The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (92 page)

But then another nagging thought came to Miss Temple—the last seconds of that card’s experience—metal-banded door and the high chamber…the broad-shouldered man leaning over the table, on the table a woman…that very card had come from Colonel Trapping. The man at the table was the Comte. And the woman…Miss Temple could not say.

These thoughts were driven from her head by Lydia’s muffled screams, the shrieking machinery, and the truly unbearable smell. Miss Poole stood below the table, describing each step of the Process to her audience as if it were a sumptuous meal—every moment of her smiling enthusiasm belied by the girl’s arching back and clutching fingers, her red face and grunts of animal pain. To Miss Temple’s lasting disgust, the spectators whispered and applauded at every key moment, treating the entire affair like a circus exhibition. Did they have any idea who lay in sweating torment before them—a beauty to rival any Royal, the darling of the social press, heiress to an empire? All they saw was a woman writhing, and another woman telling them how fine a thing it was. It seemed to her that this was Lydia Vandaariff’s whole existence in a nutshell.

Once it was over however, Miss Temple chided herself bitterly. She did not think she actually could have broken from the two soldiers, but she was certain that this period of sparking, ghastly chaos was the only time she might have had a chance. Instead, as soon as the Comte’s men unstrapped Lydia and eased her limp form from the table—the unctuous Miss Poole whispering eagerly into the shattered girl’s ear—the soldiers stepped forward and hefted Miss Temple into her place. She kicked her legs but these were immediately caught and held firmly down. In a matter of helpless seconds she was on her back, the cotton pads beneath her hot and damp from Lydia’s sweat, the belts cinched close across her waist, neck, and bosom and each limb tightly bound. The table was angled so those in the gallery could see the whole of her body, but Miss Temple could only see the glare of the hot paraffin lamps and an indistinct mass of shadowed faces—as uncaring to her condition as those waiting with empty plates are to the frightened beast beneath the knife.

She stared at Lydia as the tottering young woman—sweat-sheened face, hair damp against the back of her neck, eyes dull and mouth slack—was briskly examined by Miss Poole. With a tremor Miss Temple thought of the defiant course of her short life—itself a litany of governesses and aunts, rivals and suitors, Bascombes and Pooles and Marchmoors…she would now join them, edges stripped away, her velocity set to their destinations, her determination yoked like an ox to work in someone else’s field.

And what had she wanted instead? Miss Temple was not without insight and she saw how genuinely free the Process had made both Marchmoor and Poole, and—she did not frankly doubt it—how Lydia Vandaariff would now find her will of steel. Even Roger—her breath huffed around the gag with a plangent whine as his visage crossed her inner eye—she knew had been formerly restrained by a decency rooted in fear and timid desire. It did not make them
wise
—she had only to recall the way Roger could not reconcile her present deeds with the fiancée he had known—but it made them fierce. Miss Temple choked again as the cotton wadding nudged the slick softness at the back of her throat. She was
already
fierce. She required none of this nonsense, and if she’d carried a man’s strength and her father’s horsewhip these villains would as one be on their knees.

But in addition Miss Temple realized—barely listening to Miss Poole’s disquisition—that so much of this struggle came down to dreams. Mrs. Marchmoor had been released from the brothel, Mrs. Stearne from fallow widowhood, and Miss Poole from a girlish hope to marry the best man within reach…which was all to say that of course she understood. What
they
did not understand—what no one understood, from her raging father to her aunt to Roger to the Comte and the Contessa with their wicked violations—was the particular character of her own desires, her own sunbaked, moist-aired, salt-tinged dreams. In her mind she saw the sinister
Annunciation
fragments of Oskar Veilandt, the expression of astonished sensation on Mary’s face and the gleaming blue hands with their cobalt nails pressing into her giving flesh…and yet she knew her own desire, however inflamed at the rawness of that physical transaction, was in truth elsewhere configured…her colors—the pigments of her need—existed before an artist’s interposition—crumbled, primal minerals and untreated salts, feathers and bones, shells oozing purple ink, damp on a table top and still reeking of the sea.

Such was Miss Temple’s heart, and with it beating strong within her now she felt no longer fear, but near to spitting rage. She knew she would not die, for their aim was corruption—as if to skip the act of death completely and leap ahead to the slow decomposition of her soul, through worms that they would here place in her mind. She would not have it. She would fight them. She would stay who she was no matter what—no matter what—and she would kill them all! She snapped her head to the side as one of the Comte’s attendants loomed over her and replaced her white mask with the glass and metal goggles, pushing them tight so the black rubber seal sucked fast against her skin. She whined against the gag, for the metal edges pressed sharply and were bitter cold. Any moment the copper wires would surge with current. Knowing that agony was but seconds away, Miss Temple could only toss her head again and decide with all the force of her will that Lydia Vandaariff was a weakling, that it would not be difficult at all, that she should thrash and scream only to convince them of their success, not because they made her.

Into the theatre two soldiers brought this Miss Dujong, slumped and unresponsive, and deposited her onto the floor. The unfortunate woman had been bundled into the white robes, but her hair hung over her face and Miss Temple had no clear picture of her age or beauty. She gagged again on the wadding in her mouth and pulled at the restraints.

They did not pull the switch. She cursed them bitterly for toying so. They would
die
. Every one of them would be punished. They had killed Chang. They had killed Svenson. But this would not be the end…Miss Temple was not
prepared
to allow—

The straps around her head were fast, but not so tight that she did not hear the gunshots…then angry shouts from Miss Poole—and then more shots and Miss Poole’s voice leapt from outrage to a fearful shriek. But this was shattered by a crash that shook the table itself, another even louder chorus of screams…and then she smelled the smoke and felt the heat of flame—flame!—on her bare feet! She could not speak or move, and the thick goggles afforded only the most opaque view of the darkening ceiling. What had happened to the lights? Had the roof fallen in? Had her “gunshots” actually been exploding joists from an unsound ceiling? The heat was sharper on her feet. Would they abandon her to burn alive? If they did not, if she pretended to be injured they would not hold her tightly—a stout push and she could run the other way…but what if her captors had already fled and left her behind to burn?

A hand groped at her arm and she twisted to take hold of whoever it was—she could not turn her head, she could not see through the thickening smoke—and squeeze—they must free her, they must! She curled her toes away from the rising flames, biting back a cry. The hand pulled away and her heart fell—but a moment later hands fumbled at the belt. She was a fool—how could the fellow free her if she held his arm? After another desperately distended moment the strap gave way and her hands were free. Her rescuer’s attention dropped to her feet and without a thought Miss Temple’s hands flew to her face, ripping at the mask. She found the release screw—for she had felt the point from which the thing was tightened—and scraped her finger tearing it loose. The goggles fell away and Miss Temple caught a handful of copper wire and sat up, dangling the contraption behind her like a medieval morning star, ready to bring it down on the head of whatever conscience-stricken functionary had thought to save her.

He’d managed the other straps and she felt the man’s arms snake under her legs and behind her back to scoop her from the table and set her feet down on the floor. Miss Temple snorted at the presumption—the silk robes might as well have been her shift, a shocking intimacy no matter the circumstance—and raised her hand to swing the heavy goggles (which bore all sorts of jagged metal bolts that might find vicious purchase), while with her other hand she pried the sopping gag from her mouth. The smoke was thick—across the table the flames flickered into view, an orange line dividing gallery from stage and blocking off the far rampway, where she could hear shouts and see figures looming in the murk. She took a lungful of foul air and coughed. Her rescuer had his hand around her waist, his shoulder leaning close. She took aim at the back of his head.

“This way! Can you walk?”

Miss Temple stopped her swing—the voice—she hesitated—and then he pulled her down below the line of smoke. Her eyes snapped open, both in unlooked-for delight at the man she found before her, and at the desperately stricken image that man presented, as if he had indeed crawled up through hell to find her.

“Can you walk?” Doctor Svenson shouted again.

Miss Temple nodded, her fingers releasing the goggles. She wanted to throw her arms around his shoulders and would have done that very thing had he not then pulled her arm and pointed to the other woman—Dujong?—who had come from Tarr Manor and was now hunched against the curved wall of the theatre with the Doctor’s coat thrown across her legs.

“She cannot!” he shouted above the roaring flames. “We must help her!”

The woman looked up to them as the Doctor took her arm and duty-bound Miss Temple took her other side. They lifted her with an awkward stumble—in the back of her mind Miss Temple was entirely unsure—in fact, annoyed—about the choice to adopt this new companion, though at least now the woman was able to move and mutter whatever she was muttering to Doctor Svenson. Hadn’t Miss Poole described her as “seduced by Francis Xonck”? Wasn’t she some sort of adherent possessing privileged information? The last thing Miss Temple desired was the company of such a person, any more than she appreciated the Doctor’s earnest frown of concern as he brushed the hair from the woman’s sweat-smeared face. Behind them she heard steps and a piercing wave of sharp hissing—buckets emptied into the fire—and then coughed at the roiling smoky steam that billowed into their faces. The Doctor leaned across the Dujong woman to call to her.

“—Chang! There is a—machine—the Dragoon—do not—glass books!”

Miss Temple nodded but even apart from the noise the information was too thick to make sensible in her mind—too many other sensations crowded for her attention—hot metal and broken wood beneath her bare feet, with one hand under the woman’s arm and the other out before her, feeling in the gloom. What had happened to the lights? From the once-blazing array she saw but one distracted orange glow, like a weak winter sun unable to reach through fog—what
had
happened to Miss Poole? Doctor Svenson turned—there was motion behind them—and thrust his half of the woman wholly onto Miss Temple, who stumbled forward. His hand was shoving at her, driving her on. In the shadows she saw Doctor Svenson extend a revolver toward their pursuers and heard him shout.

“Go! Go at once!”

Never one to misunderstand her own immediate needs, Miss Temple dipped her knees, threw the burdensome woman’s arm over her shoulder and then stood straight with a grunt, Miss Temple’s other hand around her waist, doing her best to carry what weight she could, rolling on her tiptoes away from the wall to stumble down the rampway, hoping the slope would create enough momentum to keep Miss Dujong propelled. They slammed into the far wall at the curve, both of them crying out (the bulk of the impact absorbed by the taller woman’s shoulder), careened backwards and wavered, nearly toppling, until Miss Temple managed to angle them along the next part of the pitch-black passage. Her feet caught on something soft and both women went down in a heap, their fall broken by the inert body that had tripped them. Miss Temple’s groping hand fell onto leather—the apron—this was one of the Comte’s attendants—and then into a sticky trail on the floor that must be his blood. She wiped her hand on the apron and got her feet beneath her and her hands under the arms of Miss Dujong, heaving her over the body. She heaved her again—Miss Temple huffed with the knowledge that she simply was not meant for this sort of work—and felt in front of her for the door. It was not locked, nor did the fallen man block its opening. With another gasp she pulled Miss Dujong through its bright archway, into light and cool sweet air.

She dragged the woman as far as she could onto the carpet with one sustained burst of effort, until her legs caught beneath her and she tripped, sitting down. On her hands and knees Miss Temple crawled back to the open door and looked for any sign of Doctor Svenson. Smoke seeped into the room. She did not see him, and slammed the door, leaning against it to catch her breath.

The attiring room was empty. She could hear the commotion in the theatre behind her, and racing footsteps in the mirrored hall on the other side. She looked down to her charge, presently attempting to rise to her hands and knees, and saw the blacked soles of the woman’s bare feet and the singed, discolored silk at the hem of her robes.

“Can you understand me?” Miss Temple hissed impatiently. “Miss Dujong?
Miss Dujong.
”

The woman turned to her voice, hair across her face, doing her best to move in the awkward robe that, with Doctor Svenson’s greatcoat, was tangling her legs. Miss Temple sighed and crouched in front of the woman, doing her best to give an impression of kindness and care, knowing well there was precious little time—or, to be honest, feeling—for either.

“My name is Celeste Temple. I am a friend of Doctor Svenson. He is behind us—he will catch up, I am sure—but if we do not escape his efforts will be wasted. Do you understand me? We are at Harschmort House. They are keen to murder us both.”