“Where is Miss Temple?” he whispered.
Gray opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. Chang eased up his pressure on the fellow’s windpipe.
“Try again,” he hissed.
“I—I do not know!” pleaded Mr. Gray.
Chang doubled up his fist holding the dagger and slammed it into Mr. Gray’s cheek, knocking his head brutally against the stone.
“Try again,” he hissed. Gray began to weep. Chang raised his fist. Gray’s eyes widened in desperate fear and his mouth began to move, groping for words.
“I—don’t!—I don’t—I have not seen her—she’s to be taken to the theatre—or the chamber—elsewhere in the house! I do not know! I am only to prepare the works—the great works—”
Chang slammed his fist once more into Mr. Gray’s head.
“Who is with her?” he hissed. “How many guards?”
“I cannot tell you!” Gray was weeping openly. “There are many Macklenburgers, Dragoons—she is with the Comte—with Miss Vandaariff—they will be processed together—”
“Processed?”
“Redeemed—”
“Redeemed?” Chang felt the natural pleasure of violence blooming directly into fury.
“You are too late! By now it will be started—to interrupt it will kill them both!” Mr. Gray looked up and saw his own reflection in the smoked black lenses over Cardinal Chang’s eyes and wailed. “O—they all said you were!—why are you not dead?”
His eyes opened even wider, if that were possible, in shock, as Chang drove the dagger into Mr. Gray’s heart, which he knew would be quicker and far less bloody than cutting the man’s throat. In a matter of seconds Gray’s body had relaxed and gone forever still. Chang rolled back onto his knees, still breathing hard, wiped the dagger on Gray’s coat, and sheathed it. He spat again, felt the stab of pain in his lungs, and muttered darkly.
“How do you know I am not?”
He dragged the body back to the stairwell and down one full curve before propping it up and tipping it over, doing his best to send the unregretted Mr. Gray all the way to the bottom—wherever it had landed, it was at least out of sight to anyone coming to this door. He pocketed the key Gray had stupidly left in the lock and returned to the corridor, trying to guess what Gray had been doing. Chang sighed. There had been more information to glean from the man, but he was in a hurry, and itching, after being hunted and assailed, to strike some blow in answer. That it was against an aged, wounded man was to Cardinal Chang no matter at all. Every last one of these people was his enemy, and he would not scruple to excuse a single soul.
The niches in the inner wall were old cell doors—heavy metal monstrosities whose handles had been hacked off with a chisel and sealed shut with iron bolts driven into the brick. Chang laced his fingers in the small barred window and strained but could not shift it at all. He peered into the cell. The far wall of bars was draped with canvas. On the other side of the canvas, he knew, was the great chamber, but this was no way for him to reach it. He paced rapidly down the length of the curving hallway. Gray was another fool from the Institute, like Lorenz and the man he’d surprised making the book. As a reader of poetry, Chang believed that learning was dangerous and best suited for private contemplation, not something to put in the service of the highest bidder—as the Institute did, in thrall to the patronage of men with blind dreams of empire. Society was not bettered by such men of “vision”—though, if Chang was honest, was it bettered by anyone? He smiled wolfishly at the thought that it was better without the corrupted Mr. Gray, amused at the notion that he himself might be seen as an engine of civic progress.
At the end of the corridor was another door. Gray’s key turned sharply in the lock and Chang peered into a room scarcely larger than a closet, with seven large pipes running vertically from the ceiling to disappear through the floor, each one set with an access panel similar to the one he’d emerged through downstairs. The room was stiflingly hot and reeking—even to him—with the acrid, chemical excrescence of indigo clay. To the side was another rack of pegs, dangling another collection of flasks, vials, and unsettlingly large syringes. The roar of the machines echoed in the tiny chamber as if he were near the humming pipes of a massive church organ. Chang noticed a narrow slice of light between two pipes, and then, looking closely, saw similar small gaps elsewhere in the wall they formed … and realized that this was literally true—the far wall of the closet was the pipes, and beyond them, its brilliant illumination shining through, lay the great chamber. Chang crouched and removed his glasses, pressing his face to the nearest chink of light he could find. The pipes were hot against his skin, and he could only see the smallest view, but what he saw was astonishing: an opposite wall, high as a cliff-face, thick with more pipes flowing the entire height of a gigantic, vaulted chamber, and then, just on the edge of his sight, what looked like the central tower, like the hub of a wheel, whose sheer face of riveted steel was dotted with tiny vents from which the interior of every cell in the old prison could have been viewed. Chang shifted to another gap on his hands and knees, searching for an angle that showed him more. From here he saw a different segment of the opposite wall. Between the banks of pipes lay a tier of exposed cells—actually several tiers—bars still in place, looking for all the world like viewing galleries in a theatre. He sat back and brushed himself off by habit, wincing at how smeared with filth he was. Whatever was going to happen in the chamber, it was designed to have an audience.
He was back in the spiral staircase, climbing quietly, both hands on his stick. The next and final door did not appear until double the usual number of stairs, and when it did, he was surprised to see it was wood, with a new brass doorknob and lock—consistent with the formal decor of Harschmort. Chang had ascended to the—probably lowest—level of the house proper. Gray had said they thought he was dead—but did that mean back at the Ministry or just now in the furnace pipes? Surely he had been recognized in the garden—did it matter? He was more than happy to play the role of avenging ghost. He opened the door a narrow crack and peered, not into the hallway he expected, but a small dark room, blocked by a drawn curtain, under which he saw flickers of light—flickers matching audible footfalls on the curtain’s other side. Chang eased through the doorway and crept close to the curtain. He delicately pinched the fabric between two fingers, making a gap just wide enough to peek through.
The curtain merely masked an alcove in a large storeroom, the walls lined with shelves and the bulk of the open floor taken up with freestanding racks stuffed full of bottles and jars and tins and boxes. While he watched, two porters shifted a wooden crate of clinking brown bottles onto a wheeled cart and pushed it from sight, pausing to make conversation with someone Chang couldn’t see. After they left, the room was silent … save for bootsteps and a metallic knocking Chang had heard too many times before—the jostling of a saber scabbard as a bored guard paced back and forth. But the guard was hidden on the opposite side of the racks. To reach him Chang would have to leave the curtained alcove and only then decide on his angle of attack—while exposed.
Before he could begin he heard approaching steps and a harsh commanding voice he recognized from the garden.
“Where is Mr. Gray?”
“He hasn’t returned, Mr. Blenheim,” answered the guard—by his accent not one of the Macklenburgers.
“What was he doing?”
“Don’t know, Sir. Mr. Gray went downstairs—”
“Damn him to hell! Does he not know the time? The schedule?”
Chang braced himself—they were certain to search. Without the covering noise of the servants there was no way to slip back through the door without them hearing. Perhaps it was better. Mr. Blenheim would pull the curtain aside and Chang would kill him. The guard might sound the alarm before he fell as well—or the guard might kill Chang—either way it was an additional helping of revenge.
But Blenheim did not move.
“Never mind,” he snapped irrit
ably. “Mr. Gray can hang himself. Follow me.”
Chang listened to their bootsteps march away. Where had they gone—what was so important?
Chang chewed on a handful of bread torn from an expensive fresh white loaf purloined from the storeroom as he walked, recognizing nothing around him from his previous travels through the back passages of Harschmort House. This was a lower story, finely appointed but not opulent. The pipes could have landed him at any point of the house’s horseshoe arc. He needed to work his way to the middle—there he would find the entrance to the panopticon tower, to the great chamber—and do it quickly. He could not remember when he’d eaten such delicious bread—he should have stuffed another loaf in his pocket. This caused Chang to glance down at his pocket, where he felt the knocking weight of Miss Temple’s green ankle boot. Was he a sentimental fool?
Chang stopped walking. Where was he? The truth of his situation penetrated his thoughts as abruptly as a blade: he was in Robert Vandaariff’s mansion, the very heart of wealth and privilege, of a society from which he lived in mutually contemptuous exile. He thought of the very bread he was eating, his very enjoyment of it feeling like a betrayal, a spike of hatred rising at the endless luxury around him, a pervasive ease of life that met him no matter where he turned. In Harschmort House Cardinal Chang suddenly saw himself as he must be seen by its inhabitants, a sort of rabid dog somehow slipped through the door, already doomed. And why had he come? To rescue an unthinking girl from this very same world of wealth? To slaughter as many of his enemies as he could reach? To avenge the death of Angelique? How could any of this scratch the surface of this world, of this inhuman labyrinth? He felt he was dying, and that his death would be as invisible as his life. For a moment Chang shut his eyes, his rage hollowed out by despair. He opened them with a sharp, slicing intake of breath. Despair made their victory easier still. He resumed his pace and took another large bite of bread, wishing he’d found something to drink as well. Chang snorted; that was exactly how he needed to collide with Blenheim, or with Major Blach, or with Francis Xonck—with a bottle of beer in one hand and a wad of food in the other. He stuffed the last of the loaf into his mouth and pulled apart his stick.
As he went he dodged two small parties of Dragoons and one of the black-coated Germans. They all traveled in the same direction and he altered his course to follow them—assuming that whatever event had called Blenheim was calling them as well. But why was no one searching for him? And why did no one look for Mr. Gray? Gray had been doing something with the chemical works, the content of the pipes … and none of the soldiers seemed to care. Was Gray doing something for Rosamonde that none of the others knew about—some secret work? Could that mean division within the Cabal? This didn’t surprise him—he would have been surprised by its absence—but it explained why no one had come. It also meant that Chang had, without intending it, spoiled Rosamonde’s scheme. She would only know that Gray had not returned, but never why, and—he smiled to imagine it—be consumed with doubt and worry. For what if it was the Comte or Xonck who had interrupted her man, men who would know in a moment how she planned to betray them? He smiled to imagine that lady’s discomfort.
Chang shifted his thoughts to the great chamber, recalling the tier of cells, where prisoners—or spectators—could see the goings-on below which must, he assumed, be where he would find Celeste. He estimated how far he’d climbed—that row of cells might be on this level … but how to find it? The curtained alcove had so casually hidden the entrance to the spiral staircase … the door to these cells might be hidden in the same offhand manner. Had he already passed it by? He trotted down the hallway, opening every interior-facing door and peering into blind corners, finding nothing and feeling very quickly as if he was wasting time. Shouldn’t he follow the soldiers and Blenheim—wouldn’t they be guarding the Comte and his ceremony? Couldn’t Celeste be with them just as easily? He’d give his search another minute and then run after them. That minute passed, and then five more and still Chang could not pull himself from what he felt was the right path, rushing on through room after room. This entire level of the house seemed deserted. He unheedingly spat on the pale, polished wooden floor and winced at the gob’s scarlet color, then turned yet another out-of-the-way corner. Where was he? He looked up.
He sighed. He was an idiot.
Chang was in a sort of workroom, set with many tables and benches, racks of wood, shelves stuffed with jars and bottles, a large mortar and pestle, brushes, buckets, large tables whose surfaces were scarred with burns, candles and lanterns and several large free-standing mirrors—to reflect light?—and everywhere stretched canvases of different dimensions. He was in an artist’s studio. He was in the studio of Oskar Veilandt.
There was no mistaking the paintings’ author, for they bore the same striking brushwork, lurid colors, and disquieting compositions. Chang walked into the room with the same trepidation as if he were entering a tomb … Oskar Veilandt was dead … were these his works—more that had been salvaged from Paris? Had Robert Vandaariff made it his business to gather the man’s entire oeuvre? For all the brushes and bottles, none of the paintings seemed obviously in mid-composition—as if the artist was alive and working. Was someone else restoring or cleaning the canvases to Vandaariff’s specifications? On impulse Chang stepped to a small portrait leaning against one of the tables—of a masked woman wearing an iron collar and a glittering crown—and turned it over. The back of the canvas was scrawled, just as Svenson had described, with alchemical symbols and what seemed like mathematical formulae. He tried to locate a signature or a date, but could not. He set the painting down and saw, across the room, a large painting, not leaning but hanging in place, its lowest edge flush with the floor—a life-size portrait of none other than Robert Vandaariff. The great man stood against a dark stone battlement, behind him a strange red mountain and behind that a bright blue sky (these compositional elements reminding Chang of nothing more than a series of flat, painted theatrical backdrops), holding in one hand a wrapped book and in the other a pair of large metal keys. When would it have been painted? Vandaariff had known Veilandt personally—which meant the Lord’s involvement went back at least to Veilandt’s death.
But standing in the midst of so many of the man’s unsettling works, it was hard to believe he was dead at all, so insistent was the air of knowing, insinuating, exultant menace. Chang looked again at the portrait of Vandaariff, like an allegorical emblem of a Medici prince, and realized that it was hung lower than the paintings around it. He crossed and hefted the thing from its hook and set it none-too-gently aside. He shook his head at the obviousness of it. Behind the painting was another narrow alcove and three stone steps leading down to a door.
* * *
It opened inward, the hinges recently greased and silent. Chang entered another low curving hallway, light bleeding in through small chinks on the inner wall, like the interior of an old ship, or—more accurately—like the depths of a prison. The inner wall was lined with cells. Chang stepped to the nearest: here too the handles had been chiseled off and the doors bolted to their frames. He pulled aside the viewing slot and gasped.
The far wall of the cell, though blocked off with bars, revealed the entirety of the great chamber. Chang doubted he’d ever seen a place—so ambitiously a monument to its master’s dark purpose—that so filled him with dread, an infernal cathedral of black stone and gleaming metal.
In the center of the room was the massive iron tower, running from the closed ceiling (the chamber’s brilliant light came from massive chandeliers of dangling lanterns suspended on chains) all the way to a floor that was tangled and clotted with the bright pipes and cables that flowed down the walls to the base of the tower like a mechanical sea breaking at the foot of a strangely land-bound lighthouse. The slick surface of the tower was pock-marked with tiny spy holes. As a prisoner in the insect-hive of open cells, it would be impossible to know if anyone inside was watching or not. Chang knew that in such circumstance
s the incarcerated began to act, despite themselves, as if they were being watched at all times, steadily amending their behavior, their rebellious spirit inexorably crushed as if by an invisible hand. Chang snorted at the perfect ideological aptness of the monstrous structure to its current masters.
He could not see the base of the tower from his vantage point and was about to seek a better view when he heard a metallic clang and spied, in one of the cells opposite him, a flicker of movement … legs … a man was descending into the cell by way of a ladder. Abruptly he heard another clang much nearer, to his right. Before he could see where it exactly was he heard a third directly above his head, from the very cell he peered into. A hatch in the ceiling had been heaved open and the legs of a man in a blue uniform slithered through, feeling for a metal ladder bolted to the wall that Chang hadn’t noticed. All sorts of men and women were climbing into the cells across the chamber, usually a man first who then assisted the ladies, sometimes being handed folding camp chairs, setting up the prison cells as if they were private boxes at the theatre. The air around Chang began to buzz with the excited anticipation of an audience before an unrisen curtain. The man in the blue uniform—a sailor of some sort—called merrily up through the hatch for the next person. Whatever was about to start, Chang wasn’t going to do anything about it where he was. However much he’d just discovered, he’d made the wrong decision as far as locating Celeste. Whatever the Comte had arranged for all of the people to watch, Chang was sure she would be part of it—for all he knew she could be descending the central tower that very minute.
As he ran his lungs met each breath with a crest of small sharp pains. Chang spat—more blood this time—and again cursed his stupidity for not killing the Contessa outright when he had the chance. He drove himself forward—looking for a staircase, some way up to the main level, it had to be near—and saw it at the same time as he heard the sound of steps descending straight toward him. He could not get away quickly enough. He pulled apart his stick and waited, breathing deeply, lips flecked with red.
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