“Do not trouble yourself, Madame—I have two good men aloft,” he answered, smiling at his nautical reference. The Doctor’s smile faded as he took in that it was Bascombe on the floor being questioned, and not the prisoners.
“Our position?” the Contessa asked him crisply.
“We are just over the sea,” Lorenz replied. “From here, as you know, there are different routes available—remaining over water, where there is less chance of being seen, or crossing straight to shadow the coast. In this fog it may not matter—”
“And how long until we reach Macklenburg proper?” asked the Comte.
“With either route it will be ten hours at the least. More if the wind is against us … as it presently is …” Lorenz licked his thin lips. “May I ask what is going on?”
“Merely a disagreement between partners,” called Xonck, over his shoulder.
“Ah. And may I ask why they are still alive?”
The Contessa turned to look at them, her eyes settling at last upon Miss Temple. Her expression was not kind.
“We were waiting for you, Doctor. I would not have any bodies found on land. The sea will take them—and if one does happen to wash up on a beach, it will only be after days in the water. By that time even the lovely Miss Temple will be as grey and shapeless as a spoiled milk pudding.”
Caroline appeared again, the bag in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.
“Madame—”
“Excellent as always, Caroline,” said the Contessa. “I am so glad you retain your flesh. Can you read them?”
“Yes, Madame. They are Lord Vandaariff’s writings. I recognize his hand.”
“And what does he write about?”
“I cannot begin—the account is exhaustive—”
“I suppose it would be.”
“Madame—would it not be better—”
“Thank you, Caroline.”
Caroline bobbed her head and remained in the doorway with Lorenz, both of them watching the room with nervous fascination. The Comte frowned darkly, beads of sweat had broken out on Xonck’s forehead, and Crabbé’s face had gone so pale as to seem bloodless. Only the Contessa smiled, but it was a smile that frightened Miss Temple more than all the others rolled to one, for above her scarlet lips and sharp white teeth the woman’s eyes glittered like violet knife-points. She realized that the Contessa was pleased, that she looked forward to what would come with the bodily hunger of a mother embracing her child.
The Contessa drifted to Xonck, placing her face next to his.
“What do you think, Francis?” she whispered.
“I think I should like to put down this sword.” He laughed. “Or put it in someone.” His eyes settled on Chang. The Contessa leaned her head against Xonck’s, somewhat girlishly.
“That’s a very good idea. But I wonder if you have ample room to swing.”
“I might like more, it’s true.”
“Let me see what I can do, Francis.”
In a turn as elegant as if she were dancing, the Contessa spun toward Deputy Minister Crabbé, the razor-sharp spike in place across her hand, and drove it like a hammer into the side of his skull, just in front of his ear. Crabbé’s eyes popped open and his body jerked at the impact … then went still for the four long seconds it took for his life to fade. He collapsed onto Prince Karl-Horst’s lap. The Prince hopped up with a cry and the Deputy Minister bounced forward and onto the cabin floor with a thud.
“And no blood to mop.” The Contessa smiled. “Doctor Lorenz, if you would open the forward hatchway? Your Highness? If you might assist Caroline with the Minister’s remains?”
She stood, beaming down as they bent over the fallen diplomat, his eyes wide with the shock of his dispatch, doing their awkward best to drag him to where Lorenz knelt in the cabin beyond. On the sofa, Lydia watched the corpse’s progress with a groan, her stomach once more heaving. She erupted wetly into her hands and with a disgusted sigh the Contessa shoved a small silk handkerchief at the girl. Lydia snatched it gratefully, a smeared pearl of blue at each corner of her mouth.
“Contessa—” she began, her voice a fearful quaver.
But the Contessa’s attention turned at the clicking of a bolt, as Lorenz raised an iron hatchway from the floor. A burst of freezing air shot through the cabin, the grasping paw of winter. Miss Temple looked through at the open hatch and realized that something seemed wrong … the clouds outside … their pallid veneer of light. The round windows in the cabin were covered by green curtains … she had not noticed the dawn.
“It seems we divide the future in ever expanding portions,” observed the Contessa. “Equal thirds, gentlemen?”
“Equal thirds,” whispered the Comte.
“I am agreeable,” said Xonck, a bit tightly.
“Then it’s settled,” she announced. The Contessa reached out to Xonck’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Finish them.”
* * *
The dagger was in Chang’s hand and he slashed toward Xonck, catching the saber on the dagger hilt and pushing Xonck’s weapon aside as he rushed forward. But Xonck spun on his heels and chopped his bandaged arm across Chang’s throat, knocking him backwards to the ground, both men crying with pain at the impact. Doctor Svenson darted for Xonck, a half-step too late, and Xonck whipped the saber hilt up and into Svenson’s stomach, dropping the Doctor choking to his knees. Xonck retreated a step and wheeled to Miss Temple, his blade once more extended toward her face. Miss Temple could not move. She looked at Xonck, his chest heaving, wincing at the pain in his arm … hesitating.
“Francis?” said the Contessa, her voice glazed with amusement.
“What?” he hissed.
“Are you waiting for something?”
Xonck swallowed. “I was wondering if you’d prefer to do this one yourself.”
“That’s very sweet of you … but I am quite content to watch.”
“I was merely asking.”
“And I assure you, I appreciate the thought, as I appreciate that you might also wish to retain Miss Temple for intimate scrutiny … but I would appreciate it even more if you would get on with it and stick her like the vicious little pig she is.”
Xonck’s fingers flexed around the saber hilt, shifting his grip. Miss Temple saw its merciless tip not two feet from her chest, light rippling along the silver blade as it rose and fell with Xonck’s breathing. Then Xonck leered at her. She was going to die.
“First it was the Minister wanting people to get on with it … now it’s the Contessa,” she said. “Of course, he had his reasons—”
“Must I do this myself?” asked the Contessa.
“Do not hound me, Rosamonde,” snapped Xonck.
“But the Comte never finished his questions!” cried Miss Temple.
Xonck did not lunge. She shouted again, her voice rising up to a shriek.
“He asked if the Minister killed Colonel Trapping! He did not ask who else might have killed him! If Roger killed him! Or if he was killed by the Contessa!”
“What?” asked Xonck.
“Francis!” cried the Contessa. She snorted with rage and strode past Xonck to silence Miss Temple herself, the spike raised high. Miss Temple flinched, trembling at whether her throat would be cut or her skull perforated, unable to otherwise move.
Before any of these could occur, Xonck wheeled and hooked the Contessa about the waist with his bandaged arm and swept the woman off her feet and with a shriek of protest onto the nearest settee—exactly the spot where Harald Crabbé had just died.
The Contessa glared with an outrage Miss Temple had never seen in life—a ferocity to peel paint or buckle steel.
“Rosamonde—” began Xonck, and—too late again—Miss Temple darted for Chang’s fallen dagger. Xonck slapped the flat of the saber blade hard across her head, sprawling her atop Doctor Svenson, who groaned.
She shook her head, the whole right side stinging. The Contessa still sat on the settee, next to
the Prince and Lydia, miserable as children marooned in the midst of their parents’ row.
“Rosamonde,” said Xonck again, “what does she mean?”
“She means nothing!” the Contessa spat. “Colonel Trapping is no longer important—the Judas was Crabbé!”
“The Comte knows all about it,” managed Miss Temple, her voice thick.
“All about what?” asked Xonck, for the first time allowing the saber to drift toward the Comte d’Orkancz, who sat opposite the Contessa.
“He won’t say,” whispered Miss Temple, “because he no longer knows who to trust. You have to ask Roger.”
The Comte stood up.
“Sit down, Oskar,” said Xonck.
“This has gone far enough,” the Comte replied.
“Sit down or I will have your God damned head!” shouted Xonck. The Comte deigned to show actual surprise, and sat, his face now quite as grave as the Contessa’s was livid.
“I will not be made a fool,” hissed Xonck. “Trapping was my man—mine to discard! Whoever killed him—even if I would prefer not to believe—it follows they are my enemy—”
“Roger Bascombe!” shouted Miss Temple. “Do you know who killed Colonel Trapping?”
With a snarl and three iron-hard fingers of his sword hand Xonck took hold of Miss Temple’s robes behind her neck, yanked her to her knees and then, with a roar of frustration, tossed her down the length of the cabin through the doorway to land with a cry at the feet of Caroline Stearne. The breath was driven from her body and she lay there blinking with pain, dimly aware that she was somehow even colder. She looked back to see her shredded robes hanging from Xonck’s hand. He met her gaze, still furious, and Miss Temple whimpered aloud, convinced he was about to march over and step on her throat just like he’d done to the Dragoon … but then in the panting silence, Roger Bascombe answered her question.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I know.”
Xonck stopped where he stood, staring at Roger. “Was it the Contessa?”
“No.”
“Wait—before that,” broke in the Comte, “why was he killed?”
“He was serving Vandaariff instead of us?” asked Xonck.
“He was,” said Roger. “But that is not why he was killed. The Contessa already knew Colonel Trapping’s true allegiance.”
Xonck and the Comte turned to her. The Contessa scoffed at their naïve credulity.
“Of course I knew,” she sneered, looking up at Xonck. “You are arrogant, Francis, so you assume that everyone wants what you do—your brother’s power—and Trapping especially. You hide your cunning behind the mask of a libertine, but Trapping had no such depth—he was happy to deliver every secret of your brother’s—and yours—to whoever best indulged his appetite!”
“Then why?” asked Xonck. “To preserve the Comte’s Annunciation project?”
“No,” said Roger. “Trapping hadn’t yet agreed on a price to save Lydia—he’d only given Vandaariff hints.”
“Then it was Crabbé—Trapping must have learned his plans for distilling Vandaariff—”
“No,” repeated Roger. “The Deputy Minister would have killed him, to be sure … just as the Comte would have … given time and opportunity.”
Xonck turned to the Contessa. “So you did kill him!”
The Contessa huffed again with impatience.
“Have you paid any attention at all, Francis? Do you not remember what Elspeth Poole—stupid, insolent, and barely regretted—displayed for us all in the ballroom? Her vision?”
“It was Elspeth and Mrs. Stearne,” said Xonck, looking through the doorway to Caroline.
“With Trapping,” said the Comte. “The night of the engagement.”
“We were sent to him,” protested Caroline. “The Contessa ordered us—to—to—”
“Exactly,” said the Contessa. “I was doing my best to indulge him where the other guests would not intrude!”
“Because you knew he could not be trusted,” said the Comte.
“Though he could be distracted—until we had time to deal with Vandaariff ourselves,” observed the Contessa, “which we then did!”
“If Colonel Trapping alerted Vandaariff then our entire enterprise could have been compromised!” cried Caroline.
“We are all aware of it!” snapped the Contessa.
“Then I don’t understand,” said Xonck. “Who killed Trapping? Vandaariff?”
“Vandaariff would not kill his own agent,” said a hoarse voice behind Xonck, which Miss Temple recognized as Doctor Svenson’s, pushing himself up to his knees.
“But Blenheim had Trapping’s key!”
“Blenheim moved the body,” said Svenson, “on Vandaariff’s orders. At the time he still controlled his own house.”
“Then who?” growled the Comte. “And why? And if it was not for Lydia’s fate, or Vandaariff’s legacy, or even control of the Xonck fortunes, how has the murder of this insignificant fool torn our entire alliance asunder?”
The Contessa shifted herself on the settee, and looked fiercely at Roger, whose lip betrayed the slightest quiver at his fruitless attempts to remain silent.
“Tell us, Roger,” said the Contessa. “Tell us now.”
As Miss Temple watched the face of her former love, it seemed she looked at a puppet—remarkably life-like to be sure, but the falseness was readily, achingly, apparent. It was not his passive state, nor the even tone of his voice, nor the dullness of his eye, for these were explained by their strange circumstances—just as if he had screamed or gnashed his teeth. Instead, it was simply the content of his words, all the more strange, for Miss Temple had always attended instead to the way he said them—the way he took her arm or leaned across a table as he spoke, or even the stirring those words (whatever they might be) might spark in her own body. But now, what he said made clear the extent to which Roger’s life had become separate from hers. She had assumed through their engagement—no matter where their own discrete days took them—they remained symbolically twinned, but now, spreading through her heart like the rising dawn outside the hatch, she saw that their wholeness—an idea beyond facts, however vain and foolish and doomed—lived only in her memory. She truly did not know who he was anymore, and never would again. And had she ever? It was a question she could not answer. The sadness she felt was no longer for him—for he was a fool, nor for herself—for she was rid of one. But somehow, listening to Roger speak in the freezing air, in Miss Temple’s closely bound heart she mourned for the world, or as much of it as her sturdy chest could hold. She saw for the first time that it was truly made of dust … of invisible palaces that without her care—care that could never last—would disappear.
“The night before I underwent the Process,” Roger began, “I met a woman at the St. Royale Hotel whose passion met my own in an exquisite union. In truth I had not decided to undergo the Process at all, and even then contemplated exposing everything to the highest authorities. But then I met this woman … we were both masked, I did not know her name, but she hovered hesitant on the same cusp of destiny, just as I did. As I strove to choose between the certain advancement brought by betraying the Deputy Minister and the utter risk of following him, I saw how she had given over the whole of her life to this new chance—that all before had been released, all attachment and all hope. And even though I knew that in giving myself to the Process I would give up my former aspirations to romance and marriage, this woman somehow in one night stirred me to my soul—a sadness matched with such tender care for our one lost instant together. But the next day I was changed and any thoughts I ever had of love were changed as well, directed and more reasoned, in service to … larger goals that could not contain her … and yet three days after that I met her again, once more masked, in the robes of an initiate to the Process … I knew her by her scent … by her hair—I had even been sent to collect her for the theatre, where she would undergo her own irrevocable change. I found her with another woman, and with a man I knew to be a
traitor. Instead of collecting them I sent her friend ahead and the man away, and revealed myself … for I believed our temperaments were such that an understanding might survive, undetected by all … that we might ally … to share information about you, Contessa, about Minister Crabbé, Mr. Xonck, the Comte, Lord Robert—to serve both the goals we had sworn to and our own mutual ambition. And make an alliance we did, rooted no longer in anything called love … but in sensible expedience. And together we have served you all, our masters, and watched patiently as one after another those above us have been enslaved or slain, rising ourselves to the very edge of power until we are positioned to inherit everything, as each one of you turns on the other—as you are doing even in this instant. For we are without your greed, your lusts, your appetites, but have stood silently to the side of every plan, every secret, for the Process has made us stronger than you can know. All this we saw together, a dream when we both thought we would never dream again. It was later I found the man had not gone away as I’d thought. He’d seen us together … overheard everything … and wanted payment—of many kinds. That was impossible.”
“You killed him?” whispered Xonck. “You?”
“Not me,” said Roger. “Her. Caroline.”
Every eye in the room turned to Caroline Stearne.
“Hold her!” shouted Xonck, and Doctor Lorenz reached past Miss Temple to seize Caroline around the waist. Caroline lashed out with her elbow, driving it into the Doctor’s throat. In an instant she turned on the choking man and pushed him with both hands. Doctor Lorenz vanished through the open hatch, his fading howl swallowed by the wind.
No one moved, and then Caroline herself broke the spell, kicking the Prince’s leg and swinging a fist at Lydia’s face, clearing a path to the iron staircase that rose to the wheelhouse. A moment later the cabin echoed with an ear-splitting scream and down the stairs bounced the body of one of Doctor Lorenz’s sailors, blood pouring from a pulsing puncture on his back.
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