The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  “Your Grace?” Miss Temple ventured.

  The Duke did not stir. Miss Temple crept carefully closer. The smell here was different, the noisome, waxy reek smothered in jasmine perfume. Still he did not move, not even to blink his glassy eyes. She took another hesitant step, slowly extending one arm, and at the tip of that arm a finger toward his nearest hand, large-knuckled and knotted with rings. When her finger touched the clammy skin, the Duke's face snapped toward her, a movement as sharp as a cleaver cutting meat. Miss Temple yelped in surprise and leapt back.

  Before she could gather words to speak, her ears—though not her ears at all, for she felt the noise erupt within her head—rebounded with brittle, sliding laughter. The glass woman emerged through a gap in the tapestries, wrapped in a heavy cloak, her hands and face reflecting the gaslight's glow.

  “You are alive!” whispered Miss Temple.

  In answer, the unpleasant laughter came again—like a needle dragged across her teeth—and with a sudden flick of intention Mrs. Marchmoor—the glass woman—caused the Duke to turn his head just as sharply away.

  Miss Temple ran for the door. It had been locked. She turned to face the woman—the glass creature—the slick blue surface of her flesh, the impassive fixity of her expression belied by the wicked amusement in her laugh, and the subtle curl of her full, gleaming lips.

  She had seen three glass women paraded by the Comte before the gathered crowds at Harschmort, each naked but for a collar and leash— like strange beasts from deepest Africa captured and sent to Rome to astonish a dissolute Emperor. The last of the three, Mrs. Marchmoor—a courtesan, born Margaret Hooke, the daughter of a bankrupt mill owner—was quite obviously no longer human. But was she sane?

  “At your feet,” hissed the voice inside Miss Temple's skull. “Bring it to me.”

  The canvas sack lay on the carpet, where Fordyce must have set it.

  “Do it. No one will come. No one will hear you.”

  Miss Temple walked forward with the sack and set it onto the desk with care. Then, glancing once into Mrs. Marchmoor's unsettling and predatory blue pearl eyes, she shucked the canvas away without touching the surface of the blue glass, exposing it to the air.

  “Explain.”

  “I took it from Francis Xonck,” said Miss Temple, with a sort of shrug that she hoped conveyed that this had been no particular challenge for her. “I can only assume he took it from the trunk of books on the airship.”

  Mrs. Marchmoor floated closer to the book, gazing intently into its depths.

  “It is not from the trunk…”

  “But it must be,” said Miss Temple. “Where else?”

  “The book itself perhaps, but not what lies within—the mind… is new…”

  Mrs. Marchmoor extended one slender arm toward the book, the cloak falling away to either side, the fingers of her hand uncurling like the stalks of some unclassified tropical plant. Miss Temple gasped. At the point where the woman's fingertip ought to have clicked against the cover like a tumbler striking a table top, it instead passed directly through, as if into water.

  “Glass… is a liquid…” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor.

  At the first intrusion of her finger the book began to glow. She slowly inserted the whole of her hand, and then, like the curling smoke from a cigarette, twisting, glowing azure lines began to swirl inside the book. Mrs. Marchmoor cocked her head and extended her fingers, as if she were tightening the fit of a leather glove. The lines wrapped more tightly around her and glowed more brightly—yet Miss Temple was sure that something was wrong. Then the gleam went out, and Mrs. Marchmoor retracted her hand, the surface of the book top never once betraying a single ripple at her passage.

  “Can you… can you read it?” asked Miss Temple.

  Mrs. Marchmoor did not respond. Miss Temple felt a harsh pressing at her mind, cold and uncaring, and stumbled backward in fear.

  “Simply ask me!” she squealed.

  “You will lie.”

  “Not when I know you can enter my mind as easily as one sticks a spoon in a bowl!” Miss Temple held out her hand. “Please—I have seen what you have done to the people in this place—I have no desire to lose my hair or see my skin split by sores!”

  “Is that what I have done?” asked Mrs. Marchmoor.

  “Of course it is—you must know very well!”

  The glass woman did not respond. Miss Temple heard her own quick breath and was ashamed. She forced herself to swallow her fear, to pay attention, to think. Why was her enemy silent?

  “I do not see anyone, Celeste,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor, carefully. “I remain in this room and only rummage what minds are near. I cannot go out. I am not unaware of your reaction to my … form— yours and everyone else's. I am alone. I am alone in the world. I have been waiting for word, but no word has come.”

  “You sent soldiers, didn't you?” asked Miss Temple. “Did they tell you nothing?”

  “What happened on the airship?”

  “Quite a lot happened,” replied Miss Temple nervously. She pointed to the Duke. “What happened to Colonel Aspiche?”

  A trilling series of clicks in Miss Temple's head told her Mrs. Marchmoor was chuckling.

  “That was very clever of you. But I stopped the Colonel in time. I cleansed his mind. I can do that. I have discovered that I can do all kinds of things.”

  “But you can't do anything with him.” Miss Temple gestured again toward the sepulchral Duke. “If anyone but Fordyce gets a glimpse— or a whiff—of him, they'll know something's wrong. Everyone outside is most agitated, you know.”

  Mrs. Marchmoor's rage struck Miss Temple's mind like a hammer.

  “I could kill you,” the glass woman snarled. “I could skin your mind like a cat and keep it dancing in an agony you cannot conceive.”

  “The city is in turmoil,” spat Miss Temple, on her hands and knees, a strand of saliva hanging from her lip. “Someone will force their way in, or the Duke will decay beyond what perfume can hide. His palace will be burned to the ground like a plague house—”

  Another hammer blow and Miss Temple felt the carpet fibers prickling against her cheek. She was lying flat, unable to think. How much time had passed? Had the glass woman already ransacked her memories? Her eyes stung and her teeth ached. The unnatural face loomed above her, its eyes shining as if they'd been slickened with oil. The fingers of Mrs. Marchmoor's hands moved slowly as her mind worked, like sea grasses in a gentle current.

  “In the airship,” Miss Temple gasped, “every one of your masters plotted against the others. You say you have discovered new talents, yet I am certain the Comte set controls on your independence. Why else would you hide in this tomb?”

  “I am not hiding. I am waiting.”

  Despite her aching mind, Miss Temple smiled.

  “I wonder… are you more frightened that none of the others possesses his knowledge… or that one of them does?”

  “I have nothing to fear from the Contessa or from Francis Xonck.”

  “Is that why you sent men to kill them?”

  “I sent men to find them, Celeste. And to find you. I can take whatever I need from your mind. I can leave you dead.”

  “Of course you can,” admitted Miss Temple, with a nervous breath. “You kept me alive to talk to me—but if I live still, it has to do with that book… and everything you fear.”

  Mrs. Marchmoor was silent, but Miss Temple could see flecks of brightness flitting inside her like sparks from an open fire at night. There was no telling what secrets the woman had plucked from the minds of those around her. Like a hidden spider at the heart of the Palace, with every day Mrs. Marchmoor extended her knowledge beyond the Cabal.

  The door opened for Fordyce, shuffling his feet and breathing wetly. He tottered directly to the seated Duke and executed as deferential a bow as his precarious balance might allow. From the Duke's decay-riddled chest came a rotting meat wheeze that drove Miss Temple to put a hand across her mouth.


  “Fordyce… the large brougham… private steps… at once.”

  “At once, your Grace.”

  “And those fellows…”

  “Fellows, your Grace?” Fordyce tipped toward the desk and reached out a subtle hand to steady himself.

  “Phelps…” rasped the Duke, stretching the name on the rack of his breath to three ugly syllables. “Crabbé's man… and the other… newly posted… Soames… I require them.”

  “Excellent, your Grace.”

  “And the corridors… as always… cleared.”

  “As always, your Grace. At once.”

  Fordyce tottered from the room without the slightest glance in their direction. Miss Temple flinched as the abrasive hiss filled her mind.

  “You will take the Duke's arm.”

  THE CORRIDORS were indeed empty of all human traffic. With everyone in Stäelmaere House waiting anxiously for the Duke's appearance, the decaying chamberlain's announcement of his departure must have been a blow. Were there topcoated diplomats and Ministers kneeling behind every keyhole as they walked? The Duke's steps were deliberate and slow, but he was stable enough—or Mrs. Marchmoor's control so powerful—that she could brace him with one hand and keep the other over her mouth, for the Duke's perfumed stench was extremely disagreeable. The glass woman herself followed behind, swathed in her thick dark cloak, its hood pulled forward. Only the muffled click of her footfalls betrayed her to Miss Temple's ears, though to anyone else the sound would have merely suggested fashionably Spanish, metal-capped boots.

  Fordyce led the way, his left leg dragging more than before, to a portrait of the young Duke dressed in a dashing hussar uniform, his vicious face and long black hair at odds with the merry profusion of tassels and plumes. To the side of the portrait—the background of which, Miss Temple noticed with a shock, showed a line of severed brown heads on fence-spikes—was another over-carved wooden door. Fordyce clawed it open with shaking hands and stepped aside for them to enter a narrow vestibule, waiting for Mrs. Marchmoor without ever seeming to acknowledge her presence. He nodded gravely and shut them in. Miss Temple grimaced—the air was impossibly close. Were they hiding here while the rest of the Privy Council crept past? She gagged into her hand. Suddenly the entire chamber shuddered. Miss Temple looked over at the glass woman, whose lip curled with a stiff amusement. The entire vestibule was a dumbwaiter—and they were descending.

  The vestibule came to a stop. The door was unlocked from the outside by Mr. Phelps. Behind him waited Mr. Soames—face drawn, eyes ringed with red—earnestly staring down at the floor. Neither man acknowledged Mrs. Marchmoor as she glided past them into a corridor flagged with slate tiling. The air was cooler, as if they had descended far beneath the house.

  “The large brougham…” rasped the Duke. “It is prepared?”

  “It is, your Grace,” answered Phelps. “May I ask our destination?”

  The Duke's voice was a baleful scrape. “The driver knows.”

  BEFORE THEM waited a large black coach, strangely constructed with two distinct compartments, the whole pulled by six enormous black horses. The rear compartment was windowless—almost as if it were part of a hearse—while the forward was every bit a normal sort of carriage. Liveried footmen stood waiting, utterly attentive though avoiding any eye contact, as Mrs. Marchmoor very slowly scaled the small steps into the rear compartment, whose interior was as lushly upholstered as a Turkish sofa. The footmen relieved Miss Temple of the Duke's arm and eased their master up. Once he was settled, they shut the door and opened the front compartment. Miss Temple raced to the far corner without anyone's help. Phelps sat across from her. Soames perched nervously next to Phelps, plucking at the frayed skin of his lower lip with his teeth. The footmen shut the door, called out to the driver, and the coach eased forward so gently it might have carried a cargo of eggs.

  At first the way around them was dark, but then they safely emerged into a cobbled avenue dotted with well-dressed scowling men striding about importantly.

  “The rear of the Kingsway,” observed Phelps, and then, as Miss Temple had no comment, “We are behind the Ministries.”

  “A shame you've no more idea than I where we are off to,” replied Miss Temple.

  Phelps said nothing.

  “What of you, Mr. Soames?” she called, doing her best to smile brightly.

  “I'm sure I couldn't say!” he managed, in an earnest sort of yelp.

  The coach left the white stone warren of the Ministries and flanked the river itself, for she recognized its stone walls and iron railings and saw beyond them open sky.

  For a moment it seemed as if Soames might speak, but he glanced first to his superior and thought better of it. Miss Temple exhaled with a sharp little huff. That she found herself—so quickly upon her return—in the exact sort of situation she had been determined to avoid galled her extremely. So much was happening—the glass woman had forsaken her lair!—and yet here she was cocooned with two utterly bloodless drones. She thought again of Chang standing by the clock, and her anger rose, as if her predicament was entirely his doing.

  “If you think I care that she hears us you are mistaken,” Miss Temple said. “And if you think fawning will save your disease-ridden skins, then you are outright fools.”

  “She?” asked Mr. Soames.

  Miss Temple ignored Soames altogether and leaned to Phelps.

  “Deputy Minister Crabbé is dead,” she hissed. “Roger Bascombe is dead. That part of your plot died with them. She is looking for something in that book! Once she finds it, she will rule every soul in Stäelmaere House as easily as you can butter hot toast.”

  Phelps looked to Soames, but Soames bore the troubled expression of an ailing man whose physicians have begun to speak across his head in Latin.

  “The deprivations of poverty and despair,” Soames offered to Phelps. “Once a girl sheds her virtue, her thoughts become every bit as corrupted as her body—”

  “Be quiet!” spat Phelps to his shocked colleague. Phelps turned back to Miss Temple. “It is pointless to speculate, pointless to discuss. I am bound by an oath to my Queen.”

  “Your Queen?” Miss Temple sneered. “And who do you think that will be in a fortnight? A blue glass monstrosity who but one week ago was an upper echelon whore!”

  The pain took hold of her mind like an iron hand, its fingers bunching tight into a fist through the very fabric of her thoughts, an excruciating crush that shot a thread of blood from each nostril. The two men before her faded to the palest glimmers, as if the coach had been flooded with the brightest summer sun, as if each of her eyes had been somehow smeared with fire. She squeezed shut her eyes, but the brightness blazed through her lids. Into her very soul she felt the malevolent burn of Mrs. Marchmoor's violent disapproval. Miss Temple arched her back, gagging against what felt like an impossibly sustained whip crack along her spine.

  She sat up on one elbow and dabbed at her nose with one hand, pulling it away and looking at her red-tipped fingers. Phelps passed her a folded handkerchief, and she struggled to a sitting position, wiping her face and where the blood had dripped onto her dress. In the center of her thoughts was a buzzing, as if she had not slept for three days.

  Was this how it had begun, for Soames and Fordyce and the other servants of Stäelmaere House? Would she have sores and splitting nails and her hair dropping out in clumps? Did she already? Miss Temple sniffed deeply, refolded the handkerchief, and pressed it quickly to each corner of her eyes. She looked out the window. They had left the city altogether and rode along a country road bordered to either side by wide, flat brown fields of marsh grass. Fen country—and as she formed that thought she smelled a tang of salt in the cooler air. She looked up to meet the gaze of Mr. Phelps.

  “We are going to Harschmort House,” she said.

  THE JOURNEY lasted another hour, during which there was little talk. Phelps had shut his eyes, with only his left hand's restless plucking at a spot of loose plaster on his cast to betray
his wakefulness. Soames slept without any disguise, his mouth open and his posture slack, like a switched-off machine. Despite her own weariness, Miss Temple did not follow their example. There was no reason not to, she knew— even if she were to open the coach door and fling herself to freedom, Mrs. Marchmoor could still reach out and stop her. Miss Temple examined the front of her dress with annoyance, and lifted the stained portions to her mouth and sucked on them one after another, tasting the blood and working the fabric back and forth between her tongue and teeth. Her thoughts sank into a brood.

  If she had followed Francis Xonck and stolen his book out of a determined antagonism to evil, she would have happily curled herself up for a proper nap. But Miss Temple knew, for hers was a habitually lacerating scrutiny, that the daring theft had been spurred by the confusion she felt in the wake of the Contessa's seduction and rebuff—that her stabbing action was in fact a running away. With a growing conviction she began to wonder if the entirety of her adventures, from first following Roger's coach to ending his life inside the airship, had not been a flight from a deeper and unflattering truth about her character and its essential paucity.

  She had no answer for such thoughts save assertion, and her powers of insistence were low. The Contessa had advised her to abandon her adventure utterly. Even Elöise had attempted to dissuade her from any further investigation—was she so certain these warnings were wrong? Her adventures had altered her character—into a woman who had done murder, a woman whose body inflamed to depravity at the merest spark. It was a feral life like Chang's, and rootless like the Doctor's—marked by isolation and anonymity, by danger and, without any question, eventual doom. It was also, Miss Temple bit her lip to admit it, a life like the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza's.