Glass Books of the Dream Eaters mtccads-1

by Gordon Dahlquist

  “Indeed…I…that is excellent—”

  “It seemed as if it might be precious to you.”

  The Doctor nodded, but then looked away, frowning, as if he did not want to say more. Chang coughed again, congestion echoing wetly in his chest.

  “We must do something for you,” said Svenson, but Chang shook his head.

  “It is my lungs—”

  “Powdered glass,” said Miss Temple. “The Contessa explained how she’d killed you.”

  “I am sorry to disappoint the Lady…” He smiled.

  Svenson looked at Chang quite soberly. “The glass alone would be harmful to your lungs—that it bears such toxic properties as well, it is a marvel you have not succumbed to hypnotic visions.”

  “I should prefer them to this coughing, I assure you.”

  “Is there any way to get it out?” asked Miss Temple.

  The Doctor frowned in thought. The Cardinal spat again, and began to speak.

  “My story is simple. When we did not know where you went, we split up, the Doctor to Tarr Manor and I to the Ministry, neither of us guessing correctly. I met Bascombe and the Contessa, witnessed the Process in action, fought Xonck, nearly died, then tracked you—too late—to the St. Royale—thus the boots—and made the train for Harschmort. Once here I have seen the most powerful figures overborne, their minds drained into these books, and Robert Vandaariff, mindless as an ape, filling page after page with a narrative of his secrets. I was unable to prevent the transformation of the three women…” Chang paused for a moment—Miss Temple was becoming steadily aware of the degree to which each man had pressed the limit of not only his strength but also his heart, and her own went out to them utterly—and then cleared his throat. “Though I did kill your Major Blach. But the rest was capture and failure—except I also managed to kill the Contessa’s man, Mr. Gray—”

  “O! They were arguing about it fiercely!” exclaimed Miss Temple.

  “He was on some errand—secret from the others, I am sure. I do not know what it was.” He looked up at Miss Temple. “Did you say our guards were Dragoons?”

  “Not directly outside the door, no—but in the corridor, yes—perhaps a dozen men with their officer, Captain Smythe, and their Colonel—”

  “Smythe, you say!” Chang’s face visibly brightened.

  “I met him,” said Svenson. “He saved my life!”

  “He knows me too, somehow,” said Miss Temple. “It was actually rather unsettling…”

  “If we can get rid of Aspiche then Smythe will come to our cause, I am sure of it,” said Chang.

  Miss Temple glanced back at the door. “Well, if that is all we require, then we will soon be on our way. Doctor?”

  “I can speak as we go—save to say that there is an airship on the roof—it is how we came from Tarr Manor. They may use it to reach a ship at the canal, or farther up the coast—”

  “Or go all the way to Macklenburg,” said Chang. “These machines I have seen are prodigiously powerful.”

  Svenson nodded. “You are right—it is ridiculous to undervalue their capacity in any way—but this too can wait. We must stop the marriage. We must stop the Duke.”

  “And we must find Elöise,” exclaimed Miss Temple, “especially as she has the glass key!”

  “What glass key?” rasped Chang.

  “Did I not mention it? I believe it is the way to safely read the books. We got it from Blenheim’s pocket.”

  “How did he have it?” asked Chang.

  “Exactly!” Miss Temple beamed. “Now, both of you—back on the floor—or, all right, I’m sure it is fine if you are on a settee—but you must shut your eyes and remain inert.”

  “Celeste, what are you doing?” asked Svenson.

  “Managing our escape, naturally.”

  She knocked on the door and called out as sweetly as she could to the guards on the other side. They did not answer, but Miss Temple kept knocking and although she was forced to switch several times from one hand to the other as her knuckles became tender, at last the lock was turned and the door cracked open a single suspicious inch, through which Miss Temple glimpsed the pale, cautious face of a young soldier from Macklenburg—younger than herself, she saw, which only increased the sweetness of her smile.

  “I do beg your pardon, but it’s very important that I see the Colonel. I have information for the Contessa—the Contessa, you understand—that she will be most anxious to have.”

  The trooper did not move. Did he even understand her? Miss Temple’s smile hardened as she leaned forward and spoke more loudly, with a sharp, unmistakable intent.

  “I must see the Colonel! At once! Or you will be punished!”

  The trooper looked to his comrade, out of view, clearly unsure of what he should do. Miss Temple barked past him at the top of her lungs.

  “Colonel Aspiche! I have vital news for you! If the Contessa does not get it, she will cut off your ears!”

  At her scream the guard slammed the door and fumbled for the lock, but Miss Temple could already hear the angry stride of heavy boots. In a moment the door was flung wide by Aspiche, face crimson with rage, cheroot in one hand and the other on the hilt of his saber, glaring down at her like a red-coated schoolmaster ready to deal out a whipping.

  “Thank you so much,” said Miss Temple.

  “What information are you screeching about?” he snarled. “Your manners are quite unbecoming—even more so if I find this is a lie.”

  “Nonsense,” said Miss Temple, shivering for the Colonel’s benefit and slipping a theatrical quaver into her voice. “And you do not need to scare me so—the state of my allies and the Contessa’s power have left me helpless. I am only trying to save my own life.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “What information?” repeated Aspiche.

  Miss Temple glanced behind him at the guards, who were staring with undisguised curiosity, and then leaned forward with a whisper.

  “It is actually rather sensitive…”

  Aspiche leaned forward in turn with a tight, put-upon expression. Miss Temple brushed his ear with her lips.

  “Blue…Caesar…blue…Regiment…ice…consumption…”

  She looked up and saw the Colonel’s eyes did not move, gazing at a point just beyond her shoulder.

  “Perhaps we ought to be alone,” she whispered.

  Aspiche wheeled on the guards with fury.

  “Leave me with the prisoners!” he barked. The guards stumbled back, as Aspiche reached out with both hands and slammed the door. He turned back to Miss Temple, his face without any expression at all.

  “Cardinal,…Doctor,…you may rise…”

  She kept to her whisper, not wanting the guards to hear. Chang and Svenson stood slowly, staring at the Colonel with morbid curiosity.

  “Everyone who undergoes the Process is instilled with some sort of control phrase,” Miss Temple explained. “I overheard the Contessa use one on the Prince, and again when she attempted to use one on me—to prove I had not been converted. I wasn’t able to work it all out—it was a guess—”

  “You risked this on a guess?” asked Svenson.

  “As it was a good guess, yes. The phrase has several parts—the first is a color, and I deduced that the color was about where the Process was administered. You remember that the different boxes had different colors of felt packing—”

  “Orange at Harschmort,” said Chang. “Blue at the Institute.”

  “And seeing as he was converted before they moved the boxes from the Institute, the color for the Colonel was blue.”

  “What was the rest of the phrase?” asked Svenson.

  “The second word is about their role, using a Biblical metaphor—I’m sure it is all part of the Comte’s ostentation. For the Prince it was Joseph—for he will be the father to someone else’s child, as poor Lydia must be Mary—for me it would have been Magdalene, as for all of the white-robed initiates—and for the Colonel, as the representative of the state, I
guessed correctly it would be ‘Caesar’…the rest follows the same way—‘Regiment’ instead of ‘Palace’ or ‘Royale’—”

  “Is he understanding this?” asked Svenson.

  “I think so, but he is also waiting for instructions.”

  “Suppose he should cut his own throat?” suggested Chang, with a moist chuckle.

  “Suppose he tells us if they’ve captured Elöise,” said Svenson, and he spoke slowly and clearly to Colonel Aspiche. “Do you know the whereabouts of Mrs. Dujong?”

  “Shut your filthy hole before I shut it for you!” Aspiche roared.

  Svenson darted back a step, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “Ah,” Miss Temple said, “perhaps only the person who speaks the phrase can command.” She cleared her throat. “Colonel, do you know where we can find Mrs. Dujong?”

  “Of course I don’t,” snapped Aspiche, sullenly.

  “All right…when did you last see her?”

  The Colonel’s lips curled into an unabashed and wicked smile. “Aboard the airship. Doctor Lorenz asked her questions, and when she did not answer Miss Poole and I took turns—”

  Doctor Svenson’s fist landed like a hammer on the Colonel’s jaw, knocking him back into the door. Miss Temple turned to Svenson—hissing with pain and flexing his hand—and then to Aspiche, sputtering with rage and struggling to rise. Before he could, Chang’s arm shot forth and snatched the Colonel’s saber from its sheath, a wheeling bright scythe that had Miss Temple scampering clear with a squeak. When she looked back, the Cardinal had the blade hovering dangerously in front of the man’s chest. Aspiche did not move.

  “Doctor?” she asked quietly.

  “My apologies—”

  “Not at all, the Colonel is a horrid beast. Your hand?”

  “It will do fine.”

  She stepped closer to Aspiche, her face harder than before. She had known Elöise endured her own set of trials, but Miss Temple thought back to her own irritation at how the woman, drugged and stumbling, had slowed their progress in escaping the theatre. She was more than happy to expend the sting of her guilt and regret on the villain before her.

  “Colonel, you will open this door and take us into the hall. You will order both of these guards into this room and then lock the door behind them. If they protest, you will do your level best to kill them. Do you understand?”

  Aspiche nodded, his eyes wavering between her own and the floating tip of the saber.

  “Then do it. We are wasting time.”

  The Germans gave them no trouble, so inured were they to following orders. It was only a matter of moments before they stood again in the open foyer where the members of the Cabal had argued with one another. The Dragoons lining the corridor were gone, along with their officer.

  “Where’s Captain Smythe?” she asked Aspiche.

  “Assisting Mr. Xonck and the Deputy Minister.”

  Miss Temple frowned. “Then what were you doing here? Did you not have orders?”

  “Of course—to execute the three of you.”

  “But why were you waiting in the corridor?”

  “I was finishing my cigar!” snapped Colonel Aspiche.

  Chang scoffed behind her.

  “Every man reveals his soul eventually,” he muttered.

  Miss Temple crept to the ballroom doors. The enormous space was empty. She called back to her prisoner.

  “Where is everyone?” He opened his mouth to answer but she cut him off. “Where are each of our enemies—the Contessa, the Comte, Deputy Minister Crabbé, Francis Xonck, the Prince and his bride, Lord Vandaariff, the Duke of Stäelmaere, Mrs. Stearne—”

  “And Roger Bascombe,” said Doctor Svenson. She turned to him, and to Chang, and nodded sadly.

  “And Roger Bascombe.” She sighed. “In an orderly manner, if you please.”

  The Colonel had informed them—sullen twitches around his mouth evidence of a useless struggle against Miss Temple’s control—that their enemies had split into two groups. The first occupied themselves with a sweeping progress through the great house, gathering up their guests and collecting the stupefied luminaries whose minds had been drained into the glass books on the way, to send off the Duke of Stäelmaere with ceremony suitable to his imminent coup d’état. Accompanying the Duke’s progress would be the Contessa, the Deputy Minister, and Francis Xonck, as well as Lord Vandaariff, Bascombe, Mrs. Stearne, and the two glass women, Marchmoor and Poole. The second group, about which Aspiche could provide no information as to their errand, consisted of the Comte d’Orkancz, Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck, Lydia Vandaariff, Herr Flaüss, and the third glass woman.

  “I did not recognize her,” said Miss Temple. “By all rights the third subject ought to have been Caroline.”

  “It is Angelique, the Cardinal’s acquaintance,” replied Doctor Svenson, speaking delicately. “The woman we searched for in the greenhouse. You were right—she did not perish there.”

  “Instead, the Comte kept her alive to use as a test subject,” rasped Chang. “If his transformation failed, then he need not sacrifice the others—if it worked and made moot the issue of her damaged body, then all the better. All in all you see, it is an admirable expression of economy.”

  Neither Miss Temple nor the Doctor spoke, letting Chang’s bitterness and anger have their sway. Chang rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and sighed.

  “The question is what they are doing, and which group we ought to follow. If we agree that stopping the Duke and the Prince’s marriage are both vital, it is of course possible that we split up—”

  “I should prefer not to,” said Miss Temple quickly. “In either place we shall find enemies en masse—it seems there is strength in numbers.”

  “I agree,” said the Doctor, “and my vote is to go after the Duke. The rest of the Cabal journeys to Macklenburg—the Duke and Lord Vandaariff are their keys to maintaining power here. If we can disrupt that, it may upset the balance of their entire plot.”

  “You mean to kill them?” asked Chang.

  “Kill them again, in the case of the Duke,” muttered the Doctor, “but yes, I am for assassinations all round.” He sighed bitterly. “It is exactly my plan for Karl-Horst, should his neck ever come within reach of my two hands.”

  “But he is your charge,” said Miss Temple, a little shocked by Svenson’s tone.

  “My charge has become their creature,” he answered. “He is no more than a rabid dog or a horse with a broken fetlock—he must be put down, preferably before he has a chance to sire an heir.”

  Miss Temple put her hand over her mouth. “Of course! The Comte is using his alchemy to impregnate Lydia—it is the height of his part of this plan—it is Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical Annunciation made flesh! And they are doing it tonight—even now!”

  Doctor Svenson sucked on his teeth, wincing, looking back and forth between Miss Temple and Chang.

  “I still say we stop the Duke. If we do not—”

  “If we do not, mine and Miss Temple’s lives in this city are ruined,” said Chang.

  “And after that,” asked Miss Temple, “the Prince and Lydia?”

  Svenson nodded, and then sighed. “I’m afraid they are already doomed…”

  Chang abruptly cackled, a sound as pleasant as a gargling crow. “Are we so different, Doctor? Save some of your pity for us!”

  At Miss Temple’s command Aspiche led them toward the main entrance of the house, but it became quickly clear they could not go far that way, so thronged had it become with the many, many guests gathered for the Duke’s departure. With a sudden inspiration, Miss Temple recalled her own path with Spragg and Farquhar through the gardener’s passage between the wings of the house and around to the carriages. Within two minutes—Aspiche huffing as sullenly as his conditioning allowed—they had arrived, their breath clouding in the chilly air, just in time to watch a procession flow down the main stairs toward the Duke’s imperious, massive black coach.

  The Duke himsel
f moved slowly and with care, like a particularly delicate, funereal stick insect, guided on one side by the small greasy-haired man—“Doctor Lorenz,” whispered Svenson—and on the other by Mrs. Marchmoor, no longer with a leash around her neck, her gleaming body now covered in a thick black cloak. Behind in a line came the Contessa, Xonck, and Deputy Minister Crabbé, and behind them, stopping at the steps and waving the Duke on his way, stood the similarly aligned knot of Robert Vandaariff, Roger Bascombe, and Mrs. Poole, also leashless and cloaked.

  The Duke was installed in his coach and joined a moment later by Mrs. Marchmoor. Miss Temple looked to her companions—now was clearly the time to dash for the coach if they were going to do so—but before she could speak she saw with dismay, boisterously shouting to the Duke and to each other as they sought their own amongst the many coaches, the rest of the guests all preparing to leave. Any attack on the Duke’s coach was all but impossible.

  “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.