The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (40 page)

“But, Doctor,” asked Miss Temple, “do not the stains themselves suggest that the fluid has come—been expelled—
from
the woman? They are sprayed—spattered—”

“Yes, they are—very astute!”

“Do you suggest she was
infested
?”

“No, I suggest nothing—but I do wonder about the effects of such a solvent with regard to the possible properties of the blue fluid, the glass, within the human body. Perhaps it was the Comte’s idea of a remedy.”

“If it melts an insect’s shell, it might melt the glass in her lungs?”

“Exactly—though, of course, we are ignorant of the exact ingredients of the glass, so I cannot say if it might have proven effective.”

They said nothing for a moment, staring at the bed and the traces of the body that had lain there.

“If it worked,” said Miss Temple, “I do not know why he has burnt her dress.”

“No.” Svenson nodded, sadly.

“No,” snapped Chang. He turned from them and walked out to the garden.

Miss Temple looked to Doctor Svenson, who was still on the bed, his expression one of concern and confusion, as if they both knew something was not right. He began to climb off—awkwardly, his coat and boots cumbersome and his lank hair falling over his face. Miss Temple was quicker to the door, snatching up her flowered bag where Chang had left it—it was shockingly heavy, Marthe was an idiot to think she could carry the thing for any distance—and lurching into the garden. Chang stood in the middle of the lifeless lawn, staring up at the boarded windows of the house—windows that in their willful impenetrability struck Miss Temple as a mirror of Chang’s glasses. She flung down the bag and approached him. He did not turn. She stopped, perhaps a yard from his side. She glanced back to see Doctor Svenson standing in the greenhouse doorway, watching.

“Cardinal Chang?” she asked. He did not answer. Miss Temple did not know if there was anything so tiresome as a person ignoring a perfectly polite, indeed sympathetic, question. She took a breath, exhaled slowly, and gently spoke again. “Do you know the woman?”

Chang turned to her, his voice quite cold. “Her name is Angelique. You would not know her. She is—she
was
—a whore.”

“I see,” said Miss Temple.

“Do you?” snapped Chang.

Miss Temple ignored the challenge and again held up the scrap of burnt silk. “And you recognize this as hers?”

“She wore such a dress yesterday evening, in the company of the Comte—he took her to the Institute.” Chang turned to call over her shoulder to Svenson. “She was with him there, with his machines—she is obviously the woman you saw—and she is obviously dead.”

“Is she?” asked Miss Temple.

Chang snorted. “You said it yourself—he has burnt the dress—”

“I did,” she agreed, “but it really makes little sense. I do not see any freshly turned earth here in this garden, do you?”

Chang looked at her suspiciously, and then glanced around him. Before he could answer her, Svenson called out from the doorway, “I don’t.”

“Nor did—forgive the indelicacy—I find any
bones
in the stove. And I do believe that if one were to burn such a thing as a body—for I have seen the bodies of animals in such a fire—that at least some bones would remain. Doctor?”

“I would expect so, yes—the femur alone—”

“So my question, Cardinal Chang,” continued Miss Temple, “is why—if she is dead and he is abandoning this garden—does he not bury or burn her remains right here? It truly is the sensible thing—and yet I do not see that he’s done it.”

“Then why burn the dress?” asked Chang.

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps because it was ruined—the bloodstains the Doctor described. Perhaps it was
contaminated.
” She turned to Svenson. “Was she wearing the dress when
you
saw her, Doctor?”

Svenson cleared his throat. “I saw no such dress,” he said.

“So we do not know,” announced Miss Temple, returning to Chang. “You may hate the Comte d’Orkancz, but you may also yet hope to find this woman alive—and who can say, even recovered.”

Chang did not reply, but she sensed something change in his body, a palpable shifting in his bones to accommodate some small admission of hope. Miss Temple allowed herself a moment of satisfaction, but instead of that pleasure she found herself quite unexpectedly beset by a painful welling of sadness, of isolation, as if she had taken for granted a certain solidarity with Chang, that they were alike in being alone, only to learn that this was not true. The fact of his feelings—that he
had
feelings, much less that they were of such fervor, and for this particular sort of woman—threw her into distress. She did not desire to be the object of such a man’s emotions—of course she didn’t—but she was nevertheless unprepared to face the depth of her loneliness so abruptly—nor by way of consoling someone else—which seemed especially unjust and was hardly Miss Temple’s
forte
to begin with. She could not help it. She was pierced by solitude, and found herself suddenly sniffing. Mortified, she forced her eyes brightly open and tried to smile, making her voice as brisk and amiable as she could.

“It seems that we have each lost someone. You this woman, Angelique, the Doctor his Prince, and my own…my cruel and foolish Roger. While there is the difference that the two of you have some hope—and indeed the desire—to recover the one you have lost…for me I am content to assist how I can, and to achieve my share of understanding…and revenge.”

Her voice broke, and she sniffed, angry with her weakness but powerless to fight it. Was this her life? Again she felt the gagging absence in her heart—how could she have been such a fool as to allow Roger Bascombe to fill it? How could she have allowed such feelings to begin with—when they had only left her with this unanswerable ache? How could she be still beset by them, still want to be somehow simply misunderstood by him and taken by the hand—her own weakness was unbearable. For the first time in her twenty-five years Miss Temple did not know where she was going to sleep. She saw Doctor Svenson stepping toward her and forced a smile, waving him away.

“Your aunt,” he began, “surely, Miss Temple, her concern for you—”

“Pffft!”
scoffed Miss Temple, unable to bear his sympathy. She walked to her bag and hefted it with one hand, doing her best to conceal the weight but stumbling as she made her way to the garden gate. “I will wait in the street,” she called over her shoulder, not wanting them to see the emotion on her face. “When you are finished, I’m sure there is much for us to do…”

She dropped the bag and leaned against the wall, her hands over her eyes, her shoulders now heaving with sobs. Only moments ago she had been so proud to find the scrap of silk in the stove and now—and why? Because Chang had feelings for some whore?—the full weight of all she had suffered and sacrificed and stuffed aside had reappeared to rest on her small frame and tender heart. How did anyone bear this isolation, this desolated hope? In the midst of this tempest, Miss Temple, for her mind was restless and quick, did not forget the sharp fear inspired by her enemies, nor did she refrain from berating herself for the girlish indulgence of crying in the first place. She dug for a handkerchief in her green bag, her hand searching for it around the revolver, another sign of what she had become—what she had embraced with, if she was honest, typically ridiculous results. She blew her nose. She
was
difficult, she knew. She did not make friends. She was brisk and demanding, unsparing and indulgent. She sniffed, bitterly resenting this sort of introspection, despising the need for it nearly as much as she despised introspection itself. In that moment she did not know which she wanted more, to curl up in the sun room of her island house, or to shoot one of these blue-glass villains in the heart…yet were either of these the answer to her present state?

She sniffed loudly. Neither Chang, for all his hidden moods, nor Svenson, for all his fussy hesitance, were standing in the open street in tears. How could she face them as any kind of equal? Again, and relentlessly, she asked herself what she thought she was doing. She’d told Chang that she was willing to pursue her investigations alone, though in her heart she had not believed it. Now she knew that this was exactly what she must do—for at the moment
doing
seemed crucial—if she was ever going to scour this awful sense of being
subject
from her body. She looked back at the garden door—neither man had appeared. She snatched up the bag with both hands and walked back the way they had come, away from the Boniface. With each step she felt as if she were in a ship leaving its port to cross an unknown ocean—and the farther down Plum Court she went, the more determined she became.

At the avenue, she hailed a coach. She looked back. Her heart caught in her throat. Chang and Svenson stood in the garden doorway. Svenson called to her. Chang was running. She climbed into the coach and threw the bag to the floor.

“Drive on,” she called. The coach pulled away and with an almost brutal swiftness she was beyond the lane and any vision of her two companions. The driver looked back at her, his face an unspoken inquiry for their destination.

“The St. Royale Hotel,” said Miss Temple.

FIVE

Ministry

B
y the time Chang reached the end of the lane, the coach was out of sight and he could not tell in which direction it had vanished. He spat with frustration, his chest heaving with the wasted effort. He looked back to see Svenson catch up, the Doctor’s face a mask of concern.

“She is gone?” he asked.

Chang nodded and spat again. He had no idea what had transpired in the girl’s head, nor where the irresponsible impulses had carried her.

“We should follow—” began Svenson.

“How?” snapped Chang. “Where is she going? Is she abandoning her efforts? Is she attacking our enemies on her own? Which one? And when, between being taken and being killed, will she tell them all they need know to find us?”

Chang was furious, but in truth he was just as angry at himself. His display of bad temper with regard to Angelique had touched off the foolishness—and what was the point? Angelique had no feelings for him. If she were alive and he could find her, it would help his standing with Madelaine Kraft. That was the end of it, the only end. He turned to Svenson, speaking quickly.

“How much money do you have?”

“I—I don’t know—enough for a day or two—to eat, find a room—”

“Purchase a train ticket?”

“Depending on how far the journey—”

“Here, then.” Chang thrust his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out the leather wallet. It held only two small banknotes, change from his night at the Boniface, but he had a handful of gold coins in his trouser pocket to fall back on. He handed one of the notes to Doctor Svenson with a bitter smile. “I don’t know what will befall us—and the change purse of our partnership has just walked away. How are you for ammunition?”

As if to reinforce his reply, Svenson hefted the revolver from his pocket. “I was able to reload from Miss Temple’s supply—the weapons share a caliber—”

“That’s a service .44.”

“It is.”

“As was hers?”

“Yes, though her weapon
was
deceptively small—”

“Has she ever fired it, do you know?”

“I do not think so.”

The two men stood for a moment between thoughts. Chang attempted to shrug off his feelings of remorse and recrimination. How had he not realized the gun was so powerful—he’d helped her clean it, for God’s sake. He wondered what he’d been thinking—but in truth knew exactly what had distracted him: the surprise at seeing her again in such different apparel than on the train, the curves of her throat marked by bruises instead of bloodstains, her small nimble fingers working to disassemble the black oiled metal parts of the revolver. He shook his head. The kick from such a weapon would knock her arm up back over her head—unless she pressed the barrel into her target’s body, she would never hit a thing. She had no idea what she was doing, in any of this.

“It is senseless to consider what’s done,” the Doctor said. “Do we go after her?”

“If she is taken, she is dead.”

“Then we must part to cover more ground. It really is unfortunate—it seems but a moment ago we were each running for our lives in isolation. I will miss someone to help me scale what water pipes I must.” He smiled and extended his hand. Chang took it.

“You will scale them by yourself—I am sure.”

Svenson smiled with a pinched expression, as if he appreciated Chang’s encouragement but remained unpersuaded. “Where do we each go?” he asked. “And where shall we meet again?”

“Where would
she
go?” Chang asked. “Do you think she is running to her aunt? That would be easier for us all…”

“I do not think so,” said Svenson. “On the contrary, whatever distress she has felt, I believe it has spurred her to direct action.”

Chang frowned, thinking. What had she said to him in the garden, her face, the smile belied by her grey eyes.

“Then it has to be this Bascombe idiot.”

Svenson sighed. “The poor girl.”

Chang spat again. “Will she shoot him in the head or blubber at his feet—that’s the question.”

“I disagree,” said Svenson quietly. “She is brave and resourceful. What do we know about anyone—very little. But we know Miss Temple has surprised any number of powerful people into thinking she was a deadly assassin-courtesan. Without her we both could have been taken in the hotel. If we can find her, I will wager you that she will save each of us in our turn before this is finished.”

Chang did not answer, then smiled.

“What is your Macklenburg currency—gold shillings?”

Svenson nodded.

“Then I will happily wager you ten gold shillings that Miss Temple will not preserve our lives. Of course, it’s a fool’s bet—for if we are not so preserved, then neither shall we be in any position to profit.”

“Nevertheless,” said Svenson, “I accept the wager.” They shook hands again. Svenson cleared his throat. “Now…this Bascombe—”

“There’s the country house—Tarr Manor. He could well be there. Or he could be at the Ministry, or with Crabbé.” Chang looked quickly up and down the avenue—they really ought not to be standing so long in the street so near to the Boniface. “The trip to Tarr Manor—”

“Where is it?”

“To the north, perhaps half a day by rail—we can find out easily enough at Stropping—we may even catch her at the station. But the trip will take time. The other possibilities—his home, the Ministry, Crabbé—these are in the city, and one of us can easily move from one to another as necessary.”

Svenson nodded. “So, one to the country, one to stay here—do you have a preference? I am an outsider in either instance.”

Chang smiled. “So am I, Doctor.” He gestured to his red coat and his glasses. “I am not one for country gentry, nor for the drawing rooms of respectable townsfolk…”

“It is still your city—you are its animal, if you will forgive me. I will go to the country, where they may be more persuaded by a uniform and tales of the Macklenburg Palace.”

Chang turned to flag another coach. “You should hurry—as I say, you may find her at Stropping. The path to the Ministry takes me the other way. We will part here.”

They shook hands for a third time, smiling at it. Svenson climbed into the coach. Without another word Chang began to walk quickly in the opposite direction. Over his shoulder he heard Svenson’s voice and turned.

“Where do we meet?” called the Doctor.

Chang called back, shouting through his hands. “Tomorrow noon! The clock at Stropping!”

Svenson nodded and waved before sitting back down in the coach. Chang doubted that either of them would be there.

As soon as he could, Chang left the avenue for a winding trail of alleys and narrow lanes. He had not decided where he ought to go first. More than anything he wanted to orient himself to his task in his normal manner and not rush headlong into circumstances he didn’t understand—even though this was exactly what Celeste was doing. Celeste? He wondered how he used that name in his thoughts, but not to her face, nor when speaking to Doctor Svenson, when it was always “Miss Temple”. It hardly mattered—it was undoubtedly because she was behaving like a child. With this thought, Chang resolved that if he were to try and enter the offices of the Foreign Ministry, or the house of Harald Crabbé, he needed to be better prepared. He increased his pace to a loping trot. He could not brave the Raton Marine, for it would certainly be watched—he had to believe Aspiche was now one with this Cabal. He would have very much liked to reach the Library. There were so many questions to answer—about indigo clay, about the Comte and the Contessa, about Bascombe and Crabbé, about the foreign travels of Francis Xonck, about Oskar Veilandt, even, he admitted, about Miss Celestial Temple. But the Library was where Rosamonde had found him, and they would certainly be waiting. Instead, his thinking more practical and dark, he made his way to Fabrizi’s.

The man was an Italian ex-mercenary and weapons master who catered to a clientele drawn from all across the city and whose only shared characteristic was an elegant bloody purpose. Chang entered the shop, glancing to either side at the glass display cases with his usual surge of covetous pleasure. He was relieved to see Fabrizi himself behind the counter, a crisp suit covered by a green flannel apron.

“Dottore,”
said Chang, with a nod of greeting.

“Cardinale,”
answered Fabrizi, his tone serious and respectful.

Chang pulled out his dagger and placed it before the man. “I have had a misadventure with the rest of your splendid cane,” he said. “I would like you to repair it, if possible. In the meantime, I would request the use of a suitable replacement. I will of course pay for all services in advance.” He took the remaining banknote from the wallet and laid it on the counter. Fabrizi ignored it, instead picking up the dagger and studying the condition of the blade. He returned the blade to the counter, looked at the banknote with mild surprise, as if it had appeared there independently, and quietly folded it into the pocket of his apron. He nodded to one of the glass cases. “You may select your replacement. I will have this ready in three days.”

“I am much obliged,” said Chang. He walked to the case, Fabrizi following him behind the counter. “Is there one you would suggest?”

“All are superb,” said the Italian. “For a man like you, I recommend the heavier wood—the cane may be used alone, yes? This one is teak…this one Malaysian ironwood.”

He handed the ironwood to Chang, who held it with immediate satisfaction, the hilt curved like a black-powder pistol grip in his hand. He pulled out the blade—a bit longer than he was used to—and hefted the stick. It was lovely, and Chang smiled like a man holding a new baby.

“As always,” he whispered, “the work is exquisite.”

It was after three o’clock. Without the Library to tell him where Bascombe lived, the easiest thing would be to follow the man from the Ministry. Besides, if Celeste were truly intent on finding him quickly, she would certainly go to the Ministry herself, doing her best to meet him—kill him?—in his office. If he was not there…well, Chang would answer that when it became necessary. He weighed the coins in his pocket, decided against a coach, and began to jog toward the maze of white buildings. It took him perhaps fifteen minutes to reach St. Isobel’s Square, and another five to walk—taking the time to ease his breathing and his countenance—to the front entrance. He made his way under the great white archway, through a sea of coaches and the throng of serious-faced people pursuing government business, and into a graveled courtyard, with different lanes—paved with slate and lined with ornamental shrubbery—leading off to different Ministries. It was as if he stood at the center of a wheel, with each spoke leading to its own discrete world of bureaucracy. The Foreign Ministry was directly before him, and so he walked straight ahead, boots crunching on the gravel and then echoing off the slate, to another smaller archway opening into a marble lobby and a wooden desk where a man in a black suit was flanked by red-coated soldiers. With some alarm, Chang noticed that they were troopers from the 4th Dragoons, but by the time he had realized this, they had seen him. He stopped, ready to run or to fight, but none of the soldiers stirred from their stiff postures of attention. Between them, the man in the suit looked up at Chang with an inquiring sniff.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Roger Bascombe,” said Chang.

The man’s gaze took in Chang’s apparel and demeanor. “And…who shall I announce?”

“Miss Celeste Temple,” said Chang.

“Excuse me—Miss Temple, you say?” The man was well enough trained in dealing with foreign manners not to sneer.

“I bring word from her,” said Chang. “I am confident he will want to hear it. If Mr. Bascombe is unavailable, I am willing to speak to Deputy Minister Crabbé.”

“I see, you are…
willing
…to speak to the Deputy Minister. Just a moment.” The man jotted a few lines onto a piece of paper and stuffed it into a leather tube, which he fed into a brass opening in the desk, where it was sucked from sight with an audible hiss. Chang was reminded of the Old Palace, and found it somehow comforting that the highest levels of government shared the latest means of communication with a brothel. He waited. Several other visitors arrived and were either allowed to pass through or became the subject of another such message sent through the leather tubes. Chang glanced at the others waiting—a dark-skinned man in a white uniform and a hat with peacock feathers, a pale Russian with a long beard and a blue uniform of boiled wool with a line of medals and a sash, and two elderly men in run-down black tailcoats, as if they had been continuously attending the same ball for the last twenty years. He was not surprised to see all four of them staring at him in return. He casually looked around to make sure the exit behind was still clear, and to note the hallways and staircases on the other side of the desk, the better to anticipate any danger that might arrive. The troopers remained still.

It was five more minutes before an answering tube thumped into its receptacle near the desk. The clerk unfolded the paper, made a note in the ledger next to him, and handed the paper to one of the troopers. He then called to Chang.

“You’re to go up. This man will show you the way. I will need your name, and your signature…here.” He indicated a second ledger on the desk top, and held out a pen. Chang took it and wrote, and handed it back.

“The name is Chang,” he said.

“Just ‘Chang’?” the man asked.

“For the moment, I’m afraid so.” He leaned forward with a whisper. “But I am hoping to win at the races…and then I shall purchase another.”

The soldier led Chang along a wide corridor and up an austere staircase of polished black granite with a wrought iron rail. They moved among other men in dark suits walking up and down, all clutching thickly packed satchels of paper, none of whom paid Chang the slightest attention. At the first landing the soldier led the way across a marble corridor to another staircase blocked off with an iron chain. He unlatched the chain, stepped back for Chang to pass, and replaced it behind them. On this staircase there was no other traffic, and the farther they climbed the more Chang felt he was entering a labyrinth he might never escape from. He looked at the red-coated trooper ahead of him and wondered if it would be better to simply slip a knife between the man’s ribs here, where they were alone, and then take his chances. As it was, he could only hope that he was indeed being taken to Bascombe—or Crabbé—and not into some isolated place of entrapment. He had mentioned Miss Temple’s name on a whim, to provoke a response—as well as to see if she had been there before him. That he had gained entry without any particular reaction left him mystified. It could mean that she was there, or that she wasn’t—or that they merely wanted to find her, which he already knew. He had to assume that the people who had allowed him in did not ultimately plan for him to leave. Still, the impulse to kill the soldier was mere nervousness. All that would come soon enough.