The Dark Volume Part 35

"Why scruple at the house when he has already sacrificed his daughter? The stakes must be beyond imagination! What were you instructed to retrieve? Where are you to take it?"

"I do not know. It was a... a thing. I was told no more."

"But you were given details, a description..."

"I was told it was bright metal, and perhaps the size of..."

She held out her hands and extended her fingers to indicate triggers and k.n.o.bs. She thought of the wicked snouty implement the Comte had employed to violate Lydia Vandaariff and began to describe it. As she spoke Fochtmann set down the quill and began to search through the piled doc.u.ments.

"And it would fit in your case?" he asked.

"Apparently the item folds."

"Ah... as I a.s.sumed..."

Fochtmann pushed one wide page of foolscap across the table to her. She turned it right side up and saw a cross-section diagram of the exact object, labeled in the Comte's hand an "ethereal irrigator." Miss Temple inhaled sharply through both nostrils and met Fochtmann's gaze-anything to look away from the diagram. At the sight of it her flesh crawled, imagining its usage-the p.r.o.ne form of Lydia Vandaariff, limbs secured, legs forced apart, the thickened blue mixture to be extruded from the metal snout at the exactly right temperature. She bit back her disgust-at Lydia's weakness, at the uselessness of women, at the arrogance of human effort, at Fochtmann's idiotic pride. Miss Temple set the page down.

"Aren't you curious where it is?" he asked.

"Not anymore."

"Do not be downhearted. I have seen others far worse off than you."

"Where is the Duke of Staelmaere?"

"Indeed," said Fochtmann, as if her question ill.u.s.trated his point. "Having done a minimal examination, I have to admit, the dynamic properties of this indigo clay are singular. To turn a little thing like death on its d.a.m.ned head..."

Miss Temple ignored him, suppressing the burn in her throat.

"And where is Colonel Aspiche?" she croaked.

Fochtmann frowned at the interruption.

"Where is Robert Vandaariff?" he demanded.

"Where is Mrs. Marchmoor?"

"Where did he take all the machinery?"

"Where is Mrs. Marchmoor?"

"No, you must answer me! Where is Robert Vandaariff? Why does he want this particular tool? Why did he send you?" He slammed both fists onto the table, his long arms like the forelegs of a powerful horse. "You cannot brave me unless you are prepared to brave Mrs. Marchmoor! However... if you cooperate with me now..."

Miss Temple shivered to recall the gla.s.s woman hammering her mind.

"You have no choice," he said, gently as a farmer easing a lamb onto the block.

"It's because you can see, isn't it?" she said. "You understand what this gla.s.s can do, perhaps now more than any man alive... they have employed you like a coachman, but they do not comprehend that you will gain an advantage over them all... over her, over the world."

Fochtmann smiled tightly, immensely pleased with her description.

"What will you do with me?" Miss Temple asked.

"That depends. You must do what I say."

"Must I?"

He chuckled. Miss Temple leaned across the table, as if to share a final secret, daring him to hear it. Despite himself, Fochtmann leaned down to meet her. Her voice was a whisper.

"You were given a chance."

She swung the case with all her strength, for it was well made, with sharp metal corners-one of which caught Mr. Fochtmann's shining forehead like the spike of a chisel. He reeled with a cry, one hand to the wound, blood already pouring through his fingers and across the Comte's papers.

"O! O d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l! Help! Help me-help!"

Instead of running to the door, which had been her first impulse, Miss Temple instead went directly at the weaving, keening man. He saw her coming and croaked his defiance, waving a spattered palm to ward her off, but she swung the case again, with both hands, hard, cracking it straight into his right kneecap. Fochtmann toppled with a squawk at her feet. Miss Temple felt the sickening black presence in the back of her throat. She brought the case down once more on Mr. Fochtmann's head and stopped his movements altogether.

HE WAS still alive, for the bellows of his chest beat like the wet wings of a newborn insect. Miss Temple seriously considered cutting his throat with the knife in her boot-inflamed without even noticing by seven different memories of that very action, nose thick with the remembered smell, hands twitching at how hot the spray-but instead she sensibly crossed to the door and locked it. She returned to the p.r.o.ne man-curious at how out of their element a tall person seems when on the ground, like fish on a tar-baked dock. Ignoring the dark coagulated smears above his face, she stepped to his topcoat, hung on a chair: cigars, matches, a scented handkerchief, a bra.s.s case of visiting cards printed with swirling script on a pale green bond paper (Marcus Fochtmann, Theoretical Engineer, 19 Swedter Street).

The outer pocket contained something heavy and clinking, and Miss Temple extracted a canvas pouch, sewn shut, like a bag of grape-shot for a tiny cannon. She sensed a glimmer of nauseating memory and forced it away-any more and she would vomit. What did every detail matter-no doubt the bag held machine parts-and she shoved it angrily back into his coat.

The final pocket was custom-made, for it was long and perfectly suited for what it in fact held, a rolled piece of stiff vellum. Miss Temple hesitated, but could not prevent herself from unrolling the paper. The sheet held an elegant sketch by the Comte d'Orkancz of a slotted bra.s.s pedestal, trailing thick metal tubes and black hoses. At the sight of the sketch a black acrid surge brought Miss Temple to her knees, gagging, but the harsh strain on her throat was subsumed by a wave of perception as to the pedestal's function. The slot held a gla.s.s book. The tubes and hoses were attached to a person, laid out upon a table-the machine serving to connect the gla.s.s book to that person's mind. Depending on how one set the seven bra.s.s k.n.o.bs, alchemic energy could flow in either direction. If the energy was directed toward the book, the person's mind was drained and the book inscribed with their memories. If the energy was directed toward the person, the book's contents were imprinted on the person's mind, obliterating their own memory-and possibly, if one chose to use the word, their soul.

Miss Temple gasped as if she had been submerged in water and with desperate fury ripped the vellum drawing in half and then half again, pulling the pieces to ragged bits. Her mind swam with black loathing, and when her eyes found Fochtmann laid out next to her, his eyelids fluttering, she was at once caught between the futility of any action and the sharp urge to end his life. The knife lay in her boot. Fochtmann's right hand feebly groped the carpet. He was an enemy. If one saw the world with open eyes, was it anything but cowardice to halt half-way? Chang would not have scrupled to kill him. The Contessa would have slain the man without a qualm. Miss Temple wanted to believe her rage was her own, but as she swayed on her feet she knew it had been contaminated every bit as much as her desire.

With a tremor of fear she tried to remember some moment of her own-some instant she could claim-but found only a new swirl of visions, like the flutters of a dovecote, set loose inside her head. She squeezed her thighs together and sucked hard on her lower lip, appalled at the sudden rush of sweetness in her loins, and groaned (... smooth cool marble against her bare b.u.t.tocks, her fingers, heavy with ecclesiastical signets, forced into a grunting man's mouth...), willing her thoughts to something else-to someone else-but it seemed as if every bit of care and affection in her heart had been translated to mere hunger, the impulse of animals, a callous cycle of need and dissipation, of emptiness and death at the end of everything, woven into each moment, inevitable and cruel. She remembered Chang's hand on her body and gagged, steeped in the horrid futility of each morsel of longing.

MISS TEMPLE wiped her eyes on a sleeve, wishing herself back to a time when everything had always seemed so clear. But how long ago was that? Before leaving her island? Before Roger's letter ended their engagement? Before the gla.s.s book? Miss Temple was not one to care about causes, or about cares in the first place-it was a simpler life without them-but she could not bear being so subject to forces she insisted on seeing as external, as unthinkable plagues. A larger thought hung within her reach-the differences between one death and another, or between her killing of Roger and the hanging of a renegade by her father's overseer... her benefit from each, her partic.i.p.ation in each. More examples flared from the Contessa's book, murders and executions and desperate struggle, those collected lives rising to mirror a secret history she could not deny-how violence, rather than gold, was the true currency of her world, and how in such a world, to her sharp shame, she remained a very wealthy girl indeed.

But Miss Temple appreciated shame no more than criticism, and shoved this unwelcome conclusion away as if it were a malingering servant in her path. On her way to the door she paused to wipe the edges of Lydia's case on the carpet. The last thing she needed was to stain her dress.

MISS TEMPLE realized she had not properly understood the gla.s.s woman. Fochtmann must have been sought out some time ago, perhaps as soon as the airship had been aloft. Even if only in the interest of survival, Mrs. Marchmoor was casting a wider net-hiring her own expert on the gla.s.s, hunting down Charlotte Trapping, ransacking the minds around her for diplomatic advantages. But the Duke's usefulness was only a matter of time, and the gla.s.s woman would need another mouthpiece.

At once Miss Temple saw the gla.s.s woman's plan, and the reason she had come to Harschmort: to implant the contents of the book- the Comte's memories and sensibility-into the vacant mind of Robert Vandaariff. With both the Comte's knowledge and Vandaariff's vast fortune at her call, what need she fear from any survivor of the Cabal- what from any quarter anywhere?

Yet this book was now Miss Temple's. And the Comte's machinery- whose now was that? And where was Robert Vandaariff? Every element of the gla.s.s woman's plan had gone wrong. Miss Temple's torment of minutes before was shoved aside by her own ably working mind-these plagues would prove as tractable as any other apparently devastating tragedy. Did the loss of a mother or a father's violence dog her every step as a woman? Of course not-she scarcely recalled either to mind at all.

Her intention had been to climb through a window and hike across the fens to the train. Yet as she sought the proper ground-floor room, Miss Temple was aware of another possibility, like the echo of her boots against the marble. If Harschmort was riddled with her foes, they were now scattered and beset: Fochtmann bloodied, Rawsbarthe debased, Mrs. Marchmoor perhaps quite literally broken... she asked herself what Chang would do in the same circ.u.mstances and knew he would hunt down whoever had offended him. Miss Temple turned to the more rational Doctor Svenson, and immediately remembered the sad face of young Francesca Trapping. If he were here, the Doctor would no more leave Harschmort now than take the child's life himself.

She allowed herself a sneer at the Doctor's tractability, just on the off chance such sneering might convince her that she could in fact walk on, but it did not, and so Miss Temple stopped, besieged all the more by her own meanness of spirit. There really was nothing wrong with simply saving herself. Indeed, she was certain the Doctor and Chang would both advise this exact course of action for her, while never once considering it for themselves. This realization settled the matter at once.

SHE REACHED an odd hallway lined with marble heads (Romans-a doomed cruelty marked the faces, like animals still ferocious in a cage) and she stopped. On the floor lay a jumble of clothing and broken gla.s.s-shattered champagne flutes by what remained of the stems. The wine was dried but was still tacky beneath her boots. Miss Temple stepped over the mess, but as she went she found more debris-spilled food that had been stepped on, broken masks from the final night's ball, female undergarments-the corridor looking as if it had not been visited once by a servant in the whole intervening week. Finally she reached a set of double doors left ajar, and heard running water, the murmur of voices-and strangest of all, the plink of an out-of-tune piano.

She entered an entirely lovely atrium, with a gla.s.s ceiling and a stone fountain set into the floor, the whole surrounded by tall potted trees. The piano sat beneath the wide, splitting leaves of a banana plant and the man slumped against it-thick-waisted, in his shirtsleeves and stocking feet, a gold-leather mask pulled down around his neck-did not play, but picked at the keyboard with one index finger, like a sated chicken amongst scattered seed. The atrium held at least twenty more people, lolling on chairs and benches or on the tile- men and women kissing each other quite openly, others fast asleep, half-dressed, the floor more littered than the hallway, with bottles and plates and rotting food. Every third person still wore a mask. All had once been arrayed in the finest evening attire, now rumpled or discarded-even exchanged, for more than one woman wore a topcoat or evening jacket, and at least one man-the opened bodice strange against the hair on his chest-a lady's gown. This was the last band of the Cabal's adherents, confounded by appet.i.te and the excess that Harschmort could supply. Miss Temple studied the still bodies she first a.s.sumed were asleep and wondered how many might be dead.

Her foot kicked a toppled winegla.s.s. The man at the piano stopped, turning to her. Others looked up from their absorptions, and soon they were all staring.

"Who is it?" one fellow whispered to a bearded, shirtless man crouched at his feet.

"Have they come back?" called an older woman, her petticoats pulled up above vein-mottled thighs. "Is it time?"

"You don't have a mask," a young woman chided Miss Temple. Another next to her poured brandy into teacups. Both their chins were matted with dried slime. "Everyone has been instructed to wear masks."

"I have just arrived," replied Miss Temple. "I am looking for three children."

The young woman with the brandy bottle began to sn.i.g.g.e.r. Miss Temple kept on, stepping around groping couples-in one case groping men-and felt the rising flush in her limbs. She reached the fountain-happy to find nothing worse than a sunken pair of shoes in the water. They all continued to stare at her.

"There has been a fire," she told them. "Lord Vandaariff is gone."

The woman with the bottle sn.i.g.g.e.red again.

"The soldiers are coming," Miss Temple said. "You should be ready-all of you."

But with the exception of the man at the piano, the tattered adherents had gone back to their dissipation. Miss Temple met the man's gaze, and then he too resumed his distended, internal melody.

IF TACKHAM had been taking the children to the main floor and Mrs. Marchmoor's hand had been mended in the kitchens, then that meant her enemies were gathered in the center part of the house. Miss Temple had just decided to cross the next hallway and try what doors she could, for the people behind her-like animals in a human zoo- made her shiver, when something caught her eye. At first she was frightened to turn, fearing it was another a.s.signation that would bring her to her knees, but it was only a dark mark on the wall, a broken vertical line that indicated a hidden door. She could not stop herself, even if she a.s.sumed it to be full of more revelers. Miss Temple went to the door and opened it wide.

The room was very small, sized for a servant, with a daybed, standing cabinet, writing desk, and several lamps with brightly colored shades. The door from the atrium lacked a k.n.o.b, opening instead by the pressing of a b.u.t.ton-from the outside posing as merely another wall panel. Miss Temple laughed aloud, for the purpose of such a hidden bedchamber directly off such a romantic s.p.a.ce as the garden conservatory was suddenly obvious. The bedcovers had been remade but not cleanly, and the writing desk lay cluttered with items more redolent of a.s.signation than correspondence-ointments, a hairbrush, winegla.s.ses, one of which was smeared with lipstick. Indulging her naughtiness this much, Miss Temple crossed to the bed and sat on it, bouncing to test the firmness. Flushing at the memories this action kicked up, she quickly stood again, grinning despite an uncomfortably growing itch.

Before her on the green blotter was a letter in the unmistakable hand of Roger Bas...o...b... It was addressed to Mrs. Caroline Stearne.

THE LETTER itself, read with a studied revulsion, as if she were peeling up a bandage to peek at her own half-healed wound, contained no particular point of interest, simply informing Mrs. Stearne-at no point did the familiar, Ministry-schooled tone of Roger's prose presume to "Caroline"-of the arrangements for Lydia's gala engagement party: that she would be collected by coach at the St. Royale Hotel, taken to Stropping-Roger himself would see her on the train-and from there to Harschmort, where she would be met by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. He instructed her as to dress, and closed with a simple congratulations on her imminent embrace of the Process. Miss Temple read it again and set the paper onto the blotter so as not to notice her own shaking hands. Her eyes fell onto the rumpled bed, mocked by the book within her, knowing that upon it Roger and Caroline must have surely acted those visions out in flesh.

That the letter contained no evidence of affection meant nothing. Roger would not have crossed the street to bid good day to his mother if it meant appearing less than properly poised. And yet... She read the note a third time, and noted with a sour curdle in her stomach the appearance of certain words. Roger loved words very much, and took care to polish a handful of favorites, the pleasure they gave him attaching to the object of his affection, and here they were. She could imagine his tender smile at the writing of each one: "piquant"... "exact.i.tude"... "tulle" ...

She pushed the letter aside and roughly pawed through the other papers, sweeping what did not interest her to the floor, only preventing herself by deliberate will from toppling the entire little desk altogether. She stopped. She had crumpled and thrown another letter without looking at it closely, but not before a name had leapt out to her eye. She kicked awkwardly through the scattered pile until she found the one she sought. She would have liked to sit but could not now bring herself to further touch any piece of furniture, given what gymnastic purposes they might have served. Miss Temple smoothed out the paper against her thigh.

The looping script matched the note in her dress. Miss Temple scanned the text for the name she was sure she'd seen... and there it was... Eloise Dujong.

Sweet Caroline, As we discussed, Husband and Family are your Skeleton Keys.

She will come at your Request, I am Sure, if the Invitation appears by way of her Companion, Mrs. Eloise Dujong. A Room has been laid ready at the St. Royale tomorrow night. Our Allies understand you do my Business, so you must justify your Travels. Thus go first to the Ministry to give the enclosed List of Invitees to Mr. Roger Bas...o...b...

They will do the work Themselves. Be genuinely their Friend. There is always Time for Everything.

RLS.

The note bore no date. Some elements were obvious enough- if Eloise was "Companion" to "she," then "she" must be Charlotte Trapping. The husband and family were the late Colonel and the three children now in the care of Captain Tackham. The Contessa's reference to "our allies" made clear that to the rest of the Cabal, Caroline was the Contessa's creature and thus needed to seemingly embark on normal business with Roger (the "invitees" being those figures from the highest levels of society they planned to a.s.similate into books) to conceal the Contessa's private business. And this private business had to do with Charlotte Trapping and Eloise. Had Eloise truly met with Charlotte Trapping and Caroline Stearne at the St. Royale? Surely Eloise would have said something about it to her, or to the Doctor- surely she must have recognized Caroline Stearne on the airship, or at Harschmort when she was taken prisoner!

But was that the case? When Eloise had been captured in the Comte's laboratory, Caroline had been elsewhere. They had all been on the rooftop and in the airship, but with the chaos of the battle, was it possible that Eloise and Caroline had not recognized one another? Miss Temple huffed. Anything was possible, but was it likely? Was it not more likely that Eloise remembered the meeting perfectly well, that she had merely kept the knowledge to herself? As they walked from the Jorgenses' cabin Miss Temple had spoken of Caroline Stearne, about her murder... and Eloise had not said a word.

SHE LOOKED around her at the tiny room with a colder sense of pride. Caroline Stearne, like Eloise, had been a creature in service, and indeed, the room appeared now every bit as provisional and undistinguished as a military barracks or a cramped cabin on a trading ship. And this had been the woman's final home-these were her things, still strewn about because there existed no one in the world to claim them, no one who cared to know her fate-whether she might be dancing in a Macklenburg ballroom or a frozen, crab-chewn corpse at the bottom of the sea. Miss Temple walked out, stepping over the trash in the atrium and past the debauchery, accepting the taste of death in her throat and the unfettered desire coursing through her veins. These people were nothing.

MISS TEMPLE marched through Harschmort at a rapid pace, determined to find the Trapping children and extricate them from the gla.s.s woman's clutches. She swept into a suite of offices-thick with filing cabinets and bookcases and work desks-and looked down to see her feet kicking through loose papers as if they were autumn leaves. The cabinets and desks had been pulled open and ransacked without care. Then through a large doorway she heard a crash and raised voices. Miss Temple threw back her shoulders and deliberately walked toward the noise, the knife in one hand and the case in the other.

Robert Vandaariff's private office was full of soldiers. Red-coated dragoons-with their bra.s.s helmets and clanking sabers, half like machines themselves-were tearing through every expensively appointed inch as uncaringly as a thresher pounding grain. Hovering ineffectually around them were Lord Vandaariff's own people, doing their vain best to preserve his files from destruction.

Miss Temple darted back from view.

"I do not care, sir!" bellowed a harsh voice. "We will find it! We will find him!"

"But we have told you, we have told you all, we do not-"

"Pig swill! Barrows, have a look through these, from his own desk!"

There followed a whump, as another column of paper was dropped without ceremony onto a table. The second voice yelped in protest.

"Colonel! I cannot allow you-"

"Foster!"

"Sir!"

Aspiche, for it was none other, ignored Vandaariff's secretary, barking to Foster, "Where is Phelps?"

"With Mr. Fochtmann, sir."

"Tackham?"

"The Captain is with the... ah... children, sir."

"What word from Lieutenant Thorpe?"

"None yet, sir. If they searched as far as the ca.n.a.l-"

"I am well aware of it! Carry on."

"Sir!"

This last was echoed by a snapping click of Foster's boot heels, and the renewed protests of Vandaariff's man. Miss Temple risked another look. She caught the Colonel's receding form, tall and fierce, stalking to the far end of the wide office... Robert Vandaariff's own office, being ransacked like a Byzantine jewel house for clues as to where he had vanished. Miss Temple darted across the open doorway, paused for any corresponding cry of alarm, and then crept on to the next open door.

Before she reached it, a man stepped through, stopping abruptly at the sight of her.

"Mr. Harcourt," she said, and bobbed her knees, for it was the same young Ministry official from the upstairs hallway. "Miss Stearne. We met with Captain Tackham."

"I am aware of it. Why are you still at Harschmort? I am sure you have no one's permission."

"My good friend Lydia Vandaariff-"

"Lydia Vandaariff is not here!"

Mr. Harcourt looked past her to Lord Vandaariff's office. He would call for soldiers. She would be seen by Aspiche.

"What of Lord Vandaariff?" she asked quickly.

"Lord Vandaariff is gone."

"You do not know where he is?"