The Chemickal Marriage

Nine Indenture

Doctor Svenson swung the pistol calmly between Bronque’s soldiers, Kelling and Schoepfil. Any show of weakness would spark their attack.

‘Give my best wishes to Her Majesty. All of Macklenburg is at her service.’

The words were meaningless. He was a criminal in Macklenburg and a criminal here. How many times would he fling himself at death before the black wings caught him up?

He saw Schoepfil move, but the man’s damned speed was such that to stop him meant shooting to kill – and, while he knew Schoepfil to be a villain, the man had committed himself to bringing down Robert Vandaariff. Was this – lust apart – any different from his détente with the Contessa?

Schoepfil seized Kelling’s crate of paper and hurled it like a stone into the chest of a footman, pages flying in the air. The soldiers charged. Svenson swore in German.

He shot one trooper in the thigh and the other, sabre raised to open the Doctor’s skull, neatly under the arm. His third shot went to the ceiling as the falling soldier’s sabre slapped Svenson across the forehead and knocked him to his knees. He looked up to see the door close behind Miss Temple, Schoepfil battering the second footman to the ground. The footman, with more than thirty pounds and seven inches on Schoepfil, collapsed, groaning. Schoepfil turned a raging gaze at Svenson, fists clenched.

‘Why should I spare you? Why should you not die?’ Schoepfil kicked Svenson’s pistol away and spun round to Kelling. ‘Open this damned door!’

Kelling barked at the Ministry men, standing off to the side, well clear of the struggle. Now that the prevailing wind of power was established, they willingly joined Kelling at the oval door – Kelling grunting at the pain, but heaving nevertheless – all straining at the iron wheel.

Svenson crawled on his hands and knees. Schoepfil hopped in front of him. ‘Where the devil do you think you’re going?’

‘These men.’ Svenson pointed to the soldiers. ‘Someone must bind their wounds.’

‘And perhaps you should not have shot them!’ But Schoepfil stepped aside, then shrieked at the courtiers: ‘And you! I will remember each of your names! O I will remember your names!’

Despite his patients’ hateful looks, Svenson bent to examine each soldier. The leg would heal easily, bone and artery spared, but the arm would be a trial, for the bullet had pierced the shoulder joint.

‘What’s the old crone thinking?’ Schoepfil asked, ostensibly to Kelling, but his secretary was hard against the wheel. Schoepfil thrust his face between the labouring men and shouted, ‘I am not deceived, Your Grace!’

His searching little eyes found Svenson, his only audience. The courtiers had fled.

‘The Duchess claims the Queen is within. She is a liar.’

‘Is it some Eastern system of combat?’ asked Svenson.

‘Beg pardon?’ Schoepfil chuckled. ‘O! O no, not at all.’

‘You move with an unnatural speed.’

‘And I shall do something unnatural to the Duchess of Cogstead, you may be sure of it! I know who is there! Why should she protect the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza – of all people? And you! You gave that colonial chit my book! My own glass book and you have thrust it into the arms of an empty-headed girl!’

‘Only because I had no time to smash it.’

‘O! O!’ Schoepfil waved both arms at the ceiling. ‘Artless! Crude! Teuton!’

‘If the Contessa is inside, these few men will not take her.’

‘Pah! I’ll take her myself.’ Schoepfil clapped his grey-gloved hands. ‘So hard it stings.’

The wheel gave with a sudden lurch. Schoepfil bustled through, returning the pistol to his secretary as he passed. Svenson pushed after the Ministry men, but Kelling waved the pistol.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Put it away,’ sighed Svenson. ‘If he could spare me, I’d be dead. Since I’m not, I could shoot you in the head and he would only swear at the mess.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Kelling snarled. ‘He remembers – you’ll pay!’

‘You should bind that wrist.’

‘Go to hell.’

Svenson found the others in a low octagonal room, with an oval door in each wall, like the engine room of a steamship. Schoepfil faced the Duchess with his hands on his hips.

‘Well, madam? Your falsehood is exposed!’ When the Duchess did not respond, he screamed again, waving at the doors: ‘Open them! Open them all!’

Doctor Svenson locked eyes for an instant with the Duchess. ‘Whose rooms are these?’

‘Not the Queen’s!’ crowed Schoepfil. Three doors were opened to utter blackness.

‘They were given to Lord Pont-Joule,’ said the Duchess.

‘The late Lord Pont-Joule.’ Schoepfil’s voice echoed from inside a doorway. He reappeared to shove a Ministry man at the next door. ‘Nothing – go, go!’

‘He was charged with Her Majesty’s safety –’

‘I know who he is,’ said Svenson. ‘Or was.’

Schoepfil hopped back to the Duchess. ‘These tunnels follow the springs!’

‘Spy tunnels,’ said Svenson. ‘Just like where we observed Her Majesty’s baths.’ The Duchess gasped.

‘O well done,’ muttered Schoepfil. ‘Blab every single thing …’

‘You ought to have expected others. The rock beneath the Thermæ must have been honeycombed for a thousand years.’

Schoepfil sniffed at the next door. ‘Sulphur – leading to the baths proper. Would the Contessa seek the baths? She would not.’ He called to the Duchess: ‘She killed him, you know – Pont-Joule!’ Schoepfil scoffed on his way to the next doorway. ‘You arranged her audience. You aided her escape. He was her lover! Right in the neck!’

The Duchess put her hands over her eyes. ‘I did not –’

‘O I will see you punished. Where is my book?’

Kelling wrenched open the seventh door. Schoepfil sniffed the air. His face darkened. ‘O dear Lord …’

‘What is it?’ asked Kelling.

‘The channel.’ Schoepfil spun to the Duchess. ‘It’s true after all! You knew it! And she damn well knew it! Of all the – O this takes the biscuit!’

Schoepfil’s hand flew at the Duchess. Svenson caught the blow mid-air. With an outraged sputter Schoepfil’s other hand delivered three rapid strikes to the Doctor’s face. Still Svenson held on – giving the Duchess time to retreat – until Schoepfil wrenched his arm free.

‘You presume, Doctor Svenson, you presume!’

Schoepfil’s voice stopped with a guttural snarl. In the Doctor’s hand hung his grey glove, peeled off while retrieving his arm. The flesh of Schoepfil’s hand was a bright cerulean blue, nails darkening to indigo.

‘Sweet Christ,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘What have you done – what idiocy?’

Schoepfil snatched the glove and wriggled his hand inside, glaring at Svenson with a mixture of abashment and pride, like a young master caught plundering his first housemaid. The instant the glove was restored Schoepfil turned on Kelling with a scream: ‘What do you wait for? Inside and after them!’

Kelling dived through, but the Ministry men paused. ‘Is there a light?’ one ventured.

Through the door came a crash and a grunt of pain. ‘There are steps,’ called Mr Kelling.

Svenson opened the doors of a sideboard and pulled out a metal railwayman’s lantern.

‘How did you find that?’ asked Schoepfil.

‘Pont-Joule must have used these tunnels for surveillance.’

‘And look what it got him,’ Schoepfil spat, then shouted at them all. ‘A match! A match! Light the damned thing up!’

Kelling was waiting by a pile of clothing. Schoepfil stood at the black pool, glaring at the billowing effervescence. The Ministry men hovered, one, stuck between care and complicity, arm in arm with the Duchess, for Schoepfil dared not leave her alone. Another held the lantern high, but the cavern had no other exit but the pool.

Svenson gave the candle a glance, noticed the ash around its base and the tiniest curl of unburnt paper, coloured red. The Contessa had left a message, which Miss Temple had possessed the presence of mind to burn.

The riddle of the clothing was even simpler: one woman had followed the lead of the other, the clothing removed to swim. Svenson knelt at the water, swiped a finger through the fizz and put it to his nose, then in his mouth.

‘Colder than the baths,’ he said, ‘though the minerals prove a mingling. This channel meets the river. Underground.’

‘It was a secret way,’ said the Duchess. ‘Used for terrible things.’

He did not suppose any explanation was needed; they were beneath a palace, after all. ‘The journey to air cannot be far. Do we follow?’

He plucked his tunic between his thumb and forefinger, as if offering to strip. Schoepfil scowled. ‘Of course we don’t. The ash there, Kelling – what was burnt?’

‘A note. Unreadable, sir.’

‘Blasted female. Shameless. Brazen.’ Schoepfil pointed damningly at the clothes. ‘Does she have a new wardrobe ready on the other side? Of course she does. And as soon as your little beast arrives she will also have my book!’

Svenson had thought Miss Temple dead, only to see her again in the baths – with the Contessa, of all people, and being introduced, of all things, to the sickly, costive Queen. From their concealment he and Schoepfil had heard the entire conversation, the Contessa’s sly blaming of Vandaariff and Lord Axewith for the Duke of Staëlmaere’s murder. Minutes later came Colonel Bronque’s own audience, a litany of abuse received in place of Axewith, whose request for the Queen’s seal was violently refused. Schoepfil had nearly exposed their hiding place, chuckling at this reverse for his uncle. Uncle! What but a life of envious proximity to power could explain this strange creature of a man?

From there Svenson had been passed to the odious Kelling, who – with two grenadiers – had shown him another cork-lined room stuffed with ephemera relating to the Comte d’Orkancz and indigo clay: books and papers, diagrams, paintings, half-tooled bits of brass and steel. Kelling hungrily noted where his attention fell, as if Svenson were a pilgrim in an alchemical allegory, presented with a table of riches, with his choice to dictate the course of his soul.

‘Lorenz.’ Svenson tapped a stack of that man’s notes. ‘Dropped out of an airship to the freezing sea.’

Kelling was silent. Svenson moved to the next pile.

‘Fochtmann. Shot in the head at Parchfeldt.’ He smiled at Kelling, as if in friendly reminiscence. ‘Gray, killed at Harschmort by Cardinal Chang. And Crooner … everyone forgets him. Lost both arms – turned to glass and sheared off. Died of the shock, I suppose …’

‘What about the marriage?’ Kelling extended his knobbed throat like a buzzard.

‘Do you mean the painting?’

‘Do I?’

‘Or the ritual behind it?’ Svenson smiled pleasantly. ‘A man like the Comte d’Orkancz would view the thing as a recipe. Since he was barking mad.’

Svenson fished out a rumpled cigarette and, not waiting for Kelling’s permission, set it to light. He exhaled. ‘Do you know what happened to the Comte?’

‘He died on the airship,’ replied Kelling.

Doctor Svenson took another puff and shook his head. ‘No, Mr Kelling. He is in hell.’

He was taken by the grenadiers to another room, Kelling called away and, to Svenson’s mind, happy to leave. Kelling was exactly the sort of court-bred toad whose dislike the Doctor had so often negotiated in protecting the Prince, men whose self-regard became one with their masters’. Svenson’s refusal to be so attached had marked him a social leper.

But worse than the company of Kelling was that of his own untended heart. Left alone, the guilt Svenson had been able to suppress since his delivery to Schoepfil rose to the surface of his thought. Francesca. Elöise. The Contessa.

A soldier entered with a wooden plate of bread and meat, and a mug of beer. Svenson drank half the beer in a swallow and set the plate on his lap, forcing himself to chew each bite. The bread had gone stiff, sliced hours before, and the grey beef stank of vinegar. Still, he finished the plate, emptied the mug and carried them to the door.

As the guard took the empty dishes, Doctor Svenson looked out.

‘Do you think I might stretch my legs?’ he asked. ‘I have had so little sleep, if I do not walk I will collapse.’

‘Why not sleep now?’

‘There is no time. Mr Schoepfil says we must travel. I require my wits.’

He took out his last two cigarettes, offered one to the grenadier, who – blessedly – declined. Svenson tucked it away, lit the other and indicated the small corridor. ‘Just here?’

The guard did not protest and Svenson wandered to a window. Night had fallen and a movement outside caught his eye: a man in a white jacket, arms bound, dragged by soldiers towards a livery shed. A few steps behind came Kelling. Perhaps a minute later Kelling and the grenadiers returned alone.

In the distance came the sound of doors. Svenson ambled to the corridor’s end in time to see the Contessa with an escort of guards.

‘There you are!’ She called with such self-importance that her soldiers allowed her to veer towards Svenson. He bowed as she approached.

‘The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza,’ he said to his guard, ‘a gentlewoman from Venice.’

The guard’s reply, and her own guards’ desire to interpose, was brusquely overridden. ‘Doctor Svenson, thank goodness. I’ve just been with Her Majesty now’ – this clearly for the benefit of the guards – ‘and I would speak to Mr Schoepfil – yet I may not have time, you see. Because of Her Majesty.’ She pointed past Svenson. ‘Is that where you’ve been waiting? May we speak?’

‘I am at your service,’ replied Svenson.

‘Mr Schoepfil wants you to wait,’ managed one of her guards.

‘Of course I’ll wait,’ she cried. ‘But if the Queen requests my presence, what do you suggest? This way I may convey to Doctor Svenson – who also waits for Mr Schoepfil – my own account of the matter, so he may pass it on – in case. Don’t you see?’

She strode down the windowed passage, unseen heels clipping the floor like the hoofs of a performing horse. ‘I will knock when I am finished,’ she told the guard. ‘What is that, beer? Two more of the same. I am parched.’

She sailed inside and sat in the only chair. Svenson smiled apologetically at the guard and began to shut the door.

‘The beer,’ the Contessa snapped.

She flounced her dress into place. The knot of soldiers stared past him at the woman. Svenson accepted the beer and shut the door with his heel.

‘What are you waiting for, trumpets?’

She snatched a mug from his hand and drank deeply, paused to breathe, then finished it off. ‘Drink. Drink or give it to me. There is very little time.’

He looked to the door. ‘Surely everything we say is heard –’

The Contessa took hold of Svenson’s belt and yanked him sharply to one knee. She took his mug and set it down, slopping beer across the varnished cork.

‘We have unfinished business.’

‘Madam, nothing between us –’

She jerked his belt to stop his rising. ‘Speak quietly,’ she whispered. She put her mouth near his ear. ‘We have all manner of unfinished business, Abelard Svenson. Do not deny it.’

‘I will not.’ He swallowed. ‘But this morning – I cannot –’

‘Cannot what?’

‘You took the life of Mrs Dujong –’

‘Someone had to.’

The crack of Doctor Svenson’s open hand across her cheek split the room. He leapt to his feet, furious, appalled.

Her eyes blazed. ‘You’ll pay for that.’

‘I already have.’

The Contessa burst into a raucous laugh. The door opened and two grenadiers peered in, alarmed by the sound of the blow, but now confused by her laughter and the Doctor’s shame-red face. The Contessa waved them away and, docile to hauteur, they went. She laid two fingers on her cheek. ‘My lord.’

‘Whatever you have to say, madam, say it.’

‘Not until you kneel.’ She raised her eyebrows. Svenson sighed and did so, reaching to shift the beer mug.

‘I’ll have that. If you’re not drinking.’ She took another long pull. ‘I’ve been in the baths. No wonder her skin comes off in strips.’

‘Immersion dehydrates the flesh,’ observed Svenson. ‘So does alcohol.’

‘Not beer, surely.’ She offered him the mug. He shook his head, and the Contessa tipped back the rest.

‘Those soldiers will not wait forever. And Schoepfil not at all.’

‘Nor Bronque. Do you know Bronque?’ She gave him the mug, which he set down with annoyance. When he looked back she held a tightly wrapped piece of silk, plucked, while his gaze was diverted, from between her breasts. She tossed it to him, like a treat for a lapdog.

‘I stole that from Celeste Temple. The handkerchief belongs to Robert Vandaariff.’

Svenson unwrapped the silk: a blue glass spur.

‘I have seen these before. At Raaxfall – and in the square –’

‘Everyone has seen them,’ she said. ‘Why give it to her?’

Svenson glanced quickly to the door. ‘It must be different.’

‘I have not time to investigate, but had I the time I do not think I would, as it was given to Celeste precisely before her delivery to me.’

‘I am your enemy just as much as Miss Temple –’

Svenson began to stand. She caught his belt. ‘Of course you are, lord – what does a woman have to do?’

‘To do, madam? To do?’

She bit back whatever tart reply she was about to make and met his eyes. The moment stretched. ‘You’re not afraid of me, are you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘No. You’re afraid of yourself.’

Svenson pursed his lips, shrugged. She relaxed her grip on his belt, and gently arched her wrist so her four fingers slipped inside the Doctor’s trousers.

‘Do you recall,’ she asked, the back of her fingers slipping into his woollen undersuit, ‘our first meeting? When we first spoke?’

Svenson’s body tensed. ‘The St Royale Hotel. I sought the Prince.’

‘And I told you where he was.’

‘Because doing so amused you. You later consigned me to death for the same reason.’

‘But you did not die.’ She studied him closely, warily. Her hand slowly slipped deeper, until her nails just traced his groin, then just as suddenly withdrew. She sat back in the chair. Her manner became brisk.

‘Robert Vandaariff has exchanged Cardinal Chang, who was mine, for Celeste Temple, who was his. Now Celeste – and you – are guests of Drusus Schoepfil –’

‘As are you.’

The Contessa let this pass as immaterial. ‘She must be freed.’

He spoke bitterly. ‘Because the child has died?’

‘What child?’

‘Francesca Trapping! And since Celeste is the other person with knowledge of your horrid book – and thus the Comte – you require her, to sacrifice her as well, to defeat him!’

‘The child is dead?’

‘You sent her to me!’ he said savagely. ‘You sent us to Mrs Kraft! What else could happen?’

The Contessa sighed. ‘I did not know.’

‘Did you care?’

‘About what?’

‘About her!’

The Contessa caught sharp hold of Svenson’s chin and pulled his face to hers.

‘Of course I didn’t!’ she hissed. ‘She was an odious and unnaturally born cast-off. She was doomed, like every girl born to ruin. The world cannot withstand them grown. Their kind makes the world pay.’

She stood, forcing Svenson back onto his heels.

‘I regret you bore the burden. And Madelaine Kraft?’

His mouth was dry. ‘Restored.’

‘Superb. If you survive, you may visit every brainless victim of Oskar’s books and make a fortune reclaiming their precious minds. A grateful nation, lacking such a bounty of overlords, will grovel at your feet.’

‘Did you know it could be done?’

She swept to the door. ‘I do now, don’t I?’

Doctor Svenson held up the handkerchief. ‘And what of this?’

The Contessa lifted her dress and kicked the door. ‘It’s yours now, Doctor. Isn’t that enough for you?’

The grenadier only just dodged from her path. He frowned with jealous disapproval at Svenson, still on the floor, and hurried after her.

Svenson paused to help the Duchess back through the oval door. Kelling had collected his papers. The footmen and the wounded soldiers had been taken away. Mr Nordling had returned with a dozen men of the court, and, though their presence had caused the Ministry men to retire – and then to join their number – Schoepfil paid them no mind. He told Kelling to be quick and sneered at Svenson’s kindness.

‘You must answer, sir,’ called Nordling, sword cane in hand. ‘You have transgressed, most gravely – and the person of Her Grace –’

‘Let him pass, Mr Nordling.’ The Duchess squeezed the Doctor’s hand as she pulled away.

‘Of course I’ll pass!’ cried Schoepfil. ‘I’ll leave the man who tries to stop me in tears!’

The Duchess spoke to the room. ‘That girl, the colonial with the Chinese name – she said the realm was under attack. The realm.’

‘O stuff,’ muttered Schoepfil. ‘On and on …’

‘Robert Vandaariff is Our Majesty’s enemy. I do not know who is strong enough to stand against him – hush, Mr Nordling, your loyalty is noted – save perhaps these criminals. Mr Schoepfil, and this Italian murderess –’

‘And that German spy,’ observed Schoepfil, ‘awaiting the noose in two lands.’

The Duchess looked to Svenson with dismay.

‘No tale is completely true, Your Grace. What can be done, will be.’ Svenson tipped his head. ‘And then – only then – will I consent to hang.’

‘Leather-skinned valise,’ growled Schoepfil. ‘Interfering sheepdog. Did you see the hairs on her chin? In her ears? Less a duchess than a horse blanket.’ He pounded on the ceiling and shouted to the coachman. ‘Run them down! There is a curfew! They are in the wrong!’

They had extracted themselves from the Thermæ without issue, swift passage assured by the same duchess Schoepfil now hotly condemned.

‘To call you a criminal, sir,’ added Kelling. ‘And in such company.’

‘She will answer, Mr Kelling. Every last one will answer for every last thing. I have friends.’ Schoepfil sniffed at Svenson, who sat next to the crate of papers. ‘The way of the world, after all. Chemical equivalencies. Do you understand my meaning?’

‘Alchemy?’

‘You disapprove!’ Schoepfil laughed. ‘The fact is, so do I! And yet – and yet!’ He twirled a hand with a flourish. ‘My uncle is not, in fact, a fool!’

Schoepfil turned his attention to Kelling, who nodded with a professional deliberation, memorizing his master’s commands. Svenson shut his eyes. His last cigarette had been sacrificed to calm his nerves after the Contessa’s departure. A foolish indulgence, for he’d been desperate for another after studying the glass spur.

The grenadier had collected the mugs, scowled at the spilt-upon floor and come back with a rag, swabbing with an angry, protective zeal. Then Svenson had been alone. He had unfolded the square of silk, staring at the blue disc as if it were some faerie token that, wrongly handled, would serve his doom.

The spurs found at the Xonck works had been infused with rage, and it seemed reasonable that the simplicity of the content was determined by the small amount of glass. But here was a spur made for the specific target of the Contessa.

Such were both the Contessa’s power and Vandaariff’s invention that Svenson hesitated to touch the thing with bare flesh, much less gaze inside. He thought of Euripides’ sorceress giving a poisoned gown to her lover’s new bride, consuming the girl in flames … but that seemed wrong. The spur would never be so volatile, because of Celeste. Vandaariff could not depend on his messenger’s lack of curiosity – thus, unless Miss Temple was its true target, which Svenson did not believe, the spur must be benign to Miss Temple yet deadly to the Contessa. Would it be safe for him as well?

He grazed the glass with a fingertip and felt a flutter at the back of his neck. He took a breath and pressed his finger onto the flat side of the disc. The hair rose on his nape and his breath quickened …

Svenson raised the spur to his eye.

A hollow lightness filled his chest. He was with Elöise, standing on the sand. He was with Corinna in the trees, her hand in his, knowing he must release it before their walk ended and they could be seen. Tenderness overwhelmed him. His eyes brimmed and then spilt tears down the Doctor’s face.

Of course. The deadly spur held love.

They drove past soldiers and torches, angry crowds and noise, even the clatter of hurled stones bouncing off the coach. Doctor Svenson ignored it all. He was exhausted, disgusted by Schoepfil’s self-satisfaction and sick with worry for Celeste. Chang had delivered himself to death to save her, not unlike Svenson himself in the Parchfeldt woods. He twisted into the corner of the seat and felt the pull of the long, puckered scar. Why her, of all people? Why he and Chang? A more unlikely trio would be hard to imagine. Yes, he was a spy, and Chang an assassin – yet Miss Temple remained unlikely in the extreme. But was she the strongest of the three? He recalled their morning in the abandoned tower, the awkward conversation after so long, her palpable distress. Could he or Chang have borne such a torment?

Schoepfil looked up from his papers. ‘Are you uncomfortable, Doctor?’

‘He drank two mugs of beer,’ said Mr Kelling. ‘The guard confessed it.’

‘I do not enjoy beer,’ observed Schoepfil in a tone that made clear, in the imminent domain of Schoepfil, no one else would either. ‘A peasant’s beverage.’

‘Peasants also drink wine,’ said Svenson. ‘And make brandy.’

‘Nonsense.’ Schoepfil returned his nose to a battered notebook. ‘Stuff.’

The coach reached Schoepfil’s home, passing through a cordon of militia. Schoepfil left the box for Kelling, who in turn heaved it into the arms of the first serving man they met. Svenson came last, and was commanded to wait in the main parlour.

‘Would you, or any of your people, have tobacco?’

‘Tobacco stains the teeth,’ replied Schoepfil. ‘Just look at yours!’

A traditionally dressed serving man, in a grey-striped jacket and gloves, eased into his master’s range of vision.

‘What can it be now, Danby?’

‘Callers, sir. They insisted on being seen.’

‘Insist?’

‘An unusual pair of persons, Mr Schoepfil. The lady is most demanding, claiming that you need to see her. I have allowed them to wait.’

‘A lady and a younger man?’ asked Svenson. ‘He darker than her?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Schoepfil snapped his fingers in Danby’s face as he marched away. ‘He is not a sir. He is no one. Need, do I? We shall see. Kelling – everything for transport!’

Servants piled up more boxes taken from an inner room. When Schoepfil reappeared, all smiles, it was with Madelaine Kraft and Mahmoud. Doctor Svenson rose. Schoepfil ignored him.

‘If there was but time!’ He prised the lid off a box and peered inside. ‘O yes – you will enjoy this!’

He offered a square of parchment to Mrs Kraft. Svenson met the eyes of Mahmoud, but the dark man’s face was impassive.

‘A woodcut, aus dem Rheinland, only one other copy, and that owned by my uncle! From the fourth day of the narrative. Extremely rare. The Executioner.’

Mrs Kraft nodded appreciatively, passed the page to Mahmoud. ‘And how did you come to share your uncle’s interest?’

‘Let us say I follow the wind,’ said Schoepfil. ‘You know Doctor Svenson, I believe? One might say you were in his debt.’

‘One might.’

‘He is my captive. If either of you makes a single gesture of aid our bargain is null. If you wish to reach Harschmort, you will submit to my management in this and all things.’

‘The girl died,’ Doctor Svenson told them. ‘Bronque stripped the Old Palace to its nails. Michel Gorine is their prisoner. This man, with whom you ally, has destroyed your livelihood and scattered your people to the law, or worse.’

Schoepfil raised both hands as if to take hold of Svenson’s throat. The butler in the grey-striped jacket stopped him with a cough.

‘Christ alive, what is it, Danby!’

‘Men at the door, sir. And soldiers surrounding the house, sir. Grenadiers.’

‘Grenadiers, you say?’

‘Also members of an irregular unit, sir, in green.’

With an exaggerated care Schoepfil tiptoed to a latticed Chinese screen and put his face to a viewing-hole. At his signal Danby answered the door. Madelaine Kraft joined Schoepfil at the screen. He made room with a scowl.

It took a moment for Svenson to place the voice at the door: Vandaariff’s white-haired captain, whose request for Schoepfil was deflected with a lie. Then a second voice, hard and loud, Colonel Bronque …

Svenson leant close to Mahmoud. ‘They beat him very badly. Bronque himself.’

The door was closed and Schoepfil skipped from the screen to the shutters, watching his visitors go down the stairs.

‘Who was there?’ Mahmoud asked.

‘My uncle’s man, Foison,’ replied Schoepfil. ‘Ghastly fellow.’

‘And Colonel Bronque?’

‘O yes. Bronque slipped in that they search for you, they know. We must buy time. Danby – I’ll need a messenger, no one wheezy.’

‘And Cardinal Chang,’ observed Madelaine Kraft. ‘In chains.’

Mahmoud frowned. ‘I thought Chang was dead.’

‘No one dies when they ought to,’ said Schoepfil, ‘uncles least of all. So that was Cardinal Chang? Provocative …’ He took the woodcut print from Mahmoud, and chuckled. ‘Yes, this will do perfectly.’

Mr Kelling stood ready with pen and ink. Schoepfil dipped the nib and scratched a careful line across the woodcut.

‘What is that?’ asked Mrs Kraft.

‘A message, of course. And misdirection …’

‘What is this?’

Mahmoud had reached into the box of papers and lifted out a leather volume that, even as he handled it, began to moult paper and ash. Schoepfil hurried to take it from his hands.

‘No! That is an extremely valuable grimoire! Please set it down!’

For the briefest instant Mahmoud’s eye caught the Doctor’s, then the dark man twisted away from Schoepfil, towards the light. ‘Valuable? But so much of it has been burnt –’

‘Yes, yes – an accident at the Thermæ –’

Mahmoud innocently shifted further from Schoepfil. With the stealthy ease of a cat Doctor Svenson took the pen and began to write, tiny letters, quickly made. Kelling had joined his master in retrieving the precious book, and Mrs Kraft chided her son to return it. By the time Schoepfil finally snatched up the woodcut to fold and seal, the Doctor had retreated to his seat.

An hour later Svenson sat across a coach from Mrs Kraft. Mahmoud was beside her and Kelling next to Svenson, boxes between them and cluttering the floor. Mr Schoepfil travelled with Colonel Bronque, a wedge of soldiers clearing their way to Stropping.

‘Mrs Kraft, what did you learn from being healed?’

She studied Svenson closely, and he saw with pity how every transaction of her life must be a thing of leverage and guile. He did not doubt her desire for revenge, her determination to wager all. That she was willing to risk those around her should not have surprised him – what brothel keeper does not rise on the destruction of others? – but that it would include her own son took him aback. Had he misjudged her, or the hell to which she’d been consigned?

‘Your hands shake, Doctor.’

He raised one to his face and saw the thin vibration. ‘I am in the habit of consuming more tobacco than has been available. And I am tired. And …’ He met her eyes and smiled. ‘I am sad.’

‘Sad?’

‘When I ask what you have learnt, it is not as physician or confessor, but what you remember about the Comte d’Orkancz, as only that would be valuable to Mr Schoepfil. Something he did to one of your women? Or is your insight from another source – Francis Xonck? You must have known him very well –’

‘Do not say a thing!’ warned Mr Kelling.

The Doctor wanted to smile, for there was no better lever against Mrs Kraft’s silence than a presumptuous underling demanding that she keep it. But either she was not so easily provoked, or Mr Kelling was too insignificant.

At Stropping, as they waited for the soldiers to clear a path, the Doctor had the presence of mind to put money into Mahmoud’s hands and shove him to a kiosk, open to brisk business despite the hour. ‘Anything – anything he has.’

Schoepfil glanced from where he stood with Bronque – letting the Colonel, who clearly relished the task, harangue the militia officers charged with keeping order – scowling at Mahmoud’s departure, and then, having discerned the cause, wagging a finger in Svenson’s direction. Svenson only looked away. The station echoed with every sound ten thousand desperate people could make. Whistles shrieked. Railwaymen laboured to add extra carriages to trains going in every direction.

‘Turkish.’ Mahmoud handed him a flat red tin. ‘All that was left.’

‘Bless you.’ Svenson popped the lid with a thumbnail and inhaled. He plucked out a slender cigarette in coffee-coloured paper, tapped it twice on the tin and stuck it in his mouth. ‘You have no idea.’

‘Why do we wait?’ Mahmoud asked Mr Kelling.

‘Our special arrangements have been misplaced in all this nonsense. This fire.’

Svenson met Mahmoud’s gaze over a flaming match set to the cigarette.

‘Damned inconvenient,’ added Kelling.

‘I expect it spoils Lord Vandaariff’s plans as well. He counts on our arrival as much as we do.’

‘Not mine,’ said Mrs Kraft.

‘Of course yours – unless Foison and Chang are dead. He will expect us all.’

‘They are dead. With all of the Colonel’s men hunting them? Men like that are common enough, and they die commonly too.’

‘I do not think you know Cardinal Chang.’

‘I assure you, I do, Doctor. And his faults. Do you know of his feeling for Angelique?’

‘Something of it. I was called to treat her, by the Comte.’

Mrs Kraft shook her head. ‘Chang could have had her. Of course she was indifferent to him, as his behaviour was – almost courtly. But he could have taken her.’

‘That is not Chang.’

‘A man who indulges desire without acting to satisfy it deserves contempt. And that is Chang’s doom.’

‘What will be yours?’ asked Doctor Svenson.

‘Stop.’ Mahmoud cut in, for they had both grown sharp. ‘Where are they going?’

The bulk of Bronque’s grenadiers jogged past, double time, a blue column returning up the grand staircase and into the night.

‘The other stations.’ Mr Kelling raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘To make sure.’

‘That means Foison and Chang still live, and we must take care.’ Mahmoud reached for the red tin and helped himself to a cigarette.

‘I do beg your pardon!’ Svenson fumbled for a match. ‘I did not think to offer.’

Mahmoud leant to the light, and then exhaled. ‘People often don’t. One would think I were invisible. Or small. Or – what is the word? – property.’

A weary conductor let them board the east-bound train, a motley group nevertheless given precedence over the waiting elite. In the third carriage Schoepfil pointed to a compartment. ‘Here, Mr Kelling! And Mrs Kraft, with your man. To Orange Locks – as we have agreed.’

‘We have not agreed on anything,’ replied Mrs Kraft.

‘Kelling has the particulars – I have considered your every wish! Do not fret, you will have the advantage of our numbers.’

‘What if you and I need to speak?’

‘We will not. I will be further up the train – quite impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Now, now – I have given you sanctuary; you must give your trust. Doctor Svenson?’ Schoepfil wagged his finger. ‘With me, sir. You are required.’

The door to the front-most carriage had been augmented with a metal plate and a substantial lock that Colonel Bronque, leaving two men posted outside, turned once he, Schoepfil and Doctor Svenson had passed through. The compartment walls and seats had been removed, the draperies replaced with more sheet metal.

An array of machines took up the centre of the carriage – not the pipe organ of brass and steel that Svenson had seen at the Institute, but rather a modest scatter of brass canisters and tin-lined tubs, linked by copper wire and rubberized hose. Two much thicker bundles of cable ran to the far end of the car and out through holes cut in the wall.

‘Amazing, yes?’ Schoepfil clapped his hands. ‘You have seen it before – Margaret Hooke, Elspeth Poole, even Angelique – marvels misunderstood and too soon gone! Now you will assist us!’

‘Vandaariff must fall, Doctor.’ Colonel Bronque turned a chair and straddled it. ‘For the common good.’

‘So you can replace him?’

Schoepfil removed his jacket and laid it on the table to avoid a crease. ‘I am his heir.’

‘Better us than that Italian hellcat.’ Bronque gave a sour look to Schoepfil. ‘You should not have allowed her to escape.’

‘I did not allow a thing. She killed two of your men, neat as a snap! Besides, you – well, decency forbids me to say more.’

Bronque took a pull from a silver flask and exhaled. ‘It was never the time.’

‘You were her lover?’ blurted Doctor Svenson. ‘I thought it was Pont-Joule.’

Schoepfil blew air through his lips. ‘The Colonel, Pont-Joule, Matthew Harcourt –’

‘Not Harcourt,’ Bronque cut in. ‘There she only teased.’

‘You see! He defends! O her hooks are in!’ Schoepfil snorted at Svenson. ‘I wonder she has not added you to their number!’

Bronque laughed and took another drink. Svenson felt his face redden. ‘She may be beautiful, but her heart is black.’

‘Spoken like a man never asked,’ said Bronque. He tucked the flask away. ‘Shall we?’

‘I would prefer to be in motion,’ replied Schoepfil.

‘Why? You’ll need to rest. And I’m getting out before you.’

‘O very well.’ Schoepfil sniffed, almost girlishly. ‘Doctor, we take you into our confidence.’

‘I have not agreed to anything.’

‘But you will agree. Because my uncle, as my colleague says, must fall.’

‘You forget Chang. You forget Miss Temple.’

‘One cannot forget what one has never considered in the first place. The former is doomed through my uncle’s science; the latter insignificant altogether.’

Svenson found the red tin and selected another cigarette.

‘My Lord, Doctor,’ sighed Schoepfil. Bronque laughed and held out a hand. Svenson offered him the box and struck a match for them both. The smoke touched his lungs like a perfume of nettles.

‘If you need me, your disapproval can go hang. Now take off your gloves and show me what you’ve done, then tell me how you did it, and what madness I’m to help you do next.’

‘Power, of course, comes from the engine. We sacrifice speed, but the duration is brief – has to be, or the same mistakes are made. No one understands the degree to which the Comte’s achievement was determined by aesthetics. Three women turned to glass.’ Schoepfil tugged at his goatee. ‘Beautiful – no doubt of it –’

‘An abomination,’ said Svenson.

‘An opinion –’

‘I knew the women.’

‘The point is that complete transformation is neither necessary nor useful.’ Schoepfil raised one bright blue hand, then rapped it hard on the table top. ‘As you can see, still flesh, still mine to command. And yet …’

Schoepfil closed with Doctor Svenson and, showing the same preternatural speed as before, stabbed his hands in half a dozen places about the Doctor’s body, well ahead of any attempt to block him. The blows became mere touches at the last instant, but the potential damage was unpleasantly clear. Red-faced again, Svenson raised his arms and stepped away.

‘I have experienced your skill.’

‘You did not know the cause.’

‘But I knew there was one. You are no athlete. You have acquired only speed.’

‘More than that, Doctor, speed is but the scent off the dish. The advance is in the mind.’ Schoepfil grinned. ‘Everything my uncle has acquired, I have plundered – he is betrayed by his own people, who already cleave to my inheritance.’

Svenson turned to Bronque. ‘And were you a part of this? He can’t have done it by himself.’

‘But I did, Doctor! One hand at a time – the left is a touch less sensitive, but one learns!’

‘We became partners after the fact.’ Bronque clapped his hands. ‘Drusus. There is not time. And Doctor Svenson is not our friend.’

‘No, he is not!’ Schoepfil returned to the jumble of machines. ‘I cannot tell you how much I wanted to throttle him at the Thermæ.’ He peered at Svenson over his spectacles. ‘The Kraft woman’s cure is a miracle. You must dedicate the same knowledge and skill to our interests. Only then will you survive.’

‘And if I told you I know nothing, that I merely followed instructions?’

Schoepfil laughed. ‘The Colonel would dangle you from this train until your head met the wheels.’

After examining the paths through which the power flowed, how it was held and released in the different brass and glass chambers, the Doctor had to admit, and the admission frightened him, that Schoepfil was right. The Comte’s alchemical creed had driven his discoveries to extreme forms, such as Lydia Vandaariff’s pregnancy and the three glass women. With the exception of the glass books, the Comte had largely eschewed practical applications. Schoepfil’s moderation – unburdened by ideology or belief – exposed a vaster and more terrifying danger.

‘The speed of thought.’ Schoepfil wiggled the fingers of both hands to mimic the energy coursing through the wires. ‘The property of blue glass that touches the mind – that speaks in thought’s chemical tongue. By lengthening time of exposure and lessening its intensity, the transformational effects are diminished – and, since I do not desire to be made of glass, there is no penalty. And, at the sacrifice of discoloration, what I do acquire is sensitivity. While Mrs Marchmoor could sift the thoughts of others, I am content to sense their impulses – their energy. And then respond with all of thought’s speed.’

‘Imagine an army,’ said Bronque. ‘Untouchable swordsmen. Accuracy of fire.’

‘I do not know how much of the Comte’s lore my uncle has digested, though it seems he feeds at the same alchemical trough, that he believes. If he’s wrapped around visions of triple-souled births and exaltations of new flesh, we are halfway home!’

‘Do not discount his practicality,’ said Svenson. ‘The explosions in the city, the spurs.’

Schoepfil pursed his lips. ‘Well. Perhaps.’

Svenson nodded at the machines, the tin-lined tubs of water. ‘And now?’

‘My legs! I shall move like a ghost! The perfect provocateur.’

Schoepfil undressed to cotton underwear whose legs had been removed, so that he might undergo the procedure and retain his modesty. On the table lay what looked like an oversized bandolier. Each loop of leather was padded with orange felt and held a bolt of blue glass, larger than a shell for an elephant gun. Several loops were empty, but in one the charge of blue glass had been replaced with the flask of bloodstone Svenson had brought from the Institute. He fished out a handkerchief and prised loose a bolt of glass.

‘This fits in the first chamber?’

‘It does.’ Schoepfil settled himself on a padded stool with each foot in a tub and flicked his toes in the water.

Svenson slotted the glass in place and fastened the chamber’s hatch. He began to gather the black hoses. ‘The Comte did attempt something like this, you know …’

‘Well, his mind was exceedingly fertile. One entire notebook dedicated to hair –’

‘Angelique, from Mrs Kraft’s brothel. I was called in to consult, after the fact.’

Schoepfil shrugged, having no interest in a whore.

‘The experiment went wrong. It was as if she were drowned, without ever going underwater.’ Svenson strapped the hoses to Schoepfil’s bare legs and fitted his feet with webbed leather slippers. ‘His inability to reverse the effects led to her being substituted as the third glass woman, instead of Caroline Stearne.’

‘What exactly went wrong?’ asked Bronque.

‘I never learnt.’

‘Doesn’t help us, then,’ said Schoepfil.

The whistle sounded. The train began to slow. Bronque consulted his watch.

‘Crampton Place. Once the train starts again we’ll throw the switch.’

Through the next stations, from Packington to St Porte, every time the Colonel stepped from the carriage, two grenadiers entered to make sure Doctor Svenson did nothing to Mr Schoepfil, asleep on a straw pallet. Bronque had drawn a blanket around Schoepfil to his neck, as the last thing soldiers going into battle needed was to see a man with his limbs turned blue.

The procedure went smoothly. Svenson followed the mechanics of energy, his understanding augmented by the ordeal of Mrs Kraft. Well into the change Schoepfil could still converse, guiding Svenson through tight-clenched teeth until the blue colour began to saturate his skin. Bronque caught Schoepfil’s head when he fell back insensible, but it was for Svenson alone to judge the moment when the power must be cut off, when going further risked the next stage of transformation, turning Schoepfil’s flesh to glass.

Had he erred, he knew, Bronque would have taken his life. He wondered at the strange alliance between the two men, both possessed of a certain talent, yet judged by their betters to be mediocrities. Were they kindred spirits of spite? Certainly they had staked their lives on this one throw. Without Schoepfil inheriting his uncle’s empire – that protecting influence – Bronque’s diversion of an elite regiment in a time of public crisis would bring a court martial and disgrace, if not a firing squad. And if Schoepfil failed, for his abuses at the Thermæ alone he would be banished or imprisoned. For the next hours, however, both men remained free as lords.

With the second leg finished and Schoepfil collapsed into a stupor, Svenson was left alone with Bronque. He blew smoke at the rear of the train. ‘How is Mrs Kraft here, after what you did to her people?’

Bronque laughed harshly and fished out his flask. ‘If Vandaariff dies, she won’t care about a few sticks of furniture and some trollops.’

‘You are an expert on women’s feelings?’

Bronque screwed up his face and took a pull of whisky. ‘Still brooding about the Contessa? Well, you may indeed. I’ve never had a more magnificent –’

‘No, Colonel, I am not brooding. Nor do I desire your narrative of conquest. But I am obliged to ask, are you so sure she did not conquer you? And the details of this very campaign?’

‘What in hell do you mean?’

Svenson said nothing. Bronque made to drink, but put the flask down.

‘I would know.’

‘Would you? She has learnt to make her own blue glass. With it, she could have stolen your memories or persuaded you with new ones. Ask yourself, Colonel, did you ever have her? Are you sure? I was there when she cut Pont-Joule’s throat. I did not know they were en amour, but it did not stay her blade. If you think she would not ransack your mind like a trunk, then you’re an ass.’

Bronque flushed with anger but did not speak. Instead he pocketed the flask and rubbed his face with both hands. He stood and stalked to the door. Svenson heard him address his men, but not the words. Bronque came back and reclaimed his seat.

‘If there is coffee on this train we will have some.’ Svenson nodded blandly, for Bronque’s sharp face still showed rage. ‘And I’m a fool not to allow for what you say. Which means that Mrs Kraft’s information must be considered in an altogether new light.’

‘Because she has only recently appeared,’ said Svenson.

‘And thus represents the one thing the Contessa categorically cannot know. And not only did that woman escape her captivity, by doing so she avoided a very specific fate. I planned to inform Vandaariff of the Contessa’s location, and Lord only knows what he would have done to her. But somehow she chose just that time to get away.’

‘As if she knew … or that you’d told her?’

‘But why would I? It was my plan!’ Bronque glared at Schoepfil on the pallet. ‘If you tell him this I’ll cut your throat.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because you’re as desperate as I am. And, because a damned whore-mistress knows something the Contessa can’t anticipate, I must protect her at all costs. But, however important it might now be to reach Vandaariff before sunrise, that doesn’t change our having to get through his front door.’

Colonel Bronque slapped his thigh with frustration. Doctor Svenson took that moment to palm the flask of bloodstone and drop it in his pocket.

They woke Schoepfil before Orange Locks, where Bronque and his men would disembark. Schoepfil exulted in his altered legs: vivid blue from the toes to mid-calf, with marbled streaks extending up each sparsely haired thigh.

‘Did it work?’ asked Bronque.

‘O I do expect so!’ Schoepfil rotated each ankle, then hopped from one leg to the other. He snapped his fingers – a command for his clothing – and the Doctor grudgingly passed Schoepfil his trousers.

‘Do mind the crease!’ Schoepfil chided, shaking them out and slipping one foot through. ‘Anything in the meantime?’

‘Nothing to change our plans,’ Bronque replied. ‘A few prisoners. Pretending to be bankers. Michel Gorine, for one.’

‘No! That little nuisance must have set him free.’

‘What matters is that he tried to see Mrs Kraft.’

‘Very good of you to prevent it. Who are the others?’

‘One I don’t know – foreigner. The second is Vandaariff’s man from the Institute. Augustus Trooste.’

Schoepfil paused between shirt buttons. ‘With Gorine? Is it a scheme?’

Both men turned to Svenson. He sighed. ‘I have been under guard with you.’

‘Could be Chang,’ Bronque admitted. ‘Neither he nor Foison showed at any station, and the men sent after them did not return.’

Svenson made a point of balling up Schoepfil’s waistcoat and tossing it across. Schoepfil caught it with a frown and stroked the silk to smooth it.

‘Perhaps they are all dead. The violence in the town.’

‘Perhaps.’ Bronque snapped shut his watch. ‘You know what to do?’

Schoepfil wormed into his jacket. ‘Not to worry. I shall pass like a shade.’

Bronque gave Svenson a warning glance not to speak. ‘We do not know what to expect. It may be that Mrs Kraft’s knowledge –’

‘Yes, yes, you are the tactician. I leave it to you, though Gorine may serve as leverage over the woman.’ Schoepfil pulled on his gloves, as dapper a figure as he had ever been. He extended a hand to Bronque. ‘Until the finish.’ He laughed. ‘Rebirth.’

Bronque shook his partner’s hand, but did not speak. He turned for the door.

‘O do not be dour, Colonel! We will not fail!’

Bronque rapped on the metal panel. The door swung open, letting in the racket of the wheels. He nodded to them, without speaking, and stepped through.

Schoepfil sat on the table, legs dangling. Svenson had taken the Colonel’s chair. On his lap Schoepfil held an oblong wooden box, the lid positioned to block Svenson’s view. He ran a finger across its contents with a satisfied smile. The train rattled to its terminus.

‘You’re a soldier – of sorts, anyway. Are they all so superstitious?’

‘Most people are, when it comes to death.’

‘They should be confident.’

‘Solitude lacks comfort. And there is no greater solitude than mortality.’ Svenson rubbed his eyes. ‘Your uncle who will not die, I expect you think him a fool.’

‘The biggest.’

‘You have given your body to his same foolishness – this alchemy.’

‘I am not dying.’

‘You might have died ten times today. I could have shot you through the head myself.’

Schoepfil smiled. ‘You would not have!’

‘I would have very well,’ replied Svenson testily. ‘But for the same reason you keep me – that you may prove of use. Another man would have spattered your brains –’

But Schoepfil had already burst into laughter. ‘I be of use to you! O that is prime!’ Schoepfil drummed a hand on his knee. ‘You will be lucky to avoid the scaffold!’

The Doctor tapped his ash onto the floor, loathing the man, and even more the truth in his words. For a blessed moment Schoepfil did not speak. Svenson allowed his mind to touch upon the painful day he and Phelps had returned to Parchfeldt … the air wind-kissed, the clouds blooming white. He was no stranger to death. The medical habit of distance had run deep enough to let him search through the woods, and to at last identify the bundle of limbs – taken first for weather-beaten twigs – and the colour of the tattered dress she’d worn. Phelps had hung back with a handkerchief to his face, but Doctor Svenson could not. His hand had gently turned the corpse’s face, no longer Elöise, and, yet, he could not un-see her, still the woman he’d loved in all her ruined parts. The gaping, gummy crease from the Contessa’s blade, blackened with long-dried blood. The eyes cruelly sunken, glazed pale as milk. Her fingers in the grass, always so thin, now grey at the tips, puffed with bloat, foreign. He had spread the tarpaulin and so very tenderly eased her onto it, turning his eyes from the flattened earth where she had lain, the insects and worms writhing at the sudden light.

It is an illusion that we are not such objects while we still live, the Doctor had told himself. And in the time since, while Elöise mouldered in the garden of her uncle’s cottage, where had time carried him – what achievement lay in his staying alive?

Small gestures with Phelps and Cunsher, meagre checks against their enemies. Preserving Celeste Temple’s life, and Chang’s – for a time. And his own animal resurgence – the compulsion of life – had come at the provocation of an outright monster. Could there be any stronger proof of an indiscriminate world?

He groped for the red metal tin. ‘I assume we approach Harschmort by the canal? Timed to coincide with the Colonel’s arrival at the gate?’

‘O more than that, Doctor.’

Svenson sighed, then asked, as was expected. ‘How so?’

Schoepfil snapped the box shut and set it aside. ‘I do not expect to be alone.’

They disembarked at the Orange Canal Station with two grenadiers, the last of Bronque’s men, not a single other soul to be seen. The Doctor inhaled the salt tang of the sea.

‘I thought we would be joined.’

‘Not here, Doctor. We must to the canal.’

So rapid was Schoepfil’s pace that Svenson and the grenadiers were forced into an awkward trot. The Doctor addressed them as they ran.

‘Despite your orders, I wish to be civil – there is no telling what difficulties may drive us together. I am Captain-Surgeon Svenson of the Macklenburg Navy.’

Neither soldier spoke, so Svenson bent to the nearest, stripes on his sleeve. ‘Sergeant of grenadiers is no small achievement. Had I a hat, I would touch it to you.’

At this the tall sergeant smiled. ‘Barlew, sir, sergeant these two years. This is Poggs. You don’t want to cross Private Poggs.’

Svenson spoke across Barlew to Poggs, with a respectful gravity. ‘I’m sure I do not. But I am more concerned with your own safeties.’

‘Not to worry, sir,’ said Barlew. ‘But very good of you.’

They nearly collided with Schoepfil when the man suddenly stopped. Sergeant Barlew muttered an apology but Schoepfil hissed him to silence, peering around him in the gloom. Svenson saw nothing and heard only the wind. Schoepfil flexed his hands, as if stroking the air for scent. He whispered to the soldiers, ‘One of you stay here. Wait five minutes, then catch up to us. Be careful. Keep your guard. Come.’

Trooper Poggs diligently stepped aside and the others hurried on until the dunes were replaced by the shining surface of the Orange Canal. Its walkways were empty, with not even a watchman’s lantern. Schoepfil pointed away to a glow across the grass.

‘Harschmort.’

Svenson turned to the canal. ‘But is this not where we expect whoever will join us?’

‘Be patient, Doctor. Who is this?’

Schoepfil darted to the side with astonishing speed. Footfalls came towards them from the dark. The Sergeant’s bayonet was fixed and ready, but a whisper made clear it was Poggs.

‘Report!’ hissed Schoepfil.

‘Someone following all right. I couldn’t get him, sir. Kept hanging back.’

‘But who is it?’ Schoepfil squeezed his hands to fists. ‘And are you sure it is a man?’

‘Wouldn’t be a woman, sir – not out here.’

Abruptly Schoepfil looked up, listening intently. With a pale, questioning expression he turned to Svenson. ‘I don’t hear a thing.’

‘Ought you to?’

‘Colonel Bronque should have reached the gate.’

‘Perhaps he was delayed. Vandaariff has his own men –’

‘No, we should have heard.’

Sergeant Barlew cleared his throat. ‘There was the fire, sir.’

‘What fire?’

‘We saw it behind us, from the train. The Colonel must have burnt the station. Didn’t you see? We were told not to disturb you –’

‘There was no plan to burn any station!’

‘I’m sorry, sir. We must have it wrong, then.’

‘Of all the blasted idiocy! Follow me and watch – beware what traps I avoid – pay attention! Our purpose is stealth, not confrontation. Colonel Bronque is the broadside of cannon. We are the stiletto in the ear. Do you understand?’

‘Why do you need us at all?’ asked Doctor Svenson.

‘I need them to watch you. I will need you to preserve my life.’ Schoepfil darted away, his short, thin legs as brisk as a bird’s.

‘And why in hell should I do that?’ called Svenson.

Schoepfil’s reply echoed off the still canal. ‘Because otherwise she wins!’

The nearest Svenson had seen to it was watching men such as Chang, whose instincts had been thoroughly etched onto the most primitive portions of the brain, where action preceded thought. In Schoepfil’s case it had nothing to do with experience.

Running at full speed, Schoepfil abruptly jumped in the air. When Svenson and the soldiers reached the same point, they found black wire stretched between two huts, tied to an explosive charge. Carefully they stepped over and kept on – past more wires and beds of glass spikes hidden in the path. Veering around the last, Svenson glanced back and caught a glimpse of motion. Someone did follow, and aped Schoepfil’s safe path as well.

Muffled cries and the crack of breaking glass reached them with Schoepfil’s warning.

‘Stay back! Wait for the wind!’

Svenson perceived a cloud of smoke and watched it break apart, towards the sea. He advanced to find two men in green on the ground, their heads encased by brass helmets. Each carried a canvas satchel of apple-sized glass balls, several of which lay broken at their feet.

‘Hurry!’ called Schoepfil, already well ahead.

More traps and men – so many that Barlew and Poggs, wading in with their bayonets, reached Schoepfil before he could finish the last. Svenson, without a weapon, hung back, hoping to snatch something off one of the fallen men, but Barlew took the Doctor’s arm before he could.

They joined Schoepfil at a set of glass garden doors. This was the eastern wing of Harschmort. Schoepfil’s face gleamed with perspiration but he smiled.

‘Now we are to it! Follow some steps behind, weapons ready. The new construction has been concentrated in the western wing –’

Schoepfil whipped his head towards the outbuildings, then lunged for the door. Svenson heard the explosive pop of breaking glass as Schoepfil hauled himself through. Poggs and Barlew sank in a cloud of smoke. Schoepfil slammed the door even as the panes shattered, smoke rising around them from the shards.

Svenson clapped a hand over his mouth and ran – for an instant after Schoepfil, but then veering wildly away. He heard Schoepfil’s cries of outrage, but still more glass and smoke prevented any pursuit. Svenson crossed the ballroom floor before risking a look back: a distant figure like a tall tropical insect, all orange and brass, with two pitiless glass eyes that marked the Doctor as he fled.

Construction in the western wing, Schoepfil had said. Svenson gathered his memories of Harschmort as he ran, but the carpets were gone and the furniture covered with white sheets. He brought himself to a panting stop when the floor changed to black-and-white chequers. This was near the kitchens – at the corridor’s end had been the staircase descending to the Comte’s underground chamber. Chang had described it destroyed, collapsed to form a vast crater. And yet … renovation. Svenson began to trot in that direction.

At a swinging wooden door he paused and peered into a scullery. A heavy steel cleaver stuck up from a butcher’s block, and Svenson wrenched with both hands until the blade came free. A woman in dark livery watched from an inner doorway. Past her more servants gathered around a teapot.

‘Everyone all right?’ whispered Svenson.

The woman nodded.

‘Excellent. Stay here – you’ve all been told, haven’t you?’

The woman nodded. Svenson turned for the door, then craned his head back. ‘Beg your pardon – so much has changed – the western wing?’

‘No one goes there, sir.’

The cook was joined by the others, the increase in numbers heightening the dubious nature of his uniform, his accent, his filthy appearance.

‘That’s my cutting knife,’ said one of the men.

‘I will not abuse it.’ With an afterthought Svenson sketched a bow of thanks. ‘Not to worry. I do serve the Queen.’

The disapproving man only pursed his lips. ‘Queen’s an old haddock.’

Where the staircase had stood was a wall of new-laid brick, unplastered and without a door. This route blocked, Svenson followed the path of recent construction and eventually met voices, coming near. He scrambled behind a cloth-draped statue of an Eastern goddess (nearly putting out his eye on a finger of her fourth arm). The voices went past: two men in green with carbines guarding a half-dozen shambling, bandaged grenadiers.

He walked on, gripping the cleaver. The corridor was gritty with plaster and sawdust, and ended at a wide, high foyer. He had reached the front of the house. Svenson flattened himself against the wall.

The foyer was filled with bodies: grenadiers. Unlike the Customs House, these men were not dead: they stirred and moaned, slowly regaining their senses. A group of six, standing shakily, was bullied to order by Vandaariff’s militia.

More of Vandaariff’s men marched through the main door carrying the same boxes that Kelling had so assiduously cared for. These men wore brass helmets, and dropped the boxes without ceremony. There was no sign of Kelling, or of Bronque. Perhaps they were still outside. Perhaps they’d been killed.

The western wing lay beyond the foyer, but Svenson could not cross without being seen – any more than he could remain where he was. The group of grenadiers began to trudge towards Svenson’s arch. He retreated to a squat piece of cloth-covered furniture and ducked under the sheet, only to find a solid Chinese trunk. Svenson curled into a ball. The footfalls passed by, endlessly, but finally he tugged the cloth from his head. Not ten yards away on the opposite wall, similarly peeking from his own shroud, was a young man Svenson did not know.

Carefully the young man slipped free of his hiding place and Svenson recognized the figure who had followed from the canal – orange coat, brass helmet, canvas satchel. He pointed deliberately to the floor.

‘We must go down,’ he whispered.

Svenson nodded. ‘First we must cross the foyer.’

The young man reached into the satchel, coming out with a pair of blue glass balls. He offered one to Svenson, but the Doctor shook his head, leaning close. ‘They have helmets – more than enough to stop us. Still, I have an idea.’

‘What is that?’

The Doctor carefully laid the cleaver on the young man’s throat. ‘That you are my prisoner, Mr Pfaff.’

The last grenadiers were being roused with kicks. Svenson’s quick count of Vandaariff’s men stalled at fifteen, four or five in helmets. Keeping to the wall, he and Pfaff advanced nearly halfway to the far wing before they were seen. The curiosity of Svenson holding a knife to Pfaff’s neck prevented an immediate clash. Instead, Vandaariff’s men formed a line to hem them in, carbines raised. Svenson addressed them as calmly as he could.

‘I am here for Lord Robert Vandaariff. If prevented, I will take the life of this man. Since Lord Vandaariff desires him whole, whoever amongst you provokes my action will pay the penalty. I will speak to Mr Foison.’

‘You’ll speak to me,’ replied a senior guard, shouldering through the line.

‘I am Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson of the Macklenburg Navy. This man is named Pfaff. He has information vital to Lord –’

‘Svenson?’

‘That is correct – and I assure you, unless you allow …’

The Doctor faltered, for the senior guard had taken a paper from his pocket and, upon consulting it, signalled to his men. The four in helmets strode forcefully towards Svenson and Pfaff, then knelt to lift two panels in the floor, exposing a staircase leading down. The drone of machines echoed from below.

‘The Warden. You are expected,’ said the guard. ‘Leave the satchel and the helmet.’

The carbines snapped back to readiness. Pfaff eased the satchel and helmet to the floor.

‘And the knife.’

Svenson dropped the cleaver with a clang. The guard motioned them to the stairs. The soldiers who’d opened the stair doors stood just out of reach … but they did not spring.

In a moment of strange calm, Doctor Svenson reached into his tunic for the red tin, took a cigarette, tucked the tin away and struck a match. He exhaled, and tossed the match aside. Still none of the green-coats attacked. Still mystified, Svenson descended, boots rapping the steel steps like a pair of mallets. Pfaff came after, and his head had just cleared the edge when the panels above them were unceremoniously slammed shut. Both men flinched, Svenson groping for the rail.

‘What did he mean, “Warden”?’ asked Pfaff.

‘I have no idea.’

Their shadows danced above them as they went, elongated demon shapes with twisting limbs. At its base the staircase vanished into black water, like a pen in a massive inkwell. Across the dark pool, too far to jump, awaited a brick wall and a door of unpainted oak.

‘Do you think it’s deep?’ asked Pfaff.

‘I do.’ Svenson knelt and cupped a palm. The water beaded on his skin like oil. ‘It’s warm … and filthy from the machines. I should not drink it.’

‘I had no desire to.’

Svenson thrust his hand into the water and shoved forward, sending small waves at the door. He stood. ‘Come.’

‘Where?’

Svenson extended one foot deliberately over the pool and stepped down. The water did not rise above the ankle of his boot. He used his second foot to kick another wave.

‘Look where the ripples break. There are stones beneath, in a path. Simple, really.’

He picked his way to the door, Pfaff following only after having rolled up his precious chequered trousers. ‘Why would anyone do this?’ Pfaff muttered. ‘Take all this trouble?’

‘To keep people like us out. And I suppose stepping stones instead of a path because the water needs to flow freely.’

‘Why?’

‘To power the machines.’ Svenson reached the door and turned. ‘But it isn’t salt water.’

‘What does that mean?’ Pfaff balanced on the last stone, waiting for him to open the door and make room. Svenson did not.

‘It means the river. Where is the Contessa, Mr Pfaff?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Of course you know.’

‘Open that door.’ Pfaff filled his hands with a slim knife and a brass-knuckle guard.

Svenson nodded across the black water to the stairs. ‘You should go back. The soldiers will not harm you if you do.’

Pfaff spat in the water. So answered, Svenson opened the door and stepped into a scene of his own hell.

Copper wire had been strung around the room on hooks, well away from the floor, which was awash with filthy water like a slaughterhouse with blood. Around a medical table stood a dozen figures in white robes. A large man lay strapped to the table, his face obscured by a black rubber mask that bristled with tubes and wires, his skin the colour of cherrywood.

A robed acolyte knelt to insert a bolt of blue glass into a brass box-stand, one of several strung together. Another acolyte fitted wire inside a wooden box lined with orange felt. Each discarded box cluttering the corners of the room meant another convert, and the faces looking up at their entrance, eyes peering through red livid rings, lacked any expression save cold will.

‘Get away from him,’ called Svenson.

‘We will not,’ replied an acolyte at the head of the table, gripping a brass handle.

‘I am named Warden of this ritual, by your master. This one is not to be reborn.’

‘How do we know you speak the truth?’ asked the man with the handle. His hood hung loose around his shoulders and Svenson glimpsed a grenadier uniform: one of Bronque’s adjutants, captured and already made Vandaariff’s slave.

‘Do you presume?’ Svenson replied haughtily, but felt his ignorance. Nowhere did he recall any warden. What was he intended to do? ‘Where is the Executioner?’ he demanded. ‘Where is the Virgo Lucifera? Where is the Bride?’

The adjutant of grenadiers only shook his head.

‘Then find them!’ shouted Svenson. ‘How else can we continue? Hurry!’

He stabbed a finger at the exit – a curtain, he saw – and the acolytes retreated, bowing and bobbing … all except the adjutant, who remained, still ready to throw the switch. Svenson approached, looking stern.

‘Why do you delay?’

The adjutant swallowed, fighting some inner command. ‘I … I have surrendered my will, in order to be free … my desires have been redeemed …’ His mouth groped for words. ‘The – the –’

‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’ Svenson asked gently.

The adjutant shook his head.

‘Where is Mrs Kraft?’

‘Consumed. Consumed. Every last soul shall be –’

Pfaff’s brass-bound fist shot into the adjutant’s jaw. Svenson leapt for the handle as the man toppled, luckily, backwards.

‘Good Lord! If he had fallen the other way –’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Pfaff, looking down at Mahmoud.

‘He is not. Untie him, wake him – we must know what happened.’ Svenson prised the mask from Mahmoud’s face, wincing at the clinging layer of gelatin, smeared to conduct the electrical charge. Instead of helping, Pfaff crossed to the curtain.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Why did they listen to you?’

‘Because obviously Vandaariff left instructions –’

‘And you made a bargain,’ Pfaff sneered.

Svenson pulled at the restraints. ‘Everyone has made bargains. While Vandaariff holds Miss Temple or Chang, he is convinced he can command my aid – and so names me Warden to put me near him, where I can defend him against Schoepfil … or you.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Pfaff ducked through the curtain and was gone.

No doubt because of his size, more of the blue glass balls had been employed against Mahmoud to bring him down, and Svenson could not rouse him. The large man was too much to carry. Svenson could only leave him where he was.

Outside the curtain waited a second, wider moat, churning and black. On the opposite side rose another flight of iron steps. The wall behind the staircase bore a line of square embrasures, one of which had its metal grille bent aside. Pulses of water – translucent and clean – slopped over the embrasure’s lip and into the pool.

Svenson carefully negotiated another set of hidden stones. No wet prints from Pfaff climbed the steps – had he bent aside the grille? Svenson was tempted to follow, but reasoned that the sooner he reached Vandaariff the better. The stairs rose to an open trapdoor. He climbed through and gazed about in wonder. If Schoepfil’s makeshift arrangement in the railway carriage had been a pencil sketch of Vandaariff’s prowess, here was a full work executed in oil: more machines with more wires, more hoses, and two large medical tables in the centre. Around the tables, instead of paltry footbaths, hulked five massive coffin-shaped tubs, with space for a sixth. Each tub perched atop a brass-legged dais, like giant, gleaming scarabs. At the beetle’s mouth lurked an ugly crucible chamber, each primed with a bolt of blue glass.

The walls were painted in the style of Oskar Veilandt, though Svenson felt the execution differed … another artist, or the same artist with an older and unsteady set of hands? Much of it echoed the massive painting from Vienna … but as much again had been changed, reimagined. Had Vandaariff’s practical knowledge deepened? Or had his desires changed? Or had a scrap of the old financier’s practical mind remained to assert itself?

Doctor Svenson cupped his hands around his mouth and called: ‘Robert Vandaariff! Oskar Veilandt! I am here!’

‘So you are, my Warden. Welcome.’

Framed in a small archway, Robert Vandaariff stood wearing a white robe, with a half-mask of white feathers over his haggard face. One blackened hand lay on a squat rostrum that sprouted a mix of knobs and handles. A second archway was at Vandaariff’s back, through which Svenson glimpsed a fountain swirling orange and blue. From the reflections Svenson perceived that Vandaariff was sealed away by protective walls of glass. Vandaariff turned a knob on the rostrum and a door closed, blocking off the fountain room.

Svenson wondered if he could use one of the smaller machines to smash the glass. ‘I am not yours. If you do not surrender I will do my best to sabotage every piece of equipment you have.’

Vandaariff shook his head. ‘But, Doctor, surrender is exactly what I intend!’

‘Then enough of this nonsense. Too many people are in danger, and your fortune –’ He checked himself. ‘Robert Vandaariff’s fortune – cannot be passed to dangerous fools.’

‘We agree again. It is a shame we have not taken tea.’

‘It is a shame I have not shot you through the heart.’

‘Don’t play-act a man you are not. Do you imagine I have not divined your nature?’

‘And what is that?’

‘Enough words. See those souls you – you alone – protect.’

With a sudden chill, Svenson turned to the line of tubs.

‘Protect or sacrifice, dear Doctor, whichever you choose.’

The acolytes Svenson had driven from below – and that many more again – returned to the room hauling a sixth porcelain tub with its brass undercarriage. Black hoses were attached and dark fluid poured inside.

The sixth tub contained Madelaine Kraft, her honey-coloured skin covered with painted symbols, as senseless as she’d been in the Old Palace. Now she floated naked in a rust-red fluid.

An acolyte approached the glass wall with a bow. ‘All is ready, my lord.’

Svenson gaped at Professor Trooste’s red-scarred face. ‘Dear God.’

‘Very well!’ Vandaariff did not hide his pleasure at Svenson’s dismay. ‘Proceed.’

Trooste clapped his hands and several acolytes followed him out. More attended to the tubs, wary of the Doctor’s interference, but he was too stricken at seeing whom they held: Mr Kelling, Colonel Bronque, Matthew Harcourt, Michel Gorine and, last of all, poor Cunsher, his lank hair suspended in the viscous liquid.

‘Abate your concern, Doctor – worse decisions await. Nothing is forbidden. Habituate yourself to that fact.’

Svenson did not reply. Any attempt to save them now would fail – he could not, unarmed, defeat so many – and cast away any chance of saving them later. That every tub was fitted with a glass-charged undercarriage meant that a vast amount of power would be channelled into each: the thought of a well-seasoned broth came foully to mind. These were living beings, laid out like stew-meat in a kitchen. The entire enterprise, every lusciously fashioned, brass-bound inch of it, was obscene.

‘It won’t work,’ he shouted to the glass. ‘I see the sepsis in your hands – you’re rotting from within. That you can stand is a miracle.’

‘No miracle, Doctor – deliberately timed. Though time does run short …’

Svenson followed Vandaariff’s eyes. Mr Foison limped into the room, a bloody bandage wrapped around his right thigh. Vandaariff’s dapper captain had become as dishevelled as the Doctor. In one hand he held a silver knife and in the other a leather case. With a horrible certainty Svenson knew it was the same case he’d passed to Miss Temple in the Thermæ.

On Foison’s heels bustled Trooste and his acolytes, bearing Cardinal Chang, naked to the waist and senseless. Before Svenson could move, Foison raised the knife.

‘Is – is he …’

‘Dead? No.’ Foison nodded to the leather case. ‘But neither, would I say, is Cardinal Chang at home.’

Chang was strapped face down on a table, head in a padded frame, as if for surgery. An acolyte carefully cleaned the scar at the base of his spine. Svenson grimaced at the increased inflamation.

‘Mr Foison has been impetuous, but the vessel has arrived.’ Vandaariff broke into a gurgling cough, groped for a shallow bowl and then retched into it, a clot of curdled aspic. ‘I am … unclean – not meant for such a fragile basin … yet to be rid of it is to die.’

‘You will find no relief.’ Svenson called. ‘Robert Vandaariff was a healthy man at Parchfeldt, before contact with that book, and in a few months his body’s been destroyed. Though Chang is healthier still, the same will happen. No matter how you may try to prepare him alchemically, you will find only the same unstoppable decay.’

‘Contact with a book?’ murmured Vandaariff. ‘What book? I have consulted physicians by the score. The precipice I occupy is due to consumption aggravated by an especially grievous bout of blood fever. With no other avenue available, I have turned to the late Comte’s intriguing research.’

He shrugged at Foison, as if to apologize for Svenson’s offensive theories.

‘That is a lie,’ Svenson said to Foison. ‘He needs you to protect him.’

Trooste took a beaker of red liquid from Mrs Kraft’s tub and raised it to the light. An acolyte stood ready with a tray of flasks. Trooste poured the beaker back into the tub and selected a flask, sprinkling its contents judiciously … bright flakes gleaming gold. The flask was capped and they moved on to Mr Harcourt. Another beaker to the light, and another flask, but for Harcourt it was a sprinkling of dark pellets.

The Doctor pressed at Foison. ‘Today, at the Institute, you asked the Professor if he found Lord Vandaariff’s interests troubling –’

‘A test, obviously,’ said Vandaariff.

‘Obviously,’ echoed Trooste. Foison said nothing.

Svenson’s voice rose to a shout. ‘These are good men – Cunsher, Gorine! They do not deserve this barbaric treatment! This is cannibalism – forbidden by every sane precept – Lord, how can you not see?’

Foison said nothing. Vandaariff tapped the glass with his stick.

‘If your outrage can bear it, Doctor, I have a question for Mr Foison myself. Actually I have two. The first from the confession – upon initiation to the Process, secrets will out – of Professor Trooste. He swears that Doctor Svenson destroyed two glass books at the Institute today, and kept one for himself. Somehow, the Doctor lost that book, most likely at the Royal Thermæ, as you have obviously found it. Yet, in the tumult of Cardinal Chang’s arrival and subsequent harvest, I have not had the details of that acquisition. One winnows the list of those who might have taken such a book from the Doctor – Drusus Schoepfil? The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza? If you had bested any of these enemies I should expect to hear of it.’

‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Foison’s thin voice held not an ounce of contrition. ‘It was my intention to report whenever you had time to hear. I found the book in the house of Drusus Schoepfil, in a secret room painted in the manner of the Comte d’Orkancz.’ Foison glanced, impassively, at Svenson. ‘Mr Schoepfil is a dangerous man. As his people occupied the Harschmort train, I was forced to find my own transport, and entrance.’

Vandaariff waved away this inconvenience, along with Foison’s concern. ‘I well know of my nephew’s painted room, and that he has collected every artefact of the Comte he could find. Who do you think made them available? Who instructed those powerful men to promote Drusus Schoepfil as a figurehead in the first place? Though he credits his own ludicrous destiny, he remains as he ever was, an insignificant worm.’

‘You underestimate the power of his belief,’ said Doctor Svenson.

‘The man believes nothing. His heart is inert.’

Svenson had given the book to Miss Temple. Foison must have had it from her, have seen her. But why had he hidden that from Vandaariff? Not from any weakness or wavering of purpose – Foison had used the book to reduce Cardinal Chang to a mindless husk, after all – a fact Trooste’s examination had just confirmed. Had Foison taken the book from the Contessa instead? Was that the alliance? Was Miss Temple even alive?

Foison cleared his throat. ‘There was a second question, my lord?’

‘Indeed, for Doctor Svenson. You were given entry in the company of another man. A Mr Pfaff. Where is he now?’

‘We parted ways.’

Foison cut in, softly but insistently: ‘Pfaff is an ally of the Contessa, my lord. He collected Miss Temple from the tomb. A criminal for hire, like Chang.’

‘Are you in league with Rosamonde, Doctor Svenson? I should find that … amusing.’

‘I am not.’

‘I wondered if you had forgotten poor Mrs Dujong so very soon.’

‘Burn in hell.’

‘I have a better notion – why don’t you come join me?’

Leaving nothing to chance, six acolytes escorted the Doctor past three different locked doorways, the last edged with a band of black rubber to make an airtight seal. Brass helmets hung on pegs, two taken by acolytes and a third given to Svenson. The door was opened and, the seal of the helmet pulling at his neck, he followed the acolytes through.

In the corners of the room stood copper braziers, each heating a bowl of orange-coloured oil, a tonic for Vandaariff’s condition, and evidently fatal for anyone else. The ceiling was honeycombed with small holes, aglow with growing light.

Vandaariff waited at a table, blackened fingers tracing the edges of a blue glass key. An acolyte with gloved hands set a gleaming book before him. Vandaariff carefully inserted the key into its binding, lengthwise from the base, and the bright glass clouded, ever so slightly. He opened the cover and ran a fingertip down the first page.

‘Delicious.’ He gently closed the book. ‘Time enough … time enough.’

The braziers with their oil, the glass balls with their somnolent gas, the explosions and the sharp-edged spurs – in how many other ways had Vandaariff expanded the Comte’s initial discoveries? Schoepfil was a fool to underestimate him. And where was Schoepfil? If Vandaariff’s men had not brought him down like Bronque, they must have sent word of his intrusion … but the fact did not appear to perturb.

At a touch the key emerged from the book and Vandaariff tucked it away. The acolyte reverently restored the book to a case holding a score of others – most only partially extant, their bindings cracked.

Vandaariff sighed. ‘It was a second Library of Alexandria. Now so much is lost, and so thoughtlessly.’

‘These are not the tragedies of Agathon. Chang deserves to live, in his own skin.’

‘Chang is forfeit.’

‘As are you. The rot in your body proclaims it –’

‘Please, we have been down this road. You are not here to lecture.’

‘Then why? To witness my friend’s place in your collection?’ Svenson glared angrily at the books. Both acolytes moved to block his way.

‘Doctor Svenson, you cannot hold a single thought much less two or three. I have brought you to my person through deliberate steps, knowing your preference for my death. Why? Because, plain enough for a cat to perceive, in exchange for your aid I offer you something you desire, available nowhere else on earth.’

‘That Chang will survive, of course, and Miss Temple –’

Vandaariff shook his head. ‘No. No, they are gone. Their consumption is required.’

‘I will not be party. I will do anything in my power –’

Vandaariff rubbed the skin beneath his feathered mask and groaned with impatience. ‘Doctor, I beg you, think. What have you done today? Beyond all sane probability?’

‘Madelaine Kraft was healed. As Chang might now be –’

‘Not Chang! Never Chang! Chang has become raw goods. No, Doctor Svenson, who else? What else in the world would prick your virtue like the balloon I know all virtue to be?’

Another glass book was set on the table. Vandaariff inserted the key and, resting a fingertip lightly on the glass, turned the pages to the clouded leaf he sought. He rotated the book so that it faced the Doctor.

‘Taste.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You will not regret it.’

‘Damn you.’ Svenson stabbed his forefinger onto the glass.

The first impression was too sharp, like whisky on his tongue, a pungent whirl of hair and scent, of softness and weight, tenderness, doubt, carnality –

He yanked up his hand. Vandaariff fed on his reaction with an ugly leer.

‘O … do take a little more.’

Svenson swallowed. ‘How … how in all hell –’

‘You know yourself! You were there!’

‘Tarr Manor,’ Svenson whispered. ‘Her memories were taken. Only a few, still, she almost died –’

‘A singularly aggressive reaction – and the only reason these memories survived! Set aside for study – the actual information, once Arthur Trapping was dead, bore no interest. But now it bears all manner of interest – for you! And, through your inevitable compliance, for me!’

Svenson shook his head. ‘I won’t. I won’t. She is dead –’

An acolyte hooked an arm around the Doctor’s neck, while the other caught his hand and pressed it, palm down, upon the glass. Svenson bucked against the contact. Yet, at its bite, he could not but drop his gaze …

… and enter the memories of Elöise Dujong, the whole of her relations with Arthur Trapping from innocent affection to shame-filled lust. The Doctor gasped at intimacies he himself had never shared, her body in gross and sweet detail – assignations, fervent, guilty, compulsive. He swam in her tears, sank in her self-recriminations, thrilled to the touch of kisses down her neck, Trapping’s fingers tracing the inner sweep of her white thigh –

Svenson blinked, in tears, the confinement of the helmet unfamiliar and strange. The acolytes had pulled him free. Vandaariff stood at the glass wall, shouting.

‘No! This must not occur! Stop him! Mr Foison! Mr Foison!’

Mahmoud held a length of copper wire and swung it like a whip at an acolyte foolish enough to have gone near. The wire slashed through the white robe and the acolyte dropped screaming. The big man took the acolyte by the scruff of the neck and hurled him down the trapdoor stairs, a sheer drop of at least thirty feet. Several acolytes lay on the floor, and who knew how many more had taken that plunge. Foison, armed with only a silver knife, had retreated behind Chang’s table with Professor Trooste.

Mahmoud reached into the sticky red fluid to raise up his mother.

‘Do not!’ cried Trooste. ‘You will kill her! The essential liquor is all that keeps them alive!’

Mahmoud hesitated, not trusting Trooste, yet not daring to risk her life. Vandaariff rapped his cane against the glass.

‘Enough! If you care for that woman, you will listen to me!’ He gave Svenson a haughty snort and when he spoke it was as much for the Doctor as for Mahmoud. ‘Six chambers, for the first six compounds, each reduced in turn. The seventh will infuse the final coupling. The vessel itself constitutes the eighth – tempered metal, the rebirth. The ordure of death will be shed like a serpent’s skin, peeled like a malignant husk, passed on.’

‘What in the name of all hell –’ began Mahmoud. Vandaariff rapped on the glass.

‘I hold that woman’s life in my grasp. The dawn has come!’

Vandaariff waved like a tragedian at the honeycombed ceiling. Each round tube glowed brightly, the shafts of light landing, Svenson saw, directly on the rostrum. Vandaariff ran dark fingers along six identical brass knobs. ‘What do you say, Professor Trooste? Iron, to start?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Matthew Harcourt,’ Vandaariff intoned, ‘I initiate your sacred journey … now.’

‘No!’ shouted Doctor Svenson, but the acolytes held him back. Vandaariff slipped the brass cap off one knob to expose a lozenge of blue glass. The light from the ceiling fell upon it and the glass began to glow. A moment later, the wires leading to Harcourt’s tub coughed sparks into the air. Mahmoud raised a hand to shield his eyes …

Nothing else happened. No surge of energy came through the machines. Vandaariff was speechless. He slipped the brass cover on and off. More sparks, then nothing. Mahmoud roared and went for Trooste with both hands.

‘Stop.’

Foison knelt over Gorine’s tub, the silver knife at the floating man’s neck.

‘Down on your knees or he’s dead.’

Slowly, Mahmoud did just that. Svenson saw the heaviness in the large man’s limbs, that his body still fought the effects of the blue smoke.

‘What in heaven, Professor Trooste!’ shouted Vandaariff. ‘What has gone wrong? Examine every coupling, every cable! This cannot be allowed! Send men below! The time, sir, the time!’ Vandaariff turned from the window, mopping his mouth with a sleeve.

‘Already your plan fails,’ said Svenson.

‘Momentary malfunction is not failure,’ barked Vandaariff. ‘Why was that black fellow not redeemed?’

‘Because I saved him,’ said Svenson.

‘Saved? You have doomed him altogether.’

Mahmoud looked at the glass wall with a baleful hatred. Svenson spread his fingers on the glass, anything to urge patience.

‘Why preserve me?’ Svenson asked. ‘Why any warden at all? You offer me Elöise – but merely her shadow, a sliver of her mind –’

‘A taste of heaven is still heaven, Doctor.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I will be forced to trust you.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘Then everything dies. And every person with it. The chaos in the city goes unchecked and my work will be scattered like African diamonds, treasure waiting for the worst of men to use for the worst of purposes.’

‘What is that to me?’

‘Because I see who you are. What is your answer? For Elöise?’

‘No. Never. No.’

Vandaariff gurgled with pleasure. ‘O Doctor. Such a terrible man with a lie. Excellent.’

By the time Svenson returned to the machines, Mahmoud’s arms had been bound behind his back, copper bands digging into his dark skin. Trooste kept well away, moving from tub to tub, adding pinches of different powders. Foison guarded Mahmoud, favouring one leg, knife held listlessly.

Svenson rubbed his neck where the helmet’s seal had pinched the skin. He nodded to the second, unoccupied medical table, and called to Vandaariff behind the glass: ‘Is that for Miss Temple or the Contessa? Or does it matter?’

‘Such cynicism – everything matters.’

‘We should find Pfaff,’ Foison called. ‘We should locate Drusus Schoepfil.’

‘You should let me examine your leg,’ said Svenson.

‘Thank you, no.’

‘Doctor Svenson has been tempted to save the innocent,’ called Vandaariff. ‘He has refused. He has been tempted by his own heart and refused again. He is a man of duty.’

Mahmoud spat at the Doctor’s feet. ‘That’s for your duty, if these two die.’

‘I’m sure Doctor Svenson’s assistance is welcome,’ Trooste muttered from Chang’s table, a pair of callipers measuring the expanded inflammation. ‘If not altogether required – earlier today, for example –’

Abruptly the curtains over the far door were torn free, pulled to the floor by a flailing acolyte. Another two reeled in, turned and flung themselves back at a figure Svenson could not see. Each man’s body was arrested in three different spots, jerking like puppets, and both dropped senseless. Hopping past them with a mincing precision, Drusus Schoepfil beamed with a cold intent.

‘Doctor Svenson – you did survive – well met indeed!’

Without breaking stride Schoepfil twisted his torso and slashed the air with his arm, deflecting Foison’s thrown knife so it rang against the wall like a bell. He pulled a sheaf of papers from his coat and waved them imperiously.

‘Uncle Robert, do not think to avoid me! I have searched your papers! The payments to my supposed allies! Your new will! I know it all!’ He hurled the papers at Chang’s unmoving form. ‘That man – that criminal – will not inherit. I will prevent it with my own two hands!’

Even with an injured leg Foison cut Schoepfil off, blocking his way to the table. Schoepfil only smirked.

‘Mr Foison. I apologize for not receiving you earlier when you called. I’d just had the place swept, you see, and simply couldn’t bear to admit my uncle’s trained baboon.’

Foison did not react to the insult, so Schoepfil’s arm shot out and slapped him hard across the face. Foison staggered and Schoepfil came on, swinging. Foison managed to block two blows, but a third, so fast that Svenson only heard it strike, left him weaving.

‘Do not fight him!’ shouted Vandaariff. ‘Mr Foison, retreat!’

But Schoepfil would not allow it. He feinted from side to side, while his fists, not strong but precise and persistent, pummelled Foison’s face and body. Foison’s skill was on full display, for he stopped more blows than struck home, but his counter-strokes found nothing but air. Schoepfil grinned fiercely. He darted about, teasing Foison with the final strike – but then, as he finally came near, Foison hurled himself, arms wide, and pinned Schoepfil’s arms to his body. He lifted Schoepfil off the floor, and squeezed.

Schoepfil gasped – with surprise as much as pain – and kicked his legs and swatted with his forearms.

‘Good Lord! Release me! Release me now and I – ah – I will – ugh – spare –’

Foison squeezed tight, tottering with the effort. Schoepfil’s eyes locked on Svenson.

‘Doctor – our agreement – gah – please –’

Svenson did not move.

‘Doctor –’

Mahmoud staggered past Svenson. The wire still held his arms but a swinging kick behind Foison’s knee brought all three men down. In a flash Schoepfil was up, stamping at Foison’s head. Foison did not rise. Schoepfil stamped again for spite. He swept his angry eyes around the room until he found Svenson and screamed.

‘You! Snake! Judas!’

‘Calm yourself –’

‘Calm myself?’

Schoepfil stalked in a ragged circle, glaring at the line of tubs, before stopping short at the sight of Bronque and Kelling.

‘Good Lord! This is not the ritual! What is this?’ He bellowed at the glass wall. ‘What have you done to Colonel Bronque? Uncle! What … wait – wait! Who in hell is that?’

Svenson followed Schoepfil’s gaze. Vandaariff stood unmoving behind the glass, a bright blade at his throat. Holding the knife was a woman, her head hidden by a brazen helmet, her filth-stained dress hanging heavy, soaking wet.

‘Uncle Robert?’ asked Schoepfil.

‘Do your duty, Doctor Svenson,’ croaked Vandaariff. ‘You know what can be yours.’

‘Be quiet, Oskar,’ buzzed the voice from inside the helmet. ‘Doctor Svenson is of absolutely no importance to anyone.’

The Contessa gave the blade a sharp tug. A ruby jet splashed the glass and rolled down, fed in gouts as Robert Vandaariff slumped into the window and sank lifeless to the floor.