The Chemickal Marriage

Eight Fontanel

When Vandaariff reclaimed the glass card from Matthew Harcourt, the young man dropped to his knees and, shaking like an opium eater, emptied his stomach onto the carpet. When the heaving subsided, Foison hauled the overmatched Interim Minister to his feet and marched him out. Vandaariff followed at his own slow speed, humming under his breath.

Blood instructs us on the use of flame

Fire’s indulgence sings the end of shame

Chang had hoped to erode Foison’s devotion to his master, and Phelps had paid the price. He watched in silence as the green-coats cut the corpse from the chair and took it away. When they returned it was with Foison, and for him.

His arms were bound behind his back with chain. Outside waited a large vehicle, unlike any Chang had ever seen. Sheathed in metal, the smaller front was like any rich man’s coach, but was attached to a second portion, as large as a goods wagon.

Were the trains no longer safe?

Two lackeys led Chang into the long rear car and looped his chain over a hook in the ceiling. The height of the hook gave Chang no choice but to stand. They pulled forward, Chang balancing like a seaman on a heaving deck. He looked to Foison, slouched on a bench against the inner wall.

‘The spur that killed Phelps,’ said Chang. ‘It wasn’t like the ones we found at Raaxfall. It didn’t hold rage, but something more like despair. He’d been cut with it before, under questioning, hadn’t he, just nicks to help him along? The man was ruined.’

Foison waited, as if this required no comment.

‘Blue glass in the throat. It’s what killed Lydia Vandaariff. She was decapitated. Did you know that?’

Foison gripped a metal hook for support as the coach swept round a turn. ‘Lord Robert was so informed, yes.’

‘By whom?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Only five people survived that crash. Francis Xonck is dead since. If any of the four – I include myself – had described that scene for your master, you would know it. I’ll wager they have not, and yet he knows. How is that possible? Because those memories – memories of a dead man, also on that airship – have been placed inside his mind.’

A panel slid open and through a barrier of steel mesh loomed Vandaariff’s haggard face.

‘Such an interesting conversation, Cardinal. One is reminded of those Greeks, groping to understand the world – everything wrong, of course, the logic of intelligent children, fumbling in their mother’s kitchen, rising on their toes in the hope of buttering bread. You observe – of course you do, you’re a hunter – but do you comprehend?’

‘I know you’re going to die.’

‘But not alone, Cardinal Chang. Do not let the news deject you.’

Vandaariff turned from the panel, but left it open. He resumed his hoarse humming.

Love is a severance sure as any blade

Flesh is a table where God’s feast is laid

The carriage took another turn and the iron shackle dug into Chang’s wrist. Foison watched him with a bone-deep readiness, and in the man’s posture Chang recognized himself: at the Old Palace, present only by sufferance, waiting for a message from Madelaine Kraft – which would be his signal to depart. His eyes were ever fixed on Angelique, shining amidst the wealthy men who might at any moment signal the house manager, Gorine, and claim her for however long desire might last. Chang watched her, but what had he ever seen? Tiny hands holding a wine glass. Smiling lips. Black eyes. Scraps of whoever she might, truly, have been.

Even after so much time, so many lives, Chang preserved Angelique in his heart, but only – he knew – like a doll, a dream. What had all that longing served? Did his life merit survival? Had he punished wicked men? Of course. Had he done so within his own web of wickedness? Undeniably. Who spared a fowl-eating fox because it also dined on rats?

This was rhetoric and pity. Chang looked again at Foison – at his own futile past – and glimpsed what he stood to lose now.

She was not beautiful, not like Angelique. She was not kind. She was undoubtedly – in her heart, glass books be damned – an ignorant prude. She was a perfectly spoilt example of a class he despised. He did not honestly know if he could stand her presence for one entire sustained day. He did not know if she was alive.

But he thought of her in his arms, wading through the freezing surf. Her courage at Parchfeldt. Guiding them from Raaxfall, the acceptance of her doom. Against every instinct and all logic, these thoughts uncoiled like the sticky wings of a butterfly. He felt the rush in his soul. It was absurd. He could choose to suppress it – that was in his power. Yet he was dying too. He did not choose. He shut his eyes and let go.

Robert Vandaariff cleared his throat, a coach wheel crunching gravel. ‘Wither your thoughts, Cardinal Chang?’

‘How best to end your life.’

‘I think not. No, you were far away.’

‘What do you care?’

‘All flesh may be cursed, but there are degrees. There are tigers and there are sheep. And tigers – though rare – can be anywhere in life. I am no snob, Cardinal. One finds as many sheep in a palace as in a poorhouse.’

‘You seek to count my stripes, then? So I am remembered?’

‘You’d prefer to be forgotten?’

‘I’d prefer to set myself on fire.’

Vandaariff scowled. ‘Posturing.’

‘Not every man fears oblivion.’

‘Not every man has tasted it.’

‘Will you tell me where we’re going?’ Chang asked.

‘Harschmort,’ said Foison. ‘You know that.’

Foison kept his gaze on Chang and did not see his master’s disapproving look – though Chang did not suppose he needed to. The break in protocol had been deliberate.

Through the mesh loomed a line of lanterns, blocking the road. The panel slid shut. Outside came the sound of horses, and loud calls. The carriage slowed – a military roadblock.

‘You were away,’ said Chang. ‘You returned after his recovery from blood fever.’

‘Men change. The death of his daughter –’

‘That man doesn’t give a damn about any daughter.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Foison’s voice was soft, no longer needing to speak over hoof beats and wheels. ‘I’ve seen the flowers in her bedchamber.’

‘He’s not the same man – the same mind.’

‘He’s dying. So are you.’

‘And you with us, you ignorant monkey.’

Foison’s eyes went cold. ‘Unfortunate choice of word.’

‘Woke you up, didn’t it?’ Chang leant to the end of the shackles’ chain. ‘Our world isn’t theirs. Are you so well trained to forget it?’

The panel slid open.

‘Mr Foison!’ called Vandaariff. ‘A change of plan. Disembark with your charge. And take care for his safety. We know the fellow’s delicate.’

Chang stood in the street, a dog on Foison’s lead. In the lantern light waited at least a company of elite grenadiers. Another knot of men clustered at the door of Vandaariff’s carriage, chickens awaiting their handful of seed.

First amongst them – Chang squinted to be sure – was the Privy Minister, Lord Axewith. Chang thought of the man’s wife, retching her guts out, another dupe led to the grave. Did Axewith even know? The Privy Minister’s face was ashen in the torchlight, like a swine given its first whiff of the slaughterhouse. Next to Axewith stood Matthew Harcourt, sickly and pale. Chang pitied neither man – idiots who had naively passed their authority to Robert Vandaariff to end their troubles. The old Robert Vandaariff might have done so, but the man in the armoured wagon had no care for anything save his own dark dreams.

A colonel of grenadiers in full glittering dress advanced to the carriage as if he had been summoned. Axewith himself stepped aside so the Colonel might lean into the coach. Chang half wondered if he would pull his head out again or, as if in a children’s tale, the serpent in the cave would snap it off.

Foison lifted his face skyward, sniffing the air.

‘A shift in the wind,’ he said, assuming Chang possessed a sense of smell. ‘Who knows where the fire will be halted?’

‘Is it so severe?’

Foison flicked the chain as a sign for Chang to turn. The consultation had ended and the Colonel, bodily whole, strode towards them. He was a powerful, hawk-faced man, black hair flat against his skull.

‘Colonel Bronque,’ said Foison quietly. Bronque’s eyes darted across them with distaste – Foison with his dandified clothes and Asiatic cast, Chang with his cleric’s coat and scars.

‘Chang, is it? Lord Vandaariff says you will help us.’

All three turned at the sound of the carriage door closing, sealing Vandaariff back in his protected box. Lord Axewith’s men – save Harcourt, who was no longer visible – positioned themselves in a circle around several large maps spread onto the cobbles.

‘I need to find someone,’ Bronque went on. ‘A Mrs Madelaine Kraft.’

‘Why?’ Chang asked.

‘None of your affair. Say what you know.’

Chang smiled stiffly. ‘She’s at the Old Palace – or where her people put her. Left an imbecile. By a blue glass book.’

‘She was.’ The subject of blue glass gave Bronque no pause. ‘She’s been healed.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘That is the point.’

Bronque was serious. And that Chang, a prized possession, had been lent for the search made clear the cure had not come from Vandaariff’s hand.

‘The Old Palace has been ransacked,’ Bronque went on. ‘And its ashes raked. She has fled with an employee. An African. Where would he take her? Where would she flee?’

Chang glanced at Foison. ‘Does your master have time for this? If this fire is as bad as you say –’

‘You’ll do what you’re told!’ Bronque bellowed at Chang, as if he were an insubordinate trooper. Without warning Cardinal Chang chopped his forehead into the Colonel’s nose. Bronque staggered back with a cry of shock.

The soldiers around them leapt forward, weapons ready. The Colonel straightened himself, eyes blazing with hatred, blood seeping through his fingers.

‘Calm, gentlemen.’ Foison pulled the chain to place Chang nearer. ‘Cardinal Chang will find this woman. But he is required – in sound condition – after the errand. At your peril, Colonel. Now I suggest you wipe your face.’

Bronque reeled away, shouting for water.

‘I don’t suppose you’d undo these chains?’ Chang asked Foison. ‘If I gave my word not to escape?’

‘Your word means nothing.’

Chang turned at the creak of Vandaariff’s massive carriage, pulling forward. Axewith waved his hat, an abject gesture. Chang had not expected Vandaariff to leave.

‘But you won’t escape,’ said Foison, ‘because you need to reach him, before the time. And without me you won’t.’

‘Then why this diversion?’

Foison called to Bronque, returning with a cloth pressed to his face. ‘I have spoken to Cardinal Chang, Colonel. He will cooperate.’

The soldier clearly wanted nothing more than to hack Chang’s head from his shoulders, but a man did not acquire so much gold brocade without learning to swallow his own desire.

‘Very well.’ Bronque sniffed wetly, to show he too was willing to begin anew. ‘We’ve spoken to a Michel Gorine. He described Mrs Kraft’s recovery.’

‘And where is Gorine now?’ Chang asked.

‘He knows nothing he didn’t say.’

Chang grimaced. ‘Which probably means he said a lot of things he didn’t know.’

‘He had every motivation to confess.’ Bronque dabbed at his nose. ‘Under further questioning the story didn’t change. I’m not a fool. The cure was managed by Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson. I understand you are acquainted.’

Mrs Kraft – that had been the Contessa’s secret errand: to attain her cure. Could every other victim be so restored? Could Robert Vandaariff himself? This changed everything.

To Bronque, Chang only shrugged. ‘Where is Svenson now?’

‘Not with Mrs Kraft. They were separated in the fire. When Gorine met him, Svenson was caring for a child.’

‘What child?’ asked Foison sharply.

Bronque glared at the interruption. ‘I don’t know – a girl. Dead in the fellow’s arms. Smoke, I believe.’

‘The child is dead?’

‘What can it matter? Do you know her?’

But Foison had already crossed to his green-coated mercenaries. He spoke low and rapidly. One man broke for a tethered horse, leapt into the saddle and clattered off.

‘Is there a problem?’ called Bronque.

‘Continue.’

Displeased at Foison’s evasion, Bronque snapped his fingers at an aide, who brought a map of the city. The soldier bent so the map could be spread across his back.

‘We need to know where she’d go to ground.’ Bronque traced a circle with his finger. ‘Now, these districts are presently inaccessible because of the fire …’

Chang was astonished. The area was massive – a full quarter of the city. He tried to figure for wind, but Bronque was ahead of him, sketching the likely path of the blaze and filling in where the authorities – always before neighbourhoods of wealth – had entrenched their resources to prevent its spread.

‘She can’t have reached the river, and coach travel is all but impossible. They are thus probably on foot, heading north or east. My own guess would put them here.’ Bronque tapped on what Chang knew to be a nest of warehouses. ‘She has wealthy backers – how else does a half-caste operate a place like that? One might easily hide her on his premises –’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Chang.

‘It makes perfect sense.’

‘Only if she wants to hide.’

‘Why wouldn’t she?’

‘Because she’s been wronged. She’ll want revenge.’

‘Just her and a servant?’

‘He’s not her servant,’ said Chang. ‘He’s her son. And he could snap your spine like a baguette. No, the question isn’t where they’ve hidden; it’s where they will attack.’

Bronque considered this, but shook his head. ‘I still can’t see it. I grant her intelligence, but how she can hope, even with this chaos –’

‘It depends on whom she blames, doesn’t it?’ Chang turned to Foison. ‘Assume she knows who formed the Cabal behind the blue glass. Any of those names could be a target.’

Colonel Bronque nodded, again admitting his awareness of this secret history.

‘The Comte d’Orkancz is dead,’ observed Foison carefully.

‘And Crabbé, and Francis Xonck,’ added Chang. ‘Who else remains?’

‘The Italian woman.’

‘We don’t know where she is,’ said Bronque.

But Bronque knew who the Contessa was. ‘Madelaine Kraft was invited to Harschmort along with a hundred other guests,’ said Chang. ‘That was where her mind was plundered.’

‘Invited by Robert Vandaariff.’ Bronque sighed. ‘If you are right, their destination will be Harschmort House. Which isn’t to say that reaching Harschmort won’t be extremely difficult.’ He peered at the map. ‘I can post men at these crossroads –’

‘Do you know Mr Drusus Schoepfil?’

Bronque looked up, but Foison’s question was for Chang. Chang shook his head.

‘With the death of Lydia Vandaariff, Drusus Schoepfil has become his uncle’s heir. Do you know him, Colonel?’

‘We’ve met in passing. Queer duck.’

‘Indeed.’ Foison traced a slim finger across the map. ‘As you set your roadblocks, you might also post men to the Crampton and Packington railway stations. Any train to Harschmort must pass them both – that way we needn’t bother with the madhouse of Stropping. We ourselves will visit Mr Schoepfil’s home.’

‘My understanding is that Mr Schoepfil and his uncle do not speak. Why would Mrs Kraft fix her revenge on him?’

‘Not her revenge, Colonel, theirs. What the woman needs is an ally.’

Bronque hesitated. ‘I’ve no wish to be indelicate, but, in all honesty, why would he betray his uncle now? If Lord Vandaariff’s health is on the wane –’

‘Will you join us or not?’ asked Foison.

Bronque slapped the map hard. The aide grunted at the impact, then rolled it up. The Colonel gave his orders, detailing men to roadblocks and the railway stations, and others to accompany them on their search. Bronque’s hand found the hilt of his sabre, gloved fingers curling around the guard.

‘So. Let us see if this insight into her mind is sound.’

Foison extended a finger to Bronque’s gold epaulette. ‘Spot of blood.’

The path to Schoepfil’s house, even accompanied by two dozen soldiers, required detours – around refugees, looting and roadblocks. The last they could have negotiated with Bronque, but the Colonel avoided the contact, preferring their errand to remain unknown.

‘Why didn’t you bring Gorine?’ Chang asked. ‘He could have been your hostage.’

‘I didn’t plan this,’ Bronque replied testily. ‘I came with dispatches from Her Majesty to Lord Axewith – this is at Lord Vandaariff’s insistence. I should not have rated the fate of a brothel-mistress above a burning city, but he does, and now every other duty must hang.’

‘You came all the way from Bathings?’

‘None of your damned business.’

The chaos Chang had witnessed in his flight with Cunsher had grown worse. Each face they passed – whether helmeted soldier or stricken citizen – showed how beyond the grip of authority the crisis had become. Even the men he walked with – Bronque’s soldiers and Foison’s lackeys, ostensibly agents of order – passed through the city as if it were a place for which they bore neither responsibility nor affection. It burnt around them, and by all it was ignored. Surely these men had wives, children, homes – why hadn’t they fled to save their own? Instead, every one did his best to save Robert Vandaariff.

Schoepfil’s residence was a cube of soot-stained granite whose unadornment spelt out the estrangement from his mighty uncle’s wealth. Bronque sent men to the rear of the house before mounting the steps. A servant welcomed them in and explained that Mr Schoepfil was not home.

‘Do you know where we might find him?’ asked Foison. ‘Our errand comes from the Privy Minister.’

‘I cannot say, sir.’ The servant did not blanch at Foison’s appearance or Chang’s, not even at the leash of chain.

‘The matter is extremely important. It concerns his uncle, and Mr Schoepfil’s inheritance.’

‘Indeed, sir. If I do hear from him, what message shall I give?’

‘That Lord Vandaariff’s health –’ began Foison, but Bronque cut in.

‘Tell him the woman and the black man were seen and his only hope is immediate surrender.’

The servant nodded, as if this threat was of a piece with everything else that had been said. ‘Very good, sir. I will do my best to convey the message.’

Back on the street, Foison whispered. ‘Do not apprehend the courier – we must follow.’

‘I know my business,’ the Colonel replied tersely. At a signal his men melted into the darkness. ‘As you see, I am happy to provoke the man, though I remain unconvinced Lord Vandaariff’s nephew will lead us to this woman. More likely, her own people hide her –’

‘Madelaine Kraft is not hiding,’ said Chang.

‘You don’t know that. Any more than I see how she’s worth our time.’

Chang said nothing, yet the Colonel’s comment raised a question as to the true – with regard to Robert Vandaariff – object of their search.

‘What does Drusus Schoepfil do?’ Chang asked Foison.

‘Whatever he wants. A life of random expertise, a thousand tasks half done.’

‘Another arrogant wastrel?’ asked Bronque.

‘If he was a wastrel,’ said Chang, ‘we should not be here. Is he capable of striking at his uncle?’

‘Anyone is capable,’ said Foison.

‘Because he’s threatened his uncle before?’

‘No,’ Foison sighed. ‘Because he hasn’t.’

One of Bronque’s soldiers waved from the corner. The chase had begun.

Their quarry was a young man in a shapeless coat, hurrying from the rear of Schoepfil’s house. Two of Foison’s men, stripped of their jackets, made the nearest pursuit. The rest, including Bronque’s grenadiers, came at a safer distance. Chang walked between Bronque and Foison, still chained. After a quarter-mile Bronque leant across Chang’s chest to Foison, a sympathetic gesture intended to evince tact.

‘Lord Vandaariff’s rapid decline is most dispiriting. Is there truly no hope?’

‘He does not entertain any.’

‘But what of the nation?’ Bronque ventured.

‘Nations are vanity,’ replied Foison.

The restive wanderers they passed echoed this fatalism, feral in the glare of bonfires. All his life Chang had seen inequity, implacable and institutionalized, and people bore it all, even their own children dead before their eyes. This night these desperate faces had found the spark of rebellion. But he knew their momentary gains – windows broken or constables driven off with stones – would only provoke harsher measures when law was restored.

Was this not the arc of any life – from oppression to revolt to still deeper servitude? He thought of Cunsher, how the man’s competence was but a shell encasing a long-shattered heart. Who didn’t nurse sorrow at their core? Chang’s discontents were nothing new or precious. Had Foison lost a family, a lover, a language, a home? Of course he had – most likely all in one vicious stroke. And in exchange, offering his life to another man of power, he had survived … the doomed chain of service. Phelps, Smythe, Blach … and Svenson – perhaps the most miserable of them all. To a man they would be finished, and that he would be finished with them, Chang did not doubt.

The young messenger skulked to the gate of a livery yard and disappeared inside. The Colonel quickly positioned his men, then drew their eye to a line of gabled windows.

‘With luck the woman has gone to ground. If we enter in force –’

Foison shook his head. ‘If it is merely an agreed-upon place to leave word, such action will keep her away. Let us see if the messenger stays or returns whence he came.’

Bronque looked at Chang. Chang kept silent, allowing their disagreement to stand.

Gunshots echoed from inside the livery. All three charged for the door. On the floor of the stable lay the young man they’d followed, shot twice in the chest. Bronque’s grenadiers crowded a far doorway, their officer holding a smoking revolver. Near the body lay another gun.

‘He was trying to leave,’ the young lieutenant explained to Bronque. ‘Saw us, sir, and drew his weapon.’

Bronque knelt over the messenger – little more than a boy – pressing two fingers to the jugular. ‘God-damned cock-up.’ He thrust his chin at a staircase in the corner. ‘Search the premises. No more killing. If the woman is here, we need her alive.’

The soldiers clattered off. Bronque exchanged a bitter look with Foison and set to emptying the dead boy’s pockets. ‘Idiots. Ruined everything.’

‘Unless she is upstairs,’ said Foison mildly.

Chang brushed the straw from around the boy’s gun with his foot – it was a service revolver, heavy and difficult to fire.

‘Lieutenant!’ Bronque roared at the staircase. ‘Report!’

The officer stomped back into view at the top of the steps. ‘Nothing, sir. All empty.’

‘Hang your idiocy! Get your men formed in the courtyard.’

The soldiers marched down the stairs and out. Bronque tossed the contents of the dead boy’s pockets into the straw: a clasp-knife, a scatter of pennies, a dirty rag.

Through the boy’s half-open lips gleamed a brighter touch of red, blood risen from a punctured lung. Chang cocked his head.

‘What is it?’ asked Foison.

‘His cloak is untied.’

‘What of that?’ asked Bronque.

‘It wasn’t before, when we were following him.’

‘So he untied his cloak upon coming in – that’s natural enough.’

‘Not if he wasn’t going to stay. Not if he was attempting to leave through the rear door.’

Bronque’s voice deepened. ‘Are you saying he wasn’t? Wait a moment …’

The Colonel slipped two gloved fingers into the messenger’s boot and came out with a folded square of paper. ‘A message, by God.’

He handed the paper to Foison, who opened it for them all to see: a page torn from an old book, a woodcut depicting a muscular black man in a turban, with an axe. At his feet lay an open casket, a jewel box that contained a human heart. But the woodcut had been freshly amended by its sender: with the crude stroke of an ink pen the axeman’s eyes had been wholly covered by a thick black bar, like a blindfold.

Bronque frowned at the corpse, as if to doubt such a message could have come from such a courier. ‘What can it mean?’

‘The Executioner,’ said Chang. ‘From The Chemickal Marriage.’

‘What does that mean?’ demanded Colonel Bronque.

Foison sighed, almost sadly, and refolded the page. ‘That Drusus Schoepfil must die.’

Foison sent another man into the night, this time on foot, with news of their discovery.

‘But what have we found?’ Bronque looked at them hopefully, then exhaled through his nose in the general direction of the corpse. ‘We can leave this lot here, and I’ll set my men to search the surrounding houses –’

Foison shook his head. ‘You don’t have enough men both to search and to establish a cordon. Anyone wary, and they are, would escape. Of course, with the messenger unable to speak and the message so obscure, we do not even know if it was meant for Mrs Kraft.’

‘Who else?’

‘Drusus Schoepfil – his people passing on your threat, no doubt to advise surrender.’

Bronque let this go. His men stood formed and ready. ‘Well, what next? Are we finished or aren’t we?’

‘Perhaps we are.’

‘Good.’ Bronque did not bother to hide his relief. ‘Where will you go? We can provide an escort –’

‘Cardinal Chang and I can make our own way.’

‘To Harschmort? On foot? It would take two days.’

‘Perhaps Stropping, and an east-bound train.’

‘Then let us walk together; Stropping Station is not so far from where Lord Axewith –’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘But what will I tell Lord Axewith?’

‘That we arrived too late. Our search was a fool’s errand – and now you are relieved of it. Best of luck in the night.’

Foison flicked Chang’s chain and began to walk, his three remaining men trotting across the courtyard to join him. Chang looked over his shoulder. Framed first by his grenadiers and then by the disaffected crowds, Bronque watched them go, a statue in the torchlight.

Around the first turn Foison stopped, listening. ‘Will he come?’

‘He must,’ Chang replied. ‘Once there are fewer witnesses.’

They had entered a walled avenue offering little cover. Foison stepped behind Chang to unwrap the chain. ‘When did you know? Before the clumsy murder?’

‘The interrogation of Gorine.’

‘How so?’

‘Svenson. If he cured Madelaine Kraft, we ought to be looking for him. We aren’t – because someone already has him. And not Vandaariff, or you would know.’

Foison coiled the chain into a loop he could carry, then thought better of it and threw it to the side. ‘Svenson could be dead.’

‘Then why not say so?’

Foison set off without replying. Chang kept pace, rubbing his wrists. Two green-coats jogged before them, while the third hung back to guard the rear. At the cross street, the lead men paused, peering cautiously ahead. Foison and Chang stopped as well, waiting.

‘The message was for Bronque,’ Chang said, ‘commanding our deaths. The Executioner’s resemblance to Mahmoud was but a witty coincidence.’

Foison sighed. ‘So Schoepfil was home when we called.’

‘Who else could send such a message to Bronque, one that he would follow?’

‘And if Madelaine Kraft was there as well – which would, as you say, inform the image – she is gone by now too.’

‘The real question is the extent to which your master’s been betrayed. Bronque has allied with Schoepfil – but who are they? Who pulls their strings – Axewith?’

‘It makes no sense,’ said Foison. ‘He owns them all.’

The lead men waved them on, and they dashed across the open road. Once on the other side, the third man fell back and the lead two loped ahead.

Chang was aware of his own place in Foison’s catalogue of men-as-property, yet how quickly his fortunes had changed – from free man to prisoner to fleeing through the streets – all of a piece with a city set spinning on a different and degraded axis. His first struggle with the Cabal had been a battle to gain control over institutions – Crabbé suborning the Ministries, for example, but the Ministries had been left intact. Now it seemed possible that anything could fall, any edifice could be torn down.

Chang sighed. If he lived, Svenson was their prisoner – as he was Foison’s, as Celeste Temple had been taken by the Contessa. Was that what had become of their grand alliance – tethered familiars, each to a different demon?

The lead men signalled a stop. Chang bent over, still wary of the pursuit they had outpaced. Foison wiped the sweat from his neck with two fingers and then, in a disquieting gesture, licked them, an animal seeking salt. Their path had dead-ended near the sounds of a crowd, whose voices echoed over the rooftops …

‘Two more avenues and we will find a coach,’ said Foison.

‘Or more empty stables.’ Foison did not respond. Chang spat on the cobbles. ‘Come – we’re alone. No one will hear. What does it mean that the child is dead? What does it mean that Mrs Kraft is healed? Why did your master choose me over Celeste Temple?’

‘None of that is my concern.’

‘Someone might be saved. You can choose.’

‘And follow your example – the nation of one man? Vanity.’

The blend of doom and duty drove Chang mad, almost as bad as the damned Doctor –

Doctor Svenson. Chang thrust out his hand. ‘The message, from the stable!’ Foison took the paper from his coat and Chang snatched it away. The black Executioner had been sketched like a gypsy’s Tarot trump, in blunt strokes of a primitive, emblematic power – the axe in his hands, the casket at his feet …

‘Explain,’ said Foison.

‘Vanity. The Chemickal Marriage.’ Chang tapped the new-made slash of ink. ‘The Executioner puts on the blindfold to kill – that mark is the order for Bronque, for our lives.’

‘We know that.’

‘Yes, but look at the image itself – torn from an old book –’

‘So? Drusus Schoepfil has copied his uncle’s esoteric habits –’

‘Do you know the details of this story – The Chemickal Marriage?’

‘Should I? My duties do not –’

Chang cut him off. ‘Precisely the point. You know it exists, but only because of your master’s interest.’ Chang held up the paper. ‘Schoepfil is no different. He knows the topic and pours himself into learning – from books. But the Comte d’Orkancz abandoned books to make his own versions – do you see? Schoepfil cannot know the Comte’s vision of The Chemickal Marriage, because he cannot have seen the painting.’

Foison paused. ‘And you have?’

‘We all did – Svenson, Celeste Temple and myself. A memory from before the canvas burnt – preserved in blue glass.’

One of Foison’s men hissed from the road ahead. Foison extended a palm so the man should wait, never taking his eyes from Chang. ‘So you lied. Why raise the question now?’

Chang thrust the paper back at Foison. ‘Because this is not from any book.’

A line of letters crossed the top and bottom of the image, so closely written as to appear decorative, like an engraved frame – yet without question recently added in the same black ink as the blindfold. Foison read the top line aloud. ‘ “Virgo Lucifera. No heart but goblet.” ’ He looked to Chang.

‘In the Comte’s painting,’ Chang explained, ‘there is no heart in a casket. The Executioner decapitates the Bride and Groom and their blood flows into a goblet. Don’t you see? It’s a message from someone who does know the painting, and who saw me in the foyer of Schoepfil’s house. To anyone else the words are alchemical nonsense.’

‘You believe Doctor Svenson inserted his own message into the one for Bronque?’

‘Who else? That first line is to prove his identity to me. Now read the second.’

Foison rotated the page, for the letters on the lower edge had been written upside down. ‘ “Mother Child Heir … Virgin Lucifera … I’m sorry –” ’

‘The symbols!’ Chang ran a finger along the text, as if he were schooling a child. ‘ “Mother Child Heir” is followed by two elemental signs taken from the Comte’s work, for iron and wind. “Virgin Lucifera” is followed by signs for water and fire. Svenson had no time, so used code – look closely, It’s not “Virgo” that’s written but “Virgin”. Virgin and Lucifera. Two people.’

Foison studied the paper, then nodded with an exasperated impatience at his own slow thinking. ‘ “Mother Child Heir” is Kraft, her son and Schoepfil. They are together, and – iron and wind – will travel to Harschmort by train. “Virgin” is Miss Temple, “Lucifera” the Contessa. Heat and water – since the Colonel is involved, this means the Royal Thermæ. Either they remain there in the Queen’s protection –’

‘Or?’ asked Chang.

Foison returned the paper to his coat. ‘Or the old stories are true.’

‘What stories?’

Foison’s face went still. Chang spun round to follow the man’s gaze. The third green-coat, guarding their rear, was nowhere to be seen. How long had they been standing like fools?

With a drumming of boot steps, the darkness behind them filled with Bronque’s grenadiers, bayonets fixed for silent work. Foison and Chang broke as one, waving the lead men on, racing blindly into the next intersection. A shot cracked out and the green-coat next to Chang staggered and fell.

The far end of the road had been blocked with overturned wagons. Chang ran towards them, weaving to present a shifting target, ready to hurl his body over the makeshift wall. More shots came from the soldiers, missing their mark but splintering the wagons.

The last green-coat reached the barrier first, caught hold and began to climb. As soon as his head cleared the wagon, a fist-sized lump of plaster potted him square on the ear. The man dropped hard to the cobbles. Chang and Foison veered, careening from both the bullets snapping around them and a hail of bricks and stones from the wagons – now topped by a line of angry faces.

He seized Foison’s shoulder and they turned to see the crowd’s fury directed at the grenadiers. How many errant bullets had torn into the unseen crowd? The grenadier lieutenant waved his sabre for order, but a brick struck the officer on the arm and his sabre rang on the stones. The soldiers answered with a ragged volley, plumes of smoke spitting forward. Another shower of stones. The Lieutenant flat on his face. From the wagons, shrieks –

Foison jerked free of Chang’s grasp and ran. Chang followed, wondering what had happened to the world.

He caught an arm on a lamp-post and wheeled himself to a stop, ribs heaving. They had entered a warren of close lanes, but these were not streets simmering with discontent. Men in uniform stood scattered amongst the refugees, dismounted horsemen without their brass helmets, constables, even a priest, but no one claimed authority. Muskets cracked in the distance. A canopy of cloud hung over the city, its underside lit orange like an iron pot over a flame.

‘Why do you stop?’ called Foison.

Chang shook his head. These choked lanes led to the railway station. ‘Stropping will be mobbed. And who’s to say your master hasn’t set off another device in the heart of it?’

Punctuating another grudging concession, Foison sniffed. ‘Then what?’

‘Schoepfil.’

‘He has no army. He is but one clever man.’

‘He may give us Svenson and Madelaine Kraft.’

‘They are gone. More sensible to find Axewith – he can get us horses, escorts.’

‘Schoepfil’s house is on the way.’

A knot of children stared at them, two strangely dressed demons conversing under the lamp light. Foison grunted and reached into his coat. He flung a fistful of coins onto the paving. The children didn’t move. Foison’s flat nostrils flared at his useless gesture and he stalked off. Behind the children stood a fat man in a stained waistcoat with a heavy walking stick. Chang extended one arm and snapped his fingers. With a nervous nod the man offered up the stick – strong ash with a brass grip shaped like a bird. Foison glanced back, saw the weapon in his prisoner’s hand, but continued on.

The cordon of soldiers had withdrawn, and with them the angry crowds, dispersing with the decision of Axewith and his engineers to abandon this district. The orange glow in the sky seemed no closer, but Chang wondered how many houses would survive the dawn. He snorted at the thought – that it had become a refrain – and focused his attention on the dark windows of Drusus Schoepfil’s home.

‘No one,’ whispered Foison from the servant’s lane behind. Chang followed to the rear door. The house had no rear garden or stable.

‘No coach,’ observed Chang.

‘The allowance from Lord Vandaariff is small.’

‘Why?’

‘Schoepfil is Lady Vandaariff’s nephew, no tie of blood.’ Foison slipped a knife from his silk coat. ‘Drusus Schoepfil is a parasite, his every gesture an imitation, of as little merit as a parrot’s speech.’

‘But if he has allied with more powerful –’

‘Allied.’ Foison spat the word. ‘At a word from Lord Vandaariff each man would sprawl on his belly and beg.’

Foison wedged the knife in the lock, but Chang caught his arm. Foison twisted quickly and Chang released his grip, raising an open palm.

‘Before we go in. The Royal Thermæ. You said the old stories might be true. What stories?’

‘You’re the native. I’m the monkey.’

‘Don’t be an ass. The Contessa and Miss Temple – where would they be?’

‘With your old Queen, rotting in a pool.’

The discussion of Schoepfil had pricked Foison’s loyalty back to prominence. Chang stepped back. The lock was as cheaply made as the rest of the house.

Having done his share of housebreaking, Chang was accustomed to inferring the character of a man from his furnishings, but the home of Drusus Schoepfil was as devoid of attachment as a hotel parlour. Foison lit a brace of candlesticks and passed one to Chang, who brought his to a mantelpiece topped with a line of identical Chinese jars, glazed with pagodas and bamboo. Likewise a case of silver showed no family pieces, only a tea service of middling value and cutlery purchased by lot.

The house was silent. Chang crossed to the foyer, smiling grimly at a view-hole behind a screen. Bronque’s words – ‘the woman and the black man were seen’ – were spoken as a threat, but had been a warning from one ally to another, placing the decision of what to do next in Schoepfil’s hands. Svenson must have watched from the window, but Chang discovered no sign of the Doctor’s presence.

Deeper in the house they found a padlocked door. Foison passed his candlestick to Chang and drew a knife for each hand. The first kick rocked the bolts holding the padlock. The second sheared them from the frame.

‘Worse than I’d feared,’ Foison said quietly.

If the rest of the house adopted polite decor without feeling for use – for life – this inner room had been dedicated to another more strident imitation. Every inch of the wall was covered with alchemical scrawls, layered to create different shapes – flowers, bodies, planets – almost like one of the Comte’s canvases. But Chang had been to Harschmort, to Parchfeldt, and Schoepfil’s room only made clear the actual art of the Comte’s vision. This was the work of a schoolboy set to copy … markings of paint without passion, nothing insidious or disturbing or mad …

As Chang peered at an open mouth, the curving lips formed by an arching line of tiny glyphs, he thought of his conversation with Father Locarno, and The Chemickal Marriage. An alchemical narrative was less a story than a recipe: sequence, ingredients, actions. For the Comte, the art, the grace was all important – but was that, alchemically speaking, necessary? Granting any of this nonsense in the first place, did Schoepfil’s vulgarity of vision make any difference if he had successfully captured the formula? With a growing chill, Chang wondered if Vandaariff’s parasite nephew was unexpectedly dangerous?

‘Schoepfil means to inherit more than his uncle’s wealth,’ he said. ‘Alliances be damned, here is your enemy. You say he is no intimate of his uncle’s. What of his uncle’s associates – Francis Xonck or Harald Crabbé?’

‘I have been gone these months. Not that I am aware.’

The words were an admission of neglect, and Chang sensed Foison’s mind working, the urge to make up lost ground.

‘What of Colonel Arthur Trapping?’

‘A wholly negligible person.’

‘Whose daughter’s death was worth your sending a messenger.’

‘I had standing orders –’

‘And why was that?’

Foison’s eyes loomed even blacker beyond the flickering candle. ‘The approach of death is taken differently by each man. The actions of the powerful are naturally more … grandiose.’

‘People are being sacrificed on its altar. That child. Lydia.’ Chang rapped his stick against a lewdly painted rose. ‘The girl had scarcely seven years.’

‘Seven or seventy.’ Foison walked from the ruined little room. ‘Death is inevitable.’

They retraced their steps past the front parlour. Chang noticed a coat closet left ajar and looked to Foison before opening the door. He pushed the hanging coats aside with his stick to reveal the curled body of a soldier in green, bloodstained above the heart. The messenger sent to Vandaariff from the stable. Foison said nothing.

At a noise from outside both men blew out their candles. Foison peered through the slats of a wooden shutter. Abruptly Foison stalked to the foyer and wrenched open the door of Schoepfil’s house, leaving it wide. In the shadows across the road loomed a band of tired refugees, who went still at the sound. When no one emerged from the house, a few of the braver souls crept forward. Foison retreated past Chang without a word, towards the rear door. The first of the crowd had reached the steps and begun to climb. Chang hurried after Foison.

‘You’re inviting them to loot the place.’

‘I’m inviting them to do what they will.’

A hundred yards from Schoepfil’s house Chang stopped. ‘Enough of this wandering. Svenson’s note gives us two choices – Schoepfil’s train or the Contessa and Celeste Temple at Bathings.’

Foison glanced about with caution, but their immediate location, a modest, tree-lined lane, was silent. ‘We cannot reach Stropping before Schoepfil leaves. The Contessa is long departed from Bathings. We have a third option –’

‘Axewith?’ Chang pointed with his stick to the west. ‘The cordon has retreated beyond his command post. Given the fire’s speed, we have little hope of finding him on foot before his place is abandoned once again.’

‘We do not need the man,’ countered Foison. ‘If we walk north-east we will strike his troops, at which point Lord Vandaariff’s name will get us transport.’

‘It’s no longer that simple.’

Foison gently shifted his stance. ‘I thought you had agreed to come.’

Chang could not run. Foison would put a knife in his back – or more likely his leg – and drag him to the nearest horse. But Chang had come to his decision. He slipped into a defensive crouch. Foison drew two knives with an unpleasant ease.

‘I will force you.’

‘You will have to kill me. Perhaps you can, but it is against your orders. I, however, may kill you most freely.’

‘You need me to reach Harschmort.’

‘I disagree. And once I get there I will kill your master.’

‘You won’t get within ten yards of the door. How many men did Miss Temple send? How many dozens came from other rivals? Harschmort has changed. You know how they died.’

Chang extended the walking stick like a blade, the tip floating at the level of Foison’s eyes. Foison sighed with impatience.

‘This is madness.’

Chang feinted at Foison’s abdomen, then swung the stick like a sabre blade, a cross-cut at the man’s head. Foison deflected the blow with one knife, but his counter thrust was slow. They watched each other. Foison could not attack freely and risk the possibility of Chang’s death, while Chang could attack and attack again, and finally – inevitably – strike home.

Foison retreated two steps. ‘Stop this – I am willing to follow, as long as we leave. If you’re not at Harschmort in time, Celeste Temple will be consumed.’

Chang advanced again, a jab to the face and then a swipe at Foison’s knee. Foison parried, dodged, fell back.

‘She’ll be consumed anyway. You know full well.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You lie.’

With a swift motion Chang cracked the haft of the stick across Foison’s wrist and one knife clattered to the road. Foison brought the wrist to his mouth with a hiss, and fell back. Chang scooped up the knife, a weapon now in each hand. Foison flipped his remaining knife in the air and caught it by the tip, ready to throw.

‘You change nothing. She will die.’

‘She shouldn’t.’

‘We are all tested.’ Foison’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And if I kill you here and now … so be it.’

Foison whipped back his arm and threw. Chang dived, taking the cobbles on his shoulder. He felt a sting at his hip, but Foison – still seeking to wound instead of kill – had missed. Chang rolled up, slashing the stick across the empty hands that reached to take him. Foison hissed at the pain, yanking both hands back as Chang lunged and stuck the knife into Foison’s thigh. Chang brought the walking stick down hard on Foison’s head. Foison fell and lay still.

The knife had pierced his coat, but the point had gone wide, scarcely a prick. Chang tucked a knife into his belt and glanced at Foison’s wound. He would live. Chang began to run.

It was half a mile before he found the cordon: exhausted militiamen doing their best to tend to those displaced – handing out blankets and serving soup from a makeshift canteen. He presented himself to a weary subaltern as an emissary of the Church and was passed through. Soon Chang was running again, angling away from where he’d been directed – if Foison did attempt to follow, Axewith would appear to have been Chang’s goal – and towards the train.

Not Stropping Station – there Foison had been right. The place would be a madhouse. But he recalled Foison’s suggestion that Bronque post men beyond Stropping on the route to the Orange Canal. Now, because of Foison, Schoepfil would make his transit safely under the protection of the Colonel’s men.

At the next checkpoint, further from the chaos, the troops again fed refugees from steaming pots suspended over open fires. He passed in easily, trading on the Archbishop’s name to request transport. A sergeant directed him to a line of people pressing similar claims of urgency. He stood behind a dishevelled older man and woman, their rich clothing spoilt by soot and water. The woman’s pleasure to see a churchman was visibly curdled by the Monsignor’s scars.

‘A terrible night,’ she managed.

‘We must reach our home,’ explained her husband, shifting to maintain his place in line ahead of Chang. ‘The grandchildren. The horses.’

Chang craned his head to the front. Despite there being any number of apparently free vehicles, no one moved. With a sigh of disgust he strode forward.

‘We have to wait!’ cried the old woman.

‘Take us with you!’ pleaded the husband.

Their calls caught the attention of others as Chang advanced, like a match to a trail of powder, igniting shouts of protest at his refusal to wait and calls of support from those attaching their frustration to his own.

Chang cared only that no one blocked his way – that they’d remained docile for this long showed how little destruction this crowd had really seen. At the head of the queue stood a major of engineers, looking up from a folding field table of maps at the growing cries. The weary officer raised his hoarse voice for everyone to hear. ‘A system is in place, without favouritism – if you would just go back to your place –’

‘I have urgent word for the Archbishop.’

The Major pointed with his stylus. ‘And that man for the Admiralty, and that man for the Ministries, and that man for Lord Robert Vandaariff himself – unfortunately, everyone must wait.’

‘Those coaches are unused.’

‘They may be required.’ The Major waved unhappily to his soldiers. ‘Kindly escort the Monsignor –’

‘That would be a mistake.’ Chang spoke coldly enough to give the soldiers pause. He turned to a man the Major had indicated, fat-faced and fair-haired, laden with several bulging satchels. ‘Your errand is with Robert Vandaariff?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ stammered the man.

‘His errand is none of your –’

Chang’s walking stick slammed like a shot on the folding table, directly between the engineer’s two hands.

‘What is your name?’ Chang demanded, ignoring how his action had stunned everyone within earshot to stillness.

‘Trooste.’ The fair man’s hesitation set a wobble to his chin. ‘Augustus Trooste, Professor of Chemical Science, Royal Institute.’

Chang let his expression curl to a knowing sneer. ‘Is that so?’

‘It is! My research – to Lord Vandaariff, is of the highest –’

‘When did you last see Madelaine Kraft?’

Professor Trooste blanched, swallowed, rallied. ‘Why, whoever is that?’

Chang laughed aloud at the lie. The trade between the Institute and the Old Palace was so thick that no resident scholar, whether he partook of her wares or no, could be ignorant of the woman who was its mistress.

‘You’ll come with me.’

‘To the Archbishop?’ protested Trooste, even as he bent awkwardly for his papers. ‘But I have told you –’

Chang leant over the engineer’s table, speaking low. ‘Robert Vandaariff clings to life. The explosion at the Customs House – the news has been suppressed, but he will die tonight. His bequest of aid to the city has not been signed. He has no heir. Do you understand what that will mean to the city if his offer becomes swallowed in legal wrangling?’

‘But – how does the Archbishop –’

‘Who do you think arranged it to begin with? This man’– Trooste had joined him, breathing hard from the weight of the satchels – ‘may be able to extend Lord Vandaariff’s life. Can’t you, Professor? If the matter is blue glass?’

Trooste baulked again, his shock evident, but the engineer, aware that the decision lay beyond his care, only shouted over his shoulder: ‘Two to pass. A damned dog-cart if you’ve got it!’ He glared sourly at Chang. ‘All blessings on your task.’

Not a dog-cart, but small enough, a two-wheeled gig, given over at the soldiers’ insistence by its whey-faced owner, who demanded – and was denied – an official chit to mark his property’s requisition. Trooste drove, satchels crammed under the seat, as Chang, town-born and ever poor, had no skill with horses. He knew the city, however, and directed Trooste down unobtrusive roads where they made good time. The Professor was hardly calm in Chang’s menacing presence, however, and it was minutes before he attempted conversation.

‘Will we really go to Harschmort House? It seems cruel to the horse.’

‘It’s a cruel night,’ Chang replied. ‘Turn left.’

‘But that takes us away from –’

‘Turn.’

Trooste guided the trap into an unpaved lane. ‘So, the Archbishop’s own messenger –’

‘The Archbishop can go hang. Do you know how Mrs Kraft was restored to her mind?’

Trooste stammered at the directness of the question, but then accepted he was not up to the task of duplicity. ‘As a matter of fact I do.’

‘Was it you or Svenson?’

‘Well, I do not flatter myself –’

‘Or the child?’

‘What child?’

‘The one who’s dead, Professor.’ Chang turned in his seat, making sure they’d not been followed. ‘Left again.’

Trooste did so with some skill, for the road was littered with refuse that might well have broken a wheel. Chang wondered at the man’s origins. Had he grown up with money, a horse-cart of his own, books and telescopes to feed his hungry mind? Judging by his modestly cut coat, that comfort had gone – gambled away? – though an attending air of privilege remained.

‘Lord Vandaariff has not sent for you at all.’

‘But he will see me.’ Trooste beamed with confidence. ‘He will want to hear what has been achieved – the actions of his enemies –’

‘You mean Svenson.’

‘Indeed I do.’ Trooste shivered. ‘A terrible figure. You should have seen that poor child writhe! She guided the machines – you guessed it, I don’t know how – and the stench, the bile, like coal tar filling her mouth –’ Trooste waved his hands at the memory, then immediately lunged back to recover the reins.

‘Dreadful,’ he muttered, ‘simply dreadful!’

As the tale came out, Chang perceived the cruelty of the Doctor’s dilemma: how to save Madelaine Kraft without destroying the child. Svenson had failed – or had acted with a coldness of which Chang had not thought him capable … yet who knew Svenson’s mind or manner now? The horses of grief drove each man down a different, darkened path.

‘We fled our separate ways in the fire, and that was the last I saw of them.’ The Professor raised both eyebrows. ‘That German is a madman, you know. A killer.’

‘He refrained from killing you.’

‘Not from kindness!’ Trooste gave Chang a sidelong, crafty glance. ‘You know, I think you want to see Robert Vandaariff as much as I – and intend that I shall get you through the gates with my treasure house of news!’

Trooste chuckled and went so far as to slap Chang’s knee. Chang caught the hand as he might snatch a horsefly from the air.

‘Tell me about Vandaariff’s new glass. The different colours.’

‘I’m sure I’ve no idea –’

Chang squeezed, grinding the bones. Trooste grimaced, and Chang released the hand, the puffy flesh pink where he had gripped it. Trooste worked his fingers, chastened, but his eyes remained bright. Usually force and pain were all that was necessary to contain a man unused to violence, but Trooste was more resilient.

‘So that’s where we sit, then? I had hoped for a more collegial –’

‘Then do not lie. The different colours. Each with different alchemical properties.’

‘Alchemical?’ Trooste’s sly look had returned. ‘Surely you don’t credit such nonsense?’

‘I am not Lord Vandaariff.’

Trooste laughed. ‘But that is just his genius! For every mention of alchemy, planets and spheres – the metaphorical brushstrokes, if you will –’

‘Metaphorical horse droppings.’

‘You may well say, but the science at play is as sound as a bell.’

‘So. The coloured glass cards. What is their purpose?’

‘No purpose at all!’ Trooste insisted. ‘Experiments in smelting, nothing more. The primary component of each card remains indigo clay –’

‘But they are not infused with memory.’

‘No! Each card is an amalgam of indigo clay with a different metal –’

‘Why? Why alchemically?’

Trooste did not hear the question, for his attention had been taken by Chang’s face. Chang wiped at his cheek, wondering if he’d been splashed with Foison’s blood.

Trooste bit his plump lower lip, and dropped his voice to an eager whisper. ‘My Lord, I’d no idea. And – sweet mercy – where is it installed?’

Chang seized the reins and pulled. Trooste fought to keep them – to keep the gig from spilling – but the horse came to a stop without incident.

‘Of all the reckless – you could have broken our necks!’

‘How the nation would mourn. Get out.’ Chang reached beneath the seat and hurled one of the Professor’s satchels to the street.

‘What are you doing? I’m coming with you – you need me!’

Chang threw another satchel – aiming for the fetid gutter but landing short. Trooste lunged to stop him. Chang shoved him hard in the chest.

‘Get down.’

The Professor did so, an awkward scramble as the final satchel struck the road. Chang vaulted down after him and walked off quickly. Trooste gathered his burdens and hurried to follow.

‘But our gig! Someone will steal it!’

‘Let them.’

‘My papers are heavy!’

Chang called over his shoulder. ‘Then let them burn.’

Trooste caught up at the corner, red-faced and gasping. ‘You’re a lunatic!’

‘Is that so?’ Chang gazed at the Professor over the rim of his spectacles. ‘You see, I know Robert Vandaariff, and knew the Comte d’Orkancz before him even better.’

‘You knew the Comte d’Orkancz?’ Trooste’s voice rose, like a dreamy imperialist speaking of Napoleon.

‘I put a sabre through his guts.’

The Professor hitched his bundles higher on his chest. ‘You are not a priest.’

Chang laughed and walked on. Trooste glanced back to the gig as they rounded the corner, the horse waiting docile in the empty street.

‘Lord above!’

To Trooste’s credit, the outburst was not so fearful as grim. Before them stood the Crampton Place railway station, the platform packed with so many waiting travellers that they spilled into the lane. Chang saw neither Foison’s green-coats nor Bronque’s grenadiers …

‘We will never get through,’ huffed Trooste. ‘We should go back to the horse before it’s taken.’

‘One horse cannot get us there in time. You said it yourself.’

‘In time for what?’

Chang stopped cold. Trooste slammed into his back and cursed as a satchel tumbled to the ground.

‘Leave it!’ Chang set off. ‘Hurry.’

‘I cannot leave it! O damn you – will you not wait?’

Chang ignored him, sure of what he’d just seen. He plucked a satchel from Trooste’s grasp and thrust it ahead, a battering ram to reach an alley that ran parallel to the rails.

Trooste gestured over his shoulder. ‘Is not the platform behind us?’

Chang pointed the walking stick. Trooste extended his bulging neck to look – why did such men so often opt for constrictive garments? At the end of the alley, in a gap between tar-shingled shacks, appeared a squat line of green – rushes along the trackside … and through them came another wink of orange.

At the final shack, Chang knelt to wait. A far-off wail. The train.

‘Who is the man in orange?’ asked Trooste. ‘A friend?’

‘No. If he sees us, he may attack. You should flee.’

‘Not you?’

Chang smiled. ‘Let us say we share an outstanding wager.’

The train wheezed into Crampton Place like a massive metal ox, overburdened but stoic. A bell sounded from the station house and the air erupted with the tumult of hundreds attempting to board. Chang counted twenty carriages in all – a long train, extended to answer the fleeing crowds – and watched as Jack Pfaff broke from his hiding place and ran straight for the brake van. Chang slapped Trooste’s arm and made for the nearest carriage, third from the rear. He vaulted the steps into the vestibule and brusquely pulled Trooste up. He whipped aside the curtain to the baggage compartment. ‘Stay here.’

Trooste peered past Chang down the corridor. ‘While you do what?’

‘No.’ Chang pushed Trooste into the compartment and whisked the curtain shut.

‘What if this wager of yours goes sour?’ protested Trooste. ‘Where am I?’

‘On a train to Harschmort, as you wanted. Don’t make any noise.’

At the corridor’s end he turned in time to see Trooste’s head duck from sight. Chang sighed – there was nothing to be done about it now – and stepped through.

At a flash of white he raised his stick, blocking a forearm reaching for his neck, and dodged the other way, into the arms of a second waiting man. A hard elbow and this second man’s grip gave way, and Chang chopped the walking stick into the first man’s face, knocking him back on his heels. The man overbalanced, his back to the open boarding staircase. Chang thrust the stick into Michel Gorine’s grasping hands, and retrieved him before he could topple out under the iron wheels. Behind Chang, Mr Cunsher exhaled painfully and rubbed his abdomen.

‘A pair of fools!’ Chang shouted over the noise of the wheels. Gorine jabbed his hand towards the rear of the train with the subtlety of a puppet show.

‘Jack Pfaff! I know!’ Chang waved them closer so as not to shout. ‘Have you followed him, or were you on the train already?’

‘From the Thermæ,’ replied Cunsher. ‘He hasn’t seen us. No idea of his intentions.’

‘Have you seen Celeste?’ The question sparked an apprehensive look between the men. ‘Tell me.’

‘Beg pardon – the noise is impossible …’ Cunsher put his mouth to Chang’s ear and with characteristic efficiency related his progress since Chang had thrown the rock at Pfaff in the square: following Pfaff, eventually to the Thermæ, Miss Temple’s freeing of Gorine, Cunsher’s intention to follow Pfaff, Miss Temple’s wilful disappearance.

‘We did not realize she was gone until it was too late, yet, with Pfaff likely to reunite with his patroness, he seemed actually the surest way to locate the young lady.’

‘Headstrong idiot,’ muttered Chang.

‘Never met a creature like her,’ agreed Gorine. ‘Barking.’

His smile of agreement wilted before Chang’s grim stare.

‘Resourceful young lady,’ observed Cunsher.

Gorine nodded with vigour, then – wanting to appear useful – craned his head to make sure no one was coming to disturb them, only to realize that Cunsher and Chang had each already positioned their bodies to watch the corridor without being seen. Gorine pulled back, chagrined. He smoothed the lank hair from his eyes. Chang said nothing to alleviate the man’s discomfort. How many times in the perfumed parlours of the Old Palace had Michel Gorine kept him at bay, sending Angelique off with another customer?

‘What do you know of Drusus Schoepfil?’ Chang asked.

‘Vandaariff’s nephew and heir,’ replied Cunsher, as if it were a common fact. ‘Apparently he questioned Miss Temple at the Thermæ –’

‘Wait!’ Gorine cried. ‘In the Old Palace, Bronque always had another man with him – they used our tunnel to the Institute – we thought he was some minor royal.’

‘He’d be flattered to hear it,’ said Chang. ‘But it is with Drusus Schoepfil that Madelaine Kraft has sought protection.’

‘Impossible! They ransacked the Old Palace! Bronque nearly broke my jaw!’

‘She’s a pragmatic woman.’ Chang gripped Gorine’s arm. ‘What would she offer Schoepfil in return?’

‘Information about his uncle?’ ventured Cunsher.

Gorine shook his head. ‘Robert Vandaariff never went near the Old Palace.’

Not Vandaariff, Chang realized, yet how many times had Mrs Kraft hosted the Comte d’Orkancz? Those were the secrets to tempt Schoepfil … and perhaps to fuel her own revenge.

He took hold of a wall bracket and swung his body down the open stairs, face into the wind. Packington Station would not be far. Would Pfaff leave the train? Would the Contessa board it? He pulled himself inside. ‘In the next baggage compartment you will find Professor Trooste, late of the Royal Institute –’

‘Augustus Trooste!’ spat Gorine. ‘That shameless fat sponge –’

‘He was present at Mrs Kraft’s restoration, and may be able to help. Hide him. I will tackle Pfaff.’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Cunsher. ‘If we interrupt his plans –’

‘You mean if I kill him?’ Chang reached for the door. ‘I’ll find you as soon as I can.’

‘And if you don’t?’ asked Cunsher.

‘Acquit yourselves well,’ Chang replied. ‘It’s the end of the world, after all.’

He entered the rearmost carriage to find Jack Pfaff, in his orange coat and chequered trousers, slouched against the far door. Pfaff held up a finger for silence, and pointed to the line of compartments that lay between them. In spite of their earlier provocations Pfaff’s sharp face showed a smile, as if they were allies, or at least men who shared a common goal.

Chang began to walk, stick held ready. He glanced into the first compartment: six men of business, cases gripped across their laps. Pfaff ambled forward as well, hands empty. Chang reached the second compartment: women of differing ages and too many children. The youngest boy lay cradled across the lap of a dark-skinned maid, his legs wrapped with bandages.

Pfaff came nearer. The third compartment held at least ten people, women in the seats and men standing. The curtains on the fourth compartment door were drawn. Pfaff halted at its other side, perhaps ten feet away.

‘Joined the clergy, I see.’

‘Where is she, Jack?’

‘Which she do you mean?’ Pfaff nodded at the walking stick. ‘No room to swing. You’re hampered.’

‘Do you think?’ Chang took a sudden step forward. Pfaff just as quickly fell back, though his teasing smile remained.

‘Go in.’ Pfaff’s gaze darted past Chang, to the end of the corridor. ‘While there’s time.’

‘You coming in with me?’

‘I’ll wait. Following instructions.’

‘You always do, don’t you, Jack? Until you stop following them.’

Pfaff’s lips split in a childish grin. ‘Precisamente.’

Chang rapped the head of his walking stick against the fourth compartment door and entered. The occupants looked up, but Chang paid them no mind, stepping quickly from the doorway. He did not put it past Pfaff to have a pistol and fire through the glass. But no shot came. Chang glanced at Madelaine Kraft, then at Mahmoud, whose hand made a polished revolver look like a toy. The third man he did not know, crowded in the opposite row of seats, between boxes tied with rope.

‘That is Mr Kelling,’ explained Mrs Kraft.

‘You’re Cardinal Chang!’ The angular Kelling pushed himself back into his seat, all elbows and knees. He wore the clothes of a clerk, but there was a bandage around his wrist and a deepening bruise across his jaw.

‘Difficult day all round,’ observed Chang; then to Mahmoud, at the window: ‘Sit.’

‘Not while you –’

Before Mahmoud could finish Chang’s hand was around Madelaine Kraft’s throat. ‘Sit or we’ll start settling things the wrong way.’

‘Mahmoud …’ Mrs Kraft said gently. The dark man shoved the pistol into a pocket of his long coat and perched on the very edge of his seat, poised to fling himself onto Chang. Kelling did not stir. Chang released his grip. Mrs Kraft stretched her neck and studied Chang. He found the scrutiny unwelcome.

‘Robert Vandaariff will die,’ he announced, ‘but without care his death will only deliver his world, everyone’s world, to idiot children. Your desire for revenge risks disaster.’

Madelaine Kraft raised her eyebrows at his hard tone. ‘You’ve changed.’

‘Not at all. You no longer have anything I want.’

‘I don’t have the same thing.’

Chang let this go; there wasn’t time. ‘Tell me what you’ve planned with Schoepfil.’

She smiled at him. ‘Who is that?’

‘Are you so confident?’ Chang asked. ‘You were cast into a pit, and saved by the rarest chance.’

‘Which is why –’

‘Why you should realize your enemy is as strong as ever – no, far stronger, with the wealth of the world to ensure his safety. He searches for you, even now. Recovery makes you an especially rare species, to be displayed in a jar of spirits, post-dissection.’

‘Take him in hand!’ Mr Kelling whispered to Mahmoud. ‘He is vital to Lord Vandaariff’s plans!’

Chang slapped the metal head of the cane into a box, just wide of Kelling’s hand. Kelling yanked the hand into his lap.

‘Bronque and Schoepfil ransacked the Old Palace today,’ Chang said. ‘Michel Gorine is not two carriages away, beaten to pieces – he will gladly inform you of your error.’

Mahmoud made to stand, but Mrs Kraft only tilted her head. ‘Michel’s opinion is not mine and never was.’

‘How did you sway Schoepfil?’ Chang demanded. ‘What do you know about the Comte?’

‘Vandaariff is our enemy, Cardinal, and you need my help as much as ever. Each man braces his fear against his love. What you love may change. But if you love still, your fear remains.’

‘Where is Michel?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘How badly is he hurt?’

Chang leant close to Mrs Kraft. ‘I have seen it now dozens of times, people who think they can enter this arena and remain unscathed –’

‘But I don’t think that,’ replied Madelaine Kraft. ‘And I am not unscathed – any more than you. Lord Vandaariff’s own ticking clock.’

Chang prevented himself from slapping her face. When he looked up – when he had controlled his rage – he saw Mahmoud on his feet with the pistol in hand.

‘I saw her die,’ Chang said to them both. ‘I felt Angelique’s mind. You gave her to him. If you think I do not blame you – if you think I will forget it – you are wrong. And if you think, whatever happens at Harschmort House, that I will lift a finger to save your cold-minded souls, you could not be more deluded.’

Chang turned for the door, then spun round, slashing Mahmoud’s weapon to the floor. The dark man clutched his wrist.

‘I have done this,’ whispered Chang. ‘I know. This was your one chance. It’s gone.’

Upon exiting the compartment Chang once more darted to the side of the glass, but no bullet came. Pfaff smiled at Chang’s seemingly unnecessary movement.

‘And Mrs Kraft reckoned such a smart one. Well, she’ll be dead again soon enough. Us too, unless we leg it. Come.’

Pfaff retreated down the corridor. At its end he hopped the coupling to the small brake van. In a corner, atop a trunk, sat a bent fellow in overalls, his lank greying hair like last year’s rotten straw. With the coupling separating the brake van from the final carriage, there was no chance of being overheard.

‘This is Downie,’ said Pfaff, ‘an old friend who permits my trespass.’ Downie did not seem to hear. ‘This is Cardinal Chang. Don’t cross him, he’s a hard one.’

Downie blinked his dull eyes and swallowed. An opium eater.

‘We’re nearly to Packington,’ said Chang. ‘The train will be crawling with soldiers.’

‘Already is, in front.’

‘What’s your errand, Jack? You mentioned orders.’

‘And betray a client’s trust?’ Before Chang could advance, Pfaff shook his head. ‘You never did keep an ounce of humour.’

‘You took her money. You broke your bond.’

‘Bond. You have no idea what I have done, nor does she.’ Pfaff’s eyes gleamed. ‘And nor does she, either.’

‘You’re a fool to cross either of those women, Jack. And a fool to cross me.’

‘But I haven’t! We’re here, aren’t we? What else would Miss Temple desire?’

‘And today with that goblin of a doctor?’

‘What else do you expect? If I am to play a part –’

‘You’re a liar.’

‘I am not!’ Pfaff sighed, like an actress preparing to sing. ‘How can I convince you?’

‘You tracked the Contessa from the bankside to the Seventh Bridge – you presented yourself, she enlisted you to her side –’

‘She believes so.’

‘And what do you believe, Jack? That you can find your own path? Against Robert Vandaariff? Against her?’

But at his hard tone Pfaff went cold. No matter where Pfaff’s loyalty truly stood, jealousy formed a barrier he would never see beyond. Chang tried another tack. ‘Two of the men you hired for Miss Temple disappeared at Harschmort. One died in St Isobel’s Square wearing an explosive waistcoat – perhaps the other was shredded at the Cathedral. Vandaariff has turned Harschmort into a fortress. Obviously Bronque believes he can force an entrance with his men –’

Pfaff tossed his head. ‘Bronque.’

Chang was painfully aware of time. ‘Jack, we reach Packington in minutes.’

Pfaff threw a knowing smile to Downie, whose gaze had not shifted from the floorboards, and then, as if this much delay had made his point, nodded agreeably. ‘Right. You were exchanged for Miss Temple because he knew the Contessa would keep Miss Temple safe, and he’d get another crack at them both.’

‘But why would the Contessa keep Miss Temple safe?’

‘Why do cats play with mice before they dine?’

‘Is that something you memorized from a play?’ The words came out sharpened by impatience. Chang wanted to knock Pfaff to the floor and kick him to tears, yet whatever errand Pfaff had been charged with by the Contessa might well make the difference to Miss Temple’s survival. Chang was stranded between enemies over which he’d no control.

And what did Chang have to match them? His own strength. The knowledge of Trooste, the hope that Gorine could sway Mrs Kraft – or Mahmoud – to sense, and the intelligence of Cunsher to get each to the right place when their skills might make a difference. But every arrow of antagonism streaking towards Harschmort must be allowed to continue its flight if there was a chance that Vandaariff and his works would be destroyed.

That the effort would cost his own life, Chang accepted, and with that acceptance felt a pang of such regret, such sorrow, that, still facing Pfaff in the swaying, crowded little car, Chang shut his eyes and sighed. Whatever impossible notions he might this day alone have begun to entertain would remain just that – phantoms, dreams.

‘Listen to me,’ he repeated. ‘Whatever your errand – whatever you carry, whatever she’s told you to do – I don’t give a damn. I won’t stop you –’

‘No, you won’t,’ retorted Pfaff in a tight voice.

‘But if you harm Celeste, Jack, I will kill you. I won’t stop until I do.’

‘Celeste, is it?’ Pfaff met Chang’s implacable gaze. ‘Well, you’re finished. Everyone knows it.’

‘I may be.’ Chang voice was soft. ‘But I’ve seen the painting, Jack. He’ll kill Celeste. And the Contessa too, whatever she believes.’

Chang opened the door, then called back above the racket of the wheels. Pfaff – and, strangely, Downie – listened with a fearful expectation. ‘He’ll kill us all.’

The corridor remained empty of soldiers. Chang strode past Mrs Kraft’s compartment in time to hear the whistle. Packington Station. The platform was as crowded as Crampton Place, but fronted by a line of midnight-blue, Bronque’s grenadiers.

The train came to a halt with a great hiss of steam. Chang leapt out and rolled beneath the carriage. He hauled himself onto the steel cross-braces, kicking his legs over and through. He positioned his hips on the cross-point and wedged the walking stick between the iron posts to support his shoulders, then extended a limb in each direction, along the struts.

The whistle echoed down the track bed and the train resumed its motion. At each station Chang relaxed his arms and legs, working the joints, careful not to let them hang where they might be seen by any passing eye. He heard Bronque’s soldiers calling out, making sure no unknown persons gained access. That someone had already done so did not occur.

The only exception was Raaxfall. The Raaxfall Station had been burnt.

At last they reached Orange Locks, where the Colonel and his men would disembark. Chang remembered Foison’s words: good men had attempted to reach Harschmort in stealth, only to be taken or killed. The surest way to reach Robert Vandaariff was to let Colonel Bronque clear the path.

Around him rose the shouts of men – orders to form up, whistles. Chang crawled between the wheels, away from the station, and rolled down a slope of gravel, out of sight. The whistle sounded and the train churned on. Chang scrambled up and lay flat in the cover of the rails. A company of grenadiers, at least a hundred men, formed ranks in the station courtyard. Colonel Bronque trotted down the steps to join them. Chang traced Bronque’s path backwards to the station house in time to see Madelaine Kraft make a dignified if fragile exit, supported by Mahmoud. Bronque’s shouting, detailing men to stack wooden crates into a waiting wagon, brought his attention back to the courtyard. In the wagon stood Mr Kelling.

The rear red lantern of the train had passed from sight. Was Pfaff still aboard? Chang loped to the station and heaved himself onto the platform. He reached the station wall in a rush, his back flat against the brick. He peeked once in the window, then crept to the door.

He slipped out Foison’s knife and burst inside. The nearest grenadier took the blade across his throat. The second soldier raised his rifle to fire, but Chang slashed it away with the stick and drove the knife into the grenadier’s chest. On a bench, bound and gagged in a row, sat Cunsher, Gorine and Trooste. Chang yanked the rag from Cunsher’s mouth and sawed through the rope around his wrists.

‘They are marshalled for an assault on Harschmort.’ Chang moved to Trooste. ‘We have little time.’

Trooste spat a loose thread from his mouth. ‘I have never experienced such cruelty –’

‘The night is young,’ muttered Chang. He slipped the tip of the knife between Gorine’s wrists and ripped upwards, shearing the hemp, and left Gorine to extract his own gag.

‘She did not listen, did she?’

Gorine’s eyes were rimmed red. Chang returned to the door, peering out. The first soldier’s guttural exhalations had finally ceased.

Cunsher cleared his throat. ‘But she did listen, Chang, that is the painful fact. She knows who Bronque is, and Schoepfil – men who ought not hold the trust of a tea kettle, much less the secrets of indigo clay. She does not care.’

‘She thinks it better.’ Gorine wiped his lips on his sleeve. ‘They will fall more easily in their turn.’

‘Mrs Kraft was never so ambitious,’ said Chang.

‘No.’ Gorine’s voice had thickened. ‘I did not know her.’

‘What’s natural is rarely kind.’ Professor Trooste rubbed at the hemp strands stuck to his soft wrists. He met their inquiring faces with a shrug. ‘Growth accelerates. Four cells become eight, eight become sixteen … in an instant there are thousands. Is it not the same with licence?’

No one spoke. Cunsher brushed Gorine’s shoulder. ‘That he could not act now does not mean he cannot soon. His mind is not hers. You know it.’

Gorine smiled weakly. ‘So does she.’

The noise from the courtyard abruptly died. Something had happened that Bronque did not expect, but from his vantage Chang could see only the bearskin hats of the rearmost men.

‘Arm yourselves. If I don’t return, proceed as you can.’

‘And Pfaff?’ Cunsher passed a grenadier’s bayonet to Gorine.

‘He claims to still serve Miss Temple.’

Cunsher caught his moustache with his front teeth. ‘The night will be full of fools.’

Chang slipped out, keeping low. Bronque’s grenadiers were formed into neat lines. In front stood Bronque and his adjutants. Mrs Kraft sat with the wagon driver, while Mahmoud and Kelling perched amongst the crates, yet everyone’s attention was focused on an elegant coach just entering the courtyard.

The coachman’s face floated above his black livery. He rode alone in his seat, driving a team of four at an easy pace. A grenadier adjutant waved him to halt, and, in a confident gesture of compliance, the coachman veered his team into a sweeping curve, so the coach stopped directly in front of the adjutant with the horses facing back where they had come.

Two grenadiers moved to the bridles of the lead horses. The coachman paid no mind and tipped his black peaked cap to the officers.

‘Good evening, sir! Is it Colonel Bronque? I am sent by Lord Vandaariff, who expects you.’ The coachman turned his gaze to the lines of soldiers with an apologetic smile. ‘Perhaps not expecting so very many, of course. I can only fit four, sir. Six if you’re willing to squeeze.’

Cunsher, now carrying a carbine, joined Chang, the others close behind. Chang saw the logic – with every eye on the coach, this was the time to move. He waved them to a line of scrub that would offer cover, but did not yet follow.

‘If you’ll come with me now,’ continued the coachman, ‘ample provision will be made for your men when they arrive. It is a march of perhaps two miles –’

‘I am aware of the distance.’ Bronque gestured with a pair of thin leather gloves – as if their softness made his intentions seem more civilized. ‘You are Lord Vandaariff’s servant – no harm will come, no charges laid to your name – do you understand, you will not hang – if you cooperate.’

The coachman’s polite expression froze. ‘I beg your pardon –’

‘You will descend and describe every measure Lord Vandaariff has taken to secure Harschmort House. How many men, their placement, what weapons –’

The coachman stammered on his box, looking around him, though no assistance lay in sight. ‘I – I assure you, sir, I know nothing – only Mr Foison –’

‘And where is Mr Foison?’

‘I had been told to expect him with you! Along with Mr Schoepfil –’

Bronque smiled. ‘Doubly misinformed. Come, you have driven your team through gates and past guard posts –’

‘But Colonel – are you Lord Robert’s enemy?’

Bronque signalled for a soldier to bring down the coachman … yet the coach rocked ever so gently an instant before the first grenadier started his climb to the driving box. Before Chang could make sense of what he’d seen, the driver whipped out a pistol and put two shots into the grenadier. He furiously slashed the reins. The horses leapt to motion, kicking past their minders. Bronque began to shout, echoed by every officer and sergeant. The entire front rank of grenadiers shouldered their weapons and aimed for the departing coach –

The simplicity of the plan took Chang aback. In the split second before he’d flung himself face down he saw through the misdirection, how every eye’s placement on the coach meant no one noticed the man behind it – the passenger whose exit from the coach’s far side had caused the rocking Chang had seen: a man – no doubt the last of Miss Temple’s missing hirelings – whose torso bulged with another explosive harness.

The passenger, suddenly revealed as the coach surged away, stood not ten yards from the heart of the massed grenadiers. He reached into his coat with both hands. Only then did Colonel Bronque see, far too late, and his scream of warning vanished in an unearthly roar.

Chang stumbled to the thicket of scrub. The entire night sky seemed to echo with shrieks and moans. He met the astonished faces of the others but angrily drove them on. ‘Go! Go!’

‘But what happened?’ asked Gorine.

Chang caught Gorine’s arm. ‘They are alive. The wagon was too far away. Run.’

Only after fifty yards did Chang allow a look back. The Orange Canal Station was dotted with flame, even its shingled roof set alight.

Chang had glimpsed only a flattened mass, and enough bodies to turn a slaughterman’s stomach. How many had been left standing – even as Vandaariff’s damned coach rattled into the distance – perhaps three men in ten? But Chang had not lied to Gorine. The wagon, well off to one side, was intact, and its occupants apparently unhurt. As for Bronque … where the Colonel had stood was a seething heap.

In a stroke every contingency had changed. Chang had counted on Bronque’s men forcing an entrance to Harschmort. He considered doubling back to join forces – and felt Gorine’s pressing gaze silently urging that very path – but rejected the idea. The soldiers still standing would be only too delighted to find new targets on whom to vent their wrath. And Chang had already given Mrs Kraft her chance. He was damned if he would save her now.

They walked without the benefit of stars or moon. The chaos of the station gave way to rustling grass and the squelch of muddy fields. Trooste kept up a low litany of dismay, blundering into the muck and standing water the others always managed to avoid.

‘Lost your papers, I see,’ observed Chang.

Trooste looked up with a sour expression, balanced on one foot as he shook its dripping mate. ‘Not lost at all! Taken!’

Chang looked at Cunsher, who scratched an ear by way of apology. ‘The Professor’s attempt to protect his possessions may have encouraged their confiscation.’

‘And where are they now?’ Trooste asked the meadow at large. ‘Those papers were our only safeguard –’

‘Stop,’ said Chang. ‘Listen.’

Trooste paused, then turned to the sound. ‘Is it music?’

The low grass would not hide them. Chang broke into a run. Twenty sodden yards brought an unpaved road. He vaulted the ditch at its edge and waved the others across, risking a look in the direction of the station. Led by a line of torches, a body of grenadiers gave full-throated voice to a regimental song of blood:

Grind each foe beneath our heel

Whenever duty calls

Blood and iron, shot and steel

Until the last man falls

Beyond the road the land grew sandy, rising to dunes. The grenadiers marched nearer, the crash of their boots like a bass drum to their song. The brazen advance – announcing their presence without care – spoke to a dark resolve. Once more Chang had no desire to be its object. The grass fell away, a slight depression but enough. He dropped flat and the others followed. Chang slid off his spectacles – the lenses would reflect the torchlight – and raised his head.

The Queen’s elite regiment had been transformed to a medieval danse macabre, with every man – most showing visible wounds – bearing the weight of his own doom. Chang had not considered the screams and shouting that had followed the blast – he had been too busy gathering the others – but now he shuddered. These survivors had not been touched by the explosion. Their injuries were more cruel: suffered at the hands of comrades deranged by glass spurs. How many of their own had they been forced to put down like rabid dogs? A deadly bitterness constricted every face.

In front of the ragged column – Chang counted thirty men – marched Colonel Bronque, bareheaded, gold brucade in tatters, left arm in a sling, singing louder than anyone. Bringing up the rear came the wagon, with Mrs Kraft, Mahmoud and Kelling. Chang ducked away from Mahmoud’s higher vantage, and waited a full minute before risking another look. The column had passed like a funeral cortège into the darkness, the death song’s echo like a trail of black crêpe.

Chang restored his glasses. ‘We can follow at a distance on the road, but risk being caught up in their collision with Vandaariff.’

‘Likely another blast,’ said Cunsher.

‘They’re going to die,’ said Gorine miserably. ‘Every one of them.’

‘Or we continue over open ground,’ Chang continued. ‘Easy enough to walk, but the closer we come to Harschmort the more dangerous it will be. In the past, the grounds were salted with steel traps.’

‘Traps?’ Trooste looked at the grass around him with an appalled suspicion.

Chang patted the Professor’s knee. ‘That would snap the leg off a bear.’

‘We are caught between,’ said Cunsher, ‘while Vandaariff waits, a worm in its cave. The key element is time. He cannot wait for long. He needs you, Miss Temple, perhaps others.’

‘Worm?’ protested Gorine. ‘He is rather more than that!’

‘My apologies,’ said Cunsher. ‘I select the wrong word. Not worm, but dragon.’

‘I see, yes, lovely.’ Gorine frowned. ‘But what does he intend?’

Chang tapped Trooste with the toe of his boot. ‘Professor?’

Trooste sighed. ‘He is dying. And believes he does not have to.’ He gestured to Cardinal Chang, but thought better of saying more. ‘In any event – he has made plans.’

‘Like the Comte with Angelique,’ said Gorine bitterly.

‘And what do you know about that?’ asked Chang, deadly cold.

Gorine shook his head. ‘I don’t. I swear to you. Mrs Kraft drove us from the room. But she and the Comte bargained for an hour, and then she gave him the Oyster.’ Gorine saw their looks of incomprehension. ‘The Oyster Room. Reserved for the highest quality – everything laid on, the most luxurious single chamber for a hundred miles.’

‘But she didn’t trust the Comte,’ said Chang. ‘Why show him that kind of favour?’

‘He has already said,’ said Cunsher. ‘A room for the highest quality – kings, ministers, generals. It thus follows that clients were given this Oyster Room only to be observed by Mrs Kraft herself. And there her secret lies.’

The Comte d’Orkancz had been unable to avoid a simple sabre blade, and Robert Vandaariff would fall the same way if Chang could get near enough to land the blow. The larger task was not so clear. While the Comte had been the only soul in the airship with any understanding of indigo clay, now there were too many others – Trooste, Schoepfil, Kraft, even Svenson and, with her corrupted mind, Miss Temple. Must they all perish too?

Chang paused at the crest of a dune, saying nothing until Trooste, lagging and out of breath, reached the top. Chang extended an arm to the low line of lights. Originally constructed as the Queen’s prison, Harschmort House was a large horseshoe-shaped structure, only three storeys tall but stretching from end to end as far as a parade ground. The flagged courtyard and forbidding gates looked north. The rear of the house, a hollow around which both wings curled (once an ornamental garden, since destroyed by the implosion of the dungeons beneath), faced south to the sea. To the east lay the terminal spur of the Orange Canal. The western approach, where they now stood, offered only dunes and fen.

‘Surely Bronque has reached the gates,’ said Gorine. ‘We should hear shots.’

‘I agree,’ said Chang. ‘One way or another.’

‘What of these traps?’ asked Trooste.

‘We send the least essential man to test the way.’ Chang smiled over his shoulder at Gorine. ‘Since you failed to convince Mrs Kraft, the honour is yours.’

‘Good God!’ cried Trooste. ‘Do not joke of such things.’

‘He isn’t,’ muttered Gorine. ‘In the past I have not been Cardinal Chang’s good friend.’

Chang ignored this confession and pointed ahead: the bright line of windows was broken by rooms left dark, allowing the observers within to keep their night vision. ‘His men are watching. If we run they will shoot us down. But if we advance, I believe their master’s lack of time will dictate cooperation.’

‘But why should they cooperate?’

‘Because they will have seen me.’

As he stepped onto the mown grass that surrounded the house, a half-dozen men filed from it, looking in their green jackets and brass helmets like insects leaving a hive. Chang dropped to one knee to present a smaller target. The others, still in the high grass, did the same, so only their faces were in view. Vandaariff’s men formed a line and, in unison, each reached into a canvas satchel slung over one shoulder, reared back and threw.

Chang was already in motion, dodging one of the hurled missiles. He heard the shatter of glass and felt a stinging in his eyes. He held his breath. Cunsher’s carbine barked behind him and one of the six men fell. Glass burst at his feet in a cloud of bluish smoke – something flew past his head –

Then Chang was on them – slashing furiously, catching hands and wrenching them backwards, kicking at knees – above all staying in motion to prevent their greater numbers from pulling him down. The helmets limited their vision and made their movements awkward. Two retreated to the door, digging for weapons. Chang spun out of an attempt to seize his waist and saw Cunsher stagger from the meadow, carbine dangling from one hand, then fall, smoke swirling in his face. Chang drove his blade into an attacker’s stomach and when the man doubled over slipped behind and wrenched the helmet from his head. The man fell, hands tight around his throat. Instead of putting on the helmet, Chang charged for the two men now guarding the door with wooden clubs. More glass shattered at his feet. He felt the pressure in his chest as he collided with them, viciously swinging the helmet like a studded mace. Chang broke through and to the door, which he slammed and bolted behind.

This air too was marked by curling smoke, and in the light he saw its bluish tint more clearly. He tore off his glasses and clapped the helmet over his head. The rubber seal gripped tight around his throat. He exhaled in a gasp … and on the inhale tasted nothing but air. The door rocked on its hinges, pulled from outside. More canvas satchels hung from hooks on the wall. Chang slipped one over his shoulder and ran.

Harschmort House had changed. Chang remembered the western wing (where he’d found Arthur Trapping’s corpse, so long ago) enough to note rooms knocked through, walls stripped to prison stone. In two months this wing of Vandaariff’s luxurious residence had been returned to its original state, as unadorned as a military barracks.

He opened the satchel. Carefully insulated in sewn pockets were a dozen blue glass spheres, the size of small apples. He eased one out with a gloved hand and raised it to the light, like a float from a fishing net but for the clouds inside, swirling like milk in tea.

Alerted by a shadow on the wall, Chang turned round and threw, the globe shattering between two bareheaded green-coats. With one shuddering breath they crumpled to their faces and lay still. Were they dead? Was there hope for Cunsher and the others? He did not go near to make sure. There wasn’t time.

In the helmet he could just see straight ahead. At every room he was forced to spin like an antic dog to make sure he was alone. Three times he had not been – green-coats, servants, even a pair of housemaids – and a glass globe had preserved his liberty. Word of his penetration would spread, and Vandaariff’s forces, no matter his attempts to twist and turn, ought to have converged by now. Instead Chang advanced unimpeded, past unplastered walls, lumber, copper piping bound together with rope. Obviously every resource had been devoted to construction – the creation of whatever arena this final alchemical rite required.

Chang did not have to search. As he bulled his way on, new figures appeared – always in rooms with multiple doorways, leaving one open path – guards and servants alike, never moving to apprehend him, or to sound an alarm. He was being herded along, like a sheep nipped on its flank. He could have burst free of the cordon, but the lives of his allies demanded a confrontation, and so he pressed willingly into his adversary’s lair.

Chang’s path stopped at a double doorway made of new-cut planks. Nailed to it was an envelope of parchment. Chang tore it open: a lock of auburn hair, tied with black twine. He knew the colour at once. Celeste had come, and whatever her hopes or the Contessa’s plans, Vandaariff had claimed her.

Chang turned the iron knob, a glass globe ready in his other hand. On the floor inside lay an envelope sealed with blue wax. Chang tore it open and tipped a blue glass disc onto his palm. Words had been stamped round its edge. He had enough Latin from his student days, before his life had changed, but disliked the memory.

Date et dabitur vobis. Give and it shall be given to you.

White robes edged in green hung in a line on one wall. Below each robe waited a pair of felt slippers – as at the Raaxfall works, to prevent any hobnailed spark near the powder. Chang tucked the disc into a trouser pocket, with the lock of hair. Before him, extending for ten yards from wall to wall, a bed of gravel barred his way – like an ornamental path, save the rocks were dark as coal, and amongst them glittered hundreds of glass spurs. The black stones must be the concentrated explosive that had powered the devices, the same they’d set off on the dock. The gravel bed was too wide to leap, and from the felt slippers outside he assumed that to advance wearing boots such as his own risked triggering the charge.

But if the explosives showed what Vandaariff had pillaged from the Xonck arsenal, beyond them lay the first real sign of the Comte’s alchemy. Between the explosives and the far doorway the floor was covered by seven rows of wide coloured tiles. A glance told Chang that the plates were not flush with the floor. Had they been laid atop the layer of explosives? Even if the felt slippers permitted a person to cross the exposed area safely, the first pressure on the metal tiles would create the same effect as his nailed boots and set off an inferno. As he stared he realized the tiles were made of the blended glass that Vandaariff had developed, each tempered by the infusion of different metals. Suddenly the puzzle was clear: the proper seven tiles – which lay atop inert material – would carry a person safely to the door. One only needed to know the alchemical order.

He kicked off his boots and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. He carefully laid one foot onto the bed of explosive coal and sharpened discs, trusting the thickness of the felt. He took another step … then another … finally reaching the glass tiles. Could he put his weight upon them without the tiles breaking? What if it was only Vandaariff’s joke? And if it wasn’t – which tile to choose?

He let his mind return to the room at Raaxfall … the table … Vandaariff and the different coloured cards … ‘We start with iron’ …

The light in the horrid room at Raaxfall had been bad, and his eyes even worse. He could not recall what the cards had truly looked like. Chang pulled off his left glove and extended his hand over the tiles, gently touching them with the tips of his fingers. At the third tile the taste of blood filled his mouth, as had happened with the first glass card. He stepped carefully onto the tile. No explosion. Suddenly he wondered who else might need to follow this path. What if that person was Svenson or Cunsher? He took out Foison’s knife and scratched an x in the corner of the tile.

Next came gold, and a memory of a cracking heat inside his bones. This required an accurate hop of several feet, but he landed neatly. Another x.

He advanced two more rows, but each time the memory grew fainter, for the cards had begun to derange his senses. At the fifth row, Chang frowned. Past a certain point he’d shut his mind to the pain. Three tiles remained. He knew proper reasoning existed, that the metals in each tile carried associations with planets, the zodiac, the Hebrew alphabet, bodily parts –

Chang looked back. In the doorway stood four men in green, with carbines, but they did not shoot. Their task was to prevent retreat. Chang stepped – the very length of his long stride – to a tile shot with streaks of milky white. How he’d known it came next he could not say. He scraped the knife against the glass.

This very trial showed the ridiculous nature of the Comte’s alchemy. It was not a question of whether it worked – something always worked – but if the choice between an infusion of mercury or silver was rendered consequential only by volatile explosives, their alchemical qualities meant nothing with regard to his reaching the door alive …

Still, he must suffer these trappings. What planet went with silver? He’d no idea. At the touch of his fingers on a tile of streaked violet his teeth ached sharply, as if his mouth had been crammed with ice. He stepped onto the tile, hacked an x in the corner, then jumped to a bilious tile in the seventh and last row that he knew he’d not yet used. No explosion.

Chang marked his x, then reached under the helmet and tugged at the seal, wincing as he pulled off the awkward thing. He shook his head, eyes bare and blinking, and faced the four soldiers. He gave them a sardonic nod, which was returned by their leader, whose eyes were ringed with scars. Chang straightened, then whipped a glass sphere straight at the man, so it burst against his chest. As all four crumpled, Chang slipped through the door. Only a fool kept an enemy at his back.

In the next room Chang found the Comte d’Orkancz – although not in body. Whereas the rest of the remade Harschmort had been expedient and raw, this was the man’s vision to the last detail: sconces shaped like open wounds, murals of elongated Byzantine bodies, blue carpets with lurid orange beasts. Every carpet made a path from a doorway – one in each wall of an octagonal room – to its centrepiece: a fountain of clear glass, whose pipes and chambers looped in two intertwined but separate routes, not unlike a human heart. The fluid gushing through one chamber was blue, and through the other orange.

The fountain’s rim was inscribed. Imbibo frater vivo.

Chang restored his spectacles. Drink, brother, and live … not damned likely.

He glanced at the other doors. Did each hide a corridor of explosives? Would others – Schoepfil, Svenson, the Contessa – be driven to their own particular trial? It seemed ridiculous. While proving oneself worthy might well be a tenet of an alchemical treatise like The Chemickal Marriage, here it could result in the deaths of those persons Vandaariff had already selected – and protected – for their participation. What if Chang had chosen wrongly, and blown off his own skull? Where would Vandaariff’s great experiment be then? Was he so confident that his most desired guests knew the answers – and so willing to eliminate anyone else?

Chang worked quickly around the room. Every way was locked save the double doors on the far side of the fountain. These revealed a dim room with a squat rostrum studded with knobs and switches. Chang took a step and knocked his chin into a wall of glass, flush with the archway – the glass appeared to be built into the frame. He tapped it with his fingers, then his fist. The barrier was too thick to shatter without a hammer or axe.

On the far side of the small room was an identical archway, presumably sealed off as well, beyond which lay another large room, with an array of Vandaariff’s machines connected to five large porcelain tubs.

Chang turned to the fountain. Did Vandaariff seriously expect him to choose between orange or blue, when the wrong choice meant death? And what in hell could the right one mean, apart from fulfilling Vandaariff’s intent? In the room at Raaxfall there had been an eighth card, of bright orange glass, the experience of which had nearly killed him. For Vandaariff the orange card had represented a kind of completion …

Give and it shall be given. Chang fished the blue glass disc from his pocket, studying the pathways inside the fountain … and saw, right where the streams curled in a helix, two narrow openings in the glass …

He inserted the disc into the orange stream, and at once the flow was blocked; pressure forced the fluid up a previously unused tube of glass and into the air. In moments it filled a trough deep enough for him to dip his hand. Chang sighed. He set down the brass helmet, scooped out a palmful of the orange liquid and raised it to his lips.

He choked audibly and stumbled back, chin dripping, waving his wet glove as if it burnt. Chang’s eyes tipped back in their sockets, showing the white. He fell, limbs extended like a fallen horse. His breath came ragged and he went still, eyes open to the ceiling.

‘As tractable as a babe with an unknit skull. An object of desire dangles before it and all else recedes …’

The diminished voice of Robert Vandaariff. Somewhere behind Chang, a door had opened. Slippered footsteps. The orange fluid trickled in its trough.

‘A common misconception … at birth the bones are soft, allowing passage of essence from one realm to another, the crucial, brutal pressure associated with emission. In time the gap closes and the seams calcify – or so fools would have you believe …’

Into Chang’s peripheral vision came several figures in white robes, faces shrouded. A figure at his feet held a tray of corked bottles …

‘But the skull of an adult bends every bit as much as the human spirit, and that same spot – the fontanel – remains in every esoteric system a fountain through which souls flow to the ether. Even as coarse a soul as this.’ Vandaariff croaked with laughter. ‘Little more than an animal in trousers! What is the time?’

The man with the tray replied, ‘Near to the dawn, my lord.’

‘And our other guests? Our royal party? Our Warden? Our Bride? The Virgo Lucifera?’

‘All … mid-passage, my lord … save the ladies.’

‘Feminine vectors. What of our Executioner?’

To this question there was no reply. The robed acolytes glanced nervously across Chang’s body. A sharp sound brought them back to attention – Vandaariff rapping his cane.

‘None of that! The contract will be signed. To the vessel – he must be readied!’

Chang waited for the hands to take his shoulders and each leg. He gripped the robes of the men at his shoulders and yanked down hard, driving their heads together with an ugly thud. Sharp kicks drove the men at his legs away and he was up. The acolyte with the tray retreated, protecting his charge. None of them appeared to be armed. Chang drew the silver knife and made for Vandaariff, ready to plant it in his chest.

‘I am here, Cardinal Chang.’

Chang first turned to the voice – a metal grille, painted like a fresco of a blue-skinned maiden – and then to the glass barrier. Beyond it, in a white robe of his own, stood Vandaariff. The knobbed hand that gripped his cane was blackened, as if with burnt cork.

‘So you did not drink the Draught of Silence after all.’ Vandaariff’s hood slipped back to show a smug rictus grin and above it a soft half-mask of pale feathers. ‘I did not think you had.’

Chang snatched up the brass helmet and extended the knife to the acolytes.

‘Show yourselves.’

Vandaariff nodded, and the five pulled back their hoods. Every face bore new scars of the Process, a raw-skinned loop around the eyes and across the nose – more souls sacrificed on the altar of ambition. He wondered what clothes they’d shed in exchange for these robes, what uniforms or vestments, fashionable stripes or silks. Chang slammed the brass helmet into the barrier with all his strength. It rebounded nearly out of his grasp, the glass barely scratched.

‘Subdue him,’ said Vandaariff.

Chang faced the acolytes. ‘Keep away.’

‘Subdue him!’ repeated Vandaariff.

‘You will die,’ warned Chang.

Vandaariff cooed to his minions, ‘You’ll be reborn.’

Chang looked into eyes bright with belief and felt his stomach turn. His fist shot out, bloodying the nose of the foremost man and knocking him aside.

‘You cannot win, Cardinal Chang. The spheres have turned!’

Chang clubbed down one man with the helmet and then another. The last of the four rushed him with both hands. Chang dodged to the side, as if he were in a corrida, and drove the acolyte face first into the wall. The fifth remained where he’d been, backed against the fountain, still holding the tray. Chang suddenly scoffed.

‘I know your face. You’re an actor. Charles Leffert!’ Here was the leading man of the stage dressed like a eunuch in a comedy harem. ‘Not enough roses after the matinée? Not enough wives to seduce in their husbands’ carriages?’

‘You must submit!’ commanded Leffert in a heroic baritone. ‘The ceremony has begun – you cannot prevent –’

Chang swung the helmet into the tray, sending the flasks and implements flying.

‘O heaven!’ wailed the actor, as if Rome itself had begun to fall. Chang dropped the helmet and seized Leffert through the robe. He dragged him to the fountain. Leffert caught the rim and pushed away. ‘No! I am not given over! I am promised to ascend!’

Chang shoved the actor’s head into the trough. Leffert struggled, holding his breath. Chang dropped a knee into Leffert’s kidney and a spray of bubbles spat orange. The actor inhaled and swallowed. Chang lifted him, dripping, by the hair. Leffert’s eyes were as blue as a songbird’s eggs. Chang released him to the floor, the actor’s mouth working soundlessly.

‘The Draught of Silence?’ said Chang. ‘Not the best for his profession.’

‘You have achieved nothing,’ replied Vandaariff.

He rapped his cane on the floor. Another line of acolytes filed into the room of machines and tubs behind Vandaariff, one of them, again, with a tray of bottles. To Chang’s horror the others bore the unmoving, naked bodies of Cunsher and Gorine. Both men were daubed with symbols in bright coloured paints, like savages from cannibal islands – or almost, for the skin beneath the paint was pale.

‘What have you done to them?’

The acolytes lowered Cunsher and Gorine into coffin-shaped tubs. Their heads lolled. The acolyte with the tray emptied a flask of straw-coloured powder into Gorine’s tub, and then Cunsher’s. The tubs began to steam. The acolyte looked up, the fat face beneath the hood transformed with scars.

‘You were acquainted, I believe, in my new initiate’s former life. He will be more useful now – always clever, but now he will transcend.’

Chang watched helplessly as Trooste emptied more flasks. By the end both Cunsher and Gorine floated in a rusty liquid that foamed against their painted skin.

Chang shouted to the metal grille: ‘What do you want?’

‘For you to take the Draught of Silence, of course.’

‘Go to hell.’ Chang turned to the other doorways. ‘I’ll find a way through. I will cut your throat.’

‘No, Cardinal. That is not your place.’ Vandaariff’s eyes shone brightly through the mask. ‘You know the ritual, do you not, from Rosamonde’s memory? I am in her debt, to be sure. So many celebrants now come prepared.’

‘This cannot work,’ called Chang. ‘Even if you survive, into what world? The city burns. The Army rules the streets. The people have fled. The Ministries are silent, the bank vaults emptied –’

‘Buzzing flies on a dunghill.’

‘The nation hangs on the brink! Your nephew has allies in place. Every power will assist his accession, and your demise. You are unstable. Bronque is alive. His grenadiers –’

The words died on Chang’s lips. The acolytes had returned with two more painted bodies – the angular man from the train, Kelling, and Colonel Bronque himself, whose flesh was marked with wounds. Chang recalled the silence they had noted in the dunes – what could explain it but the glass globes? Even a few of Vandaariff’s men could overwhelm Bronque and his survivors before they fired a shot. Trooste stood above the Colonel, emptying a flask.

‘Precious salts,’ said Vandaariff, following Chang’s gaze. ‘Blood and sex, acid and fire – a sacred tempering, Cardinal. And so the flesh of life becomes the flesh of dreams.’

‘Spare Celeste Temple.’

Vandaariff turned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Spare Celeste Temple.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘In exchange for myself, for my cooperation.’

‘I will have your cooperation.’

‘You won’t.’ Chang drew out the silver knife. He tore off the canvas satchel and his red coat. He lifted his silk shirt and reached behind, isolating the lump of scar near to his spine. ‘I’ll cut out your glass. Even if it kills me.’

Vandaariff studied Chang closely through his mask. ‘It will kill you.’

‘So be it.’

‘Stop.’ Vandaariff moistened his dry lips with a pallid tongue. Beyond him Trooste watched with an avid curiosity. ‘I cannot spare her. She must act the Bride.’

‘Use the Contessa.’

‘She is the Virgo Lucifera.’ Vandaariff raised a hand to the ceiling of the little room, which was formed of small open tubes, all of which had begun, ever so slightly, to glow.

‘She is your enemy. She wants your head.’

‘And I want her parts boiled down for paste. Nevertheless, ever we have found a way.’

Behind Chang, an acolyte had crawled to the canvas satchel. Chang stamped on the man’s hand and felt the crunch of a glass globe giving way. The acolyte screamed at the pain, but kicked the brass helmet clear before he succumbed to the fumes. Chang went after the helmet, but another acolyte – they’d been waiting for their chance – caught Chang’s leg, even as he too collapsed. The helmet spun beyond Chang’s reach.

A muffled roar shook the room. Chang looked up, his lungs tight. Black smoke spewed in from a splintered doorway. Foul air would protect him as much as the helmet. Chang flung himself at the door and wrenched it wide.

Blackened figures lay on the buckled tiles – grenadiers, to judge by their singed and tattered uniforms. Then the smoky air parted and a soot-faced man cracked a rifle-butt into Chang’s chest. Chang tumbled back, the breath knocked from his body. A sharp seizing took his lungs. His dark glasses were swatted away.

Vandaariff shouted from the other room: ‘Excellent! Subdue him!’

Chang had lost the knife. He groped for the helmet. A kick into his ribs knocked him flat again. He saw the face above him and took it for Mahmoud – for Vandaariff’s black Executioner – but this man was shorter and too lithe. Then he saw the white hair.

Foison fell onto Chang’s chest, pinning an arm with each of his knees. He’d a leather case slung across his chest, and snapped it open.

‘No, no!’ cried Vandaariff. ‘The draught – give him the draught!’

Chang arched his back but could not shift Foison’s weight. His lungs were on fire.

One of Foison’s hands sought Chang’s battered eyes and peeled back the lids. The other slapped an open glass book onto Chang’s face and pressed down hard.

For a blinding, screaming instant Cardinal Chang perceived the whole of his soul, suddenly naked, balanced on a precipice. Then every part of him was taken away.