The Chemickal Marriage

Six Somnambule

Chang had been right. A dusty, uniformed man leading a bedraggled child excited no comment and scarcely a glance of pity. Too much had happened to too many people. They passed bodies on carts, weeping women, men sitting stunned in the street, soldiers doing their best to clear the crowds – and it quickly became Svenson’s task to shield the girl from the devastation. Victims reared up, roused to fury by the glass embedded in their flesh, and set to attacking whoever came within reach. After the first crazed assaults, the soldiers no longer scrupled in their response, and before their eyes had clubbed a shrieking woman to the ground with their musket-butts.

Svenson took Francesca in his arms and veered into a side street, itself a crush. The people around them did not speak – their faces, drawn, bloody, streaked with ash, made plain what they too had survived. Svenson shifted his burden and winced at the pain from his injured rib, sure he could hear the click of bone against cartilage. He mumbled soothingly and caressed Francesca’s hair, and soon enough she settled into sleep, a heavy but tractable weight.

Celeste Temple was dead. Chang was determined to kill himself. Phelps and Cunsher were taken. Doctor Svenson was alone.

Or was that true? He could make no sense – no moral sense – of the encounter in the Palace. The woman had cut Elöise’s throat … still he shuddered to recall the teasing caress of her breath.

The Contessa would be his task.

He kept on, beyond the Citadel, past the University, through the ugly brick of Lime Fields. At the corner of Aachen Street he set Francesca down and as she yawned – and his arms throbbed with relief – did his best to improve their appearance, sponging soot from their faces and brushing ash from their clothes.

Aachen Street was lined with old mansions that had been subdivided into smaller townhouses, and then – fashion and fortune shifting across the town – purchased anew and grandly recombined. In the centre of the block stood one such, with a tall iron fence that had been painted green and a guardhouse next to the gate. He had not recognized the address when Francesca had said where they must go, and it took a moment even now to interpret his sense of familiarity. It was the light – he had never seen the place during the day – but how many times had he been here to collect his Prince? The Old Palace had no sign advertising itself, but, as an exclusive brothel catering to the city’s most powerful, he did not suppose one was required.

The man in the guard box waved them away, but Francesca called out shrilly, ‘We have come to see Mrs Madelaine Kraft.’

The guard directed his gruff answer to Svenson. ‘We are not open to visitors –’

‘Mrs Kraft,’ Francesca insisted.

‘Mrs Kraft is not here.’

‘She is so.’

‘She is not well.’

‘Mrs Kraft not being well is why we must see her. We were sent.’

Svenson saw a twitch at the front window’s curtain. Before the child could speak again, he squeezed her shoulder. Francesca turned impatiently – with her pasty complexion and protuberant eyes it was the reproachful gaze of a piglet in a butcher’s window – but Svenson held his grip for silence.

‘The fact is, sir, we have walked far, through terrible disarray, with instructions to call on Mrs Kraft. If it is a mystery to you, it is also to me. I do not know who she is.’

The guard turned back to his box. ‘Then I must say good day to you –’

Svenson spoke quickly. ‘You say she is not well, good sir, but I will hazard more than that. I will hazard she has been stricken insensible.’ The guard paused. ‘Further, I will surmise that no surgeon has been able to penetrate the cause. What is more – and if I am wrong, do drive us from your door – I say that Mrs Kraft was first taken ill during a visit to Harschmort House some two months ago – and so she remains.’

The guard’s mouth had fallen open. ‘You said you did not know her.’

‘I do not. And you have kept her condition secret, yes?’

The guard nodded warily. ‘Then how – who –’

‘Permit me to introduce myself. Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson –’

Francesca threatened to spoil everything with an eager, dead-toothed smile. Svenson leant forward, blocking the guard’s view. ‘As the child said, we were referred. It may be I can do nothing … yet, if I can …’

A muffled thud came from the guard box, recalling the guard to his hut like a dog on its master’s lead. Francesca squeezed Svenson’s hand. The guard hurried out and unlocked the gate.

‘Quickly,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing grows in the daylight but shadows.’

Standing in the lavish parlour holding the hand of a seven-year-old girl only complicated the Doctor’s usual reaction to such establishments: disapproval of the architecture of prostitution – its tyranny, dispassion, degradation – and jealousy at his own exclusion – for his class, his poverty – from such rarified delights. Hypocrisy made both sources of discontent sting the more, but hypocrisy in matters of the heart was to Svenson no fresh wound.

The previous night’s flowers were being replaced with fresh bouquets – orange-streaked peonies and purple lilies – by a serving girl scarcely older than Francesca. Svenson wondered if she was an apprentice to the brothel, and how soon she might expect to join the ranks of the Old Palace’s wares. The little housemaid wrapped the dead flowers in her apron and gathered the bundle to her chest, but then she saw Francesca and stopped. The children stared at one another, but Francesca’s haughty gaze held firm. The housemaid dropped her eyes to the carpet, dipped once in Svenson’s direction and scurried out.

A rustle to their left revealed an alcove for coats and hats and sticks, and a pretty young woman waxing the counter-top. Before she could ask for their coats, Svenson shook his head.

‘We are here for Mrs Kraft.’

The young woman nodded across the parlour, where another guard – despite his lack of uniform, there could be no other term – stood at a wooden rostrum. This second guard did not stir. After a lingering moment (during which, stupid from lack of sleep, Svenson could not recall if the twitching curtain had been from this level or the floor above), a thump echoed behind the rostrum, the exact sound that had come from the guard box. Svenson saw a pair of brass pipes bolted to the wall: pneumatic message tubes, allowing swift communication throughout the house. The shocking expense of such a system spoke to the brothel’s prodigious backing.

The guard fished a scrap of green paper from a leather-wrapped tube.

‘You’re to be taken to Mr Mahmoud.’

‘I’ll do it, Henry.’ The pretty coat clerk had already slipped from her alcove. ‘You’re not to leave the front, and I can be back in five minutes.’

‘Make sure it is five minutes, Alice. No roaming off.’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Mr Gorine’s instructions –’

‘Are exactly why you need to stay in the front. Now come with me, pet.’

She looked kindly at Francesca, her expression catching only briefly at the sight of the girl’s sickly features, and led them out. Alice’s hair had been pinned, but along her nape Svenson noticed a row of dense curls. She glanced back and nearly caught his stare.

‘I’ve never been in the office myself. No one goes in the office, except Mr Gorine and Mr Mahmoud.’

‘And who are they, pray?’

‘Well, who are you, if you don’t know that?’

They passed into an oval room. Come the night, it would be filled with exquisitely painted women – and painted boys – from which a visitor might choose. Now the only occupants were two women in their shifts, playing cards on a cushion between them, with a third, distressingly young, perched on an ottoman with a box of sweets.

Alice peered at Svenson, waiting for an answer. He stammered, too struck by the contrast between the gaily painted faces and, in flat daylight, the too-pale bodies.

‘I’m sorry – I – I am no one at all.’

‘Then who is she?’ Alice winked at Francesca. Before Svenson could intervene, the child piped up, her voice disagreeably hoarse.

‘I am Francesca Trapping. I am the oldest surviving Xonck. I will inherit the entire Xonck empire because my brothers are fools.’

Svenson squeezed her hand. ‘I am sure Mrs Kraft must not be kept waiting –’

One of the card-playing women stifled a laugh. ‘Mrs Kraft?’

‘We have been sent,’ said Francesca.

The girl on the ottoman spoke around the nougat in her teeth. ‘Well, no reason to hurry on her account …’

‘And why would the likes of you see her?’ called the card-player.

‘That is a secret.’

‘A very important secret, to be kept by such a pair of beggars.’

‘We are nothing of the kind!’ Francesca cried. ‘But you’re a dirty thing. You’re a pig’s trough with a week of sloppings.’

Svenson seized the girl and marched for the far door, driving their guide before him.

‘Surviving Xonck?’ called an angry voice. ‘That one looks like pickled fish on a plate!’

Francesca squirmed in his arms. ‘Let me down.’

‘You must hold your tongue.’

Tears had broken down the child’s cheeks and her words burst out in gasps: ‘But she is dirty. Her name is Ginny – she does wicked things! She did them with your prince!’

‘My prince?’

‘I know all sorts of things. He was dreadful!’

Svenson went cold in shock and the girl wriggled free. The Comte’s book – she was a child. He went to one knee. ‘Francesca, you poor thing –’

Francesca tossed her head. ‘I am not. Stand up.’

But their guide’s face had gone pale. ‘Her name is Ginny. How did she know that?’

Svenson impulsively took Alice’s hand. ‘You can see the girl is ill. The situation is delicate – she is the heir of Henry Xonck. Both of her parents have died –’

‘Died how?’

He turned. They stood in a long, expensively papered corridor, and another party had appeared at its far end, foremost a soldier whose blue jacket was rigid with gold brocade. Alice sank into a fearful curtsy.

‘Colonel Bronque …’

The Colonel paid them no more heed than a hat stand, striding past. Behind Bronque came a small, stout figure with a foreign-looking goatee, wire-rim spectacles and pearl-grey gloves. His clothes were well tailored but nondescript. Svenson’s impression of familiarity was echoed by the man’s own surreptitious glance at the Doctor. The man vanished round the corner.

‘Forgive me, Alice, but have these gentlemen called upon your premises so early in the day, or do they depart after spending the night?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’ Her words were hushed and chastened.

‘But you knew the Colonel. You must know the gentleman with him.’

‘I’m sure I couldn’t say.’

‘Of course – the first rule of trust is discretion. But if I were to ask you instead –’

She only bobbed another abject curtsy and hurried on.

Alice rapped four times upon a door sheathed in bright steel. A narrow viewing window was pulled back and then slid home just as fast. The door was opened by a muscular man with skin the colour of cherrywood. Her desire for diversion wholly extinguished, Alice dipped again and then fled down the corridor. The large hand that waved them into the room held a revolver whose oiled barrel seemed like a sixth finger.

This was quite obviously a room of business – ledgers, blotters, notebooks, strong box, and a large abacus bolted to a table. Gleaming pipes ran down from the ceiling to another station for the pneumatic system. As Svenson watched, a leather tube rocketed into the padded receiving chamber. The dark man ignored it. Svenson cleared his throat.

‘You must be Mr Mahmoud –’

‘A message came, we should expect you.’ For such a large man, his voice was delicate, as sleek as an oboe, but the words were charged. ‘And now you’re here.’ Mahmoud nodded coldly to a door on the far side of the office. ‘So. Go see for yourself.’

Svenson released Francesca and the child tore off for the inner door. But at the threshold she stopped still, face frozen with wonder.

‘O Doctor … she looks like a queen.’

He hurried to look. A woman lay on a chaise-longue, draped in silks, eyes closed, hands clasped below her bosom.

‘Stay here, Francesca – do not move.’ At the sharpness of his tone, the child obeyed.

Careful and thorough, the Doctor took the woman’s pulse at the wrist and throat, peeled back both eyelids, opened her mouth, examined her nails, her teeth, and even, remembering the glass sickness, took an exploratory tug at her hair. Svenson’s dispassionate eye put her age at forty-five. Her golden skin seemed sallow, but he did not suppose she’d seen the sun in two months. Was she from India? An Arab? He looked around the inner room, at the Moorish daybed and enormous desk, now cluttered with the detritus of a sickroom. This too was a place of work. Madelaine Kraft was no ordinary woman. The Old Palace was hers.

He saw no mystery as to why such a woman had been a target of the Cabal. A brothel-keeper possessed the means to blackmail thousands of rich and influential men – capturing Mrs Kraft’s memory delivered them to the Cabal in a stroke. But why had the Contessa gone to such trouble to send Svenson to Madelaine Kraft now?

‘Francesca, what else did the Contessa say? Surely there was some clue, some advice?’ He peered behind the desk. ‘Did she forward some parcel of supplies to help us?’

‘There is no parcel.’

‘Child, there must be. Her own experiments with glass –’

‘There is me.’ The girl wore a prideful smirk that turned his stomach. Before he could reply, an explosion of voices came from the outer room.

‘They are strangers! What will the Colonel say?’

‘What do I care?’ This was Mahmoud.

‘Damn you, we agreed –’

‘You agreed –’

A sharp-nosed man with a moustache and long, oiled hair stormed in, his eyes leaping about to make sure nothing had been taken. Mahmoud waited in the doorway. The intruder tugged on his white shell jacket and then, glaring at the Doctor and the child, set to cracking his knuckles, one finger at a time.

‘You are Mr Gorine?’ Svenson offered. ‘I am Abelard Svenson, Captain-Surgeon of the Macklenburg Navy, attached to the service of Crown Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck –’

Gorine pulled viciously on his thumb until it popped. ‘And you will cure her? Is that what we are to believe? Macklenburg?’ Gorine stabbed Svenson’s chest with a finger. ‘We have had enough of Macklenburg at the Old Palace!’

‘If you refer to the Prince –’

Gorine slapped Svenson across the face. The blow was not hard – he did not think Gorine had much experience with slapping – but it stung. ‘I refer, Captain-Surgeon, to two women abducted from this house, to seven more who wake screaming from unnatural dreams, to the collapse of our business, and lastly – yes – to Mrs Kraft. All because your worthless Prince came through our door!’

‘If it is any solace, the Prince of Macklenburg is dead.’

‘Why should that bring me solace? Does that bring back our women?’

‘Michel –’ But at Mahmoud’s interjection, Gorine only gave the rest of his complaint directly to the dark man’s face.

‘Does that end the tyranny of our occupation – unable to come and go without leave from a gold-jacketed, stone-hearted –’

Doctor Svenson coughed into one hand. ‘If your two women are Margaret Hooke and Angelique, I must inform you both are dead as well.’

Gorine turned on Svenson, his fury heightened. But while Gorine’s back was turned, the Doctor had taken hold of his revolver and now pressed the barrel into Gorine’s abdomen. Gorine’s breath stopped.

‘O well done, Mahmoud –’

‘Be quiet.’ Svenson’s voice was calm. ‘Ignorance makes a man angry, I know. The matter is larger than us – than all of us together. I am here to help – to help her. But I am entirely willing to blow you apart like a pumpkin beforehand.’

The pressure of the pistol caused Gorine’s Adam’s apple to bob like a cork in a stream. The Doctor lowered the weapon that – he was quite sure – no longer held any bullets. Gorine darted to the side, clearing the way for Mahmoud to fire, but the dark man did not move. Svenson slipped the pistol back into his greatcoat and addressed them both.

‘The Prince of Macklenburg was as much of a dupe as your women, sacrificed to the ambition of a wicked few who are still driving this city to its grave.’

Mahmoud stepped forward. ‘Who? We have ten good men –’

‘Save them – even a hundred is too few.’

‘But their names –’

‘The name that matters is Robert Vandaariff.’

Mahmoud cast a doubting glance to Gorine. ‘But he was stricken with blood fever – we assumed he was another victim.’

‘Forty-seven people were taken ill that night,’ said Gorine. ‘Not one has recovered, save Robert Vandaariff. Are you the one who cured him?’

‘No. The recovery is false. His entire character is destroyed.’ Svenson rubbed his eyes. ‘Would either of you gentlemen have any tobacco? I have lost my supply and a touch of smoke would do wonders for my mind.’

At Mahmoud’s nudge, Gorine took an ebony box from a desk drawer. ‘Mrs Kraft’s. Get on with your story.’

‘The man is exhausted, Michel.’

‘We are all exhausted,’ Gorine retorted.

Gorine took a cheroot himself before offering the box to Mahmoud, who declined. The squabbling intimacy of the two men was suddenly plain, especially to one who had spent years sailing in close quarters. Svenson shrugged at the insight – it was nothing to him, after all – and took a tightly rolled cheroot from the box and held it to his nose. Gorine held out a light and Svenson puffed with a palpable greed.

Mahmoud waited, one hand still resting on his pistol-butt.

‘So can you help her, Captain-Surgeon, or can you not?’

The Doctor began by asking questions, but the narrative of Mrs Kraft’s care only tightened his jaw. Nothing had answered, yet he could think of nothing left to try. At last he stubbed out the cheroot – he must work or fall asleep.

‘The attack was on Mrs Kraft’s mind, not her body, and in her mind will be the cure.’

‘Her mind is beyond reach,’ replied Gorine. ‘She cannot speak one word.’

‘Yes. If I might impose for a supply of chemicals and then a meal – anything at all, though hot soup would be a treasure …’

Mahmoud went for food while Gorine found paper in the desk. As Svenson made a list of what he required, Gorine studied Francesca. She sat at the foot of the chaise-longue, and for the first time Svenson realized how quiet she had become.

‘Heir to the Xonck empire, is it?’ Gorine asked her.

‘Once my uncle Henry dies.’

‘And you’re with this doctor? Alone?’

‘Her parents,’ said Svenson, ‘along with her uncle Francis –’

Gorine plucked the list from Svenson’s hand. ‘Francis Xonck. One hopes she isn’t heir to that.’

Gorine left the room. Francesca frowned at the carpet. Svenson had no idea how much the girl had heard at Parchfeldt between her uncle and her mother, or how much she had understood.

‘Do not mind him. We are here to help this lady. As you said yourself, a queenly countenance –’

Francesca still stared at the floor. ‘Did you like my uncle Francis?’

‘I’m afraid your uncle did not care for me, my dear.’

‘But he loved mother. He loved me.’

‘Francesca …’

‘He did.’

‘Your uncle Francis loved to be happy, sweetheart – how could he not love you?’ It was a feeble attempt, and Francesca Trapping wrinkled her nose. She fell silent again. ‘What … ah … what did the Contessa say to you, about your uncle?’

Francesca snorted, as if the question was especially stupid.

Gorine hurried in. ‘There is someone to see you –’

Svenson reached for his revolver. ‘No one knows I am here –’

Gorine seized his arm. ‘For God’s sake – don’t be a fool!’

Mahmoud appeared, and his added strength wrenched the Doctor’s weapon away.

‘There is no help for it,’ the dark man said. ‘He recalled your face.’

Colonel Bronque stood in the doorway. Black hair sat flat against his skull, a widow’s peak accentuating his hawk-like nose. Gorine and Mahmoud retreated to either side.

‘Macklenburg.’ The Colonel spat it like a curse. ‘Macklenburg.’

‘What of it?’

‘You’re Svenson. Surgeon. Spy.’

‘Do I know you?’

‘Obviously not. If you did, you would be more frightened.’

The Doctor’s fatigue got the better of him. ‘O no doubt,’ he replied, and sat on the desk.

Colonel Bronque barked with harsh laughter. Svenson risked a glance to Mahmoud and Gorine – both nodding gamely along with the Colonel’s amusement. Bronque came forward beaming. ‘I did not think you fellows had any humour at all.’

‘What fellows?’

‘Macklenburgers – Germans. I knew your Major Blach. Tight as a drum head.’

‘Indeed, a horrid man. Who are you?’

Instead of a reply, Bronque extended his arms, and his glittering eyes invited the Doctor to guess – a test. Svenson had no choice.

‘Very well. Your name tells me nothing, nor – a priori – does your rank. You are seen in a brothel in full dress, with another man whose clothing is expensive but undistinguished. Judging by the poor crease of your trousers, you have spent the night. One guess says your charge is a high-born personage bent upon his pleasures, requiring an especially trusted chaperone in these troubled days.’

Bronque grinned with a wolfish satisfaction. ‘But why should I bother with you?’

‘Because, as a criminal, my presence opens your personage to scandal.’

‘Nonsense.’

Svenson sighed. ‘Indeed, you would simply kill me.’

‘But I have not.’

The Colonel’s intensity was oppressive. Svenson rubbed his eyes. It was early, and the better part of his mind was tangled with thoughts of blue glass. But then he had it.

‘Ah. Because you are not here at all.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You have not come for the brothel’s wares. You have come for the tunnel.’

‘What tunnel?’

‘Under the Old Palace is a tunnel to the Royal Institute. At one point the Comte d’Orkancz used the Institute for his research, and employed the tunnel to ferry test subjects –’

The Colonel looked accusingly at Gorine and Mahmoud. ‘Did they tell you that?’

‘Of course not. But it explains why the Old Palace continues to operate – you have demanded access to the tunnel in exchange. Which sets your companion in an entirely new light – not a patron, but perhaps a Ministry official, an engineer, a Doctor of metals –’

Gorine could bear it no more. ‘Doctor Svenson –’

‘Silence!’ Bronque’s lips curled like a twist of uncooked meat. ‘I apply the same logic to you, Doctor. You were attached to the Prince’s party as a spy –’

Svenson shook his head. ‘I am only here to attend Mrs Kraft.’

‘I do not believe you.’ Bronque stepped back, all amusement gone. ‘The tunnel is watched. Consider yourself watched as well.’

The Colonel strode out as quickly as he’d come.

‘Threaten away,’ Svenson muttered. ‘I already face a death sentence …’

Neither Mahmoud or Gorine replied. Both men were gazing intently at Madelaine Kraft, whose large brown eyes were open.

Despite the raised voices that had woken her, Mrs Kraft’s attention was entirely taken with Francesca, and the child returned the woman’s gaze with a directness ordinarily reserved for odd-looking insects or younger siblings.

‘What will you do?’ Mahmoud whispered to Svenson. He shook his head.

The girl gently patted Mrs Kraft’s foot under the blanket. ‘I am Francesca Trapping.’

‘And I am Doctor Svenson.’ He pulled a chair near to sit. The cost of her subordinates’ well-intentioned treatments – extending to leeches and quicksilver – were etched on the woman. He laid a palm across her forehead. How long could anyone survive in such a cocoon?

As he had hoped, Francesca watched his every move. She glanced conspiratorially at the tray of chemicals. ‘What did you send for?’

‘Nothing that will cure her. We must search Mrs Kraft’s mind.’

‘Can she hear us?’

‘Yes … but does she understand?’ Svenson shifted his attention to the child. ‘Now it is time for you to say what you know, Francesca.’

The girl covered her mouth with one hand, stifling a belch.

‘How else am I to help her, dear?’

Francesca shook her head.

‘Do you feel ill?’

‘No.’

But her eagerness had fallen before her discomfort. That was natural enough – and as long as she felt sick, the girl would be afraid. Svenson patted the chaise-longue, inviting her closer.

‘The Contessa has put us together, Francesca. Let us pool our thoughts. Now, everything I know of the glass tells me Mrs Kraft’s condition is permanent. I met another lady with such a hole in her mind. She’d taken just a peek into a glass book – and in a trice some of her memories were gone. Nothing so serious as our patient here, but though she tried with all her strength, this lady could never recall them.’

Doctor Svenson placed Mrs Kraft’s hand, heavy with metal rings, onto Francesca’s lap. The girl began to stroke it, as if it were a kitten.

‘When I asked what the Contessa had sent to help, you said she had sent you.’

Francesca’s voice was thick. ‘She did. But I do not –’

‘And I believe you. You have absorbed some of the Comte’s book – a frightening thing, I know, which you cannot think on without discomfort.’ Svenson kept his voice easy and calm. ‘However, the Contessa wastes no time on trifles. She believes Mrs Kraft can be cured – and therefore, my dear, you are the puzzle, not Mrs Kraft, and our task is to divulge your secrets safely. We must be clever and we must be brave. Are you brave enough to try?’

Francesca nodded, and clutched the hand to her stomach.

‘Good. You need not fear.’ Svenson forced a smile. The girl’s dull teeth peeped back trustingly.

The Doctor peeled off his greatcoat, laid it over his chair and then rearranged the supply of chemicals. He felt their expectant eyes upon him as he crossed to Mahmoud’s tray, bent to sniff and then poured the still-steaming black coffee into a mug. By the time the cup was drained – just the limit of his audience’s patience – he had chosen his course.

‘The Old Palace stands hostage to Colonel Bronque’s use of your tunnel. What so commands his concern? Could the Institute be a staging area for the attacks upon the city?’

Gorine waved this away. ‘The Institute is a gaggle of scholars in black robes.’

‘Scholars like the Comte d’Orkancz?’

Mahmoud shook his head decisively. ‘The Comte was only allowed on the premises at the insistence of Robert Vandaariff.’

‘But the Comte is dead,’ said Gorine. ‘Without him Vandaariff is just a wealthy man.’

‘Do you think so?’ asked Svenson. ‘Does Colonel Bronque?’

He used a handkerchief to extract the blue glass card from his greatcoat. Francesca’s eyes were wide. Svenson ignored her and, keeping his voice gentle, addressed his patient.

‘I am going to show you a thing, Mrs Kraft. Do not be afraid. Nothing will harm you.’

His patient did not resist when he gently angled her head, but she inhaled with force at first sight of the card, her pupils swelling black. Svenson eased the card into her fingers and they clutched it tight. Madelaine Kraft was completely immersed.

Svenson kept his voice low. ‘Has either of you ever seen blue glass such as this?’

‘Never,’ said Gorine.

‘Once.’ Mahmoud knelt at the foot of the chaise-longue. ‘Angelique. Mrs Kraft took it away.’

Gorine watched with suspicion. ‘What does she see?’

‘Dreams. Potent as opium.’

Immediately Mahmoud reached for the card. Svenson caught his hand.

‘It is dangerous. It is deadly. But nothing you have tried has penetrated her mind. This will.’

Mahmoud threw off Svenson’s arm. ‘And cause her death? Michel –’ Mahmoud appealed to Gorine, but Gorine stared at their mistress.

‘Look.’

Madelaine Kraft’s breathing had deepened and her face had changed – cheeks flushed with colour, with life. Gently, Svenson retrieved the card. Madelaine Kraft looked up. He took her hands, speaking softly.

‘The Bride and Groom … did you see them?’

She blinked at him, and then nodded.

‘Do you know those words now, Mrs Kraft? Bride?’

‘Bride …’ Her voice was tender with disuse.

Svenson nodded encouragement. ‘You saw the faces … the angels … the feathered mask and the mouth below, you saw the teeth … the Bride’s teeth –’

‘Blue.’ The word was a whisper. Mahmoud and Gorine pressed forward, but Svenson warded them off, fixing his eyes on hers, making sure.

‘And the ball … the ball in the black Groom’s hand?’

Madelaine Kraft’s mouth worked, as if she were calling forth a key she had swallowed. ‘Red.’

Svenson sighed with relief. Her mind could make new memories, the harvesting process had not robbed her of that – she was no vegetable. Yet through her illness she had not spoken – why did only indigo clay etch its mark into her mind?

He patted Madelaine Kraft’s hand. ‘What do you think of that, Francesca?’

The girl had no answer, both arms wrapped across her middle. Was she that delicate, that susceptible? Suppressing the urge to comfort her, fearing it would only make things worse, Svenson turned to the others. ‘I assume Colonel Bronque has gone?’

Gorine consulted his pocket watch. ‘He has. But why?’

‘Because we are going to need your tunnel.’

The bundle of chemicals lay at Svenson’s feet. Francesca Trapping stood yawning and blinking. The girl had recovered, and though she showed a clumsiness descending the stairs, he ascribed this to exhaustion. At the end of the basement corridor lay an old iron door. Two uniformed soldiers crouched against the wall, bound and, though not cruelly, gagged. Gorine watched them with an unhappy expression and a pistol in each hand. Mahmoud sorted through a ring of keys. Behind, two servants gently held Madelaine Kraft upright between them.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ muttered Gorine. ‘Bronque will summon his soldiers, the doors will be stormed –’

‘You could take him hostage,’ observed Mahmoud. From his tone, and Gorine’s reply, it was no new suggestion. ‘Allow him inside the house, have our men ready –’

‘The Colonel will defend himself, and if he is injured or killed it is our lives – if he doesn’t kill us outright to begin with –’

Sensing a tirade, Svenson broke in. ‘If there was time to ask the Colonel to join us, I would. There is not. Mrs Kraft’s only hope to recover her mind lies in defiance. Moreover, it is not the Colonel who controls your survival, but the man who comes with him.’

‘We don’t even know who he is!’

‘I suggest you find out. Now which of you stays and which comes along?’

‘Mahmoud knows the tunnel.’ Gorine squeezed the pistols in his hands. ‘If anything happens to Mrs Kraft you will answer. As we will answer to Her Majesty’s displeasure.’

‘I would expect no less,’ said Svenson, noting Gorine’s naive conflation of the Colonel with the Queen. ‘Now who has a lantern?’

As a boy, Doctor Svenson had prided himself on his knowledge of the forest bordering his family’s fields. In an adolescence of discontent, he made a practice of stalking at random into the trees, stopping only when the light had gone and darkness had instilled the place with shapeless dread. He made it his task to return by instinct. With each twig that popped beneath his feet or dragged across his night-chilled face, the stale misery of his days gave way to a deeper engagement, where his sacrificial determination echoed that of a knight sitting vigil in a cold stone church. In time he had seen the pride behind the romance, and the fear behind the pride, and these memories made him wince.

‘Where have you been?’ his mother would ask.

‘Walking,’ went his invariable reply.

He had always gone home – to light, to warmth – and his relief at being so recovered was a way of infusing his quotidian life, taken for granted, with value. But after so many years, was it not the dark wood that had held constant? What home was there to walk to now? In his rambles he had misplaced the life around him, but perhaps he had truly seen the world.

Mahmoud’s lantern settled on stone steps beneath an angled doorway. ‘This opens to the courtyard – the simplest entrance, but hardly concealed, given it is full morning.’

‘Is there another way?’

‘Do you have a specific destination?’

‘I do. Across the courtyard is a brick roundhouse – rather like an iceberg, it extends a hundred steps below ground. The main chamber was fitted for the Comte d’Orkancz. Enough machines may remain to restore Mrs Kraft.’

‘How?’

‘That hardly matters if we cannot reach it.’

‘As Lord Vandaariff once sponsored the Comte, so he now sponsors others, even offering his own men to guard the gates … still, there are other, older ways.’ Mahmoud’s teeth were bright in the shadows.

They followed the glow of the lantern to what seemed a dead end. Mahmoud pushed with both hands, and the entire panel of brickwork swung inward.

‘It is an actual hidden panel!’ enthused Svenson.

‘Thus the King reached his mistress,’ called Mahmoud, stepping through. ‘Take care where you put your feet …’

The process by which a king’s bedchamber became a dusty storeroom for scientific specimens – Svenson could see cephalopods in murky jars, geologic samples, piles of bound notebooks – struck the Doctor as emblematic of some larger entropic theory, one requiring a metaphor beyond his immediate wit. As he lifted Francesca over a row of bell jars, the lantern illuminated the ceiling: a peeling fresco of a nude man in the sea surrounded by women. Then the light was gone, Mahmoud playing it around the room, leaving Svenson to wonder what grand tale had graced a king’s most intimate hours. The rescue of Jonah? Poseidon and his nymphs? Or a final crisis of the flood – death in ecstasy?

‘I do not like the spiders,’ whispered Francesca, staring at a shockingly large specimen under glass. Svenson picked her up again, to let the servants pass with Mrs Kraft.

‘No one likes them, sweetheart.’

‘He does.’ Her voice had thickened. ‘He thinks they are beautiful … he makes me look, when I don’t want to.’

‘Look at Mrs Kraft instead.’

‘Looking at her makes me sick.’ Francesca belched. Svenson grimaced at the foul smell.

‘She did not make you sick before.’

‘She does now.’

‘Then we must drive the sickness from you.’

‘How?’

‘By following the Contessa’s plan. You trust the Contessa, don’t you?’

Francesca nodded.

‘Well, then,’ Svenson assured her. ‘We will do nothing she did not intend.’

He sent off the servants with detailed instructions. It might not work – the men might be seen, or his formula mistaken (was he sure of the treated paraffin?). Nevertheless, they crouched in silence, peering from a ground-floor window, Francesca hunched next to Svenson, Mrs Kraft leaning with a glazed expression against Mahmoud.

Directly across the courtyard stood the massive gate with its medieval portcullis. A score of men in green uniforms lounged around it, bantering with the Institute personnel. As Svenson watched, one black-robed figure was pulled to the side and questioned by the guards before being allowed to pass.

Mahmoud used the disturbance as an opportunity to ease the window open. The brick roundhouse lay directly between their window and the gate. A single guard stood at its door.

‘Stay as low as you can,’ Svenson whispered. ‘And run. Can Mrs Kraft do this?’

‘A bit late for that question, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course – I only –’

Having made his point, Mahmoud cut Svenson off: ‘It hardly matters.’

Across the courtyard, an iron door set into the ground was flung open – the courtyard entrance to the tunnel – and then a cloud of black smoke billowed up into the air.

‘Where is the sound?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘There is no explosion – something has gone wrong.’

‘Wait for it!’ hissed Svenson. ‘Listen!’

But something had gone wrong. The thunderclap he had hoped to achieve was absent, and in its place came only a roiling cloud. Slowly, painfully they watched, but not one of the guards took notice.

A voice cried out – finally! – but not from the guards. The shout came again, from the rooftop: sentries silhouetted against the sky. At last a man from the gatehouse jogged to the courtyard for a look. At his yell two more followed … and then in a blessed rush the rest of the guards ran to the tunnel entrance, calling for water, for axes, for everyone.

The man posted at the roundhouse hesitated, but at last set down his rifle and ran after his fellows. In a flash Mahmoud vaulted out. Svenson passed Francesca through and then did his best with Mrs Kraft, only to have Mahmoud pluck her easily from his grasp. Svenson clambered over the sill, all knees and elbows, and gathered Francesca. Mahmoud was already a dozen strides gone, his mistress over his back like a rolled carpet.

Svenson’s side jolted with pain at every step. Mahmoud reached the roundhouse and slipped Mrs Kraft from his shoulder. Svenson thudded up next to them.

The door was not locked and they ducked inside. ‘Down, my dear, fast as you can!’

Francesca gripped the rail and descended with a painful delicacy. The Doctor could not blame her – the merest slip on this high staircase meant a broken neck. Keeping firm hold of Mrs Kraft, Mahmoud gave the girl his other hand and made sure of them both. Svenson closed the door and turned the lock. Had they been seen? How long would they have? He dug out the revolver and rapped the open cylinder on the heel of his hand, scattering brass cartridges onto the landing. He pawed through the pockets of his tunic. Only three bullets. He slotted them in and told himself it was no shooting situation. If he needed more, he had already lost.

‘Do not move.’

At Svenson’s words, the laboratory’s only occupant spun with shock, a glass flask slipping from his hand. The man yelped and hopped clear, batting at the greenish smoke that rose from the stone-flagged floor.

‘Damn you, sir! Look at what you’ve done! What is this trespass?’

The indignant man was fair and unkempt, with a well-fed jaw blooming from his tight collar like a toad’s. ‘Do you know whose works these are? I promise you, when Lord Robert is made aware –’

‘Professor Trooste,’ Mahmoud called from the door.

The Professor swallowed nervously. ‘Bloody Christ – I mean to say – hello. My goodness – and Mrs Kraft!’

‘Professor Trooste is a patron of the Old Palace.’ Mahmoud secured the door with an iron bolt. ‘When someone sponsors his visit, of course. He’s been travelling – haven’t you, Professor? Research expedition?’

‘Where?’ Svenson demanded. ‘Quickly – where?’

‘Nowhere at all –’

‘Polksvarte District,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And Macklenburg before it.’

‘Damn your black eyes! Not that it matters – what are the rivalries of science to the likes of you? If you must know, I was advised of certain mineral deposits – utterly unprofitable, as it happens, waste of time all round –’

‘You’re a liar.’ Svenson cocked the revolver. ‘What does he have you doing?’

‘He?’

‘Robert Vandaariff.’

‘Your uniform and voice, sir, suggest a foreign soldier. I am a patriot. Shoot me through the heart – threats mean nothing.’ Trooste struck a noble posture, but then broke into a knowing cackle. ‘In all candour, if I were to break my word, the Ministry would punish me tenfold –’

Svenson cracked the butt of the revolver on the Professor’s forehead. Trooste fell with a cry. Before he could scuttle under the table the Doctor dragged him clear.

‘Mahmoud – place Mrs Kraft on the table.’

‘But what do you intend?’ whined Trooste, both fat hands flat across his forehead. ‘I am sorry this woman is unwell – but I am no physician –’

Svenson sought out Francesca. The girl stood staring at a little hut against the far wall.

‘What is that room?’ Svenson asked Trooste.

‘The foundry.’

‘For what is it used?’

‘Smelting metals, what else?’

‘Is there a door inside, to the corridor?’

‘Of course not –’

Francesca coughed into her hands and sank down on a wooden crate. Her lips were dark and moist. Trooste squirmed to his feet. ‘Is it plague?’

‘It is not. Mahmoud, if you would prevent the Professor from leaving?’ Svenson crossed to the child. ‘What do you remember, Francesca?’

The little girl groaned, as if the disturbance in her body would not submit to speech.

‘Try shutting your eyes. The memories will be less insistent –’

She shook her head with a whine. ‘I can’t – I can’t look away.’

Svenson turned to find Trooste had edged near.

‘She is sick with the genius of your master, through close contact with indigo clay.’

‘Indigo clay?’

‘Do not pretend you do not know it.’

‘On the contrary …’ Trooste studied Francesca like a fox eyeing a fallen fledgling. ‘Close contact, you say?’

A sharp word from Mahmoud called Trooste to assist in situating Mrs Kraft on the table. Mrs Kraft remained silent, gazing into the high, conical ceiling, an enormous brick beehive.

Svenson wiped Francesca’s mouth with a handkerchief and left it in her hands. ‘Once this is finished, you shall have anything. Back in your own home, safe with your brothers, all the tea cakes you can eat –’

Francesca nodded weakly, but her pallor forestalled further mention of food. The child had visibly deteriorated, the laboratory too resonant for her frail frame. It could not last.

‘We need to align these machines,’ he told Trooste. ‘You will obey the child’s instructions.’

‘Obey her?’

‘Exactly.’

‘How provocative. That a child might possess such knowledge – one speculates …’

Svenson ignored him and began to take stock of each device, speaking aloud for Francesca’s benefit. ‘Copper wiring connects each gearbox to leads at the foot of the table, and runs inside these rectangular crates –’

‘Crucibles,’ interjected Trooste. Svenson glanced at Francesca, who nodded, pinching her nose. Svenson went on.

‘More wires pass from the crucibles to the table and hoses, which attach to the subject’s body – no doubt there is an esoteric meaning to each point of contact – and also, most prominently, a mask …’ He found the thing hanging from a peg, rubberized canvas on a metal frame. ‘The current is passed through a bolus of blue glass inside the crucible. I assume you have an adequate supply?’

This was to Trooste. The Professor nodded, adding in a crafty undertone, ‘Lord Vandaariff assured me there was no rival inquiry in these subjects.’

‘He is a liar. And I tell you here: every man to study indigo clay has paid with his life. Gray, Lorenz, Fochtmann, the Comte d’Orkancz himself – all of them dead.’

Trooste chewed his lip, shrugged.

‘You knew this?’

‘O yes. Lord Vandaariff was quite candid. But once I knew the details of each man’s failure, I saw how my own efforts –’

Doctor Svenson dug into his tunic and came out with one of the glass spurs. He flung it at Trooste. The disc harmlessly struck the Professor’s chest and dropped into his gloved palm.

‘Packed into every bomb set off in the city,’ Svenson announced. ‘By the thousands. I trust you recognize the provenance.’

‘But that’s ridiculous –’

‘Look into it, Professor!’

At Svenson’s shout, Trooste raised the blue disc to his eye. An ugly grunt came from his mouth. Before the anger in the glass could fully insinuate itself, Svenson slapped the spur away.

‘Doctor Svenson.’

With a cold horror, Svenson followed Mahmoud’s gaze. From within the foundry came the rattling of a doorknob.

Mahmoud whipped a sheet of canvas over Mrs Kraft and shoved Svenson under the table. He plucked Francesca off her feet and carried her behind a tall cabinet, a hand across the child’s mouth.

Trooste stood blinking, still confused by the glass and staring at the tip of Svenson’s revolver beneath the hoses, ready to fire at the Professor’s first mischosen word.

Mr Foison entered from the foundry. With the knife in his right hand he pointed past Trooste to the main entrance. ‘Why is that door locked?’

‘Is it?’ asked Trooste.

Foison surveyed the room. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing objectionable, I hope. I am working.’

‘Lord Vandaariff is delayed. He will send word.’ Foison flipped the knife into the air and caught it again, as if the action helped him to think. ‘Did you lock that door?’

Trooste’s voice hovered at the edge of a stammer. ‘Perhaps I did. Lord Vandaariff said our work was extremely sensitive –’

‘What sort of idiot locks one door but not the other?’

Trooste visibly fought the urge to glance at Svenson. ‘I suppose an idiot like me.’

‘The same idiot that dropped that flask?’

‘Indeed, yes – an accident –’

‘You are anxious, Professor. You have not been anxious before. No, I should have described you as singularly satisfied.’ Foison’s contempt entered his words like the surfacing eyes of a crocodile.

‘Ah – well, perhaps – the state of the city.’

‘I hadn’t heard.’ Foison flipped the knife again. Abruptly he stepped to the wooden crate where Francesca had been sitting. He drew a fingertip across the crate and flicked it at Trooste: a spatter of black across the Professor’s pink cheek. Trooste dabbed a finger to his face and sniffed.

‘A chemical residue – carbolic phosphate – I thought I had cleaned it all –’

Beyond Trooste, Svenson could just detect the tip of Mahmoud’s shoe. He knew Mahmoud had his own pistol ready to fire. With a sickening dread Svenson saw Foison casually shift his stance to place Trooste between, blocking any clear shot.

‘What you are doing, Professor?’

‘I am assisting Lord Vandaariff –’

‘And your guest?’

‘Guest?’

Foison flipped up the canvas, revealing Madelaine Kraft’s slippered feet. He pinched her toe and provoked a noise from beneath the canvas. ‘I did not know your work at the Institute had graduated to … live subjects.’

‘I do nothing save follow Lord Vandaariff’s instruction.’

‘I see. And – now your work has taken this turn – do you find Lord Vandaariff’s instructions troubling?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not,’ Foison echoed.

‘I – ah – ascribe them to his own f-fever – and – and his recovery. To be candid, we have all heard the rumours –’

‘I have been abroad, until quite recently. Rumours?’

Trooste retreated into the table, rattling the hoses in front of Svenson’s face. ‘Lord Vandaariff’s interest in Macklenburg – and the marriage of his daughter –’

‘One explains the other, does it not? Where the daughter marries, the father invests.’

‘Indeed. But his patronage of the Comte d’Orkancz, who had also been to Macklenburg – ah!’ Trooste gasped at a sudden movement from Foison. Was the knife at his throat?

‘You will not take advantage of Lord Vandaariff, because of his ill health.’

‘Never. Christ above, I promise you –’

‘No, Professor. I promise you.’

Foison stepped away, the knife back in his coat. ‘Whatever happened to your face?’

Trooste touched his forehead where Svenson had struck it with the pistol-butt. ‘Ah, that. One of the machines. Flay-rod. One’s attention wanders –’

‘And then you’re dead.’ Foison walked to the foundry door, but then paused. ‘And Professor?’

Trooste forced a patient smile. ‘Anything.’

‘You wouldn’t know how empty shell casings came to be littering the top of your stairs?’

‘Shell casings?’

‘From a revolving pistol.’

‘I’ve no idea. I have no weapon.’

‘That is wise. The way your day is going, it would only be used against you.’

As soon as Foison was gone, Trooste sagged against the table, pale with fear. ‘I did what you asked – wait – wait! Where are you going?’

Mahmoud raced from his hiding place to the foundry room. Svenson hesitated, taking a step towards Francesca, but then followed the dark man. He found Mahmoud crouched at the second exit door. With silent care Mahmoud eased its bolt home, blocking any re-entry.

‘That cold-eyed Asiatic will have my life.’

Trooste had joined them, but the Doctor paid no heed. Above the foundry’s stone trough hung a metal rack, and there, like cakes from a baker’s oven, lay three blue glass books.

‘What in heaven …’ whispered Mahmoud.

‘O yes,’ agreed Trooste. ‘Aren’t they glorious? Just made this morning, by Lord Vandaariff himself, every one untouched and pure –’

Svenson tried to control his voice. ‘Mahmoud, take hold of the Professor. Do not touch or look into these books. A glass book brought your mistress to this pass.’

‘But what are they?’

Against the wall lay a stack of leather cases. Svenson opened the topmost, noting with grim satisfaction that its interior was lined with orange felt. Equally to his purpose was a pair of iron tongs, wrapped with cloth. As the others watched, Svenson carefully lifted one of the books and set it in the case. He snapped the case shut. Mahmoud held another ready, but Svenson shook his head.

‘Put it down. Turn away.’

‘O no.’ Trooste began to sputter. ‘No, no – good God, the effort! He will kill me! I beg you –’

Svenson flipped the second book off the rack. It struck the edge of the trough and shattered across the stone floor. Trooste howled, and only Mahmoud’s strength kept him from tackling Svenson. Svenson seized the third book.

‘You cannot!’ Trooste writhed. ‘I swear – I will be hunted down –’

Svenson heaved the book onto the stone. He broke the shards under his boots. He stumbled. He was growing light-headed – there were fumes. He dropped the tongs and clapped a hand over his nose and mouth.

‘Get out – hold your breath!’ As the others fled, the Doctor stamped again and again on the broken books. He careened into the main chamber, slamming the door behind.

‘Barbarian,’ spat Trooste.

‘You have no idea.’ Svenson rubbed his stinging eyes.

‘But, Doctor, I don’t understand.’ Mahmoud pointed to the leather case in Svenson’s hand. ‘If those books are so terrible, why keep that one?’

‘Because the Professor is correct. We’ll need a weapon.’

Svenson interrogated Trooste about the machinery, keeping one eye on Francesca – gauging the veracity of the resentful man’s answers by the distress each nugget of information provoked in the girl. Caught between Svenson’s bitter resolve and the spectre of Mr Foison, the Professor became more and more anxious. By the end Trooste barked his replies, flinching in advance at the child’s grunts and soot-coloured drool.

But in that half-hour Doctor Svenson learnt more than he had ever desired about indigo clay: conduction, amplification, and the power Trooste termed ‘reciprocal cognition’. He now perceived in the tangles of wire and hose a mechanical intention: the operative essence of indigo clay eluded him as much as ever, but laid bare were the physical means to translate memory into a glass book, to infuse a book’s contents into an empty mind, to overwhelm a victim’s will with the Process – each action a relatively straightforward matter of force and direction. The restoration of Madelaine Kraft, however, depended on knowledge Trooste did not have.

Svenson had seen the toxic effects of prolonged exposure and bodily ingestion, but Madelaine Kraft’s affliction could not be put down to physical proximity – it was not as if blue glass had touched her brain. Moreover, she could form new memories – so how to explain her continued vacancy? Perhaps the chemical exchange wherein blue glass captured memory carried a charged violence, enough to leave the psychic equivalent of scar tissue. Could the power of these machines overcome that artificial barrier? And if so, would the action reveal her memory intact, like a forgotten city beneath a dam-formed lake? Or would the necessary intensity simply destroy her?

Svenson gazed down at Mrs Kraft and squeezed the woman’s honey-coloured hand. Whatever he was supposed to find, there was precious little time in which to do it.

‘She will be herself once again,’ he said. ‘Is that not right, Francesca?’ The girl had brought her knees up to her chest and sat rocking, dirty ankles exposed. ‘Perhaps you might tell Mrs Kraft yourself.’

Francesca shook her head, lips tightly shut. Hating the lie, he smiled encouragingly. The girl hiccupped and shook her head to stop him talking, but Svenson kept on.

‘I know you feel ill, but you must trust the Contessa. Look at Mrs Kraft – or, even better, take her hand.’ He lifted the child to the table, ignoring the worry on the faces of the other men. ‘Excellent, now, think of what we know … when I look into a glass book, which is to say, when I touch it with my gaze, this contact allows its entrance to my mind –’

The child’s hacking spattered black onto Svenson’s sleeve.

‘Doctor –’

‘Please do not interrupt, Mr Mahmoud. Physical contact is different, Francesca, yes? For example, I was able to remove glass from Cardinal Chang’s lungs with an orange liquid that dissolved the glass into phlegm, so it could be expelled. But even if we possessed that mixture –’

‘Bloodstone,’ Francesca croaked.

‘Bloodstone?’ Svenson had never heard the name.

‘An al-alch …’ She stumbled on the words with an unhappy squeak. ‘… alchemical catalyst.’

‘Compounded out of what – what elements?’

Francesca choked again, spraying Svenson’s coat. Mahmoud turned on Trooste. ‘Do you have any on hand? Bloodstone?’

‘Lord Vandaariff has procured a broad range of chemicals –’

Trooste indicated an apothecary’s cabinet, a tall draught-board of tiny drawers. Mahmoud leapt to it, opening an entire row. Svenson carried the child over, so she might peer inside, but Francesca shook her head at each. Her eyes were wandering and wild. Mahmoud slammed the drawers as they went and wrenched at the next row.

‘What does it look like?’ he asked.

‘The liquid was orange,’ said Svenson. ‘I have seen an orange metal as well, but that was refined, and no doubt an alloy –’

Francesca dismissed this row as well. Mahmoud set upon another and growled at Trooste, ‘Have you no idea?’

‘I am sorry, good fellow,’ Trooste replied. ‘Lord Vandaariff is not one to share a secret. Naturally I regret Mrs Kraft’s condition – she has been a friend to the Institute – although, as a regular visitor, and I am not alone in this opinion, one might merit a reduction –’

Mahmoud squared on Trooste, but Svenson caught his fist before it could swing. The sudden gesture loosened his grip on the girl and she sagged forward. Francesca inhaled, nostrils flaring, and began to whine like a chastened pup. The nearest drawer was filled with brownish rock. Svenson held a chunk to her nose. She gagged and squirmed away, unable to breathe.

‘You will kill her,’ cried Trooste. ‘Jesus Lord –’

Svenson ignored him. ‘Francesca! What do we do? How do we use it?’

Francesca met his eyes, fearfully, plaintively, and opened her mouth wide, as if she were showing him a broken tooth. Black fluid poured down her chin.

‘Dear God!’ Trooste protested.

‘It is nothing at all,’ Svenson snarled. ‘Mahmoud – bloodstone – mortar and pestle, grind it as fine as gunpowder –’ He thrust a finger at one of the brass gearboxes. ‘Professor Trooste, we will need that machine. Make it ready at once.’

‘You have no idea –’

‘Move, damn you!’

‘The smell …’ Francesca’s voice was a stricken complaint. Svenson wiped her face.

‘Do not mark it, my dear – two minutes more and we shall whisk you to clean air –’

‘The smell …’

‘Yes, I am so sorry –’

‘The smell is when.’

Francesca’s eyes rolled back into her skull.

The child lay shivering in Svenson’s greatcoat. She would not revive.

‘A terrible shock,’ he muttered, ‘a marvel she could help as she did. We will let the poor thing rest, and get her to safety as soon as possible.’

Mahmoud’s silence was its own condemnation, but the steady grind of the pestle bespoke the man’s determination. Trooste cleared his throat into a closed pink hand.

‘I believe Mrs Kraft would be better restored with a garlic soup.’

Mahmoud merely lifted the mortar with the pounded bloodstone for Svenson to see.

‘That is excellent, I’m sure. If Professor Trooste will deign to assist …’

Trooste did so, adjusting the brass knobs on a gearbox, though not without a glance at the door. Mahmoud’s worry seemed no less acute.

‘Why has no one come?’

‘We do not know what has happened in the courtyard.’ Svenson poured a handful of ground bloodstone into the gearbox.

Trooste frowned. ‘If there were a crisis, Mr Foison would have told me.’

‘He trusts you that much?’

‘He trusts no one – but Lord Vandaariff has shown every confidence. Why not stop all of this and let me address him on your behalf?’

Svenson made sure of the hoses and wires. The black rubber mask left only Mrs Kraft’s mouth exposed to breathe. Trooste inserted a heavy lozenge of blue glass into the crucible chamber. Svenson connected the copper wire to the crucible leads.

‘Mahmoud, please step back from the table.’

‘What will happen to her?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘All of this wizardry –’

‘She will be cured.’

‘She won’t,’ declared Trooste.

‘Correct me if I am wrong, Professor. This’ – Svenson pointed to a switch inside the wooden box – ‘ignites the crucible. The initial charge sent through the glass is amplified by passage around the chamber and feeds back again into the gearbox. There the collected charge reacts with the bloodstone, and – when the gearbox valve is opened – infuses the subject with its properties.’

‘That is the map of it,’ replied Trooste. ‘But a map is only half of the matter. How much bloodstone? You’re only guessing. Just as you take the word of an incoherent child that it’s bloodstone to begin with – or that bloodstone isn’t fatal. How long do you wait before opening the valve? Not long enough, and the force is too weak. Too long, and the charge alone will kill her.’

Mahmoud looked to Svenson for an answer. He had none.

‘That is the truth!’ Trooste snapped.

‘Why did that woman send you?’ Mahmoud’s question was a dagger between Svenson’s ribs. ‘Madelaine Kraft is nothing to her. I cannot believe in her kindness.’

Svenson spread his open palms. ‘I do not ask you to.’

‘Then you are here to kill her?’

‘If that were true, why drag you all this way?’

‘For your science.’

‘Not mine, Mahmoud.’

‘She will die on this table,’ insisted Trooste.

‘She will never heal as things stand,’ said Svenson gently. ‘She will waste to nothing.’

Mahmoud gazed helplessly at the woman, limbs bound and face obscured, only the red mouth visible. In an instant of clarity Svenson saw the isolated line of Madelaine Kraft’s jaw exactly mirrored on Mahmoud’s younger, darker face. He was her son.

‘Do it.’ Mahmoud’s voice fell flat and hopeless. ‘She would rather die than live like this. Do it now.’

Svenson pulled the switch. A rattle of current, like a rolling volley of musket-fire, leapt along the lines of copper wire, and the sharp stench of indigo clay burnt the air. The metal pipes that covered the walls took up the vibrations, escalating until the entire chamber throbbed with a deafening roar. Svenson clapped his hands over his ears, but it did not stop the pain. Like a fool he remembered the Comte’s brass helmets – and there they were, across the chamber, in a row. If only either he or Trooste had known what they were doing! But it was too late to reach them. Madelaine Kraft’s limbs tore against the restraints and her mouth gaped in an unheard howl. Mahmoud had a fist in his mouth, eyes fixed on his mother. Svenson lurched to the gearbox, ready to open the valve. Trooste tugged at his tunic, waving frantically. Svenson shook his head. Trooste tugged again. Madelaine Kraft arched her spine, rising off the table, higher, higher, until it seemed her bones must snap –

He almost missed it, between Trooste’s attempts to shove him aside and the hammering noise, so loud he could scarcely link one thought to another. The current flooded the bloodstone, shaking the bolts that held the gearbox – then there it was, a burst of scent, bittersweet and musky, a rawness in his nostrils –

The smell is when.

Svenson opened the valve. The black hoses flared to life. Madelaine Kraft’s twisting body went stiff, fingers splayed, jaw wide, the waves of force pouring through –

The current from the gearbox died as quickly as a candle flame, the bloodstone spent. Trooste leapt forward, closed the valve and groped in the box for the switch. The roar in the pipes fell away. The blackened wires snapped their final sparks and set to gently smoking.

Svenson fell to the table, ears pounding. Mrs Kraft’s pulse was racing but strong. With a cry of relief he waved Mahmoud to him and together they peeled the mask from her face. She bore welts where it had pressed into her skin, but her eyes … her eyes shone with a life Doctor Svenson had not previously seen.

‘Mrs Kraft?’ He could not hear himself, but it did not matter. She nodded. Mahmoud freed her limbs and raised her to sit.

‘Merciful heaven,’ she managed. ‘I have been at the bottom of the sea. O my dear boy.’

She buried her face in Mahmoud’s shoulder and his strong arms pulled her close. Mahmoud leant down, face to her hair, a spill of tears on his dark cheek.

‘Now,’ Mahmoud whispered. ‘Now we pay them back.’

Svenson hurried to Francesca. The girl was cold to the touch, her breath shallow. He tapped her cheek to no response.

‘Is she alive?’ asked Trooste.

‘Of course she is!’ Svenson crossed to the still-open square drawer and heaped another load of bloodstone into the mortar. He sat on a bench and began to grind it furiously.

‘Why do you need more?’ asked Trooste. ‘A child cannot withstand that current.’

‘I am aware of it,’ Svenson replied tightly. Mahmoud murmured to Mrs Kraft, yet her gaze fell on Doctor Svenson, to his discomfort.

‘Then for whom?’ Trooste pressed. ‘Not one of us!’

‘No.’ Svenson filled a stoppered flask with the rust-coloured grains and tucked it inside his tunic.

‘Then what?’ complained Trooste. ‘For God’s sake will you not leave? They will think I have betrayed them – my entire prospects of advancement –’

‘Are bankrupt. Lorenz, Fochtmann, Crooner – did you know Crooner?’

‘Everyone knew Crooner – ludicrous fellow –’

‘Crooner died with both arms shattered at the elbow, turned to blue glass.’

‘Well, exactly – that is Crooner all over –’

‘Don’t be an ass!’ The Doctor pulled on his greatcoat. ‘Listen – we will climb these stairs. Mahmoud must help his mistress, I must carry the girl. We cannot drag you. But Vandaariff must not know what we have done.’

‘Lock me in a cupboard, I will say I saw nothing –’

‘You will divulge every detail.’ Svenson pulled out the revolver. The Professor swallowed, his wide throat bobbing.

‘B-but I have helped you –’

‘And so I ask you to come with us. If you do not, I will shoot you or bury your mind in this last glass book.’ The words were inhuman, but had he any choice?

‘No. I would not wish it on a fiend.’ Madelaine Kraft’s voice carried an authority, however weak. ‘If the Professor will not leave this business, Mahmoud could perhaps prove his resistance to our trespass … say, by shooting his leg.’

‘Through the knee?’ offered Mahmoud.

‘Hardly sufficient,’ she observed. ‘Both knees would be better.’

Trooste blanched, at which Mrs Kraft smiled, and the moment of violence was past. The ease of her intervention seemed from another world – as distant to Svenson as allowing himself satisfaction for her cure. The Doctor stuffed away the revolver and slung the leather case over one shoulder. He lifted Francesca and stumped to the door.

For once the height of a staircase did not disrupt the Doctor’s thoughts, distracted as he was by the question of what to do next. They clustered on the upper landing, all save Mahmoud panting from the climb. Svenson put an ear to the door, but heard nothing.

‘If the guard has returned, we must pull him inside – throw him down the stairs, anything for silence. If he has not, then I suggest we run for the same window we came from –’

‘We will be seen from the rooftop.’ This was Madelaine Kraft. Her tone carried no criticism, but Svenson felt nakedly at fault.

‘Then I will charge the gate. While they surround me, Mahmoud runs for the window with you and the child –’

‘They will shoot you dead, then the rest of us from a distance. Where will your mission be then? Or our revenge?’

Svenson could not think. He could not look down at the girl. He felt the grain of the wooden door against his forehead. ‘I am open to suggestion.’

‘I will go with the Professor. He is known, and if I am noticed, the reaction will at least not be immediately hostile. If he betrays me, I will cut him down. Mahmoud?’

Wordlessly, but in Trooste’s plain view, Mahmoud passed her a short knife in a leather sheath. She gripped it with a turn of her wrist, so it appeared for all the world a folded fan. Mahmoud opened the door and ducked behind.

The light hit Trooste and Mrs Kraft and for a moment neither moved.

‘Lord above,’ Trooste gasped. ‘My lodgings … my writings – O heaven!’

Trooste ran. Both Svenson and Mahmoud snatched after him, but Mrs Kraft blocked them with her arm. ‘Let him go – look!’

Before their eyes an entire wing of the Institute stood shrouded in smoke and, licking from the billowing curtain, bright tongues of flame. Svenson shared a guilt-stricken glance with Mahmoud – how could this have come from their diversion of smoke? – but then a spatter of gunshots seized their attention. Trooste had been seen, and he shrieked as the grass around him kicked up in clumps. Hands over his head, the Professor reached the cover of an oak tree. Svenson saw sentries silhouetted above the gate – but who had given the order to fire, inside the courtyard, at a man they must recognize?

His eyes dropped to the gate itself. The iron portcullis had come down, and bodies littered the ground under the stone archway … what struggle had forced the guards to seal the way? Were these people from the town?

Mahmoud shook Svenson’s arm. ‘Listen!’

He heard nothing save the shouts of the men attempting to quell the fire – a poor handful, and all from the Institute, but the blaze had grown well beyond their ability. He saw men trapped by flames, others burdened with possessions, unsure where to flee. Still more huddled in the courtyard, like Trooste, unable to move for fear of rifle fire. A few sharpshooters aimed at them, but most faced the other direction, to the street … and then Svenson heard what Mahmoud had, beyond the walls, another roar to echo the inferno – a mob outside the gate! They had attempted to storm the Institute! Had the fire spread through the district?

A bullet chipped the brick above Svenson’s head. They had been seen at last. Svenson plunged forward, Francesca in his arms.

‘We will be trapped! Hurry!’

He cut to his left, tight against the curving brick, away from the snipers. A moment later Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were there.

‘I do not understand,’ she gasped, out of breath. ‘They have been ordered to keep people in as much as keep them out!’

A portion of the burning wing collapsed in a shower of sparks. Fresh jets of flame rose through the open hole.

‘The Institute will burn!’ Mahmoud cried. ‘And every neighbouring building …’

‘We must get out,’ Mrs Kraft shouted. ‘My people – I must know they are safe.’

A ricochet sent them further along the wall – at least one sniper had shifted for a better shot. Svenson saw Trooste dash from his refuge and into a gap in the wall. He boldly plunged after, Francesca bouncing in his arms. If anyone knew their way to a bolt-hole, it would be a conniving fellow like Trooste.

Bullets cracked through the branches over his head, but – perhaps due to the rising smoke – nothing found its mark and he reached the gap in the wall. Trooste had vanished, but the door he’d gone through hung open. Svenson charged on, into chaos: black-robed scholars fleeing with boxes, satchels, specimen cases. Svenson glimpsed Trooste through the mob and pressed after him, against the tide.

Mahmoud shouted over the tumult: ‘He isn’t leading us out! He wants his own papers –’

Svenson didn’t answer. The Professor had spent a good minute cowering behind the tree, long enough to grasp the scope of the fire and the orders that had been given to the soldiers. Trooste was no fool.

‘Where are we?’ he shouted to Mahmoud. ‘Which direction –’

Mahmoud pointed urgently. White smoke curled towards them from the corridor’s end. Svenson wheeled round and spied a door ajar: an office whose window had been broken out with a chair. Beyond it bobbed the figure of Trooste, racing down an alley. Once through the alley they would be free.

‘Mahmoud, as we did before – you first, I will help Mrs Kraft –’

Svenson paused. They stared at Francesca. He put an ear to the child’s ashen mouth. Her breath was starkly uneven.

‘The medicines you purchased for Mrs Kraft will answer – willow bark, and mustard to dislodge congestion – but we must get her out of this inferno!’

Fat flakes of ash filled the air like tainted snow. Improbably, the blaze had not yet leapt to the nearby townhouses, but their occupants had fled to the street. At the main road, Svenson and the others were swept into a jostling crowd. Any hope of locating Trooste was lost, and within seconds Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft were swallowed up behind him. Where were they? Francesca required immediate treatment, yet Svenson could not see which corners they were passing. He shifted his grip, despairing at the sickly flop of her hanging legs.

To either side stumbled figures in silk and fur, escaping within pockets of servantry. Surges of traffic tore at each little group as the smoke flowed over the rooftops: shoving, shouts, shrubbery trampled, a lamp-post torn from its place and crashing to the cobbles. Svenson wiped his eyes on the epaulettes of his greatcoat – if only he could see.

The people before him stopped short and Svenson piled into a wide man in his shirtsleeves. Before he could beg the fellow’s pardon someone behind cannoned into him, and again it was all he could do to remain upright.

Trumpets. Hoof beats. Cavalry clearing the road for the fire brigade. The shirtsleeved man slapped at his neck, burnt by a cinder. The right side of the road – a single line of townhouses – was all that stood between the penned-in crowd and the growing blaze. A few water-carts would not stop its spread. In five minutes the street would be a deathtrap.

Black-jacketed lancers blocked the road. Beyond the lancers came the water-carts. Suddenly a wave of shrieking rose from the rear of the crowd. The fire had reached the townhouses. The mob swelled into the cordon of horsemen. Svenson stumbled to one knee.

‘Back, damn you!’ roared a sergeant of lancers, as if his throat were boiled leather. ‘If these carts don’t pass the entire district will burn! Once they pass you can go on!’

His voice was strong, and might have swayed the crowd if not for another eruption from the Institute. The sky bloomed to a rolling orange ball, showering the street with debris. The crowd surged without care into the horsemen. The Sergeant danced his horse away, but the troopers lacked his skill. Fearing for their lives, the lancers dipped their bloody points into the churning mob. People fell screaming – as those behind them screamed at debris and flame. A horse went down with a spastic thrashing of hooves, its rider pinned. The cordon broke and the terrified mass poured blindly through. In front of Svenson an elderly man fell and tried to rise – blood on his brow, pomaded hair flapping like a dove’s broken wing – but his leather shoes slipped on the stones and he disappeared. For an instant the crowd parted around the obstruction – those who had seen him fall did their best to step clear, but those who had not tumbled heedlessly through the opening: a last ripple and he was gone.

Svenson ran as he never had in his life, past struggling horsemen, around an overturned water-cart, careening from the frenzy. He’d been kicked in the back, struck across the face and nearly skewered. He stood gasping with his back against a tattered sapling, upright in an otherwise trampled garden. The fire had entirely possessed the first line of houses and would certainly jump the road. Huddled shapes littered the street. Scavengers searched pockets and gathered trinkets and cutlery abandoned by the fallen and the fled.

The stitch in his rib sent a line of pain all the way to Svenson’s jaw. He pulled Francesca tighter to his chest and did his awkward best to chafe the circulation in her limbs. Her breath came thick with congestion.

‘Not much longer, my dear. The green guardhouse door and then hot tea and a bath – and tobacco for me, by God.’

The girl’s hair stuck to her brow, curled with sweat and grime. He jogged her gently, hoping for a response. She blinked, the blue of her eyes clouded with an opaque film.

‘You did very well, sweetheart – just wait until we tell the Contessa –’

A fresh chorus of trumpets. The lancers returning for more blood. He hurried in the opposite direction and, like a message from heaven, there was the signpost for Aachen Street.

‘Thank goodness – sweet Christ, thank goodness –’

At a clatter of boots, Svenson stopped short. The Old Palace was untouched by the fire, but the guardhouse was smashed and the front of the brothel yawned wide. The garden was littered with debris, and as he stared, stupid with fatigue, two soldiers emerged lugging a wooden chest from Madelaine Kraft’s office. Behind came two more, driving a gang of frightened women whose attire seemed as ill placed in the open air as a powdered wig in a poor house. Bronque’s men had sacked the Old Palace as if it were their prize.

The Doctor turned to flee – if he could find Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft, if they had not been taken – but a firm hand shoved him into the iron fence. A burly corporal smiled grimly, his musket-butt ready to smash the Doctor’s face.

‘For God’s sake,’ gasped Svenson. ‘I have a child –’

‘Hold! Hold there!’

An officer stood across the road, where Bronque’s men formed a cordon.

‘His uniform, ass!’ shouted the officer. ‘That’s the Colonel’s German! Get him in the wagon – now!’

Before Svenson could address the officer, the Corporal heaved him into a panelled goods wagon. He landed awkwardly on his side, rolling to protect the girl, and just pulled his legs free of the slamming door. A rattle of iron caused the Doctor to start. Chained to the opposite bench – bloody, bruised and brutally gagged – sat Mr Gorine.

Svenson reached across for the gag, but paused when he noticed the horror in Gorine’s eyes. He looked down. Francesca Trapping’s head lolled in the Doctor’s arms, her stained mouth yawning in the half-light. Her face was cold. Her eyes were sightless and unblinking.

He had no idea how long they rode, nor where their captors took them. A crippling guilt fixed Doctor Svenson to the bench and sank his mind. He wrapped Francesca in his greatcoat and fruitlessly rocked her body.

Somewhere in the midst of it he’d managed to prise the gag from Gorine’s mouth; the chains were locked fast. In a ravaged monotone he had done his best to answer Gorine’s questions. None of it mattered. He had known she was at risk. Willow bark, for God’s sake! Francesca Trapping had been balanced on a gallows by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, and he, Abelard Svenson, had kicked away the support.

‘She was doomed already.’ Gorine’s voice was as gentle as possible above the creaks of the wagon and the pounding hoof beats. Svenson nodded dumbly. It changed nothing. He had lost himself, quite completely. He raised his face to Gorine’s searching eyes. The man recoiled.

‘You’re not ill as well?’

Svenson’s lips twitched reactively, a ghost of a smile, inappropriate, hideous. ‘The damage does not signify.’

‘But … your eyes, your face –’

‘I’m sure it is only a lack of tobacco.’

‘Have you gone mad?’

Svenson heard the question as if from a distance. Gorine stared at Svenson’s hand, stroking the girl’s hair. The Doctor carefully returned it to his lap.

‘My apologies. Far too many tasks await before I can allow myself to expire.’

Gorine leant as close as his chains allowed. ‘You’re sure they were not taken? Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft – you’re sure she is restored?’

‘O yes.’

‘Then where do they take us?’ Gorine vainly attempted to look out through the ventilation holes. Svenson gazed at Francesca’s shoe, sticking out from the greatcoat, marvelling at how small the foot, how fragile each toe.

‘It was as you surmised,’ Gorine went on. ‘For three weeks we have suffered Bronque’s trespasses – soldiers on the premises, arrivals at all hours – the Colonel and his man.’

Gorine’s upper lip was bruised, and the swelling broke the meticulous line of his moustache. Almost like a cleft palate, Svenson thought, noting that Gorine now appeared less intelligent. What was it about disfigurement, however arbitrary the source, that led the mind to underestimate, even dismiss the victim …

‘That fellow never said a word, you know. We offered rooms, choice of companions. Took us up, of course, but never let slip a damned thing. No papers or club cards, not even a mark in the fellow’s clothes to show his tailor. Not one clue. Only his hands.’

‘When I saw him he wore gloves.’

‘At all times. But once I spied on them in the tunnel. This fellow’s hands are stained.’

‘A birthmark?’

‘Are birthmarks blue?’

The wheels slowed, crunching into gravel. Gorine went stiff. ‘What will they do? I am no soldier – I cannot withstand pain!’

Svenson shivered. The sweat of his flight from the Institute had gone cold. He worked a hand into his tunic and took out the blue card containing the Contessa’s memory of the painting. He dropped it to the floor and broke it to shards beneath his heel.

‘What are you doing? And what is that?’ Gorine pointed to the leather case around Svenson’s shoulder. ‘Is it valuable? We should exchange it for our lives –’

‘If they wanted to kill you, you would be dead. And since you’ve no idea where they are, you cannot betray your friends.’

‘Bronque won’t believe that!’ Gorine’s voice rose. ‘They will tie me to a rack –’

‘It is not as if racks abound. You are a hostage against Mahmoud and Mrs Kraft.’

The wagon came to a stop. An idea penetrated Svenson’s gloom. ‘Wait. What did Colonel Bronque say to you, on your arrest? When he learnt we had entered the tunnel –’

‘He called me a whoremongering traitor, then I was kicked to the floor –’

‘Nothing else? They will hunt Mrs Kraft and Mahmoud and they will kill them.’

The rattle of the lock echoed in the hollow space. Gorine shook his head. ‘It wasn’t Bronque – it was the other, and when we were outside, at the smoke –’

‘Saying what?’

‘That no man lights his own funeral pyre without reason.’

Canvas hoods were forced over their heads. Svenson pleaded for the soldiers to take care of Francesca’s body, but they only pulled him away and bound his hands. The hood smelt of oats. After minutes of stumbling and barked shins, he was dropped onto a hard wooden chair.

‘Let me see him.’

The hood was removed. Behind a table sat the gentleman he had passed in the Old Palace, Bronque’s personage. A soldier set the leather case and Svenson’s rumpled greatcoat onto the table.

‘Wait outside.’

The soldier strode from the room without care. The man behind the table set to emptying the greatcoat’s pockets. Svenson had time to study him: perhaps forty years of age, dark hair oiled and centre-parted, curled moustache, pointed goatee. He was thin-limbed but stout – a trim youth’s thickening from lack of exercise, yet his dancing eyes, and the nimble movements of his gloved hands, showed a restless acuity.

The man set Svenson’s revolver next to a crumpled handkerchief, a pencil stub, soiled banknotes, the mangled silver case. The leather case he ignored.

‘Do you like the room, Doctor? Formerly a library, but there was damp – is there not always damp? – and so the books are gone. Abandoned rooms take what usage they can – like people – still, I so appreciate the cork floor. So quiet, so comforting, and with varnish just the colour of honey. Why isn’t every room lined with cork? It would make a better world.’

He arched his eyebrows, plucked as thin as an ingénue’s. The man’s face was formed of potent details – ridged hair, wire spectacles, plump little mouth – creating a too-saturated whole.

‘A more quiet world,’ Svenson replied hollowly.

‘Is that not the same?’ The man shook his head to restore a more sober expression. ‘I am sorry – I have anticipated our meeting, and it makes me merry, though the circumstance is most grave. I am Mr Schoepfil.’

‘And you are acquainted with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘You sent Bronque to identify me, in the office.’

‘Just to be sure. I had to be elsewhere.’

‘The Customs House.’

Schoepfil chuckled ruefully. ‘And only to discover but that you had been there too! How not, after all – how not, given our mutual studies?’

‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’

Schoepfil waved a hand. ‘Inconsequential. But you! You were on Vandaariff’s dirigible! And at Parchfeldt! And the Customs House – and now the Institute! How I have waited to put questions to a man who knows!’

‘You could ask Robert Vandaariff.’

‘That gentleman remains beyond my purview.’

‘What is your purview, if I may ask?’

‘It would be such a pleasure to exchange tales, but there is no time. Would you like a cigarette?’

Schoepfil grinned at the mangled silver case and rang a bell. The soldier re-entered the room, one hand on his sabre hilt. ‘A cigarette for Doctor Svenson. In fact, let us give the poor fellow half a dozen.’

The trooper measured six cigarettes into Svenson’s shaking palm, then set a box of safety matches on top of the stack. He clicked his heels and was gone.

‘Light up – light up!’ urged Schoepfil. ‘I require a man who can think, not a trembling ruin.’ He slipped a pocket watch from his waistcoat and pursed his lips. ‘To the task. How did Robert Vandaariff arrange for the dirigible to sink into the sea? Was a confederate aboard to trigger the descent, or had the machine been sabotaged before leaving Harschmort?’

Svenson inhaled too deeply and began to cough. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘No shyness, Captain-Surgeon. I know of the alliance between Vandaariff, Henry Xonck and the Duke of Stäelmaere. I have identified their top tier of agents and a host of underlings. Their grand plan hovers at the very point of execution … and then, in one bold stroke, Vandaariff destroys his two rivals – Henry Xonck and the Duke – and launches his minions, their duties done, off to their doom. The entire Macklenburg expedition is but a red herring! Afterwards, to protect himself, he pretends blood fever, but in secret seizes control of Xonck Armaments, the Ministries, and – as is now plain to the simplest corner bootblack – reaches for the nation itself!’

Svenson tapped his ash into the matchbox. ‘Lydia Vandaariff was a passenger on that dirigible.’

Schoepfil shrugged. ‘I see you have little experience of men of high finance.’

‘The circumstances of her death were appalling.’

‘Just Lord Vandaariff’s style – the others would believe themselves safe from his hand in Lydia’s presence. What is more, his remaining enemies have been shown he will do anything! His own child! They cower in fear! But to my question. When did you realize the dirigible would sink?’

‘When it struck the water.’

‘You jest. Come, was it a triggered device, like those we have seen here?’

‘Why is that important? The airship sank, nearly all aboard were killed –’

‘Ah, and who was not? If there was a confederate, that confederate would have been most likely to survive.’

Svenson let the smoke enter his lungs, drawing strength. ‘If you suspect I am that confederate, what use in denying the fact? You will believe me or you won’t.’

‘My reasons are my own. Could you answer?’

‘Six people survived. Three are since dead – Francis Xonck, Elöise Dujong, Celeste Temple. Two others, Cardinal Chang and the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, may be dead as well – which leaves me.’ He ground the butt into the matchbox. ‘But it does not matter. You are wrong.’

‘About you?’

‘About everything. The airship went down through no pre-existing plan. Robert Vandaariff was defeated as much as Henry Xonck or the Duke. His resurrection at Parchfeldt only put a monster in his piece. Whatever Vandaariff once wanted in his life, he does not, I assure you, want it now.’

‘Shocking statements! What can you mean?’

‘He is insane. Quite literally of another mind.’

Schoepfil drummed the fingers of one hand upon the table. Then he rapped the table with his fist. ‘It is no good, Doctor. The attempt is worthy, but I know you to be wrong as well!’ A panel in the wall behind him popped open, and Schoepfil turned. ‘Mr Kelling – already? Admirable dispatch.’

Kelling, a slim fellow with the angular features of an apologetic fox, edged in holding a wide tray laden with squat bottles. In each bottle floated an odd-shaped mass – tubular, sponge-like, ink-stained – like a collection of shapeless invertebrates. But Svenson could not hide from his own anatomical knowledge, and his throat tightened. Each specimen jar contained a different sample of corrupted tissue, excised from a child’s body. Francesca Trapping. He leapt for the revolver.

With a speed belying his stoutness, Schoepfil snatched a wooden tray and swung it hard into the side of Svenson’s head. Stunned, the Doctor took two more rapid blows, one to his reaching hand and another to his face, the last forcing him to stagger from the table. He looked up, blinking, furious, impotent. Schoepfil retained his seat – the revolver untouched but within reach. His expression remained cheerful.

‘A surgeon and a spy, yet you retain this sentiment – as if ever there were two professions less suited to such a keepsake. The child is dead, sir. Forbear.’

Svenson felt his face burning. Schoepfil reached for the nearest jar. But Kelling had not gone, and whispered a private word. Schoepfil nodded eagerly.

‘A reprieve! Though I will want your opinion, Doctor, for these samples appear to be nothing like those collected from the blast sites. One itches to speculate irresponsibly.’

He sniffed at Svenson’s revolver. ‘That stays here.’ Schoepfil flung the greatcoat across the table for Svenson to catch. ‘Though I should not wear it. On the contrary, you will wish to trade its warmth for an iced orange squash!’

Kelling waited in the corridor, next to an ovoid hatch, as on a warship. Svenson followed Schoepfil into a dark passageway that smelt of mould. He considered attacking Schoepfil – the way was so narrow that the man might not be able to turn – but hesitated, and in his hesitation felt the weight of his exhaustion and despair. If he did escape, where would he go? What would he do? Svenson felt as alone as he ever had in life.

The air was damp, smelling of rust. They walked on. Finally Svenson felt a single gloved finger impertinently touch his lips. He resisted the urge to bite it. With a gentle scrape, Schoepfil eased aside a tiny panel in the wall: a viewing window the size of a playing card. Through the opening came light and warm, wet air laced with the rotten tang of sulphur … and the echoes of water, splashing, slapping … the sounds of people in a bath.

A very large bath. Svenson dug the monocle from his tunic, wiped it on his trouser leg. He had seen bathhouses before, but rarely so opulent or so old as the one he was peering at now – as if the city’s Roman bones had been overlaid with stucco flowers and birds, the brick archways enamelled with tile. Attendants crossed between pools bearing trays of refreshment and piles of thick Turkish towels.

A splash recalled Svenson’s attention to the pool before his eyes. Along its far edge floated a line of women, rosy with heat, hair wrapped in turbans, bathing costumes of thin muslin plastered to their flesh. Svenson stared, dull-hearted, at bare throats and shoulders, at bosoms winking above the lapping pool. One lady raised a dripping arm, a signal. More splashes, beyond his view, and a new woman, grey-haired and fat, swam to the centre of the pool. She bobbed her head.

‘The ladies you sent for …’

Svenson could not see whom she addressed – they were beneath the tiny window – but he stifled a gasp as another figure glided forward. A muslin bathing costume clung to her torso, and her bare limbs shimmered. The grey-haired woman made an introduction.

‘Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Your Majesty. An Italian gentlewoman.’

The Contessa shyly blinked her violet eyes. With her black hair wrapped away, she appeared disturbingly unadorned, almost innocent.

‘I am much honoured by Your Majesty’s attention,’ she murmured, nodding to the space directly beneath Svenson’s panel.

Svenson spun to Schoepfil, but the man eagerly nodded him back to the window. A second figure floated into view. Svenson could not breathe.

‘And the Contessa’s companion …’ The speaker paused to suggest her disapproval. ‘A Miss Celestial Temple.’

The scar above her ear peeped from the turban and fresh abrasions dotted her cheeks … but it was her. She was alive.

Alive and with the Contessa, and somehow here, at an unimaginable audience with the Queen herself. Schoepfil rocked with satisfaction, like a schoolboy.

‘For God’s sake,’ Svenson whispered, ‘who are you?’

Schoepfil shifted to better press his mouth to Doctor Svenson’s ear.

‘Who else could I be, Doctor? I am Robert Vandaariff’s heir!’