“Had to come straight from the crossing. Been riding for days. Still, couldn’t miss it, eh?”
“Of course not.” Trapping nodded, vaguely mollified, but looking somewhat helplessly over Chang’s shoulder, where the rest of his group was drifting distinctly in the other direction to resume their conversation.
“What are you drinking?” demanded Chang.
“I believe it is the same as what you are drinking.”
“Is it? Do you like it?”
“It is indeed fine.”
“I suppose it is. I suppose it would be, eh? Here’s to the host.”
Chang touched his glass to Trapping’s and tossed off the contents, more or less forcing Trapping to do the same. Before he could move, Chang snatched the glass from him and held them both out toward the servant, barking for more wine. As the servant leaned forward to pour, and as Trapping groped for excuses behind him to leave, Chang deftly dusted a small amount of white powder onto his thumb, and—distracting the servant with a brusque question about a possibly spoiled cork—rubbed it along the rim of Trapping’s glass as he picked it up. He handed the glass to the Colonel, and they drank again—Trapping’s lips touching the rim of his glass where he’d placed the powder. Once this was done, just as abruptly as he’d arrived, Chang nodded to Trapping and walked out of the room. He’d watch from the margins until the drug took hold.
From there it had quickly gone wrong. The group of men—Crabbé’s faction?—finally claimed Trapping from the group Chang guessed to be the Xoncks and walked with him to a rear corner of the room and through a doorway flanked by two men who stood, casually but unmistakably, as sentries. Chang watched his quarry disappear, and looked around for another way, just for one moment catching the eye of Charlotte Xonck’s companion, who looked away—not quite quickly enough—in the same instant. He stalked from the main rooms before he attracted any more unwanted attention. It had taken him at least an hour—time spent dodging servants, guests, and what looked to be a growing number of openly suspicious faces—before he finally found himself in a long marbled corridor, lined with doors. It was an exact epitome of his ridiculous situation, and how his decision to risk first entry and then bold exposure to Trapping had utterly failed. By this time Trapping should have been dead, but instead he was most likely shaking off what he would explain to himself as a bit too much wine. Chang had given him only enough of the drug to guarantee his pliability—thinking to drag him into the garden—but now it was just another mistake. He stalked down the corridor, trying the doors as he went. Most were locked, and he was forced to move on to the next. He had perhaps reached the mid-point when he saw, ahead of him at the far end, a crowd begin to emerge from a balcony above, and make its way down a spiral staircase. He lunged for the nearest door. It was open. He dashed through and closed it behind him.
On the floor was Trapping, dead, his face branded—seared? scarred?—but with no immediately apparent cause. Chang detected no wound, nor any blood, any weapon, even another glass of wine that might have been drugged. Trapping was still warm. It couldn’t have been long—no longer than thirty minutes, at most—since he had died. Chang stood above the body and sighed. Here was the result he wanted, but in a far more disturbing and complicated manner. It was then that he’d noticed the smell, vaguely medicinal or mechanical—but thoroughly out of place in that room. He had bent down again to go through Trapping’s pockets when there was a knock at the door. At once, Chang stood and walked quietly to the next room of the suite and from there into the bath closet, looking for some place to hide. He found the servants’ door just as the hallway door was opened, and someone called to Colonel Trapping by his Christian name. Chang was carefully, silently easing the latch behind him when the voice began calling harshly for help.
It was time to get out. The narrow dark corridor led to a strange man in a room—a crabbed, officious creature—surrounded by familiar-looking boxes. The man wheeled at his entry and opened his mouth to shout. Chang crossed the distance to him in two steps and clubbed him across the face with his forearm. The man fell onto a table, scattering a pile of wooden box pieces. Before he could rise, Chang struck him again, across the back of the head. The man smashed into the table and slumped to the floor, groping, gasping damply. Chang glanced quickly at the boxes, which all seemed to be empty, but knew that he had no time. He found the next door and stepped into an even larger corridor, lined with mirrors. He looked down the length and knew that it must lead to the main entrance, which would never do. He saw a door across the hall. When he found that it was locked, he kicked it until the wood around the lock buckled in, and shouldered his way through. This room had a window. He snatched up a side chair and hurled it through the glass with a crash. Behind him there were footsteps. Chang kicked the broken shards free from the panes and leapt through the opening. He landed with a grunt on a bed of gravel and ran.
The pursuit had been half-hearted—for he was near-blind in the night and by all rights any serious attempt should have taken him. When he was sure that they had stopped following, Chang eased into a walk. He had a general notion of where he was in relation to the sea and so turned away from it and eventually struck the rail tracks, walking along them until he reached a station. This turned out to be Orange Canal, and the end of this particular line. He boarded the waiting train—pleased that there was a waiting train—and sat brooding until it finally began to move, carrying him back to the city and, in the midst of that journey, his moment with the battered Persephone.
At the Raton Marine, he finished his drink and put another coin on the table. The more he worried over the events of the previous day and night, the more he berated himself for impulsive nonsense—all the more that now there was no announcement of Trapping’s death. He felt like going back to sleep for as long as he could, perhaps for days in the opium den. What he forced himself to do instead was walk to the Library. The only new information he had was the possible association of Robert Vandaariff or his high-placed prospective son-in-law. If he could explore their connection to Xonck, or to Crabbé, or even to Trapping himself, he would then be able to obliterate his senses with a clear conscience.
He walked up the grand steps and through the vaulted lobby, nodding at the porter, and climbed to the main reading room on the second floor. As he entered, he saw the archivist he was looking for—Shearing, who kept all records relating to finance—in conversation with a woman. As he approached, the small gnarled man turned to him with a brittle smile and pointed. Chang stopped as the woman turned to face him, and dipped her knee. She was beautiful. She was walking toward him. Her hair was black, and gathered behind to hang in curls over her shoulders. She wore a tiny black wool jacket that did not reach her thin waist over a red silk dress, subtly embroidered in yellow thread with Chinese scenes. She held a small black bag in one hand, and a fan in the other. She stopped, a mere few feet away, and he forced himself to look at her eyes—past her pale throat and fiercely red lips—which were fixed upon him with a certain seriousness of manner.
“I’m told your name is Chang,” she said.
“You may call me that.” It was his customary answer.
“You may call me Rosamonde. I have been directed to you as a person who might provide me with the aid I require.”
“I see.” Chang shot a look back at Shearing, who was gawking at them like an idiot child. The man ignored the look entirely, beaming at the woman’s splendid torso. “If you’ll walk this way”—Chang smiled stiffly—“we may speak more discreetly.”
He led her up to the third floor map room, which was rarely occupied, even by its curator, who spent most of his time drinking gin in the stacks. He pulled out a chair and offered it to her, and she sat with a smile. He chose not to sit, leaning back against a table, facing her.
“Do you always wear dark glasses indoors?” she asked.
“It is a habit,” he answered.
“I confess to finding it disquieting. I hope you are not offended.”
>
“Of course not. But I will continue to wear them. For medical reasons.”
“Ah, I see.” She smiled. She looked around the room. Light came in from a high bank of windows that ran along the main wall. Despite the grey of the day, the room still felt airy, as if it were much higher off the ground than its three stories raised it.
“Who directed you to me?” he asked.
“Beg pardon?”
“Who directed you to me? You will understand that a man in my position must have references.”
“Of course. I wondered if you had many women for clients.” She smiled again. There was a slight accent to her speech, but he could not place it. Nor had she answered his question.
“I have many clients of all kinds. But please, who gave you my name? It is quite the final time I will ask.”
The woman positively beamed. Chang felt a small charge of warning on the nape of his neck. The situation was not what it appeared, nor was the woman. He knew this utterly, and strove to keep it in the fore of his mind, but in the same moment was transfixed by her body, and the exquisite sensations emanating from its view. Her chuckle was rich, like the flow of dark wine, and she bit her lip like a woman play-acting the schoolgirl, doing her level best to fix him with her riveting violet eyes, like an insect stuck on a pin. He was unsure she had not succeeded.
“Mr. Chang—or should I say Cardinal? Your name, it is so amusing to me, because I have known Cardinals, for I was a child in Ravenna—have you been to Ravenna?”
“No. I should of course like to. The mosaics.”
“They are beautiful. A color of purple you have never seen, and the pearls—if you know of them you must go, for not seeing them will haunt you.” She laughed again. “And once you have seen them they will haunt you all the more! But as I say, I have known Cardinals, in fact a cousin of mine—who I never liked—held such an office—and so it pleases me to see a figure such as yourself hailed with such a name. For as you know, I am suspicious of high authority.”
“I did not know.”
As the moments passed, Chang became painfully more aware of his rumpled shirt, his unpolished boots, his unshaven face, that his whole life was at odds with the splendid ease, if not outright grace, of this woman. “But you still, forgive my insistence, have not told me—”
“Of course not, no, and you are so patient. I was given your name, and a notion of where you might be found, by Mr. John Carver.”
Carver was a lawyer who, through a number of unsavory intermediaries, had engaged Chang the previous summer to locate the man who had impregnated Carver’s daughter. The daughter had survived the abortion her father—a harsh pragmatist—insisted upon, but had not been seen in society since—apparently the procedure had been difficult—and Carver was especially distraught. Chang had located the man in a seaside brothel and delivered him to Carver’s country house—not without injury, for the man had struggled hard once he realized the situation. He left Carver with the wandering lover trussed on a carpet, and did not concern himself further with the outcome.
“I see,” he said.
It was extremely unlikely that anyone would associate his name with Carver’s unless the information came from Carver himself.
“Mr. Carver has drawn up several contracts for me, and has come to share my confidence.”
“What if I were to make it quite clear to you that I have never met nor had any acquaintance with John Carver?”
She smiled. “It would be exactly as I feared, and I must turn for assistance elsewhere.”
She waited for him to speak. It was his decision, right then, to accept her as a client or not. She clearly understood the need for discretion, she was obviously rich, and he would certainly welcome a distraction from the unsettled business of Arthur Trapping. He shifted his weight and hopped onto the table top, sitting. He bent his head toward hers.
“I am sorry, but seeing as I do not know Mr. Carver, I cannot in conscience accept you as a client. However, as a man of sympathy, and since you have come all this way, perhaps I can listen to your story and in return provide you with whatever advice I am able, if you are willing.”
“I would be in your debt.”
“Not at all.” He permitted himself a small smile in return. At least this far, they understood one another.
“Before I begin,” she said, “do you need to take notes?”
“Not as a rule.”
She smiled. “It is after all a simple situation, and one that while I am unable to answer it doesn’t strike me as particularly unanswerable for the man with the proper set of skills. Please interrupt me if I go too fast, or seem to leave anything out. Are you ready?”
Chang nodded.
“Last night there was a gathering at the country home of Lord Vandaariff, celebrating the engagement of his only daughter to Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck—you surely have heard of these people, and appreciate the degree of the occasion. I was in attendance, as a school friend—acquaintance, really—of the daughter, Lydia. It was a masked ball. This is important, as you will see later. Have you ever been to a masked ball?”
Chang shook his head. The warning tingle on his neck had by now traveled the whole length of his spine.
“I enjoy them, but they are disquieting, for the masks provide license for behavior beyond the social norm, especially at a gathering this large, at a house this expansive. The anonymity can feel profound, and quite frankly anything can happen. I’m sure I do not need to explain further.”
Chang shook his head again.
“My escort for the evening was, well, I suppose you would describe him as a family friend—somewhat older than I, an essentially good fellow whose weak resolve had led him to repeated degradations, through drink, gambling, and foolish, even unnatural, indulgence—and yet through all of this, for our family connection and his, I do believe, essential inner kindness, I was resolved to try and do my part to return him to the better graces of society. Well, there is no way of putting it cleanly. The house is large and there were many people—and in such a place, even in such a place, people enter who should not, without invitation, without regard, without any intention beyond, if I may say so, profit.”
Chang nodded in agreement, wondering exactly when he ought to run from the room, and how many confederates she might have on the staircase below.
“Because—” her voice broke. Tears formed at the corners of each eye. She dug for a handkerchief in her bag. Chang knew he ought to offer her one, but he also knew what his own handkerchief looked like. She found her own and dabbed at her eyes and nose. “I am sorry. It has all been so sudden. You must see people in distress quite often.”
He nodded. Distress that he himself caused, but he needn’t point that out.
“That must be terrible,” she whispered.
“One becomes used to anything.”
“Perhaps that is the worst thing of all.” She folded the handkerchief back into her bag. “I am sorry, let me continue. As I say, it was a large affair, and one was required to speak to many people, aside from Lydia and Prince Karl-Horst, and so I was quite busy. As the evening went on, I realized that I had not seen my escort for some time. As I looked for him, he seemed to be nowhere. I was able to engage the assistance of mutual friends and, as discreetly as possible, we searched the adjoining rooms of the house, hoping that he had merely overindulged in drink and fallen asleep. What we found, Mr. Chang—Cardinal—was that he had been murdered. After conversation with other guests I am convinced that I know the identity of his killer. What I should like—what I should have liked, were you able to accept this task—is for this person to be found.”
“And delivered to the authorities?”
“Delivered to me.” She met his gaze quite evenly.
“I see. And this person?” He shifted in his seat, ready to leap at her. With the razor at her throat he could force his way past any phalanx of waiting men.
“A young woman. An inch or two above five feet but no more, c
hestnut hair in sausage curls, a fair complexion, pretty enough in a common style. She wore green boots and a black traveling cloak. Due to the manner in which my friend was killed, it is safe to say that she bore significant traces of blood. She gave her name as Isobel Hastings, but that is undoubtedly a lie.”
He had asked other questions after this, but a part of his mind was elsewhere, attempting to make sense of the coincidence. Rosamonde could not say anything else about the woman—she was assumed to be a prostitute of some high stature, otherwise it was not known how she could have entered the house so easily, but Rosamonde had no idea how she had arrived nor how she had escaped. She asked him, as a point of reference, about his usual fee. He told her, and suggested that, again, if he had been able to accept her as a client, they would choose a place to meet or leave word. She looked around her and declared that the Library suited her fine for such a meeting, and that word could be left for her at the St. Royale Hotel. With that she rose and offered him her hand. He felt like a fool but found himself bending over to kiss it. He remained where he was, watching her leave, the stirring vision of her walking away quite matched by the seething disquiet in his mind.
Before anything else, he sent a message to John Carver, asking for confirmation, via the Raton Marine, that his name had been given to a young woman in need. Next, he required something to eat. It had been since the meat pie in St. Isobel’s Square the day before, and Chang was famished. At the same time, as he walked down the marble steps outside the Library and into the open air, he was keenly suspicious of having been exposed. He made his way west, toward the Circus Garden and its shops, then stopped at a news kiosk, pretending to look at a racing pamphlet. No one seemed to have followed him from the Library, but this meant nothing—if they were skilled he might have men waiting for him at any particular haunt, as well as his rooming house. He put down the pamphlet and rubbed his eyes.
The food stalls gave him another meat pie—the Cardinal was not expansive in his diet—and a small pot of beer. He finished them quickly and continued to walk. It was nearing four o’clock, and already he could feel the day turning toward darkness, the wind acquiring its evening bite. As Chang saw it, he had three immediate choices: first, back to the Raton Marine to await contact from either Carver or Aspiche; second, stand watch at the St. Royale and find out everything he could about his new client, beginning with her true name; or third, start visiting brothels. He smiled—a rather simple choice, after all.
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