"The Dark Volume" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dahlquist Gordon)

Seven. Cinders

AS A GIRL Miss Temple had once, after insisting upon it for a steady hour, tagging along at his side as he surveyed the fields from the raised high road, been given a puff from the pipe of Mr. Groft, the overseer of her father's plantation. She had immediately become sick— realizing the puff was not likely to be repeated, the young Miss Temple had made it a mighty one—dropping to her knees as the overseer spat oaths above her, for if her father found out he would be sacked. She had stumbled back to her rooms with a splitting pain behind her eyes and a reeking taste that would not leave her mouth no matter how she scrubbed it with lemon slices. Mr. Groft indeed was sacked, but that was the following month and had involved improprieties with house girls, three of whom had been promptly sold (including a sweet fat thing, always kind but whose name Miss Temple had since forgotten), for her father's authority brooked no challenge whatsoever.

It was some years later, preparatory to her voyage to the continent, when Miss Temple, goaded by that same iron cagework of rule, found herself in her father's study. Despite her imminent departure he had ridden to the far side of the island to inspect a new planting and was not expected to return before she sailed, simplifying everything for them both. She had wandered through the house and along the paths of the garden and the open balconies, smelling the sweet, musky fields. She knew she might never return. But in the study, sitting in her father's large leather chair—the horsehair stuffing clumped and flat and kept this way precisely because her father believed a lack of ease sharpened the mind—Miss Temple was suddenly restless, and looked to the closed study door, wondering if she ought to lock it even before she formed any sense of what she was going to do.

One of her hands had idly traced a path, finger by finger, up the inside of her thigh. Despite a fullness of tension in her flesh, not yet demanding but palpable, she pulled her hand away, for she did not choose—since it seemed that she had wandered now pointedly to the heart of her father's domain—to so expend her desires. Instead, she opened the cedar box of cigars, wrinkling her nose. With a shocking and scandalous presumption she took one out and bit off the end, just as she had seen her father do on hundreds of occasions—and she knew, had she been male, this would have been a common occurrence, even such a thing as to bring two men together. She picked the bitter flakes from her mouth and wiped them onto the cracked leather of the chair, then leaned to the candle on the desk top. She puffed four times before the thing took fire, gagged, spat out the smoke, and puffed twice more, swallowing the smoke with a cough. Her eyes watered. After another puff she erupted with a hacking that would not stop. The awful taste was back in her mouth. But she continued to inhale, determined, until there was an inch of tightly coiled grey ash at the end. Miss Temple wiped her lips on her sleeve, feeling dizzy.

It was enough, her edge of restlessness blunted by disgust—with both the tobacco and her own desire. She set the smoking cigar on the metal ashtray and collected her candle, walking unsteadily from the room—uncaring whether a servant would clear it away before her father returned or if he would find the evidence of her invasion himself… a last fittingly oblique communication between them.

THE FOULNESS of these old memories was but a childish shadow to what she had so foolishly just opened herself. Miss Temple lay on her back beyond the gardens of Harschmort, panting hard, staring up without registering the slightest detail of cloud or sky, insensible to any cries that might have echoed beyond the hedgerows, to gunshots, and to time. She reached up slowly, as if the air had become gelatinous with dread, and touched her dripping mouth. Her fingers were wet with saliva and a clotted string of black bile. With a concentrated effort she turned her head and saw, gleaming where it had fallen, the blue glass book. She swallowed, her throat raw from retching, and sank back again, feeling the stalks of tall grass poking at her hair, her will sapped, with all the sickness in her mind rising again like a flooding mire.

Since looking into the glass book in the Contessa's rooms, Miss Temple had been determined that its insistent, delirious memories not overwhelm her, knowing such an initial surrender could easily stretch into a span of days. But Miss Temple's disapproval of a world so defined was primarily fearful, for such surrender frightened her very much. Miss Temple did not consider herself as priggish—she did not tremble at her own natural appetites—yet she knew some pleasures were different. When she imagined them inside her mind, she imagined her mind stained.

But the second book changed all of this. It had colored Miss Temple's thoughts to the same extreme degree as the first—or recolored them, overlaying every vivid impulse ash grey. The Contessa's book had been compiled from countless lives, while the book on the grass contained the memories of a single man—but his memories had been harvested at the very moment of death, infecting each instant of his captured experience with a toxic, corrupting, nauseating dread. It was not unlike the pageants one saw carved on medieval churches— lines of people, from princesses to peasants to popes, trailing hand in hand after Death, the trappings of their lives exposed as vanity. Scenes of lust—and what scenes they were!—became disgusting charades of rotting meat, sumptuous banquets became fashioned whole from human filth, every strain of sweet, sweet music became re-strung to the coarse calling of blood-fed crows. Miss Temple had never imagined such despair, such utter hopelessness, such bottomless bankruptcy. The first book's bright empire of sensation, its unstable riot beneath her skin, had been mirrored by bitter futility, with the acrid dust that was every person's inheritance.

But Miss Temple understood why Francis Xonck had chosen this book to keep. How quick his thoughts must have flown just to see the possibility, to seize an empty glass book. He had preserved in its unfeeling depths—the freezing glass no doubt pressed to the dying man's face—all the alchemical knowledge of the Comte d'Orkancz.

She shoved her body onto one elbow, pursing her lips with a twinge of irritation that hinted at recovery, and looked over her shoulder at the book, whose surface had taken on a satisfied glow. Miss Temple doubted there was any person—even Xonck, even Chang—strong enough to actually immerse themselves in its contents without being utterly overwhelmed. Mrs. Marchmoor's hand had passed into it without harm… but what did that mean? The glass woman may have learned the book contained the Comte—why else would she have gone to Harschmort?—but if she had been able to absorb the actual contents of the Comte's mind, then she would have had no need for Miss Temple and no reason to seek the Comte's tools and machines. Miss Temple recalled the three glass women ransacking the minds of everyone in the Harschmort ballroom—invisibly passing everything they saw to the Comte… it only made sense that he had forbidden them to enter his own mind. Could that taboo extend to his mind when encased in the book? Mrs. Marchmoor had come to Harschmort to insert the book into another body—one the glass woman believed she could control. But that must mean she had no idea of the taint, the corruption coloring all of its contents.

And what of Francis Xonck? He had rescued the book from the sinking airship, his own body a sickening ruin, in hopes to reverse his condition. Had he looked into it? Miss Temple did not think so. Had not Xonck come to Harschmort—just like Mrs. Marchmoor—to find the necessary machines to open the book and thus save his life?

Again Miss Temple wondered who had set the fires, foiling them both.

SHE CURLED her legs beneath her and peeked over the wall. The actual clearing where Xonck and Mrs. Marchmoor had struggled was far beyond view, but there were no signs of anyone searching in the garden. With a fretful grimace—as if she were managing an especially wicked-looking cane spider—Miss Temple carefully scooped the glass book back into the canvas sack. Harschmort was surrounded by miles of fen country. She was alone, hungry, and her appearance would have dismayed a fishwife. Miss Temple wound the top of the sack around her palm and pushed her way through the high grass. She had no idea of cross-country escapes and pursuing soldiers, but what she knew quite well were large houses run by servants, riddled with ways to pass unseen.

Near the stone wall's end lay a collection of low sheds. She saw no one, and this was strange, for even with the family not present, routine upkeep of Harschmort's house and grounds ought to necessitate all manner of effort, and Miss Temple was confident—unless she had discovered an epidemic of shirking—that these sheds were a hive of everyday activity. Yet now they seemed to be abandoned.

She scampered quickly between the sheds to the nearest glass double doors of the house. The lock had been broken. This must be where Francis Xonck had forced his way in. Miss Temple slipped into the ballroom. She had last seen it full of the Cabal's minions, dressed in finery and wearing masks, cheering their masters off to Macklenburg. Now the great wooden floor and the line of bright windows were coated with dust from the fire. She crossed quickly and found herself in the very same ante-room where the Contessa had licked the port stains from her eyes. Miss Temple shivered, stopping where she was. The memory of the Contessa's tongue led directly to the freight car, the woman's lips on her own… and to Miss Temple's spiraling shame, she could not stop her mind from plowing on. At once those kisses bloomed like a gushing artery into a hundred more, kisses of all kinds between too many different people to separate, erupting from the Contessa's book. Miss Temple stuffed one hand in her mouth, the tips of her body ablaze, aghast at how quickly she had been so overwhelmed. On desperate impulse, she opened her reeling senses to the second book, to the bilious tang of the Comte's despair. As it collided with her pleasure, Miss Temple lurched into the cover of a decorative philodendron, where she crouched and rocked helplessly, hugging her knees.

In time, both waves ebbed away. She heard shouting in another part of the house. Miss Temple staggered up. In the corridor lay the older servant, toppled by Mrs. Marchmoor, his face still dark with blood. The voices were far away and the hallways too conducive to echo for her to place them. She crept past the fallen man to what looked like a painted wall panel and found the inset hook to pull it open, revealing a narrow maid's staircase. She climbed past two landings before leaving it to enter a thickly carpeted corridor with a low ceiling, almost as if she had boarded an especially luxurious ship—though she knew this to be an architectural remnant of Harschmort Prison. With a spark of anticipation Miss Temple padded toward Lydia Vandaariff's suite of rooms.

SHE PASSED quietly through the Lady of Harschmort's private parlor, attiring room, bedchamber, and finally to her astonishingly spacious closet. The walls were lined with hanging garments and tight-stuffed shelving—enough clothing for a regiment of ladies. Satisfied no one was there—she had feared a lingering maid—Miss Temple lifted the chair from the heiress' writing desk, and, recalling Chang's precautions at the Boniface, wedged it fast under the doorknob.

She returned to the closet, plucking at her dress—not intending any commentary on the late Mrs. Jorgens but more than sick of it, the smell of her own sweat having permeated the fabric. Miss Temple dislodged the final buttons with impatience and pulled it over her head and then balled the thing up to throw across the room.

She stopped. As she wadded the fabric… on the side of the bodice, along the seam… she stepped closer to the light and removed a scrap of parchment paper torn to a neat square and folded over. She wondered if it was from Mrs. Jorgens—a shopping list or love note— for the writing first struck her as an unschooled scrawl. But that was wrong… not so much a scrawl as its author was utterly careless of how it appeared. As she thought back to the littered ruin of the suite at the St. Royale, such an intemperate script for the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza made perfect sense.

My Dear Celeste,

Forgive my Departure. Were I to stay I must eat you to the Bones.

Islands are Precious Domains. This is my way of saying Do Not Follow. That is your Choice now, as it was mine before you. There is no Shame in Retreat.

If you Ignore good Advice, I will see you Again. Our Business is not Finished.

RLS

Miss Temple folded the note, then unfolded it and read it again, sucking her lip at each overly dramatic capital, sensing that even in this disturbing little note (and how long had it taken the woman to find that pocket, she wondered, imagining those nimble fingers searching across her body) the Contessa's foremost goal had been to find some measure of delight. It was as if, in a mist of woodland air that anyone else would find refreshing, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would locate some extra thread of scent (a flower or a rotting stag—or flowers growing from a stag's carcass) so the tips of her black hair might twist another curl.

Miss Temple did not consider herself an object of change—she had always been the same bundle of impulses and moods, however unpredictable these might appear to others—but now she found herself surprised, in the very midst of her anger, by the sudden memory of the Contessa's gashed shoulder, and an urge to draw her own tongue along its ragged, coppery length. The problem was not the impulse itself, but the necessary connection to another person.

Miss Temple had become very accustomed to the fact that, in her life, almost no one liked her. She was served, flattered, distrusted, disapproved of, coveted, envied, despised, but she had never, with the illusory exceptions of certain servants when she was a girl, enjoyed any particular friendship. The closest she had come was her fiancé, Roger Bascombe, but that had been a mere three months sparked by physical hunger (and had turned out horribly). She thought of Chang and Svenson, even Elöise… but friendship was hardly the same thing as loyalty or duty. Would the two men die for her? She had no doubt. Did they like her? A nut-hard part of Miss Temple's heart would not believe it—and she could have easily convinced herself the question did not matter, save for the Contessa's disorienting attentions in the freight car, no matter how mercenary those attentions undoubtedly had been.

But then, for she could not help it, Miss Temple read through the note again, this time fixing on the word “choice,” and the very intriguing phrase that followed it, “as it was mine before you”… she had never heard even one reference to the Contessa's life before, nor entertained the notion that there was a before for such a creature. Miss Temple's throat went dry to imagine what the Contessa could have possibly been like as a girl. And what choice could any girl have made to become that woman?

And how dare she suggest that Miss Temple herself faced anything resembling the same crossroads?

Suitably affronted to set the paper back down, Miss Temple turned her attentions elsewhere. Lydia Vandaariff's closet had a metal hip-bath and a very large Chinese jug of water. To either side of a tall mirror stood elegant tables, three-tiered like cakes and entirely cluttered with pins, ribbons, bottles, powders, paints, and perfumes. She tore off the corset and ill-fitting shift she had worn since her bath in Lina's kitchen and then, quite determined to be clean once more, sat naked on the carpet to unlace her boots.

THOUGH THE water was unheated, there was still a splendid array of sponges and soaps, and Miss Temple took the opportunity to scrub the whole of her body without any impediment of time. She must leave Harschmort eventually, but did it not make sense to wait until nightfall—a decision which, once made, allowed her hours? Washed and toweled at some leisure, she entered into a scrupulous investigation of Lydia's wide array of scents. While Miss Temple could not but view so many choices as emblematic of Lydia's essential lack of character, she was nevertheless curious whether her own sensible routine might be improved. Out of deliberately minded perversity, she settled upon a concoction of frangipani flowers, the Contessa's signature scent, placing a drop behind each ear, on each wrist, and then dragging one wet fingertip from the join of her collarbones down between her breasts.

Though Lydia had been taller than she, Miss Temple found several dresses that fit and one in particular that would allow her to run. This was a murky shade of violet that went quite well with both her boots (she was committed to her boots) and with her hair. That the fabric was dark meant it would not so eagerly show the dirt her actions must acquire, that it was sensible wool meant she would not be cold—practical insights that pleased Miss Temple very much.

Yet before the dress came an exacting selection of undergarments, and here, more than anywhere, the late Miss Vandaariff had not skimped. The possibilities presented to Miss Temple became quite literally overwhelming, as each new garment opened lurid implications— a veritable advent calendar of wickedness—in her mind. She was forced to pause, eyes open, cheeks flushed, and thighs tight together, until the fluttering tide had passed. With trembling fingers she selected silk replacements for her long-lost little pants and bodice, then petticoats, and a corset she put on backwards, tightened as well as she could, and then inched around until the laces were behind her. This done, Miss Temple sat at Lydia's mirror and did her steady best, availing herself freely of pins, ribbon, and a tortoiseshell comb, to strip the knots from her hair and restore the sausage curls she associated with her own accustomed presentation. She was not her maid Marthe— and had she been asked, she might well have admitted it—but she possessed some skill with her own hair (and since it had before been such a fright, the merest measure of success was welcome). Another half an hour slipped past before Miss Temple was at last presentable, the canvas sack exchanged for an elegant leather travel case, the glass book inside doubly wrapped within two silk pillowcases.

She knew she was dawdling, to keep away from outright danger and to indulge herself in the luxury to which she had been for far too long denied. She had even, as she washed herself and patted powder along her limbs, enjoyed the sensual tension of the Contessa's book, hovering like a cloud of golden bees just beyond reach, testing the limits of what she might allow and when she must bite the inside of her mouth to quell the sweetening tides. But then she came aware of another strain—an impatience with the petty vanity of her toilette— and she watched with fascination, both within the emotion and apart enough to see it, as the impatience grew into anger—with herself, with the luxury around her, with everything the useless life of Lydia Vandaariff had stood for. She shot home the latches on the case and picked it up. Without any thought but bitter disapproval, Miss Temple's hand lashed out at an especially over-glazed Chinese ginger jar and boxed it from its stand. The jar broke on the floor like a disconsolate egg, and she smiled. She stopped and snatched up another just like it. With grim satisfaction Miss Temple hurled the thing all the way back into the closet's mahogany door, the completeness of its destruction the exact expression of sharp justice she had desired.

MISS TEMPLE, now unsettled and sour, retraced her path down the corridor. If she could suppress the glass books' active interference with her thoughts, she could not expunge the fact of their encroachment—nor pretend that suppression was any lasting victory. As she walked, she sensed the prison's bones behind the paint and powder of Harschmort's splendor. Was she any different? Just as the lurid memories from the Contessa's book mocked Miss Temple's most secret desires, the Comte's book made clear its own web of grim connection—that death was shot through her past, her family, her wealth, and in her every morsel of anger or condescension or contempt.

She glanced into a mirror on the wall, its heavy gold frame carved with impossibly lush peonies, the blossoms blown open in a way that made Miss Temple uncomfortable. But what caused her to stop before the glass and rise to her toes was the pallor of her face. There had been mirrors in Lydia's chamber, and she had naturally glanced at her own body as she bathed—the shape of her legs, the appearance of her bosom, the tightly curled hair between her legs when it was wet and soaped—but this was a way of looking and not seeing. Miss Temple poked a finger into the skin below her eye and took it away—there was a brief impression of pink where the fingertip had been, but it faded at once, leaving her complexion waxy and drawn. She bared her teeth and was distressed to see the edges of her gums were red as the flesh of a fresh-cut strawberry.

MISS TEMPLE peeked over the railing of the main staircase, her newly set curls hanging over her face, and saw a passing line of bright red uniforms far below. There had been no soldiers accompanying their coach, which meant others had arrived. Did this mean Colonel Aspiche? She could not descend to the foyer if there was anyone who might recognize her. She quickly darted down one flight, just to the next landing. She would cut along this hallway, stay out of sight, and find a servant's staircase to the ground. But when Miss Temple hurried around the first corner she nearly collided with a Captain of Dragoons.

He was fair-haired with an elegantly curled moustache and side whiskers. It was the officer she'd seen in the corridor of Stäelmaere House, sick and tottering after his audience with the Duke. Behind him in a line, the oldest holding hands with the Captain, were three primly dressed children.

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Temple, bobbing in a tardy sketch of a curtsey.

“Closer to evening, I think,” replied the Captain. His voice was soft but sharp, like a talking fox in a tale.

“And who are all of you?” asked Miss Temple (who did not appreciate foxes), smiling past the officer at the three children. She did not especially appreciate children either, but could be kind to them when they were silent. All three watched her with wide, solemn eyes.

“I am Charles,” said the middle child, a ginger-haired boy in a brushed black-velvet suit. He sniffed. “Master Charles Trapping.”

“Hello, Charles.” Miss Temple loathed the boy at once.

“I am Francesca,” said the oldest, a girl with hair near the color of Miss Temple's own. Her chin was small and her eyes too round, but her dress was a shade of lilac Miss Temple very much approved of. The girl's voice was low, as if she was not at all confident of her surroundings but as the oldest needed to assert precedence over her brash younger brother. Francesca turned to the third, a boy of perhaps three years, also in a velvet suit, holding in one hand the remains of a chocolate biscuit. “That is Ronald.”

“Hello, Ronald.”

Ronald looked at his feet in silence.

“Who are you?” demanded Charles.

Miss Temple smiled. “I am a dear friend of Miss Lydia Vandaariff, whose house you are in. She has journeyed to Macklenburg to be married.”

“Did she forget something?” Charles pointed to her case.

“She did not,” replied Miss Temple. “I did.”

“Don't you have servants to fetch it for you?”

Miss Temple smiled icily, wanting to strike him. “One does not simply send servants to Harschmort House. We had been celebrating Lydia's engagement—”

“My mother has a case just like that,” said Francesca. “For her silver bracelets.”

“Is that full of silver bracelets?” the officer asked Miss Temple. His gaze gently ranged across her body. He negligently met her eyes and smiled, but the smile seemed unconnected to his thoughts.

“What I forgot,” Miss Temple replied with a winning smile, “was a set of combs and brushes. As a treat, Lydia's closest friends all prepared her for the gala evening. But now I need them back again.”

“Haven't you a maid?” asked Charles.

“I have as many maids as I like,” snapped Miss Temple. “But one is accustomed to a particular degree of bristle. I'm sure your sister understands.” She smiled at Francesca, but the girl was rubbing her eye.

“When Maria brushes Ronald's hair it makes him cry,” announced Charles.

Ronald said nothing, but looked at Miss Temple with hopeless little eyes.

“And what brings all of you to Harschmort?” Miss Temple asked brightly.

“I don't believe I heard your name,” stated the officer.

“I am Miss Stearne.” Miss Temple raised her eyebrow to let him know she held it to be an impertinent question. “Miss Isobel Stearne.”

“David Tackham, Captain of Dragoons.” The officer clicked his heels with another wry smile. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Stearne. Are you related to Caroline Stearne?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Caroline Stearne. Also an intimate of Miss Vandaariff, I believe.”

“We are cousins,” said Miss Temple tartly. “Caroline is presently traveling with Miss Vandaariff, as they are especially close to one another. Do you know her? She did not mention you.”

“I know of her only. A handsome woman, I am told.”

Tackham's blue eyes were both lovely and absent. Miss Temple looked at them for just a touch too long and they began to appear inhuman—blue eyes so often did that, Miss Temple felt.

“Were you off to anywhere in particular, Miss Stearne?” he asked.

Miss Temple did not reply, bending forward to Francesca with a smile.

“Where is your mother, darling?”

“I do not know,” answered the girl, her lip quivering.

MISS TEMPLE turned at a sound on the main stairs. A young man in a black coat with a yellow waxed moustache and blue eyes approached them, a sheaf of papers under one arm. In his Ministry topcoat, he could have been a lesser cousin of Roger Bascombe, but as he came nearer Miss Temple saw the pallor of his skin, and the bloodied nails on the hand that held the white papers.

“There you are.” He noted Miss Temple's presence with an irritated frown. “Who is this?”

“I am Miss Stearne.”

“What is she doing here?” the man asked Tackham.

“I am a friend of Lydia Vandaariff,” Miss Temple answered him. “What are you doing so freely in my friend's house?”

“This is Miss Stearne.” Captain Tackham smiled.

The Ministry man ignored her. “You are well behind schedule, Captain. There is no time—”

“If there's so little time, where in hell have you been?” Tackham snapped.

The other man's eyes shot wide at such language in front of the children, but he erupted in a wicked sneeze, and then two more in rapid succession, even as he shifted the papers to his other arm and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He finally wiped his nose but not before they had all seen the first smear of blood on the yellow waxed hair on his upper lip.

“I'll not have this impertinence. Mr. Phelps is waiting with the Duke.”

“Will you join us?” Captain Tackham asked Miss Temple.

“Yes, please,” said Francesca in a small voice.

“Of course she will not,” snapped the man from the Ministry.

“She has a case of hairbrushes,” announced Charles, as if this were especially significant. The Ministry man ignored him and folded his handkerchief away.

“Captain Tackham! The Duke!”

“What is your name?” Miss Temple asked the man.

“He is Mr. Harcourt,” replied Tackham.

“Mr. Harcourt has not answered my question about what he is doing with another man's children in my good friend's house.”

Harcourt fixed her with an unpleasant glare.

“Perhaps you'd like to come with us after all? Perhaps you'd care to explain—” He sniffed again, for the dark pearl of blood had reappeared “—to the Duke just where your good friend's father has gone off to!”

Harcourt wheeled toward the stairs. Tackham snapped his fingers for Francesca's hand without shifting his gaze from Miss Temple, who was shocked to see, as the girl extended her arm to the officer, the sleeve of the child's dress slide up to reveal a blot of cotton wool stuck to the hollow of her elbow with blood. As the unlikely party disappeared behind the balcony rail, all three children looked back to her, like lambs on a leash to market.

IT HAD been gratifying how easily her being disagreeable to Harcourt had resulted in his leaving her behind—but unless the Captain was a fool, there would be immediate inquiries about one Isobel Stearne, and soldiers sent to find her. That the children were being brought to the Duke—that the Duke was still in play—meant Mrs. Marchmoor had survived, and that the children were being brought to her. Yet the shock Miss Temple had felt in her mind as she fled the garden had been real. Something had hurt the glass woman dearly, but not dearly enough.

She smiled at Harcourt's slip revealing that they'd still no idea how Robert Vandaariff had disappeared, pleased with an opportunity to puzzle something out for herself—such puzzling being an excellent distraction from the distressing urges of her body (had it been necessary to so notice the delicate curve of Captain Tackham's throat?) and the foul taste that would not leave the back of her throat. Vandaariff's absence must be related to the fires at Harschmort—but had he been taken, or murdered?

Miss Temple paused on the landing, wondering why a Dragoon officer had been guarding children—and then what the Trapping children were doing here to begin with. Had they been taken hostage against their mother's cooperation? Why waste time kidnapping the children of a powerless woman? Thus, Charlotte Trapping was not powerless, but a person Mrs. Marchmoor needed to control… could she be the new adversary? With the death of her husband she surely had a motive.

On the carpet lay a crumble of chocolate biscuit, directly outside a door. Miss Temple walked to the door and opened it. On a spindle-legged side table next to a mirror-fronted cabinet sat an unfinished snifter of brandy and a half-smoked cheroot in a ceramic dish. Clearly Captain Tackham had found his own distractions. Farther into the room were two uncomfortable-looking armchairs with yellow cushions, and across from these (beneath a strange painting of an old man glaring oddly at two half-dressed young women) was a fancily carved camp bed, with a long, blue-striped bolster. Beneath it lay more chocolate crumbs.

Beyond the camp bed was another doorway. Through it came the sound of the scuffling of papers, and then a dry voice croaking with impatience.

“Are you back again, Tackham? What have you cocked up this time?”

Miss Temple clapped a hand across her mouth to stifle a gasp. In the mirrored cabinet, she could see, reflected from the far side of the doorway—disheveled, sickly, but still without question—of all people, Andrew Rawsbarthe, Roger Bascombe's aide. On his desk top lay an open leather case lined with orange felt and containing inset depressions for small glass-stoppered vials. Three of these spaces were empty. These vials, their ruby contents glowing darkly, lay before Rawsbarthe, who was in the midst of gluing to each, with shaking fingers (each ending in a ragged and split purpled nail) small labels. To the side lay jumbled wads of cotton wool, streaked with still-bright blood. He finished the last label, slipped the vials into the case, and snapped it closed.

“Captain Tackham! I am in no state for teasing.”

The chair scraped as Mr. Rawsbarthe stood. He would know her—they had been in each other's company a score of times. Had Roger taken him into his confidence? Or was he another of Mrs. Marchmoor's minions, to be occupied and consumed? Did he know of Miss Temple's actions against the Cabal? Ought she snatch up the brandy bottle and crack him on the head?

Rawsbarthe called, less certain, “Mr. Fochtmann?”

He appeared in the doorway, the leather case tucked under one arm. Miss Temple had not moved. They stared at one another.

“Hello, Mr. Rawsbarthe. I'm sure I did not expect to find you here.”

“Miss Temple! Nor I—of all people—you!”

Andrew Rawsbarthe had always been the servile functionary hovering at Roger's right arm, and as a young woman inured to servantry from an early age—and servantry of an especially abject status—Miss Temple had regarded him as merely a more animated, speaking species of footstool.

“Permit me to observe you do not look at all well.”

“A smithereen of fatigue,” offered Rawsbarthe, plucking at his shirt collar. “Extra duties with this recent unrest. It will pass.”

“You have lost a tooth.”

“But I have found you,” the man replied, his tongue reflexively sliding over the gap. “In Harschmort House.”

“I believe it is I have done the finding.”

Miss Temple noticed Mr. Rawsbarthe's eyes upon her bosom… and was shocked that instead of sparking her bitter ire, she sensed with a mocking pleasure what power his covetous desire granted her, and what she might now be able to do.

His eyes flicked to the open door behind her.

Sensing that Rawsbarthe sought to prevent her exit, she reached for the door herself and swung it closed, the clasp catching with a well-greased click to shut them in together.

“That is a new coat you wear,” said Miss Temple. “And of a finer cut. Do you know where Mr. Bascombe—your superior—is?”

Mr. Rawsbarthe cleared his throat and swallowed. “Do you?”

“Do you know why you molt to pieces like a dying parrot?”

“Roger Bascombe is dead!” blurted Rawsbarthe, openly gauging her reaction to this news.

“Is he?”

“Do you deny it?”

“Why should I?”

“Because Bascombe was murdered! He accompanied Deputy Foreign Minister Crabbé to Macklenburg, but they never arrived— cables from Warnemünde have confirmed it!”

“Not arriving does not make him dead, much less murdered.”

Rawsbarthe stepped closer, shaking his head with a cloying tolerance. “Do you imagine the Queen's Privy Council and her Ministries remain idle when so much hangs in the balance? I know you were this very morning found at Stropping Station and taken to the Palace. I know your disfigured criminal accomplice—yes, yes, we are aware of your activities—has re-emerged from the gutters where he fled. And the German spy? His own government has issued papers for his arrest—by now he's been dragged home in chains, or had his throat cut by his countrymen! You know about Roger Bascombe! You know about Arthur Trapping!”

“Ah, well then, it is impossible to dissemble.” Miss Temple found herself smiling enigmatically and batting her eyes. “I put a bullet through Roger Bascombe's heart myself.”

RAWSBARTHE WAS silent. Miss Temple deliberately inhaled, the small swell of her breasts momentarily confounding the man's attention, and then let out a poor little sigh.

“You will undoubtedly want to arrest me—it is natural. And yet… have we not made enough amiable conversation between us— at the Ministry, at Mr. Bascombe's home, at so many very dull receptions—to possess between us some understanding?”

“You… shot him?”

“Dear Mr. Rawsbarthe…what I mean to say—and I may be wrong, and if that is so, we must proceed to unfortunate outcomes—”

“The murder of Roger Bascombe—”

“Enough about Bascombe.”

“Miss Temple, as much as I might prefer—”

“Mr. Rawsbarthe, I do not believe you are a fool.”

“I am gratified by the sentiment, I'm sure.”

“Indeed, so—please—if you could just step… here.”

She took his arm—causing him to nervously lick his lips—and guided him two steps to the mirrored cabinet. Rawsbarthe flinched.

“Look at my skin.” Miss Temple nodded to her mirrored image. “Below the eyes.”

“You are a perfectly attractive young woman—”

“O Andrew, normally I should blushingly agree with you, but the two of us must be honest… I look ill.”

“People often do.”

“Not me.”

“No doubt the toll of your recent immorality—”

“Andrew… look at yourself.”

At once he pulled away. “I—I am a representative of the Foreign Ministry, and I insist that you accompany me downstairs. You must see the Duke—”

“How do you think I arrived?”

Rawsbarthe put a hand to his mouth. “You saw the Duke? You spoke with him? Impossible, he speaks to no one.”

“Of course he doesn't—”

“But how are you free? Did they not know you?”

“Of course they did!”

“How can that be?”

“Have you seen the Duke? Andrew, listen to me, for your own sake…”

Rawsbarthe's eyes shirked away from hers and he squeezed the leather case.

“Andrew, answer me! Have you seen the Duke?”

Rawsbarthe waved at the mirror without looking at it. “If you refer to his Grace's illness—most definitely not the blood fever that has been rumored—rumored to infect all Harschmort, and yet here we are!—it is but an ague that will pass! If in the meantime others of us shake under his Grace's chills, it is another sort of loyalty, of service…”

Rawsbarthe took another step away, staring at the carpet like a shamed dog, his voice colored by an unpersuasive chuckle.

“Whatever you have assumed—well, trust you are not the first to make the error! Indeed, the inner workings of a modern government must appear a veritable spider's web of influence and compulsion to the humble citizen, and so the commonplace—an ague!—turns into mystery, crisis, plague! I do not know what Mr. Bascombe ever explained to you—very little, I should think, you being, indeed, a w-w-woman—”

“Mr. Rawsbarthe—”

“Now I must take you downstairs with all dispatch. Mr. Bascombe spoke at all times with discretion—I have heeded no insinuations about what compromised your engagement, even now, despite those questionable men who have become your companions.”

Miss Temple stepped nearer and he began to stammer. She could smell the frangipani perfume on her skin and wondered if he could as well. Rawsbarthe took a breath with a quivering determination, as if he had been abruptly pushed to some inner precipice.

“A great deal has changed, Miss Temple. I do not promise I am in a position to help you—but yet it may be that I am not wholly without influence. I have been summoned to Stäelmaere House… on several occasions… a sign of favor I should not have dreamed of one week ago.”

“I have just been there myself,” observed Miss Temple.

“Then you know!” he said quickly, and then caught himself. “Or perhaps not, perhaps you did not—cannot—truly appreciate—”

“Appreciate what exactly?” She came closer, despite the unclean odor of his mouth.

“How bold you are, I see that—even if you try to influence me— toward, ah, leniency—but—but nevertheless, because you know— knew—Mr. Bascombe, you can at least appreciate my good fortune, even to be invited—”

“O I do appreciate it,” she whispered.

“Do you truly?”

“I should like every detail! Once you entered Stäelmaere House— the seat of the Privy Council itself… the corridor with the glass cases and those awful old paintings—were you ushered to a room? Come, Andrew… what do you remember?”

“Naturally, I was not alone—”

“Were you with Mr. Soames?”

“How do you know Soames?” Rawsbarthe's voice was pinched. “Soames is new! He didn't see the Duke? Soames is hardly worthy of—”

“Soames does not matter,” she assured him. “The room. It was dark?”

“His Grace is notoriously particular.”

“So you did see the Duke?”

“Of course! And we heard him.”

“What did he say?”

“I… I… the words themselves…”

She waited. Rawsbarthe clutched his hands.

“Andrew… surely you remember?”

“Ah… well—”

“How can you not remember what the Duke of Stäelmaere said to you personally? The highest achievement of your career?”

Rawsbarthe was silent. Her lips almost touched his blood-scabbed ear.

“I will tell you why, Andrew. You fell asleep. Every one of you. You had dreams. A pain in your head… the taste of copper in your throat. You knew exactly what you must do, though you cannot recall receiving any instruction. And afterward none of you said a word—”

“Silence b-bespeaks the high respect—”

“Listen to yourself! It is Mrs. Marchmoor!”

“I beg your pardon? I am unacquainted with any M-M-Mrs.—”

“The glass woman.”

Rawsbarthe attempted a blanched smile. “I must assure you again there are no women in Stäelmaere House—the Duke's, ah, martial proclivities—”

She took his shoulder and thrust him again toward the mirror. Mr. Rawsbarthe bleated his protest and squeezed shut his eyes.

“Andrew! Mrs. Marchmoor has rummaged in your thinking like it was a bag!”

“Miss Temple—”

“Look at yourself!”

He did, but at once burst free with a stricken cry, shoving past and knocking Miss Temple across one of the chairs. By the time she pulled herself upright, there was no sign or sound of Andrew Rawsbarthe at all.

MISS TEMPLE found her side staircase. The walls were lined with painted niches aping the shadowed passageways of a cathedral, each holding allegorical figures that Miss Temple—whose biblical education had been attended to with a gratifying indifference—nevertheless recognized as the ten plagues visited upon Egypt. Despite her hurry she could not help but stare as she went down, the toads, blood, lice, and fire presaging her own descent into the stinking mire that had already swallowed poor Rawsbarthe. But the final landing stopped her cold, for the wider section of wall allowed for a more elaborate tableau, and she stood there, Francesca Trapping's bandaged arm fresh in her mind, facing the death of the Egyptian firstborn, where pitiless angels dangled lifeless children from both hands, hovering above a crowd of keening women.

At the base of the stairs was a door on a swing. She was near the kitchens. The corridor wound past rooms stuffed with barrels and crates and crocks and bottles and baskets and burlap sacks, rooms storing pots and pans both massive enough to cook a wild boar whole and comedically small, as if for a Roman banquet of larks. Yet every room she passed, in what ought to have been the busiest part of the household, was devoid of servants.

At a larger archway she wrinkled her nose and looked about her for the source of the smell—matted straw thrown onto the mess, the actual cleaning laid aside for some luckless drudge, perhaps a soup-bowl's worth of mustard yellow vomit. Miss Temple had reached the enormous central kitchen hearth, radiating heat from a bed of white flaking coals. The benches and tables that filled the room had all been pushed aside, as if making room for… something. She advanced slowly, and the smells of gastric excrescence gave way to the stench of indigo clay. A pebble crunched beneath her foot—a fleck of blue glass. The smell was thicker at the hearth itself, the heat against her face. On the brick border of the oven lay a dusting of tiny blue needles…

What had happened in the garden? And where was everybody now?

She staggered and put a hand over her mouth, turning her face and groping for the nearest table to support her. What had just happened?

She had framed the questions in her mind… and then suddenly received a sickening flick of an answer… the glass woman had been in here, and in such distress that the agony projected from her mind had sickened the minions around her. The knowledge had come from the Comte's memories—Miss Temple's own mind drawing unbidden from that pool, dangerously and without warning…

Miss Temple bent over and did her best to rid herself of the nausea, but nothing came. She felt the blood rushing to her head and stood, grim and once more consumed with an anger not altogether hers.

THE CORRIDOR ended at another swinging door and she pushed through to an elegant dining room. A crystal chandelier in the shape of a three-masted frigate hung over an enormous long dark table. The glass craft floated like a ghost ship, bearing a mere half-dozen candles, their glow abetted by a standing candelabrum on the table itself, set next to a man in his shirtsleeves. He sat in the master's own thronelike seat, and busied himself amidst a mass of papers. One ink-stained hand held an old-fashioned feather pen and the other a metal tool she had seen used on a ship to measure distance. Beyond him lay the doorway out.

The man was not Robert Vandaariff.

Miss Temple cleared her throat. He looked up and showed himself to be younger than she'd first assumed. His hair had receded to the rear of his skull—but upon seeing his face she doubted he was much older than Chang, and his firm jaw and strong hands bespoke a masculinity that made her twitch. He set down the quill and the metal tool and stood, a politeness that took her by surprise.

“I did not know there were any ladies in the house…”

“I am Miss Stearne, a friend to Lydia Vandaariff. I fear I am interrupting all sorts of things everywhere.”

“Not at all, I'm sure.”

“There seems to have been a fire.”

The man gestured broadly with a wry smile. “And yet the house is of a size that some fifty rooms remain for civilized occupation. Would you care for tea?”

“No thank you.” The last thing Miss Temple wanted was to be introduced to a servant as a friend of Lydia's. “I trust I am not disturbing your work.”

“Not at all.”

A silence hung between them, to her mind fetid with possibility.

“You have not said your name,” said Miss Temple, a little appalled for blinking her eyes as she did so.

“My apologies. I am Mr. Fochtmann.”

“What a very interesting mass of papers,” she said, pointing. “They look very… goodness, mechanical and scientific.”

Still smiling, Mr. Fochtmann turned the top page of each pile facedown, hiding their contents from her eyes. “A woman like yourself cannot be interested in anything so tiresome. Will you sit?”

“No, thank you. I'm sure I will be late for the train—”

“Caroline Stearne I am aware of,” he said. “But you said ‘Isobel’—”

“We are cousins,” said Miss Temple easily. “Caroline has traveled with Lydia to Macklenburg.”

Miss Temple wondered if Captain Tackham and his dragoons were searching for her, whether they might appear at any time.

“Apparently there has been no word sent from her party,” Fochtmann observed. “Though they are gone now over a week.”

“Who writes postcards after getting married?” The skin above her breasts flushed with memories from the glass book (… a blindfolded man straining at the touch of two tongues at once… the careful liquid insertion, one at a time, of a string of amber beads…). She blinked to find he had cocked his head, watching her.

“But there has been word. From the court at Macklenburg. The party did not arrive.”

“Not arrive? That is impossible.”

“It is at the least strange.”

“Sir, it is difficult to credit at all! Where is the outcry? Where are the journalists—the naval search parties, troops of lancers scouring the coasts? If the heir to Macklenburg is missing—” She stopped, staring at Mr. Fochtmann quite seriously. “Has anyone told Lydia's father?”

“Her father cannot be found.”

“But he is Robert Vandaariff!”

“Is he, though?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Will you not take a seat, Miss Stearne?”

“I have told you I cannot.”

“And yet I think you should. I would go so far as to recommend it for your health.”

FOCHTMANN'S VOICE remained pleasant as ever. “You have been exposed to the glass. I can see it in your skin. Perhaps the exposure has been minimal—it has not caused you to lose any of your lovely hair. But you do know what I am talking about, and I must insist that you answer my questions.”

“What questions?”

Fochtmann glanced to the door, then back to her, staring hard, as if what he found in her countenance would determine his choice— that he was making a choice, right then. Miss Temple smothered another spasm of nausea. A cold shaft of understanding from the Comte's memories pierced her thoughts, the tip of a blade shoving past a cupboard lock and splintering it open.

The hearth. The man was in his shirtsleeves. He had cauterized Mrs. Marchmoor's shattered wrist in the kitchen hearth fire.

Fochtmann indicated the papers before them on the table.

“It is an entire world of the ‘mechanical and scientific’ These are times when opportunity rides side by side with disaster.”

“And you would avoid the disaster.”

“For myself, to be sure.”

“And your… employers?”

“I only know what I've been told—nothing a man can trust. There are fissures between them—it can be the only reason I am engaged.”

Miss Temple nodded slowly. “And perhaps…I am not…exactly… who you take me to be,” she said.

Fochtmann rapped the papers sharply, as if some inner gamble had been won.

“So which of them sent you? It is all very well to replace Lorenz, but before anything else I must know whether the blue glass has killed him. No one will hazard a guess—especially since all of them are sick as well.”

“Doctor Lorenz dead? Well, Doctor Lorenz was nothing—the Comte's dogsbody only.”

“You know the Comte? You knew him?”

“Knew? You do not mean the Comte is dead?”

Fochtmann squinted at her as if she were a strangely behaving insect.

“I wonder at your indifference. Your own cousin, Caroline Stearne, was part of the same party. She is most likely dead as well.”

Miss Temple did her best to gasp aloud.

“Do not pretend!” he scoffed, pleased at catching her out. “You yourself bear signs of this indigo decay—and here by luck you have blundered into the only man who can save you!” He snatched up his pen and searched for clean paper. “Tell me whatever you have heard them say—Lorenz, the Comte, anyone. I will make sense of it myself. Obviously a young woman has not come all this way on her own initiative—who do you serve?”

He looked up suddenly. “No no—I'm a fool! It's Vandaariff!”

He stabbed the quill at her clasped hands. “What is that case?”

Miss Temple raised it with a shrug and waggled the handle between her fingers. “It is empty. I was instructed to collect a particular item from the Comte's laboratory. But it is already gone.”

“Do you expect me to believe that? Who else but Vandaariff could marshal the resources to steal so many machines away? But he lacks something and was forced to send you to retrieve it—someone harmless who would attract no suspicion.”

“Why would Vandaariff destroy his own house?”

“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 knobs. 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 documents.

“And it would fit in your case?” he asked.

“Apparently the item folds.”

“Ah… as I assumed…”

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 prone 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 Stäelmaere?”

“Indeed,” said Fochtmann, as if her question illustrated 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 damned 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 glass 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 glass 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 damn you to hell! 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 prone 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 brass 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 brass 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 glass book. The tubes and hoses were attached to a person, laid out upon a table—the machine serving to connect the glass book to that person's mind. Depending on how one set the seven brass knobs, 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 buttocks, 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 glass 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 participation 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 glass 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 glass, 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 glass woman would need another mouthpiece.

At once Miss Temple saw the glass 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 glass 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 circumstances 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 glass—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 glass 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 appetite and the excess that Harschmort could supply. Miss Temple studied the still bodies she first assumed were asleep and wondered how many might be dead.

Her foot kicked a toppled wineglass. 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 snigger. 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 sniggered 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 assignation 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 assumed 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 knob, opening instead by the pressing of a button—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 space 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 assignation than correspondence—ointments, a hairbrush, wineglasses, 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 Bascombe. 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”… “exactitude”… “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… Elöise 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. Elöise 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 Bascombe.

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 Elöise 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 assimilate into books) to conceal the Contessa's private business. And this private business had to do with Charlotte Trapping and Elöise. Had Elöise truly met with Charlotte Trapping and Caroline Stearne at the St. Royale? Surely Elöise 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 Elöise 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 Elöise and Caroline had not recognized one another? Miss Temple huffed. Anything was possible, but was it likely? Was it not more likely that Elöise 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 Elöise had not said a word.

SHE LOOKED around her at the tiny room with a colder sense of pride. Caroline Stearne, like Elöise, 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 glass 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 brass 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 canal—”

“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?”

Harcourt gestured angrily toward the sound of the ransacking soldiers. “Of course not!”

“Goodness.” She smiled brightly. “Would such information be worthwhile?”

As she hoped, Harcourt hustled her back where he had emerged, the better to make her capture his own. It was another office, its furniture covered with dust cloths. His grip remained hard on the arm that held the case, and he shook her when he spoke.

“Where is he? Tell me! Lord Vandaariff has five estates within two days' travel. Soldiers have searched each one!”

Miss Temple chuckled and shook her head. “Mr. Harcourt, I am not a girl to take the efforts of the Queen's own army lightly! Believe me when I say, with sober respect—”

Harcourt shook her arm again. She looked down at his hand and her voice became cold.

“It is merely a matter of logic—”

“Logic? Are you just guessing? If you think to mock me—”

“Mr. Harcourt, contain yourself! If Lord Robert Vandaariff is not here at Harschmort, then two things have unquestionably taken place.”

“What things?”

“First, someone has lost him. And second, someone else… has taken him.”

Harcourt sputtered with exasperation. Her knife-hand was still tucked behind her back.

“You said you knew where he was!”

“I said I was looking for Captain Tackham.”

“I am right here,” called Tackham from the inner door.

Miss Temple and Mr. Harcourt both spun toward the officer. He smirked at their expressions, then pushed himself toward a tall piece of furniture from which the white cloth had been pulled, a sideboard stocked with bottles. The Captain sorted amongst the brandy as Harcourt sputtered.

“Are they finished? Why did no one call?”

“Where are the children?” asked Miss Temple.

Tackham pulled the cork from a squat square bottle and poured an inch of amber liquid into a glass. “What is she doing here?” he asked.

Harcourt's reply was stopped by a cry from the inner room, the high-pitched voice of a child. Miss Temple took a step toward the door. Tackham quite casually reached back and pulled it tight with a click.

“What is being done to them?” she cried.

Harcourt called past her to Tackham. “She claims to know how to find Lord Vandaariff.”

“What is being done?”

“Does she really?” asked Tackham with amusement.

“But now she will not say!”

“I say she knows as much as my boot.”

“Any idiot knows,” sneered Miss Temple.

Tackham cocked his head with some amusement, but she saw the shift of weight between his legs, and the snifter slip easily into his left hand, leaving his empty right hand ready to catch her arm.

“Call me idiot, then,” he said. “I've no damned idea.”

“You are a swearing rogue,” she spat.

Captain Tackham extravagantly drained his glass. Recognizing the gesture for a distraction, Miss Temple wheeled, to find Harcourt had crept up behind her.

“She has something in her hand,” called Tackham sharply, but Miss Temple had already slashed the little blade at Harcourt, ripping a two-inch line across his coat sleeve. Harcourt stumbled clear and stared at her in shock, pulling at the sleeve and its dangling button to make sure he was unhurt.

Captain Tackham chuckled. Miss Temple turned back to him with contempt.

“You are a beast. I will be happy to see your skin melt off with each rise in rank.”

Tackham's face hardened and she knew he was about to come for her. Miss Temple gripped the knife tightly, but the conversation was interrupted yet again.

“What is this?” croaked a peevish voice from the corridor.

“It is Miss Stearne!” called Harcourt. “She knows the location of Lord Vandaariff but will not say.” He raised his sleeve. “And she has cut my coat!”

Andrew Rawsbarthe entered unsteadily, drawing a noticeably more gelid gaze across Harcourt, Miss Temple, and the blade in her hand, before settling it on Captain Tackham.

“Captain?”

“The lady insists upon seeing the children.”

“What children? It surprises me to hear you speak of children in Harschmort House.”

Tackham shifted uncomfortably. “She encountered them in the upstairs hallway.”

“I see,” said Rawsbarthe, gravely. “You first failed in your assignment, compromising your orders—and then you said nothing about this breach, to protect yourself!”

“She's only a feather-headed nothing of Lydia Vandaariff—”

“I did not know you made these decisions, Captain. I was not aware you were in command!”

Tackham pursed his lips, angry but silent. Harcourt cleared his throat and gestured to the door.

“If you would like me to inform the Colonel—”

“I would like nothing of the kind!” Rawsbarthe's fatigue showed through his anger like bones protruding in an old man's hand. “I will be obliged, sir, if you would shut the door to the corridor and then sit on that chair.”

Harcourt looked once at Tackham and then—as he was clearly junior to Rawsbarthe, no matter the man's condition—closed the door and then perched himself on an armless side chair, looking altogether childish. Rawsbarthe himself fell onto a divan. His palm left a rusty streak on the white cover.

“Miss Stearne, is it?” he asked.

“It is,” said Miss Temple.

“A companion of Lydia Vandaariff,” offered Harcourt.

“She should be brought to Mr. Phelps,” insisted Tackham.

“I disagree, Captain,” Rawsbarthe answered, sharply. “Miss Stearne, perhaps you will lower your weapon. There are no highwaymen here, and no lady is in peril.”

Miss Temple looked to Tackham, who smoothly adopted a posture of casual disinterest and poured himself more brandy. She lowered the knife but did not put it away.

“I am indeed acquainted with Lydia Vandaariff.” She indicated the case in her left hand. “I am here to collect certain hairbrushes to be sent on to Macklenburg. I came upon the Captain and his charges and have expressed my concern. You have three children—under arms, mistreated—”

“What of Lord Vandaariff?” Rawsbarthe wheezed. “Do you indeed know where he might be?”

Miss Temple did not answer him, glaring again at Tackham. Rawsbarthe leaned forward with difficulty. His chin quivered and suddenly Miss Temple wondered where he had been in the house all this intervening time. Even from the upstairs room, his condition had precipitously declined.

“Will you tell us?” he croaked.

“Why should I, given these peremptory gentlemen?”

“It would be indelicate to say,” drawled Tackham, “but I should be more than happy to show you.”

“Captain Tackham!” cried Rawsbarthe. “I believe you have tasks other than drunken insolence! You will inquire as to the readiness of your charges, at once!”

“I was told to wait—”

“And I am telling you to go!”

The officer met Rawsbarthe's gaze—and his trembling jaw—and then mockingly clicked his heels. He cast a last glance at Miss Temple. Then he was gone.

“Mr. Harcourt, as soon as Miss Stearne reveals Lord Vandaariff's location, you will take the news to Mr. Phelps alone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I tell you,” Miss Temple asked, “will you let me see the children?”

“It is not your place to bargain,” wheezed Rawsbarthe.

Miss Temple was certain that as they stood talking, no matter what Rawsbarthe intended to do, Captain Tackham would carry the children farther and farther from her grasp.

“Well then.” She tugged on a dangling chestnut curl, and then exhaled with a tinge of boredom. “It is the simplest thing to learn where a person is—one merely has to know where he isn't. Lord Vandaariff is not at any dwelling or place of business, or you would have found him long ago. He is not anywhere related to his business, or his family. His daughter is gone. His recent companions of close council are gone as well, all off to Macklenburg. Of course, such a man has secrets—yet with the destruction of his home, he must suppose those secrets compromised. He must turn to others, and so one returns to these absent companions. Which of them possesses resources he might rely upon… or take outright.”

“If he were in the shelter of Crabbé,” whispered Rawsbarthe, “the Ministry would know it.”

“So he is not,” said Miss Temple. “And neither the Contessa nor the Comte have an organization of people. It leaves only Francis Xonck, and the power of Xonck Armaments.”

“But… but Francis Xonck…” Harcourt looked nervously to Rawsbarthe.

“Was here this very day,” said Miss Temple. “I know it.”

“Yet if Francis Xonck could not find him…” began Rawsbarthe.

“Then it is not Francis Xonck Lord Vandaariff is with.”

Neither man spoke. Rawsbarthe stared at Miss Temple, his fingers gripping the divan at some internal pang.

“Go to Phelps,” he hissed. “It is the sister after all.”

HARCOURT RUSHED from the room. Miss Temple followed him to the door and locked it. From the corridor she heard Colonel Aspiche roaring to his men. She turned to the wheezing man on the divan.

“You are not well, Andrew. And now you have quite compromised yourself. When it is known who I am, she will be angry.”

“Then she must not know.”

“She knows already. Have you not sent Tackham to her? She will snatch my image from his mind.”

“I resent this very much indeed,” Rawsbarthe muttered. He coughed weakly. Tears glazed his eyes.

“Come, come,” she said, with a brightness that would not convince a trusting dog. “You forget that I am well acquainted with the woman. Indeed, I am acquainted with her as a woman. Up you go!”

She took his arm carefully with her case-hand, guiding him from the sofa and toward the inner door.

“We cannot—”

“If I leave you here, you will simply die, like Mr. Soames.”

“And the Duke,” he sighed, as if this were a terrible admission.

“And the horrid Duke,” she agreed. “But the truth is, Andrew, the Duke of Stäelmaere was killed some days ago. He was shot through the heart in the quarry at Tarr Manor, and by the lover of a Macklenburg spy at that.”

Rawsbarthe wobbled as Miss Temple reached for the doorknob.

“I had no idea.”

“It is a world of secrets.”

THEY PASSED through another shuttered parlor and another after that, Miss Temple closing each door behind with a flick of her boot.

“I have always found you beautiful,” wheezed Rawsbarthe.

“Well, that is most kind of you, I'm sure.”

“What you said to me earlier—about my being ushered into a room, and not remembering…”

“The truth is better for us all, Mr. Rawsbarthe.”

“That is a terrible lie! The truth is a plague!”

“Mr. Rawsbarthe—”

“Andrew!”

She felt the clawlike grip of his fingers on her arm as she opened the next door. Beyond lay a table spread with white cloth, dotted with small reddish stains.

“Can you smell her?” she asked.

“I cannot smell myself,” he whimpered. “Though any mirror says I ought to.”

“She has left with Captain Tackham and the children.”

“What does she look like exactly?”

“You have seen her yourself, Mr. Rawsbarthe.”

“Andrew,” he whined.

“Andrew—you have seen her. She has seen you. Have you no memory of it at all?”

He shook his head dumbly. “I saw your man,” he said.

“What man?” Miss Temple had grown impatient and pulled him round the table to the door. “Roger?”

“Roger is dead. And I have been thinking, since we spoke—you will wonder that I have come back to find you—but all of what you said has been gnawing at my mind, and—I will say it—at my body. I can imagine where you have been, what you have done, what experiences you have cast yourself open to, what wanton impulses—”

“Mr. Rawsbarthe—”

“Do not deny it! I am speaking of your criminal!”

Miss Temple's hand was on the knob, but stopped mid-turn.

“You saw Cardinal Chang? At the station?”

“Of course not. At the Trappings'.”

“When was that? What were you doing? What was Chang doing?”

“Looking for her.”

“Mrs. Trapping?”

“Why should you care for him?” Rawsbarthe whined. “He is a brute! Your curls are so beautiful—”

Rawsbarthe erupted in a coughing fit. His face was bright with fever. Clumps of hair fringed his lapels. His eyes had acquired a slick cerulean oil, and she doubted he could see a thing. Miss Temple pulled free. He sank against the table. She retreated to the far door.

“Where are you going?” he rasped, his voice shrill with concern.

“I must find Captain Tackham. I will return, I promise!”

“You will not!” Rawsbarthe moaned, then toppled. He scrabbled to steady himself but found only the tablecloth, balling it up in his hands. He collapsed to the floor with a shriek, pulling the white sheet on top of him. Miss Temple plunged into the darkness of another room.

RAWSBARTHE'S PLAINTIVE cries (“Celeste! Celeste!”) penetrated the door to Miss Temple's back, but she did not pause. She followed Mrs. Marchmoor's path, the smell growing more bitter and the stains more bright until she finally emerged in a far part of the garden, lined with hedges. Crushed on the threshold was a broken chocolate biscuit.

The glass woman's journey to Harschmort had yielded nothing. In the absence of the book, and the Comte's machines, and Vandaariff, was Mrs. Marchmoor in flight? Or did she follow some desperate strategy? One thing was sure: since the children had been taken out this way, not back through the house, Mrs. Marchmoor did not intend a return via carriage or train…

So much pointed to Charlotte Trapping. Yet if the children were only hostages to their mother's cooperation, what could one make of the vials and bloodstained cotton wool? With a grimace Miss Temple opened her mind to the memories of the Comte d'Orkancz—the three children, their mother, the vials—but was rewarded only with bitter retching and tears in her eyes. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. She must rely on her own wits. The children had been brought here… and now they were being taken away. Why?

WHEN SHE ran out of lawn—the house now a darkening shadow behind her—Miss Temple tumbled into the beach grass without a break in stride. Another two minutes of running, her pace now spurred by fear, and she dropped into a sudden crouch. Ahead stood a silhouetted man smoking a cigar, its tip winking red. It was Captain Tackham. Miss Temple flung herself down.

Tackham stood scanning the high grass, turning his head stiffly like a marionette, his face emptied of all expression and intelligence. She held her breath. Another ten seconds and Tackham erupted into a fit of coughing. He raised both hands to his head, gagging like a man given poison.

From behind him came a call.

“Captain Tackham!”

Tackham wiped his mouth with dismay. “In a moment!”

He threw his shoulders back and staggered from Miss Temple's view. Quietly, she slipped after him. She could hear bootsteps on planking and creaking ropes… another few yards and she could see the canal itself. To either side of a long barge scurried shadowed figures—soldiers on deck and others, actual bargemen, readying sails and coiling the ropes that bound the craft to the canal side. Miss Temple saw nothing of the Trapping children, nor of Mrs. Marchmoor, but the glass woman had just inhabited Tackham in order to search the dunes. She must be in a cabin belowdeck. Tackham strode up the gangway to a knot of men. She recognized Mr. Phelps, Colonel Aspiche, and—his forehead wrapped with gauze—the ambitious engineer, Mr. Fochtmann.

Captain Tackham saluted the Colonel, gave some minimal report, and then stood back from the others, who talked on. Tackham's gaze was restless, studying the sailors, sweeping the dock, then returning to the grassy dunes. He raised a hand and the other men at once followed his gaze. Miss Temple plunged her head down to the sand, too terrified to move.

“Where have you been?” Mr. Phelps called directly toward her. “We have been waiting!”

Miss Temple pressed her body closer to the ground, hoping it was all a mistake, fighting the urge to leap up and run.

“Did you find Rawsbarthe?” called Phelps again.

“I did,” gasped a voice right behind her. Miss Temple nearly yelped with surprise. Not inches away, his feet kicking grass into her face, appeared the young Ministry man, Mr. Harcourt.

“My apologies to you all!” Harcourt was out of breath as he stumbled down to them. Phelps turned to the others.

“I suppose we can rendezvous with Rawsbarthe tomorrow.”

“I cannot think he will see morning,” gasped Harcourt, as he reached the gangway. “Mr. Rawsbarthe is overcome. He is quite unable to travel.”

“Lord preserve us,” muttered Phelps, and rubbed his eyes.

“What happened to this girl—this Miss Stearne?” asked Colonel Aspiche, his voice low.

“I questioned Mr. Rawsbarthe—but to be frank, he was no longer lucid.” Harcourt's voice was heavy with concern.

“Miss Stearne indeed!” snapped Phelps. “We have all been fools—”

Phelps stopped speaking, for Harcourt had suddenly begun to weave on the gangway, dangerously near to pitching headfirst into the water. Tackham took a step away, but Phelps caught Harcourt's arm. Harcourt tottered, then slowly spun, surveying the canal side and the darkened dunes. He seemed to stare directly at her. Miss Temple did not breathe.

“Gentlemen…” announced Harcourt, still facing into the night, his voice unpleasantly hollow. “Is it not time to set off?”

“We were only waiting for Mr. Harcourt,” replied Phelps.

“Has he seen Miss Stearne?” asked Fochtmann, his voice stiffly conversational.

“Mr. Harcourt has not,” said Harcourt, a phrasing that made the men visibly uncomfortable.

“She is dangerous,” said Fochtmann firmly. “She must be found.”

“Perhaps some soldiers could continue the search here,” offered Phelps.

“She is nothing,” announced Harcourt, his voice hollow. “An insignificant liar. Mr. Phelps is required in the forward cabin with Mr. Fochtmann and the Colonel. Captain Tackham will see to his men.”

“May I suggest that Mr. Harcourt remain on deck?” offered Phelps delicately. “I expect he will feel… unwell.”

“As you like,” intoned Harcourt. “It makes no difference.”

The younger man staggered again and Phelps rushed to catch his arm, guiding him off the gangway. Tackham hovered, but Phelps turned to him sharply.

“You have your orders—get below! I will follow in a moment.” Tackham went with a curt nod. Phelps looked at Harcourt—dazed and distractedly sniffing—and then shouted at the bargemen, startling them back to duty.

“Cast off at once! Barge-master! Make sail!”

MISS TEMPLE knew very well that she could stay where she was, allow the barge to go and walk back to the house and then to the train station—that her journey could end in a suite at the Anburne, with a proper bath and a proper pot of tea. Yet when she pushed herself up and drove her body on, it was toward the canal. The bargemen pulled the gangplank onto the deck, but Miss Temple kept running. With a catch in her throat came an awareness of how delicate the blue glass was. She cradled the case in both arms, holding it tight against her chest, and leapt the distance onto a pile of netting, the rough hemp biting into the soft skin of her knees and forearms. She rolled quickly off the ropes and into the shadow of a sail, out of sight but dangerously near to where Mr. Harcourt sat slumped.

The bargemen ran back and forth around her, their hard bare feet slapping the deck, gathering lines. She could see the pale hair above Harcourt's stiff collar. The knife was at hand and the ease of his murder fluttered atop her thoughts, a rippling pennant of cruelty. She imagined the man's shirtless back—she wondered if there would be scars, Chang would have all sorts of scars… even the Doctor might have them, as a soldier… ugly things… disfigurements—she felt a desire to trace her fingers down Mr. Harcourt's spine… or someone else's, anyone else's… and slide her hand beneath his belt like a knife into an envelope.

MISS TEMPLE slipped from her shadow to a hatchway at the rear of the barge. She stuffed the knife into her boot, and pushed the hatchway wide, wrinkling her nose at the stink of bilge water below her in the dark. She slid the hatchway closed above her, perched in pitch black, listening. Footsteps thumped above… but no cries of alarm, nor was the hatch flung wide. She groped around her—boxes, bales of moist cloth, coiled rope—and then wormed her way behind the ladder so that anyone looking down would not see her, no matter that they had a light. Shifting her buttocks and shoulders made room between the bales where she could sit and Miss Temple did so, leaning back, Lydia's case on her lap.

No doubt the barge was rife with rats. She snorted. If the rats knew what was good for them they would steer clear.

Miss Temple snorted again. For the very first time she understood the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza's slovenly room at the St. Royale. With death and desire such constant companions, what attention would a woman like that possibly waste on décor?

Or indeed, thought Miss Temple—curling onto her side to sleep, an animal in its lair—a woman like herself.