‘Lost your papers, I see,’ observed Chang.
Trooste looked up with a sour expression, balanced on one foot as he shook its dripping mate. ‘Not lost at all! Taken!’
Chang looked at Cunsher, who scratched an ear by way of apology. ‘The Professor’s attempt to protect his possessions may have encouraged their confiscation.’
‘And where are they now?’ Trooste asked the meadow at large. ‘Those papers were our only safeguard –’
‘Stop,’ said Chang. ‘Listen.’
Trooste paused, then turned to the sound. ‘Is it music?’
The low grass would not hide them. Chang broke into a run. Twenty sodden yards brought an unpaved road. He vaulted the ditch at its edge and waved the others across, risking a look in the direction of the station. Led by a line of torches, a body of grenadiers gave full-throated voice to a regimental song of blood:
Grind each foe beneath our heel
Whenever duty calls
Blood and iron, shot and steel
Until the last man falls
Beyond the road the land grew sandy, rising to dunes. The grenadiers marched nearer, the crash of their boots like a bass drum to their song. The brazen advance – announcing their presence without care – spoke to a dark resolve. Once more Chang had no desire to be its object. The grass fell away, a slight depression but enough. He dropped flat and the others followed. Chang slid off his spectacles – the lenses would reflect the torchlight – and raised his head.
The Queen’s elite regiment had been transformed to a medieval danse macabre, with every man – most showing visible wounds – bearing the weight of his own doom. Chang had not considered the screams and shouting that had followed the blast – he had been too busy gathering the others – but now he shuddered. These survivors had not been touched by the explosion. Their injuries were more cruel: suffered at the hands of comrades deranged by glass spurs. How many of their own had they been forced to put down like rabid dogs? A deadly bitterness constricted every face.
In front of the ragged column – Chang counted thirty men – marched Colonel Bronque, bareheaded, gold brucade in tatters, left arm in a sling, singing louder than anyone. Bringing up the rear came the wagon, with Mrs Kraft, Mahmoud and Kelling. Chang ducked away from Mahmoud’s higher vantage, and waited a full minute before risking another look. The column had passed like a funeral cortège into the darkness, the death song’s echo like a trail of black crêpe.
Chang restored his glasses. ‘We can follow at a distance on the road, but risk being caught up in their collision with Vandaariff.’
‘Likely another blast,’ said Cunsher.
‘They’re going to die,’ said Gorine miserably. ‘Every one of them.’
‘Or we continue over open ground,’ Chang continued. ‘Easy enough to walk, but the closer we come to Harschmort the more dangerous it will be. In the past, the grounds were salted with steel traps.’
‘Traps?’ Trooste looked at the grass around him with an appalled suspicion.
Chang patted the Professor’s knee. ‘That would snap the leg off a bear.’
‘We are caught between,’ said Cunsher, ‘while Vandaariff waits, a worm in its cave. The key element is time. He cannot wait for long. He needs you, Miss Temple, perhaps others.’
‘Worm?’ protested Gorine. ‘He is rather more than that!’
‘My apologies,’ said Cunsher. ‘I select the wrong word. Not worm, but dragon.’
‘I see, yes, lovely.’ Gorine frowned. ‘But what does he intend?’
Chang tapped Trooste with the toe of his boot. ‘Professor?’
Trooste sighed. ‘He is dying. And believes he does not have to.’ He gestured to Cardinal Chang, but thought better of saying more. ‘In any event – he has made plans.’
‘Like the Comte with Angelique,’ said Gorine bitterly.
‘And what do you know about that?’ asked Chang, deadly cold.
Gorine shook his head. ‘I don’t. I swear to you. Mrs Kraft drove us from the room. But she and the Comte bargained for an hour, and then she gave him the Oyster.’ Gorine saw their looks of incomprehension. ‘The Oyster Room. Reserved for the highest quality – everything laid on, the most luxurious single chamber for a hundred miles.’
‘But she didn’t trust the Comte,’ said Chang. ‘Why show him that kind of favour?’
‘He has already said,’ said Cunsher. ‘A room for the highest quality – kings, ministers, generals. It thus follows that clients were given this Oyster Room only to be observed by Mrs Kraft herself. And there her secret lies.’
The Comte d’Orkancz had been unable to avoid a simple sabre blade, and Robert Vandaariff would fall the same way if Chang could get near enough to land the blow. The larger task was not so clear. While the Comte had been the only soul in the airship with any understanding of indigo clay, now there were too many others – Trooste, Schoepfil, Kraft, even Svenson and, with her corrupted mind, Miss Temple. Must they all perish too?
Chang paused at the crest of a dune, saying nothing until Trooste, lagging and out of breath, reached the top. Chang extended an arm to the low line of lights. Originally constructed as the Queen’s prison, Harschmort House was a large horseshoe-shaped structure, only three storeys tall but stretching from end to end as far as a parade ground. The flagged courtyard and forbidding gates looked north. The rear of the house, a hollow around which both wings curled (once an ornamental garden, since destroyed by the implosion of the dungeons beneath), faced south to the sea. To the east lay the terminal spur of the Orange Canal. The western approach, where they now stood, offered only dunes and fen.
‘Surely Bronque has reached the gates,’ said Gorine. ‘We should hear shots.’
‘I agree,’ said Chang. ‘One way or another.’
‘What of these traps?’ asked Trooste.
‘We send the least essential man to test the way.’ Chang smiled over his shoulder at Gorine. ‘Since you failed to convince Mrs Kraft, the honour is yours.’
‘Good God!’ cried Trooste. ‘Do not joke of such things.’
‘He isn’t,’ muttered Gorine. ‘In the past I have not been Cardinal Chang’s good friend.’
Chang ignored this confession and pointed ahead: the bright line of windows was broken by rooms left dark, allowing the observers within to keep their night vision. ‘His men are watching. If we run they will shoot us down. But if we advance, I believe their master’s lack of time will dictate cooperation.’
‘But why should they cooperate?’
‘Because they will have seen me.’
As he stepped onto the mown grass that surrounded the house, a half-dozen men filed from it, looking in their green jackets and brass helmets like insects leaving a hive. Chang dropped to one knee to present a smaller target. The others, still in the high grass, did the same, so only their faces were in view. Vandaariff’s men formed a line and, in unison, each reached into a canvas satchel slung over one shoulder, reared back and threw.
Chang was already in motion, dodging one of the hurled missiles. He heard the shatter of glass and felt a stinging in his eyes. He held his breath. Cunsher’s carbine barked behind him and one of the six men fell. Glass burst at his feet in a cloud of bluish smoke – something flew past his head –
Then Chang was on them – slashing furiously, catching hands and wrenching them backwards, kicking at knees – above all staying in motion to prevent their greater numbers from pulling him down. The helmets limited their vision and made their movements awkward. Two retreated to the door, digging for weapons. Chang spun out of an attempt to seize his waist and saw Cunsher stagger from the meadow, carbine dangling from one hand, then fall, smoke swirling in his face. Chang drove his blade into an attacker’s stomach and when the man doubled over slipped behind and wrenched the helmet from his head. The man fell, hands tight around his throat. Instead of putting on the helmet, Chang charged for the two men now guarding the door with wooden clubs. More glass shattered at his feet. He
felt the pressure in his chest as he collided with them, viciously swinging the helmet like a studded mace. Chang broke through and to the door, which he slammed and bolted behind.
This air too was marked by curling smoke, and in the light he saw its bluish tint more clearly. He tore off his glasses and clapped the helmet over his head. The rubber seal gripped tight around his throat. He exhaled in a gasp … and on the inhale tasted nothing but air. The door rocked on its hinges, pulled from outside. More canvas satchels hung from hooks on the wall. Chang slipped one over his shoulder and ran.
Harschmort House had changed. Chang remembered the western wing (where he’d found Arthur Trapping’s corpse, so long ago) enough to note rooms knocked through, walls stripped to prison stone. In two months this wing of Vandaariff’s luxurious residence had been returned to its original state, as unadorned as a military barracks.
He opened the satchel. Carefully insulated in sewn pockets were a dozen blue glass spheres, the size of small apples. He eased one out with a gloved hand and raised it to the light, like a float from a fishing net but for the clouds inside, swirling like milk in tea.
Alerted by a shadow on the wall, Chang turned round and threw, the globe shattering between two bareheaded green-coats. With one shuddering breath they crumpled to their faces and lay still. Were they dead? Was there hope for Cunsher and the others? He did not go near to make sure. There wasn’t time.
In the helmet he could just see straight ahead. At every room he was forced to spin like an antic dog to make sure he was alone. Three times he had not been – green-coats, servants, even a pair of housemaids – and a glass globe had preserved his liberty. Word of his penetration would spread, and Vandaariff’s forces, no matter his attempts to twist and turn, ought to have converged by now. Instead Chang advanced unimpeded, past unplastered walls, lumber, copper piping bound together with rope. Obviously every resource had been devoted to construction – the creation of whatever arena this final alchemical rite required.
Chang did not have to search. As he bulled his way on, new figures appeared – always in rooms with multiple doorways, leaving one open path – guards and servants alike, never moving to apprehend him, or to sound an alarm. He was being herded along, like a sheep nipped on its flank. He could have burst free of the cordon, but the lives of his allies demanded a confrontation, and so he pressed willingly into his adversary’s lair.
Chang’s path stopped at a double doorway made of new-cut planks. Nailed to it was an envelope of parchment. Chang tore it open: a lock of auburn hair, tied with black twine. He knew the colour at once. Celeste had come, and whatever her hopes or the Contessa’s plans, Vandaariff had claimed her.
Chang turned the iron knob, a glass globe ready in his other hand. On the floor inside lay an envelope sealed with blue wax. Chang tore it open and tipped a blue glass disc onto his palm. Words had been stamped round its edge. He had enough Latin from his student days, before his life had changed, but disliked the memory.
Date et dabitur vobis. Give and it shall be given to you.
White robes edged in green hung in a line on one wall. Below each robe waited a pair of felt slippers – as at the Raaxfall works, to prevent any hobnailed spark near the powder. Chang tucked the disc into a trouser pocket, with the lock of hair. Before him, extending for ten yards from wall to wall, a bed of gravel barred his way – like an ornamental path, save the rocks were dark as coal, and amongst them glittered hundreds of glass spurs. The black stones must be the concentrated explosive that had powered the devices, the same they’d set off on the dock. The gravel bed was too wide to leap, and from the felt slippers outside he assumed that to advance wearing boots such as his own risked triggering the charge.
But if the explosives showed what Vandaariff had pillaged from the Xonck arsenal, beyond them lay the first real sign of the Comte’s alchemy. Between the explosives and the far doorway the floor was covered by seven rows of wide coloured tiles. A glance told Chang that the plates were not flush with the floor. Had they been laid atop the layer of explosives? Even if the felt slippers permitted a person to cross the exposed area safely, the first pressure on the metal tiles would create the same effect as his nailed boots and set off an inferno. As he stared he realized the tiles were made of the blended glass that Vandaariff had developed, each tempered by the infusion of different metals. Suddenly the puzzle was clear: the proper seven tiles – which lay atop inert material – would carry a person safely to the door. One only needed to know the alchemical order.
He kicked off his boots and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. He carefully laid one foot onto the bed of explosive coal and sharpened discs, trusting the thickness of the felt. He took another step … then another … finally reaching the glass tiles. Could he put his weight upon them without the tiles breaking? What if it was only Vandaariff’s joke? And if it wasn’t – which tile to choose?
He let his mind return to the room at Raaxfall … the table … Vandaariff and the different coloured cards … ‘We start with iron’ …
The light in the horrid room at Raaxfall had been bad, and his eyes even worse. He could not recall what the cards had truly looked like. Chang pulled off his left glove and extended his hand over the tiles, gently touching them with the tips of his fingers. At the third tile the taste of blood filled his mouth, as had happened with the first glass card. He stepped carefully onto the tile. No explosion. Suddenly he wondered who else might need to follow this path. What if that person was Svenson or Cunsher? He took out Foison’s knife and scratched an x in the corner of the tile.
Next came gold, and a memory of a cracking heat inside his bones. This required an accurate hop of several feet, but he landed neatly. Another x.
He advanced two more rows, but each time the memory grew fainter, for the cards had begun to derange his senses. At the fifth row, Chang frowned. Past a certain point he’d shut his mind to the pain. Three tiles remained. He knew proper reasoning existed, that the metals in each tile carried associations with planets, the zodiac, the Hebrew alphabet, bodily parts –
Chang looked back. In the doorway stood four men in green, with carbines, but they did not shoot. Their task was to prevent retreat. Chang stepped – the very length of his long stride – to a tile shot with streaks of milky white. How he’d known it came next he could not say. He scraped the knife against the glass.
This very trial showed the ridiculous nature of the Comte’s alchemy. It was not a question of whether it worked – something always worked – but if the choice between an infusion of mercury or silver was rendered consequential only by volatile explosives, their alchemical qualities meant nothing with regard to his reaching the door alive …
Still, he must suffer these trappings. What planet went with silver? He’d no idea. At the touch of his fingers on a tile of streaked violet his teeth ached sharply, as if his mouth had been crammed with ice. He stepped onto the tile, hacked an x in the corner, then jumped to a bilious tile in the seventh and last row that he knew he’d not yet used. No explosion.
Chang marked his x, then reached under the helmet and tugged at the seal, wincing as he pulled off the awkward thing. He shook his head, eyes bare and blinking, and faced the four soldiers. He gave them a sardonic nod, which was returned by their leader, whose eyes were ringed with scars. Chang straightened, then whipped a glass sphere straight at the man, so it burst against his chest. As all four crumpled, Chang slipped through the door. Only a fool kept an enemy at his back.
In the next room Chang found the Comte d’Orkancz – although not in body. Whereas the rest of the remade Harschmort had been expedient and raw, this was the man’s vision to the last detail: sconces shaped like open wounds, murals of elongated Byzantine bodies, blue carpets with lurid orange beasts. Every carpet made a path from a doorway – one in each wall of an octagonal room – to its centrepiece: a fountain of clear glass, whose pipes and chambers looped in two intertwined but separate routes, not unlike a human heart. The fluid gush
ing through one chamber was blue, and through the other orange.
The fountain’s rim was inscribed. Imbibo frater vivo.
Chang restored his spectacles. Drink, brother, and live … not damned likely.
He glanced at the other doors. Did each hide a corridor of explosives? Would others – Schoepfil, Svenson, the Contessa – be driven to their own particular trial? It seemed ridiculous. While proving oneself worthy might well be a tenet of an alchemical treatise like The Chemickal Marriage, here it could result in the deaths of those persons Vandaariff had already selected – and protected – for their participation. What if Chang had chosen wrongly, and blown off his own skull? Where would Vandaariff’s great experiment be then? Was he so confident that his most desired guests knew the answers – and so willing to eliminate anyone else?
Chang worked quickly around the room. Every way was locked save the double doors on the far side of the fountain. These revealed a dim room with a squat rostrum studded with knobs and switches. Chang took a step and knocked his chin into a wall of glass, flush with the archway – the glass appeared to be built into the frame. He tapped it with his fingers, then his fist. The barrier was too thick to shatter without a hammer or axe.
On the far side of the small room was an identical archway, presumably sealed off as well, beyond which lay another large room, with an array of Vandaariff’s machines connected to five large porcelain tubs.
Chang turned to the fountain. Did Vandaariff seriously expect him to choose between orange or blue, when the wrong choice meant death? And what in hell could the right one mean, apart from fulfilling Vandaariff’s intent? In the room at Raaxfall there had been an eighth card, of bright orange glass, the experience of which had nearly killed him. For Vandaariff the orange card had represented a kind of completion …
Give and it shall be given. Chang fished the blue glass disc from his pocket, studying the pathways inside the fountain … and saw, right where the streams curled in a helix, two narrow openings in the glass …
The Chemickal Marriage Page 45