The Dark Volume Part 27

"So has Leveret."

"Leveret's a dull clot. He will be as obvious in his hiding place as a schoolboy crouching under a table."

"Is Charlotte Trapping a clot?"

"Even more than Leveret! She is a society widow. She is marooned-she has no skills. The powerful brother has lost his mind, and the other brother... has vanished."

"Along with the Contessa, and everyone else on the airship."

"Quite a tragic journey, that," said the Captain. "A comprehensive loss for the nation."

Chang studied the man's face, as he knew the man studied his. The Captain had been in the train yard along with Chang-it was entirely possible he too had seen the Contessa and Xonck. In fact, he must have seen them-why else would the Ministries be searching Stropping with such vigor?

"As you say... there may be opportunities... Mrs. Trapping-" The Captain spoke carefully.

"What can a woman matter?" Chang interrupted. "Especially her?"

"The Privy Council believes Mrs. Trapping matters a great deal. Makes a fellow think..."

"Think what?" asked Chang, stepping closer.

The dragoon glanced at the knife blade and then up to Chang, girlish curls framing a mirthless smile. "That the Privy Council has lost its head."

"Get out your key."

CHANG TOSSED the dragoon's saber behind him on the chaise. He looked into the open coffin where the Captain lay, arms tucked tightly to his sides, face set with displeasure.

"What is your name?" asked Chang.

"Tackham. David Tackham."

"They will find you when we arrive, if not before."

"I a.s.sure you, it is not necessary-"

"It is this or cutting your throat," said Chang.

"My point being, such a choice does not have to be-"

"What do you know of this Fochtmann?"

Tackham sighed. "Nothing at all. Engineer-invented some useful... thingummy."

"And Rawsbarthe?"

"Another Foreign Ministry stick insect. Why the Duke entrusts such weak tea to do his bidding-"

"Where is Margaret Hooke?"

"Who?"

"Mrs. Marchmoor."

"Who?"

"Where is Charlotte Trapping?"

"As I have told you-"

"Who is Eloise Dujong?"

"I've not the slightest idea-"

"Then where is Captain Smythe?"

Tackham was taken aback and smiled, unsure of the question's intent.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Captain Smythe," snarled Chang. "Your brother officer."

"Yes, of course-I just don't know why you would be asking, of all people!"

"Answer me."

"Captain Smythe is dead. Shot in the back and strangled where he lay-on the roof of Harschmort House, before the airship went aloft. Shot and strangled by you, according to every account I have heard. a.s.suming you are the infamous Cardinal Chang..."

Chang was no longer listening. He dropped the gla.s.s lid into place and shot the bolts, trapping Tackham inside. Perhaps the man would be able to kick his way free. Chang did not especially care.

THE LIGHT in the next car was all wrong-brighter than it should have been. Chang craned his head around the wall of what he a.s.sumed was the first compartment, only to see that the compartment was not only empty of people, but of seats and luggage racks as well. Moreover, the walls between this compartment and the next two had been knocked down. Chang silently crossed this opened s.p.a.ce, and craned round again to find another three compartments enlarged into one. This new room was cluttered with boxes and occupied by a man in a black coat, sitting with his back to Chang at a table of stacked crates piled high with notebooks. Chang did not move... and neither did the man. Chang stalked closer, slipping the dagger from his stick. The man's face was pale, red around the nose and eyes. A crust of blood lined his nearer ear. He rocked gently with the motion of the train, upright but quite asleep.

If the train was going to Harschmort with so much empty s.p.a.ce, its aim must be to collect whatever of the Comte's scientific paraphernalia still remained. What would prompt such an expedition, and on such a scale? It could not have been the return of Francis Xonck- Aspiche and his men had orders to collect the black car before Xonck arrived at Stropping, probably even before Tackham could have confirmed Xonck was alive. Chang imagined all the t.i.tled and moneyed adherents the Cabal had suborned for various schemes, all waiting greedily, desperate for the orders that would make them exceedingly rich and powerful... and yet it was clear, from the soldiers controlling Stropping Station and the reclamation of the black car, that something was happening. Was the plotting of Aspiche and Rawsbarthe part of it? Or were they already the first sign of rebellion?

There was one more compartment. Going to it would put Chang in the line of sight of the sleeping man, but even if the fellow woke, who could he call for help?

Chang peered around the wall. Curled on the far seat lay a girl in a lilac dress, perhaps eight years old, and next to her, his head having sagged into the girl's lap, a boy of five in a black velvet suit. The near row of seats held a still-younger boy, in a matching suit, save he had kicked off his shoes. He sat next to another sleeping man in a black coat with a sheaf of papers on his lap. Chang tilted his head to see the man's face: fair, with a pale waxed moustache, just enough like the dip lomat Bas...o...b.. to spark contempt. The face bore no signs of the degenerative pallor. The man's fingernails, however, were splitting and red. Another look at the man's face-the eyelids were noticeably gummed-and Chang stepped back from view.

These were Charlotte Trapping's three children.

He looked again, only to find the girl, eyes now open, staring directly back at him. Chang froze. The girl did not make a sound. She glanced quickly to her sleeping Ministry guardian, then to Chang's black lenses. Her face betrayed no fear-though he knew her world had been uprooted like a tree, both parents gone, in the custody of men she did not know. His own appearance must seem to her like something from a carnival. Yet the girl merely watched him.

The chilling air above a winter stream A stab of doubt enrobing every day Why did this come into his head now? More of DuVine's "Christina," a poem Chang did not so much enjoy as feel subject to. With his painstaking reading habits he had lived in the work's incandescent world for days-an archaic story of a woman bewitched by a wizard who had died, taking to his grave the secret of her enchantment, and of her doomed lover, unable to penetrate the magic-"a sheet of lead enwrapping a corse"-yet unwilling to abandon his love... or was it merely impossible to remember a life before his efforts?

None of this was helping.

He could do nothing for the Trapping girl. In two steps Chang was through the far door, hoping the sudden rush of noise from the platform did not wake the other children or the man. Before him was the coal wagon. As he climbed to it, the train rattled past Raaxfall Station without slowing. At this pace they would reach the Orange Locks in under an hour.

CHANG LEAPT off the train-hanging from the coal wagon ladder- half-way between St. Porte and Orange Locks. He landed without breaking his ankle and rolled into the cover of a copse of low trees. He stayed down until the train was well past, collected his stick from where he had thrown it before jumping, and began his hike to Robert Vandaariff's mansion.

Why had he not cut Tackham's throat? Was it because the man had revealed himself as the greedy minion of fools? Or was Chang still hesitant to spill the blood of any 4th Dragoon? Captain Smythe had saved his life more than once, and the lives of Miss Temple and Svenson. Chang felt his jaw tighten at the utter waste of the man's death-shot from behind, on the roof of Harschmort, and no doubt finished off by Francis Xonck. Was that a surprise? What other reward did decency receive in this world? Chang shook his head. Tackham must be newly promoted in Smythe's stead-Aspiche's handpicked favorite. And yet, for all that he despised Aspiche as a hypocritical a.s.s, Chang had to allow that the man knew his soldiering-and knew his men. Tackham's character was no mystery to Aspiche-and the choice simply confirmed where Aspiche's intentions truly lay, as fully evidenced by the conversation he'd just overheard in the black railcar. It was the ambition of such trusted underlings as Roger Bas...o...b.. and Caroline Stearne that had brought the Cabal to ruin in the airship. Why should Colonel Aspiche be any more loyal?

Chang's mind went back to Tackham. That he had been an instant away from killing him in the woods meant nothing-such careening circ.u.mstances could happen to anyone. The man was unquestionably dangerous. Chang spat into a ditch as he jumped across, his heels sinking into the muddy earth. No, it did mean one thing: Tackham would be particularly keen to cut him down.

The idea was a whetstone for Chang's bitterness. He vaulted another ditch, wider than the last, the water's surface swirling with what looked like ash. Harschmort was visible now, like the ridged scar of a bullet in an expanse of unblemished skin. He wondered about its master, shut indoors under false quarantine. Was there anything remaining of the man who had once bent a continent to his will?

BEARING IN mind that the party from the train might arrive before him in their coaches, Chang angled his approach well to the far side of the gardens, between the estate and the sea. Several hollows within the dunes had been flecked with ash, probably just the normal burning of leaves or scrub that came with any garden the ridiculous size of Harschmort's. By the time he approached a scatter of outlying sheds his attention was focused on anyone watching from the French doors or an upstairs window. Chang waited, saw no one, and dashed across to the nearest fragile gla.s.s door. A quick jab of his dagger into the lock, and one sharp turn to pop the bolt. He was in.

Robert Vandaariff's office and private apartments lay on the opposite side of the ma.s.sive house, but Chang was near to at least one of his targets. He poked his head into a white-tiled corridor that ran the length of the entire wing, off of which lay the stairway to the lower levels. He readied his stick, for the corridor was not empty.

An elderly man in black livery lay on his back, his face dark and wet. Chang advanced quietly, close to the wall. The servant's eyelids fluttered. Blood had poured from his nose and smeared itself over the near half of his face, but the nose itself was not bruised or red-it did not seem he had been struck. Chang looked up. Farther down the hallway, toward the center of the house...a strangled cry...a man's voice? He waited. Silence, but in it as he listened, even to his limited senses, penetrated the odor of smoke. Could the garden fires have drifted indoors? Chang abruptly stepped to the staircase door, and hurried down.

THE COMTE'S laboratory was a blackened shambles. Chang stood in the doorway, attempting to remember the room as it had been, the better to discern the intentions of whoever had set the fire. That it was deliberate he had no question, and from the density of the reek he knew it had occurred within the last few days. He stepped over a fallen beam and the half-charred remnants of a wooden chair. To the left had been the Comte's laboratory proper. This had been the center of the fire (not surprising, given the density of volatile chemicals), and the balcony above it was completely consumed, the stone walls behind scorched to the cracked and blackened ceiling. Books had been pulled from the walls and hurled into the flames, along with the Comte's implements, now reduced to twisted lumps of metal sticking up from the ashes. Indeed, it seemed like every sign of the Comte d'Orkancz's work had been purposefully destroyed-except...

Chang's eyes went to the walls, where the Annunciation had been hung. This was an enormous canvas cut into thirteen parts, portraying the Comte's blasphemous interpretation of Mary's visitation from the angel (whose skin was a tell-tale blue). Seen in isolated fragments, the painting's lurid s.e.xual intent might not have been immediately apparent, but with the slightest study the nasty amus.e.m.e.nt infusing the artist's composition was both obvious and appalling. But most importantly, the rear of each canvas had been covered with alchemical formulae-explaining, if one knew how to read the Comte's symbolic codes, vital secrets about the properties of indigo clay. That these too had been destroyed...

Chang frowned, comparing the scorch marks on that part of the wall with the rest of the room-there was no difference at all. If the thirteen paintings had burned, the chemicals embedded in the paint should have marked the walls with the same livid whorls of burnt color scored across the marble worktop. He took another few steps, wondering if the paintings had simply been taken from the walls and thrown into the fire directly-it was possible, to be sure... but was it also possible they had been saved? It all depended on who had set the blaze and why. Chang took another step, and a curl of gla.s.s popped to pieces beneath his boot.

The skin at the back of his neck suddenly went cold. The floor was littered with gla.s.s-broken, blackened, but still glinting blue... Angelique.

Chang knelt despite himself, setting his stick on the floor, and reached out a gloved hand, touching the pieces-faceted pebbles, with one or two long, curving fragments-with just the tips of his fingers, gently, as if he were tracing them across her skin.

In the corridor were footsteps and he spun on his heels, one hand snapping up the stick and the other-the most natural and yet the stupidest impulse in the world-stabbing down at the floor to maintain his balance. Chang felt the sharp pain in his palm, just as the black cloak of Francis Xonck flitted past the doorway. But then Xonck was forgotten, for when the blue gla.s.s shard penetrated his flesh, Chang's mind was suddenly swallowed up... with hers.

ANGELIQUE STOOD in her small room at the Old Palace brothel, wearing a pale silk robe, her hair hanging wet and fragrant with sandal-wood-Chang knew the smell only because she herself had taken such pleasure in it, but he experienced it now, the sensation of scent, in his mind, with a deranging vividness well beyond him in life-facing an open cabinet set with five empty shelves. On a chair next to her and on the small pallet bed were piles of clothing, dresses and robes and underthings and shoes, and then a small carved wooden box, cheaply bought from the markets near St. Isobel's. From her memory he knew the box contained every bit of meager jewelry that she owned. As she looked at the empty shelves, Chang felt from Angelique such a surge of pleasure-of arrival, of security, of an answer so gratefully received to a question Chang himself had never wanted to ask-and he realized that this was her first-ever room of her own, where her things would not be stolen, where she might put a printed postcard or a picture cut from a colored newspaper on the wall without it disappearing the next day-and her happiness, to begin to place her clothing in the cabinet, rejoicing in the extent of her possessions, shifting each piece with delight from shelf to shelf just to stretch out the task, beaming with pleasure at her escape from the degradations of the brothels that had so far been her life, chuckling with antic.i.p.ation at the advantages she was sure to find, at the mere prospect of- CHANG WRENCHED the shard from his palm and threw it into the wreckage, tearing the glove from his stricken hand, his concentration desperately held in the face of the continuing-a pulsing echo even after the gla.s.s was gone-repet.i.tion of Angelique's captured happiness pressing inescapably at his brain. The glove came off at last and he saw his palm starred with blue gla.s.s-newly made from contact with his own blood, a fat, flattened, still-biting spider-his fingers clutching at its impossibly cold burn. Thankful it had gone into his left hand, Chang pulled the razor from his pocket and flicked it open. With an excruciating burst of pain he sliced under the gla.s.s and then, blood pooling brightly beneath the blade, did his best to pry it up. For a moment it would not come, pulling cruelly. Chang bit his lip, digging deeper with the razor. The spiked lozenge of gla.s.s flipped free, leaving his palm a raw, seething mess. Chang swore aloud. He wrapped a handkerchief tight around the wound, pulling the knot with his teeth. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his stick and stumbled after Xonck-how much time had he lost? Chang reeled like a drunkard but kept going, the smell of her hair in his mind like a poison.

He burst back onto the main floor, past the unmoving elderly servant, striding too recklessly toward the center of the house. Ahead of him were jostling footsteps, voices, a crowd of people-Aspiche and his Dragoons? No, it was a gang of servants from Harschmort, all in Vandaariff's black livery, rushing ahead of him into the ballroom. Chang felt a spur of curiosity-it was easier than thinking-and followed. Someone shouted over the tumble of voices-a man just come in from the French doors. Chang could not see him, but his voice was loud and very angry.

"Let me have it!" the man cried. "There is no time!"

"But it is mine!" protested the servant.

"There is no time!" the man cried again, and lunged-Chang could tell from the sudden swirl of bodies-wrestling desperately for whatever it was he sought.

Without warning, the memory of Angelique in her room rose to swallow him once more. Again he was in her body, but this time more deeply, feeling so intimately the strength of her limbs, the weight of them, the particular distribution of female flesh, the pins in her hair, and all of it infused with her happiness.

He shook his head like a dog, keeping his gla.s.ses in place with his bandaged hand, wondering what had set off the spell-a perfume, the sight of an open cabinet? He had pried the gla.s.s out of his hand-the memory ought to be gone! And yet he could sense it still, gliding beneath the surface of his thoughts like a pike-fish in a pond, waiting to sink its sweet teeth into his scarcely coherent will. He snapped his eyes to the open French door and the suddenly motionless crowd of servants.

From the garden came a pistol shot, and then a hideous scream.

HE SHOULDERED his way into the garden. A second, more terrible fire had caused the ornamental garden to collapse in on the cathedral chamber below, leaving a ma.s.sive ruined pit from which fumes and foul vapors continued to rise. Near to the edge, grappling like unnatural statues amidst the scorched greenery, were Francis Xonck and Mrs. Marchmoor. Xonck writhed against the gla.s.s woman's hand, two fingers of which were buried in his chest like a dagger. On the gra.s.s lay two men: one by his iron-grey hair and blue sash Chang knew as the Duke of Staelmaere; the other, his head bloodied, looked like a Ministry peon. Directly in front of Chang but facing the garden stood a second Ministry official, a smoking pistol extended in his hand. But the man hesitated to shoot again, for Mrs. Marchmoor and Francis Xonck were still entwined.

Chang had no such scruples. He stabbed the tip of his stick hard into the Ministry man's right kidney, deftly s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistol as the man arched his back in pain, and then kicked the back of the fellow's knee, dropping him to the gra.s.s. Chang strode toward the conjoined pair of his enemies and fired, the pistol kicking at his grip. The bullet flew between them-it was not his weapon, or perhaps he could not choose which of the two he more wanted to kill-and cut across Margaret Hooke's wrist, chipping the gla.s.s and sending a single pale fissure forward into her hand. Xonck grunted with pain and twisted, exerting pressure on the damaged hand. As Chang aimed again, her wrist began to give, puffs of blue smoke rising out from the cracks. Xonck hurled himself away, screaming with agony, and the hand sheared off, its jagged stump sparking gla.s.s chips like the spout of a spitting kettle.

Chang staggered, as if he had borne the great blast of a silent explosion. He looked behind him. The servants of Harschmort had as one collapsed to their hands and knees, holding their heads in pain. He could not hear. He looked back to Mrs. Marchmoor, waving her broken limb like a smoking branch, staggering. Xonck was on his back, pulling at the shattered fingers still penetrating his chest. How had the silent explosion of Margaret Hooke's anguish left him standing while flattening everyone else?

Chang raised the pistol for another shot. Angelique... He felt the rising sensation of her flesh once more, in every limb-he shook his head, it was no time-it was never time, was not right, could not be borne, how could she be in him when he knew she had not cared? He blinked his eyes-he could not free his mind-he could not see-he fired blindly at the woman, then just as recklessly at Xonck. Angelique would not leave him. Chang thrashed like a bull beset with stinging bees, except the bees were all beneath his skin. He moaned at the complete idiocy of his predicament, even as he sank helpless to his knees, and his mind surrendered to the feel of silk pyjamas.

Six. Ca.n.a.l.

DOCTOR SVENSON stared at the purple stone in the trainsman's open palm for three seconds, just long enough for the men encircling him to take in his silence and the stricken pallor of his face, before reaching to take it with his left hand, his right occupied with Mr. Potts' revolver. The man who had spoken still indicated with an extended arm the first compartment car of the train. Without a word Svenson walked toward it, his pace quickening. He was up the five iron stairs in two steps, and then, far too soon it seemed, standing at the compartment's open door.

Eloise lay in her black dress, with one arm pinned beneath her and the other awkwardly splayed above her head. Svenson set the revolver on the nearest seat and sank to his knees, whispering her name. Be hind in the corridor came shuffling bootsteps. Svenson turned, aware that his face was flushed and that his voice held firm by the scarcest margin.

"Send men to search! The killers! They could still be anywhere!" Svenson shifted forward, stuffing the purple stone into the pocket of his trousers, again whispering her name as if it were a spell. He placed two fingers against the pulse in her throat. Her flesh was still warm... but cooling... he felt nothing... but then-some birdlike tremor, was it possible? No, his own hands were shaking-he was unable to perform a simple examination, nerves of an untempered student. If he had only been here sooner, even a few minutes! His boots ground unpleasantly against the floor. He looked down and saw glittering dust-a scattering of shattered blue gla.s.s across the polished wood.

Francis Xonck. If Svenson had not been such a helpless wretch at the mining camp-if it had been Chang instead of him-Eloise might still be living.

He delicately rolled her onto her back, wincing at the lifeless loll of her head-at the base of her sternum, a dark circle, smaller than his monocle, soaking the black fabric and catching the lantern light... blood. The relatively small amount spoke to a deep, suddenly mortal wound. He touched the stain with a finger to judge how long ago it had occurred.

The stain was solid and clicked against his nail, like a shining black coin set into the cloth. It was gla.s.s.

"A knife-sharp as you have-at once!"

He snapped his fingers as the men hurriedly patted their pockets, aware he was again burying heartbreak under a shovelful of useless effort. He looked down at Eloise's impossibly pale face...

Doctor Svenson's breath stopped. Was it only the light? At once he feverishly dug into his coat. A man stepped forward with a knife.

"Not now-not now!" he cried, and pulled free his silver cigarette case.

He rubbed the shining surface violently across his trouser-leg and leaned forward, cradling her head and holding the polished metal directly before her parted lips. He waited... waited... bit his lip hard enough to draw blood... and then felt a surge of desperate joy as the surface fogged ever so delicately, an infinitesimal pearling.

"This woman is alive!" he cried. "Hot water! Clean linen-whatever you have! At once!"

Svenson thrashed out of the horrible stiff coat. He snapped his fingers again at the man with the knife, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away-an old penknife, its thin blade nothing near sharp enough. He put a hand again to Eloise's throat and then her forehead, which was cold and moist, and unb.u.t.toned the black dress to either side of the tight gla.s.s disk, which seemed fixed through to her skin. Svenson carefully plucked up the dress and sawed a quick circle around the gla.s.s. The wound was just at the lowest joint of her rib cage. Had the cartilage shattered Xonck's gla.s.s stiletto, or had the blade thrust past, penetrating her vital organs? That would be an injury he could scarcely address with a fully equipped surgical theatre.

He gently palpated the paper-white skin around the dark lozenge, seeking the submerged hardness of a deeper plume of gla.s.s. The skin was colder around the wound. Her lips had darkened in the seconds she'd been on her back. Svenson turned savagely to the men cl.u.s.tered at the door.

"Where is the water? She will die without it!"

A man in a blue uniform edged toward Svenson and cleared his throat. "The train, sir... the schedule-"

"I do not give a d.a.m.n for your schedule!" cried Svenson.

A ring of blued flesh was spreading before his eyes across Eloise's abdomen. He could not wait for the water. He pulled the skin taut with the fingers of his left hand and edged the knife beneath the disk of gla.s.s. A sharp chop and the gla.s.s came free, leaving only a few splintered chips. Eloise gasped, but when he glanced to her face she was no closer to her senses. What was more, part of the wound had coagulated at once back into gla.s.s. The remaining hole was small, perhaps a half inch wide-but how deep did it go? How could he dig without any way to control the bleeding? Would more bleeding simply transform into more blue gla.s.s and make things worse? Svenson was sure it was the toxic quality of the gla.s.s itself, more than the puncture, that was killing her. He thought back to Chang's damaged lungs. The orange liquid-if only he had some now!-had dissolved the gla.s.s Chang had inhaled, allowing him to spit it up like the gelatinous detritus of any chest cold, removing it in a way surgery never could have. And once it was done the man had regained his strength with striking rapidity.

But Svenson had no orange liquid. There was nothing else for it. He inserted the knife blade into the wound-and then cursed out loud in German as the entire compartment lurched around him. The train was moving.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n!" he cried to the men in the doorway. "What is this idiocy?"

"It is the schedule," protested the uniformed conductor. "I have tried to explain-"

"She will die!" barked Svenson.

None of the cl.u.s.tered men spoke, stepping away as the conductor appeared in the doorway.