Glass Books of the Dream Eaters mtccads-1

by Gordon Dahlquist

  The door of her compartment was opened by the Macklenburg officer. He held a metal canteen and extended it to her. For all her parched throat she hesitated. He frowned with irritation.

  “Water. Take it.”

  She did, uncorking the top and drinking deeply. She exhaled and drank again. The train was slowing. She wiped her mouth and returned the canteen. He took it, but did not move. The train stopped. They waited in silence. He offered the canteen again. Miss Temple shook her head. He replaced the cork. The train pulled forward. With a sinking heart she saw the sign for Crampton Place pass by her window and recede from sight. When the train had resumed its normal speed, the soldier gave her a clipped nod and left the compartment. Miss Temple tucked her legs beneath her once again and laid her head against her armrest, determined that she would rather sleep than give in again to tears.

  She was woken by the officer’s reappearance as the train stopped at Packington, and again at Gorsemont, De Conque, and Raaxfall. Each time he brought the steel canteen of water and each time remained otherwise silent until the train resumed its full forward momentum, after which he left her alone. After De Conque Miss Temple was no longer inclined to sleep, partially because it annoyed her to be awoken so relentlessly, but more because the impulse had gone. In its place was a feeling she could not properly name, gnawing and unsettling, which caused her to shift in her seat repeatedly. She did not know where she was—which was to say, she realized with the impact of a bullet, she did not know who she was. After having become so accustomed to the dashing tactics of adventure—shooting pistols, escaping by rooftop, digging clues from a stove as if this were the natural evolution of her character (and for a wistful moment Miss Temple occupied herself with a recounting of all the adventurous tasks she had managed in the past few days)—it seemed as if her failure had thrust forward another possibility, that she was merely a naïve and willful young woman without the depth to understand her doom. She thought of Doctor Svenson on the rooftop—the man had been petrified—and yet while she and Chang had leaned over the edge to look into the alley, he had driven himself to walk alone across the top of the Boniface Hotel and the next two buildings—even stepping across the actual (negligible, it was true, but such fear was not born of logic) gaps between structures. She knew what it had cost him, and that the look on his face showed the exact sort of determination recent events had proven she did not possess.

  However harsh her judgment, Miss Temple found the clarity helpful, and she began with a clear-eyed grimness—in the irritating absence of a notebook and pencil (oh, how she wished for a pencil!)—to make a mental accounting of her probable fate. There was no telling if she would again be mauled and traduced, just as there was no telling if, despite the Contessa’s words, she would finally be slain, before or after torment. Again she shivered, confronting the full extent of her enemies’ deadly character, and took a deep breath at a likelihood more dire still—her transformation by the Process. What could be worse than to be changed into what she despised? Death and torment were at least actions taken against her. With the Process, that sense of her would be destroyed, and Miss Temple decided there in the compartment she could not allow it. Whether it meant throwing herself into a cauldron or inhaling their glass powder like Chang, or simply provoking some guard to snap her neck—she would never give in to their vicious control. She remembered the dead man the Doctor had described—what the broken glass from the book had done to his body…if she could just get to the book and smash it, or hold it in her arms and leap headlong to the floor—it must shatter and her life be ended with it. And perhaps the Contessa was right, that death from the indigo glass carried with it a trace of intoxicating dreams.

  She began to feel hungry—despite her love for tea, it was not an overly substantial meal—and after an idle five minutes where she was unable to think about anything else, she opened her compartment door and again looked into the passage. The soldier stood where he had before, but instead of Francis Xonck, it was the scarred stout man that stood with him.

  “Excuse me,” called Miss Temple. “What is your name?”

  The soldier frowned, as if her speaking to him was an unseemly breach of etiquette. The scarred man—who it seemed had recovered his sensibilities somewhat, being a bit less glassy about the eyes and more fluid in his limbs—answered her with a voice that was only a little oily.

  “He is Major Blach and I am Herr Flaüss, Envoy to the Macklenburg diplomatic mission accompanying the Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck.”

  “He is Major Blach?” If the Major was too proud to speak to her, Miss Temple was happy enough to speak about him as if he were a standing lamp. She knew that this was the nemesis of both the Doctor and Chang. “I had no idea,” she said, “for of course I have heard a great deal about him—about you both.” She really had heard nothing much at all about the Envoy, save that the Doctor did not like him, and even this not in words so much as a dismissive half-distracted shrug—still she expected everyone liked to be talked of, Process or no. The Major, of course, she knew was deadly.

  “May we be of service?” asked the Envoy.

  “I am hungry,” replied Miss Temple. “I should like something to eat—if such a thing exists on the train. I know it is at least another hour until we reach the Orange Locks.”

  “In truth, I have no idea,” said the Envoy, “but I will ask directly.” He nodded to her and padded down the passageway. Miss Temple watched him go and then caught the firm gaze of the Major upon her.

  “Get back inside,” he snapped.

  When the train stopped at St. Triste, the Major entered with a small wrapped parcel of white waxed paper along with his canteen. He gave them both to her without a word. She did not move to open it, preferring to do it alone—there was precious little entertainment else—and so the two of them waited in silence for the train to move. When it did he reached again for the canteen. She did not release it.

  “May I not have a drink of water with my meal?”

  The Major glared at her. Clearly there was no reason to deny her save meanness, and even that would betray a level of interest that he did not care to admit. He released the canteen and left the compartment.

  The contents of the waxed paper parcel were hardly interesting—a thin wedge of white cheese, a slice of rye bread, and two small pickled beets that stained the bread and cheese purple. Nevertheless she ate them as slowly and methodically as she could—alternating carefully small bites of each in succession and chewing each mouthful at least twenty times before swallowing. So passed perhaps fifteen minutes. She drank off the rest of the canteen and re-corked it. She balled up the paper and with the canteen in her hand poked her head back into the passageway. The Major and the Envoy were where they had been before.

  “I have finished,” she called, “if you would prefer to collect the canteen.”

  “How kind of you,” said Envoy Flaüss, and he nudged the Major, who marched toward her and snatched the canteen from her hand. Miss Temple held up the ball of paper.

  “Would you take this as well? I’m sure you do not want me passing notes to the conductor!”

  Without a word the Major did. Miss Temple batted her eyelashes at him and then at the watching Envoy down the passageway as the Major turned and walked away. She returned to her seat with a chuckle. She had no idea what had been gained except distraction, but she felt in her mild mischief a certain encouraging return to form.

  At St. Porte, Major Blach did not enter her compartment. Miss Temple looked up to the compartment door as the train slowed and no one had appeared. Had she annoyed him so much as to give her a chance to open the window? She stood, still looking at the empty doorway, and then with a fumbling rush began her assault on the window latches. She had not even managed to get one of them open before she heard the clicking of the compartment door behind her. She wheeled, ready to meet the Major’s disapproval with a winning smile.

  Instead, in the open door stood Roger Bascombe.

&n
bsp; “Ah,” she said. “Mr. Bascombe.”

  He nodded to her rather formally. “Miss Temple.”

  “Will you sit?”

  It seemed to her that Roger hesitated, perhaps because she had been found so evidently in the midst of opening the window, but equally perhaps because so much between them lay unresolved. She returned to her seat, tucking her dirty feet as far as possible beneath her hanging dress, and waited for him to stir from the still-open door. When he did not, she spoke to him with a politeness only barely edged with impatience.

  “What can a man fear from taking a seat? Nothing—except the display of his own ill-breeding if he remains standing like a tradesman…or a marionette Macklenburg soldier.”

  Chastened and, she could tell from the purse of his lips, pricked to annoyance, Roger took a seat on the opposite side of the compartment. He took a preparatory breath.

  “Miss Temple—Celeste—”

  “I see your scars have healed,” she said encouragingly. “Mrs. Marchmoor’s have not, and I confess to finding them quite unpleasant. As for poor Mr. Flaüss—or I suppose it should be Herr Flaüss—for his appearance he might as well be a tattooed aboriginal from the polar ice!”

  With satisfaction, she saw that Roger looked as if a lemon wedge had become lodged beneath his tongue.

  “Are you finished?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe I am, but I will let you speak, if that is what you—”

  Roger barked at her sharply. “It is not a surprise to see you so relentlessly fixed on the trivial—it has always been your way—but even you should apprehend the gravity of your situation!”

  Miss Temple had never seen him so dismissive and forceful, and her voice dropped to a sudden icy whisper.

  “I apprehend it very fully…I assure you…Mr. Bascombe.”

  He did not reply—he was, she realized with a sizzling annoyance, allowing what he took to be his acknowledged rebuke to fully sink in. Determined not to first break the silence, Miss Temple found herself studying the changes in his face and manner—quite in spite of herself, for she still hoped to meet his every attention with scorn. She understood that Roger Bascombe offered the truest window into the effects of the Process she was likely to find. She had met Mrs. Marchmoor and the Prince—her pragmatic manner and his dispassionate distance—but she had known neither of them intimately beforehand. What she saw on the face of Roger Bascombe pained her, more than anything at the knowledge that such a transformation spoke—and she was sure, in her unhappy heart, that it did—to his honest desire. Roger had always been one for what was ordered and proper, paying scrupulous attention to social niceties while maintaining a fixed notion of who bore what title and which estates—but she had known, and it had been part of her fondness for him, that such painstaking alertness arose from his own lack of a title and his occupation of yet a middling position in government—which is to say from his naturally cautious character. Now, she saw that this was changed, that Roger’s ability to juggle in his mind the different interests and ranks of many people was no longer in service to his own defense but, on the contrary, to his own explicit, manipulative advantage. She had no doubt that he watched the other members of the Cabal like an unfailingly deferential hawk, waiting for the slightest misstep (as she was suddenly sure Francis Xonck’s bandaged arm had been a secret delight to him). Before when Roger had grimaced at her outbursts or expressions of opinion, it had been at her lack of tact or care for the delicate social fabric of a conversation he had been at effort to maintain—and his reaction had filled her with a mischievous pleasure. Now, despite her attempts to bait or provoke him, all she saw was a pinched, unwillingly burdened tolerance, rooted in the disappointment of wasting time with one who could offer him no advantage whatsoever. The difference made Miss Temple sad in a way she had not foreseen.

  “I have presumed to briefly join you,” he began, “at the suggestion of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza—”

  “I am sure the Contessa gives you all manner of suggestions,” interrupted Miss Temple, “and have no doubt that you follow them eagerly!”

  Did she even believe this? The accusation had been too readily at hand not to fling…not that it seemed to find any purchase on its target.

  “Since,” he continued after a brief pause, “it is intended that you undergo the Process upon our arrival at Harschmort House, it will arise that, although we have been in the last days sundered, after your ordeal we shall be reconciled to the same side—as allies.”

  This was not what she had expected. He watched her, defensively expectant, as if her silence was the prelude to another childish eruption of spite.

  “Celeste,” he said, “I do urge you to be rational. I am speaking of facts. If it is necessary—if it will clarify your situation—I will again assure you that I am well beyond all feelings of attachment…or equally of resentment.”

  Miss Temple could not credit what she had heard. Resentment? When it was she who had been so blithely overthrown, she who had borne for how many evenings and afternoons in their courtship the near mummifying company of the condescending, starch-minded, middling-fortuned Bascombe family!

  “I beg your pardon?” she managed.

  He cleared his throat. “What I mean to say—what I have come to say—is that our new alliance—for your loyalties will be changed, and if I know the Contessa, she will insist that the two of us continue to work in concert—”

  Miss Temple narrowed her eyes at the idea of what that might mean.

  “—and it would be best if, as a rational being, you could join me in setting aside your vain affection and pointless bitterness. I assure you—there will be less pain.”

  “And I assure you, Roger, I have done just that. Unfortunately, recent days having been so very busy, I’ve yet had a moment to set aside my virulent scorn.”

  “Celeste, I speak for your good, not mine—truly, it is a generosity—”

  “A generosity?”

  “I do not expect you to see it,” he muttered.

  “Of course not! I haven’t had my mind re-made by a machine!”

  Roger stared at her in silence and then slowly stood, straightening his coat and, by habit, smoothing back his hair with two fingers, and even then in her heart she found him to be quite lovely. Yet his gaze, quite fixed upon her, conveyed a quality she had never seen in him before—undisguised contempt. He was not angry—indeed, what hurt her most was the exact lack of emotion behind his eyes. It truly made no sense to her—in Miss Temple’s body, in her memory, all such moments were rooted in some sort of feeling, and Roger Bascombe stood revealed to her as no kind of man she had ever met.

  “You will see,” he said, his voice cool and low. “The Process will remake you to the ground, and you will see—for the very first time in your life, I am sure—the true nature of your shuttered mind. The Contessa suggests you possess reserves of character I have not seen—to which I can only agree that I have not seen them. You were always a pretty enough girl—but there are many such. I look forward to finding—once you’ve been burned to your bones and then re-made by the very ‘machine’ you cannot comprehend—if any actually remarkable parts exist.”

  He left the compartment. Miss Temple did not move, her mind ringing with his biting words and a thousand unspoken retorts, her face hot and both of her hands balled tight into fists. She looked out the window and saw her reflection on the glass, thrown up between her and the darkened landscape of salty grassland racing past outside the train. It occurred to her that this dim, transparent, second-hand image was the perfect illustration for her own condition—in the power of others, with her own wishes only peripherally related to her fate, insubstantial and half-present. She let out a trembling sigh. How—after everything—could Roger Bascombe still exert any sway over her feelings? How could he make her feel so desperately unhappy? Her agitation was not coherent—there was no point from which she could begin to untangle answers—and her heart beat faster and faster until she was forced to
sit with a hand over each eye, breathing deeply. Miss Temple looked up. The train was slowing. She pressed her face to the window, blocking the light from the passageway with her hand, and saw through the reflection the station, platform, and white painted sign for Orange Locks. She turned to find Major Blach opening the door for her, his hand inviting her to exit.

  Beyond the platform were two waiting coaches, each drawn by a team of four horses. To the first, his fiancée on his arm, went the Prince, followed as before by his Envoy and the older man with the bandaged arm. The Major escorted Miss Temple to the second coach, opened the door, and assisted her climb into it. He nodded crisply to her and stepped away—undoubtedly to rejoin the Prince—to be replaced by the Comte d’Orkancz, who sat across from her, and then the Contessa, who stepped in to sit next to her opposite the Comte, then Francis Xonck, who sat next to the Comte with a smile, and finally, with no expression in particular on his face, Roger Bascombe, hesitating only an instant when he saw that, due to the size of the Comte and the room accorded Xonck’s thickly wrapped arm, the only seat was on the other side of Miss Temple. He climbed into place without comment. Miss Temple was firmly lodged between the Contessa and Roger—their legs pressing closely against hers with a mocking familiarity. The driver shut the door and climbed to his perch. His whip snapped and they clattered on their way to Harschmort.

  The ride began in silence, and after a time Miss Temple, who initially assumed this was because of her presence—an interloper spoiling their usual plots and scheming, began to wonder if this was wholly the case. They were wary enough not to say anything revealing, but she began to sense levels of competition and distrust…particularly with the addition of Francis Xonck to the party.

  “When can we expect the Duke?” he asked.

  “Before midnight, I am sure,” replied the Comte.

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “Crabbé has spoken to him,” said the Contessa. “There is no reason for anyone else to do so. It would only confuse things.”