“What can we do?” she whispered. “We are too late!”
Chang hefted the saber in his hand. “I can go—one of us alone, I can move more quickly—I can track them to the Palace—”
“Not in your condition,” observed Svenson. “You would be caught and killed—and you know it. Look at the soldiers! They have a full escort!”
As he pointed Miss Temple now saw that it was true—a double rank of mounted Dragoons, perhaps forty men, moving their horses into position ahead and behind the coach. The Duke was completely beyond their reach.
“He will convene the Privy Council,” rasped Chang hollowly. “He will make whatever they want into law.”
“With the Duke’s power, and Vandaariff’s money, the Macklenburg throne, and an inexhaustible supply of indigo clay … they’ll be unstoppable …” whispered Svenson.
Miss Temple frowned. Perhaps it was a futile gesture, but she would make it.
“On the contrary. Cardinal Chang, if you would please return the Colonel’s saber—I do insist.”
Chang looked at her quizzically, but carefully passed the weapon to Aspiche. Before the man could do a thing with it, Miss Temple spoke to him quite firmly.
“Colonel Aspiche, listen to me. Your men protect the Duke—this is excellent. No one else—no one, mind—is to come within reach of the Duke during his journey back to the Palace. You will go now, collect a horse, and join his train—immediately, do not speak to anyone, do not return to the house, take the mount of one of your men if you must. Once you reach the Palace, being very particular to avoid the scrutiny of Mrs. Marchmoor, you will find time—the appropriate time, for you must succeed—but nevertheless before the Privy Council can meet—to hack the Duke of Stäelmaere’s head clean from his body. Do you understand me?”
Colonel Aspiche nodded.
“Excellent. Do not breathe a word of this to anyone. Off you go!”
She smiled, watching the man stride into the crowded plaza, possessed by his mission, toward the nearest stand of horses, pretending not to see the astonished expressions of Svenson and Chang to her either side.
“Let’s see them stick it back on with library paste,” she said. “Shall we find the Prince?”
The Colonel had not known exactly where the Comte and his party had gone, merely that it was somewhere below the ballroom. From his own journeys through Harschmort House, Cardinal Chang was convinced he could find the way, and so Miss Temple and Doctor Svenson followed him back through the gardener’s passage and then indoors. As they walked, Miss Temple looked up at Chang, daunting despite his injuries, and wished for just a moment that she might see inside his thoughts like one of the glass women. They were on their way to rescue—or destroy, but the goal was the same—the Prince and Lydia, but the Cardinal’s lost woman, Angelique, would be there as well. Did he hope to reclaim her? To force the Comte to reverse her transformation? Or to put her out of her misery? She felt the weight of her own sadness, the regret and pain of Roger’s rejection, of her own habitual isolation—were these feelings, feelings that because they were hers felt somehow small, however keenly they plagued her, anything like the burdens haunting a man like Chang? How could they be? How could there not be an impassable wall between them?
“The two wings mirror each other,” he said hoarsely, “and I have been up and down the lower floors on the opposite side. If I am right, the stairway down should be right … about … here …”
He smiled—and Miss Temple was struck anew, perhaps by his especially battered condition, of what a provocative mix of the bodily compelling and morally fearsome Cardinal Chang’s smile actually was—and indicated a bland-looking alcove covered with a velvet curtain. He whisked it aside and revealed a metal door that had boldly been left ajar.
“Such confidence”—he chuckled, pulling it open—“to leave an open door … you’d think they might have learned.”
He spun to look behind them, his face abruptly stern, at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Or we would have …” muttered Doctor Svenson, and Chang hurriedly motioned them through the door. He closed it behind them, letting the lock catch. “It will delay them,” he whispered. “Quickly!”
They heard the door being pulled repeatedly above them as they followed the spiral staircase for two turns, reaching another door, also ajar, where Chang eased past Miss Temple and Svenson to peek through first.
“Might I suggest we acquire weapons?” whispered the Doctor.
Miss Temple nodded her agreement, but instead of answering Chang had slipped through the door, his footfalls silent as a cat’s, leaving them to follow as best they could. They entered a strange curving corridor, like an opera house or a Roman theatre, with a row of doors on the inner side, as if they led to box seats, or toward the arena.
“It is like the Institute,” Svenson whispered to Chang, who nodded, still focused on the corridor ahead. They had advanced, walking close to the inner wall, just so the staircase door was no longer visible behind them, when a scuffling noise beyond the next curve caused Chang to freeze. He held his open palm to indicate that they should stay, then carefully moved forward alone, pressed flat against the wall.
Chang stopped. He glanced back at them and smiled, then darted forward in a sudden rush. Miss Temple heard one brief squawk of surprise and then three meaty thuds in rapid succession. Chang reappeared and motioned them on with a quick toss of his head.
On the ground by another open door, his breathing labored, blood flowing freely from his nose, lay the Macklenburg Envoy, Herr Flaüss. Near his feebly twitching hand lay a revolver, which Chang snatched up, breaking it open to check the cylinder and then slamming it home. While Doctor Svenson knelt by the gasping man, Chang extended the weapon for Miss Temple to take. She shook her head.
“Surely you or the Doctor,” she whispered.
“The Doctor, then,” replied Chang. “I am more useful with a blade or my fists.” He looked down to watch Svenson briskly ransack the Envoy’s pockets, each search answered by an ineffectual gesture of protest from the injured man’s hands. Svenson looked up, behind them toward the staircase—footsteps. He stood, abandoning the Envoy. Chang pressed the pistol into Svenson’s hands and took hold of the Doctor’s sleeve and Miss Temple’s arm, pulling them both farther down the corridor until they could no longer see the Envoy. Svenson whispered his protest.
“But, Cardinal, they are surely inside—”
Chang tugged them both into an alcove and pressed a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough. Down the corridor Miss Temple heard rushing steps … that suddenly fell silent. She felt Chang’s body tense, and saw the Doctor’s thumb moving slowly to the hammer of the pistol. Someone was walking toward them, slowly … the footsteps stopped … and then retreated. She strained her ears … and heard a woman’s haughty, angry hiss.
“Leave the idiot …”
Chang waited … and then leaned close to them both.
“Without getting rid of the body, we could not enter in secret—at this moment they are searching the room, assuming we have entered. This alone will halt whatever is happening inside. If we enter now, there is a chance to take their rearmost by surprise.”
Miss Temple took a deep breath, feeling as if she had somehow in the last five minutes become a soldier. Before she could make sense of—or more importantly, protest against—this wrong-headed state of affairs Chang was gone and Doctor Svenson, taking her hand in his, was pulling her in tow.
The Envoy remained in the doorway, raised to a sitting position but still incapacitated and insensible. They stepped past with no reaction from Herr Flaüss save a snuffle of his bleeding nose, into a dim stone entryway with narrow staircases to either side to balconies that wrapped around the room. Chang swiftly ducked to the left, with Svenson and Miss Temple directly behind him, crowding as quietly as possible out of sight. Miss Temple wrinkled her nose with distaste at the harsh reek of indigo clay. Ahead of them, through the foyer, they heard the Contess
a.
“He has been attacked—you heard nothing?”
“I did not,” answered the dry, rumbling voice of the Comte. “I am busy, and my business makes noise. Attacked by whom?”
“I’m sure I do not know,” replied the Contessa. “Colonel Aspiche has cut the throats of each likely candidate … thus my curiosity.”
“The Duke is away?”
“Exactly as planned, followed by those selected for book-harvest. As agreed, their distraction and loss of memory have been blamed on a virulent outbreak of blood fever—stories of which will be spread by our own adherents—a tale with the added benefit of justifying a quarantine of Harschmort, sequestering Lord Robert for as long as necessary. But that is not our present difficulty.”
“I see,” grunted the Comte. “As I am in the midst of a very delicate procedure, I would appreciate it if you explained what in the depths of hell you are all doing here.”
Miss Temple did her best to follow the others up the narrow stairs in silence. As her head cleared the balcony floor, she saw a domed stone ceiling above, lit by several wicked-looking iron chandeliers that bristled with spikes. Miss Temple could never see a chandelier under the best of circumstances without imagining the destructive impact of its sudden drop to the floor (especially if she was passing beneath), and these instinctive thoughts, and these fixtures, just made the Comte’s laboratory that much more a chamber of dread. The balcony was stacked with books and papers and boxes, all covered by a heavy layer of dust. Svenson indicated with a jab of his finger that she could inch forward to peek through the bars of the railing.
Miss Temple had not been to the Institute, but she had managed a powerful glimpse of the hellish platform at the base of the iron tower. This room (as the walls were lined with bookshelves it seemed to have once been some sort of library) was a strange mix of that same industry (for there were tables cluttered with steaming pots and boiling vials and parchment and wickedly shaped metal tools) and a sleeping chamber, for in the center of the room, cleared by pushing aside and stacking any number of tables and chairs, was a very large bed. Miss Temple nearly gagged, covering her mouth with her hand, but she could not look away. On the bed, her bare legs dangling over the side, lay Lydia Vandaariff, her white robes around her thighs, each arm outstretched and restrained by a white silk cord. Her face shone with exertion, and each of her hands tightly gripped its cord, as if the restraint were more a source of comfort than punishment. The bedding between Lydia’s legs was wet, as was the stone floor beneath her feet, a pooling of watered blue fluid streaked with curling crimson lines. The embroidered hem of Lydia’s robe had been flipped down in a meager gesture toward modesty, but there was no ignoring the flecks of blue and red on her white thighs. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking.
Slumped in a nearby chair, a half-full glass in his hand and an open bottle of brandy on the floor between his legs, sat Karl-Horst von Maasmärck. The Comte wore his leather apron, his black fur slung over a pile of chairs behind him, and cradled a bizarre metal object, a metal tube with handles and valves and a pointed snout that he wiped clean with a rag.
On the walls behind them, hung on nails hammered carelessly into the bookcases, were thirteen distinct squares of canvas. Miss Temple turned to Chang and pointed. He had seen them as well, and made a deliberate gesture to flatten his hand and then turn it over, as to turn a page. At the St. Royale, Lydia had muttered something about the rest of the Annunciation fragments—indicating that she had seen them collected. Miss Temple knew the squares of canvas represented the entire reconstituted work, but she had not expected the Comte to hang each painting face to the wall, for what she saw was not the complete blasphemous image (which she was frankly by now more than a little curious to see), but its canvas backing—Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical formulae as they traveled across every piece, for which the painting was but a decorative veil, a detailed recipe for his own Annunciation, the unspeakable impregnation of Lydia Vandaariff by way of his twisted science. Around each canvas were pasted scores of additional notes and diagrams—no doubt the Comte’s own attempts to understand Veilandt’s blasphemous instructions. Miss Temple looked down at the girl on the bed and bit her knuckle to keep silent …
She heard an impatient sigh below her and the flicking catch of a match. Miss Temple scooted forward on her belly and gained a wider view of the room. With a tremor of fear she saw, almost directly beneath, the Contessa’s large party. How had they not heard them in the corridor? Next to the Contessa—smoking a fresh cigarette in her holder—stood Francis Xonck and Crabbé, and behind them at least six figures in black coats, carrying cudgels. She glanced again to Chang and Svenson and saw Chang’s attention focused elsewhere, underneath the opposite balcony. Glittering in the shadows, as the orange flames from the Comte’s crucibles reflected off her skin, stood the third glass woman, Angelique, silently waiting. Miss Temple stared at her, and was just beginning to examine the woman’s body with the new understanding that it was the object of Chang’s ardent affection—and in fact, its consummation, for the woman was a whore—which meant … Miss Temple’s face became flushed, suddenly jumbling her memories from the book with thoughts of Chang and Angelique—when she shook her head and forced her attention to the rather agitated conversation below.
“We would not have bothered you,” began Xonck, his eyes drawn with some distaste to the spectacle before them, “save we are unaccountably unable to locate a workable key.”
“Where is Lorenz?” asked the Comte.
“Readying the airship,” replied Crabbé, “and surrounded by a host of soldiers. I would prefer to leave him be.”
“What of Bascombe?”
“He accompanies Lord Robert,” snorted the Contessa. “We will meet him with the trunk of books and his ledger—but he does not have a key either, and for any number of reasons I would prefer not to involve him.”
Crabbé rolled his eyes. “Mr. Bascombe is absolutely loyal to us all—”
“Where is your key?” the Comte asked, glaring pointedly at the Deputy Minister.
“It is not my key at all,” replied Crabbé somewhat hotly. “I do not believe I am even the last to have it—as the Contessa says, we were collecting the books, not exploring them—”
“Who was the last to have it?” cried the Comte, openly impatient. He shifted his grip on the repulsive metal device in his hand.
“We do not know,” snapped the Contessa. “I believe it was Mr. Crabbé. He believes it was Mr. Xonck. He believes it was Blenheim—”
“Blenheim?” scoffed the Comte.
“Not Blenheim directly,” said Xonck. “Trapping. I believe Trapping took it to look at one of the books—perhaps idly, perhaps not—”
“Which book?”
“We do not know,” said the Contessa. “We were indulging him—I am still not satisfied as to his death. Blenheim either took it from Trapping’s pocket when the body was moved, or he was given it by Lord Robert.”
“I take it Blenheim is still missing?”
The Contessa nodded.
“The question is whether he is dead,” said Crabbé, “or independent?”
“Perhaps we can query Lord Robert,” said the Comte.
“We could if he retained his memory,” observed Xonck. “But as you know it has been put into a book—a book we cannot find. If we did find it, we could not safely read it without a key! It is ridiculous!”
“I see …” said the Comte, his brooding face dark with thought. “And what has happened to Herr Flaüss?”
“We do not know!” cried Crabbé.
“But don’t you think we should?” asked the Comte, reasonably. He turned to Angelique and clapped his hands. At once she stepped into the light like a tamed tiger, drawing the wary attention of every other person in the room.
“If there is someone hiding here,” the Comte said to her, looking up to the balconies, “find them.”
Miss Temple spun to Chang and Svenson, her eyes wide. What could th
ey do? She searched around them—there was no other place to hide, to shield themselves! Doctor Svenson silently rolled back on his heels and pulled out the gun, his eyes measuring the distance to Angelique. Chang put a hand on the Doctor’s arm. The Doctor shrugged it off and eased back the hammer. Miss Temple felt the strange blue coldness approaching her mind. Any moment they would be found.
Instead, the pregnant silence in the room was broken by a crash from the opposite balcony, directly above Angelique. In an instant Xonck had the serpentine dagger in his hand and was sprinting to the narrow stairs. Miss Temple heard a scuffle and then a woman’s gasping protests as Xonck dragged her twisting body brusquely down the staircase and thrust her to her knees before the others. It was Elöise.
Miss Temple looked to Svenson and saw his frozen expression. Before he could do a thing she reached for his hand that held the pistol, gripping it tightly. This was no time for reckless impulse.
Xonck backed away from Elöise, indeed as did they all, for at a nod from the Comte Angelique stepped forward, her feet clicking against the stone floor like a new-shod pony’s. Elöise shook her head and looked up, utterly bewildered by the splendid, naked creature, and screamed. She screamed again—Miss Temple squeezing the Doctor’s arm as tightly as she could—but it died in her throat, as the expression of terror on her face faded to a quivering passivity. The glass woman had savagely penetrated her mind and was rummaging through its contents with pitiless efficiency. Again, Miss Temple saw the Comte d’Orkancz had closed his eyes, his face a mask of concentration. Elöise did not speak, her mouth open, rocking back and forth on her knees, staring helplessly into the cold blue eyes of her inquisitor.
Then it was done. Elöise dropped in a heap. The Comte came forward to stand over her, looking down.
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