"The Dark Volume" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dahlquist Gordon)Nine. IncisionDOCTOR SVENSON refused to consider himself the sort of man who might kill a woman, under even the most heinous of circum-stances, heinous being a perfectly apt word to describe the woman before him. The Contessa had requested a cigarette from the Doctor's case and was deftly inserting it into her black lacquered holder. She caught the Doctor's gaze and shyly smiled. “Would you have any matches?” Svenson slipped the dead barge-master's clasp knife into his trouser pocket and pulled out a box of matches. He lit one and offered it to her, nodding to his own case, still in her hand. “May I?” “It is very lovely,” she remarked. “I suppose the laws of salvage compel me to return it.” She held it out and his fingers just barely grazed hers—cool, soft—as he took it. “As if you were one for laws.” The Contessa blew a plume of smoke toward the guttering fire. “These are quite raw,” she said. “Where do you get them?” “Purchased from a fisherman,” replied the Doctor. “Danish.” “In the city, you were smoking something else. They were black.” “Russian,” said Svenson. “I buy them from an agent in Riga. I used to call on him when my ship stopped in port. Being no longer with a ship, I order them over land.” “I'm sure you could acquire them nearer.” “But not from him. Herr Karoschka—one so rarely finds a decent man of business.” “Rubbish.” The Contessa tapped her ash toward the fire. “The world is ankle-deep with decent men of business—it is exactly why so many are so poor. Their delusion is merely the Svenson nodded in the direction of the barge-master's body. “Are you always so merry after killing a man?” “I am this merry when I have “Madame—” “Doctor Svenson, Her tone was arch and impatient, but Svenson could see the fatigue in her face—and it surprised him. The Contessa's normal temperament was so fully “Where is Elöise Dujong?” he asked, his voice even. The Contessa burst out laughing. “You were with her, madame. In her uncle's cottage—you arranged—” “Arranged “Do not hope to lie to me! You saw her—” The Contessa choked gleefully on her cigarette. “Madame! She directed you to Parchfeldt Park.” “We did not meet at all. I saw “She was attacked by Francis Xonck.” “I don't suppose it was fatal?” “He mistook her for The Contessa shrugged as if to say this meant nothing, but then met the Doctor's cold gaze. Her smile faded away. “And so Francis followed on the train—not reaching the freight car before I was gone. It was you that prevented him from doing so, wasn't it? That gunshot.” Doctor Svenson was silent. The Contessa exhaled again, wearily. “Being obliged in any way is hateful. Very well. I have not seen Elöise Dujong since the train yard at Karthe. Miss Temple traveled with me. I left her quite alive, free to re-enter her cocoon of respectable hotels and tractable fiancés. Now, will you please HE KNEW the Contessa to be the worst of women, and yet whenever she spoke, even if he knew it to be a honey spun of nightshade, it was as if her candor was meant for him alone. He stuffed the kindling into what remained of the embers. Could she truly not have been at the cottage? The Contessa uncorked the cider, took an unhurried pull, and held out the bottle. He felt the dizzy throb at the back of his skull and drank, reflexively wiping the bottle with his sleeve—at which the Contessa chuckled. She pushed across the barge-master's dinner: a half loaf of coarse brown bread; a block of cheese, its edges scumbled with mold; and perhaps six inches of blood sausage. The Contessa raised her eyebrows with a knowing expectation. He looked at the sausage, then met her eyes again and felt his face grow warm. “You have the fellow's knife, I believe,” she said. Doctor Svenson cut sausage and cheese for them both and then returned the clasp knife to his pocket. The Contessa piled a slice of each onto a torn hank of bread and took a small, estimatory bite. “A bit of mustard would do well.” She shrugged. “Or caviar on ice with vodka—but what can one do?” They ate in silence—like Svenson, the Contessa was evidently starving. But it was enough to simply watch her “WHAT DID you think of the glass card?” he asked. “It was taken from my pockets. Don't tell me you didn't look into it.” “Why should I tell you that?” She reached for the bottle, drank, and set it down. “I think she does her best to warn you.” “Why?” “Because she is an idiot.” “You mean she wants to save my life.” The Contessa shrugged. “If she cared for you truly, if she had a scruple of genuine sympathy for your soul, she would have instead provided you with the experience of Arthur Trapping having his beastly way with her on the floor of his children's schoolroom. You would have felt their pleasure—it would have aroused you, but sickened you even more. No doubt your skin crawls to think of it, of She stopped at once, her eyes innocently round. “If Mrs. Dujong cared for you, she would have done her level best to drive you away by whatever means might be at hand. She has instead attempted to “Do you think so?” “Listen to yourself defend her! The only question is whether she did so knowingly or is stupid. In either case, again—really, Doctor— SVENSON HAD no answer. The blue card had been placed in his pocket by Elöise… but what justification could it possibly offer? How other to read the attack in her uncle's cottage save as the tipping point where she had been forced to reveal her “Is it likely we will receive visitors from the large building down the road?” “That depends on whether the fellow whose dinner we eat was merely a guard to mind the barge or someone with a task, the non-doing of which will draw notice.” She reached for a last slice of cheese. “One reason to maintain the fire of course is to maintain the illusion of his continued presence.” “And if I had not arrived?” “But you “You credit the notion of destiny, then?” The Contessa smiled. “I credit the need to face facts. I am not one to entertain phantasms when I can entertain the real.” “The objects on the blanket told you they had encountered me.” “Why should I care?” “Why indeed?” Doctor Svenson reached for the cider. The bottle was two-thirds gone. “And what “To so arrantly reveal your ignorance, Doctor Svenson—it shows bad form.” “Rubbish yourself, madame.” Could mere cider be going to his head so quickly? “Do you think I cannot see the stiffness in your right shoulder?” “I assure you, I am quite well.” “You have taken the bottle each time with your left hand, even when I have placed it much nearer the right. If you have been injured, I should see what I can do—it will only make it easier for you to take my life when you finally decide.” “Or for you to take mine directly.” “If that were a worry, you would not be here.” In a sudden afterthought to his logic, Svenson realized that he had taken a blow square to the right side of his head, from a woman directly behind him—which meant she must have used the full force of her arm, which strongly suggested his assailant had used her right arm. It could not have been the Contessa at the cottage—just as the Contessa could not have extricated Robert Vandaariff from Harschmort. But if the woman he had glimpsed next to Elöise The Contessa glanced to the road, then back to Doctor Svenson, her violet eyes inhabited by a curious gleam. As if she had come to a wicked decision, she reached into a canvas bag behind her and came out with a bottle and a rag. “Such professional concern. You must give me a moment to undo my dress…” HE COULD see the wound would scar. At another time he would have certainly stitched the gash together, but here he soaked it with the alcohol. “This was not from the glass,” he said, as the Contessa flinched— not from pain, but from the cold drips that ran beneath her dress to the small of her back. “Not from Francis, you mean?” Her hair hung over her face to provide a clearer view of the wound. “No. I had the misfortune of passing through a window.” “A few inches higher and it would have cut your throat.” She had removed her right arm from the dress, and the purple silk bunched in a rustling diagonal, revealing the Contessa's corset and a good deal of her body—even paler for the blackness of her hair. “What is your “I think you did very well to tie it yourself,” he answered, reaching carefully beneath her arm to redo the knot. “It was not me at all,” said the Contessa, “but someone with much smaller fingers. It was a very long journey, you see, and just the two of us together.” For an unguarded second Svenson imagined himself trapped in a freight car with the Contessa. Sharing an open fire was difficult enough. But the woman alone with Celeste Temple… what had they spoken of, and what—what else, it did not matter… nothing mattered as long as Miss Temple had emerged alive and unscathed. If only he could believe it. “There you are,” said Doctor Svenson, sitting back on his knees. She turned to face him, testing the ease of her arm and the tightness of the bandage, but not moving to do up her dress. Doctor Svenson swallowed, his medical objectivity steadily more confounded, like distant moonlight disappearing under cloud, as he stared. He forced his gaze up to hers, expecting a twinkling mockery, but the Contessa's eyes were warm and clear. “If any girl could ever be dear to me, I can imagine Celeste Temple such a one, though my first impulse on seeing such a determined little beast was to snap her neck between my teeth. So to speak, you understand … and yet… perhaps it was this wound… perhaps the need to huddle together for warmth …” “She—she “I think The moment was as dangerous as any Doctor Svenson had ever known. Despite all perspective and sense, her violet eyes remained pools into which he could, even now, be utterly lost, and in that losing give over all loyalty, all faith, all decency to her uncaring purpose. If he leaned forward to her lips, would she kiss him? Would she laugh? He licked his lips and dipped his gaze across her body. He could no longer recall the color of Elöise's eyes. Doctor Svenson sprang to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers, and at once stumbled on a stone and toppled backwards into the undergrowth, landing with a grunt as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay gasping, the green leaves of forest ivy brushing at his face, and shoved himself onto his elbows. The Contessa had returned her arm to her dress, and was doing up the shining black buttons with her left hand. “Are you quite alive?” she asked. “My apologies.” “Come back to the fire,” she said. “We have little time after all, and urgent matters to discuss.” DOCTOR SVENSON took a cigarette from his case and lit it before he sat down, as if his habit might shield his weakness, but her expression made plain he was the least of her concerns. Grateful, if also childishly stung at his peripherality, he returned to his place across the fire. “Where is Cardinal Chang?” It was not at all what Svenson expected her to say, and he was strangely crestfallen. “I have no idea.” The Contessa was silent. Svenson exhaled and tapped his ash onto the stones. “If you hope Chang will aid you any more than I—” Her mood had sharpened, or she had stopped bothering to hide it. “Upon surviving the airship, madame, you must have assumed you were the only one of your Cabal—” “What else does one call you and your… associates?” “My The Contessa's eyes were harder. “The subject is not diverting.” “You ask for Chang because you are alone and seek greater numbers—and since you do ask, since you do expect my help—” “How very Svenson's cigarette had burned nearly to his fingers. He took one last puff and dropped it into the fire. He looked the Contessa in the eye. “You left the train deliberately to come here, to this spot in Parchfeldt Park. While this building is of a size to be a manor house, the construction is made for industry. The location of the canal allows the swift passage of goods—and yet the road and the canal are new-made. That you are here suggests you are one of the people who has new-made it—just as it is “Once wronged, Francis is most persistent in his rage. As you put a bullet in his chest, you might bear it in mind.” The Doctor ignored her mocking smile. “He has had several opportunities to take my life, yet I am here. Which means this place too is entirely related to Xonck.” This last did not come from any deduction about the Contessa, but from the crates of Xonck munitions on the barge with Mr. Fruitricks. Svenson was sure now that Fruitricks was an agent of Francis Xonck, who had intended all along to seize control of the Comte's machinery. And now Charlotte Trapping had the Comte's paintings along with Vandaariff Whatever she knew of the Cabal—through her brother or her husband or even, he had to admit it, Elöise—had been enough to send her on her own extreme journey. Did the woman hope to challenge Fruitricks? Or was she hoping only to survive? Svenson swallowed. Would he see Elöise again after all? “In any event,” he muttered, “you must expect Xonck here, if he still lives.” “I do. And you and I have been here far too long.” The Contessa stood, reached behind for her bag, and smiled as Svenson struggled to his feet. “You have caused me so much trouble, Abelard Svenson, yet as you say, you “But I do not trust “If you did I should think you quite a worm,” she replied. “The fire will die on its own, and by now we will be unseen on the road. Come, it is time.” THEY WALKED without speaking to the gravel road, a rough carpet threading the wood to either side. With night fallen full, the building glowed even more brightly. The Contessa reached for his arm, and then her touch became a tug on his uniform sleeve. He quickly followed her off the path, crouching low and keeping silent. A thin glimmer of yellow drifted toward them from the white building: the gleam from a mostly closed lantern. Svenson had not even glimpsed it— without the Contessa he would have blundered on and been taken. Behind the lantern came a double line of figures dragging two low, flat carts. These were the bargemen going back for the final load from the canal. Once they had passed, the Contessa's lips touched his ear. “They will find him. We must hurry.” In a rustle of leaves she was back on the road and walking as quickly as the dark and her injury would allow, and Svenson broke into a rapid jog to catch up. “What is this place? I know they have brought the Comte's machines …” She ignored him. Svenson caught the Contessa's uninjured shoulder and pulled the woman to a stop, her furious glare causing him to take back his hand at once. “If you expect my help, you must say.” He gestured at the bright building. “You and Xonck were “Francis “Whatever of his you have—whatever his book contains—can you really want it for yourself?” “Really, Doctor, I want him not to Behind them Svenson heard a cry—distant, but telling. The barge-master had been found. The Contessa picked up her dress and quickened her pace to a run. Svenson dashed after her. “We must hide!” he hissed. “Not yet!” “They will see us!” She did not reply, bearing straight toward the house. Over his shoulder Svenson saw a lantern wink on and off in sequence. Figures silhouetted in an upper window of the white building replied with their own signal. With a sinking realization he knew the bargemen would assume Abruptly the Contessa dodged from the road. The Doctor followed, the undergrowth whipping around his knees. The Contessa vanished into the trees. An instant afterward the branches were slapping Svenson's face in the dark. The double doors of the building had opened wide—pools of light bobbed forward and over the trees. Then the Contessa stopped and he was right upon her, nearly knocking her down. “There is a party, coming down the road,” he whispered, “from the—the—” “Factory,” she finished his sentence. “Follow me. Walk on the leaves!” She darted ahead again, not quite so fast, moving with hushed footfalls under a line of high, old elms. He followed, making up the ground with his longer strides, and saw she held her dress with only one hand, to favor her injury. The minutes passed in silence, the moonlight flickering through the treetops onto her shoulders. With a puncturing loneliness, Svenson marveled at how delicate a woman the Contessa truly was, in contrast to the enormity of her character. He tried to imagine possessing the same determination, for he too had driven himself to extremes, but it had always been in the service of someone else. The Contessa reached with her good left arm and took hold of Svenson's tunic, slowing them both to a stop. Through the trees before them he could see torchlight. He reached carefully into his pocket for his monocle and fit it over his eye. The torches were moving—figures on the march down a different forest road… but marching He turned back to the roadway, screwed in his monocle more tightly, and frowned. The party walked with the serious intent of soldiers on a forced march—except, by their dress, these were evidently figures of “This is no search,” he breathed into the Contessa's ear, his concentration even then pricked by the smell of her hair. She nodded, but did not shift her gaze. The line of figures finally came to an end. As if the decision had been made together, both the Doctor and the Contessa inched forward. The road indeed led straight to the large brick building—fronted here by a high wooden wall and an iron-bound gate. They turned to look in the other direction, to where the strange crowd had appeared. Perhaps fifty yards away “Now!” the Contessa whispered. “Keep low!” They broke from their shelter and dashed across the road—horribly exposed for an instant—and stumbled into another grove of trees, this one more tangled with broken limbs. They threw themselves down in the shadows. “You know those people,” whispered Svenson. The Contessa did not answer. “I believe the preferred term is ‘adherents,’” he hissed, “those fools who have pledged their loyalty to you and your associates—and had it seared into their souls by the Process. One wonders what in the world such a collection of people is doing so far out in the countryside—almost as much as one wonders why you did not reveal yourself to them. It would seem the answer to all your present difficulties. That you did not tells me their presence here is a mystery—and that you fear they retain no loyalty to The Contessa only pushed past him into the trees. When they emerged on the other side, another road crossed before them, overgrown with grass and knee-high saplings. Svenson realized it must have predated the canal, for it curved away around the forest, and recalled all the ruins he had passed in the woods while walking with Elöise. Parchfeldt Park was a sort of graveyard—like any forest perhaps, where every new tree fed on the pulped-up corpses beneath it. But as graveyards always brought to the Doctor's mind his own mortality, so standing on the derelict road placed all the new life and effort he had seen—the barge, the re-fitted factory, its master's blazing ambition—within the heavy shadows of time. The Contessa had not spoken since they'd seen the torch-led crowds. Doctor Svenson cleared his throat and she turned to him. “If I had not appeared, did you intend to simply approach the front door and charm the inhabitants to your will?” He was aware that sharp questions and a mocking tone must be strange to her, and did not doubt he was angering the woman—and yet his questions were also plainly meant. What “You're a strange man,” she at last replied. “I remember first meeting you at the St. Royale, where it was immediately obvious you were an intelligent, dutiful, tractable fool. I do not think I was wrong—” “I admit Cardinal Chang cuts a more “Cardinal Chang is merely another stripe of heart-sop idiot—you could each learn a thing from your little provincial ice floe. Yet I am not speaking of “What you think cannot be my concern.” The Contessa gazed at him, so wan and simple it made him blanch. “I will find the proper word for you someday, Doctor. And when I do, I shall whisper that word into your ear.” The Contessa turned and began to walk toward the factory. “Where are you going?” he cried. “We do not know who is there! We do not know why—if you have not called them—these people, your The Contessa looked over her shoulder—an action he was certain caused her pain. “Content yourself with your card,” she called back to him. “The ideals you place upon the world are broken. There is nothing THE SHIMMER of her silk dress caught the moon even after he could, no longer distinguish her shadow from the surrounding dark, and then she was around the curve and gone. He did not follow, wondering why, and looked back at the trees where they had come from, and then down the overgrown road as it led away from the factory… a path he might follow to another world. He reached into his pocket for his cigarette case and felt his fingertips touch the cold glass card. Was there enough moonlight to see? Was it not an intensely stupid thing to do in such open ground? Doctor Svenson sighed, regretting the act already (what had Elöise said, that knowing more of a thing invariably meant more pain?), and turned his gaze into the glass. WHEN HE finally looked up again the world around him seemed unreal, as if he had been staring into the sun. He felt the sweat on the back of his neck and a stiffness in his fingers from gripping the glass rectangle so tightly. He slipped it back into his tunic pocket and rubbed his eyes, which seemed to be moist… tears? Or merely his body's response to not blinking? He began walking toward the factory. The card had been infused with Trapping's memory, but that made sense, since the man would have taken part in many gatherings where the Cabal recruited its intimates, where the cards were a prominent lure. Svenson had looked into two cards before this, each different from the other in the manner of captured experience. The first contained one specific event—the Prince's intimacy with Mrs. Marchmoor, when the woman's sensations had been bled into the glass on the spot. The second card, holding the experiences of Roger Bascombe, had been an assemblage of impressions and memories, from his groping of Miss Temple on a sofa to the quarry at Tarr Manor. To fabricate it, the memories must have been distilled into the card well after the fact, from Bascombe's mind. Trapping's card—as the Doctor now thought of it—was different from each of these. Its experience was not rooted in images, or even in tactile sensations. Instead, it conveyed—and to a hideous degree—an emotional state alone. There Mrs. Trapping appeared nowhere, yet her absence was not its source. What reason did Arthur Trapping have to be so bitter? His ambition had been handsomely rewarded… and suddenly Svenson placed Colonel Trapping's bottomless resentment: he owed the Xonck brothers for If Mrs. Trapping was absent from the card, Elöise Dujong was even more so—was she not the man's mistress? This was convenient if Elöise hoped to assuage Svenson's anger, but Doctor Svenson was not truly angry—perhaps, he thought dryly, it was a lifelong failing. The choices Elöise had made, however much apart from his own desires, were too easily seen to be contingent and human. She had done what she had done—though he did not especially want to THE LIGHT still blazed through the factory's windows, and Svenson could see the shadows of a gathered crowd against the wooden wall. As he came nearer he heard a buzz of discontentment, affronted mutters, and calls of disbelief. The gate had not opened, a turn of events the crowd found altogether unexplainable. The men with torches held them high, the better to shout to the unanswering windows. Their dress was not as formal as when he'd seen these same people at the final Harschmort gala, but there was no question they represented the highest levels of profession, the military. There was also a rank of younger faces within the whole—those for whom profession was but a path to pass the time, high-born siblings or cousins living near enough to taste the titles they would never hold, forever nursing jealousies and resentments. Svenson compared this gathering with the servants and clerks he'd met on the train to Tarr Manor, seduced into selling the dark secrets of their masters in exchange for what to the Cabal must have seemed like red feathers given to South Sea islanders for land—a decent place to live and enough money for a new coat in winter. What could any of the well-placed people before him lack, by what lures had they been led along? The Doctor shook his head—the terms did not matter at all. The Cabal had suborned each group by dangling before their eyes a credible prospect of HE DROPPED onto his knees in the grass. The way into the factory was twice blocked—by the spreading crowd and by the wall. The crowd bunched in front of the gate, but their numbers were such that the mass had spread along the wall—perhaps as many as two hundred people altogether. Svenson could hear people knocking on the gate and calling for entrance, but their calls were so arrogantly presumptuous in their tone that the Doctor began to doubt that any of the crowd really knew where they were… or what might be inside. Did they not even register the contrast between the isolation of the factory and its fantastic new blazing inhabitation, between the derelict road and the recently raised outer wall? Svenson did not see the Contessa. He had seen a bust of Cleopatra once, in Berlin—his thoughts were wandering, it was getting cold—life-sized, but he had been struck by how small it seemed, that she was only one woman, who no matter how much of the world she had set aflame remained only so many pounds of flesh and bone, so much breath, so much warmth within one bed. He thought of the Contessa's lacerated shoulder, her quiver of pain beneath his touch, and laid against it like a wager her determined and rapacious—and cruel, he could not forget that— He stood and straightened his tunic. Some of these people had no doubt witnessed him being knocked on the head at Harschmort and dragged away to die—but that only meant they assumed he Svenson reached the crowd and shouldered his way past the rearmost ranks before speaking aloud, in a disdainful voice borrowed from the late Crown Prince. “Why do they not open the gate? Do they intend we should wait like tradesmen in the lane? Have we not traveled all these miles?” A man next to him, in a crisp wool overcoat, snorted in commiseration. “No one answers at all! As if we were not even expected!” “There can be no mistake,” whispered a thin, older fellow with gold spectacles. “When so many of us have received the message.” This was met with a general murmur of agreement, but still the gate did not open. Farther down the wall—Svenson was some distance from the gate itself—he could hear the rapping of steel-toed boots kicking hard against the wood. “Have you seen no one?” Svenson asked. “When we first approached, the gate was open. They barred it shut at the sight of us!” “They must know we are summoned!” “They do not act as if they do!” complained the older man. “And now it has grown cold… and the country is so “Gentlemen,” offered the Doctor, hesitating enough to make sure of their attention. “Is it possible… there is trouble?” The man in the overcoat nodded vigorously. “I have the exact notion!” “What if it is all a… a… Svenson was aware that their small conversation had attracted many listeners. “Then we were best not to fail,” he replied, pitching his voice more loudly. “Would you not agree?” He was answered by nods and mutters by others around them. “I beg your pardon,” one said, “but your voice…your accent—” “We are not to know one another any more than necessary!” the older man broke in. “Our league is intended to be invisible in the world,” the Doctor agreed, “like a fishing net in the ocean, yes? Yet I will say, since you hear it clear enough, that I am from the Duchy of Macklenburg, serving my Prince, who serves the same… “You are a soldier.” The older man indicated the Doctor's uniform. “Perhaps we are all soldiers now,” replied Svenson gravely, feeling an absolute ass. The men around him nodded with a cloying self-satisfaction. “Something “You were not told why you were summoned?” asked Svenson. “Were Svenson felt the entire gang of men around him waiting for his answer. “Not “Tell us what you know!” urged the older man, and he was echoed by many others. Svenson surveyed their faces and then shook his head seriously, as if he too had come to a decision—to trust them all. He lowered his voice. “On the other side of this wall is a factory… the property of Xonck Armaments.” At this revelation came a gasp from the older man. “Exactly who controls the factory at this moment is a mystery. Francis Xonck has journeyed to Macklenburg. Henry Xonck has been taken with an attack of blood fever… and yet there has been a summoning.” Svenson swatted at his less-than-scrupulous uniform. “I say ‘summoned,’ but you will notice I am here later than you all, and after traveling for a longer time. I have come from Harschmort House, where the miraculous machinery of the Comte d'Orkancz has all been removed… removed and relocated into this very factory, behind this very wall.” “But is not the Comte gone to Macklenburg as well? Upon whose orders has this been done?” “Is that our business?” asked the older man. “Have we not sworn to serve?” “Serve “If we were summoned, why are we shut “Clearly we were not summoned by whoever is master in this place,” said the man in the overcoat. “So we must ask ourselves,” said Svenson, “just who can issue such a summons …and who cannot.” The men around him erupted into mutterings that spread along the wall like a wildfire leaping from treetop to treetop in the wind. The man in the overcoat bent closer, but his words were lost in the growing noise—outright shouts that the gates must be opened at once, and an explosion of kicks and fists upon the wooden wall. He caught Svenson's arm in a powerful grip. The Doctor stood ready to rip it free, but the man only squeezed harder, hissing into Svenson's ear, “What In his other hand the man held a small volume bound in red leather—the book given to every loyal servant of the Cabal for deciphering coded messages. The crowd surged closer to the wall, jostling them both. Svenson pointed to the book. “I am afraid I have lost mine.” “And yet you are here.” Svenson groped for an explanation that would not expose him further. Before he could speak the man tugged him away from the wall, where they might hear one another clearly. If he struck the man hard enough, might he reach the woods before the others brought him down? “You were at Harschmort,” the man said. “As was I. But these others… I do not know them, or where they have been enlisted.” “Or by whom,” Svenson added. “As I say, Harschmort. You were there…” “ “You remember them, their sifting your thoughts.” “Not, I confess, with any pleasure,” said Svenson. “Nor I, and yet…” The man looked down at the red leather book. The others were now shouting quite loudly to be let in. “I felt it again not six hours ago.” “I had not wanted to say. It is “She? You know which of the three has done it?” “Only one survived the night,” said the Doctor. “There was chaos and violence—I know this from the Prince.” “But…but…that just makes it worse!” the man cried, now barely audible against the escalating roar. “Who has given “What did she tell “Nothing—it was not even words! Just the certain impression that I must travel at once to this place.” “Your dedication distinguishes you,” said Svenson. “My dedication leaves me flat,” the man replied. “We do not know our situation—how can we serve in ignorance?” Before Svenson could answer, the man pulled him back into the agitated crowd, raising his voice above their shouting. “Listen! Listen all of you! Here is one who has been this day to Harschmort House. More is afoot than we know! We have been called here for a Any answer Svenson might have made stopped in his throat when he saw that the crowd of angry men had all turned to him, waiting for his words. “Ah… well… the trick of it is—” “He is a soldier serving the Prince of They gazed at Svenson with a new veneer of respect. Once more, he was appalled. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, while that is true—” “Send him over the wall!” It was the old man with gold spectacles, his mouth a rictus of spite. “These blackguards won't let us in? Let's give them one who can sort them out!” Before Svenson could dispute this especially stupid idea he felt something cold and heavy pressed into his hand, and looked down to see he was now holding a silver-plated revolver. “Wait a moment, all of you! We do not know—” “You will shoot them!” cried the old man. “You will open the gate!” “That is The men behind him shouted with triumph, but the Doctor expected at any moment to be shot at or perforated by a pike. He looked down into a grassy compound, lit from the factory's high windows— the light streaming so brightly he was forced to squint. They called to him—what did he see, who was there, what had he found? Someone bounced the fence and he promptly lost his grip on the pistol, dropping it onto the grass inside. Svenson swore. His outer leg was suddenly shoved upwards and he toppled over. With a grunt he caught himself before he fell completely, hanging by one arm, but there was no way he could pull himself back up. He spat with frustration—suspended between the louts outside and the rogues within, all convinced he had murdered the barge-master. He dropped with a squawk into an ungainly roll. A triumphant cry soared at his disappearance—and he groped urgently for the pistol. A door in the factory opened wide. Someone had seen him. SVENSON LOOKED into the glare. Perhaps ten men filed out toward him, the gleam of polished metal in their hands. He flung himself facedown, flinching as they snapped carbines to their shoulders and fired a crashing volley. Svenson realized he was not dead—nor had the bullets gone into the fence above him. They had fired into the air. He heard a synchronous clacking as each rifleman advanced his next round, and then too soon a second volley—and then a third, and then a The mob fell silent, as if they too were on their knees and trembling. What else had he expected—it was an His groping hand found the pistol and closed about it. One soldier detached himself from the line and strode directly at Svenson, his carbine fixed on the Doctor's chest. Svenson raised his empty hand in supplication, the hand with the pistol still hidden in the grass. “These fellows have raised me over this wall,” he stammered. “I am not one of them.” The soldier wore an extravagant green uniform, like that of a hotel doorman, with polished black shoes and a black belt loaded with am munition pouches. An elaborate silver plume of flame had been embroidered on each tab of his stiff green collar—an officer, but of what force? The man's expression was stone-hard. He advanced a new shell into the carbine. The Doctor recalled the one bit of advice he had received with regard to dueling (Svenson having been challenged as a student by a drunken Prussian), from a disinterested young baron with unpleasant pink scars across each cheek. The nobleman had advised Svenson to note when his opponent The cry came from the doorway, but Svenson could see only the speaker's shadow. “There is another dead,” called Mr. Fruitricks, quite perturbed. “And THE PISTOL'S silver-plating betrayed his attempt to tuck it behind his back, and it was taken away. The officer marched him into the house, the rest of the detachment following in a drill precise enough to satisfy a tartar. The door was slammed and bolted, and the men leapt up ladders to loopholes in the wall through which they could fire upon the whole of the open yard and the wooden wall. These were not young men, not raw fellows recruited from the thousands driven from work by failed mills or ruined farms—but men with hard faces, scarred and grim. Svenson had seen them on his own ships, sailors whose service had required terrible acts—criminal in any civilian circumstance— and who after years where such work grew familiar came to inhabit another world entirely, men whose shore leave inevitably resulted in bloody mayhem and consequent whippings. Such men filled the ranks of the Xonck Armaments private militia. No doubt the company paid better than the Queen. He thought of the crowd outside the wall, its peevish assumption of privilege, and how little they understood the resolute figures arrayed to keep them out—men whose deep-set resentment for everything the privileged adherents stood for would find grateful outlet in the Xonck family's defense. The officer detailed two men to escort Svenson to a perfunctory office complete with filing cabinets, a desk, and two wooden chairs. Fruitricks was already behind the desk, shoving at the ledger books on top of it. Svenson fell into a chair and reached in his tunic for his cigarettes. “Who is killed?” he asked mildly. “You are astonishingly insolent,” Fruitricks muttered, sorting papers without looking at his hands. “On the contrary, I am merely a foreigner who knows not your ways.” The Doctor blew smoke toward the lantern on the desk, wishing very much that his fingers would stop trembling. “You know I did not kill your man at his watch fire—I found him dead.” “Then why did you run away?” “Because your men would have shot me,” replied the Doctor. “Who has been killed?” Fruitricks sighed, his expression aggrieved and pinched. “One of Svenson swiveled his head, following Fruitricks' gaze to the guards. “The Xonck private army?” “They are most formidable, I assure you.” “As formidable as your new weapons can make them, at least.” “That is The Doctor sat back in his chair and looked for a spot to tap his ash. “A very good thing they answer to your command.” “Of course they do.” “And not to anyone named Xonck.” Mr. Fruitricks glared at him. “No one named Xonck is my present concern.” “What about anyone named Trapping?” Mr. Fruitricks shot to his feet, prompting the soldiers at the door to look in. He ignored them, leaning over the desk at Svenson. “I am a businessman, sir—and this is a place of work! Whatever your “Of course not,” replied the Doctor. “This is an island of calm.” Fruitricks snorted and waved with anger toward the courtyard and the gate. “Who is that “I think they appreciate it more than they did before your display.” “But who “You do not know?” Svenson tapped his ash into a dish of pins. “My goodness. All manner of people from the city, some of them very highly placed—” “But they cannot “Then why are you upset?” “Because two men are dead! I watched you out there—speaking and plotting! They put you over my wall!” “They assume I am of their number.” “That is no answer! If you think I will scruple to get the information I require…” The man was near to screaming and Svenson's head throbbed with each shrill, miserable word. He inhaled deeply and replied as calmly as he could. “I am no sort of interested party—while you “We are nothing of the kind! Our store of munitions alone—” “Cannot hold off the Queen's entire army!” cried Svenson. “This mob is but a vanguard—a simple delaying tactic until the greater force can arrive.” “What greater force?” “Whatever the Duke of Stäelmaere can command. Whole regiments. Do you think they will scruple to get Fruitricks returned to his seat, tapping his fingers on the desk top. “But who is killing my men?” “How should I know?” asked Svenson, fatigued by the man's inability to keep to the obvious point. “Someone “But who is left? They are all dead. Or in Macklenburg.” Svenson rubbed his eyes and sighed. “No one ever reached Macklenburg. My Prince is dead. Lydia Vandaariff's head was cut from her body. The airship sank into the sea.” Fruitricks' face went pale. He shrieked to the door, “Take him to the tempering room—at once!” SVENSON WAS taken through a narrow corridor into an enormous chamber so crammed with machinery that he could not see the far side. He held a hand before his eyes—gas lamps had been placed along the walls, but the truly blazing light shone from the machinery itself, piercing as winter sunshine slicing off the Baltic ice. He looked back to see if Fruitricks had followed—he had not—and noticed fresh saw-cuts and nails. The warren of little rooms had been recently made. The green-coated soldier behind him touched his arm—a decent enough gesture when the man perfectly well might have given him a shove—and Svenson moved on. The bulky machines he had seen on the barge, all now roaring with life, had been arranged in a jagged, radiating spiral around a hidden center, shielded by tall rectangles of beaten steel that hung in frames. The metal sheets reflected the light off one another, and he could see that each was somehow scored with writing. At once he thought of the Comte's alchemical formulae, scrawled on the On the far side of the industrial floor another hasty wall had been flung up, and Svenson was shown into a room whose every surface had been sheathed with bright metal sheets. In the center of the room, suspended in a complicated harness strung between iron poles was the same—or if not the same, its double—round, helmetlike contraption the Cabal had used in Tarr Village to refine raw lumps of indigo clay into pliable bolts of glass. The burning, acrid smell told Svenson it had been successfully used. The room would forever stink of it. Yet the smell and the machine were nothing, the Doctor's attention captured instead by the corpse on the floor. The kerchief around the barge-master's neck had been removed, and Svenson saw the wound clearly for the first time—a deep slash across the jugular and into his larynx. Svenson turned to the soldiers posted to either side of the open door. Each resolutely ignored his gaze. He fished out a cigarette and sensed by a tightening in each man's posture that they disapproved of his access—as a prisoner—to any such luxury. “Any physician can judge from skin pallor and stiffening of the limbs how much time has passed since this man's murder,” he observed aloud. “Enough that the event must have taken place while I was still under confinement at the canal. Your master knows this. It proves I am no killer.” The soldiers said nothing, not that he expected they would. He lit his cigarette, wondering how long he would be confined in this especially unnatural cell. He shook out the match and tossed it to the floor. In the brilliant light he could see the yellow stains on his fingers. HE LOOKED up at a commotion in the corridor. Two more soldiers bustled in with a second body on a stretcher. Fruitricks stood to the side, hands balled into bony fists, waiting for the soldiers to leave. As soon as the stretcher-bearers had gone, he darted at Svenson with a nervous, sour expression. “You must tell me who has done this!” Doctor Svenson knelt by the body— “This has been done while you were out there!” Fruitricks waved impatiently toward the front of the building. “With “The wounds look… similar.” “Of course they are “You must study the clues.” “I do not care to—I am no butcher or surgeon! It is horrid!” Fruitricks stabbed a finger at the barge-master. “That is Mr. Brandt! He is “If you do not look, you will not learn. This is the world you have entered. Svenson indicated with his right hand—the cigarette between his fingers, a translucent ribbon of smoke fluttering above it—Mr. Brandt's opened throat. Fruitricks winced in protest, but knelt beside him. “From the angle of the cut, it is clear that his assailant stood before him—from where the blade enters to where the cut leaves off… it is unlikely for anyone to have done it from behind.” “He saw his killer? But there was no cry, no signal!” “Look closer, at the actual angle of the blade—excuse me, I mean no disrespect… but to illustrate my point…” Svenson took out the dead man's own clasp knife and snapped it open. If Fruitricks recognized the weapon he kept silent. Svenson delicately pressed the flat blade into the sticky wound. “To make this incision the blade must be pointing “What does “No,” said Svenson. “Stand.” They rose. Svenson put the blade into the other man's hand and then took hold of that hand's wrist, moving the blade slowly toward his own throat to sketch an attack. “In making your stroke, your arm is actually much more likely to swing the blade from your shoulder, like a fist, and so the angle of entry is more a flat gash than what we see.” Fruitricks looked down at the knife in his hand with distaste. “What does that mean?” “Only that whoever killed the man was a good deal Svenson took back the clasp knife and knelt by the newly dead soldier, pressing aside the wound in much the same way—the fresher gash seeping unpleasantly over the blade. “It is the same—from the front, and from below. I assume there was no cry or signal from this man either?” “Not at all.” “One must assume their silence comes for a reason. They might have been held at pistol-point. Or saw no reason to be afraid.” “But they were murdered.” “Obviously such reasoning was “Can you say who has murdered them or not?” Svenson imagined the ease with which the Contessa had approached each dead man, stilling their suspicions with a smile. He recalled the speed and violence—and the A green-coated officer burst into the room. “Mr. Leveret! Another man! You must come directly!” HE LED them all, the Doctor following “Leveret” (since neither name meant anything to Svenson, it was as easy to call him this instead of the frankly ridiculous “Fruitricks”) out the opposite side of the building, another squad at loopholes guarding this door. On this side of the factory there was no wooden wall, but the still-standing stone border of a much older structure whose crumbled outline lay strewn beyond it, just visible through the trees, like a faded inscription on a moss-covered grave. At the base of the wall several soldiers clustered around a figure on the ground. Leveret was already snapping for an explanation. The officer pointed to a wooden ladder fixed to the wall. Had the man simply lost his balance? Leveret wheeled on the Doctor, his mouth a tight line. “This is monstrous!” The Doctor glanced once at the corpse. He drew a last, long puff from the diminished stub of his cigarette before grinding it out against the stone wall. “You must send your men away.” “I will not!” insisted Leveret. “You will take no more advantage of my tolerant manner!” “As you insist… then they will hear the truth.” Svenson had seen this countless times in the navy: over-promoted fools whose prideful insistence on “having their way” resulted in a ship needlessly lost in a storm, or drifting within range of enemy batteries. Svenson glared at him, flatly contemptuous. Mr. Leveret swallowed. With an impatient flipping of both hands he waved the soldiers back to their posts. The dead soldier's eyes were open in uncomprehending terror, the corners of his mouth crusted with a blue-tinted saliva. The Doctor recalled Karthe, the blood on the rock where the boy had been mauled, the cold stench of death in the mining camp. With effort—and then with Leveret's help—he tipped the man on one side to expose his back: a shining lattice of spattered slashes and stabs, the blood hardened to gleaming blue, suffusing the green wool coat. Svenson counted at least seven deep punctures, all made with a savage rapidity. He nodded to Leveret and they gently set the body down. Doctor Svenson stood and dug in his pocket for his silver case. “If you hoped for time to secure your rebellion, you will not get it. I have seen this before. In Karthe.” “Karthe is in the “I should think it obvious.” Leveret glanced again at the soldiers, all watching closely. Their master licked his lips. “But—but it makes no sense… the others were killed by someone they trusted—or who did not scare them. However, “Is it not the same killer?” Leveret asked hopelessly. “Does it Leveret swallowed and crossed his arms. “I suppose you doubt a man who kills like “I also doubt a man who kills like that is necessarily “You said you saw this before—in the north.” “So I did.” “Then what must we do? How was this person stopped?” “He wasn't stopped at all, obviously. He's come to your door.” Leveret studied the body, flinching with distaste at the shining wounds. “It is not possible…” “What else did you expect?” Svenson asked. “Who else did you think you served? When you next see Francis Xonck, will he reward you? I should think a man who makes munitions would understand how care must be taken when one's work becomes deadly. But you will learn it soon enough—since this man was killed inside the wall, your defenses must be considered breached.” Svenson called to the soldiers directly and pointed to the ladder. “Look where this man was posted! Whoever killed him is inside! You must search in force!” “Do not instruct us,” shouted Leveret. The soldiers had Svenson's arms and were hauling him away. “You are just like the rest of them— these social-climbing, whore-aping “I thought you served Francis Xonck!” Svenson called. He hoped for a reaction from the green-coated soldiers, but their faces did not shift. “What you think means THE DOCTOR gazed hopelessly at the silver walls of the tempering room, and at the round refining chamber hanging in its harness. He wanted to kick it. A moment after he had been escorted in, the same two soldiers resuming their stance by the door, another pair had dropped the third glass-stabbed body at his feet, as if the murder was his doing. Perhaps these new weapons were protection enough—perhaps Francis Xonck's own soldiers would shoot him like a rabid dog. Perhaps… but he could still remember the earnest faces of the slaughtered townsmen of Karthe. Svenson stared at the dead man's blue-crusted lips, then turned to the men at the door, just as doomed. This little room of corpses would not do. He dropped to one knee, gasped, then leapt up and shouted urgently to the door. “You there—at once, run for Mr. Leveret! I have discovered something on the body. He must be warned!” The men looked at each other. “There is no One man ran off, toward the front of the factory. The other stepped into the room, his carbine held ready. “What mistake?” the soldier asked warily. “Look for yourself,” said Svenson, and he knelt next to the third corpse, indicating a spot just to the back of the dead man's neck. “The brighter light in this room that allowed me to see—” “I do not see anything,” said the soldier, leaning. “I'm a blind fool! The soldier knelt. Tentatively, he extended one hand toward the body, his other resting the carbine on the floor for balance. “What is it?” Svenson stepped on the hand holding the carbine—pinning the fingers between his boot and the weapon—and brought his other knee up into the man's jaw. The sickening HE COULD not hope to best the soldiers around either doorway, so he dove instead toward the main chamber, straight amongst the machines. He pressed himself between bright pipes and sweating hoses, stumbling on, but once inside he was near-blinded by the bright light and distracted by a very loud hissing and clanking from every direction. He would not hear the soldiers—with this light he could not even see them, while they could pot him as easily as boys shooting squirrels in a tree. A tall shadow crossed his path—one of the high metal plates. The inner face had been scored with the same dense scribbled nonsense he had seen on the paintings of Oskar Veilandt: equations, different languages, even scrawled figures like a Polynesian pictogram. The plate's reflected light fell in a pattern onto the floor. Svenson cursed his own slowness of mind—the Svenson fell to his knees and cast his gaze wildly around for some way out. To his great surprise the ceiling directly above him was open, a wide round hole dangling hoses and chain. Stifling all fear and decent feeling he leapt on top of the nearest machine, whose thrumming vibrated through his boots, and jumped at a hanging metal sheet, his heart in his mouth, catching the chains above it. His knees whacked the metal, and the weight of his body caused it to swing, his feet kicking to either side. He heard a cracking sound. The metal plate rang with the impact of a carbine bullet. Svenson stabbed out a hand for a higher chain, from the hole in the ceiling, caught it, and with a rush of vertigo let go of the sheet altogether. Another crack from the carbine, the bullet whipping who knew where, and Svenson seized the edge of the hole. He threw up an elbow with a gasp, then another, and then with a terrible heave rolled his body over the lip and lay sprawled, breathing hard. Leveret had four men with him with rapid-fire carbines, yet he'd only fired at Svenson twice and missed both times. They had held back to preserve the machines. HE HAD in his life seen waterfalls where one might climb between the falling water and the cliff face, and gaze out through a shimmering curtain. It seemed he had entered a similar, though utterly unearthly, cavern. Surrounding the Doctor were dangling sheets of cable, ducts, hose, and chain—arrayed without any order he could see. The hanging mass of tubes and chain rose twenty feet—the next floor of the factory had been taken out to make room—before finally being gathered together and forced into larger metal ducts. The ceiling above held a matching circular hole, far too high for Svenson to reach by climbing. He shoved his way through them on his hands and knees. There must be a staircase. The calling voice of Mr. Leveret rose up through the open hole in the floor. “Do not be an ass, Doctor! You cannot survive! You have no idea of your danger!” Svenson snorted—he had A shuffling, closer than before. Svenson squeezed through a thicket of black hoses, their condensation moist on his face. All of this to recreate the Comte's Harschmort “factory,” yet to what end—or, more precisely, for what Svenson could hear his pursuer shoving closer and dove blindly away, disquieted by the sudden image of a steaming cavity during surgery—the cords of muscle fiber, the globular strands of lung tissue, the tender tubing of vessels and veins—shuddering at the notion of his entire body somehow swimming through The hanging curtain gave way and Doctor Svenson stepped out into thin air. He dropped the knife with a cry, boot heels balanced on the edge of a precipice, and snatched at a canvas hose. He tottered in one of the tall windows he had seen from the road—windows no longer glazed, wide open to the elements. What sort of insane idea was that? He looked down, swallowing nervously. It was not so very high and the fall onto grass—but for Svenson, whose outright loathing of heights had been only amplified by the airship, it was enough to fix him stiff. The rustling sounds were directly in front of him. He had dropped the knife. An iron ladder had been bolted to the building's outer wall, running from the roof to the ground, a mere three feet away. The tubes shifted in front of him and one green arm pushed through, waving a long double-edged bayonet. Svenson jumped, catching the cold rungs with both hands, and clambered like an untrained ape, waiting for the blade in his back. It did not come. The hand with the bayonet slashed wildly at the air where Svenson had just been standing, but the soldier did not appear. The tubes and hoses rippled… the man was struggling with someone the Doctor could not see. The curtain parted and the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza shot out, surprised by the drop just as Svenson had been. She adroitly caught hold of a dangling chain and swung to the side like a circus gypsy as the soldier finally emerged. But then the man saw her—saw he was fighting not the foreign prisoner, but a breathless, beautiful woman—and hesitated. The Contessa slashed her brilliant spike into the hoses near the soldier's face and sent a spray of burning steam into his eyes. He reeled back into the shifting curtain. The Contessa dove after him and was gone. The encounter had been totally silent, and it was strange when Mr. Leveret's voice, dimmer now, called again for the Doctor's surrender. Svenson ignored it, climbing, terrified and horribly exposed, like a centipede stranded on a whitewashed tropical wall. Where had the Contessa come from? He must have inadvertently drawn the soldier to her own hiding place. Svenson's head spun and he squeezed shut his eyes, then opened them again, staring into the white bricks only inches from his face. He clung to the rear wall, on the opposite side from the canal: to his right was the crowd of adherents, to his left the yard where they had found the soldier riddled with glass. From this higher vantage he could now see over the stone wall and into the woods. Suddenly their depths were pierced by a brace of torches… a snaking line with green-coated soldiers marching at either end… but in between— he squinted at the flickering torchlight—a gang of… Doctor Svenson's heart leapt in his chest, but he forced himself upwards, eyes resolutely fixed to the brick. To attempt a rescue, unarmed and alone, would merely deliver himself to Leveret's rage. Judging by the soldiers, Elöise's party—the other woman must be Charlotte Trapping, the man Robert Vandaariff—had been first captured by Mrs. Marchmoor's dragoons, and then taken again by Mr. Leveret's private army. As curious as Svenson was to see Leveret's reunion with the Xonck sister—she must be his keenest rival—it was the two dragoons that confirmed the mobilization of the Ministries, that, as he had speculated to Leveret, the whole of the military lay at their call. The next floor was different in that the nearest windows, also unglazed, were blocked by iron bars. He peered closely at the bolts and saw no fresh scrapes on the bricks—the bars had been set in place for some time, even years. The machines here were larger, dark and oiled with heavy usage. The Doctor had no experience with industry but had been escorted by many a ship's engineer past turbines and boilers, enough to recognize that here were the guts of the factory proper, the powerhouse heart to pump life through the rest. Leveret had adapted these mill-works to animate the Comte's metallic fantasia. If one sought to bring the whole place to a halt, this was the spot to start swinging the pickaxe. Not that Svenson WITH A shock that nearly caused him to fall, he felt the ladder shudder with the weight of a new occupant. Svenson looked down, to see the shimmering black top of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza's head, and the purple silk of her climbing arms. Svenson hurried upwards, aware that in haste his grip was not as sure and his boot heels more likely to slide off the iron. He reached the highest line of tall windows, also barred. Each opening had been stretched with sailcloth. He could smell the reek of indigo clay, as strong as it had been amongst the forest of ducts and hoses—and detected a new sound, high-pitched and sustained, like the buzzing of porcelain wasps. He glanced down. His lead of two stories had been cut in half. The woman looked up, black hair in her eyes, and as she stabbed for the next rung she bared her teeth. The back of her dress shone with blood. She caught his eye and did not smile, the iron frame of the ladder throbbing with each determined step. Svenson groped blindly for the next rung, hauling himself recklessly toward the roof. The irony of finding a haven on a rooftop—a place where at the best of times his vertigo would drop him to his hands and knees—was not lost on him. He would have to pull himself over the lip, an awful moment of releasing the ladder entirely and taking hold of a bare— and dusty, slippery, even crumbling—crenellation of brick with his hands. What if he mistimed his reach? What if his boots slipped? And if he took too long, would the Contessa slash the back of his knee? Useless anxiety hammered his nerves. He was at the top of the ladder. He could not see beyond the lip of brick some two feet above him. With a feral snarl he thrust his arms up and took scrabbling hold, the edge of the brickwork digging awkwardly into his bicep, flailing with his legs, scuffing his knees. The Doctor clawed his way onto a gritty, soot-smeared expanse of planking slathered with old tar. The rooftop, an open rectangle some thirty yards across and sixty yards long, was divided lengthwise by a double line of squat brick chimneys, each perhaps the width of a barrel and twice the height of a tall man. But near to where he had emerged, on his side of the line of smokestacks, rose a squat brick hutch, with a door to the factory below. Svenson gave one quick glance to where the Contessa would momentarily emerge, and dashed to the door—reasoning one fearsome women to be less dangerous than an army of soldiers. He snatched up a length of broken wood—at one point it had been the leg of a chair (who knew how it had migrated to the rooftop, like a sheep's bone in an aerie)—and wedged it fast between the door and the frame. He heard no steps at the door, and peering through the line of chimneys he saw no guards ascending from the other side of the rooftop. How could that be? He looked back to the ladder. The Contessa's hand shot over the brick lip, fingers splayed like the claws of a clambering cat. Doctor Svenson stepped forward. One kick, and she would be done for. The Contessa tottered on the rooftop's edge, legs thrusting against their confines of silk. He reached his hand to the woman's good arm. She met his gaze, snorted, and took it. With a not entirely gentlemanly pull Doctor Svenson hauled her onto the rooftop and to her feet. She snorted again and tossed her head. “If we had stayed together it would have been far more sensible.” “I am not your ally.” “Don't be an ass! Acknowledge the world as it is—as it has become.” “I disagree,” he replied, feeling inadequate that he had no further words. “You have given me your hand,” the Contessa panted. “It was that or smash your boot on my fingers and send me to hell. You did not do that, Doctor Svenson—you have made your choice, pray do not tax me with peevish distaste! Do not, or I will turn your heart's blood to a fountain!” Doctor Svenson did not doubt the woman's rage, nor her capacity—she had this night slain how many men? But he knew she had done so by virtue of surprise, by the fact that she was a beautiful woman, whom the soldiers had no reason to think a mortal threat. Svenson had no such illusions. “Your wound has opened.” He nodded to the smear of gore that had reached the end of her right sleeve. “Your teeth are unpleasantly stained,” sneered the Contessa. “Neither fact is of the slightest use for being pointed out.” “They will be coming for us, and very soon.” “Again, you cleave to the obvious.” “I must ask you something, and I will insist on an answer.” “And I will insist on flinging your corpse from this rooftop—” “I am not afraid of you, madame.” With a shocking vulgarity the Contessa spat onto the stiff tar at her feet and met Svenson with a glittering expression that made it clear that, given the chance, she would carve her answer on his neck. “By all means, then. “You arranged for Caroline Stearne to meet with Charlotte Trapping and Elöise Dujong in a private room of the St. Royale Hotel. I want to know why, and I want to know what resulted.” The Contessa rolled her eyes with disbelief. “I do.” “My Lord, Doctor! Because of “I am not interested in your opinions, madame.” “At least let us listen at the door—it would be stupid to be surprised—” As she spoke the Contessa gestured with her injured hand to the rooftop door but at the same time took a sly step toward Svenson, her left hand carefully out of view behind her hip. The Doctor stepped rapidly back, beyond her reach, and spoke quite sharply. “If you do that again, I will shout at the top of my lungs for Mr. Leveret. And then, madame, I will do my very best to end your life, even if it means carrying you off the rooftop with me.” “You would not.” “I would consider it a service to all mankind and a sure passage to sainthood.” The Contessa wiped her mouth with the fingertips of her left hand, a contemptuous gesture that deliberately showed him her weapon: a band of bright metal that fit across all four fingers, sporting in the middle a sharp, almost triangular spike of steel, perhaps an inch in height: enough of a blade to slash, yet the squat base also made it a vicious adjunct to the wearer's fist. One swift blow had punctured the skull of Harald Crabbé on the airship, ending his life before he could collapse to the floor. But—and the sensation caused him to marvel, for he was in his life stricken by so many things—Doctor Svenson was “If you would,” he said to her. “The St. Royale…” AS IF admitting she had been for the moment foxed, the Contessa smiled. Doctor Svenson braced himself. Whatever she was about to say would form the first step in her revenge. “There is practically nothing to describe. You must know of her assignation with Trapping—merciful sin, Doctor, you met the man yourself. Is there anything more dispiriting than to be the mistress of a fool?” Svenson wanted very much to strike her, but did not move. “I find “From a man who has thrown away his life for Karl-Horst von Maasmärck…well, I shall bear it in mind.” “The meeting. The hotel.” “What is there to say? I did not want Francis or Oskar or Crabbé to know of my suspicions, so I could not risk being seen. As I knew Charlotte Trapping socially, it needed to be arranged by Caroline.” “Mrs. Trapping was not to know of your involvement?” “She least of all,” replied the Contessa, as if this point were especially obvious. “But why should Elöise be present? Why, if she was—” he stammered to say it, feeling his face grow hot with anger and shame “—the Colonel's mistress, and Mrs. Trapping was aware of—her—their— assignations—” Svenson was dumbfounded. “But—if—why—” The Contessa laughed again. Svenson saw her assumptions change—and knew what she would tell him had changed as well. Before she could speak, he held up his hand. “You were not getting information But suddenly Svenson knew this was wrong. “Indeed, such would explain the presence of Mrs. Dujong. But you forget that I have seen the women arrive together to this building, as I have seen them together earlier this day: if the infidelity were indeed a breach between them, this would not be. You included Mrs. Dujong in the invitation for two reasons: first, as a sensible, observant person who must have known the secret herself, she would make sure Charlotte Trapping showed up; and second, upon being apprised of the threat to her mistress, Mrs. Dujong would exert a prudent influence—in protecting Mrs. Trapping, she would inadvertently deliver her into your control.” It was also ironic, he thought: Elöise being made aware of the threat to Mrs. Trapping—swiftly followed by the Colonel's disappearance—explained why she had been so readily persuaded by Francis Xonck to go to Tarr Manor, where the memories of that meeting, along with the very fact of her infidelities, had been removed from her mind. “Why should I require “Because Mrs. Trapping is a Xonck,” replied Svenson. “Proud, angry, bitter, and as unpredictable as a drunken Lord.” The Contessa smiled again. “My goodness, Doctor, your cleverness has so nearly assuaged the urge to strike you dead.” “You have not yet told me what the secret “And I will not.” “You will.” “Unfortunately, Doctor, we are no longer SVENSON SPUN toward the rooftop door. At once, instinct firing his limbs just in time, he threw himself back to avoid the slash of the Contessa's spike across the front of his throat. The woman staggered at the force of her erring blow. Svenson's own arm was cocked in a fist when he met her eyes and saw she was once again laughing. “You cannot blame me, Doctor—only a fool gives up easily. Strike me if you must—or if you can—but I was telling you the truth.” She pointed with her steel-wrapped hand at the far side of the rooftop, beyond the line of chimneys. Two men stood there, one straight, one bent as if in illness, yet however many steps apart they stood, they unquestionably stood The two men advanced to the line of chimneys and crossed through to Svenson's side of the tar-covered rooftop. The Contessa darted to the ladder, but once there merely leaned down, sniffed, and then called to them. “No one climbs up. As it would be evident to an infant that we are here, I must assume Mr. Leveret considers us How easily the woman had gone, in the matter of a minute, from dashing conversation to attempted murder, to a reunion with sworn enemies—and “What weapons are they using?” growled Xonck, his voice thick and hoarse. “Your special carbines, of course,” replied the Contessa. “But I do not believe they have men in the trees to shoot us here.” “They could rush us if they cared.” Xonck nodded to the rooftop door. “So they do Xonck hacked out a wretched blue gobbet onto the tar. For an instant his eyes lost focus and his body swayed. “Leveret… merely following… orders.” “I do not think so, Francis,” the Contessa said. “Leveret remains no more your creature than Margaret Hooke is the Comte's, or Caroline Stearne is my own.” “He does not know that “Perhaps not—merely that a savage, stinking, monstrosity—” “And how Standing apart from them all, Cardinal Chang chuckled. Svenson searched on his one-time ally's face for some explanation for his alliance with Xonck, but found only the two implacable, flat circles of black glass. “Francis.” The Contessa's tone was almost kindly. “There is no time at all. You must talk to us while you are still able, and while we have time. The machines are gaining speed.” The clatter from below, and the corresponding vibrations, had accelerated so gradually the Doctor had scarcely noticed the change. But the incremental change was actually quite extreme, like a ship's boiler driven slowly to ramming speed to break through ice. “What of that army—those “Because she did not summon them at all,” said Chang. “You might have said before what you knew,” hissed Xonck, swaying. “Neither of you could have called them. You have both just arrived.” “Nor Leveret,” said Svenson. “He does not even know who they are.” “It is Margaret,” said the Contessa, bitterly. “She will skin you alive yet, Rosamonde,” Xonck snorted, a garbled rueful laugh. “Do you still have it?” “Have what?” “The marrow sparge,” said Chang, again causing both to turn to him. “With a damned “If you have the marrow sparge, none of this matters!” “Unless Margaret did “Recover it from “The little teapot.” “Celeste Temple,” said Chang. “She is alive?” cried Svenson, taking a step closer to Chang, wanting to shake the man. “She went to Harschmort,” said Chang. “And took the book for herself.” “Margaret has invaded her mind!” insisted Xonck. “The girl is marked, “So all will be well!” the Contessa shot back at him. “If your book does arrive—and if we are not killed—and if our minds are not raped—and if Margaret and Mr. Leveret are both utter fools! And if “I am The Contessa's only reply was a haughty snort. “None of this makes sense,” said Svenson. “Leveret knows we are here. And yet he does nothing.” “Because he fears to cross me,” rasped Xonck. “Because he fears “He does nothing because he does not need to,” said Chang. “We are birds in a cage.” “No.” Svenson shook his head. “He did not expect us to be here— we mean nothing to his plan. He waits for his true rivals—one he has taken captive, and the other is on her way. The one he has is insignificant. But the one he waits for—the glass woman—when she arrives, he must be ready for her. It can be the only reason for this factory to exist.” NO ONE spoke, and then a moment after that they could have shouted at the top of their lungs and no one would have heard. The double line of chimneys burst into life, belching thick columns of black smoke and steam. The roar of their spewing left Doctor Svenson staggering as if a gunshot had gone off next to each ear. It was perhaps two seconds after this that the rooftop door exploded in an almost silent flower of wood chips and flame. The Contessa fell to her knees and Xonck, nearest to it of all, was knocked flat. Svenson flinched at the splinters blown against his face, and looked up, blinking. Chang carefully raised his empty hands. Svenson followed his gaze and then lifted his own arms with the exact placating caution. The ragged hole where the doorway had been was now crowded with green-coated soldiers, their bright weapons aimed in an unwavering line. Another squad of soldiers had swarmed up the ladder where he had climbed with the Contessa, and a third—following Chang and Xonck on the opposite side—had crossed the roof to take positions between the chimneys. Xonck vomited onto the tar. The Contessa struggled to her feet, her hair in disarray. The soldiers at the ruined doorway fanned onto the rooftop, and as they did so Svenson saw a figure rise through the fingers of still-flaming wood, the black chimney smoke behind her like an infernal curtain blotting out the sky. Charlotte Trapping stepped onto the rooftop, looking with disdain at the disheveled Contessa and her ruined brother, then wrinkled her nose at Svenson and Chang, their arms still in the air. “Collect them,” she cried over the roar, a note of pleasure running through her poised demeanor like a seam of silver through cold stone. “If any |
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