SIX Quarry
As he stepped from the coach outside the yawning entrance to Stropping Station, Doctor Svenson’s attention was elsewhere. During his ride from Plum Court he had allowed his thoughts to drift, spurred by the poignant quality of Miss Temple’s reckless pursuit of lost love, to the sorrows and vagaries of his own existence. As he descended the crowded staircase his eyes mechanically scanned the crowds for a diminutive figure with chestnut sausage curls and a green dress, but his mind was awash with a particular astringent quality of Scandinavian reproach he had inherited from a disapproving father. What had he made of his life? What more than unnoticed service to an unworthy Duke and his even less worthy offspring? He was thirty-eight years old. He sighed and stepped onto the main station floor. As always, his regrets were focused on Corinna.
Svenson tried to recall when he had last been to the farm. Three winters? It seemed the only season he could bear to visit. Any other time, when there was life or color in the trees, it reminded him too painfully of her. He had been at sea and returned to find her dead from an epidemic of “blood fever” that had swept the valley. She’d been ill for a month before, but no one had written. He would have left his ship. He would have come and told her everything. Had she known how he felt? He knew she had—but what had been in her heart? She was his cousin. She had never married. He had kissed her once. She’d stared up at him and then broken away…there wasn’t a day he did not find a moment to torment himself…not a day for the past seven years. On his last visit there were new tenants (some disagreement with his uncle had driven Corinna’s brother off the land and into town) and though they greeted Svenson politely and offered him room when he explained his relation to the family, he found himself devastated by the fact that the people living in her house no longer knew—had no memory of, no celebration in their hearts for—who was buried in the orchard. A profound sense of abandonment took hold of him and he had not, even in the depths of this present business, been able to shake himself free. His home—no matter where he had been—had lain with her, both living and in the ground. He had ridden back to the Palace the next day.
He had since traveled to Venice, to Berne, to Paris, all in the service of Baron von Hoern. He had performed well—well enough to merit further tasks instead of being sent back to a freezing ship—and even saved lives. None of it mattered. His thoughts were full of her.
He sighed again, heavily, and realized that he had no earthly clue where to find Tarr Manor. He walked to the ticket counter and joined one of the lines. The station buzzed with activity like a wasps’ nest kicked by a malicious child. The faces around him were marked with impatience, worry, and fatigue, people unified in their desperate rushing to make whichever train they sought, relentlessly flowing in awkward clumps back and forth, like the noisome circulatory system of a great distended creature of myth. He saw no trace of Miss Temple, and the place was so thronged that his only real hope was to find the train she sought and search there. In the time it took to light and smoke the first third of another cigarette, he reached the front of the line. He leaned forward to the clerk and explained he needed to reach Tarr Manor. Without pause the man scribbled a ticket and shot it toward him through the hole in the glass and announced the price. Svenson dug out his money and pushed it through the hole, one coin at a time as he counted. He picked up the ticket, which was marked “Floodmaere, 3:02”, and leaned forward again.
“And at which stop do I get off?” he asked.
The clerk looked at him with undisguised contempt. “Tarr Village,” he replied.
Svenson decided he could wait to ask the conductor how long the journey would be, and walked onto the station floor, looking around for the proper platform. It was at the other end of the great terminal hall. He looked up at the hideous clock and judged he did not need to run. His ankle was behaving itself, and he had no desire to aggravate it without reason. He made a point to look in the various stalls as he passed—food, books, newspapers, drink—but in none of them saw the slightest sign of Miss Temple. By the time he got to the train itself, it was clear that Floodmaere was not the most illustrious of destinations. There were only two cars attached to a coal wagon and an engine that had certainly seen better days. Svenson looked around once more for any woman in green—for a glimpse of green anywhere—but saw no one. He flicked away his cigarette butt and entered the rear of the train, resigned that his was a fool’s errand and that she would be located by Chang. He caught himself. Why the flicker of jealousy, of—he had to admit—peevish possessiveness? Because he’d met her before Chang? But he hadn’t—they’d seen each other on the train…he shook his head. She was so young…and Chang—an absolute rogue—practically feral—not that he or Chang presented any kind of match—not that he even could consider—or in conscience desire…it really was too ridiculous.
A greying, unshaven conductor, his face looking as if it had been stippled with paste, snatched Svenson’s ticket and brusquely indicated he should walk forward. Svenson did so, reasoning that he could speak to the man later about arrival times, return trips, and other passengers. It would be better to find her himself without drawing attention, if possible. He walked down the aisle of the first car peering into each compartment as he passed. They were empty, save for the rear-most, which held the many members of a family of gypsies, and at least one crate of indeterminate fowl.
He entered the second and last car, which was more crowded, with each compartment occupied, but none by Miss Temple. He stood at the end of the corridor and sighed. It seemed a futile errand—should he get off the train? He went back to the conductor, who watched him approach with a reptilian expression of cold dislike. Svenson screwed in his monocle and smiled politely.
“Excuse me. I am taking this train to Tarr Village, and had hoped to meet an acquaintance. Is it possible they could have taken an earlier train?”
“Of course it’s possible,” the conductor spat.
“I am not clear. What I mean to ask is when was the last train, the previous train, which my acquaintance might have taken?”
“2:52,” he spat again.
“That is but ten minutes before this one.”
“I see you’re a professor of mathematics.”
Svenson smiled patiently. “So another train stopping at Tarr Village left as recently as that?”
“As I have said, yes. Was there anything else?”
Svenson ignored him, weighing his choices. It was possible, if her coach had made good time, that Miss Temple could have caught the 2:52. If that were so, then he needed to follow her on this train, with hope to catch her at the Tarr Village station. But if she hadn’t come here at all—if she were still in town—he should go to Roger Bascombe’s house, or to the Ministry, to do what he could to help Chang. The conductor watched his indecision with evident pleasure.
“Sir?”
“Yes, thank you. I shall require information about my return tomorrow—”
“Best to get that from the station master himself, I usually find.”
“The Tarr Village station master?”
“Exactly so.”
“Then that is excellent. Thank you.”
Svenson wheeled and strode down the corridor toward the second car, the conductor audibly snorting behind him. He was hardly confident in his choice, but if there was even a chance she’d come this way, he needed to follow. He could ask for her at the station—they would have to notice her—and if she had not appeared, take the next train directly back. At most it would be only a few hours’ delay. And at the worst, he would still find Chang at Stropping the next morning—if he was lucky, with Miss Temple on his arm.
He glanced into the first compartment and saw it held a man and a woman, sitting next to each other on one side. As the opposite row of seats was empty, he pulled the door open, nodded to them, and installed himself by the window. He slipped the monocle into his pocket and rubbed his eyes. He had not slept above two hours. His heavy mood was now compounded by the likely pointless nature of his journey, and a vague gloomy disapproval of the reckless danger Miss Temple had thrown herself—indeed, all of them—into without any larger plan or understanding. He wondered when their descriptions would be given to the constabulary. Was this Cabal so confident as to involve the power of the law? He scoffed—for all practical purposes they were the law…Crabbé had a regiment at his call, Blach had his troopers…Svenson could only hope that a train to the country would take him free of their immediate influence. The whistle blew and the train began to move.
It took perhaps a minute to clear the station and enter a tunnel. Once they emerged into a narrow trough of soot-stained brick buildings, Svenson availed himself of the opportunity to examine his traveling companions. The woman was young, perhaps even younger than Miss Temple, her hair the color of pale beer, stuffed under a blue silk bonnet. Her skin was white and her cheeks pink—she could have been from Macklenburg—and her slightly plump fingers held a black volume tightly in her lap. He smiled at her. Instead of returning the smile, she whipped her eyes to the man, who in turn gazed at Doctor Svenson with a glaring suspicion. He was also fair—Svenson wondered if they could be siblings—and had the antic, rawboned look of an underfed horse. His arms were long and his hands large, gripping his knees. He wore a brown striped suit and a cream-colored cravat. On the seat next to him he had placed a tall brown beaver hat. Svenson could not help noticing, as the man studied him openly, that the fellow’s complexion was poor and there were circles under his eyes—most probably from self-abuse.
As someone who was generally tolerant and at least conversationally kind, it took Doctor Svenson a moment to realize that the pair stared at him with unfeigned hatred. He glanced again at their faces and was confident that he had never before made their acquaintance…could it be merely that his presence interrupted their privacy? Perhaps the fellow had planned to propose? Or perhaps an explanation more louche…in Venice he’d once bought a battered volume of lurid stories celebrating the physical pleasures associated with different modes of transport—trains, ships, horse-carts, horseback, dirigibles—and despite his fatigue he was just recalling the particular details of a caravan of camels (something about the unique rhythm of that animal’s gait…) when the young woman across from him snapped open her book and began to read aloud.
“In the time of redeeming the righteous shall be even as lanterns in the night, for by their light will be told the faithless from the true. Look well into the hearts of those around you and traffic only with the holy, for the cities of the world are realms of living sin, and shall suffer in reclamation the scouring of the Lord. Corrupted vessels shall be smashed. The unclean house will be burned. The tainted beasts will be put to slaughter. Only the blessed, who have already opened themselves to purifying flame, shall survive. It is they who shall re-make the world a Paradise.”
She closed the book and, once more holding it tightly with both hands, looked at the Doctor with narrowed disapproving eyes. Her voice, which held all the charm of broken crockery, made it that much easier for him to now see the signs of rigid stupidity in her features, where before he had been willing to assume a neutral bovine placidity. Her companion was gripping his knees even more tightly, as if to release them would be cause for damnation. Svenson sighed—he really could not help himself—but in this mood he could not be fully answerable.
“What a gratifying homily,” he began. “Yet…when you say Paradise”—the woman’s mouth pursed with shock that he could presume to answer—
“would that refer back to the conditions of life before the Fall, when shame was unknown and the course of desire without stain? That would be exquisite. It has always seemed a cunning part of God’s wisdom that he offers to each of us who are saved the innocence and joy of beasts rutting in the road—or, who knows, in a train car. The point, of course, being the purity of experience. I thank the Lord each minute of the day. I could not agree with you more.”
He reached in his pocket for another cigarette. They did not answer, though he noted with some satisfaction their eyes had widened with discomfort. He replaced his monocle and nodded. “I do beg your pardon…” and made his way to the corridor.
Once there Svenson found a match and lit his cigarette, breathing deeply and attempting to gather his scattered mind after this ridiculous interruption. The train was racing north, the trackside lined with hovels and debris and tattered stunted trees. He could see clustered figures around cooking fires, and ragged children running, followed by excited dogs. Moments later these were gone and the train shot through a luxuriant royal park, then past a small square of white stone monuments that reminded him of France. He exhaled, blowing smoke against the glass, and noted the differences between traveling by land and by sea—the relative density and variety of spectacle one saw on the land versus the sparse nature of even the richest seascape. It was an irony, he noted, that the relative plenty of the land absolved him of thought—he was content to watch it flow by—whereas the sameness of the sea drove him inward. Life on land—though he welcomed it, in some northern sort of self-criticism—struck him as somehow lazy and distracted from the higher goals of ethical scrutiny, of philosophical contemplation that the sea enforced upon a man. The couple in the compartment—apes, really—were a perfect example of land-bound self-satisfaction. His mind drifted painfully to Corinna, and her life in the country—though she had read so voraciously that it seemed to him she carried an ocean in her mind—for they had spoken of this very thing…she had always promised to visit him and sail…Doctor Svenson pushed his thoughts elsewhere, to Miss Temple. He reflected that her own experience of the sea, on an island and on her passage over, must inform the part of her character he found most remarkable.
He forced himself to walk down the corridor, glancing again into the compartments—perhaps there was a more hospitable place for him to sit. The other passengers certainly represented a variety—merchants and their wives, a party of students, laborers, and several better-dressed men and women that Svenson did not recognize, but could not help (for such was the world of Lacquer-Sforza, Xonck, and d’Orkancz) but view with great suspicion. What was more, it seemed that in every compartment there were couples of men and women—sometimes more than one—but never another single traveler, except possibly in one compartment, which held a single man and woman, sitting on opposite sides and apparently not speaking to each other. Svenson crushed his cigarette on the corridor floor and entered their compartment, nodding as each looked up at the sound.
Both were in the window seats of their respective row, so Doctor Svenson installed himself on the man’s side, nearest the door. Upon sitting he was at once markedly aware of his fatigue. He removed his monocle, rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, and replaced it, blinking like a dazed lizard. The man and woman were looking at him discreetly, not with the hostility of the couple in the first compartment, but rather with the mild civilized rebuke of suspicion that is natural when one’s relative solitude on public transport has been disturbed by a stranger. Svenson smiled deferentially and asked, by way of a conversational olive branch, if they were familiar with the Floodmaere line.
“Specifically,” he added, “if you might know the distance to Tarr Village, and the number of stops in between.”
“You are bound for Tarr Village?” asked the man. He was perhaps thirty and wore a crisp suit of indifferent quality, as if he were clerk to a lawyer of middling importance. His black hair was parted in the center and plastered flat to either side, the rigid grooves from his comb revealing furrows of pale flaking scalp contrasting with the flushed pink of his face. Was it hot in the compartment? Svenson did not think so. He turned to the woman, a lady of perhaps his own age, her brown hair braided into a tight bun behind her head. Her dress was simple but well-made—governess to some high-placed brats?—and she wore her age with a handsome frankness Svenson found immediately compelling. Where were his thoughts? First Corinna, then Miss Temple, the rutting dogs of Paradise, now he was ogling every woman he saw—and the Doctor chided himself for, even within that moment, examining the tightly bound swell of her bosom. And then in that same instant, he looked at the woman and felt a vague prick of recognition. Had he met her before? He cleared his throat and answered briskly.
“Indeed, though I have never been before.”
“What draws you there, Mr….?” The woman smiled politely. Svenson returned the smile with pleasure—he’d no idea where he might have seen her, perhaps in the street, perhaps even just then in the station—and opened his mouth to reply. In that very moment, when he felt it was just possible for his heavy mood to shift, his eyes took in the black leather volume she held in her lap. He glanced at the man. He had one as well, poking out from the side pocket of his coat. Was this a train of Puritans?
“Blach—Captain Blach. You will know from my accent that I am not from this land, but indeed, the Duchy of Macklenburg. You may have read of the Macklenburg Crown Prince’s engagement to Miss Lydia Vandaariff—I am attached to Prince Karl-Horst’s party.”
The man nodded in understanding—the woman did not seem to Svenson to react at all, her face maintaining its friendly cast while her mind seemed to work behind it. What could that mean? What might either of them know? Doctor Svenson decided to investigate. He leaned forward conspiratorially and dropped his voice.
“And what draws me are dire events…dire events in the world—I’m sure I have no need to elaborate. The cities of the world…well, they are realms of living sin. Who indeed shall be redeemed?”
“Who indeed?” echoed the woman quietly, with a certain deliberate care.
“I was traveling with a woman,” Svenson went on. “I was prevented—perhaps I should say no more about her—from meeting this lady. I believe she may have been forced to take an earlier train. In the process, I was deprived of my”—he nodded to the book in the woman’s lap—“that is, my guide.”
Was this too thick? Doctor Svenson felt ridiculous, but was met by the man shifting his position to face him fully, leaning forward in earnest concern.
“Prevented how? And by whom?”
This type of intrigue—play-acting and lies—was still awkward for Doctor Svenson. Even in his work for Baron von Hoern, he preferred discretion and leverage and tact over any outright dissembling. Yet, faced with the man’s open desire for more information, he had—as a doctor—enough experience with conjuring credible authority when he felt helpless and ignorant (how many doomed men had asked him if they were going to die? To how many had he lied?) to frame his immediate hesitation—trying to think of something—as the troubled moment of choice where he decided to trust them with his tale. He glanced at the corridor and then leaned forward in his turn, as if to imply that perhaps their compartment alone was safe, and spoke just above a whisper.
“You must know that several men have died, and perhaps a woman. A league has been organized, working in the shadows, led by a strange man in red, a half-blind Chinaman, deadly with a blade. The Prince was attacked at the Royal Institute, the powerful work there disrupted…the glass…do you know…have you seen…the blue glass?”
They shook their heads. Svenson’s heart sank. Had he completely misjudged them?
“You do know of Lord Tarr…that he—”
The man nodded vigorously. “Has been redeemed, yes.”
“Exactly.” Svenson nodded, more confident again—but was the man insane? “There will be a new Lord Tarr within days. The nephew. He is a friend of the Prince…a friend to us all—”
“Who prevented you from meeting your lady?” the woman asked, somewhat insistently. The nagging sense he had seen her persisted…something about the slight tilt of her head when she asked a question.
“Agents of the Chinaman,” Svenson answered, feeling an idiot even as he said the words. “We were forced to take separate coaches. I pray she is safe. These men have no decency. We were—as you well know—to travel together—as arranged…”
“To Tarr Village?” asked the man.
“Exactly.”
“Could any of these agents have boarded the train?” the woman asked.
“I do not believe so. I did not see them—I believe I was the last to board.”
“That is good at least.” She sighed with a certain small relief, but did not relax her shoulders, nor her cautious gaze.
“How should we know these agents?” asked the man.
“That is just the thing—they have no uniform, save duplicity and cunning. They have penetrated even to the Prince’s party and turned one of our number to their cause—Doctor Svenson, the Prince’s own physician!”
The man inhaled through his teeth, a disapproving hiss.
“I am telling you,” Svenson went on, “but I fear no one else should know—it may be all is fine, and I should hesitate to agitate—or, that is, make public—”
“Of course not,” she agreed.
“Not even to…?” the man began.
“Who?” asked Svenson.
The man shook his head. “No, you are right. We have been invited—we are guests, after all, guests to a banquet.” With this he smiled again, shaking off the Doctor’s tale of dread. His hand went to the book in his pocket and patted it absently, as if it were a sleeping puppy. “You look very tired, you know, Captain Blach,” he said kindly. “There will be time enough to find your friend. Tarr Village is at least another hour and a half away. Why not rest? We will all need our strength for the climb.”
Svenson wondered what he meant—the quarry? The hills? Could it mean the manor house? Svenson could not say, and he was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Was he safe with them? The woman interrupted his thoughts.
“What is your lady’s name, Captain?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Your friend. You did not say her name.”
Svenson caught a worried glance from the man to the woman, though her face remained open and friendly. Something was wrong.
“Her name?”
“You did not say what it was.”
“No, you didn’t,” confirmed the man, somewhat after the fact and a touch more insistent for it, as if he’d been caught out.
“Ah. But you see…I do not know it. I only know her clothes—a green dress with green shoes. We were to meet and travel together. Why…did you know each other’s name before this journey?”
She did not immediately answer. When the man answered for her, he knew he had guessed correctly. “We do not know each other’s names even now, Captain, as we were indeed instructed.”
“Now you really should rest,” the woman said, genuinely smiling for perhaps the first time. “I promise we will wake you.”
Within his dream, a part of Doctor Svenson’s mind was aware that he’d not had a regular stretch of sleep in at least two days, and so expected turbulent visions. This sliver of rational distance might contradict but did not alter the successive waves of vivid engagement thrust upon him. He knew the visions were fed by his feelings of loss and isolation—more than anything by his helplessness in the face of Corinna’s death and then his own chronic reticence and cowardice in life—and then all of this regret swirling together with a world of cruelly unquenched desire for other women. Was it merely that, so exhausted, even in sleep, his guard was so much lowered? Or was it, could he admit, that his feelings of guilt provoked in turn a secret pleasure in the act of dreaming with such erotic fervor in an open train compartment? What he knew was the deep warm embrace of sleep, twisting effortlessly in his mind into the embrace of pale soft arms and sweet caressing fingers. He felt as if his body were refracted in a jewel, seeing—and feeling—multiple instances of himself in hopelessly delicious circumstances…Mrs. Marchmoor stroking him under a table…Miss Poole with her tongue in his ear…his nose buried in Rosamonde’s hair, inhaling her perfume…on his hands and knees on the bed, licking each circular indentation on the luscious flesh of the bed-ridden Angelique…his hands—O shamefully!—cupping Miss Temple’s buttocks beneath her dress…his eyes closed, nursing tenderly, hungrily, at the bared breast of the brown-haired governess, who had moved to sit next to him, to ease his torment, offering herself to his lips…the incomparably soft sweet pillow of flesh…her other hand stroking his hair…whispering to him gently…shaking his shoulder.
He snapped awake. She was sitting next to him. She was shaking his arm. He sat up, painfully aware of his arousal, thankful for his greatcoat, his hair in his eyes. The man was gone.
“We are near Tarr Village, Captain,” she said, smiling. “I am sorry to wake you.”
“No, no—thank you—of course—”
“You were sleeping very soundly—I’m afraid I had to shake your arm.”
“I am sorry—”
“There is no reason to be sorry. You must have been tired.”
He noticed that the top button of her dress was now undone. He felt a smear of drool on his lip and wiped it with his sleeve. What had happened? He nodded at where the man had been.
“Your companion—”
“He has gone to the front of the train. I am about to join him, but wanted to make sure you were awake. You were…in your dream, you were speaking.”
“Was I? I do not recall—I seldom recall any dream—”
“You said ‘Corinna’.”
“Did I?”
“You did. Who is she?”
Doctor Svenson forced a puzzled frown and shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Honestly—it’s most strange.” She looked down at him, her open expression, along with the insistent pressure in his trousers, inspiring him to speak further. “You have not told me your name.”
“No.” She hesitated for just a moment. “It is Elöise.”
“You’re a governess, for the children of some Lord.”
She laughed. “Not a Lord. And not a governess either. Perhaps more a confidante, and for my salary a tutor, in French, Latin, music, and mathematics.”
“I see.”
“I do not begin to know how you could have guessed. Perhaps it is your military training—I know that officers must learn to read their men like books!” She smiled. “But I do not mind my pupils all the day. They have another lady for that—she is their proper governess, and enjoys children much more than I.”
Svenson had no reply, for the moment happy enough to look into her eyes. She smiled at him and then stood. He struggled to stand with her, but she put a hand on his shoulder to dissuade him. “I must get to the front of the train before we arrive. But perhaps we shall see each other in the Village.”
“I should like that,” he said.
“So should I. I do hope you find your lady friend.”
In that moment Doctor Svenson knew where he had seen her, and why he could not place her face, for this Elöise had worn a mask—leaning forward to whisper into the ear of Charlotte Trapping at Harschmort, the night Colonel Trapping had been killed.
Then she was gone, and the compartment door latched shut behind her. Svenson sat up and rubbed his face, and then, with self-conscious reproach, adjusted his trousers. He stood, shrugging his coat more comfortably onto his shoulders, the weight of the pistol in the pocket, and exhaled. He worked to reconcile the instinctive warmth he felt toward the woman with the knowledge that she had been amongst his enemies at Harschmort, and was now here on the train, unquestionably in the service of them still. He did not want to believe that Elöise was aware of the dark forces at work and yet how could it be otherwise? They all had a black book, and responded easily to his spun story…and it was she who had worked to make sure of him, asking questions…and yet…he thought of her role in his dream with simultaneous spasms of sympathy and discomfort. With another breath he pushed her from his mind entirely. Whatever the purpose of the other passengers’ pilgrimage to Tarr Village, Doctor Svenson’s only goal was to find Miss Temple before any further mischance. If the station agent had not seen her, then he would return at once—wherever she was, she would need his help.
He stepped to the window, looking out on the passing landscape of county Floodmaere: low scrubby woods clinging to worn rolling hills, with here and there between them a stretch of meadow and, breaking through like damaged teeth, crags of reddish stone. Doctor Svenson had seen such stone before, in the hills near his home, and knew it meant iron ore. He recalled the taste of it in the winter snow-melt, ruddying the water as it flowed down the valley. No wonder there was mining here. He was amused to notice the clear sky—he’d spent so many days in the clouds and fog that he could not remember when he’d last seen it so open—smiling that it must be nearing five o’clock, for the sun was already going down, as if he were journeying to a blue sky merely to be denied it. At least—as opposed to earlier in the day—he could laugh at the irony. Beneath his feet, the train’s momentum shifted, and he felt it slow. They were arriving. He dug out another cigarette—how many did he have left?—and stuck it in his mouth, lit it and shook out the match, dreading a return journey without tobacco. The train came to a stop. He’d have to find some other brand in the village.
By the time he stepped onto the platform, the party of couples was well ahead of him, walking toward the station house. As near as he could figure—save perhaps for the gypsies—the train had emptied. He did not see Elöise or the clerk she was apparently paired with, though he did spy the hateful couple from his first compartment. The young blonde woman turned back, saw him, and tugged on the arm of her companion, who turned as well. They quickened their pace, her plump bottom moving in a way that Svenson might have normally—surreptitiously—enjoyed but now made him only want to thrash it. He let them all go ahead, through the wooden archway of the station and out into the Village proper, while he stepped into the small station house. There were perhaps three waiting benches, all empty, and a cold metal stove. He walked over to the ticket counter, but found the window shuttered. He knocked on it and called out. There was no answer. At the end of the counter was a door. He knocked on it as well, again received no answer, and then tried the handle, which was locked. If Miss Temple had been here, which he doubted, she was not here now.
On the wall was a blackboard with a painted grid of train departures and arrivals. The next return train was, he was exasperated to read, at eight o’clock the next morning. Svenson sighed with annoyance. He would be wasting hours and hours of time—who knew where she was, and what help he might have offered to Chang had he stayed with him. He looked around the room, as if by remaining there he might find some reprieve, but Doctor Svenson had to accept that his only real recourse was to walk into the Village and find a room for the night. Perhaps he should catch up to Elöise and her mysterious party, all with their black books. Were they Bibles? He had no idea what else they could be, especially with the hectoring specter of redemption and sin, but who could take such a thing seriously? He felt sure the answer was more insidious and complicated…or did he merely prefer to associate Elöise with villains rather than with fanatics?
He walked from the station onto the road. By now, the others were gone from his view. The road was lined on either side with an overgrown tangle of black briar, the hard thorns casting wicked shadows onto the road. Shadows? There was a rising moon, and Svenson looked up at it with pleasure. Above the briars, in the distance, he could see the thatched rooftops of Tarr Village. He walked toward them with a brisk purpose, and it was only another minute before the road opened up onto a small square with a common green in the center and a cobbled lane running around it. On the far side was a church with a white steeple, but—happily—the building nearest to him announced itself by a hanging wooden sign, painted with a picture of a crow wearing a silver crown. Svenson stopped at the door, one foot on the step, and looked around the square. There were lights here and there in the buildings he could see, but no people in the street, nor any sound in the air. If there had been visible sentries, Tarr Village would have reminded him of nothing more than a military camp after nightfall. He went into the tavern.
As a foreigner, Doctor Svenson knew he was no knowledgeable judge, but the King Crow struck him as a decidedly odd village pub, adding—with the excessively orderly nature of the town itself and the apocalyptic halo of the party from the train—to his growing suspicion that Tarr Village might in fact be one of those communities, purposely organized around religious or moral principles (but what was the doctrine, and who its charismatic—or stern—leader?). For one, the King Crow did not smell like a tavern at all, of beer and smoke and the sour pungence of sweat and human grease. Indeed, the air was all soap and vinegar and wax, and the main room scrubbed and sparse as the bare, clean insides of a ship, with the walls whitewashed and a fire in its modest hearth. For another, the only two occupants were wearing crisp black suits with high white shirt collars and black traveling cloaks. Each man stood near the fire with a glass of red wine, not even, or no longer, speaking to each other, but obviously waiting for some word, or someone. Both turned swiftly at his entrance.
One cleared his throat and spoke. “Excuse me. Are you just arrived…on the 3:02 train?”
Svenson nodded politely, his face impassive. “I am.”
They were examining him, or waiting for him to speak…so, he did not.
“That is a Macklenburg uniform coat, if I am not mistaken?” asked the other man.
“It is.”
One whispered into the other’s ear. The listener nodded. They continued to look at him, as if they could not come to a decision. Svenson turned his gaze to the bar, behind which a porcine fellow in a spotless white shirt stood silently.
“I require a room for the night,” Svenson told him. “Do you have any?”
The man looked at his two customers—whether to receive instruction or to simply see if they needed anything before he left, Svenson could not say—and then walked out around the bar, wiping his hands. He continued past Svenson, muttering, “This way…”
Svenson looked once more to the two men by the fire, and turned to follow the innkeeper’s heavy steps up the stairs.
The room was simple, the price fair. After a moment of looking at it—a narrow bed, a stand with a basin, a hard chair, a mirror—Svenson said it would do well and asked where he might find some food. Once more, the man muttered, “This way…” and led him back down to the fire. The other two were still there—it could only have been two minutes—and continued to watch him as he removed his greatcoat and sat at the small table his host indicated before disappearing through a door behind the bar, into what Svenson assumed was the kitchen. That there was no discussion of what the food might be did not trouble him. He was used to traveling in the country and doing with what he could find. But when had he last eaten—tea at the Boniface with Miss Temple and Chang? And before that? His bread and sausage the night before…two sparse meals in as many days. It was no way to manage an adventure.
The two men were still studying him, now with the barest pretense of manners.
“Was there something you wanted to say?” he asked.
They shuffled and muttered and cleared their throats to no great purpose. It was his turn to stare at them, so he did. Beyond the room he could hear gratifying noises of pots and crockery. Fortified by the mere prospect of a meal, Svenson spoke again.
“I take it you are here to meet a traveler from the 3:02 train from Stropping Station. I also take it that you do not know the traveler you are meeting. Thus, I take your habit of studying my person as if I were a zoo animal to be not so much a personal affront as an admission of your own foolish predicament. Or—you must tell me, please—am I in error? Is there an offense that, as gentlemen”—he lowered his voice meaningfully—“we need to settle out-of-doors?”
Svenson was not normally given to such arrogant posturing, but he felt sure that the two were not men of violence—that indeed, they were educated and accustomed to clean cuffs and uncalloused hands…rather like himself, actually. Perhaps Chang was rubbing off on him. After a moment the one who had spoken first, who was taller and with a sharper nose, held up his open palm.
“We are sorry to have disturbed you—it was never our intent. It is merely that such a uniform—and accent—is understandably rare around these parts—”
“You are from these parts?” asked Svenson. “I would find that a surprise. I would think it much more likely that you came today on the train—on the 2:52 train, though I suppose you could have come earlier. The person you now seek was supposed to travel with you, but did not appear. You then hoped he would appear on the next train. That you at all entertained the possibility it might be me confirms, as I say, that you have never met this person. One cannot help wondering if the purpose of the meeting is entirely savory.”
At this, the door to the kitchen banged open and their host appeared carrying a wooden platter with both hands, loaded with several plates—roasted meat, thick bread, steaming boiled potatoes, a pot of gravy, and a plate of buttered mashed turnips. He laid it down on Svenson’s table, his hand then drifting half-heartedly toward the bar.
“Drink…” he muttered.
“A mug of beer, if you will.”
“He does not have beer,” announced the second man, whose hair was receding and brushed hopefully forward in the old Imperial fashion.
“Wine then,” said Svenson. The innkeeper nodded and stepped behind the bar. Doctor Svenson returned to the two men. He breathed in the smells of the food before him, feeling the intensity of his hunger. “You have not answered my…hypothesis,” he said.
The two men exchanged one quick look, set their wineglasses on the hearth, and strode abruptly from the King Crow without another word.
The clock in the entryway of the King Crow chimed seven. Doctor Svenson lit the first of his remaining cigarettes, inhaled deeply, and then slowly blew smoke across the remains of his meal. He swirled the contents and tossed off the last of his second glass of wine—a meaty, country claret—then set down his glass and stood. The innkeeper was behind the bar, reading a book. Svenson shrugged on his greatcoat and called to the man.
“I should like to take a walk across the green. Will there be any difficulty getting back inside? When do you retire?”
“Doors are not locked in Tarr Village,” the man replied, and went back to his book. Svenson saw he was to get no further communication, and walked to the front door.
Outside, the night was clear and cool, with bright moonlight casting a pale, silvered sheen over the grassy common, as if it had just rained. Across the square, he could see light through the windows of the church. No other building seemed to be so occupied, again as if an order had been given to extinguish all candles by a particular hour. In possible confirmation, the light vanished behind him in the windows of the King Crow, its proprietor closing down for the night. It could not be much past seven! When did these villagers wake—before dawn? Perhaps the puritanical nature of the train party was not so out of place after all—perhaps his recent time in the sin-filled city (he could hardly deny it was so) had overly influenced his skeptical views. Svenson set off across the grass toward the church, to see if he could discover what kept these particular people awake.
In the center of the common was a very large, old oak tree, and Svenson made a point of walking beneath it and looking up at the moon through its enormous, tangled network of leafless branches, just to torment himself with the subsequent whiff of vertigo. As he turned down to his boots to steady himself, he heard across the square the unmistakable sound of a horse-drawn coach rattling into Tarr Village. It was small and efficient, drawn by two black horses and driven by a well-wrapped coachman who reined the horses directly in front of the King Crow. Svenson knew instantly this was the party, arriving late, who was to meet the two men. The coachman went to the door, knocked, waited, knocked again much more loudly, and several minutes later—receiving no response—returned to the coach. Svenson could not but admire the pugnacious reticence on the part of the innkeeper. After another word with his master, the coachman climbed back into place. With a sharp whistle and a snap of the reins the coach pulled forward along the square and then disappeared into the heart of the village. Soon it had passed beyond Svenson’s hearing, and in the re-gathering of the night’s quiet it was as if the coach had never been.
In construction, the church in Tarr Village was quite plain: white-painted wood with a boxy steeple in the rear more like a watchtower than a pinnacle rising to heaven. The front of the church was more of a mystery. The double doors were closed, but they were also, he realized as he neared them, bolted shut with a heavy chain wound through each handle and held fast with a blockish padlock. Svenson ambled onto the cobbled lane and looked up at the doorway. He saw no one, and walked quietly up the three stone steps and put his ear to the door. Something…a sound that, the more he took it in, set his nerves on edge…a low, undulating sort of buzz. Was it chanting? A queer, dyspeptic drone from a pipe organ? He stepped back again, got no other clue from anything he could see. The church was bordered by an open lot, so he walked quietly through untended grass that rose above his ankles and, with the evening dew, wetted his boots. A row of tall windows ran along the side of the church. The glass bore the knotted surface of elaborate leaded detail, without any particular colors to make plain the illustration. It made him wonder if the images were merely decoration—a geometrical pattern, say—as in a mosque, where any depiction of a man or woman, much less the Prophet, would be a blasphemy. Looking up, all he could see was a dim glow from within—there was some kind of light, but nothing more than a modest lantern or small collection of candles. Suddenly, Svenson saw a blue flash like a bolt of azure lightning snap out of the windows. Just as instantly it was gone. There was no accompanying sound, and no sound of reaction from within…had he truly seen it? He had. He raced to the back of the church, for another door, rounded the corner—
“Captain Blach!”
It was the man from the train, Elöise’s ostensible partner, the lawyer’s clerk. He stood in the open rear door of the church, in one hand a lit cigarette and in the other—incongruously—a heavy cast iron wrench, for use on only the most unwieldy of machines. Before Svenson could speak, the man stuck the cigarette between his lips and offered the Doctor his hand.
“You arrived after all—I was worried you would not. Did you ever find your lady friend?”
“I’m afraid I did not—”
“Not to worry—I’m sure she went ahead to the house with the others.”
“The light.” Svenson gestured behind him to the windows. “A blue flash, just moments ago—”
“Yes!” The man’s eyes lit up. “Isn’t it splendid? You really are just in time!”
He took another drag on his cigarette, dropped it to the stone porch and ground it beneath his shoe. Svenson’s gaze went to the wrench—it was perhaps as long as the man’s forearm. The man noticed his look and chuckled, hefting the hunk of iron as if it were a prize. “They are letting us help with the works, you see—it really is just as engaging as I hoped! Come, everyone will be delighted to see you!”
He turned and went into the church, holding the door open for Svenson to follow. The blue flash made him think of d’Orkancz and the Institute. He’d given this man a false name—but any member of the Cabal, if present, would know him instantly. Further—his mind raced, gesturing for the man to go first, and closing the door behind them—were the women at Tarr Manor? What other house could be meant? If that was so, there was no hiding the connection of this group—the black books, the Puritan brimstone—with Bascombe and his Cabal. But—he must decide, he must do something (even then the man was leading him into a dressing vestibule hung with church robes). Lord Tarr had been killed to gain control of the quarry and the deposits of indigo clay. What did that have to do with this religious nonsense? And what religious ceremony involved that size of…wrench?
The man abruptly stopped, one hand on Doctor Svenson’s chest, the other—with the wrench, which could not but look foolish—held over his mouth to indicate silence. He nodded ahead of them at an open door, and then stepped quietly ahead until they could see into the next room. Svenson followed, apprehensive and curious in equal measure, craning his head over the man’s shoulder.
They were to the side of the altar, looking past it into the nave of the church, where the pews had been pushed away and stacked against either side wall. In the center of the open floor was an impromptu table made of stacked wooden boxes…boxes like those Chang described from the Institute, or that Colonel Aspiche’s men had taken away in carts that morning. Atop the table was a…machine—an interlocking conglomeration of metal parts sticking out of a central casket not unlike a visored medieval helmet, and trailing bright twists of copper wire that ran into an open box on the floor (which Svenson could not see into). The air was sharp with that same mechanical smell—ozone, cordite, burnt rubber, oil—that he’d known on the bodies of Trapping and Angelique and the man in Crabbé’s kitchen, only now so intense that his nostrils wrinkled in protest, even from this far away. Around the machine, in a circle, was a collection of men—the same mix of classes and types he’d seen on the train, including the tall horse-ish fellow from his first compartment. Most had taken off their coats and rolled up their sleeves, some held tools, some oily rags, some merely rested their hands on their hips with satisfaction, and all of them gazed lovingly at the machine between them. At the circle’s head was another man, in an unkempt but elegantly cut black coat, his streaked hair pushed back behind his ears, his sharp face dominated by a pair of dark goggles, and his hands magnified—like a giant’s—by a pair of padded leather gauntlets that went up to his elbows. It was Doctor Lorenz.
Svenson stepped away from the door. His companion felt him move and turned with a look of concern. Svenson held up his hand and began to silently gag, motioning that there was some trouble with his breathing, with his throat—he took another step back and waved the man forward, as if this would only take a moment, he would be right with him. Instead of going ahead, the man stepped after him—forcing Svenson to gag still more theatrically—and then to the Doctor’s dismay turned to the room, as if to call for help. Svenson took hold of the man’s arm and tugged him along back toward the rear door of the church. They reached the far side of the dressing room before Svenson allowed himself to audibly cough and gag.
“Captain Blach, are you all right? Are you unwell? I’m sure Doctor Lorenz—”
Svenson charged through the rear door and bent over on the paved portico, hands on his knees, sucking in great gasps of air. The man followed him outside, clucking with concern. Svenson could not go in. Lorenz would know him. And now, whatever else happened, this man was sure to mention him—perhaps he had already?—in such a way that would leave little mystery to those who already marked him as an enemy. He felt a comforting hand on his back and tilted up his head.
“I hope we are not disturbing them,” Svenson rasped.
“O no,” the man answered. “I’m sure they did not even know we were there—”
As he had hoped, the man instinctively turned his head toward the door as he spoke. Svenson stood up swiftly, the butt of the pistol in his right hand, and brought it down hard behind the man’s ear. The man grunted with surprise and staggered into the doorframe. Svenson hesitated—he did not want to hit him again. He was no judge on giving blows to the head, though he knew well enough they could kill. The man groaned and tried to stand, wobbling. Svenson cursed and struck him once more, feeling the sickening thud of impact through his entire arm. The man went down in a heap. Svenson quickly stowed the pistol and dragged him into the church. He listened—he heard nothing from within—and quietly snatched several of the robes from the inner room. He spread these over the body, leaving him in a sitting position behind the propped-open door, so he was quite hidden to any casual eye. Doctor Svenson felt the back of the man’s head. It was swollen, pulpy, but he did not think there was a fracture—though he could hardly tell for sure, leaning over the fellow in the dark. The man was alive—he told himself perhaps that was enough, though it did not ease his guilt. Svenson picked up the wrench. He then rolled his eyes at his own forgetfulness and knelt again, digging through the layers of robe, and came up with the man’s black book. He stuffed this into his greatcoat and crept again to the inner doorway. The buzzing sound had returned.
The machine vibrated on the table top with an escalating whine that seemed—by the reactions of the men around it—to indicate that it was nearing the successful achievement of whatever process it performed. Lorenz held a pocket watch in his hand, his other hand raised, with the men around him alertly poised for his signal. To Svenson, it looked like nothing more than a group of overgrown boys waiting for their schoolmaster’s permission to start a scrimmage. The machine kicked, shaking the boxes beneath it with a dangerous rattle. Was it going to explode? Lorenz had not moved. The men were still clustered close around. At once the scientist dropped his arm and the men leapt to the machine, holding it firmly in place. The restraint seemed to drive the machine’s energy inward, and Svenson could detect first thin plumes of smoke and then a rising glow. He saw that the men had all screwed their eyes shut and faced away from the machine and, realizing what this meant just before it happened, Svenson spun from the door, his back to the wall, eyes shut. A bright blue flash erupted from the other room that he could feel through his eyelids, seeing a floating after-flash in the air without even having opened them. He placed a hand over his mouth and nose—the smell was intolerable. He could hear the men in the other room choking and laughing in equal measure, congratulating themselves. He rolled his head back to the door, risking a peek.
Lorenz bent over the machine. He’d pulled back a metal plate on a hinge, like the cover of a stove, and was reaching inside with his heavily gloved hand, into a bright blue light that washed all color from his already pallid face. The attention of the men was fixed on Lorenz’s hand as it penetrated the open chamber and then returned with a ball of pulsing blue (stone? glass?) in his palm. He held it up for them all to see and the men erupted with a ragged, exuberant cheer. The faces of the men were flushed and crazed. The chemical smell had Svenson feeling light-headed already, he could just imagine what it was doing to all of them. Lorenz flipped back his cloak. Slung across his chest he bore a heavy leather bandolier, from which hung many capped metal flasks, like the powder charges of an old musketeer. He carefully unscrewed one of the flasks and then squeezed—as if it was glowing, malleable clay—the ball in his hand into the narrow flask opening. When it was completely in, he replaced the cap and with a small flourish flipped his cloak back into place.
Doctor Lorenz looked up at the men around him and asked, with an even-toned curiosity, “Where is Mr. Coates?”
Svenson wheeled from sight, his back against the wall. In two long silent strides he was through the dressing room and then, now running, out of the church entirely. He crossed the empty lot and ducked behind the next building, back to the cobbled road and across it onto the common. He did not stop until he had reached the trunk of the oak tree, running low and as quietly as he could, where he knelt and finally looked back, his heart pounding. There were men standing in the grassy lot, and one who had walked as far as the front of the church, looking across its steps and onto the common. Svenson ducked back. Had they seen him running? With any luck, their discovery of the unfortunate Coates slowed any pursuit long enough for him to make his way. Of course, given the high spirits of the group, it could just as well fire them up for immediate vengeance. Would Coates revive? What could he tell them? Svenson dared not risk running across the open ground to the King Crow. He glanced above him. Any other man might cleverly climb the tree and rest undetected. Svenson shuddered. He was not Cardinal Chang.
The man in front of the church gave another long look to the grassy common and then retreated back to the rear door, collecting the men in the lot on his way. Svenson heard the rear door close. Now was the time for him to dash to cover, but he remained behind his tree, watching. It was another fifteen minutes of gnawing cold before the door opened again, and a line of men emerged, carrying the boxes between them. Last of all came Lorenz, no longer with the gauntlets and goggles, holding his cloak closely about him. The line vanished from Svenson’s view, along the same road the coach had followed earlier. He could only assume it went to Tarr Manor.
Svenson gave them another two minutes before leaving the oak tree and walking back to the church. He had no idea what he thought to find, but anything was better than another ignorant walk in the dark. Coates was no longer in the corner where he placed him—hopefully he’d been able to walk away upon being revived—and Svenson picked his way through the dressing room into the darkened church. Moonlight still poured in through the windows, but without the machine’s blue glow the room had a different feel, more mournful and abandoned—though the pews had been hastily restored to their places. Svenson glanced over to the altar, which had acquired a peculiar shadow beneath it. He looked at the windows but did not see what could be blocking the light—some kind of smudge or deposit on the glass—soot from the machine? He crossed to the altar itself and saw his mistake. The shadow was a pool. Svenson pulled back the white cloth and saw, beneath it, the crumpled figure of Mr. Coates, whose throat had been quite cleanly cut.
Svenson bit his lip. He dropped the cloth and turned, reaching into his pocket for the service revolver. He checked the cartridges and the hammer, spun the chamber, and stuffed it away. He looked around him with a rising urge to kick over the pews and forced himself to breathe evenly. He could do nothing for Coates except remember him as affable and attentive. He walked out of the church and made for the road.
Because the line of men carried the boxes of machinery, Svenson half-thought he might overtake them—or at least come within sight—on the way, but he had walked a mile on the country road, briar hedges to his left and barren winter fields to his right, without doing so. At the mile marker the road forked, and he stood under the moonlight trying to decide. There was no delineating sign, and each road seemed equally traveled. Looking ahead, the left fork sloped up a gentle rise, which made him recall Coates’s reference to a climb. With nothing else to go on, Svenson turned his steps that way.
At the top, he saw that the road dipped and then continued to rise in a gentle winding path around an escalating series of scrubbish hills. As he crested each new height, the Doctor saw his destination more clearly, and by the time he faced it directly—still without trace of the men—he could see an estate house of such size that it must be Tarr Manor: orchards in the surrounding fields, a tall windbreak of leafless poplars, and fronted by an old-fashioned stone fence and high iron gate. The out-buildings were few and small, and the house itself, though nothing compared to a monstrosity like Harschmort, was a great, crenellated cube bristling with gables and pipes and brickwork, more than half smothered in ivy whose leaves looked to Svenson, under the insidious moonlight, like the scales of a reptile’s skin.
The ground-floor windows of the house were blazing with light. With a prick to his curiosity, the Doctor saw that the only other so lit was a gable window in the highest attic, which made, as he counted the windows, four completely dark stories in between. He approached the gate with caution—being shot for trespassing would be a particularly stupid way to die—and found it chained. He called out to the small guard’s hut on the other side of the wall, but received no answer. He looked up—the gate was very high—and shuddered at the prospect of climbing. He preferred to find another, less egregious point of entry, and remembered from Bascombe’s blue glass card an image near an orchard, of a crumbled wall that, could he find it, would be simple to scramble over. He set off around the side, tramping through the high, dry grass drifting—from the wind, he supposed—up against the stone—like sand.
Svenson tried to form a plan of action, a task at which he never felt particularly skilled. He enjoyed studying evidence and drawing conclusions, even confronting those he had managed to entrap with facts, but all of this activity—running through houses, climbing drainage pipes, rooftops, shooting, being shot at…it was not his métier. He knew his approach to Tarr Manor ought to be an order of battle—he tried to imagine Chang’s choices, but this didn’t help at all: it only spelled out the degree to which he found Chang utterly mysterious. Svenson’s trouble was contingency. He was searching for several things at once, and depending on what he found, all of his goals would shift. He hoped to find Miss Temple, though he did not think he would. He hoped to find the women from the train, which was also to say that he wanted to know if Elöise was corrupt as he feared, or perhaps a duped innocent like Coates. He hoped to find some information about Bascombe and the previous Lord Tarr. He hoped to find the true nature of the work at the quarry. He hoped to find the truth behind Lorenz and his machinery, and what it had to do with these men from the city. He hoped to find who was in the coach and thus more about the two men who had journeyed from the city themselves to meet it. But all these goals were a jumble in his head, and all he could think to do was to enter the house and skulk about with as much secrecy as possible—and what, his stern skeptical logic demanded, would he do if he found someone from the Cabal who could name him directly, aside from Lorenz? What if he were to be brought before the Contessa, or the Comte d’Orkancz? He stopped and sighed heavily, a dry pinch in his throat. He had no idea what he would do at all.
When he found the crumbled gap in the wall, Svenson peered over it first to make sure the path was safe. He was much closer to the house here—it seemed that there were only a few small fruit trees and fallow garden beds between him and the nearest windows. He recalled the newspaper report of Lord Tarr’s death—had he not been discovered in his garden? Svenson heaved his body up and over the wall, scraping his hands just a little, and dropped onto grass. The nearest windows were actually dark; perhaps this was the old Lord’s study, which no one was presently using (did that mean Bascombe was not in residence?). Svenson padded quietly across, stepping on the grass to avoid boot prints in the earthen beds. He reached the windows; the inner two were actually a pair of French doors—from the wall he had not seen the stairs that rose from the garden to meet them. Svenson leaned forward and adjusted his monocle. One of the doors was broken, a whole pane of glass missing near the handle. He looked on the steps below him and found no glass—of course, it would have been cleaned up—but then turned again to the missing pane. Around the wooden frame small flicks of wood had broken away. If he read the signs correctly, the blow had come from within, punching the glass outward. Even if Svenson credited that it was an animal that slew the old Lord (which he did not)—and why should an animal break open the door in such a way to reach through to the lock?—he would expect the assailant to come from outside. If he were already on the inside, why break the door at all? Could perhaps Lord Tarr have broken it himself, in his hurry to escape? But that only made sense if the door had been locked from the outside…if Lord Tarr had been confined to his room…
The door was locked now, from the inside, and Svenson reached in carefully and opened it. He stepped into the darkened room and closed the glass door behind him. In the moonlight he could see a desk and long walls completely fitted with bookshelves. He fumbled a match from his pocket, struck it on his nail and located a candle in an old copper holder on a side bookshelf. With this much light, he carefully went through each drawer of the desk, but at the end all he knew was that Lord Tarr had a keen interest in medicine, and next to none in his estate. For the single ledger—completely written in what Svenson assumed was his overseer’s hand—detailing Lord Tarr’s business, there were many, many notebooks and banded stacks of receipts from different physicians. Svenson had seen this enough before to realize that the Lord’s own ebbing health had been itself a pursuit of pleasure beyond any particular restorative or cure—indeed, the man seemed to record the failures with as much satisfaction in his journal. This was a neat volume Svenson had found in the top drawer, under another larger ledger of receipts for potions and procedures. He flipped through it idly, just ready to put it down when his eye caught a reference to “Doctor Lorenz: Mineral Treatment. Ineffective!” He turned the page and found two more entries, identical save for a growing number of exclamation points, the last also describing Lord Tarr’s bilious reaction and the subsequent forceful voiding of many chambers in his body. This was the final page in the journal, but Svenson saw a small ridge of paper between this and the journal’s back cover…there had been another page, several, but someone had carefully cut them out with a razor. He frowned with frustration. The entries were undated—the egotism of the patient assumed no need to record what he already knew—so Svenson had no idea how long this had been going on. No matter. He dropped the journal back in the drawer and slid it shut. The Cabal had made its attempt to swing Lord Tarr to their party long before they settled on Bascombe’s succession…and murder.
Svenson knelt at the keyhole and looked unhelpfully onto a bare wall some three or four feet away. He sighed, stood, and very, very slowly turned the knob, feeling the latch release with a far-too-audible click. He did not move, ready to shoot the bolt and run back for the garden. Apparently, no one had heard. He took a breath and just as slowly eased the door open, his eye against the growing gap. He desperately wanted a cigarette. The hallway was empty. He opened the door enough to poke his head and look in the other direction. The hall itself was dim, illuminated only from lighted rooms at either end. He could not see what those rooms were, nor could he hear. Svenson’s nerves were fraying. He forced himself to step into the hallway and close the door—he didn’t want anyone to come across it ajar and start investigating—even though he was afraid of getting lost in the house and not recognizing it again when he was trying to escape. He steeled himself—he did not need to escape. He was the predator. The people in the house should be afraid of him. Svenson stuck his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat and took hold of his revolver. It was foolish for a weapon to reassure him—either he had courage or he didn’t, he chided himself, anyone can carry a gun—but he nevertheless felt better able to walk to the end of the hallway and peer around the corner.
He whipped his head back and brought his hand up over his face. The smell—that sharp sulfurous mechanical smell—assaulted his nostrils and his throat as if he had inhaled the fumes of an iron works. He wiped his nose and eyes with his handkerchief and looked again, the handkerchief held over his face. It was a large room, a reception parlor, ringed with elegant old-fashioned sitting chairs and sofas, all with wide seats to accommodate women with bustles or hoops. Around the chairs were small end tables, the tops of each punctuated with half-empty tea cups and small plates bearing crusts and demurely unfinished slices of cake. Doctor Svenson made a quick count and came up with a total of eleven cups—enough to supply the women from the train? But where were they now—and who was their host? He crept across the parlor and peeked out the opposite doorway—directly into a small ante-room that housed a dauntingly steep staircase and, beyond it, an archway to another parlor. Peeking in from this archway at that exact instant was a short, well-fed woman dressed in black. As one they both recoiled in surprise, the woman with a squeak, Svenson with his open mouth inaudibly groping for an explanation. She held up a hand to him and swallowed, using her other to fan her reddening face.
“I do beg your pardon,” she managed. “I thought they—you—had all gone! I would have never—I was merely looking for the cake. If any is left. To put away. To bring to the kitchen. The cook will have retired—and it is a very large house. There may very well be rats. Do you see?”
“I am terribly sorry to surprise you,” replied Doctor Svenson, his voice tender with concern.
“I thought you all had gone,” she repeated, her own voice reedy and wheezing.
“Of course,” he assured her. “It’s most understandable.”
She cast an apprehensive glance up the staircase before looking back to Svenson. “You’re one of the Germans, aren’t you?”
Svenson nodded and—because he thought it would appeal to her—clicked his heels. The woman giggled, and immediately covered her mouth with a pudgy pink hand. He studied her face, which reminded him of nothing more than a smirking child’s. Her hair was elaborately arranged but without any particular style. In fact—he realized he was desperately slow at this kind of observation—it was a rather ambitious wig. The black dress meant mourning, and it occurred to him that her eyes were the same color as Bascombe’s, and that her eyes and her mouth bore his same elliptical shape…could she be his sister? His cousin?
“May I ask you something, Madame?”
She nodded. Svenson stepped aside and with his hand indicated the parlor behind him. “Do you apprehend the smell?”
She giggled again, this time with a wild uncertain gleam at work in her vaguely porcine eyes. She was nervous, even frightened, by the question. Before she could leave, he spoke again.
“I merely mean, I did not expect them to be…working…here. I assumed it would be elsewhere. I speak for us all when I hope it does not too much infuse your upholstery. May I ask if you spoke to any of the women?”
She shook her head.
“But you saw them.”
She nodded.
“And you are the present Lady of the house.”
She nodded.
“Can you—I am merely making sure of their work, you understand—tell me what you saw? Here, please, come in and take advantage of a chair. And perhaps there is some cake left after all…”
She installed herself on a settee with striped upholstery and pulled a plate of untouched cake slices onto her lap. With impulsive relish the woman crammed the whole of a slice into her mouth, giggled with her mouth full, swallowed with practiced determination, picked up another slice—as if having it in her hand was a comfort. She spoke in a rush.
“Well, you know, it is the sort of thing that seems, well, it seems awful, just awful—but then so many things seem that way at first, so many things that are good for one, or actually—eventually—delicious—” She realized what she had just said, and to whom, and erupted in another shrill laugh, stifled only by another bite of cake. She choked it down, her full bosom heaving with the effort beneath the bodice of her dress. “And they did seem happy—these women—alarmingly so, I must say. If it wasn’t so frightening I would have been envious. Perhaps I still am envious—but of course I have no reason to be. Roger says it will do wonders for the family—all of this—which perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, but I do believe he is right. My boy is a child—he can do nothing for his family for years—and Roger has promised, aside from every other generosity, that Edgar will inherit from him, that Roger—who has no children, but even if he did—he had a fiancée, but doesn’t any longer—not that that matters—she was a wicked girl, I always said, never mind her money—he’s quite eligible—and most impressively connected—he will pass it all back when the time comes. Fair is fair! And do you know—it is nearly certain—we shall be invited to the Palace! I cannot say it should have happened with Edgar on his own!”
Doctor Svenson nodded encouragingly.
“Well, Mr. Bascombe’s work is very important.”
She nodded vigorously. “I know it!”
“Though it must—I can only imagine, of course—surely some would find it a touch…unsettling…to have such intrusions into their house.”
She did not answer, but smiled at him stiffly.
“May I also inquire—the recent loss of your father—”
“What of that? There is no sense—no decent sense to dwell on—on—on—tragedy!”
She persisted in smiling, though once more her eyes were wild.
“Were you with him in the house?”
“No one was with him.”
“No one?”
“If there’d been anyone with him, they’d have been killed by wolves as well!”
“Wolves?”
“What’s worse is that the creature’s not been found. It could happen again!”
Svenson nodded gravely. “I should stay indoors.”
“I do!”
He stood, gesturing to the ante-room with the staircase. “The others…are they…upstairs?”
She nodded, then shrugged, and finished the second slice.
“You’ve been very helpful. I shall inform Roger when I see him…and Minister Crabbé.”
The woman giggled again, blowing crumbs.
Svenson walked up the stairs, realizing that he was searching for Elöise. He knew Miss Temple was not here. In all likelihood, Elöise did not want to be found—that is, she was his enemy. Was he such a sentimental fool? He looked back down the stairs and saw the Bascombe woman cramming another piece of cake into her mouth, tears streaming down her face. She met his gaze, cried out with dismay and dashed awkwardly from sight like a silk-wrapped scuttling dog. Svenson thought about stopping to find her for perhaps one second and then continued up the stairs. His hand drifted again to his revolver. His other hand absently bounced against the black book in his other pocket. Was he an idiot? He’d forgotten completely about it—the lack of light to read, probably—but it was the surest thing to explain what Elöise—and everyone else—was doing there.
He reached a dark landing and remembered that this and the following floors were completely dark from outside. Tarr Manor was an old house, subsisting solely on lanterns and candles, which meant there was always a near sideboard with a drawer of tallow stubs for contingencies. The Doctor stumped down the hallway until he found the very thing, and snapped a match to the candle. Now for some place to read. Svenson glanced at the labyrinthine passages and doorways and decided to stay where he was. Even taking this long went against a nagging fear that something might be happening to the women even now. He remembered Angelique. What if Lorenz, who clearly lacked the Comte d’Orkancz’s esthetic scruples, was upstairs even then, unscrewing one of his glass-packed metal flasks?
Svenson controlled his thoughts—he was working himself up to no purpose. Two minutes. He would give the book that much.
It was all the task required. On the first page was the quotation he’d had read to him on the train. And on the second page, and the next, and throughout the entirety of the book, printed again and again in small script, one great continuous flow of the identical passage. He looked on the inside and back covers, to see if Coates had written anything…and saw that he had, a series of numbers, jotted in pencil and then ineffectively erased. Svenson held the candle close, and turned to the first of the pages listed, 97…it seemed like any other page, with no special sign or significance that he could see. An idea gnawed at him…he looked at the first word at the top of the page—could these add up to a message? Some kind of basic code? Svenson took a pencil stub from his pocket and began to jot notes on the inner flap of the book. The first word of TWO: Cardinal was “the”…he looked at the next number in Coates’s list, THREE: Surgeon…the first word was “already”…Svenson quickly flipped the pages.
He frowned. “The already remake realms vessels into…” did not seem like anything sensible. Perhaps it was itself a code—he tried to puzzle it out: “already” meant the past…so “already remake” might mean their progress so far…but why bother with “the” at the beginning? Weren’t coded messages supposed to be economical? Svenson sighed, looking at the book with as much insight as if it were a Hungarian newspaper, but feeling just within reach of the solution…he tried the last words of each page, but this gave him “of Lord will their night only”. It sounded like a dire prediction of some kind, but wasn’t right…
The letters! He looked at the list of first words—if he only took the first letters he got…“T-A-R-R-V-I”…he anxiously looked for the next page—the first word was “look”—it meant Tarr Village! He kept going and got as far as “Tarr Vill” when the next page, ONE: Temple, began with a blank line…as did the next, ONE: Temple. It came in an instant—3:02!—it was the time of the train! It was the matter of another minute before Svenson had nearly the whole of it done—there was only the last number, whose page started with the letter p…which gave him a last word of “bravep”…which could not be correct. He double-checked Coates’s numbering, and noticed that this last number was underlined. Could it mean something different? He chuckled and had it—it indicated the whole word! He jotted it down and looked at what he’d written:
Tarr Vill. 3:02. Who offers sin shall brave Paradise
Doctor Svenson snapped the book closed and picked up the candle. These people—in ignorance of one another—had been invited to come, to submit “sin” in exchange for “Paradise”. He knew enough to shudder at what this Paradise might actually be. Did any of them know with whom they trafficked? Had Coates? He walked back to the stairs, wondering why—why these people? Karl-Horst, Lord Tarr, Bascombe, Trapping—suborning them made mercenary sense, they were perfect well-placed tools. He thought of the stupid woman on the train and he thought of Elöise. He thought of Coates under the altar, and knew exactly how little these people were worth to those who had seduced them. At the base of the stairs Doctor Svenson took the pistol out of his coat and blew out his candle. He climbed into the darkness.
He heard nothing until he stepped onto the fourth floor. Above were the gabled attics, where he’d seen the light. His steps climbing were as light as he could make them, but anyone listening would have heard the creaks and groans of the old wood well in advance of his arrival. As he ascended the steps he also met a thicker concentration of the mechanical smell—perversely, as if he were in the thinning alpine air, his breath more shallow and his head dizzied. He stopped and put his handkerchief over his nose and mouth, sweeping across the shadowed landing with the pistol.
The silence was broken by a footstep above him in the attic. Svenson cocked the pistol and searched for the way up, nearly tripping on it: a ladder, flat on the floor. Whoever it was above him, they’d been marooned.
Svenson eased back the hammer and stuffed the pistol into his pocket. He picked up the ladder and looked above him for the hatch, only noticing it—the thing was quite flush with the ceiling—because of the bolt that held it shut. There was a wooden lip to rest the ladder against, and Svenson wedged it securely in place and began his tentative climb, eased by the darkness—he could not exactly see how high he was, nor thus how far there was to fall. He kept his gaze resolutely above him and reached out—nerves dancing with dismay at holding on with but a single hand—to undo the bolt. He pushed back the hatch and nearly lost his balance recoiling from the chemical stench. This was a good thing, as his instinctive shrinking from the smell caused his head to duck just out of the path of a sharp wooden heel. A moment later—taking in the swinging heel and the woman swinging it—Doctor Svenson’s foot slipped on the rung and dropped through it—a sudden descent of two feet until his hands caught hold (and his jaw smacked into a rung of its own). He looked up with distress, rubbing his stinging face. Looking down at him, hair in her face and a shoe in her hand, was Elöise.
“Captain Blach!”
“Have they hurt you?” he rasped, working to restore his dangling leg on the ladder.
“No…no, but…” She looked to something he could not see. She had been crying. “Please—I must come down!”
Before he could protest, she was out of the hatch and nearly on top of him. He half-caught, half-hung on to her legs as they descended, finding the floor himself just in time to help her do the same. She turned and buried her face in his shoulder, hugging him tightly, her body shaking. After a moment, he put his arms around her—timidly, without exerting any untoward pressure, though even this much contact set off a wondrous appreciation that her shoulder blades could be so small—and waited for her emotions to subside. Instead of subsiding, she began to sob, his greatcoat muffling the sounds. He looked past her, up into the open hatch. The light in the room was not from a candle or lantern—it was somehow more pale and cold, and did not flicker. Doctor Svenson took it upon himself to pat the woman’s hair and whisper “It’s all right now…you’re all right…” into her ear. She pulled her face away from him, out of breath, swallowing, her face streaked. He looked at her seriously.
“You can breathe? The smell—the chemicals—”
She nodded. “I covered my head—I—I had to—”
Before she could erupt once more he indicated the hatch. “Is there anyone else—does anyone need help?”
She shook her head and shut her eyes, stepping away. Svenson had no idea what to think. Dreading what he would find, he climbed the ladder and looked in.
It was a narrow gabled room with the roof slanted on each side—perhaps a child of seven could have stood without stooping in the very center. Across the floor near the window were the slumped shapeless forms of two women, obviously dead. Equally clear, though he possessed no explanation, was that their bodies were the source of the unnatural blue glow animating the grisly attic. He crawled into the room. The smell was unbearable and he paused to replace the handkerchief over his face before continuing on his hands and knees. They were from the train—one was well-dressed, and the other probably a maid. Both had bled from the ears and nose, and their eyes were filmed over and opaque, but from within, as if the contents of each sphere had become scrambled and gelatinous under extreme pressure. He thought of the Comte d’Orkancz’s medical interests and recalled men he had seen pulled from the winter sea, whose soft bodies had been unable to withstand the crushing tons of ice water above them. The women were of course completely dry—nothing of the kind could explain their conditions…nor could any disease of the arctic account for the unearthly blue glow that arose from every visible discolored inch of their skin.
Svenson bolted the hatch behind him and climbed down, laying the ladder on the floor. He coughed into his handkerchief—his throat was unpleasantly raw, he could only imagine what hers felt like—and then tucked it away. Elöise had crept to the stairs, sitting so she could look into the shadow of the floor below. He sat next to her, no longer presuming to place an arm around her, but—as a physician—scrupling to take one of her hands in both of his.
“I woke up with them. In the room,” she said, her voice a whisper, ragged but under her control. “It was Miss Poole—”
“Miss Poole!”
Elöise looked up at Svenson. “Yes. She spoke to us all—there was tea, there was cake—all of us from so many places…come for our different reasons, for our fortunes—it was all so congenial.”
“But Miss Poole is not in the attic—”
“No. She had the book.” Elöise shook her head, covering her eyes with a hand. “I’m not making any kind of sense, I’m sorry.”
Svenson looked back at the attic. “But those women—you must know them, they were on the train—”
“I don’t know them any more than I know you,” she said. “We were told how to get here, not to speak of it—”
Svenson squeezed her hand, fighting down each impulse of sympathy, knowing he must determine who she really was. “Elöise…I must ask you, for it is very important—and you must answer me truthfully—”
“I am not lying—the book—those women—”
“I am not asking about them. I must know about you. To whom are you a confidante? Whose children is it that you tutor?”
She stared at him, perhaps unsure in the face of his sudden insistence, perhaps calculating her best response, and then scoffed, bitterly and forlorn. “For some reason I thought everyone knew. The children of Charlotte and Arthur Trapping.”
“There is too much to tell,” she said, straightening her shoulders and pushing the loosened strands of hair from her eyes. “But you will not understand unless I explain that, upon the disappearance of Colonel Trapping”—she looked at him to see if he required more information but Svenson merely nodded for her to go on—“Mrs. Trapping had taken to her rooms, receiving the calls of no one save her brothers. I say brothers, for it is the habit of the family, but in truth the brother she wanted to hear from, to whom she sent card after card—Mr. Henry Xonck—did not once respond, and the brother with whom her relations are strained—Mr. Francis Xonck—called upon her throughout the day. On one visit, he sought me out in the house, for he is enough of a family presence to know who I am, and my relation to Mrs. Trapping.” She looked up again at Svenson, who opened his expression into one of gentle questioning. She shook her head, as if to gather her thoughts. “Who of course you don’t know—she is a difficult woman. She has been shut out of her family business by her older brother—she gets money, understand, but not the work, the power, the sense of place. It haunts her—and it is why she was so determined her husband should rise to importance, and why his absence was so distressing…indeed, perhaps more than the loss of her man was the loss of her, if you will permit me…engine. In any case, Francis Xonck took me aside and asked if I should like to help her. He knows my devotion to Mrs. Trapping—as I say, he has seen her reliance on my advice, and he is a man who misses nothing—of course I said yes, even as I wondered at this sudden attention to his sister, a woman who despised him as a corrupting influence on her already corrupted husband. He told me there would be secrecy and intrigue, there would even—and here he looked into my eyes—I would not be telling this to a soul, Captain, were it not—what has occurred—” She gestured to the darkened house around her.
Svenson squeezed her hand. She smiled again, though her eyes were unchanged.
“He looked at me—looked into me—and whispered that I might find advantage in the affair myself, that I might find it…a revelation. He chuckled. And yet even as he played at seducing me, the story he told was very dark and horrid—he was convinced Colonel Trapping was being held against his wishes—because of scandal it was impossible to go to the authorities. Mr. Xonck had only heard rumors but was too visible himself to attend to them. It was part of a much larger set of events, he said. He informed me that I would be expected to reveal secrets—compromising information—of the Trappings, of the Xonck family—and he authorized me to do so. I refused, at least without first consulting Mrs. Trapping, but he insisted in the gravest terms that to alert her to even this much of her husband’s predicament was to strain the marriage to the breaking point, to say nothing of what it must do to the poor woman’s nerves. Still, it seemed shameful—what I knew, I knew only because of her trust. Again I refused, but he pressed me—flattering me as he praised my devotion, only to insinuate a deeper devotion lay in doing as he asked. Finally I agreed, telling myself I had no choice—though of course I had. We always do…but when someone praises us, or calls us beautiful, how easy it is to believe them.” She sighed. “And then this morning instructions arrived to take the train and come here.”
“Who offers sin shall brave Paradise,” said Svenson. Elöise sniffed, nodding.
“The others were all like me—relations or servants or partners or associates of the very powerful. All of us bearing secrets. One at a time, Miss Poole led us from the parlor to another room. Several men were there, wearing masks. When my turn came I told them what I knew—about Henry Xonck and Arthur Trapping, about Charlotte Trapping’s hunger and ambition—I am ashamed of it, and I am ashamed that while part of my mind did this in earnest hope to save the missing man, another part—the truth of this is bitter to me—was greedy to see what Paradise I’d find. And now…now I cannot even recall what I said, what might have been so important—the Trappings are not scandalous people. I am a fool—”
“Do not—do not,” whispered Svenson. “We are all so foolish, believe me.”
“That cannot be an excuse,” she answered him flatly. “We are all also given the chance to be strong.”
“You were strong to come so far alone,” he said, “and you were even stronger…in the attic.”
She shut her eyes and sighed. Svenson tried to speak gently. He felt utterly convinced by her story, and yet wished he was not so predisposed to believe it. She had been at Harschmort—with the Trappings, as explained—but still, he needed more before he could trust her fully.
“You said that Miss Poole had a book…”
“She laid it on the table, after I’d told them what I thought they wanted to hear. It was wrapped in silk, like—like some kind of Bible, or the Jewish Torah—and when she revealed it—”
“It was made of blue glass.”
She gasped at the word. “It was! And you had mentioned glass on the train—and I hadn’t known, but then—I thought of you—and I knew I did not understand my situation—and just at that moment I had the most vivid recollection of the chill of Mr. Francis Xonck’s eyes—and then Miss Poole opened the glass book…and I read…or should I say that it read me. That makes no sense—but it made no sense at all. I fell into it like a pool, like falling into another person’s body, only it was more than one—there were dreams, desires, such thrills that I blush to recall them—and such visions…of power…and then—Miss Poole—she must have placed my hand on the book, for I remember her laughing…and then…I cannot convey it…I was deep…so deep, and so cold, drowning—holding my breath but finally I had to breathe and gulped in—I don’t know what—freezing liquid glass. It…felt like dying.” She paused and wiped her eyes and glanced back at the hatch. “I woke up there. I am lucky—I know that I am lucky. I know I should have perished like the others, my skin glowing blue.”
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“I can.” She stood, and smoothed out her dress, still holding his hand, and reached down to replace her shoes. “After all the trouble to gather me here they have cast me aside without a care, with so little thought! If you had not come, Captain Blach—I shudder to think—”
“Do not,” said Svenson. “We must leave this house. Come…the next floors are dark—the house seems to be abandoned, at least for now. I have followed the party of men, who I believe went elsewhere on the estate. Perhaps Miss Poole and the other ladies have gone to join them.”
“Captain Blach—”
He stopped her. “My name is Svenson. Abelard Svenson, Captain-Surgeon of the Macklenburg Navy, attached to the service of a very foolish young Prince who I, also a fool, yet retain a hope of saving. As you say, there is not enough time to tell the necessary tale. Arthur Trapping is dead. Earlier this morning Francis Xonck tried to sink me in the river, in the same iron casket as Colonel Trapping’s corpse. It may well be that he schemes to undo both of his siblings as his own part of these machinations—and indeed, damn it all, there is too much to say—we have no time—they could return. The man you sat with on the train, Mr. Coates—”
“I did not know—”
“His name, no, nor he yours—but he is dead. They have killed him for as little cause as can be imagined. They are all dangerous, without scruple. Listen to me—I do recognize you, I have seen you among them—I must say this—at Harschmort House, not two nights past—”
Her hand went to her mouth. “You! You brought word of the Prince to Lydia Vandaariff! But—but it wasn’t about that at all, was it? It was Colonel Trapping—”
“Found dead, yes—murdered, for what and by whom I’ve no idea—but what I am saying, what—I am deciding to trust you, despite your connection to the Xonck family, despite—”
“But you have seen them try to kill me—”
“Yes—though apparently some among them are happy to kill each other—no matter, please, what I need to tell you—should we escape, as I hope we shall, but if we are separated…Oh, this is ridiculous—”
“What? What?”
“There are two people you may trust—though I don’t know how you should find them. One is the man I described on the train—in red, dark glasses, very dangerous, a rogue—Cardinal Chang. I am to meet him tomorrow at noon under the clock at Stropping Station.”
“But why—”
“Because…Elöise…if the last days have taught me anything it is that I do not know where I shall be tomorrow at noon. Perhaps you will be there instead…perhaps we have met one another for just that purpose.”
She nodded. “And the other? You said two people.”
“Her name is Celeste Temple. A young woman, very…determined, chestnut hair, of small stature—she is the ex-fiancée of Roger Bascombe—a Ministry official who figures in this—who owns this house! Oh, this is foolish, there is no time. We must be off.”
Svenson led her by the hand down the successive flights, a nagging anxiety rising along his spine. They had taken too long. And even if they escaped the house—where to go? The two men knew he was at the King Crow—it could not be safe if they were part of the Cabal, as of course they must be—but the train was not until next morning. Could he sleep in someone’s shed? Could Elöise? He flushed at the very idea, and squeezed her hand in instinctive assurance that the thoughts in his head would not be succumbed to—a certainty challenged by her squeeze of his own hand in return.
At the top of the last staircase—leading down to the brightly lit first floor and the parlor where he’d left the Bascombe woman—he stopped again, indicating they should be especially silent. Svenson listened…the house was still. They crept down one stair at a time until Svenson could step to the parlor door itself and peer in. It was empty, the dishes still there (but not the cake). He looked the other direction—another parlor, also empty. He turned back to Elöise and whispered.
“No one. Which way is the door?”
She finished descending the stairs and crossed to him, standing close and leaning past his chest to look for herself. She stepped back, still quite close, and whispered in return. “I believe it is through that room and one other, not far at all.”
Svenson barely took in her words. In her exertions in the attic, her dress had opened another button. Looking down at her—she was not so very short, but still his was a lovely view—he could see the determination in her face and eyes, the naked skin of her throat and then, through the opened collar of her dress, the join of her clavicles to her sternum—bones that always made him think with a strange sensual stirring of bird skeletons. She looked up at him. Without moving her eyes he knew she saw him looking at her body. She said nothing. Around Doctor Svenson time had slowed—perhaps it was all this talk of ice and freezing—and he drank in the sight of her and her acceptance of his gaze equally. He was as helpless as he had been before the Contessa. He swallowed and attempted to speak.
“This afternoon…do you know…on the train…I had…such a dream…”
“Did you?”
“I did…goodness, yes…”
“Do you remember it?”
“I do…”
He had no idea what lay behind her eyes. He was about to kiss her when they heard the screaming.
It was a woman, somewhere in the house. Svenson spun his head toward either parlor but could not tell in which direction to go. The woman screamed again. Svenson snatched hold of Elöise’s hand and pulled her back through the tea cups and cake plates to the corridor where he’d first arrived, his hand digging at his greatcoat as they went. He quickly opened the door and thrust her into the study. She tried to protest, but her words were stopped as he placed the heavy service revolver in her hands. Her mouth opened with shock, and Svenson gently forced her fingers around the butt of the gun, so she was holding it correctly. This got her attention enough that he could whisper and know she would understand him. Behind them the woman screamed again.
“This is Lord Tarr’s study. The garden door”—he pointed to it—“is open, and the stone wall is low enough to climb. I will be right back. If I am not, go—do not hesitate. There is a train at eight o’clock tomorrow morning to the city. If anyone accosts you—anyone who is not a man in red or a woman wearing green shoes—shoot them dead.”
She nodded. Doctor Svenson leaned forward and placed his lips on hers. She responded fervently, emitting the softest small moan of encouragement and regret and delight and despair all together. He stepped back and pulled the door closed. He walked down the hallway to the other end, passed through a small service room. Svenson availed himself of a heavy candlestick, twisting it in his hand to get a firm grip. The woman was no longer screaming. He strode forward to his best estimate of where the sound had been with five pounds of brass in his hand.
Another hallway fed Svenson into a large carpeted dining room, the high walls covered with oil paintings, the floor dominated by an enormous table surrounded by perhaps twenty high-backed chairs. At the far end stood a knot of men in black coats. Curled into a ball on her side, on top of the table, was the Bascombe woman, her shoulders heaving. As he walked toward them—the carpet absorbing the sound of his step—Svenson saw the man in the middle take hold of her jaw and bend her head so she must face him. Her eyes were screwed shut and her wig dislodged, revealing the poignantly thin, lank, dull hair beneath. The man was tall, with iron grey hair worn down to his collar—and Svenson saw with alarm the medals on the chest of his tailcoat and the scarlet sash that crossed his shoulder, signs of the highest levels of nobility. If he were a native he felt sure he would have known the man…could he be Royal? To his left were the two men from the tavern. To his right was Harald Crabbé, who—pricked by some presentiment—looked up, eyes widening, at Svenson’s grim-faced approach.
“Get away from her,” Svenson called coldly. No one moved.
“It is Doctor Svenson,” said Crabbé, for the benefit of his superior.
Svenson saw that the Royal’s other gloved hand held a lozenge of blue glass above the struggling woman’s mouth. At Svenson’s call she had opened her eyes. She saw the lozenge and her throat gurgled in protest.
“Like this?” the man idly asked Crabbé, taking the lozenge between two fingers.
“Indeed, Highness,” replied the Deputy Minister, with all deference, his widening eyes on Svenson’s approach.
“Get away from her!” Svenson cried again. He was perhaps ten feet away and approaching fast.
“Doctor Svenson is the Macklenburg rebel…,” intoned Crabbé.
The man shrugged with indifference and stuffed the glass into her mouth, snapping the woman’s jaw between his two hands, holding it tight, her voice rising to a muted scream as the effects within intensified. He met Svenson’s hot gaze with disdain and did not move. Svenson raised the candlestick—for the first time the others saw it—fully intending to dash the fellow’s brains out, no matter who he was, never breaking stride.
“Phelps!” Crabbé snapped, a sudden, desperate imperative in his voice. The shorter of the two men—with the Empire hairstyle—rushed forward, a hand out toward Svenson in reasonable supplication, but the Doctor was already swinging and the candlestick caught the man across the forearm, snapping both bones. He screamed and dropped to the side with the momentum of the blow. Svenson kept coming and now Crabbé was between him and the Royal—who still had not moved.
“Starck! Stop it! Stop him! Starck! ” Crabbé barked, backing up, exerting his full authority. Over his shoulder dove the other man from the tavern—Mr. Starck—reaching for Svenson with both hands. Svenson met him with his own outstretched left arm. For a moment they grappled at such arm’s length, which left Svenson’s other hand, with the candlestick, free to swing. The blow caught Starck squarely on the ear with a sickening, pumpkin-thwacking thud, dropping him like a stone. Crabbé stumbled into the Royal personage, who was finally taking note of the mayhem around him. He had released the woman’s jaw—the bubbles at her mouth a foaming mix of blue and pink. Svenson prepared to strike over the shorter diplomat’s head directly at the offending aristocrat—Prince, Duke, whoever—and realized, somewhere in the periphery of his mind, that he was acting just like Chang. He was astonished at how good it felt, and how much better it would feel as soon as he’d broken the face of this monster into pulp…but it was just then that the ceiling of the room—he did not know, as he fell, what else could have been so heavy—collapsed without warning on the back of Doctor Svenson’s head.
He opened his eyes with the distinct memory of having been in this exact lamentable situation before, only this time he was not in a moving horse-cart. The back of his head throbbed mercilessly and the muscles of his neck and right shoulder felt as if they’d been set aflame. His right arm was numb. Svenson looked over to see it shackled above his head to a wooden post. He was sitting in the dirt, leaning against the side of a wooden staircase. He squinted his eyes, trying to focus through the pain in his head. The staircase wound back and forth many times above him, climbing close to a hundred feet. Finally the truth dawned on his dimmed intelligence. He was in the quarry.
He struggled to his feet, desperately craving a cigarette despite the bitter dryness of his throat. Doctor Svenson squinted and shaded his eyes against the glaring torchlight and the quite oppressive heat. He had awoken into a very hive of activity. He fished for his monocle and attempted to take it all in.
The quarry itself was deeply excavated, its sheer orange stone walls betraying an even higher concentration of iron than he had seen from the train. The density of the reddish color made his scattered mind wonder if he had been transported in secret to the Macklenburg mountains. The floor was a flattened bed of gravel and clay, and around him he could see piles of different mineral substances—sand, bricks, rocks, slag heaps of melted dross. On the far side was a series of chutes and grates and sluices—the quarry must have some supply of water, native or pumped in—and what might have been a shaftway descending underground. Near this—far away but still close enough to bring sweat to Svenson’s collar—was a great bricked kiln with a metal hatch. At the hatch crouched Doctor Lorenz, intent as a wicked gnome, once again wearing his goggles and gauntlets, a small knot of similarly garbed assistants clustered around him. Opposite these actual mining works of the quarry, and sitting on a series of wooden benches that reminded Svenson of an open-air schoolroom, were the men and women from the train. Facing them and giving some sort of low-voiced instruction was a short, curvaceous woman in a pale dress—it could only be Miss Poole. Installed alone on the backmost bench, Svenson was startled to see the Bascombe woman, her wig restored and her face—if perhaps a little pale and drawn—almost ceramically composed.
He heard a noise and looked up. Directly above him on the wide, first landing of the staircase, which made a balcony from which to overlook the quarry, stood the party of black-coated men: the Royal personage, Crabbé, and to the side, his complexion the color of dried paste, Mr. Phelps, his arm in a sling. Behind them all, smoking a cheroot, stood a tall man with cropped hair in the red uniform of the 4th Dragoons, the rank of a colonel at his throat. It was Aspiche. Svenson had not attracted their notice. He looked elsewhere in the quarry—not daring to hope that Elöise had escaped—scanning for any sign of her capture. On the other side of the stairs was an enormous, stitched-together amalgamation of tarps, covering something twice the size of a rail car and taller, some kind of advanced digging apparatus? Could it being covered mean they were done with digging, that the seam of indigo clay was exhausted? He looked back to the kiln for a better sense of what Lorenz was actually doing, but his eyes were stopped by another single tarp, thrown over a small heap, near the large stacks of wood used to stoke the oven. Svenson swallowed uncomfortably. Sticking out from the tarp was a woman’s foot.
“Ah…he has awakened,” said a voice from above.
He looked up to see Harald Crabbé leaning over the rail with a cold, vengeful gaze. A moment later he was joined by the Royal, whose expression was that of a man examining livestock he had no intention to buy. “Excuse me for a moment, Highness—I suggest you keep your attention on Doctor Lorenz, who will no doubt have something of great interest to demonstrate momentarily.” He bowed and then snapped his fingers to Phelps, who slunk after his master down the stairs. After another taste of his cheroot, Aspiche ambled after them, allowing his saber to bang on each step as he went. Svenson wiped his mouth with his free left hand, did his best to hawk the phlegm from his throat and spat. He turned to face them as Crabbé stepped from the stairs.
“We did not know if you would revive, Doctor,” he called. “Not that we cared overmuch, you understand, but if you did it seemed advantageous to try and speak with you about your actions and your confederates. Where are the others—Chang and the girl? Who do you all serve in this persistently foolish attempt to spoil things you don’t comprehend?”
“Our conscience, Minister,” answered Svenson, his voice thicker than he’d expected. He wanted very much to sleep. Blood was creeping into his arm, and he knew abstractly that he was going to be in agony very soon as the nerves flooded back to life. “I cannot be plainer than that.”
Crabbé studied him as if Svenson could not possibly have meant what he said, and therefore must be speaking in some kind of code.
“Where are Chang and the girl?” he repeated.
“I do not know where they are. I don’t know if they’re alive.”
“Why are you here?”
“And how’s the back of your head?” chortled Aspiche.
Svenson ignored him, answering the Minister. “Why do you think? Looking for Bascombe. Looking for you. Looking for my Prince so I can shoot him in the head and save my country the shame of his ascending its throne.”
Crabbé twitched the corners of his mouth in a sketch of a smile.
“You seem to have broken this man’s arm. Can you set the bones? You are a doctor, yes?”
Svenson looked at Phelps and met his pleading eyes. How long had it been? Hours at least, with the raw fractures cruelly jarred with each step the poor fellow took. Svenson raised his shackled wrist. “I will need out of this, but yes, certainly I can do something. Do you have wood for a splint?”
“We have plaster, actually—or something like it, Lorenz tells me—they use it for mining, or for shoring up crumbling walls. Colonel, will you escort the Doctor and Phelps? If Doctor Svenson diverges from his task in the slightest, I’ll be obliged if you would hack off his head directly.”
They walked across the quarry, past the impromptu schoolroom, toward Lorenz. As they passed, Svenson could not help but glance at Miss Poole, who met his eyes with a dazzling smile. She said something to her listeners to excuse herself and a moment later was walking quickly to catch him.
“Doctor!” she called. “I did not think to meet you again, or not so soon—and certainly not here. I am told ”—she glanced wickedly at Aspiche—“that you have made yourself a most deadly nuisance, and have nearly slain our guest of honor!” She shook her head as if he were a charmingly disobedient boy. “They say that enemies are often closest in character—what separates them is but an attitude of mind, and as I think we all must see, those are eminently flexible. Why not join us, Doctor Svenson? Forgive me for being blunt, but when I first saw you in the St. Royale, I had no idea of your status as an adventurer—your legend grows by the day, even to the heights of your unfortunate friend Cardinal Chang, who I am led to understand is, well, no longer your competition in heroic endeavors.”
Svenson could not help it, but at her words he flinched. To the obvious anger of Colonel Aspiche, Miss Poole draped her arm in Svenson’s and clucked her tongue, leaning in to his face. Her perfume was sandalwood, like Mrs. Marchmoor’s. Her soft hands, the overwhelmingly delicate scent, the sweat around his neck, the hammering in his skull, the woman’s galling blitheness: Doctor Svenson felt as if his brain would boil. She chuckled at his discomfort.
“Next of course you will tell me you are a rescuer and defender of women—I have heard as much this very evening. But look”—she turned and waved to the Bascombe woman, sitting on the bench, who immediately waved back with the hopeful vigor of a whipped dog’s wagging tail—“there is Pamela Hawsthorne, the present Lady of Tarr Manor, and happy as can be, despite the unpleasant misunderstanding.”
“She has undergone your Process?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure she will. No, she has merely been exposed to our powerful science. Because it is science, Doctor, which I hope as a scientific man you will credit. Science advances, you know, just as must the moral fiber of our society. Sometimes it is dragged forward by the actions of those more knowledgeable, like a recalcitrant child. You do understand.”
He wanted to offend her, call her a whore, to crassly violate this pretense of companionable flirtation, but he lacked the presence of mind to form the appropriate insult. Perhaps he could vomit from dizziness. Instead, he tried to smile.
“You are very persuasive, Miss Poole. May I ask you a question—as I am a foreigner?”
“Of course.”
“Who is that man?”
Svenson turned and nodded to the tall figure next to Crabbé on the stair landing, looking over the quarry as if he were a Borgia Pope sneering down from a Vatican balcony. Miss Poole chuckled again and patted his arm indulgently. It occurred to him that she had not possessed this sort of power before the Process, and still searched for its proper expression—was he a child to her, a pupil, an ignorant tool, or a trainable dog?
“Why, that is the Duke of Stäelmaere. He is the old Queen’s natural brother, you know.”
“I did not know.”
“Oh yes. If the Queen and her children were to perish—heaven forbid—the Duke would inherit the throne.”
“That’s a lot of perishing.”
“Please don’t misunderstand me. The Duke is Her Majesty’s most trusted sibling. As such he works most intimately with the present government.”
“He seems intimate with Mr. Crabbé.”
She laughed and was about to make a witticism when she was brusquely interrupted by Aspiche.
“That’s enough. He’s here to fix this man’s arm. And then he’s going to die.”
She bore the intrusion gracefully and turned to Svenson.
“Not much of a prospect, Doctor. I would consider a switch in alliances, if I were you. You truly do not know what you are missing. And if you never do, well…won’t that be too sad?”
Miss Poole gave him a smiling, teasing nod of her head and returned to her benches. Svenson glanced at Aspiche, who watched her with evident relish. Had she been groping Aspiche or Lorenz in the private dining room at the St. Royale? Lorenz, he was fairly sure—though it looked as if Lorenz was quite occupied with his smelting and could not be bothered. Svenson saw the man empty one of the bandolier flasks into a metal cup that his assistants were preparing to stuff into the raging kiln. He wondered what the chemical process really was—there seemed to be several distinct steps of refinement…were these for different purposes, to convert the indigo clay to distinct uses? He looked back at Miss Poole, and wondered where her glass book was now. If he could manage to capture that…
He was interrupted again by Aspiche, tugging his tingling arm toward Mr. Phelps, who was painfully attempting to take off his black coat. Svenson looked up at Aspiche, to ask for splints and for some brandy at least for the man’s pain, when he saw, looming in the orange kiln-light like the tattoos of an island savage, the looping scars of the Process scored across his face. How had he not noticed them before? Svenson could not help it. He laughed aloud.
“What?” snarled the Colonel.
“You,” answered Svenson boldly. “Your face looks like a clown’s. Do you know that last time I saw Arthur Trapping—which was in his coffin, mind you—his face was the same? Do you think, just because they have expanded your mind, that you are any less their contingent tool?”
“Be quiet before I kill you!” Aspiche shoved him toward Phelps, who began to move out of the way and then flinched with pain.
“You’ll kill me anyway. Listen—Trapping was a man with powerful friends, he was someone they needed. You can’t pretend to that—you’re just the man with the soldiers, and your own elevation should demonstrate how easily you too could be replaced. You mind the hounds when they need to hunt—it’s servitude, Colonel, and your expanded mind ought to be broad enough to see it.”
Aspiche backhanded Doctor Svenson viciously across the jaw. Svenson sprawled in a heap, his face stinging. He blinked and shook his head. He saw that Lorenz had heard the sound and turned to them, his expression hidden behind the black goggles.
“Fix his arm,” said Aspiche.
In fact the “plaster” was some kind of seal for the kiln, but Svenson thought it would work well enough. The breaks were clean, and to his credit Phelps did not pass out—though to Svenson this always seemed a dubious credit indeed. For, if he had passed out it certainly would have gone easier for them all. As it was, the man was left trembling and spent, sitting on the ground with his arm swathed in his cast. Svenson had curtly apologized for the inconvenience of breaking his arm—assuring him that it was the Duke he had wanted to strike—and Phelps had answered that, of course, given the circumstances, it was entirely understandable.
“Your companion…,” Svenson began, wiping his hands on a rag.
“I’m afraid you have done for him,” replied Phelps, his voice somehow distant for all the pain, with the delicate, whispered quality of dried rice paper. He nodded to the tarp. Now that they were closer, Svenson saw that in addition to the woman’s foot, there was also a man’s black shoe. What had been his name—Starck? The weight of the killing settled heavily on the Doctor’s shoulders. He looked to Phelps, as if he should say something, and saw the man’s eyes had already drifted elsewhere, biting his lip against the grinding of his broken bones.
“It’s what happens in war,” Aspiche sneered with contempt. “When you made the choice to fight, you made the choice to die.”
Svenson’s gaze returned to the hidden stack of bodies, trying desperately to recall Elöise’s shoes. Could that be her foot? How many people—dear God—were under the tarp? It had to be at least four, judging by the height, perhaps more. He hoped that, with him captured, they would not bother to search the inn or the train platform in the morning, that she might somehow get away.
“Is he going to live?” This was the arch, mocking call of Doctor Lorenz, walking over from the kiln, the goggles pulled down around his neck. He was looking at Phelps, but did not even wait for an answer. His eyes roamed over Svenson once, a professional estimation that revealed nothing save an equally professional depth of suspicion, and then moved on to Aspiche. Lorenz gestured to his assistants, who had followed him over from the kiln.
“If we’re to dispose of this evidence, then now is the time. The kiln is at its hottest, and will only burn lower from this point on—for all that we wait, the remains shall be more legible.”
Aspiche looked across the quarry and raised his arm, getting the attention of Crabbé. Svenson saw the Minister peer, then realize what the Colonel was pointing to and give him an answering wave of approval. Aspiche called to Lorenz’s men.
“Go ahead.”
The tarp was whipped away and the men stepped to either side, each pair picking up a body between them. Svenson staggered back. On top of the pile were the two women from the attic room, their flesh still glowing blue. Beneath them were Coates and Starck and another man who he recalled but vaguely from the train, his skin also aglow (apparently the men had been shown the book as well). He watched in horror as the first two bodies were taken to the kiln and the wider stoking panel kicked open, revealing a white-hot blaze within. Svenson turned away. At the smell of burning hair his stomach heaved. Aspiche grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back across the quarry to Crabbé. He was dimly aware of Phelps stumbling along behind. At least Elöise had not been there…at least she’d been spared that…
As they again passed Miss Poole and her charges, he saw her amongst the benches, handing out books—these with a red leather cover instead of black, whispering something to each person. He assumed it was a new code, and the key for new messages. She saw him looking and smiled. To either side of Miss Poole were the man and woman he’d first sat with on the train. He barely recognized them. Though their garments had changed—his were smeared with grease and soot, and hers were noticeably loosened—it was more for the transformation of their faces. Where before had been tension and suspicion, now Svenson saw ease and confidence—it truly was as if they were different people entirely. They nodded to him as well, smiling brightly. He wondered who they were in the world, who in their lives they had just betrayed, and what they had found in the glass book to be so altered.
Svenson tried to make sense of it all, to force his tired brain to think. He ought to be drawing one conclusion after another, but nothing followed in his dulled condition. What was the difference between the glass book and the Process? The book could obviously kill—though this seemed almost cruelly arbitrary, like a toxic reaction to shellfish, as he doubted the deaths were intentional or planned. But what did the book do? Elöise spoke of falling into it, of visions. He thought of the compelling nature of the blue glass card, and then extrapolated that to the experience of a book…but what else…he felt near to something…writing…a book must be written in, the thoughts must be recorded…was that what they were doing? He recalled Chang’s description of the Institute, the man dropping the book as it was being made—made somehow from Angelique—the same man from Crabbé’s kitchen. What was the difference between using a person to make the book, and then using these people here to write in it…or be drawn into its clutches like a spider’s web? And what of the Process? That was simple conversion, he felt—a chemical-electric process using the properties of the refined indigo clay—indigo clay melted somehow into glass—to affect the character: to lower inhibitions and shift loyalties. Did it merely erase moral objections? Or did it re-write them? He thought how much a person could accomplish in life without scruples, or one hundred such people working together, their numbers growing by the day. Svenson rubbed his eyes as he walked—he was getting confused again, which merely returned him to the first question: what was the difference between the Process and the book? He looked back at Miss Poole and her little schoolroom in the slag heaps. It was a question of direction, he realized. In the Process, the energy went into the subject, erasing inhibitions and converting them to the cause. With the glass book, the energy was sucked out of the subject—along with (or in the form of—was memory energy?) specific experiences in their lives. Undoubtedly this was the blackmail: the secrets these bitter underlings had to tell were now secreted within Miss Poole’s book, and that book—like the cards—would allow anyone else to experience those shameful episodes. There would be no denial, and no end to the Cabal’s power over those so implicated.
It was making more sense to him now—the books were tools and could, like any other book, be used for a variety of purposes, depending on what was in them. Furthermore, it might be that they were constructed in different ways, for different reasons, some written whole and some with a different number of empty pages. He could not but recall the vivid, disturbing paintings of Oskar Veilandt—the compositions explicitly depicting the Process, the reverse of each canvas scrawled with alchemical symbols. Did that man’s work lie at the root of the books as well? If only he was still alive! Was it possible that the Comte—clearly the master within the Cabal of this twisted science—had pillaged Veilandt’s secrets and then had him killed? As he thought of books and purposes, Svenson suddenly wondered if d’Orkancz had been intending to make a book of Angelique alone—the vast adventures of a lady of pleasure. It would be a most persuasive enticement for his cause, offering the detailed experience of a thousand nights in the brothel without ever leaving one’s room. Yet that would be but one example…the limit was sensation itself—what adventures or travels or thrills that one person had known could not be imprinted onto one of these books for anyone to consume, which was to say, to experience bodily for themselves? What sumptuous banquets? What quantities of wine? What battles, caresses, what witty conversations…there truly was no end…and no end to what people would pay for such oblivion.
He looked back to Miss Poole and the smiling couple. What had changed them? What had killed the others, but spared these two? It was somehow important to know—for this was a wrinkle, something that did not flow cleanly. If there was only a way to find out—yet any idea of who those people were or what might have killed them was even now disappearing into ash. Svenson snorted with anger—perhaps there was enough after all. Their skin had been infused with blue—this hadn’t happened to the ones who had survived. He thought of the couple, changed from suspicious resentment to open amity…Svenson stumbled with the sudden impact of his thoughts. Aspiche took hold of his shoulder and shoved him forward.
“Get along there! You’ll be resting soon enough!”
Doctor Svenson barely heard him. He was recalling Elöise—how she could not remember what scandals she might have revealed about the Trappings or Henry Xonck. She had said it in a way to mean there had been nothing to reveal…but Svenson knew the memories had been taken from her, just as the memories of spite and injustice and envy had been taken from the venal young couple—all to be inscribed in the book. And the ones who had died…what had d’Orkancz said about Angelique? That the energy had “regrettably” gone the other direction…this must have happened here too…the book’s energy must have entered deeper into the people who died, leaving its mark as it drained them utterly. But why them and not the others? He looked back at the smiling people around Miss Poole. None of them could remember exactly what they had revealed—indeed, did they even know why they were here? He shook his head at the beauty of it, for each could be safely sent back to their life, lacking any knowledge of what had been done, aside from a trip to the country and a few strange deaths. But when was there not a way to explain deaths of those considered to be insignificant? Who would protest—who would even remember those killed?
For a moment Svenson’s thoughts stabbed toward Corinna—the degree to which her true memory was retained in his breast alone—and he felt within him a sharpening rage. The death of Starck weighed heavily, but he took the words of the simpleton Aspiche (why must such men always reduce the complexity of the world to single-syllable thinking—an empire of grunts?) as a reminder of who his enemies truly were. He was not Chang—he could not feel good about killing, nor kill well enough to preserve his life—but he was Abelard Svenson. He knew what these villains were doing, and which of them were truly doing it: above him on the platform balcony, Harald Crabbé and the Duke of Stäelmaere. If he could kill them, then Lorenz and Aspiche and Miss Poole did not matter—whatever mischief they made in the world would be limited to the reach of their own two arms and would land them in the same undoubted discontent they knew before their glorious redemption in the Process. The Process depended on the organization of the Cabal—on these two, on d’Orkancz, Lacquer-Sforza, and Xonck. And Robert Vandaariff…he must be the leader. Doctor Svenson suddenly knew that even if he did escape he would not be meeting Chang or Miss Temple at Stropping Station. Either they were dead, or they would be at Harschmort.
But what could he hope to do? Aspiche was tall, strong, armed, and vicious—perhaps even a match for Chang. Doctor Svenson was unarmed and spent. He looked back to the kiln. Lorenz walked toward them, shucking his gauntlets as he came. Above, Crabbé and the Duke chatted quietly—or Crabbé was chatting and the Duke nodding at what he heard, his face glacially impassive. Svenson counted fifteen wooden steps to their platform. If he could make a dash for it, reach them ahead of Aspiche—Crabbé would again throw himself in front of the Duke…Svenson thought of his pockets—was there any kind of weapon? He scoffed—a pencil stub, a cigarette case, the glass card…the card, perhaps if he could snap it in his hands as he ran, and use the jagged edge, one sharp cut into Crabbé’s throat, and then to take the Duke hostage—to drag him up the steps, somehow—would he have his coach above?—making it back to the train, or all the way to the city. Lorenz was nearing them. It was the perfect distraction. He casually slipped a hand into his pocket and groped for the card. He shifted his feet, ready to run.
“Colonel Aspiche,” called Doctor Lorenz, “we are nearly—”
Aspiche swung his forearm savagely across the back of Svenson’s head, knocking him to his knees, his skull near to bursting with pain, his stomach heaving, tasting the vomit in his throat, blinking tears from his eyes. Somewhere behind him—it seemed miles away—he could hear Lorenz’s thin laughter and then the dark hiss of Aspiche at his ear.
“Don’t even think of it.”
Svenson knew he would probably die, but he also knew that if he did not get off his knees he would lose whatever infinitesimal chance he had. He spat and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, noticing with vague surprise that his hand held the blue card still. With a terrible effort he braced his other arm on the grimy clay and raised one knee. He pushed off, wobbled, and then felt Aspiche take hold of his greatcoat collar and yank him up to his feet. He let go and Svenson staggered, nearly falling again. Again he heard Lorenz laugh, and then Crabbé call out from above.
“Doctor Svenson! Any new thoughts about the location of your comrades?”
“I am told they are dead,” he called back, his voice hoarse and weak.
“Perhaps they are,” responded Crabbé. “Perhaps we have taken enough of your time.”
Behind him he heard the metal swish of Colonel Aspiche drawing his saber. He must turn and face him. He must snap the card and drive the sharp edge into his neck, or his eyes, or…he could not turn. He could only look up at Crabbé’s satisfied face, leaning over the railing. Svenson pointed to the quarry walls and called up to the Deputy Minister.
“Macklenburg.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Macklenburg. This quarry. I understand the connection, your indigo clay. This can only be a small deposit. The Macklenburg mountains must be full of it. If you control its Duke, there is no end to your power…is that your plan?”
“Plan, Doctor Svenson? I’m afraid that is already the case. The plan is what to do with the power we’ve managed to achieve. With the help of wise men like the Duke here—”
Svenson spat. Crabbé stopped mid-sentence.
“Such vulgarity—”
“You’ve insulted my country,” called Svenson. “You’ve insulted this one. You’re going to pay, each arrogant one of you—”
Crabbé looked past Svenson’s shoulder to Colonel Aspiche. “Kill him.”
The shot took him by surprise, as he was expecting a blow from a saber—and it took him another moment to realize that it wasn’t he who had been hit by the bullet. He heard the scream—again, wondering that it wasn’t coming from his own mouth—and then saw the Duke of Stäelmaere reel into the railing, clutching his right shoulder, quite cleanly punctured, blood pouring through his long white fingers clutching the wound. Crabbé wheeled, his mouth working, as the Duke dropped to his knees, his head slipping through the rails. Above and behind them, both hands tightly gripping the smoking service revolver, stood Elöise.
“God be damned, Madame!” shouted Crabbé. “Do you know who you have shot? It is a capital offense! It is treason!” She fired again, and this time Svenson saw the shot blow out through the Duke’s chest, a thick quick fountain of blood. Stäelmaere’s mouth opened with surprise at the impact, at the shocking scope of his agony, and he collapsed to the planking.
Svenson whirled, drawing new energy from his rescue, and—recalling something he’d once seen in a wharf-side bar—stomped on Colonel Aspiche’s boot in the same moment he shoved the man straight back sharply with both hands. As the Colonel fell back, Svenson’s weight fixed his foot to the ground so that he was both unable to rebalance himself and to prevent his own weight from being thrown against his pinned ankle. Svenson heard the cracking bones as the Colonel landed with a cry of rage and pain. He leapt away—Aspiche, even so down, was swinging the saber, face reddened, tears at the corners of his eyes—and dashed to the stairs. Elöise fired again—apparently missing Crabbé, who had retreated into the corner of the landing, arms over his face, hunched away from the gun. Svenson charged and struck him in his exposed stomach. Crabbé doubled forward with a grunt, his hands clutching his belly. Svenson swung again at the Deputy Minister’s now-exposed face, and the man went down in a heap. Svenson gasped—he had no idea how such a blow would hurt his hand—and staggered toward his rescuer.
“Bless you, my dear,” he breathed, “for you have saved my life. Let us climb—”
“They are coming!” she said, her voice rising with fear. He looked back down to see Lorenz’s assistants and the gang of men from the benches all running. Lorenz had helped Aspiche to his feet and the limping, hopping Colonel was waving his saber and bawling orders.
“Kill them! Kill them! They have murdered the Duke!”
“The Duke?” whispered Elöise.
“You did right,” Svenson assured her. “If I may, for there are many of them—”
He reached for the pistol and took it, pulling back the hammer, and jumped down to the cowering Crabbé. The men charged up the stairs as Svenson took the Minister by his collar and raised him to his knees, grinding the gun barrel against Crabbé’s ear. They surged to the very edge of the platform, eyeing Svenson and Elöise with hatred. Svenson looked over the rail to the quarry floor to where Lorenz stood supporting Aspiche. He shouted down to them.
“I will kill him! You know I will do it! Call your fellows off!”
He looked back to the crowd and saw it part to allow Miss Poole to pass through. She stepped onto the platform, smiling icily.
“Are you quite all right, Minister?” she asked.
“I am alive,” muttered Crabbé. “Has Doctor Lorenz finished his work?”
“He has.”
“And your charges?”
“As you can see, quite well—enthusiastic to protect you and avenge the Duke.”
Crabbé sighed. “Perhaps it is best this way, perhaps it can be better worked. You will need to prepare his body.”
Miss Poole nodded, and then looked up beyond Svenson to Elöise. “It seems we have underestimated you, Mrs. Dujong!”
“You left me to die!” shouted Elöise.
“Of course she did,” called Crabbé, rubbing his jaw. “You failed your test—it seemed as if you would die, like the others. It cannot be helped—you are wrong to place blame with Elspeth. Besides, look at you now—so bold!”
“Do you think we were hasty with our decision, Minister?” asked Miss Poole.
“Indeed I do. Perhaps Mrs. Dujong will be joining our efforts after all.”
“Join you?” cried Elöise. “Join you? After—after all—”
“You forget,” called Miss Poole. “Even if you do not remember why you came, I remember it quite well—every noisome little secret you offered up in exchange for your advancement.”
Elöise stood, her mouth open, looking to Svenson, then back at Miss Poole. “I did not—I cannot—”
“You wanted it before,” said Miss Poole. “And you want it still. You’ve proven yourself quite bold.”
“There’s barely a choice, my dear,” observed Crabbé with a sigh.
Svenson saw the confusion on Elöise’s face and jabbed the gun hard into Crabbé’s ear, stopping the man’s speech. “Did you not hear what I said? We will be going at once!”
“O yes, Doctor Svenson, you were heard quite clearly,” Crabbé muttered, wincing. He looked up at Miss Poole. “Elspeth?”
The woman retained her icy smile. “Such chivalry, Doctor. First it is Miss Temple, and now Mrs. Dujong—a veritable collector of hearts you seem, I never would have thought it.”
Svenson ignored her, and yanked Crabbé back toward the stairs.
“We will be taking our leave—”
“Elspeth!” the Deputy Minister croaked.
“You will not,” Miss Poole announced.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Svenson.
“You will not. How many shots remain in your gun?”
Aspiche called back to her from below, a disembodied voice. “She fired three times, and it is a six-shot cylinder.”
“So there you are,” continued Miss Poole, indicating the crowd of men around her. “Three shots. We are at least ten, and you at the very most can shoot three. We will take you.”
“But the first I shoot shall be Minister Crabbé.”
“It is more important that our work proceed, and your escape may endanger it. Do you agree, Minister?”
“Unfortunately, Svenson, the woman is correct—”
Svenson cracked him sharply on the head with the gun butt. “Stop talking!”
Miss Poole spoke to the gang of men behind her. “Doctor Svenson is a German agent. He has succeeded in causing the death of the Queen’s own noble brother—”
Doctor Svenson looked up at Elöise, whose eyes were wide with fear. “Run now,” he told her. “Escape—I will hold them off—”
“Do not bother, Mrs. Dujong,” called Miss Poole. “We cannot allow either of you to leave—really we can’t. And I do promise, Doctor, however much time your bravery does buy your ally, she will not in that dress outrun these gentlemen across three miles of open road.”
Svenson was at a loss. He did not believe they would sacrifice Crabbé so easily—yet could he risk Elöise’s life on the chance? But, if he were to surrender—impossible, surely—what hope would they have of surviving? None! They’d be ash in Lorenz’s oven—it was an appalling thought, unconscionable—
“Doctor…Abelard…” Elöise whispered to him from above. He looked up at her, helpless, sputtering.
“You will not join them—you will not stay—”
“What if she wants to stay?” asked Miss Poole, wickedly.
“She does not—she cannot—be quiet!”
“Doctor Svenson!” It was Lorenz, shouting from below. Svenson edged closer to the rail—pulling his hostage with him—and looked down. The man had walked over to the large conglomeration of tarps, covering the hidden train car. “Perhaps this will convince you of our great purpose!”
Lorenz pulled on a rope line and the tarps were released. At once the great shape beneath them rose some twenty feet in a lurch, thrusting up clear of the covering. It was an enormous cylindrical gasbag, an airship, a dirigible. As it ascended to the limits of its tethering cables, he could see propellers, engines, and the large cabin underneath. The entire thing was even larger than he’d thought, expanding like an insect coming out of its cocoon, an iron skeleton of supporting struts snapping into place as it rose—and the whole painted to perfectly match the deepest midnight sky. Traveling at night the craft would be near invisible.
Before Svenson could say a word, Elöise screamed. He wheeled to see her off balance, a man’s hand incongruously holding onto her leg through the gap in the stairs—an arm in a red sleeve, Aspiche, reaching up from below while he’d been distracted by Lorenz’s spectacle like a gullible fool. Svenson watched helplessly as she tried to pull herself free, to step on his wrist with her other foot—it was all that was needed for the spell to be broken. The men around Miss Poole surged forward, cutting Svenson off from Elöise. Crabbé dropped into a ball on the planking, pulling Svenson off balance. Before he could re-position the pistol the men were upon him—a fist across his jaw, a forearm clubbing him across the head and he staggered back into the rail. Elöise screamed again—they were all around her—he had failed her completely. The men scooped him up bodily and threw him over the rail.
He came to his senses with the cloudless black night sky in motion above him and the steady bumping of gravel and dirt beneath his skull. He was being dragged by his feet. It took the Doctor a moment to realize that his arms were over his head and his greatcoat tangled up behind, scooping up loose earth like a rake as he was pulled along. Toward the oven, he knew. He craned his head and saw a man at each leg, two of Lorenz’s fellows. Where was Elöise? He felt the pain in his neck and aches everywhere, but nowhere the sharp jarring agony that must mean a broken bone—and the way they carried his legs and his arms dragged, he would certainly know. His hands were empty—what had happened to his revolver? He cursed his pathetic attempts at heroism. Rescued by a woman only to betray her trust with incompetence. As soon as the men saw he was awake they would simply dash his brains out with a brick. And what could he possibly do, unarmed, against both of them? He thought of everyone he had failed…how would this be any different?
The men dropped his legs without ceremony. Svenson blinked, still groggy, as one of them looked back at him with a knowing smile, and the other stepped to the oven.
“He’s awake,” said the smiling one.
“Hit him with the shovel,” called the other.
“I will at that,” said the first, and began to look around him for it.
Svenson tried to sit up, to run, but his body—awkward, aching, stiff—did not respond. He rolled onto his side and forced his knees up beneath him, pushing off and then up into a stumbling tottering attempt to walk away.
“Where do you think you’re going, then?” called the laughing voice behind him. Svenson flinched, fearing any moment to feel the shovel slicing across the back of his skull. His eyes searched for some answer, some idea—but only saw the dirigible hovering across the quarry and above it a pitiless black sky. Could this be the finish? So pedestrian and brutal, cut down like a beast in a farmyard? With a sudden impulse Svenson spun around to face the man, extending his open hand.
“A moment, I beg of you.”
The man had indeed picked up the shovel and held it ready to swing. His companion stood some feet behind him, with a metal hook he’d clearly just used to pry open the oven hatch—even this far from the glowing furnace Svenson could feel the increase in heat. They smiled at him.
“Will he offer us money, do you reckon?” said the one with the hook.
“I will not,” said the Doctor. “First, because I have none, and second, because whatever money I have will be yours in any case, once you knock me on the head.”
At this the men nodded, grinning that he had guessed their unstoppable plan.
“I cannot offer you anything. But I can ask you—while I have breath—for I know you will be curious, and it would pain me to leave such honest fellows—for I know you merely do what you must—in such very, very grave danger.”
They stared at him for just a moment. Svenson swallowed.
“What danger’s that?” asked the man with the shovel, shifting his grip in anticipation of swinging it rather hard into Svenson’s face.
“Of course—of course, no one has told you. Never mind—I’m not one to interfere—but if you would, for the sake of my conscience—promise to throw this, this article straight into the oven after—well, after me—” His hand reached into a pocket and pulled forth his remaining blue card—he’d no idea which—and held it out for them to see. “It seems a mere bit of glass, I know—but you must, for your own safety, put it straight into the fire. Do it now—or let me do it—”
Before he could say another word the one with the shovel stepped forward and snatched the card from Svenson’s hand. He took two steps back, eyeing the Doctor with a sullen suspicion, and then looked down into the card. The man went still. His companion looked at him, then at Svenson, and then lunged over the other man’s shoulder to look at the card, reaching for it with a large calloused hand. Then he stopped as well, his own attention hooked into place.
Svenson watched with disbelief. Could it be so simple? He took a gentle step forward, but as he extended his hands to take the shovel the card came to the end of its cycle and both men emitted a small sigh that stopped his movement cold. Then they sank into the next repetition, jaws slack, eyes dull. With a brutal determination, Svenson snatched the shovel cleanly away and swept it down twice, slamming the flat blade across each man’s head, one after the other, as they looked up at him, still dazed. He dropped the shovel, collected the blue glass card, and turned away as quickly as he could. He had not used the edge—with luck each man would live.
A chopping roar echoed off the stone walls—such an encompassing din that he’d barely noticed it, assuming it was inside his battered skull. It must be the dirigible—its engine and propellers! What would drive such a thing, he wondered—coal? steam? The iron-framed cabin had looked woefully fragile. Had anyone heard his conversation with the men? Had anyone seen? He looked up, squinting—what had happened to his monocle?—at the demonic airship. It had risen to the height of the iron-red stone walls, tethered to the quarry bed only by a few small cables. There were figures in the window of the gondola, too far away to see clearly. He didn’t care about them—what had happened to Elöise? If she had not been taken to the oven with him—if she was not dead—then what had they done with her?
The tall staircase seemed empty save at the very top, where a cluster of figures had gathered on a level equal to the suspended dirigible’s cabin. On the quarry floor he saw only three men minding the last ropes, their attention focused upwards. Doctor Svenson limped toward the stairs, his right leg dragging, his neck and shoulders and head feeling as if they’d been wrapped in plaster and then set aflame. He wiped his mouth on his filthy sleeve and spat, having put more dust into his mouth than he’d wiped away. There was blood on his face—his own? He’d no idea. The figures on the giant staircase had to be the men and women from the train. Would Miss Poole be with them? No, he reasoned—no one would be with them. They’d served their purpose. Miss Poole would be waving from the gondola, off to Harschmort with the others. Where was Elöise?
Svenson walked more quickly, pushing against the objections of his body. His fingers dug into his coat and came out with his cigarette case. There were three left, and he stuffed one into his bloody face as he hobbled forward, and then exclaimed with pain when he tried to strike a match on a split thumbnail. He changed hands, lit the cigarette, and drew in an exquisitely taxing lungful of smoke, shaking the pain out of his hand, dragging his right foot forward, and finally heaving a thick bolus of phlegm and blood and dust from the back of his throat. His eyes were watering but the smoke pleased him nevertheless, somehow recalling himself to his task. He was becoming relentless, unstoppable, an adversary of legend. He spat again and in another stroke of luck happened to glance down at where he was spitting—to see if there was any visible blood—and saw something in the dirt catching the light. It was glass—it was his monocle! The chain had snapped when he was being dragged, but the glass was whole! He wiped it off as best he could, smiling stupidly, then pulled out his shirt-tail to wipe it again, his sleeve having hopelessly smeared things. He screwed it in place.
Crabbé stood framed in the small opened window, shouting to someone on the stairs. It was Phelps, evidently enough recovered to travel on his own. Next to Crabbé in the window was indeed Miss Poole, waving away. He did not see Lorenz—perhaps Lorenz was flying the craft. Doctor Svenson knew absolutely nothing about how these things worked, indeed, how they stayed in the air at all. Aspiche had to be inside. Where was the body of the Duke? Would that be in a cart, going back to the city with Phelps? Would that be where he found Elöise—dead or alive? It seemed likely—he would need to climb the stairs and follow them into Tarr Village.
He was half-way across the quarry, the airship looming larger above him with each step. Still no one had seen him, not even to look for the two stupefied men. Someone would have to turn—the fellows minding the cable would release it any moment. He’d never make the stairs—he couldn’t outrun a child. He needed to hide. Svenson stopped and looked around for some niche in the rock when something fell in the dirt some ten yards away. He looked at it—couldn’t tell what it was—and then turned his gaze to where it might have possibly come from. Above him, through the back window of the dirigible’s gondola, he saw a hand against the glass and a pale, half-obscured face. He looked again at what had fallen. It was a book…a black book…leather-bound…he looked up again. It was Elöise. He was an idiot.
The Doctor charged forward just as the nearest of the men minding the cables finally happened to look his way, but his cry of alarm at the strange, running figure emerged as an inarticulate shout. Svenson lowered his shoulder and cannoned into his midsection, knocking them both sprawling and the cable loose from the grounded spike that had held it. The rope began to snake around them as the dirigible surged against its moorings. The other two men released their own lines, thinking this had been the signal—only realizing their error once the lines had actually been slipped. Svenson struggled to his feet and dove for the whipping cable—he was insane, nearly gibbering with terror—and thrust his arm through the knotted loop at its end. The dirigible lurched upwards and with a shriek Svenson was pulled off his feet, some three feet in the air. The craft surged into the black sky, Doctor Svenson kicking his legs and holding to the rope more tightly than he ever imagined human beings could do. He swept past the crowd on the steps, swinging like a human pendulum. At once he was out of the quarry and over a meadow, the soft grass close beneath him for a sudden tempting moment. Could he drop and survive? His hand was tangled in the rope. Fear had made his grip hard as steel and before he could push another thought through his paralyzed mind the craft rose again, the meadow spiraling farther and farther away.
Black night above and around him, mocked by a chilling wind, Doctor Svenson looked helplessly at the impossibly distant gondola and began to climb, hand over bloodied hand, gasping, sobbing, all the terrors of hell screaming below his feet, his eyes now screwed shut in agony.
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска и скачивания книг
Книжный Бот
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
ВКОНТАКТЕ