Finish them.”

The dagger was in Chang’s hand and he slashed toward Xonck, catching the saber on the dagger hilt and pushing Xonck’s weapon aside as he rushed forward. But Xonck spun on his heels and chopped his bandaged arm across Chang’s throat, knocking him backwards to the ground, both men crying with pain at the impact. Doctor Svenson darted for Xonck, a half-step too late, and Xonck whipped the saber hilt up and into Svenson’s stomach, dropping the Doctor choking to his knees. Xonck retreated a step and wheeled to Miss Temple, his blade once more extended toward her face. Miss Temple could not move. She looked at Xonck, his chest heaving, wincing at the pain in his arm…hesitating.

“Francis?” said the Contessa, her voice glazed with amusement.

“What?” he hissed.

“Are you waiting for something?”

Xonck swallowed. “I was wondering if you’d prefer to do this one yourself.”

“That’s very sweet of you…but I am quite content to watch.”

“I was merely asking.”

“And I assure you, I appreciate the thought, as I appreciate that you might also wish to retain Miss Temple for intimate scrutiny…but I would appreciate it even more if you would get on with it and stick her like the vicious little pig she is.”

Xonck’s fingers flexed around the saber hilt, shifting his grip. Miss Temple saw its merciless tip not two feet from her chest, light rippling along the silver blade as it rose and fell with Xonck’s breathing. Then Xonck leered at her. She was going to die.

“First it was the Minister wanting people to get on with it…now it’s the Contessa,” she said. “Of course, he had his reasons—”

“Must I do this myself?” asked the Contessa.

“Do not hound me, Rosamonde,” snapped Xonck.

“But the Comte never finished his questions!” cried Miss Temple.

Xonck did not lunge. She shouted again, her voice rising up to a shriek.

“He asked if the Minister killed Colonel Trapping! He did not ask who else might have killed him! If Roger killed him! Or if he was killed by the Contessa!”

“What?” asked Xonck.

“Francis!” cried the Contessa. She snorted with rage and strode past Xonck to silence Miss Temple herself, the spike raised high. Miss Temple flinched, trembling at whether her throat would be cut or her skull perforated, unable to otherwise move.

Before any of these could occur, Xonck wheeled and hooked the Contessa about the waist with his bandaged arm and swept the woman off her feet and with a shriek of protest onto the nearest settee—exactly the spot where Harald Crabbé had just died.

The Contessa glared with an outrage Miss Temple had never seen in life—a ferocity to peel paint or buckle steel.

“Rosamonde—” began Xonck, and—too late again—Miss Temple darted for Chang’s fallen dagger. Xonck slapped the flat of the saber blade hard across her head, sprawling her atop Doctor Svenson, who groaned.

She shook her head, the whole right side stinging. The Contessa still sat on the settee, next to the Prince and Lydia, miserable as children marooned in the midst of their parents’ row.

“Rosamonde,” said Xonck again, “what does she mean?”

“She means nothing!” the Contessa spat. “Colonel Trapping is no longer important—the Judas was Crabbé!”

“The Comte knows all about it,” managed Miss Temple, her voice thick.

“All about what?” asked Xonck, for the first time allowing the saber to drift toward the Comte d’Orkancz, who sat opposite the Contessa.

“He won’t say,” whispered Miss Temple, “because he no longer knows who to trust. You have to ask Roger.”

The Comte stood up.

“Sit down, Oskar,” said Xonck.

“This has gone far enough,” the Comte replied.

“Sit down or I will have your God damned head!” shouted Xonck. The Comte deigned to show actual surprise, and sat, his face now quite as grave as the Contessa’s was livid.

“I will not be made a fool,” hissed Xonck. “Trapping was my man—mine to discard! Whoever killed him—even if I would prefer not to believe—it follows they are my enemy—”

“Roger Bascombe!” shouted Miss Temple. “Do you know who killed Colonel Trapping?”

With a snarl and three iron-hard fingers of his sword hand Xonck took hold of Miss Temple’s robes behind her neck, yanked her to her knees and then, with a roar of frustration, tossed her down the length of the cabin through the doorway to land with a cry at the feet of Caroline Stearne. The breath was driven from her body and she lay there blinking with pain, dimly aware that she was somehow even colder. She looked back to see her shredded robes hanging from Xonck’s hand. He met her gaze, still furious, and Miss Temple whimpered aloud, convinced he was about to march over and step on her throat just like he’d done to the Dragoon…but then in the panting silence, Roger Bascombe answered her question.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I know.”

Xonck stopped where he stood, staring at Roger. “Was it the Contessa?”

“No.”

“Wait—before that,” broke in the Comte, “why was he killed?”

“He was serving Vandaariff instead of us?” asked Xonck.

“He was,” said Roger. “But that is not why he was killed. The Contessa already knew Colonel Trapping’s true allegiance.”

Xonck and the Comte turned to her. The Contessa scoffed at their naïve credulity.

“Of course I knew,” she sneered, looking up at Xonck. “You are arrogant, Francis, so you assume that everyone wants what you do—your brother’s power—and Trapping especially. You hide your cunning behind the mask of a libertine, but Trapping had no such depth—he was happy to deliver every secret of your brother’s—and yours—to whoever best indulged his appetite!”

“Then why?” asked Xonck. “To preserve the Comte’s Annunciation project?”

“No,” said Roger. “Trapping hadn’t yet agreed on a price to save Lydia—he’d only given Vandaariff hints.”

“Then it was Crabbé—Trapping must have learned his plans for distilling Vandaariff—”

“No,” repeated Roger. “The Deputy Minister would have killed him, to be sure…just as the Comte would have…given time and opportunity.”

Xonck turned to the Contessa. “So you did kill him!”

The Contessa huffed again with impatience.

“Have you paid any attention at all, Francis? Do you not remember what Elspeth Poole—stupid, insolent, and barely regretted—displayed for us all in the ballroom? Her vision?”

“It was Elspeth and Mrs. Stearne,” said Xonck, looking through the doorway to Caroline.

“With Trapping,” said the Comte. “The night of the engagement.”

“We were sent to him,” protested Caroline. “The Contessa ordered us—to—to—”

“Exactly,” said the Contessa. “I was doing my best to indulge him where the other guests would not intrude!”

“Because you knew he could not be trusted,” said the Comte.

“Though he could be distracted—until we had time to deal with Vandaariff ourselves,” observed the Contessa, “which we then did!”

“If Colonel Trapping alerted Vandaariff then our entire enterprise could have been compromised!” cried Caroline.

“We are all aware of it!” snapped the Contessa.

“Then I don’t understand,” said Xonck. “Who killed Trapping? Vandaariff?”

“Vandaariff would not kill his own agent,” said a hoarse voice behind Xonck, which Miss Temple recognized as Doctor Svenson’s, pushing himself up to his knees.

“But Blenheim had Trapping’s key!”

“Blenheim moved the body,” said Svenson, “on Vandaariff’s orders. At the time he still controlled his own house.”

“Then who?” growled the Comte. “And why? And if it was not for Lydia’s fate, or Vandaariff’s legacy, or even control of the Xonck fortunes, how has the murder of this insignificant fool torn our entire alliance asunder?”

The Contessa shifted herself on the settee, and looked fiercely at Roger, whose lip betrayed the slightest quiver at his fruitless attempts to remain silent.

“Tell us, Roger,” said the Contessa. “Tell us now.”

As Miss Temple watched the face of her former love, it seemed she looked at a puppet—remarkably life-like to be sure, but the falseness was readily, achingly, apparent. It was not his passive state, nor the even tone of his voice, nor the dullness of his eye, for these were explained by their strange circumstances—just as if he had screamed or gnashed his teeth. Instead, it was simply the content of his words, all the more strange, for Miss Temple had always attended instead to the way he said them—the way he took her arm or leaned across a table as he spoke, or even the stirring those words (whatever they might be) might spark in her own body. But now, what he said made clear the extent to which Roger’s life had become separate from hers. She had assumed through their engagement—no matter where their own discrete days took them—they remained symbolically twinned, but now, spreading through her heart like the rising dawn outside the hatch, she saw that their wholeness—an idea beyond facts, however vain and foolish and doomed—lived only in her memory. She truly did not know who he was anymore, and never would again. And had she ever? It was a question she could not answer. The sadness she felt was no longer for him—for he was a fool, nor for herself—for she was rid of one. But somehow, listening to Roger speak in the freezing air, in Miss Temple’s closely bound heart she mourned for the world, or as much of it as her sturdy chest could hold. She saw for the first time that it was truly made of dust…of invisible palaces that without her care—care that could never last—would disappear.

“The night before I underwent the Process,” Roger began, “I met a woman at the St. Royale Hotel whose passion met my own in an exquisite union. In truth I had not decided to undergo the Process at all, and even then contemplated exposing everything to the highest authorities. But then I met this woman…we were both masked, I did not know her name, but she hovered hesitant on the same cusp of destiny, just as I did. As I strove to choose between the certain advancement brought by betraying the Deputy Minister and the utter risk of following him, I saw how she had given over the whole of her life to this new chance—that all before had been released, all attachment and all hope. And even though I knew that in giving myself to the Process I would give up my former aspirations to romance and marriage, this woman somehow in one night stirred me to my soul—a sadness matched with such tender care for our one lost instant together. But the next day I was changed and any thoughts I ever had of love were changed as well, directed and more reasoned, in service to…larger goals that could not contain her…and yet three days after that I met her again, once more masked, in the robes of an initiate to the Process…I knew her by her scent…by her hair—I had even been sent to collect her for the theatre, where she would undergo her own irrevocable change. I found her with another woman, and with a man I knew to be a traitor. Instead of collecting them I sent her friend ahead and the man away, and revealed myself…for I believed our temperaments were such that an understanding might survive, undetected by all…that we might ally…to share information about you, Contessa, about Minister Crabbé, Mr. Xonck, the Comte, Lord Robert—to serve both the goals we had sworn to and our own mutual ambition. And make an alliance we did, rooted no longer in anything called love…but in sensible expedience. And together we have served you all, our masters, and watched patiently as one after another those above us have been enslaved or slain, rising ourselves to the very edge of power until we are positioned to inherit everything, as each one of you turns on the other—as you are doing even in this instant. For we are without your greed, your lusts, your appetites, but have stood silently to the side of every plan, every secret, for the Process has made us stronger than you can know. All this we saw together, a dream when we both thought we would never dream again. It was later I found the man had not gone away as I’d thought. He’d seen us together…overheard everything…and wanted payment—of many kinds. That was impossible.”

“You killed him?” whispered Xonck. “You?”

“Not me,” said Roger. “Her. Caroline.”

Every eye in the room turned to Caroline Stearne.

“Hold her!” shouted Xonck, and Doctor Lorenz reached past Miss Temple to seize Caroline around the waist. Caroline lashed out with her elbow, driving it into the Doctor’s throat. In an instant she turned on the choking man and pushed him with both hands. Doctor Lorenz vanished through the open hatch, his fading howl swallowed by the wind.

No one moved, and then Caroline herself broke the spell, kicking the Prince’s leg and swinging a fist at Lydia’s face, clearing a path to the iron staircase that rose to the wheelhouse. A moment later the cabin echoed with an ear-splitting scream and down the stairs bounced the body of one of Doctor Lorenz’s sailors, blood pouring from a pulsing puncture on his back.

Miss Temple kicked herself away both from the bloody man and the open hatch, as chaos erupted around her. The Contessa was on her feet and after Caroline, lifting her dress with one hand to step over the sailor, the other hand holding her spike. The Comte and Xonck were close behind, but Xonck had not taken a step before he was tackled by Svenson and Chang. The Comte turned, looking back and then forward, hesitated, and then ripped open a cabinet near his head, revealing a rack of bright cutlasses. As Chang wrestled with Xonck for the saber, Svenson took a handful of Xonck’s red curls and pulled his head away from the floor—Xonck snarling his protest—and then slammed it down as hard as he could. Xonck’s grip on the saber wavered and Svenson smacked his head again on the planking, opening a seam of blood above his eye. The Comte ripped free a cutlass, the massive weapon looking in his hand like a particularly long kitchen cleaver. Miss Temple screamed.

“Doctor—look out!”

Svenson scuttled back as Chang finally scooped up the saber, forcing the Comte to pause. Miss Temple could not see the Comte’s face, but she doubted his alchemical knowledge included swordplay—not when he faced a bitter opponent like Chang, even if Chang was weaving on his feet.

But her scream had another effect, which was to remind the Prince and Lydia of her presence. Karl-Horst dropped into a cunning crouch and leered at her, yet to her greater distress she saw Lydia weave the other way, behind the open hatch, where Elöise hung gagged and bound to the wall. Lydia clawed at the ropes with a determined grimace, watching Miss Temple across the whistling open hatchway.

Too much was happening at once. Chang was coughing horribly, Miss Temple could not see Svenson or Chang for the Comte’s broad back and his enormous fur. Lydia pulled apart one knot, attacked another. Coming at her, his hands clutching wickedly, was the Prince, pausing to stare at Miss Temple’s body. Miss Temple realized how exposed she was without her robes, but that the Prince could find the time—at this pitch of a crisis, to ogle a woman he was hoping to kill—was but another spur to her courage, for she had already seen what she must do.

She feinted to the stairs and then dashed the other way, leaping the hatch straight at Lydia, forcing the girl to drop the ropes. But Miss Temple dodged again, over Elöise’s legs, just avoided the Prince’s flailing arms, and then hurled herself at the Comte, digging at his fur with both hands, finding the pocket even as he turned and swatted her into the far settee with his mighty arm. Miss Temple landed in a sprawl, mid-way between the Comte and Chang, but in her hands, plucked from the pocket where the Comte himself had stowed it so many hours ago at the St. Royale, was her green clutch bag. She thrust her hand inside and did not bother to pull her revolver out, but fired through the fabric, the bullet shattering the cabinet near the Comte’s head. He turned with a roar of alarm, and Miss Temple fired again, the bullet swallowed by his coat. She fired a third time. The Comte coughed sharply once, as if a bit of dinner had stuck in his throat, lost his balance and cracked his forehead hard against the corner of the cabinet. He straightened himself and stared at her, blood beading down above his eye. He turned to leave, almost casually, and caught his feet together. His knees locked, and the great man fell face down like a tree.

Xonck grunted, trying to crawl away. Chang sank to his knees and drove a brutal punch with the saber hilt across Xonck’s jaw, stilling him like a pole-axed steer. Through the open doorway Miss Temple saw the Prince and Lydia watching in terror, but it was a terror mixed with defiance, for between them they had untied Elöise and held her precariously over the hatch, where with the gentlest push she would plummet to her death.

Miss Temple extracted the revolver from her bag and stood, taking a moment to yank what was left of her petticoats into position over her revealing silk pants, relieved that no one was looking at whatever parts she had exposed sprawling on the settee. Chang and Svenson advanced past her to the far doorway, Chang with Xonck’s saber and Svenson availing himself of a cutlass from the cabinet. She stepped up between them, giving her petticoats just one more tug. The Prince and Lydia had not moved, rendered mute and still by the sudden fates of the Comte and Xonck, and by the truly vicious screaming that now reached them all from the wheelhouse.

The heated words passing back and forth between Caroline and the Contessa could not be made out over the roar of the open hatchway, but they were punctuated by the Contessa’s snarls of rage and Caroline’s shouts—tenacious, but terrified—the mix further complicated by the cries of the remaining crewman, who seemed by his pleading oaths to be German.

“Do not worry, Elöise,” Miss Temple called out. “We shall collect you directly.”

Still gagged, Elöise did not answer, for her gaze was fixed—indeed, it was held—on the freezing abyss beneath her, suspended by Lydia’s tight handful of her hair, while, a step behind, the Prince had wrapped his arms around Elöise’s legs. Wrists and ankles tied, Elöise could do nothing to prevent them dropping her through.

“Let her go!” cried Chang. “Your masters are down! You are alone!”

“Drop your weapons or the woman dies!” replied the Prince, shrilly.

“If you kill that woman,” said Chang, “I will kill you. I will kill you both. If you release her, I will not. That is the extent of our negotiation.”

The Prince and Lydia exchanged a nervous glance.

“Lydia,” called Doctor Svenson. “It is not too late—we can reverse what has been done! Karl—listen to me!”

“If we do release her—” began the Prince, but Lydia had begun speaking at the same time and overrode his words.

“Do not treat us like children! You have no idea what we know or what we are worth! You do not know—do you?—that all the land in Macklenburg purchased by my father was settled in my name!”

“Lydia—” attempted the Prince, but she swatted at him angrily and kept on.

“I am the next Princess of Macklenburg whether I marry or no—whether my father is alive or no—no matter if I am the only person alive on this craft! I insist you drop your weapons! I have done nothing to any of you—to anyone!”

She stared at them wildly, panting.

“Lydia—” The Prince had finally noticed the smear of blue across her lips, and glanced to Svenson, suddenly confused.

“Be quiet! Do not talk to them! Hold her legs!” Lydia’s stomach heaved again and she groaned painfully, spitting onto the front of her dress.

“You should be fighting them yourself!” she complained. “You should have killed all three of them! Why is everyone so useless!”

The crewman above them screamed, and at once the entire airship careened to the left. Chang went into the wall, Miss Temple into Chang, and Doctor Svenson to his knees, the cutlass sliding from his hand. The Prince fell toward the open hatch, keeping his hold on Elöise so he drove her like a ram into Lydia, knocking both women into the opening. Lydia screamed and hit the lip of the hatch with her thighs and began to slide through. Elöise disappeared up to her waist—only the Prince’s grip on her legs preventing her fall, a grip that was visibly slipping as he tried to decide whether to drop Elöise in order to save his bride.

“Hold her!” shouted Svenson, throwing himself forward to catch Lydia’s feverishly clawing hands.

The airship careened again in the other direction, just as suddenly. Miss Temple lost her balance as she tried to reach Svenson. Chang leapt past them both toward the Prince. The Prince retreated in terror, releasing his hold on Elöise, but Chang caught her legs, digging his fingers in her ropes, and braced his foot on the hatch plate. He shouted to Miss Temple and gestured to the wheelhouse.

“Stop them—they’ll kill us all!”

Miss Temple opened her mouth to protest, but as she watched—the Prince hunched in the corner beyond them—she saw Chang pull Elöise out to her hips, and Svenson do the same to Lydia.

She tightened her grip on the revolver and rushed to the stairs.

The second crewman lay draped over the topmost steps, blood bubbling on his lips. Lining either side of the wheelhouse were metal panels of levers and knobs, and at the far end, in front of the windows—where Miss Temple had first seen Doctor Lorenz from the roof—stood the wheel itself, made of brass and polished steel. Several levers had been broken off, with others jammed into positions that set the metal gears to grinding horribly. From the tilting floor it seemed certain the craft had swooned into a curve, spinning gently downwards.

In front of her lay Caroline Stearne, on her back, arms outstretched, an empty hand some inches from a bloody stiletto. Crouched on top of Caroline, her hair disheveled and her spike-hand smeared with blood like a glove, perched the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. A crimson pool drained to the side with the angle of the floor. The Contessa looked up at Miss Temple and sneered.

“Why, look who it is, Caroline—your little charge.”

Her fist flashed forward, driving the spike into Caroline’s throat with a meaty smack, causing Miss Temple to flinch and Mrs. Stearne’s still body to react not at all.

“Where is everyone else?” she asked with a smirk. “Do not tell me you alone are left? Or if you’re here, I suppose it is more accurate to say I am the only one left. How typical.”

She rose to her feet, her dress dripping blood, and gestured with her free hand to the whining machinery.

“Not that it mattered—I could have cared less who killed Trapping—if this romantic idiot hadn’t killed Lorenz and our crewmen—much less set off my own anger—we could be sharing tea. All of this for nothing! Nothing! I merely want people I can control! But now—just listen!” She gestured at the grinding machinery and scoffed. “We’re all finished! It makes me so very…savage…”

She stepped closer, and Miss Temple raised her pistol—she was still looking into the wheelhouse from the stairs. The Contessa saw the revolver and laughed. Her hand shot out to a lever and wrenched it down. With a shudder that shook the airship to its very frame—and threw Miss Temple all the way to the bottom of the staircase, her stinging fall broken only by the distressing cushion of the first crewman’s body—the spinning momentum reversed direction. A broken chopping sound erupted from one of the propellers. The grinding from the wheelhouse rose nastily in pitch and volume, and as she shook her head Miss Temple heard the Contessa’s footsteps coming down the iron steps.

She clawed her way free of the body—she was moving too slowly, she had dropped her revolver—and looked ahead of her, hair hanging in her eyes. The hatch was closed, but the sudden jolt had knocked everyone off their feet. Chang sat on the floor with Elöise, cutting her bonds. Svenson was on his knees, facing Lydia and the Prince, skulking in a corner just beyond his reach. Miss Temple pulled herself toward them, feeling stiff as a tortoise.

“Cardinal!” Miss Temple gasped. “Doctor!”

Ignoring Miss Temple utterly, the Contessa’s voice shot out from above.

“Roger Bascombe! Wake up!”

Chang and Svenson turned as Roger did just that, returning to awareness in an instant. Roger leapt to his feet, took in Xonck and the Comte on the floor, and threw himself at the open cabinet of weapons. Chang raised the saber—Miss Temple was dismayed to see still more blood around Chang’s mouth—and struggled to stand. Doctor Svenson collected his own cutlass and reached his feet with the help of a brass wall bracket. He shouted to the Contessa.

“It is finished, Madame! The airship is falling!”

Miss Temple looked back, relieved she was not dead, but having no idea why it was so. The Contessa had paused on the little landing mid-way down the stairs, where in a small alcove—emblematic of the cunning use of space so necessary aboard vessels of all kinds—her minions had lashed into place an enormous steamer trunk.

Miss Temple heaved herself to her knees. She saw her revolver, slid half-way across the floor, and screamed at the Doctor as she flung herself toward it.

“She has the books! She has the books!”

The Contessa had both hands in the trunk and when she pulled them out each held a book—in her bare fingers! Miss Temple did not know how the woman did it—indeed the Contessa’s expression was ecstatic—how was she not swallowed up?

“Roger!” called the Contessa. “Are you alive?”

“I am, Madame,” he replied, having retreated at Chang’s approach to the other side of the unmoving Francis Xonck.

“Contessa,” began Svenson, “Rosamonde—”

“If I throw this book,” the Contessa called, “it will surely shatter on that floor, and some of you—particularly those under-dressed and sitting—will be killed. I have many of them. I can throw one after another—and since the alternative means the end of every book, I will sacrifice as many as I need. Miss Temple, do not touch that gun!”

Miss Temple stopped her hand, hovering above her revolver.

“Every one of you,” cried the Contessa. “Drop your weapons! Doctor! Cardinal! Do it now or this book goes right…at…her!”

She glared at Miss Temple with a wicked smile. Svenson dropped his cutlass with a clang, and it slid with the tipping of the craft toward the Prince, who snatched it up. Chang did not move.

“Cardinal?”

Chang wiped his mouth and spat, his blood-smeared jaw like the painted half-mask of a red Indian or a Borneo pirate, and his bone-weary voice from another world altogether.

“We are finished anyway, Rosamonde. I’ll be dead by the end of the day no matter what, but we’re all doomed. Look out the windows…we’re going down. The sea will smother your dreams along with mine.”

The Contessa weighed a book in her hand. “You’ve no care for your Miss Temple’s painful death?”

“It would be quicker than drowning,” answered Chang.

“I do not believe you. Drop your weapon, Cardinal!”

“If you answer a question.”

“Don’t be ridiculous—”

Chang shifted his grip on the saber and pulled back his arm, as if to throw it like a spear.

“Do you think your book will kill me before I put this through your heart? Do you want to take that chance?”

The Contessa narrowed her eyes and weighed her options.

“What question then? Quickly!”

“To be honest, it is two questions.” Cardinal Chang smiled. “First, what was Mr. Gray doing when I killed him? And second, why did you take the Prince from his compound?”

“Cardinal Chang—why?” asked the Contessa, with a sigh of unfeigned frustration. “Why possibly do you want to know this now?”

Chang smiled, his sharp teeth pink with blood.

“Because one way or another, I shan’t be able to ask you tomorrow.”

The Contessa laughed outright and took two steps down the stairs, nodding Svenson and Miss Temple toward Chang, her expression darkening at Miss Temple’s quite brazen snatch of her pistol before she went.

“Join your comrade,” the Contessa hissed at them, then looked at Elöise with disdain. “And you, Mrs. Dujong—one wonders if you are professionally helpless for a living—hurry!” She turned to the Prince, her tone sweetening. “Highness…if you would climb to the wheelhouse and do what you can to slow our descent—I believe most of the panels have helpful words on them…Lydia, stay where you are.”

Karl-Horst darted up the stairs as the Contessa continued down, stepping over the crewman, to face all four of them in the doorway. The Doctor had pulled Elöise to him and held her hand, while Miss Temple stood—feeling rather alone, actually—between the Doctor and Chang. She glanced once over her shoulder at Roger in the far doorway, his face pale and determined, another expression she had never seen.

“What a gang of unlikely rebels,” said the Contessa. “As I am a rational woman I must recognize your success—however inadvertent—just as I can find myself truthfully wishing that our circumstances were other than they are. But the Cardinal is right. We will most likely perish—all of you will, certainly—just as I have lost my partners. Very well, Mr. Gray…it is no secret now—not even to the Comte, were he still alive. The mixture of indigo clay was altered to decrease the pliability of the new flesh of his creations. As a defense, you see, if they became too strong—they would be more brittle. As it happened, perhaps too brittle…ah, well…it seems I was rash.” She laughed again—even at this extremity a lovely sound—and sighed, going on in a whisper. “As for the Prince—well, I do not like him to overhear. In addition to taking the opportunity of implementing my own control phrase for His Highness, he has also been introduced with a poison for which I alone have the antidote. It is a simple precaution. I have secretly made an adherent of his young cousin’s mother—the cousin who must inherit if the Prince dies without issue. With Karl-Horst so dead, Lydia’s child—and the Comte’s dire plan for their offspring—is swallowed in a battle for the succession that I shall control. Or perhaps the Prince shall live, continuing to consume the antidote in ignorance—it is all preparation.”

“And all of it rendered academic,” muttered Svenson.

Above them the Prince had found a helpful switch, for one chopping propeller switched off, followed a moment later by the other. Miss Temple looked to the windows, but they were still covered with curtains—were they still losing altitude? The cabin righted itself, and grew silent save for the whistling outside wind. They were adrift.

“We shall see,” said the Contessa. “Roger?”

Miss Temple turned at a noise behind her, but it did not come from Roger Bascombe. Francis Xonck had somehow regained his feet, steadying himself with his injured hand on a settee, the other holding his jaw, his lips pulled back in a wince of pain that revealed two broken teeth. He looked at Miss Temple with cold eyes and reached his good hand toward Roger, who immediately passed Xonck his cutlass.

“Why, hello, Francis,” called the Contessa.

“We’ll talk later,” said Xonck. “Get up, Oskar. This isn’t finished.”

Before Miss Temple’s eyes the enormous man on the floor, like a bear rousing itself from hibernation, began to stir, rearing up to his knees—the fur coat flashing briefly open to reveal a shirtfront drenched in blood, but she could see it had all seeped from one superficial line scored across his ribs—the crack on the head had brought him down, not her shooting. The Comte heaved himself onto a settee and glared at her with open hatred. They were trapped again, caught between the books and Xonck’s cutlass. Miss Temple could not bear it an instant longer. She spun back to the Contessa and stamped her foot, extending the gun. The Contessa gasped with pleasure at the notion of being challenged.

“What is this, Celeste?”

“It is the finish,” said Miss Temple. “You will throw the book if you are able. But I will do my best to put a bullet through the book in your other hand. It will shatter and you will lose your arm—and who knows, perhaps your face, perhaps your leg—perhaps it is you who will prove most brittle of all.”

The Contessa laughed, but Miss Temple knew she laughed precisely because what Miss Temple said was true, and this was just the sort of thing the Contessa enjoyed.

“That was an interesting plan you described, Rosamonde,” called Xonck. “The Prince, and Mr. Gray.”

“Wasn’t it?” she answered gaily. “And you would have been so surprised to see it unveiled in Macklenburg! It is such a pity I never got to see the finish of your secret plans—with Trapping or your brother’s munitions—or yours, Oskar, the hidden instructions to your glass ladies, the triumphant birth of your creation within Lydia! Who can say what monstrosity you have truly implanted within her? How I should have been amazed and outflanked!” The Contessa laughed again and shook her head girlishly.

“You destroyed Elspeth and Angelique,” rumbled the Comte.

“Oh, I did no such thing! Do not be temperamental—it is not becoming. Besides, who were they? Creatures of need—there are thousands more to take their place! There are more right before your eyes! Celeste Temple and Elöise Dujong and Lydia Vandaariff—another triumvirate for your great unholy sacrament!”

She sneered a bit too openly with this last word, caught herself, and then snickered. A certain lightness of mind was one thing, but to Miss Temple’s wary eye the Contessa was becoming positively giddy.

“Karl-Horst von Maasmärck!” she bellowed. “Come down here and bring me two more books! I am told we must finish this—so finish it we shall!”

“There is no need,” said Xonck. “We have them trapped.”

“Quite right,” laughed the Contessa. “If I did throw this book the glass might spray past them and hit you! That would be tragic!”

The Prince clomped down the stairs into view, with two books bundled in his coat under one arm, in the other carrying a bottle of orange liquid identical to the one Elöise had taken from the Comte’s stores in the tower. Xonck turned to the Comte, who muttered, just loud enough for Miss Temple to hear.

“She does not wear gloves…”

“Rosamonde—” began Xonck. “No matter what has been done—our plans remain in place—”

“I can make him do anything, you know,” laughed the Contessa. She turned to the Prince and shouted out, “A nice waltz, I think!”

As under her command as he’d been in the secret room, the Prince, his face betraying no understanding of what his body was doing, undertook a stumbling dance step on the slippery metal landing, all the time juggling his fragile burdens. The Comte and Xonck both took an urgent step forward.

“The books, Rosamonde—he will drop them!” cried Xonck.

“Perhaps I should just start throwing them anyway, and Celeste can try to shoot me if she can…”

“Rosamonde!” cried Xonck again, his face pale.

“Are you afraid?” she laughed. She motioned to the Prince to stop—which he did, panting, confused—and then raised her arm as if to make him continue.

“Rosamonde,” called the Comte. “You are not yourself—the glass against your skin—it is affecting your mind! Put down the books—their contents are irreplaceable! We are still in alliance—Francis has them in hand with his blade—”

“But Francis does not trust me,” she replied. “Nor I Francis. Nor I you, Oskar. How are you not dead when you’ve been shot? More of your alchemy? And here I had grown quite used to the idea—”

“Contessa, you must stop—you are frightening us all!”

This was from Lydia Vandaariff, who had taken several steps toward the Contessa, and reached out one hand, the other still clutching her belly. She tottered, and her chin was streaked with blue-tinged drool—yet however hesitant her carriage, as always for Lydia, her tone was both restive and demanding.

“You are ruining everything! I want to be Princess of Macklenburg as you promised!”

“Lydia,” rasped the Comte, “you must rest—take care—”

The girl ignored him, raising her voice, piercingly plaintive and peevish, to the Contessa. “I do not want to be one of the glass women! I do not want to have the Comte’s child! I want to be a Princess! You must put down the book and tell us what to do!”

Lydia gasped at another spasm.

“Miss Vandaariff,” whispered Svenson. “Step away—”

Another gout of blue, much thicker than before, heaved into Lydia’s mouth. She gagged and swallowed, groaned and whined again at the Contessa, now in a tearful fury. “We can kill these others any time, but the books are precious! Give them to me! You promised me everything—my dreams! I insist you give them to me at once!”

The Contessa stared at her with wild eyes, but to Miss Temple it did seem the woman was genuinely attempting to consider Lydia’s request—even as if the words came from a great distance and were only partly heard—when Lydia huffed with impatience and made the mistake of trying to snatch the nearest book. Showing the same speed she had used to overcome Crabbé, the Contessa, all sympathy vanished, whipped the one book from Lydia’s reach and slashed the other book forward, chopping it with a cracking snap some two inches into Miss Vandaariff’s throat.

The Contessa let go of the book and Lydia fell backwards, the flesh of her neck already turning blue, the blood in the back of her mouth and in her lungs hardening to crystal, popping like gravel beneath a wheel. The girl was dead before she hit the floor, her solidified throat breaking open and separating her head from her shoulders as neatly as an executioner’s axe.

From the stairway the Prince let out a bellow of shock, roaring at the spectacle of Lydia dead, jaw quivering, mere words beyond him. Whether it was grief for the woman or outrage at an attack on one of his own, for the first time Miss Temple saw within the Prince a capacity for regret, for sentiment beyond mere appetite. But what to Miss Temple might have rendered the Prince infinitesimally admirable, for the Contessa changed him to a danger, and before he could take another step she hurled her second book into his knees. The glass shattered above his boots and with a piercing scream the Prince toppled back, legs buckling, juggling the books, landing heavily on the stairs, his boots still upright where he’d left them. His upper body slid down to rest against the fallen crewman and did not move.

The Contessa stood alone, flexing her fingers. The delirious gleam in her eyes grew dim and she looked around her, realizing what she’d done.

“Rosamonde…” whispered Xonck.

“Be quiet,” she hissed, the back of her hand before her mouth. “I beg you—”

“You have destroyed my Annunciation!” The Comte’s rasping voice betrayed an unbecoming whine, and he stood up, weaving, groping another cutlass from the cabinet.

“Oskar—stop!” This was Xonck, his face pale and drawn. “Wait!”

“You have ruined the work of my life!” the Comte shouted again, pulling free the cutlass and surging toward Miss Temple.

“Oskar!” the Contessa shouted. “Oskar—wait—”

Elöise took hold of Miss Temple’s shoulders and yanked her from the Comte’s path as the large man shouldered through, eyes fixed on the Contessa, who dug hurriedly to restore her metal spike. Miss Temple held her pistol, but it did not seem possible that she should shoot—for all this was the final confrontation with their enemies, she felt more a witness to their self-destruction than a combatant.

Cardinal Chang felt no such distance. As the Comte d’Orkancz passed by, Chang took hold of his massive shoulder and spun the man with all his strength. The Comte turned at this distraction, eyes wild, and raised the cutlass in an awkward, nearly petulant manner.

“You dare!” he cried at Chang.

“Angelique,” spat Cardinal Chang in return. He drove the saber into the Comte’s belly and up under his ribs, cutting deep into the great man’s vitals. The Comte gasped and went rigid, and after one hanging moment Chang gave the blade another push, grinding it in half-way to the hilt. The Comte’s legs gave way and he took the blade from Chang with his fall, his dark blood pooling into the fur.

His cough trailing into a thick rattle, Chang dropped to his knees and then slumped back against the doorframe. Miss Temple cried out and sank to his side, feeling the Doctor’s nimble fingers snatch the revolver from her hand as she did. She looked up from Chang’s haggard face to see Svenson extend the gun at Francis Xonck—caught flat-footed by the Comte’s death. Xonck stared into Svenson’s hard eyes, his broken mouth desperately working for words.

“Doctor—too much hangs unfinished—your own nation—”

Svenson pulled the trigger. Xonck flew back as if he’d been kicked by a horse. The Doctor now stood face-to-face with Roger Bascombe.

He extended his arm, and then thought better of it and wheeled to the Contessa at the far end of the airship’s cabin. He fired, but not before Roger had leapt forward and shoved the Doctor’s arm. The bullet went wide and the Contessa ran for the stairs with a cry.

Svenson grappled with Roger for the gun, but Roger—younger, stronger—wrenched it away as the Doctor tripped over Xonck’s leg. With an ugly grimace he aimed the gun at Svenson. Miss Temple cried out.

“Roger—do not!”

He looked up at her, his face disfigured by hatred and bitter rage.

“It is over, Roger. It has failed.”

She knew there was one bullet left in the gun, and that Roger was too close to miss.

“It is not,” snarled Roger Bascombe.

“Roger, your masters are dead. Where is the Contessa? She has abandoned you. We are adrift. Both the Prince and the Duke of Stäelmaere are dead.”

“The Duke?”

“He will be killed by Colonel Aspiche.”

Roger stared at her. “Why would the Colonel do that?”

“Because I ordered him to. You see, I learned the Colonel’s control phrase.”

“His what?”

“Just as I know yours, Roger.”

“I have no control phrase—”

“O Roger,…you really do not know after all, do you?”

Roger narrowed his eyes and raised the revolver to Doctor Svenson. Miss Temple spoke quickly and clearly, looking him straight in the eye.

“Blue Apostle blue Ministry ice consumption.”

Roger’s face went slack.

“Sit down,” Miss Temple told him. “We will talk when there’s time.”

“Where is the Contessa?” asked Elöise.

“I do not know,” said Miss Temple, “how is Chang?”

Doctor Svenson crawled to the Cardinal. “Elöise, help me move him. Celeste—” He pointed to the iron steps, to the Prince. “The orange bottle, if it is not broken, fetch it at once!”

She ran to it, stepping carefully around the glass—grateful for her boots—doing her best to avoid eye contact with the disfigured corpses.

“What is in it?” she called.

“I do not know—it is a chance for the Cardinal. I believe it is what saved Angelique—in the greenhouse, the mattress was stained orange—”

“But everyone we met was terrified of it,” said Elöise. “If I made to break it they ran the other way!”

“I am sure they did—it must be deadly indeed, and yet—fire to fight fire, or in this case, ice.”

Miss Temple found the bottle, nestled in the crook of the Prince’s arm. She pulled it free, glancing just once at his horrible face, the open mouth with its stained teeth and blood-red gums, the lips and tongue now tinged with blue, and then looked up the stairs. The trunk of books was where it had been, and she heard no sound from the wheelhouse save the wind. She ran back to Chang. Elöise knelt behind him, propping up his head and wiping blood from his face. Svenson doused a handkerchief in the orange fluid and then, with a determined sigh, clamped it over Chang’s nose and mouth. Chang did not react.

“Is it working?” asked Miss Temple.

“I do not know,” replied the Doctor. “I know he is dead without it.”

“It does not appear to be working,” said Miss Temple.

“Where is the Contessa?” asked Elöise.

Miss Temple looked down at Cardinal Chang. The Doctor’s cloth had partially dislodged his spectacles, and she could see his scars, wounds of a piece with the blood that dripped down his face and neck. And yet beneath this history of violence—though she did not doubt it was integral to his soul—Miss Temple also saw a softness, an impression of what his eyes had been like before, of that underpinning and those margins where Chang located care and comfort and peace—if he ever did at all, of course. Miss Temple was no expert on the peace of others. What would it mean if Chang was to die? What would it have meant to him if their positions were reversed? She imagined he would disappear into an opium den. What would she do, lacking even that avenue into depravity? She looked down at Elöise and the Doctor working together, and walked back to Roger. She took the pistol from his hand and made her way to the iron steps.

“Celeste?” asked Svenson.

“Francis Xonck has your silver cigarette case—do not forget to collect it.”

“What are you doing?” asked Elöise.

“Collecting the Contessa,” said Miss Temple.

The wheelhouse was silent, and Miss Temple climbed past the dead crewman and onto the bloody deck, looking down at Caroline’s body. The woman’s eyes were open in dismay, her beautiful pale throat torn open as if a wolf had been at it. The Contessa was nowhere to be seen, but in the ceiling above another metal hatch had been pushed open. Before she climbed up, Miss Temple stepped to the windows. The cloud and fog had finally broken apart. Whatever its course had once been, the dirigible’s path had become hopelessly skewed. She could see only grey cold water below them—not far below either, they were perhaps at the height of Harschmort’s roof—and the pale flickers of white on top of the dark waves. Would they drown in the icy sea after all? After all of this? Chang was perhaps already dead. She’d left the room in part so as not to watch, preferring even at this extremity to avoid what she knew she would find painful. She sighed. Like a persistent little ape, Miss Temple clambered onto the shelf of levers and reached up to the hatch, pulling herself into the cold.

The Contessa stood on the roof of the cabin, holding on to a metal strut beneath the gasbag, wind whipping at her dress and her hair, which had become undone and flowed behind her head like the black pennant of a pirate. Miss Temple looked around her at the clouds, head and shoulders out of the hatch, her elbows splayed on the freezing metal roof. She wondered if she could just shoot the Contessa from here. Or should she simply take hold of the hatch and close it, marooning the woman outside? But this was the end, and Miss Temple found she could do neither of these things. She was transfixed, as perhaps she’d always been.

“Contessa!” she called above the wind, and then, the word feeling strangely intimate in her mouth, “Rosamonde!”

The Contessa turned, and upon seeing Miss Temple smiled with a grace and weariness that took Miss Temple by surprise.

“Go back inside, Celeste.”

Miss Temple did not move. She gripped the gun tightly. The Contessa saw the gun and waited.

“You are an evil woman,” shouted Miss Temple. “You have done wicked things!”

The Contessa merely nodded, her hair blowing for a moment across her face until with a toss of her head it flowed once more behind her. Miss Temple did not know what to do. More than anything she realized that her inability to speak and her inability to act were exactly how she felt when faced with her father—but also that this woman—this terrible, terrible woman—had been the birth of her new life, and somehow had known it, or at least appreciated the possibility, that finally she alone had been able to look into Miss Temple’s eyes and see the desire, the pain, the determination, and see it—see her—for what she was. There was too much to say—she wanted an answer to the woman’s brutality but would not get it, she wanted to prove her independence but knew the Contessa would not care, she wanted revenge but knew the Contessa would never admit her defeat. Nor could Miss Temple prove herself—overcome the one enemy who had always bested her effortlessly—by shooting her in the back, any more than she could have made her father care for her by burning his fields.

“Mr. Xonck and the Comte are dead,” she shouted. “I have sent Colonel Aspiche to kill the Duke. Your plan has been ruined.”

“I can see that. You’ve done very well.”

“You have done things to me—changed me—”

“Why regret pleasure, Celeste?” said the Contessa. “There’s little enough of it in life. And was it not exquisite? I enjoyed myself immensely.”

“But I did not!”

The Contessa reached above her, the spike on her hand, and slashed a two-foot hole across the canvas gasbag. Immediately the blue-colored gas inside began to spew out.

“Go back inside, Celeste,” called the Contessa. She reached in the other direction and opened another seam, out of which gushed air as blue as the summer sky. The Contessa held on to the strut within this cerulean cloud, in her windblown hair and bloody dress a perilous dark angel.

“I am not like your adherents!” Miss Temple shouted. “I have learned for myself! I have seen you!”

The Contessa ripped a third hole in the slackening gasbag, the plume of smoke roiling directly at Miss Temple. She choked and shook her head, eyes stinging, and groped for the hatch. With one last look at the glacial face of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Miss Temple pulled the hatch shut and dropped with a cry to the slippery wheelhouse floor.

“We are sinking to the sea!” she shouted, and with an aplomb she scarcely noticed stepped past and over mangled bodies all the way down to the others, never once slipping on blood or nicking herself on the scattered broken glass. To her utter delight, Chang was on his hands and knees, coughing onto the floor. The spray around his lips was no longer red but blue.

“It is working…,” said Svenson.

Miss Temple could not speak, just glimpsing in the prospect of Chang alive the true depths of her grief at Chang being dead. She looked up to see the Doctor watching her face, his expression both marking her pleasure and vaguely wan.

“The Contessa?” he asked.

“She is bringing us down. We will hit the water at any moment!”

“We shall help Chang—Elöise, if you could take the bottle—while you attend to him.” Svenson looked over his shoulder at Roger Bascombe, sitting patiently on a settee.

“Attend to him how?” asked Miss Temple.

“However you like,” replied the Doctor. “Wake him or put a bullet through his brain. No one will protest. Or leave him—but I suggest choosing, my dear. I have learned it is best to be haunted by one’s actions rather than one’s lack of them.” He re-opened the hatch in the floor and sucked his teeth with concern. Miss Temple could smell the sea. Svenson slammed the hatch shut. “There is no time—we must get to the roof at once—Elöise!”

Between them they caught Chang’s arms and helped him up the stairs. Miss Temple turned to Roger. The dirigible shuddered, a gentle kick as the cabin struck a wave.

“Celeste—forget him!” shouted Elöise. “Come now!”

The airship shuddered again, settling fully onto the water.

“Wake up, Roger,” Miss Temple called, her voice hoarse.

He blinked and his expression sharpened, looking around him, taking in the empty room without comprehension.

“We are sinking in the sea,” she said.

“Celeste!” Svenson’s shout echoed down the stairs.

Roger’s eyes went to the pistol in her hand. She stood between him and the only exit. He licked his lips. The airship was rocking with the motion of the water.

“Celeste—” he whispered.

“So much has happened, Roger,” Miss Temple began. “I find…I cannot contain it…” She sniffed, and looked into his eyes—fearful, wary, pleading—and felt the tears begin in her own. “The Contessa advised me, just now, against regret—”

“Please—Celeste, the water—”

“—but I am not like her. I am not even like myself, perhaps my character has changed…for I am awash in regret for everything, it seems—for what has stained my heart, for how I am no longer a child…” She gestured helplessly at the carnage around them. “For so many dead…for Lydia…even poor Caroline—”

“Caroline?” asked Roger, a bit too suddenly, the words followed by an immediate awareness that perhaps this wasn’t the proper subject, given the circumstances, and the pistol. Miss Temple read the hesitation on his face, still grappling in her heart with the fact she had been found wanting twice in Roger’s rejection—first as a matter of course to his ambition, and then as a companion—and a lover!—to Caroline Stearne. This was not what she intended to talk about. She met his eyes with hesitations of her own.

“She is dead, Roger. She is as dead as you and I.”

Miss Temple watched Roger Bascombe take in this news, and understood that his next words were spoken not out of cruelty or revenge, but merely because she now stood for everything in his life that had thwarted him.

“She is the only one I ever loved,” said Roger.

“Then it is good that you found her,” said Miss Temple, biting her lip.

“You have no idea. You cannot understand,” he said, his voice bitter and hollow with grief.

“But I believe I do—” she began softly.

“How could you?” he shouted. “You never could understand—not me, nor any other, not in your pride—your very insufferable pride—”

She desperately wished Roger would stop speaking, but he went on, his emotions surging like the waves that slapped against the cabin walls.

“The wonders I have seen—the heights of sensation—of possibility!” He scoffed at her savagely, even as she saw tears in his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks. “She pledged herself to me, Celeste—without even knowing who I was—without a care that we must die! That all is dust! That our love would lead to this! She knew even then!”

His hands shot out and shoved her hard, knocking her back into the cabinet. He stepped after her, arms flailing as he continued to yell.

“Roger, please—”

“And who are you, Celeste? How are you alive—so cold, so small of heart, so absent of feeling, without surrender!”

He caught her hard by the arm and shook her.

“Roger—”

“Caroline gave herself—gave everything! You have murdered her—murdered me—murdered the entire world—”

His groping hand found her hair and yanked her close—she felt his breath—and then his other hand was on her throat. He was sobbing. They stared into each other’s eyes. She could not breathe.

Miss Temple pulled the trigger and Roger Bascombe reared back. His face was confused, and instead of snapping forward again he merely faded, like a dissipating curl of smoke, a shapeless figure in a black coat, falling onto the settee and then slipping with an easy movement to the floor. Miss Temple dropped the gun and sobbed aloud, no longer knowing who she was.

“Celeste!”

This was Chang, roaring out from the rooftop despite his pain. She looked up. Miss Temple felt an icy stab at her feet and saw that water was seeping through the floor. She stumbled to the iron staircase, blind with tears, and groped her way, gasping with unspent grief. Doctor Svenson crouched in the wheelhouse and hauled her up. She wanted to curl into a corner and drown. He lifted her high and more hands—Elöise and Chang—helped her onto the roof. What did it matter? They would die in the cabin or die above—either way they would sink. Why had she done it? What did it change? The Doctor followed her out, pushing her legs from below.

“Take her,” Svenson said, and she felt Chang’s arm around her shaking shoulders. The gasbag above was slackening, carried to the side with the wind, still enormous but sagging into the water—as opposed to collapsing on top of them—and tipping the roof at an angle. The spray slopped over the cabin, spattering Miss Temple’s face, as waves rocked their precarious platform. Chang’s other hand held on to a metal strut, as did the Doctor and Elöise. Miss Temple looked around her.

“Where is the Contessa?” She sniffed.

“She was not here,” called Svenson.

“Perhaps she jumped,” said Elöise.

“Then she is dead,” said Svenson. “The water is too cold—her dress too heavy, it would pull her down—even if she survived the fall…”

Chang coughed, his lungs audibly clearer.

“I am in debt to you, Doctor, and your orange elixir. I feel quite well enough to drown.”

“I am honored to have been useful,” answered Svenson, smiling tightly.

Miss Temple shivered. What clothes she wore did nothing to cut the wind or the chilling water that splashed onto her trembling body. She could not bear it, no matter how the others tried to joke, she did not want to die, not after all this, and more than anything she did not care to drown. She knew it for an awful death—slow and mournful. She was mournful enough. She looked at her green boots and bare legs, wondering how long it would take. She had traveled so far in such a small amount of time. It was as if her rooms at the Boniface were as far away, and as much a part of the past, as her island home. She sniffed. At least she was back to the sea.

Miss Temple felt her flesh going numb, and yet when she looked down again the water had not climbed. She craned her head toward the open hatch to find the wheelhouse awash with rising water, with the sodden dress of Caroline Stearne swirling just under the surface. Yet why were they not sinking? She turned to the others.

“Is it possible we are aground?” she asked, through chattering teeth.

As one the other three echoed her look into the wheelhouse, and then all four searched around them for some clue. The water was too dark to reveal its depth. Ahead and to either side they could only find the open sea, while the view behind was blocked by the dirigible’s billowing, sagging gasbag. With a sudden burst of energy Cardinal Chang hoisted himself over the metal strut and clambered onto the canvas bag itself, each step across it pushing out gouts of trapped blue smoke. He dropped from Miss Temple’s view at the trough of each wave that passed beneath, and then she lost him altogether.

“We could be anywhere,” said Doctor Svenson, adding after a silence where neither woman spoke, “speaking cartographically…”

A moment later they heard Chang’s whooping cry. He was bounding back toward them, soaked to his waist, the canvas significantly flattened by his efforts.

“There is land!” he shouted. “God help us, it’s land!”

Doctor Svenson averted his eyes as he lifted Miss Temple over the metal struts, and then did the same for Elöise, Miss Temple taking the other woman’s hands. They helped each other over the dying gasbag, not halfway across before they were wet to their knees, but by then they could see it—a scumbled line of white breaking waves and a darker stripe of trees beyond.

Chang was waiting for her in the water and Miss Temple jumped into his arms. The sea was freezing, but she laughed aloud as it splashed against her face. She could not touch the sand with her toes and so she pushed herself away from Chang, took one look at the shore for a target, and then ducked herself under, the cold tingling the roots of her hair. Miss Temple swam, kicking her legs, unable to see in the dark water, the tears and sweat on her body dissolving in the sea, knowing she must hurry, that the cold would take her otherwise, that she would be even colder once outside the water, soaked and in the wind, and that from all of these things she still might perish.

She did not care about any of it. She smiled again, certain for the first time in so long exactly where she was, and where she was going to be. She felt like she was swimming home.