The Dark Volume Part 9

CHANG SWEPT back to the street and had not walked five steps before the sudden sound of a galloping horse rose out of the darkness behind him, from the north. He had just time to see the looming shape of the animal before flinging himself clear of its hoofs. He winced-one knee had landed on a stone-and looked up, but the rider was already beyond sight, tearing through the whole of Karthe in a matter of seconds. Could this have been another one of the Captain's men, racing to meet him at the train? But how would they have coordinated their rendezvous? Chang was sure that without his own intervention, the Captain and Josephs would still be doing their vicious work in the fishing village.

And what was that work? They'd known of him-"the criminal"- which meant they must have known of Svenson and Miss Temple as well. But the soldiers' primary errand must have been to recover the airship and any survivors. Perhaps they'd seen enough of the Iron Coast to a.s.sure themselves there were none, and that the craft lay stricken beyond salvage. But none of that explained the origin of this new rider, nor the terrified white horse that stank of indigo clay.

AS HE came in sight of the stables he saw young Willem pushing the door closed. Chang waved, but he was too far away in the dark. He kept on until he reached the muddy yard and paused, looking above him at the sky. Six o'clock at the latest-he still had an hour. Chang straightened his coat on his shoulders, rapped his fist on the door, and called out for the boy. There was no reply. He pulled on the door. It had been barred. He pounded again, then pressed his ear against the gap... the m.u.f.fled sound of horse hooves... voices-they must have heard him... was someone else preventing Willem or Christian from opening the door?

Directly above was a wooden half-door for loading hay into the loft. Chang set his foot on the door handle and launched himself up.

He balanced for one precarious moment with one knee on the rotten lip above the doorway before stabbing a hand beyond it to the loft door. At his touch it swung open just enough to slip a hand through the gap. It was held with a loop of rope, and he wormed his arm in. The rope was knotted. The wooden lip sagged beneath his weight. If it gave way he would most likely break his arm, jammed as it was into the loft. Chang swore under his breath, pulled his hand free, and fished out the knife. He sliced through the rope with one stroke.

The loft door swung open. Chang tossed the knife onto the straw and hauled his body up and in. He reclaimed the knife and picked his way silently to a hole sawn in the floor, through which rose the end of a wooden ladder. Below, he heard more clearly: Willem stowing the new horse into a stall... and the voices-just the boy... no, two boys... or was there a woman?

His blood suddenly ran cold. Chang slipped down the ladder, dropping the last five rungs to land on his feet in the straw.

THE CONTESSA di Lacquer-Sforza stood near the doorway of the tack room.

When had he last seen her? On the airship... she had just slaughtered the Prince and Lydia... her eyes had been wild, like a blood-soaked bacchante, like a sense-drugged Minoan priestess with an axe, driven to violence merely by holding two blue gla.s.s books in her bare hands. Then she had fled to the rooftop, black hair whipped by the wind...

Chang carefully stepped away from the ladder.

Behind her sat Christian, insensible in a chair. At her feet was an oddly shaped trunk, like a leather-bound octagonal hat box.

"Contessa."

"Cardinal Chang."

She was tired, and her head tilted to the side as she spoke, as if to tell him so-that she was only a woman, and one who, however resourceful, stood near the end of her rope. In truth, Chang had never see the Contessa look so... human, so subject to fate. Her hair was pinned back without care and her pale face uncharacteristically drawn with fatigue. The dress was, for her, extremely plain, a cheap sort of silk that had been dyed violet-someone's wedding dress refit for fancy usage, and he wondered whose home she had ransacked to find it. He saw no weapon in her hands, but that meant nothing-the woman was a weapon in herself.

He turned at the sound of Willem emerging from the stall-the horse behind him was spent but not visibly deranged. The boy cradled a canvas-wrapped bundle in his arms.

"I have your parcel from the saddlebag-" he began, but his words stopped when his eyes met Cardinal Chang's.

"It is all right, Willem," the Contessa said, quite calmly. "The Cardinal and I are old friends."

Chang snorted.

"I understood your wounds to be quite mortal," she said.

"I understood you to be drowned."

"One's life is indeed a parade of disappointment."

She stretched the fingers of each hand, like a cat rising up from sleep. Chang did not shift his gaze from hers, but pitched his voice to the boy.

"Willem, you must leave. Set her parcel down and go home."

The boy's eyes darted to the Contessa, and then to Chang. He did not move.

"He will not harm me, dear," said the Contessa softly. "You may do what you like. I am grateful for your kindness."

"I won't leave you," whispered the boy.

"She is not your mother!" barked Chang, and then muttered, "You do not have eight legs..."

The Contessa laughed, a throaty chuckle, like dark wine poured in a rush. "Cardinal Chang and I have much to... discuss. You may be sure I am not in danger, dear Willem."

The boy looked at Chang with a new distrust but slowly set down the canvas bag. Chang backed away to give him room, waiting as the boy shifted the bar and slipped out the door. Chang snorted again and spat into the straw.

"Not everyone around you will perish, then-even if he has no sense of his escape."

"Is your own company any less perilous, Cardinal? I do not see Miss Temple or Doctor Svenson."

Chang pointed with the knife to the remaining groom, still inert in his chair. "And what have you done to him?"

The Contessa shrugged, utterly indifferent. "Not a thing. I am quite recently arrived."

"He reeks of the gla.s.s, of indigo clay. He was bewitched by it- sickened by a shard of shattered gla.s.s."

The Contessa raised her eyebrows. "My goodness. Blue gla.s.s? Surely it was all destroyed in the airship."

"The gla.s.s was fissured with cracks. The groom had looked into it. Whatever memories were stored inside have been altered."

"Well, yes, I expect they might be." She sighed like a heartsick schoolgirl. "How little I know about such practical matters. If only the Comte were here to explain to us-"

"It has damaged the boy's mind, perhaps permanently!"

"How terrible. He is so young."

"Contessa!"

Chang's voice was harsh, impatient. The Contessa waved one delicate hand dismissively at the dazed groom, and beamed at Chang with something bordering on affection.

"Poor Cardinal-it seems you are unable to protect anyone. Of course, since nearly everyone hates or fears you-that Asiatic trollop for example-"

He stepped forward and brought the back of his hand sharply across the Contessa's jaw. She stumbled but did not fall, raising one hand to her cheek, her eyes wild with something close to pleasure, meeting his gaze as the tip of her tongue dabbed at the blood beading on her lower lip.

"We must understand one another," he whispered.

"O but we do."

"No," hissed Chang. "Whatever you hope to achieve, you will not."

"And you will prevent me?"

"Yes."

"You will kill me?"

"Why not-as you killed the two grooms in the north."

The Contessa rolled her eyes. "What grooms?"

"Do not pretend-"

"When have I ever pretended?"

"You hacked out their throats. You took a horse-"

"I found a horse."

"Do not-"

"Will you strike me again?" She laughed unpleasantly. "Do you know what fate befell the last man to lay a hand on my body in anger?"

"I can imagine."

"No, I do not think you can..."

He gestured to the strange hide-covered trunk. "What is that? You could not have taken it from the airship. You leapt from the roof."

"Did I?"

"Where did it come from?"

"Such emotion. I found it, obviously... with the horse."

"What is inside?"

"I haven't the first idea." She smiled. "Shall we find out together?"

"Do not think to remove a weapon," he hissed. "Do not think of anything but the ease with which I can end your life."

"How could I, now you have reminded me?"

She knelt in the straw and reached for the trunk, turning it this way and that in search of a catch.

"There is no evident hinge," observed Chang.

"No," she agreed, pressing each corner carefully. "Though I know it does open."

"How do you know?"

"Because I have seen it, of course. Before I took it."

"You said 'found' before."

"Found, took-the point being-"

"Did you see inside?"

"Perhaps..."

She looked up at him with a triumphant smile, then pushed firmly. From within the case Chang heard a m.u.f.fled metallic click. The Contessa grinned, set the trunk down, and stood.

"There you are," she said, stepping away and indicating the trunk with an open hand. Chang motioned her back toward it.

"Open it fully."

"Are you afraid of something?"

"Do it slowly. Then step away."

"So many commands..."

The Contessa kept her eyes fixed on Chang's as she sank down to the straw. Both hands reached out for the lid, gripping it delicately. She glanced down into the trunk, then back to Chang, biting her lip.

"If you do insist..."

THE IRON pole landed hard against the side of Cardinal Chang's head and he dropped to his knees. The boy swung again. Chang deflected the blow, barking his forearm and knocking the knife away. He cried out, his head swimming, shouting at Willem-misguided idiot!- swaying on his feet, blinking with the pain. The Contessa rushed at him, the trunk s.n.a.t.c.hed up and held high. She brought it down hard on Chang's head and he collapsed into the straw.

For a moment he could not move-neither his body nor, it seemed, his thoughts-the whole of his sensibility stalled like an insect in a ball of thickening sap. Then the pain lanced across Chang's skull like a fire. His fingers twitched. He felt the straw sticking into his face. He heard the Contessa rustling nearby, but could not move.

"Where is the knife?" she hissed.

"Did I-did I-" The boy's voice was fearful and wavering.

"You did what was right and brave," the Contessa a.s.sured him. "Without you, my dear boy, I should have been-well, it is too frightful to imagine. Cardinal Chang is exactly the brute he appears. Ah!"

She had found the knife, and Chang felt her footsteps coming near. Her fingers pulled at his coat collar as she called back to Willem, "If you would collect my parcel from where you set it down-there's an angel-and close the door."

Chang pushed at the straw, trying to roll away, the strength in his arms no more than an infant's. The Contessa chuckled and ground a boot onto his nearest hand, as if she were crushing a spider. Chang braced for the tug of the knife against his jugular, the gush of his own hot blood against his skin- The Contessa's gaze must have fallen across Christian in his chair, and she paused just long enough to call again to Willem.

"And perhaps you will tell me just when your fellow found this bit of gla.s.s-"

Her words stopped. The white horse began to neigh, horrible and high-pitched like a screaming child. It kicked furiously in its stall, and Chang could hear the breaking wood. The boy called to the animal, but the Contessa's voice cut across his, suddenly sharp as iron.

"Willem! Run with the parcel-now! Out the door, to the train! I will find you-fast as you can-let no one see you-no one."

The cries of the animal escalated to outright panic-spreading to the other horses, drowning out her further words. The Contessa was shouting-someone was shouting-Chang could not concentrate with the roaring pain.

He realized after the fact that his mind had drifted and that the stables had gone silent. He rolled onto one side. The stable door hung open. The air reeked of indigo clay. He was alone.

HE PUSHED himself first to his hands and knees and then, with an audible grunt, onto his knees. Across the room lay the trunk, open and empty, the top broken. The insides were lined with orange felt, and molded to contain an instrument of a shape he did not recognize-but it had held a tool of the Comte d'Orkancz, the orange felt alone told him that. The Comte-bear of a man, an esthete whose proclivities were as jaded as an octogenarian Sultan's-had been brilliant enough to discover the secret of indigo clay, laying the insidious foundation for the Cabal's every dream. However much the man's "science" struck Chang as an addled mixture of refined engineering and alchemical nonsense, he could not dispute its effects, nor shake a fear that its true dark power remained untapped-exactly why he took particular satisfaction in having run the Comte through with a cavalry saber.

The felt depression was not large and Chang wondered if the tool it had held might have been damaged in the scuffle. Was the Contessa lying about finding it with the horse? But how else did she acquire the trunk? It had not been with her on the roof of the airship.

Chang closed his eyes at the excruciating ache in his skull. He walked stiffly toward the tack room, but there was no drink at all. The knife was gone, so as he left the stables Chang s.n.a.t.c.hed up the iron pole the boy had used to strike him, and swung it back and forth like a sword, testing the weight. He was frankly eager to thrash the next person he met.

He found the way to the train, a well-worn cart-track beyond the edge of town. He stopped at a sound beyond the immediate hills... the howling of a wolf. Chang looked back a last time at Karthe, spat into the darkness, and pressed on through a thicket of scrub, the twisted branches like the supplicating fingers of the bitter, wicked poor. He emerged to see, above an intervening rise of ground, a glow shot with rising smoke-the train. He swung the pole to loosen his arm, wondering whether he would find the Contessa or the Captain first, not especially caring, as long as he got a chance at both before the end.