The Dark Volume (14 page)

He turned at the sound of Willem emerging from the stall—the horse behind him was spent but not visibly deranged. The boy cradled a canvas-wrapped bundle in his arms.

“I have your parcel from the saddlebag—” he began, but his words stopped when his eyes met Cardinal Chang's.

“It is all right, Willem,” the Contessa said, quite calmly. “The Cardinal and I are old friends.”

Chang snorted.

“I understood your wounds to be quite
mortal,”
she said.

“I understood
you
to be drowned.”

“One's life is indeed a
parade
of disappointment.”

She stretched the fingers of each hand, like a cat rising up from sleep. Chang did not shift his gaze from hers, but pitched his voice to the boy.

“Willem, you must leave. Set her parcel down and go home.”

The boy's eyes darted to the Contessa, and then to Chang. He did not move.

“He will not harm me, dear,” said the Contessa softly. “You may do what you like. I am grateful for your kindness.”

“I won't leave you,” whispered the boy.

“She is not your mother!” barked Chang, and then muttered, “You do not have eight legs…”

The Contessa laughed, a throaty chuckle, like dark wine poured in a rush. “Cardinal Chang and I have much to…
discuss.
You may be sure I am not in danger, dear Willem.”

The boy looked at Chang with a new distrust but slowly set down the canvas bag. Chang backed away to give him room, waiting as the boy shifted the bar and slipped out the door. Chang snorted again and spat into the straw.

“Not everyone around you will perish, then—even if he has no sense of his escape.”

“Is your own company any less perilous, Cardinal? I do not see Miss Temple or Doctor Svenson.”

Chang pointed with the knife to the remaining groom, still inert in his chair. “And what have you done to him?”

The Contessa shrugged, utterly indifferent. “Not a thing. I am quite recently arrived.”

“He reeks of the glass, of indigo clay. He was bewitched by it— sickened by a shard of shattered glass.”

The Contessa raised her eyebrows. “My
goodness.
Blue glass? Surely it was all destroyed in the airship.”

“The glass was fissured with cracks. The groom had looked into it. Whatever memories were stored inside have been altered.”

“Well, yes, I expect they might be.” She sighed like a heartsick schoolgirl. “How little I know about such practical matters. If only the Comte were here to
explain
to us—”

“It has damaged the boy's mind, perhaps permanently!”

“How terrible. He is so
young.”

“Contessa!”

Chang's voice was harsh, impatient. The Contessa waved one delicate hand dismissively at the dazed groom, and beamed at Chang with something bordering on affection.

“Poor Cardinal—it seems you are unable to protect
anyone.
Of course, since nearly everyone hates or fears you—that Asiatic trollop for example—”

He stepped forward and brought the back of his hand sharply across the Contessa's jaw. She stumbled but did not fall, raising one hand to her cheek, her eyes wild with something close to pleasure, meeting his gaze as the tip of her tongue dabbed at the blood beading on her lower lip.

“We must understand one another,” he whispered.

“O but we do.”

“No,” hissed Chang. “Whatever you hope to achieve, you will not.”

“And
you
will prevent me?”

“Yes.”

“You will
kill
me?”

“Why not—as you killed the two grooms in the north.”

The Contessa rolled her eyes. “What grooms?”

“Do not pretend—”

“When have I
ever
pretended?”

“You hacked out their throats. You took a horse—”

“I
found
a horse.”

“Do not—”

“Will you strike me again?” She laughed unpleasantly. “Do you know what fate befell the last man to lay a hand on my body in anger?”

“I can imagine.”

“No, I do not think you
can
…”

He gestured to the strange hide-covered trunk. “What is that? You could not have taken it from the airship. You leapt from the roof.”

“Did I?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Such emotion. I found it, obviously… with the horse.”

“What is inside?”

“I haven't the first idea.” She smiled. “Shall we find out together?”

“Do not think to remove a weapon,” he hissed. “Do not think of anything but the ease with which I can end your life.”

“How could I, now you have reminded me?”

She knelt in the straw and reached for the trunk, turning it this way and that in search of a catch.

“There is no evident hinge,” observed Chang.

“No,” she agreed, pressing each corner carefully. “Though I know it
does
open.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have seen it, of course. Before I took it.”

“You said ‘found’ before.”

“Found, took—the point being—”

“Did you see inside?”

“Perhaps…”

She looked up at him with a triumphant smile, then pushed firmly. From within the case Chang heard a muffled metallic click. The Contessa grinned, set the trunk down, and stood.

“There you are,” she said, stepping away and indicating the trunk with an open hand. Chang motioned her back toward it.

“Open it fully.”

“Are you afraid of something?”

“Do it slowly. Then step away.”

“So many
commands
…”

The Contessa kept her eyes fixed on Chang's as she sank down to the straw. Both hands reached out for the lid, gripping it delicately. She glanced down into the trunk, then back to Chang, biting her lip.

“If you do insist…”

THE IRON pole landed hard against the side of Cardinal Chang's head and he dropped to his knees. The boy swung again. Chang deflected the blow, barking his forearm and knocking the knife away. He cried out, his head swimming, shouting at Willem—misguided idiot!— swaying on his feet, blinking with the pain. The Contessa rushed at him, the trunk snatched up and held high. She brought it down hard on Chang's head and he collapsed into the straw.

For a moment he could not move—neither his body nor, it seemed, his thoughts—the whole of his sensibility stalled like an insect in a ball of thickening sap. Then the pain lanced across Chang's skull like a fire. His fingers twitched. He felt the straw sticking into his face. He heard the Contessa rustling nearby, but could not move.

“Where is the knife?” she hissed.

“Did I—did I—” The boy's voice was fearful and wavering.

“You did what was right and brave,” the Contessa assured him. “Without you, my dear boy, I should have been—well, it is too frightful to imagine. Cardinal Chang is exactly the brute he appears. Ah!”

She had found the knife, and Chang felt her footsteps coming near. Her fingers pulled at his coat collar as she called back to Willem, “If you would collect my parcel from where you set it down—there's an angel—and close the door.”

Chang pushed at the straw, trying to roll away, the strength in his arms no more than an infant's. The Contessa chuckled and ground a boot onto his nearest hand, as if she were crushing a spider. Chang braced for the tug of the knife against his jugular, the gush of his own hot blood against his skin—

The Contessa's gaze must have fallen across Christian in his chair, and she paused just long enough to call again to Willem.

“And perhaps you will tell me just
when
your fellow found this bit of glass—”

Her words stopped. The white horse began to neigh, horrible and high-pitched like a screaming child. It kicked furiously in its stall, and Chang could hear the breaking wood. The boy called to the animal, but the Contessa's voice cut across his, suddenly sharp as iron.

“
Willem!
Run with the parcel—now! Out the door, to the train! I will find you—fast as you can—let no one see you—
no one.”

The cries of the animal escalated to outright panic—spreading to the other horses, drowning out her further words. The Contessa was shouting—someone was shouting—Chang could not concentrate with the roaring pain.

He realized after the fact that his mind had drifted and that the stables had gone silent. He rolled onto one side. The stable door hung open. The air reeked of indigo clay. He was alone.

HE PUSHED himself first to his hands and knees and then, with an audible grunt, onto his knees. Across the room lay the trunk, open and empty, the top broken. The insides were lined with orange felt, and molded to contain an instrument of a shape he did not recognize—but it had held a tool of the Comte d'Orkancz, the orange felt alone told him that. The Comte—bear of a man, an esthete whose proclivities were as jaded as an octogenarian Sultan's—had been brilliant enough to discover the secret of indigo clay, laying the insidious foundation for the Cabal's every dream. However much the man's “science” struck Chang as an addled mixture of refined engineering and alchemical nonsense, he could not dispute its effects, nor shake a fear that its true dark power remained untapped—exactly why he took particular satisfaction in having run the Comte through with a cavalry saber.

The felt depression was not large and Chang wondered if the tool it had held might have been damaged in the scuffle. Was the Contessa lying about finding it with the horse? But how else
did
she acquire the trunk? It had not been with her on the roof of the airship.

Chang closed his eyes at the excruciating ache in his skull. He walked stiffly toward the tack room, but there was no drink at all. The knife was gone, so as he left the stables Chang snatched up the iron pole the boy had used to strike him, and swung it back and forth like a sword, testing the weight. He was frankly eager to thrash the next person he met.

He found the way to the train, a well-worn cart-track beyond the edge of town. He stopped at a sound beyond the immediate hills… the howling of a wolf. Chang looked back a last time at Karthe, spat into the darkness, and pressed on through a thicket of scrub, the twisted branches like the supplicating fingers of the bitter, wicked poor. He emerged to see, above an intervening rise of ground, a glow shot with rising smoke—the train. He swung the pole to loosen his arm, wondering whether he would find the Contessa or the Captain first, not especially caring, as long as he got a chance at both before the end.

On curved spurs of track to either side stood empty open-topped cars to carry ore. Ahead were two squat wooden buildings, one fitted with scaffolding to load ore, the windows of the other glowing with yellowed lamplight. Beyond these, a short line of passenger railcars— he could hear the engineers shouting to men on the trackside—was being connected to a steaming engine. His enemies could have gone inside the square building to wait, but given their mutual desire for secrecy, it seemed unlikely.

Behind the passenger cars and the engine, but not yet connected to them, ran a longer line of ore cars, piled with rock, at the end of which was a break van whose windows were dark. Chang crouched next to a rusted pair of iron wheels and studied the yard: no sign of the Captain, of the Contessa, or even Willem. If the Captain had indeed gone to the train some hours before, he might be in a passenger car, if only because the presence of other passengers and a conductor might provide, with witnesses, more security. At the same time, he might well be hiding in an ore car… but such logic only made sense if he was frightened, and the man with the saber had not seemed frightened at all.

Chang loped to the rear passenger car, its platform bracketed by two lamps, and vaulted silently over the rail. He heard nothing from inside. The door was not locked—was there such confidence and trust still in the world?—and Chang eased it open to find the rear compartment had been converted into a comfortable little room for the conductor, with a stove, wooden chairs, lanterns, maps, and any number of small metal tools set on hooks in the wall. On a side table sat a welcome pot of tea, and he poured half a cup into a nearby metal mug—the brew still steaming as it met the air—and drank it off in one set of swallows. He set the cup down, moved to an inner door, and carefully, silently, turned the knob.

Chang stepped into the hallway of a standard passenger railcar, with glass-doored compartments to his right-hand side, bathed in the dim half-light of lanterns hung at either end. The passenger cars formed one long interlocked corridor straight to the engine, where he assumed the conductor presently was. But before the train left, the conductor would make his way down the length of it, accounting for every passenger. It would be better if Chang could locate the Captain before that happened. He strode quickly down the car, glancing into each compartment, and then through the next, with the same result— every compartment was empty. The train shuddered: the line of ore cars had been attached. They would leave momentarily.

He entered the third car. The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza burst through the far door, out of breath, her expression hard as hell itself. She saw Chang just an instant after he saw her. Neither moved. Then the Contessa launched herself straight at him with all speed, dress held up with both hands, black boots pounding against the polished planking. Chang's lips curled back with pleasure.

“Contessa! How completely
superb
…”

He raised the iron pole and strode deliberately forward—free hand raised, fingers open, to catch or turn aside whatever she might fling—awaiting their collision with an animal eagerness.

The Contessa suddenly dodged from the corridor into a compartment. Chang swore under his breath and leapt forward, tearing at the compartment door. She had shot the bolt, and he could see her through the glass clawing at the window latches. Chang stabbed the pole through the glass and cleared a ragged hole. The Contessa turned once as he thrust his gloved hand through to grope for the bolt, and then with all her strength, the latches not yet free, hurled herself full against the window. Its glass cracked, starring raggedly like the web of an opium-sick spider. She cried out, stumbled back, and Chang saw the bleeding slash across her shoulder. He wrenched the door open. The Contessa threw herself at the cracked window again, sailing through in a shower of dagger-sharp shards to land in a glittering heap on the rocky trackside below. Chang leapt to the window, looking down. The Contessa groped to her hands and knees, blood gleaming on her dress.