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

Three. Apparition

UPON waking from his first sleep after the frozen, all-night struggle to save Miss Temple from fever, Doctor Svenson felt an unaccountable lightness of heart, so unfamiliar that he wondered if he'd succumbed to fever too. He had slept in the workroom to the side of Sorge's kitchen, on a pile of linens waiting to be washed, until the fellow's wife had dragged him from sleep with her rattling pans. Svenson rubbed his face, felt his stubbled jaw, and then shook his head like a dog. He stood, plucked at his steel-grey uniform shirt—still smelling of its immersion in the sea—and rolled each sleeve to the elbow as he worked first one foot and then the other into his boots. The Doctor smeared his pale hair back and smiled. They might all die within the day, but what did it matter? They had survived so far.

His sleep had been a few snatched hours, but after collecting a mug of milky sweet tea from Sorge's daughter, Bette, hot water to shave, and a buttered slice of black bread folded over a slab of salted cod, the Doctor threw himself back into his work, re-smearing Miss Temple's many cuts and bruises with a salve he had concocted from local herbs. The fever remained high and his options in this place were impossibly few—perhaps another mixture of herbs could be brewed into a tea. The door to Miss Temple's room opened—Bette with a new pile of towels. He had not seen Elöise. No doubt she was sleeping herself.

They had not spoken at any length since the sinking of the airship— nor had they ever, save for those few impulsive words at Tarr Manor. And yet Elöise had kissed him—or had he kissed her? Did that matter? Did it retain any momentum in the present?

He applied a fresh layer of damp, cool cloths to Miss Temple's body. She had worsened while he slept. He should have insisted she stay on the airship until a boat could be fetched from the village. It might not have made any difference—the airship might have gone under before any boat could arrive—but Svenson berated himself for not even considering it, for not even realizing the danger.

HE RETURNED to the kitchen, hoping to find Elöise, but met only the concerned faces of Lina and Bette, wondering about the poor young lady. Svenson served them a practiced lie—all was improving— and excused himself to the porch, where Cardinal Chang stood at the rail with his own cup of tea. The Doctor suggested that Chang might avail himself of the salve for his own welter of cuts, but knew even before he finished describing where it was kept that the man would not. They dropped into silence, gazing at the muddied yard and the three very squat huts, one for chickens, one for drying fish, and one for nets and traps. Beyond these were the woods, mainly birch, pale bark gashed with black, branches hanging slack and dripping from the fog.

“Have you seen Mrs. Dujong?” Svenson asked.

“She went walking.” Chang nodded toward the trees. “Not that there is any notable destination.”

Svenson did not reply. He found the isolated woods and the heavy sky splendid.

“Celeste?” asked Chang.

“Grave.” Svenson patted his pocket by instinct for the cigarettes he knew were not there. “The fever has worsened. But she is a fierce young woman, and strength of character may turn the tide.”

“But as far as what you can do?”

“I will continue to do it,” said Svenson.

Chang spat over the rail. “Then it is quite impossible to say how long we are marooned here.”

Chang glanced behind him to the door, then out again at the muddy forest, for all the world trapped on the porch like a tiger in a cage.

“Perhaps I will have a walk myself,” Svenson observed mildly.

HE HAD no particular memory of Elöise's shoes—and wondered on the fact that he'd paid them no mind—but the muddy path to the shore showed small fresh prints with a pointed rear heel he doubted came from any fisherman. The surf was a brilliant churning line dragged between the nearly black seawater and the grey sky hanging heavily above it. Perhaps fifty yards away, her feet just above the reaching waves, stood Elöise.

She turned, saw him coming, and waved. He waved back with a smile, stepping clear of a sudden swipe of surf at his boot. Her cheeks were red with the cold, and her hands—in gloves, but thin wool— tucked under her arms. She wore a plain bonnet borrowed from Sorge's wife, but the wind had pulled strands of her hair loose and whipped them eagerly behind her head. Svenson was tempted to put his arm around her—indeed, upon seeing her his feelings were quite suddenly carnal—but instead he merely nodded, calling above the surf.

“Very fresh, is it not?”

She smiled and hugged her arms. “It is very cold. But a change from the sickroom.”

He saw she held something in her hand.

“What have you found?”

She showed it to him—a small wet stone, the water darkening its color to plum.

“How lovely,” he said.

She smiled, and tucked it into the pocket of her dress.

“Thank you for tending Miss Temple while I slept,” he said.

“Thank Lina—you see I am here, having left well before you were awake. You did not sleep long, you must still be quite tired.”

“Naval Surgeons are made of iron, I assure you—it is required.”

She smiled again and turned to continue walking. He fell in step beside her, closer to the rocks, where the wind was less and they could speak without shouting.

“Will she die?” Elöise asked.

“I do not know.”

“Have you told Chang?”

Svenson nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Not a thing.”

“That is ridiculous,” muttered Elöise. She shivered.

“Are you too cold?” Svenson asked.

She gestured vaguely with her hand at the waves.

“I have been walking…”

She stopped, and took a breath to start again.

“When we spoke on the stairs at Tarr Manor, when you had saved me—so long ago, a lifetime ago—well, since we have properly survived, we have not properly spoken again…”

Svenson smiled despite his desire to keep his feelings discreet. “There has been little time—”

“But we must,” she insisted. “I told you that I came to Tarr Manor on the advice of Francis Xonck, the brother of Mrs. Trapping, my mistress—”

“To find Colonel Trapping. But you did not know Xonck was part of the Cabal, and had that very morning put the Colonel's body in the river.”

“Please. I have been attempting to order these words for some hours—”

“But Elöise—”

“A train full of people came to Tarr Manor, to sell secrets about their betters to the Cabal—and I went with them. I was told they might know where the Colonel—”

“You cannot hold yourself to blame, if Mrs. Trapping authorized your journey.”

“The point is that they collected these secrets—my secrets—into a glass book—”

“And the experience almost killed you,” said Svenson. “You are uniquely sensitive to the blue glass—”

“Please,” she said. “You must listen to me.”

Svenson heard the tension in her voice and waited for her to go on.

“What I told them,” she said, “whatever I had to offer…you must understand… I cannot remember it—”

“Of course not. Memories taken into a book are erased from a person's brain. We saw the same with those seduced to Harschmort— their minds were drained into a book and they left idiot husks. Yet perhaps for you this is even fortunate—if these were secrets you yourself were ashamed of sharing.”

“No—you must understand. Confusing, intimate details of my life are missing—not about my employers, but about me. I have tried to make sense of what I do remember, but the more I try the more my fears have left me wretched! Every erasure is surrounded by scraps and clues that describe a woman I don't recognize. I truly do not know who I am!”

She was weeping—so suddenly, the Doctor did not know what to do or say—hands over her eyes. His own hands hovered before him, wanting to take her shoulders, to draw her in, but when he ought to have moved he did not and she turned away.

“I must apologize—”

“Not at all, you must allow me—”

“It is unfair to you, terribly unfair—please forgive me.”

Before he could reply, Elöise was walking back where they had come, as fast as she could, her head shaking as if she was chiding herself bitterly—whether for what she felt or for attempting to speak at all he could not tell.

WHEN HE returned to the house, Chang seemed not to have moved, but as the Doctor climbed the wooden steps the Cardinal cleared his throat with a certain pointed speculation. Svenson looked into Chang's black lenses and felt again the extremity of the man's appearance and how narrow—like a South American bird that eats only a weevil found in the bark of a particular mangrove—his range of habitation actually was. Then Svenson considered his own condition and scoffed at the presumption of comparing Chang to a parrot. He himself might well be some sort of newt.

He could hear Elöise inside, speaking to Lina. The Doctor paused, and then tormented himself for pausing, only to be interrupted by a call from behind him: the fisherman, Sorge, limping across from the shed, accosting Svenson with yet another request for medical expertise—this time for a family in the village whose livestock were ailing after the storm. The Doctor dredged a hearty smile from the depths of his service at the Macklenburg Palace. He glanced at Chang. Chang was staring at Sorge. Sorge pretended the scowling figure in red did not exist. The Doctor stumped down the stairs toward their host.

AFTER THE livestock it had been the suppurated tooth of an elderly woman, and then setting the broken forearm of a fisherman injured during the storm. Svenson knew these errands established goodwill to compensate for the strangeness of their arrival, and also for the haunting figure of Cardinal Chang, whose company—the villagers made quite clear—was unanimously loathed. But the Doctor was left with little time for Elöise, and when he was free—brief moments in the kitchen or on the porch, perfectly willing for another walk to the shore—she became unaccountably busy herself.

At their evening meal, however, they must finally be together. Lina preferred the three of them to eat apart from the family, the better to isolate the cost of their board. Svenson was more than happy to oblige. He stood over the stove, watching the kettle, having offered to make tea. Chang pushed open the door, his arms full of split wood, which he carefully stacked next to the stove. The kettle began spitting steam and Svenson lifted it up, his hand wrapped in a rag, poured it into the open pot, and placed it on a cooler part of the stove. Elöise entered from Miss Temple's room. She caught his eye and smiled quickly, then gathered an armful of dishes to set the table. Svenson replaced the top on the teapot and stepped away, rubbing his temples with a sudden grimace. Chang smirked and sat, allowing Elöise to weave around him.

“You have my sympathies, Doctor,” Chang said.

“Sympathies for what?” asked Elöise, setting out three metal mugs for tea.

“His headache, of course.” Chang smiled. “The cruelties of tobacco deprivation…”

“O that,” replied Elöise. “Hardly the best of habits.”

“Tobacco quite sharpens the mind,” observed the Doctor mildly.

“And yellows the teeth,” replied Elöise, equally genial.

Lina came between them with a steaming pot of soup—her usual steep of potatoes, fish, cream, and pickled onion. Chang had announced he could not taste it at all, by way of explaining his regular second helpings. At least the bread was fresh. Svenson wondered if Elöise ever baked bread. His cousin Corinna had. Not that she had needed to, there had always been servants—but Corinna had enjoyed the work, laughing that a country woman ought to do things with her hands. Corinna… killed by blood fever while Svenson had been at sea. He tried to remember what sorts of bread she had made—all he recalled was the flour on her hands and forearms, and her satisfied smile.

“Sorge can get tobacco,” said Lina, speaking to no one in particular.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Svenson, far too eagerly.

“Fishermen chew it. But smoke also. Talk to Sorge.”

She ran her eyes across the table to see if her obligations for their meal were met. A sharp nod to Elöise—they were—and Lina excused herself into the inner room. As soon as the door closed, Svenson held a chair for Elöise and pushed it in after she had settled herself. He took his own seat, then snapped up again to pour the tea.

“It seems you are saved,” said Elöise, tartly.

“By the saint of foul habits, I am sure.”

They did not speak while the soup was served and the bread passed, each tearing off a piece with their hands.

“How is Miss Temple?” asked Chang.

“Unchanged.”

Svenson dunked his bread in the broth, biting off the whole of the dampened portion.

“She dreams,” said Elöise.

Chang looked up.

“She is delirious,” said Svenson, chewing. Elöise shook her head.

“I am not so sure. We spoke very little together, at Harschmort— I do not presume to know her—yet I do know she holds her life quite tightly, with such purpose, for someone so young…”

She looked up to find both men watching her closely.

“I do not criticize,” said Elöise. “Did either of you know she looked into a book? A glass book?”

“Not at all,” answered Svenson. “Are you sure?”

“She said nothing,” muttered Chang.

“But when would she have?” admitted Svenson. “What did she say about it?”

“Nothing at all, apart that she had done it—if I remember correctly she mentioned the fact to comfort me. But the book I looked into was empty—that book looked into me, if that does not sound mad.”

“I saw the same at Harschmort,” said Chang. “You are fortunate to retain your mind, Mrs. DuJong.”

“It quite nearly killed her,” said Svenson, a touch importantly.

“The point is that my glass book was empty,” said Elöise, “its intent being to take my memories. But Miss Temple looked into a book that was full.”

Doctor Svenson set down his spoon.

“My Lord. A full book… instead of the few incidents captured in a single glass card. One could experience entire lifetimes—and dear heaven, you would remember those experiences from other lives as things you yourself had done. An entire book… and depending on the memories it contained… and given the decadent tastes of the Comte…” The Doctor paused.

“So I suppose I merely wonder what she dreams,” said Elöise quietly.

Svenson looked across the table at Chang, who was silent. He glanced at Elöise. Her hand shook as she held her mug. She saw his gaze and set it down with another brisk smile.

“I find I cannot sleep,” she said. “Perhaps it is the excess of light this far north.”

A SINGLE CANDLE burned in a dish near the bed in Miss Temple's room. Svenson sat down on the bed next to her, holding the light close to see her clearly. He took her pulse at the throat, feeling the heat of her glistening skin. Her heart was restless and fast. Was there so little else to do? He rose, opened the door, and nearly collided with Elöise, her hands occupied with a basin of water, new towels draped over each arm.

“I thought you'd gone with Sorge,” she said.

“Not at all. I set more herbs to steep, which should be ready. A moment.”

When he returned with the re-charged teapot, he found Elöise on the opposite side of the bed, bathing Miss Temple's body, one limb at a time. The Doctor swirled the tea before pouring it into Miss Temple's small china mug to cool, his eyes caught by the sensual competency of Elöise's fingers. Elöise carefully bent one leg at the knee and sponged along underneath, the beads of water running down the girl's pale thigh into the shadows at her hips. Elöise resoaked the cloth and reached carefully under the shift to wash—Svenson made a point of looking away—between Miss Temple's legs, the movements of her hand a gentle burrowing beneath the fabric. Elöise removed the cloth, dipped it back in the basin, and squeezed it out.

“That will ease her sleep a bit, surely,” she said softly. She handed the cloth to Svenson and nodded to the limb nearest to him. “Will you do that arm?”

He ran the cloth along Miss Temple's pale, thin arm, the cool water trickling to the stubbled pale pit and under the shift to her ribs.

“We were speaking of memory,” he said.

“We were.”

“A curious … phenomenon.”

Elöise did not answer, but instead reached out to glide a strand of hair from Miss Temple's face with an extended finger.

“My own circumstance, for example,” the Doctor continued. “In the course of these past weeks I have squandered all hope of returning as anything but a traitor to my home, my own duty invisible next to a murdered Prince, a slaughtered Envoy, a diplomatic mission in ruins.”

“Doctor…Abelard—”

“Your turn.” He handed the cloth to her and nodded at the other arm. “I am not finished. The point being that while I am presently banished—my mind spinning to imagine a life in exile—what work, what hope, what love…” He did not meet her eyes. “I am made aware by this crisis that the only force binding me to Macklenburg, indeed that has bound me to the world these past six years, is memory. A woman I loved. She died. All has been futility—and yet, that loss, which is also her, seems to be all I know. How can I go forward and not betray what I have been? A fool's dilemma—life being life, corpses being many—and yet, such is my mind.”

“She was… your wife?”

Svenson shrugged. “Never so much—or still more ridiculous. She was my cousin. Corinna. Fever, years ago. Useless regret. And I only say this, any of this, my dear, as a way of explaining my sympathy for your own difficulty—your life, to wonder what that life is, with so much disrupted… memory and time, all you have lost… and within that missing time, all that you feel you may have done.”

Elöise said nothing, absently stroking Miss Temple's arm. He took a deep breath.

“I say all of this so you will understand, when I speak of remaining here, when I see your own tears, so you will know… I am determined—”

Elöise looked up and he stopped speaking. The silence widened and became unbearable.

“It is not that I do not possess feelings for you,” she said softly. “Of course I do, and most tenderly. It is the most awkward thing, and you must think me a terrible person. It would give me no greater pleasure than to offer myself to you, to kiss you right this moment. If I were free. But I am not. And my mind… it cannot be wholly present.”

“Of course not, we are in a wilderness—”

“No—no, please—it is what I recall, and what I feel within those recollections … even if I do not know fully why, or know… who.”

Svenson's throat was at once horribly dry. “Who?”

“There is a locked room in my mind. But there are paths to the room, and from it—there are words I remember being spoken, there are clues about what I cannot recall. As I brood upon them… they imply everything, inescapably, even if—”

“But… you do not know? You mean… there is someone, but—”

“You must think very poorly of me. I think poorly of myself. Not to remember such a thing—though I know the thing to be true. I cannot describe it. I have no faith in who I am.”

She was silent, looking into his eyes. Her own were rimmed with tears, and impossibly sad. He struggled to catch up with her words. She was a widow—with a suitor. Of course she had a suitor, she was beautiful, intelligent, well placed…

But that was not the thing at all.

Svenson recalled her words on the beach. It was all to do with the book, with the memories having been taken, which meant for a reason. No memories of a simple suitor—no lover—would have been added to the glass book and thus expunged from her mind. For the memories to be worth taking, Elöise's lover could only have been someone of value to the Cabal. The number of men this could describe was unpleasantly small.

“Elöise—”

“The tea has cooled. I have been enough of a burden.”

Elöise stood, wiping her eyes. In an instant she was out the door.

The Doctor sat alone, his head pounding, the room a roar of silence. Without a hope in the world he picked up the teacup and eased his other hand behind Miss Temple's head, tilting it so she might drink.

THE NEXT morning, having passed most of the night on Miss Temple's floor, the Doctor rose early, shaved, and threw on his coat, finding Sorge with the chickens. A brief conversation pointed Svenson to the most likely fisherman to accommodate his errand. He left word for Chang to join him at the village piers.

The walk did nothing for his mood—the woods were thick with fog, the ground soft beneath his boots, the entire landscape only reminded him of home, and thus of misery. What else had he expected? And why—just because they had survived when they ought to have died ten times? Had luck in one instance ever trumped his unhappiness in another? He had only to remember first entering the halls of Macklenburg Palace—uniform crisp, boots gleaming, a far cry from the ice-rimed cabin of a ship—while the palace of his mind housed only despair. If being the protégé of Baron von Hoern had not assuaged Corinna's death, why should the heroic pleasure of shooting Francis Xonck on the airship grant him happiness with Elöise?

It was an easy enough matter, once money was offered, to arrange for the journey. A few minutes poring over a map of the local sandbars with the fisherman quickly isolated the likely spots where the dirigible must lay. This settled, Svenson inspected the boat's supply of canvas. If they were to bring out the bodies—assuming the storm had not cracked the ship open and scattered the corpses with the tides—he would need enough to hold them.

Chang was not yet there—Svenson was not frankly sure where Chang slept, much less when he woke—and so the Doctor tracked down another fisherman, the one Sorge suggested might have cigarettes. After a minute or two of evasive haggling, the man showed Svenson a brick of waxed paper sealed with a dab of red wax marked with a two-headed bird.

“Danish,” the man explained.

“My habitual brand is Russian,” countered Svenson, doing his best to sound skeptical, when he was so hungry. “One can only acquire them through an agent in Riga—Latvia—as St. Petersburg is barred to Macklenburg merchants.”

The man nodded, as if this was of no interest but he was willing to assume some point lay beyond it.

“The tobacco is quite strong,” said Svenson. “Have you smoked a Russian cigarette?”

“I prefer to chew.” In proof of his claim the fisherman spat into a pewter cup Svenson had assumed to contain an especially bitter-looking coffee.

“Understandable—a sailing man can never depend on a flame. No matter. I will be happy to take them off your hands.”

He gathered up the parcel and placed the price they had agreed to on the table—outrageous by the village's standards, but nothing compared to what he might pay in town… or what the vile sticks were worth to his clear mind.

PUFFING AWAY with the intensity of a fox tearing into a slaughtered hare, Svenson returned to the fishing boat—waiting any longer for Chang's sullen appearance would cost the tide. It took half an hour to pass through the surf into the sea. The Doctor, while no real practical sailor, knew enough to pull on the proper ropes when the fisherman called them out. As they approached the most likely sandbar, Svenson lit up another smoke and did his best to relax in the fresh cold air. But even with the familiar nicotine spur in his lungs, he wondered that he could have surrendered to optimism—from such an unlikely and unlooked-for corner—so very easily.

The airship was not at that sandbar, nor any other, nor anyplace they could spy as they ran the length of the coastline. The fisherman explained the depth of the sea away from the bars, the action of the tide, the force of the storm. The craft must have been pulled from its fortunate perch and then rolled down—keeping together or tearing apart, depending on the strength of its construction and whether it smashed into any outcroppings of rock on its way—to the very deep bottom of the sea.

MISS TEMPLE'S condition did not change. Doctor Svenson had again been dragooned by Sorge, to give his precious medical opinion on a neighbor's afflicted swine, and once back had pounded willow bark at the table for a plaster. It was a task he had hoped to share with Elöise, but instead young (and well intentioned, and fat) Bette had expressed an interest, committing the Doctor to an hour of the girl's belabored enthusiasm. By the time Svenson finally left the table he could hear Elöise helping Lina with the laundry. One could no more speak around Lina than exchange pleasantries with a Jesuit. When he returned from administering the plaster to Miss Temple, none of the women were in the house. He stepped onto the porch and fumbled a cigarette from his restocked silver case. At the other end of the rail, like a statue in its customary spot, stood Chang.

“Have you seen Mrs. Dujong?” Svenson asked, rather casually. They had not spoken of the missed appointment with the fishing boat.

“I have not,” answered Chang.

The Doctor smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence, shivering at the evening chill, and ground the butt beneath his heel.

HE WOKE in near-darkness, on the floor next to Miss Temple's bed, covered with the peacoat. The tallow candle was close to guttering, and he'd no idea of the time. Had Miss Temple made a sound? He had been dreaming, and already the fragments faded—a tree, bright leaves, his own hands caked with ice. He inhaled deeply to push away his thickened thoughts, and shifted closer to the bed.

Miss Temple opened her eyes.

“Celeste?” he whispered.

“Mmmn,” she sighed, though it seemed no sort of reply.

“Can you hear me? How do you feel?”

She turned her head away with a whispered exhalation and said no more. Doctor Svenson tucked the blanket over her exposed shoulder, allowing—and quite viciously disapproving of the gesture the instant he performed it—the tips of his fingers to trace along her skin. He returned to his place on the floor and stared up at the single window, the candle reflected in its dark pool like a distant, dying sun.

HE TRIED again at breakfast, lingering at the table while Elöise piled the plates on a tray for Bette to scrub. The girl clomped outside with the tray, and Svenson, fingering a cigarette, spoke in as general a tone as possible before Elöise could leave the room.

“We must talk about our return. Sorge tells me a train may be caught in Karthe, a mining settlement in the hills, some day's ride away on good roads—though of course the roads are poor after the storm. The forest between has been flooded…”

She turned from the window to face him and he began to stammer.

“In, ah, any event, there is a score of questions about our enemies, about the law, we must also—each of us—because I am not… unmindful, and yet—”

The door opened and Chang stepped into the room.

“That child is an animal,” he snarled.

Svenson turned to him, his face a mask of frustration.

“Doctor Svenson has raised the very important question of our return, of what waits for us,” said Elöise.

Chang nodded, but said nothing.

“The state of our remaining enemies,” Elöise continued. “The law. What is known…”

Chang nodded again but did not speak.

Svenson sighed—it was not what he wanted to talk about at all— nor did he want to be talking to Chang—but he carried on, thoughts tumbling out of order, hoping to catch Elöise's eye. But even when he did, she showed nothing beyond attention to his words.

Then, with a sudden chill Doctor Svenson saw himself, standing in the kitchen. He saw these last days with a startling clarity, with foreboding—tending Miss Temple, desiring Elöise, their isolation—it was all vanity, distraction, a witch's illusion from a tale, a false offer of a life Svenson knew he could not have.

He had delayed. He had tried to turn away. He had dropped his guard.

He stopped talking. He left them standing there and walked into the dirty yard, looking up at the oppressive, heavy sky. Sorge called to him from the boat shed, waving both arms to penetrate the Doctor's thoughts.

THIS NEWEST errand had involved goats, but their owner occupied one of a small cluster of houses and so the appearance of the Doctor had become a social occasion for all of the neighbors. Into this knot of villagers came the news about dead men at the stable… and a rumor of wolves. At once children were bundled inside, livestock penned, and a party of men gathered to investigate. The nerves on the back of his neck tingling with dread, Svenson volunteered to go along and provide a medical opinion. Sorge looked at him strangely.

“But it is a wolf.”

“Perhaps there is more than one,” said Svenson quickly. “A proper examination of wounds, you see, can make such details clear.”

The men around them murmured approval—and approval of Doctor Svenson in general—but Sorge became noticeably less talkative. Before he could broach the news to Chang—whom he found, to his annoyance, standing with Elöise on the porch—Chang suggested they walk to the shore, so they might search more effectively for any flotsam. Svenson agreed to the obvious lie, and was soon presented with Chang's discovery of blue glass. While it did not prove anything either way, it increased his dread as the two men traveled with Sorge to the stable.

The dead grooms' wounds were vicious and savage enough for a wolf, but lacked teeth-marks. Indeed, the edges of the wounds were ragged, like a hank of bread torn from a loaf. He looked up for Chang, who was not there, and found himself forced to explain the sequence of death to his observers, all the time growing more convinced no animal was to blame at all. When Chang did return, subtly directing him to the privy and its indigo blue stench and finger-stains, the Doctor knew they were all in danger.

The journey back passed in silence due to the proximity of the villagers, more than one of whom eyed Chang with ill-concealed suspicion. Without any relish for the task, Svenson sought a quiet moment to speak frankly about how the villagers' distrust of Chang must be dealt with in light of the murdered grooms. Before he even knew what had happened Chang had angrily stalked off.

Svenson was more than happy to see the man's back for the afternoon. Even if Chang's warning about their enemies—whether any had survived, what havoc might erupt were they to reach the city first— was perfectly sound, his own worry—that the villagers' reaction to Chang jeopardized their safety while Miss Temple's life still hung in the balance—was equally sensible, and serious. In the sober, dank air of the sickroom, it was obvious that both opinions could be managed together, though given Chang's pride it would be up to Svenson to smooth things over. Truly, sharing the cabin with the man was like living with a high-strung horse.

BUT CHANG did not return that night for their meal. They had waited in awkward silence—Sorge, Lina, and Bette waiting with them—until the food had gone quite cold, and Svenson was forced to concoct a story that Chang had taken it upon himself to search the coastline to the south, traveling so far that perhaps it seemed simpler to make camp where he was, especially if he had found any sign of wreckage. He'd no idea if Sorge believed him—he knew full well Elöise did not—but hoped it would be enough until Chang finally reappeared. As soon as he could reasonably escape to the porch for a cigarette Svenson snatched up a lantern and walked through the woods to where he and Chang had argued and well beyond, to the water, into the trees, knowing the search was haphazard and fruitless. Two hours later, his face numb and his breath frosting before him as he scraped his boots on the porch steps, Svenson was no more the wiser. All the lights were doused. He crept inside in silence, boots in one hand.

“Where were you?” asked Elöise softly, from the shadows near the stove.

“Walking,” he whispered, and sat awkwardly at the table.

“Did you find him?”

“No.”

“Where did he go? If you know anything, please—”

“Elöise, I have no idea. We argued. He stalked off in a rage and has not returned.”

“Argued? About what?”

“About the villagers—you must have seen it yourself, heard their whispers—I merely suggested he make himself less visible…”

Elöise was silent. He knew he ought to mention the grooms. Why did he hesitate?

“Did Sorge say anything while I was gone? Or Lina?”

“I do not know that they trust me enough to speak. Bette, however, once her parents had retired, was less reticent.”

“What did she say?”

“One of the village boats has been missing since the storm. They fear the man is dead.”

“They say this now? Has he no family?”

“No. And apparently this fellow sailed alone.”

Svenson said nothing—again, knowing he should mention the grooms, the blue stains. Instead, as the silence grew, his eyes now adjusted to the dark, he realized she was quite lost in thought.

“I am appalled at myself,” he said. “I have never asked—of course I know you were married. Do you have children, Elöise?”

She shook her head, smiling away both the question and his concern. “I do not. My husband died soon after our marriage.”

“What was his profession?”

“He was a soldier. I thought you knew.”

Svenson shook his head.

“It was a very long time ago,” said Elöise. “I scarcely remember the girl I must have been—in truth, I recall him even less. A dear boy. He did not seem a boy at the time. We knew so very little.” Elöise paused, and then spoke rather carefully. “This woman you mentioned… your cousin…”

“Corinna,” said Svenson.

“Your silver case. The engraving on it—‘vom CS’—Corinna Svenson?”

“You remember that?”

“Of course I do,” said Elöise. “Miss Temple had wondered who it was from.”

“A gift upon my last promotion.”

She smiled. He sighed, then knowing it was wrong, plunged ahead. “I have wanted to say—perhaps I can help you—to discover what you remember, what you do not—”

She shook her head quickly. “I'm sure it is impossible.”

“But—this other man—”

“I cannot speak of it.”

“But—Elöise—you are a grown woman—a respectable widow—”

She looked away from him. His words faltered.

“But you and I…” Svenson could not find the words. “At Tarr Manor, did we not…”

He stopped.

“I am a fool.” Her face was hard, but her eyes stricken. “You saved my life. But at times, so many times, I think I should have died.”

She stood and walked without another word into the room she shared with Bette.

THE NEXT morning, the fisherman's boat was found. It lay on its side, flung onto the line of sharp black rocks as if by a disdainful child, the mast snapped and the tattered, dragging sails half buried in the sand. Three men were there to meet them—the same men who had been at the stable—their expressions visibly colder and more grim. As he nodded in greeting—no man offered his hand—Svenson frowned to see that one of the fishermen now wore a well-kept pair of leather riding boots.

The man saw his gaze and redirected the Doctor's attention with a thrust of his unshaven chin. The body had been placed, as if sitting upright, on one of the angled benches that spanned the width of the boat.

“A moment first,” said Svenson, and he climbed past the corpse, over the skewed gunwale, to the cabin, poking his head into the dim little chamber.

The cabin's contents had been thrown to the floor and sent into a pile with the vessel's tilt. The floorboards were still damp but the upper walls had not been submerged. The one small window bore a spattered line of reddish brown, and a patient search revealed another half-dozen drips and flecks. Svenson rooted through the littered debris without any particular expectation, and found nothing.

He stepped back to the tilting deck. Sorge stood with the other men, some several yards farther away, as if they had sought to speak without Svenson overhearing. As the Doctor knelt to examine the corpse, their scrutiny was palpable on the back of his neck.

The fisherman's throat had been gashed, ear to ear and more than once, but the repeated strokes had not carved the same cavity seen on the bodies at the stable.

“Are those from… claws?” Sorge leaned forward, pointing.

“Or teeth?” called one of the others.

“Or is it a knife?” called the man with boots.

Svenson calmly indicated the empty sheath at the fisherman's belt. “Did anyone find his knife?”

They had not. Svenson returned to the corpse, delicately holding the head and moving it in his hands to better see the overlapping incisions. He stood and faced the fishermen, picking his words carefully.

“No doubt you can read these signs for yourselves. The weapon was likely a short, squat blade.”

“Do you know how long he's been dead?” asked Sorge.

“My guess would be two days. During the storm. Is it strange he should be found only now?”

“It was the flooding,” said the booted man, gesturing back toward the town. “The land was flooded four feet this last half mile.”

The men all stared at Svenson, as if this comment required his answer.

“The stables,” said Sorge, awkwardly. “The stables are on the other side of the village, to the south. These waters have only just receded…”

“Quite impassable,” the booted man spat. “Since the storm.”

Svenson felt his heart sink like a stone. Whoever slew this man could not possibly be to blame for the two dead grooms and the scattered horses.

“So… more than one wolf?” muttered Sorge.

HE FOUND Elöise alone in Miss Temple's room. He spoke quickly—the grooms, the fisherman, the flooding, the unrest in the village.

“What can we do?” she asked.

He had not yet mentioned the blue stains, nor the villager's new boots.

“Something has happened. Something they will not tell me.”

“Have they killed Chang?”

“I do not know. I cannot think so—”

A knock came on the door, and Svenson quickly sat next to Miss Temple, taking her wrist just as Sorge entered, nodding an apology for intruding, but asking if he might have a word with the Doctor alone.

Svenson stepped into the kitchen but Sorge had already walked out onto the porch. Svenson took out his silver case, selected a cigarette, and tapped it on the case before lighting it. Sorge exhaled sharply—miserably, for Svenson had so recently been such a stroke of good fortune— and his words came tumbling out.

“What about the flooding? Where is your Chang? The others say you must deliver him up! Or they will blame you! I have told them… but… but…”

Svenson blew a stream of smoke over the yard. The other men were gone. Miss Temple could not yet leave. He tapped his ash over the rail.

“It cannot be easy for you, my friend—you who have been so kind to us all, who have saved our lives. I will, of course—of course—do all I can to make things right with your village.” Svenson took another puff of his cigarette. “Sorge… you are quite sure that none of your fellows has seen Chang themselves? They would tell you, yes?”

“Of course they would!”

“Indeed—now, these deaths. We must sort them out—we must sort them to everyone's satisfaction. Will you trust me this much? Will you let me speak to the other men?”

Sorge did not reply and Svenson put his hand on the man's shoulder.

“It would be better for everyone—for the women—that no one be left afraid.”

Svenson wondered if the man had already sent his wife and daughter to hide in one of the sheds.

“I will call them together,” said Sorge. “An hour, at the boats.”

“I'm sure that will do perfectly.”

HE SLIPPED into Miss Temple's room. Elöise sat on the opposite side of the bed, looking down.

“Sorge claims they have not found Chang.”

She nodded but did not reply. Svenson rubbed his eyes.

“Before anything else, I am sorry for not telling you about the dead grooms. I had hoped they did not portend anything. I am sorry.”

“And do they? Portend anything?” Her voice was hoarse with worry. “Did Chang believe so—is that why he has gone?”

“I don't know where Chang is.”

“Perhaps he simply left us,” she said. “The man was miserable—”

Svenson's words came out in a cold rush. “The dead grooms and the dead fisherman had different killers. At the stable we found traces of indigo clay. Something is known by the villagers—about Chang or the deaths—that they hide from me.”

She stared at him. “Indigo clay? You say this now? Are we safe?”

“I will make sure we are.”

To this bald promise Elöise said nothing, smoothing her dress over her legs. The dress was spare and black—gathered from someone's period of mourning, and lucky to fit, he knew. In the dim room, Elöise's hair looked black as well, and her face half-wrought from shadow. He wondered—with a strange, despairing detachment he did not fully understand—what his feelings for her truly were. A piece of her mind was missing. There was another man, a man she loved. Was this such a disappointment? Could she dislodge the stone of grief he had carried so long?

It seemed to Doctor Svenson that he had the power to choose— she was right before him, a woman in life, and he saw the flaws in her face or body as he saw her fundamental beauty. He felt the tipping balance of his own heart and mind. Prudence, sanity even, demanded he fold his hopes back where they had lain and do his very best to return her to that life, to whatever mystery shook her soul, and then, that done, to step away. To choose differently led nowhere—or to the exact same place after agonizing cost.

Yet, the proximity… the terrible possibility, however illusory, however doomed, that here was a woman he might love, after so much time, after all the world. How could a man turn away from that?

“It seems her breath is not so shallow tonight,” she said.

“No.”

“Hopefully we may leave soon.” Elöise paused, as if there might be some other thing to say, but then smiled tightly.

“I must meet Sorge and the village men at the boats,” he said. “I will convince them of Chang's innocence, and our own—I must find out what they know, do my best to find Chang. If our enemies do live, then the more I do, the more visible these efforts are—”

“Why do you meet them at the boats?”

“It is Sorge's idea. My hope is to draw all this away from you.”

“Where are you going?” asked Elöise. “Where are you going?”

“I am not—I merely—whatever needs to be done—”

“What of me? What of Celeste?”

“You will be safe. Believe me. Only promise not to go out alone— to the shore or the woods—until all this has been settled.”

They stood in silence, the bed between them, the girl upon it. He so wanted to speak to her, yet sensed with an unassailable sharpness how little he must count for in her thoughts.

“They are all dead,” Elöise whispered. “They simply must be.”

HE STRODE through the woods, late for Sorge, his thoughts running wild. What did his own unhappiness matter? Elöise would disappear into her former life… or what might be left of it, a widow now caring for another widow's children. Elöise would tell Charlotte Trapping everything—perhaps sparing a few details about the louche habits of the late Colonel… but were they not confidantes? He had seen the two women together at Harschmort, Elöise whispering in Charlotte Trapping's ear… as he had seen Elöise whispering to Arthur Trapping, attempting to persuade him to remain in the ballroom as opposed to going off with Harald Crabbé, the Deputy Foreign Minister. But Trapping had ignored her and gone off with Crabbé…

The hole in Elöise's memory. Francis Xonck convincing her to visit Tarr Manor, to share whatever shameful secrets she might keep… shameful secrets Xonck must have known… all in order to save Arthur Trapping's life.

Svenson stopped walking. He stood, acutely aware of the high cocoon of the night, miles wide and cold, holding his thoughts fast.

Arthur Trapping… a man of no account… his Colonel's commission purchased by his wife's money… an unprincipled and ambitious rake… Svenson had seen the man's behavior for himself…

Elöise's lover was Arthur Trapping.

Svenson felt numb.

Or was it Francis Xonck?

Or both of them?

Svenson's thinking snagged on the image, like a fish hooked sharply through its jaw.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps Elöise was engaged to the greengrocer, or an officer in the local militia… but why should any such unimportant attachment have been selected for inclusion in the glass book?

It would not have been. He was not wrong.

Svenson laughed bitterly. He was an idiot. Of course she had kissed him. Her brown hair, curling onto her startling white neck. They had been ready to die.

HE LOOKED up. He had reached the docks without realizing it, and Vat least ten men stood watching him, waiting in a knot outside a row of huts. Sorge raised a hand to wave him on, but the others remained silent as Svenson forced himself forward, following Sorge under a hanging sheet of oilcloth and out of the wind. The hut smelled of fish, but had a burning stove and room for them all. Svenson waited until the last man had come in—the fellow with the boots—then lit a cigarette. Everyone stared at him. Svenson cleared his throat, stuck the cigarette in his mouth to free his hands, and peeled off his peacoat.

“You know me as a man of medicine…” Svenson swatted his battered tunic with both hands. “But you will see that what I wear is the uniform of a soldier—the uniform of Macklenburg. I am a foreigner— yet you all know the meaning of duty, of honor, of loyalty, and such is the code of my own service. I speak of Sorge's family, and your entire village, whose kindness saved our lives.”

No one had interrupted him yet, which he chose to take as an encouraging sign.

“The man who gave his name as Chang is a stranger to me. I do not know him, any more than I know where he is now. But the lives of two women are my responsibility—and so I am here to help as best I can.”

Svenson met the gaze of the man in the riding boots.

“This Chang is without question a criminal. And yet, such men easily become phantoms, scapegoats…”

At this, several men began to mutter. Svenson held out his hands.

“If more people are not to die, we need to understand exactly what has happened.”

“That's clear enough,” called the man with the boots.

“Is it?” asked Svenson. “What did you yourself say this afternoon? That the grooms and the dead boatman must have been killed by different hands?”

“What of it?” snarled the man. “The grooms were killed by a wolf, the boatman by your criminal.”

“The fisherman—” began Svenson.

“His name was Sarn!” called one of the others, angrily.

“I'm sorry—Sarn—my apologies, but Sarn was murdered two days ago. Before the grooms. Chang was at Sorge's—you all saw him. He could no more have reached the fishing boat than any of you, because of the flooding.”

“But he could have gone to the stables.”

“Like any of us, indeed. But you saw those wounds. The grooms were not killed by any blade I know—not unless it was a cutlass, or a boarding axe. Think, all of you! If the grooms were murdered not by a wolf, they were murdered for horses, which means whoever killed them then left ! On a horse! Chang did not so leave—nor, as he was here in your sight that entire day, did he have any horse tucked under his coat! I do not excuse Chang, but my reasoning tells me that someone else has done this killing. Perhaps they have now killed Chang. Perhaps there is something else we do not know…”

He looked out hopefully, but no one replied. Svenson turned to Sorge. “Is there paper, something to write on?”

There was no paper, but Sorge passed him a mostly white patch of sailcloth, which Svenson spread on the table, plucking a stub of charcoal from near the stove. With quick strokes he drew out the coastline as he knew it, the pathways of the village, the line of the river, and the expanded width—as he guessed—of its storm-fueled flood. Then, explaining as he went, he drew an X to mark the stables, another to mark the fishing boat.

“I am trying to reason why these people have been killed. Killing the grooms would have given their killer a mount—also blankets, food, clothing. If you look, you will see from the map that, having killed them, the killer's path south would have been unimpeded by the flood.”

“What if he did not want to go south?” asked an older man. Svenson had tended his pigs.

“Where else would he go?” the Doctor replied. “He could not have gone north, since he could not have passed the flood. We would have heard the horses in the village.”

Svenson lit another cigarette, snapping it out from his silver case. “My point is that the grooms' killer is gone. As for Sarn—well, first, there would have been no horse, little food, no clothing—why was he killed at all? Secondly, because of the flooded river, there would have been no path south until last night at the earliest. His killer was marooned.”

Even the booted man nodded. Svenson began drawing small x's.

“Those are houses,” said Sorge, unnecessarily narrating for the others. Svenson was touched by this spot of loyalty and nodded.

“They are. Anyone coming from the fishing boat must have passed by someone's house. I suggest that men go to each one, asking questions about what was heard, what was seen…”

Svenson looked up and saw the booted man studying the crude map. He reached across the table, took the charcoal from Svenson, and marked an area to the west, in the thick of the woods. This house lay on the exact route, from the vantage of the wreck, of a person attempting to skirt the village entirely.

“Whose home is that?” Svenson asked.

“Jorgens'”, Sorge answered. “More a hunter than a fisherman. He prefers the woods.”

“Has anyone seen Mr. Jorgens since the storm?”

Sorge looked up at Svenson with a blank expression.

At once the men were shouting to each other—calling for lights, for weapons—but the man with the riding boots hissed sharply and brought them all to silence.

“What if your man Chang is at Jorgens'? What if that's where he's been hid?”

“Then you must seize him,” said Svenson.

“And what if he's already gone?” The man stabbed his finger back onto the map, tracing a line south. “We need to search both ways— some to Jorgens', and some by sea, around the forest.”

“But that's full of wolves,” hissed Sorge, and other men muttered in agreement. “No matter what else is true, that way is asking for death.”

The Doctor felt a sudden peaceful symmetry.

“Not at all,” he said. “I'll go. It is the simplest way to prove myself and guarantee the safety of Mrs. Dujong and Miss Temple. If I do find Chang, I can get closer to him than any of you—and if I find wolves, well, I shall do my best to make a wolf-skin hat.”

“That is madness,” whispered Sorge.

“Do I have a choice?” asked Svenson. “If I am to convince you of my intentions?”

No one answered. The man with the boots nodded sharply, signaling the end of discussion.

“We will go to Jorgens' and walk south—you, Doctor, will skirt around the forest and come back north to the village.”

“Excellent,” said Svenson.

It was decided.

THE TIDE had changed and Svenson clambered aboard the fishing boat, directed to a seat in the bow. He had not said good-bye to Elöise. He was leaving Miss Temple, but Miss Temple had passed the crisis— it was merely a question of when she might regain her strength. Elöise would be safer without him, safer with the village mollified. The craft's sail filled easily and they pulled away, bobbing over small breaking waves. The water darkened beneath the bow, and he looked back to find the land had curved—so quickly—and the village was already out of sight. Doctor Svenson held a hand over his eyes, for they were tearing in the bitter wind.

THE SKY was black by the time the boat reached the swollen estuary lined with reeds. Svenson thanked the fishermen, and followed their directions up the bank, and through the trees. But instead of following the path deeper into the forest, the Doctor cut across a wide, wet meadow to a line of hills he could sense only as shadows. He dismissed the idea of wolves—there was no danger at all—as he now dismissed the notion of following the forest road back to the fishing village. Their enemies had already fled—the danger would be in returning to the city. He would go on to this mining town and seek Chang, not that he expected to find Chang either. He would continue to travel ahead of the women, clearing the way of danger without the painful necessity of actual contact. The villagers might assume his death—but he could leave word in the town, and any sorrow on his behalf would be brief, if it existed at all. The more he thought of it, the less he believed Elöise would want to see him anyway—would this not be the cleanest break?

Once he reached drier ground he made camp, not wanting to blunder about in the dark. He built a small fire, ate his meager supper, and spread his coat over his body. He woke with the sun and walked steadily past noon, winding to the dark hills, grateful for the physical effort to distract his mind and wear his limbs. He knew next to nothing about Karthe, and was mildly worried about his arrival—a foreigner in a military uniform in a town that saw few travelers at any time and scarcely one in half a century from abroad. So much would depend on who else had reached the town before him, and what story they had told. Yet there must be an inn, and he had money. Once the place was sure, he would take the train back to the city. He wondered which of his countrymen might be left at the mission compound, and what word had been sent to Macklenburg. Could it possibly be safe for him to appear there? Perhaps he ought to go straight on to Cap Rouge… on to the sea, and some other ship.

If she loved another man—Trapping or Xonck—what did it change? And why was it so surprising, such terrible men? When did love ever care for facts? Did Corinna moldering in a grave shift Svenson's feeling for her?

THE TWILIGHT was just creeping from the hills when he came to a wider road, rutted by the passage of mining carts. He hoped with the appearance of the road that the town was near, but after another half an hour the Doctor stopped for a drink from his water bottle, sweat under his collar. He looked around him. His gaze was taken by a stand of high black stones, each the size of a house but sharply upthrust through the earth, one on top of the other, like a spectacularly unfortunate tangle of teeth. If he did not think the town so close, he would have investigated it at once for a campsite. He corked the bottle and returned it to the rucksack.

He heard a noise—perhaps a bird, perhaps an animal, but not the wind—faint, but coming clearly from the stones. The Doctor stepped off the road, his pace quickening to a run, boots clumping over the knotted grass.

“Is someone here?” he called aloud, his own voice sounding foolish after so long in silence. The clearing was abandoned, but there was a ring of blackened rocks for a fire, flat slabs to sit or sleep upon, and even a collection of coal, most likely stolen from the mines, or from an unguarded scuttle in the town.

In answer came the same huffling wail that had reached him on the road. It was above him. He dug a candle from his coat and dragged a match on the rock to light it. Some ten feet above he saw a cracked seam between two larger stones, not a cave as such, but large enough to shelter something small. The smooth surface of the rock face below it gleamed wet. He knew it at once for blood, and called to whoever had crammed themselves into the tiny crease.

“What has hurt you? Is it an animal? Can you come down? I am a doctor—if you are injured, I can help.”

He received no reply. The rivulets of blood were smeared and spattered and dragged. The injured person had done his best to climb away, even as his attacker had persisted in trying to reach him.

“I am here to help you,” called Svenson. “I cannot get up—you must come down! Who are you? What is your name?”

In an abrupt answer the figure toppled off the rock, nearly knocking Svenson flat. He raised his arms without thinking and managed to half catch the bloody, windmilling tangle of limbs… but as he held the weight he saw it was only a boy. Svenson eased him to the ground, recovered the candle, and lit another match, moving the light to identify what wounds he could.

“What is your name?” he repeated, dropping his voice to a soothing whisper. The boy did not reply. He had been gashed at the throat and chest, and then repeatedly along his legs. Svenson could only too vividly imagine how these last had been received—the boy's assailant relentlessly scrabbling up the rock, slashing again and again at whatever could be reached, the cave so shallow that the child had not room enough to pull his legs clear. Svenson winced at a brutal gash below the child's knee, a shining, near-black drag of blood… then reached out to touch it. The dark shining line was not blood at all. He held the candle close. The line was blue… a shooting vine of glass beneath the boy's opened flesh. The Doctor hoisted the child in his arms and stumbled back to the road.

HIS SHOUTING brought a rush of people from the doorways of Karthe. Svenson handed the boy into the arms of others and gasped out that he was a doctor and required a table and some light. The townsmen did not question him—neither his words nor his appearance—as he removed his bloody coat and rolled up his sleeves, stepping into someone's kitchen, vaguely aware of the pale faces of a woman and her children as they cleared the table and attempted to lay down a sheet. Svenson waved it away.

“It will merely be ruined,” he said, and then turned to the nearest man—older than he and with luck someone in authority. “I found him in a stand of black rocks outside the town. He has been attacked— perhaps by an animal. Do you know him? Do you know his name?”

“It is Willem,” the man replied, unable to shift his gaze from the blood crusting the boy's mouth and nose. “A groom at the stable. His father—”

“Someone should find his father,” said Svenson.

“The father has been killed this night.”

THE BOY did not regain his senses before death. Given the absence of opiates or ether, Svenson counted it a blessing. The Doctor had stanched the deeper cuts at the throat and across the ribs, but neither of these had been mortal. Instead, he blamed the many gashes across each leg, all with some trace of blue glass in the wound. He recalled the freezing, snapping deaths of Lydia Vandaariff and Karl-Horst von Maasmärck on the airship, the chemical reaction of indigo blue glass and human blood, and was astonished the boy had remained alive as long as he had. He took the once-proffered sheet and pulled it over the body, shutting the child's eyes with a sad sweep of his hand.

Svenson looked up and saw the ring of faces. How long had he worked to save the boy? Thirty minutes? He hoped the effort had at least gone some way toward establishing his own good intentions. He nodded to the woman, her wide-eyed children around her (had no one thought to shoo them from the room?), and indicated the peacoat bundled over a chair. She handed it to him and the Doctor dug out his case, selected a cigarette, and leaned toward a tallow light in a wooden dish next to the dead boy's arm. Svenson straightened, exhaled, and cleared his throat.

“My name is Svenson, Captain-Surgeon Abelard Svenson from the Macklenburg Navy. Macklenburg is a German Duchy—perhaps you do not know it. Through a complicated set of events I have found myself ashore in your country, some days' travel north, in the company of several companions. Upon nearing Karthe I heard this boy cry out. He had climbed into a nook in the rocks, where something or someone attempted to drag him down with a savage determination. I find it hard to conceive of a reason any sane person should so fiercely desire the death of a child. Is that stand of rocks someone's property? Was the boy trespassing?”

He had no interest in the answer to either question, but as long as he diverted conversation from the blue glass he would have that much more time to make sense of the situation himself. One of the men was answering him—the rocks were common land, no one would have harmed the boy for his presence there. Svenson nodded, reminding himself to search the boy's pockets as soon as he had a private moment.

“But you say his father is newly dead as well?”

The man nodded.

“Where? How?” He paused at the silence in the room. “Murdered?”

The man nodded again. Svenson waited for him to speak. The man hesitated.

“Could it have been the same killer?” the Doctor asked. “Perhaps the boy ran to a hiding place he thought would be safe.”

The man looked at the other faces around him, as if asking each a question he did not care to voice. Then he turned back to Svenson.

“You should come with us,” he said.

IT WAS exactly like the murdered grooms—the gaping throat that on first glance seemed simply an especially vicious laceration but that upon further inspection betrayed a substantial removal of flesh. Svenson held a candle close to the wound, aware that his examination caused the townsfolk around him to blanch and turn away. He was certain, especially after seeing the murdered boy's legs, that the father had been killed by a weapon of blue glass.

He tilted the man's head, frowning at the discolored band of skin that stretched on either side of the wound. He looked up, and saw the head townsman—who had on their walk to this house introduced himself as Mr. Bolte—notice his discovery.

“He was hanged once,” said Mr. Bolte. “Neck didn't break and he was cut down—proven innocent, he said.”

“Or freed by his friends,” muttered one of the women.

“What did he do?” asked Svenson. “What work in the town?”

“In the mines,” said Bolte. “But he'd been ill. The boy supported them both.”

“How could his wages be enough?” asked Svenson. “Was the man also perhaps… a thief?”

He received no reply—but no denial. Svenson spoke carefully. “I am wondering if any person might have reason to kill him.”

“But why kill his son?” asked Bolte.

“What if the boy saw the murder?” said Svenson.

Bolte looked to the faces around him and then back to Svenson. “We will take you to Mrs. Daube.”

MR. BOLTE and one of his fellows—Mr. Carper, a very short man whose torso was the exact size of a barrel—accompanied Svenson to the inn. The Flaming Star's landlady met them in the perfectly hospitable common room. The Doctor smelled food from the kitchen and gazed jealously past her shoulder to the crackling fire. He nodded kindly at Mrs. Daube as she was named to him, but her eyes darkened as Bolte narrated the circumstances of the Doctor's arrival in Karthe.

“It is that villain,” she announced.

Mr. Bolte paused at the vicious look on the woman's face. “What villain, Mrs. Daube?”

“He threatened me. He threatened Franck. He had a knife—waved it right in my face—in this very room!”

“A knife!” Mr. Carper spoke across Svenson to Bolte. “You saw how the boy was cut!”

Mr. Bolte cleared his throat and called gravely to the young man now visible near the kitchen door.

“What man, Franck?”

“In red, with his eyes cut up, dark glasses. Like a devil.”

“He is a devil!” growled Mrs. Daube.

Svenson's heart sank. Who knew what Chang might have done?

Another voice broke into his thoughts, from the foot of the stairs. “Who are you exactly, sir? I confess I did not hear your introduction.”

The speaker was younger than Svenson—perhaps an age with Chang—with combed, well-oiled black hair and wearing, of all things, black business attire for the city.

“Abelard Svenson. I am a Doctor.”

“From Germany?” The man's smile floated just short of a sneer.

“Macklenburg.”

“Long way from Macklenburg.”

“And yet not so far away to introduce oneself politely,” observed Svenson.

“Mr. Potts is a guest of the Flaming Star,” said Mrs. Daube importantly. “One of a hunting party—”

Svenson looked at the man's pale hands and walking shoes, his well-pressed trouser crease.

Mr. Potts caught Svenson's gaze and cut the woman off with a crisp smile.

“So sorry, to be sure. Potts. Martin Potts. But do you know this— this devil?”

“I know of him. We had been to the same village, up north.”

“Was there trouble?” asked Mr. Carper.

“Of course there was trouble,” hissed Mrs. Daube.

“But who is he?” demanded Mr. Bolte. “Where is he now?”

“I do not know,” said Svenson, looking straight at Potts. “He is called Chang. My understanding is that he was returning to the city.”

“And yet now there has been murder,” observed Mr. Potts mildly, and cocked his head to Bolte. “I heard you mention a boy?”

“Young Willem,” explained Bolte. “A stable groom. This gentleman found him at the black rocks, savagely attacked—we were unable to save him. You know his father—”

“Murdered this night!” whispered Franck.

“Just like that devil promised!” cried Mrs. Daube. “He told me plain as day that any person crossing him would die. No doubt he went from here to the stables! Now that I remember, I am sure he said it quite clear: ‘If that boy crosses me—”

The two townsmen erupted in astonished and outraged shouts, demanding that Mrs. Daube explain more, demanding of Svenson where his friend was hiding, insisting (this was Mr. Carper) that the fellow be hanged. Svenson put up his hands and called out, his eyes darting between the strangely satisfied innkeeper and her watchful guest.

“Gentlemen—please! I am sure this woman is wrong!”

“How am I wrong?” she sneered. “I know what I saw—and what he said! And now you say the boy's been slaughtered!”

“The many cuts—” began Mr. Bolte.

“The knife!” cried Mr. Carper.

“I understand!” shouted Svenson, raising his hands again to quiet them.

“Who are you anyway?” muttered Mrs. Daube.

“I am a surgeon,” said Svenson. “I have spent the last hour attempting to save that poor boy's life—I am not unmindful of the savage way in which he was killed. Mrs. Daube, you have told us what Chang—”

“He is a Chinaman?” asked Mr. Bolte, with open distaste.

“No. It—it does not matter. Mrs. Daube claims that Chang told her—”

“He did tell me!”

“I do not doubt you, madame.” Indeed, Svenson was surprised not to find the imprint of Chang's hand still raw on the woman's face. “But when… when did this conversation occur?”

Mrs. Daube licked her lips, as if she did not trust this line of questioning at all.

“Yesterday evening,” she replied.

“Are you sure?” asked Svenson.

“I am.”

“And after this conversation Cardinal Chang departed—”

“He is a churchman?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“He is a demon,” muttered Mrs. Daube.

“A demon you last saw yesterday evening?” asked the Doctor.

Mrs. Daube nodded with a sniff.

“Why are you defending his man?” Mr. Potts asked Svenson.

“I am trying to learn the truth. The boy was attacked only some hours ago, and by his wounds, the father at most only hours before that.”

“That proves nothing,” offered Mr. Potts. “This fellow might have spent the whole next day tracking them, only to make his attack to night.”

“Certainly true,” nodded Svenson. “The question is whether Chang left town in the intervening hours or not. You did not see him yourself, Mr. Potts?”

“Regrettably, no.”

“Mr. Potts and his fellows have each traveled different directions from Karthe,” explained Mrs. Daube, “the better to find the best hunting.”

“And none of your fellows were back either?” asked Svenson.

“I fear I am the first to return, being less of an outdoorsman—”

“Not like the Captain,” said Mrs. Daube with a smile, “who has come and gone again. As handsome a man as this Chang is a terror—”

“No one was here,” Potts insisted, over her words. “Suspicion naturally falls on this man Chang.”

“Who else could have done these things?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“Why else would anyone do them?” asked Mr. Carper.

“Why would Chang?” countered Svenson. “He is a stranger here— like myself and Mr. Potts—and come to Karthe only in order to leave it, and leave before these killings occurred.”

“And yet,” began Carper, “if he is a natural villain—”

“How would we learn whether he had gone?” asked Mr. Bolte.

“Quite simply,” said Svenson. “Did a train depart last night or this morning?”

Mr. Bolte looked at Mr. Carper.

“Last night,” answered Carper. “But we do not know this Chang was on it.”

“Is there anyone who might know?” asked Svenson. “Usually this sort of thing is quite easily proven, you see.”

“Perhaps we could ask at the train yard,” Mr. Bolte said.

AN HOUR later Doctor Svenson walked back with Mr. Bolte—Mr. Carper, connected to the mines, was still speaking with the trainsmen. There had been an incident—the talk of the rail yard—on the previous night's train: a passenger compartment with its window and door shattered, and a mysterious figure, wearing a blind man's glasses and a long red coat, stalking through the corridor like a wraith. The damaged compartment had been splashed with blood, as had the glass on the trackside, but no victim—dead or alive—had been found. How ever, the trainsmen were sure: the strange figure in red had been aboard when the train had finally left.

With Chang regrettably eliminated as a suspect, the two townsmen had speculated about who, or what, might have killed the boy and his father, seizing on the possibility of a wolf with enthusiasm. Svenson nodded where politeness required it.

All of Chang's suspicion had stood before the Doctor in the form of Mr. Potts—obviously no simple hunter. If Potts was on any official Ministry errand there would be no fiction of a hunting party—there would be soldiers in uniform. Since there were not, Svenson had to conclude that the remnants of the Cabal in the city, all those masked guests at Harschmort who had received their instructions in specially coded leather-bound volumes, had not yet claimed power openly. Because of the disaster with the airship? Perhaps there was still time to stop them—the question was what Potts knew. Did he have their names? Was he informed about the glass? Would he denounce Svenson to the town? What were his exact instructions… and from whom?

And of course, to the side of this, there was the unfortunate boy himself. Both he and his father—and, by the similarity of wounds, the two grooms in the fishing village—had been slain by shards from a broken blue glass book. Could this have been one of Potts’ soldiers, penetrating that far north, coming across the glass? But why the grooms and not Svenson himself—surely anyone in the fishing village would have directed the soldiers to Sorge's cabin.

Was it possible someone else had survived the airship? Svenson recalled the crude map drawn on Sorge's table, the killings ascribed to two sources. He groaned aloud. Did that mean two survivors?

“Are you quite well, Doctor?”

“Perhaps I ought to eat,” he replied, smiling weakly.

“I will show you back to the inn,” said Bolte, “and have one of the men on watch collect you later.”

“Watch?”

“Indeed yes!” Bolte patted Svenson heartily on the shoulder. “While you are having your dinner, Mr. Carper and I must rouse the town. We have a wolf to hunt!”

MR. POTTS was not at the inn when Svenson returned. After Mr. Bolte had explained Chang's innocence, and how it was certain their culprit was a wolf, Mrs. Daube had grudgingly shown the Doctor upstairs to a small room with a bare mattress on a wooden frame. The woman sniffed, not at all ready to ease her disapproval, and asked again what place Svenson was from (this being a clear implication Macklenburg did not truly exist). Svenson took the opportunity to draw a map with his finger on the dusty top of the room's one little table, but he had not finished placing Macklenburg to the far side of Schleswig-Holstein before she broke in to ask what he desired for his meal. The Doctor swept his hand across the dust with a thin smile and replied that anything ready and warm would do—along with, if she had it, a pot of beer. Mrs. Daube briskly announced what this would cost and told him he was free to sit in the common room or to come down to the table in half an hour.

He listened to her footsteps on the stairs, sitting in his coat on the bed, and then stretched out on his back. The discovery of the boy had launched him into hours of unexpected activity, the obligations of medicine that provided—as they had so often in his life—an illusion of purpose and place. But now, staring up at the slanted split pine roof of an over-priced, underkempt room in a town he had no desire to know, the Doctor felt the weight of his isolation. Chang, by catching that train, could even at that moment have reached Stropping Station—back in a city where he lived as easily as a crow amongst carrion. But Svenson's escape from Karthe meant merely another destination for exile.

Should he offer himself to a workhouse hospital? Or to the brothels as an abortionist? He lit a cigarette and blew smoke above his head. How recently—how very recently—had his heart been as light as a fool's? What ridiculous visions had inflected the corners of his mind? During one evening meal at Sorge's, Elöise had described her uncle's cottage, near some park, her summers there as a child… a glimpse of another sort of life. It was all veneer, the very idea of taking walks, for goodness sake, or possessing genuine concern for a garden, or tending the feelings of another. The more the Doctor imagined it, the more it seemed beyond his abilities—as well as quite beyond hope.

SVENSON SAT listening to Mrs. Daube's distant puttering, and used both hands to quickly remove his boots. Walking softly in his stocking feet, the Doctor crept with the candle to the other guest rooms. The first was empty, the pallet rolled up against the bed frame. The next held Mr. Potts' things—travel valise, trousers and two shirts hanging from hooks on the wall, and a small pile of books on the bedside table— the navy's official book of tide tables, an engineering pamphlet on salvaging shipwrecks, and a distressingly thick serial novel, Handmaids to Messalina, which from randomly opened pages proved to be quite vigorously obscene.

Svenson peered beneath the bed. A second pair of shoes, a ragged newspaper—the Herald, folded to dire proclamations on “Privy Council Defiance” and “Epidemic Silences Industry”—and beyond them both, poking out from the far side of the bed frame, what looked like another book. Svenson stood, leaned carefully over the bed, and extracted a thin volume of poetry—without question the same he had seen belonging to Chang. Svenson craned his head toward the stairway, heard no one, and flipped through the book with both hands. What could have made Chang forget it—especially if his time with Mrs. Daube was so fraught with suspicion?

Chang would not have forgotten it—the man was, in his habits if not in his person, fastidious as a cat. He had left it for a reason, but it had been discovered by Mr. Potts. Svenson found a folded down page and Chang's terse note: “Our enemies live. Leave this inn …”

He crept back to his own room and hid the book beneath his bed.

THE DOCTOR sat near the hearth with a mug of beer. It was not especially good, but to the first beer to pass his lips in nearly a fortnight he was forgiving. Mrs. Daube clattered away in the kitchen. He wondered what Elöise was doing even then—most likely dismal conversation with Lina and Sorge. He wondered if Miss Temple was awake.

The front door opened to admit Mr. Bolte.

“I am afraid I must borrow your guest for a little time, Mrs. Daube,” he called, smiling in such a way as to let the woman know she had no say in the matter.

Mrs. Daube snorted at the Doctor. “What's it to me if you eat it cold?”

“WE HAVE found something,” Mr. Bolte explained once they were outside. “A clue.”

In the road waited Mr. Potts, and—his work at the train yards evidently finished—Mr. Carper, both with lanterns, and some men Svenson did not recognize, each standing with either a new-sharpened stave or a bright lantern.

“It was Mr. Potts' idea.” Bolte nodded to the crisply dressed city man. “Perhaps you will show the Doctor, Martin.”

Doctor Svenson disliked this newfound familiarity, but forced himself to smile with curiosity at Potts, aware that the man's own earnest expression was an untrustable veil. Svenson had been attached to the Macklenburg diplomatic party as personal physician to the late Prince, but everyone with a brain knew his true task, to control the young man's penchant for excess and scandal. If Potts was from the Ministry he must know of Svenson…which meant he must also know that Macklenburg had declared Svenson a criminal. Yet here was Potts, saying nothing, leading them all to a patch of scrub grass near the road, half-way between the dead boy's house and the Flaming Star.

Mr. Potts stroked his chin like a preening bird. “Indeed—well, it was this notion of the killer—the wolf—chasing the boy from the deathbed of his father to the rocks. I simply took a lantern and searched for any signs connecting the two—for example a trail of blood.”

“And was there?” asked Svenson.

“My word, yes,” replied Potts with a smile. “But not of blood! It's most strange, you see—nothing other than marbles! Beads of what to me looks like glass!” He crouched low, holding the lantern.

There in the dirt lay a scatter of flattened, bright stones that in the flickering light seemed to contain the blue shimmer of a tropical sea. Svenson saw instantly that this had been some fluid ejected in a stream—a jet of coagulating blood, or clotted saliva—that had then hardened in the cold air. Could the boy have been wounded in the house? Had he fled to the rocks, leaving this unnatural trail?

He realized Potts was watching him closely. Svenson cleared his throat.

“Do you gentlemen know their… source?”

“We rather hoped you did,” replied Bolte.

“I am afraid this is beyond my knowledge. But perhaps Mr. Potts—”

“Not I.” Potts fixed his gaze on Svenson.

“Then let us hurry on,” Mr. Bolte urged. “Back to the rocks.”

AS THEY walked, Mr. Bolte speculated whether the blue marbles might have come from some hitherto unknown mineral deposit or whether the boy's father had cadged them from unsavory dealings— here Bolte's voice dropped low—with a gypsy.

“I should not think Karthe has traffic with gypsies,” offered Svenson.

“We do not,” insisted Bolte.

“Because of the isolation, I mean.”

“Precisely.”

“Then perhaps…” Potts risked a glance to the Doctor. “… we have not found a gypsy's marble. Perhaps it comes from a wolf… eating something unnatural.”

Mr. Carper called over their shoulders, for he had fallen behind, his voice thick with effort. “A hungry wolf will eat anything!”

Svenson felt Potts watching him and groped for some reply, but then they reached the rocks. With so many lanterns lighting up the inner clearing like an unnatural dark-skied summer day, the horrifying nature of the boy's last hour was inescapable. The rock face below his cleft of refuge was thickly striped in both blood and gleaming blue. The child had been clawed to pieces like a cornered rat—his assailant striking again and again from below, hacking at the legs but never able to catch a grip to pull the boy to the ground. Svenson turned away, dismayed to his heart. His gaze fell upon a ring of blackened stones, a fire pit. Potts called to him.

“It seems to have been recently used, does it not?”

“It might have been the boy,” Svenson speculated aloud. “Or a miner in transit with no money for the inn.”

“But if it wasn't?” asked Potts.

“Who do you mean?” asked Bolte.

“I do not know. But if someone else might have been here…”

“I saw no one,” said Svenson, “when I found the boy.”

“Perhaps they too fell victim,” wheezed Mr. Carper, who did not seem the better for the walk. “Or perhaps they ran away.”

“Perhaps they left a trail themselves,” observed Svenson, and he looked meaningfully at Mr. Potts. Immediately Potts was snapping orders at the other men—without a qualm for Mr. Bolte's ostensible authority—spreading them out to search the ground.

Svenson looked up at the mournful crevice where the boy had lain. He turned to Mr. Carper. “If I might trouble you for a push, sir?”

Carper was entirely obliging—it gave him an excuse not to search— and allowed the Doctor to press one foot off his cradled hands, and then another off his shoulder. Svenson clawed his way up the rock, gritting his teeth and refusing to look beneath him—even this minor height made his palms sweat. Why must he always find himself in these situations?

“What do you see?” called Carper, holding up his lantern.

Svenson reached the crevice and pulled himself to the side of the sticky blood, exhaling with effort. The crevice was tiny, but extended farther than he'd thought, the depths too narrow for the boy to use. Svenson squinted… a pale object in the very distant dark… he flattened his body and extended one arm… his fingers touched cloth… he pulled on it, gently, and it came free—a grain sack… with something particularly heavy inside it.

He slid to the ground. Before Mr. Carper could ask what Svenson had found, the Doctor leaned close. “We must find Mr. Bolte, alone.”

The rest of the men were assisting Mr. Potts, nosing about like dogs in the shadows. Svenson crossed quickly, took Bolte's arm, and walked him out of the rocks altogether, Carper trailing behind with the lantern.

“The Doctor has something to show you,” whispered Carper, a bit too dramatically.

“Found in the crevice,” said Svenson, “where the boy was attacked. I believe it was what he was protecting—why he was killed.”

“I do not understand. Is it food?”

“It is not.”

“Why would a wolf care about anything it could not eat?”

“Mr. Bolte… and Mr. Carper, you too must know.”

The two men exchanged a glance and drew closer.

“There is no wolf,” said Svenson. “At least no wolf in Karthe. Be fore you say a word—believe me, my proof for all I say is longer than we have time to tell—you saw the ‘marbles’ Mr. Potts found on the road, and you saw the dead boy's legs—the gashes of blue?”

“But you said that you did not know—”

“I had hoped it was not necessary. It has become so.”

He opened the sack and carefully held it open, rolling down the sides so the two men could see, but keeping his fingers in contact only with the canvas. All three flinched as Carper's lantern was reflected back into their eyes, a bewitching, luminous indigo.

“It… appears to be… a sort of book…”

“Made of… glass,” whispered Carper. “The same glass!”

“But of what use is a glass book?” asked Bolte. “It cannot hold printing.”

Svenson stood, gathering the top of the sack into a knot. Mr. Potts was approaching from the stand of black stones.

“You must trust me and say nothing,” the Doctor whispered quickly. “What this holds is unnatural—to even touch it is to put your very life at risk.”

MR. POTTS informed them with a satisfied smile that someone had been using the rocks as a campsite, and that this person possessed a horse. The searchers had also discovered another spray of blue pebbles leading away from the rocks, into the hills. He looked at the sack in Svenson's hand but did not ask about it.

“Is the person with the horse related to the blue stones?” asked Svenson.

“I cannot say,” replied Potts, his eyes carefully moving across their faces.

Mr. Bolte nodded sharply and announced that the search must continue, pursuing the trail of stones. Potts shouted over his shoulder to the other men, but paused, staring narrowly at the Doctor, before stalking off to lead them.

Svenson turned to Mr. Carper. “How many fellows exactly are with us?”

Carper frowned. “I believe it is six, and Mr. Bolte and myself. And yourself.”

“Six counting Mr. Potts?”

“Yes, six with Potts. Nine with everyone, including you. Why do you ask?”

“Mere idleness. And apart from those staves, do any possess… weapons?”

“The staves are quite stout,” answered Carper. “Do you mean fire arms?”

“I suppose I do.”

“I would doubt there are five guns in all of Karthe. I believe Mr. Potts possesses a pistol.”

“He does?”

“Well, he is a hunter.”

“I did not know hunters often used pistols.”

“No,” said Carper, smiling, “that is what is so convenient for us! I should much prefer to shoot a wolf than kill it with our staves.”

“Indeed.”

“And yet… as you say… it may be no wolf at all.”

Svenson did not reply at once, then dropped his voice even lower.

“It may—I hesitate to say—but our quarry may in fact be… a woman.”

“A woman?”

“It is possible… perhaps I am wrong—”

“You must be, sir! For a woman to do such violence—and to a child!”

Svenson exhaled, not entirely sure where to begin, but Carper had reached his own conclusion, the fat man's breath rasping in clouds before his face.

“If you are correct—with so many of us, she must surrender. We will not be called on to shoot a woman.”

There were calls from the darkness ahead of them.

“I believe Mr. Potts has found something,” said the Doctor.

AT THE turning were signs of another struggle: flattened grass, a dark woolen wrap, and more glass—but this in smooth, broken wedges, not the rounded drips they had followed. Mr. Potts knelt over the glass, Mr. Bolte standing above him. It was clear by Potts' dark glare as the Doctor approached that the Ministry man had been told about the book. Svenson called out sharply as he saw Potts extend his hand.

“Do not touch it!”

Potts jerked his hand away, and stood with a triumphant sneer, making room for Svenson.

“It is just like what you discovered in the rocks,” whispered Mr. Bolte.

“Exactly,” said Svenson, to cut him off.

The pieces of glass were impossibly thin, snapped from an inner page of a book, and starred along their length, as if they had been shattered.

“I should be grateful to know your thoughts,” said Potts.

“You would be even more grateful not to, I assure you,” the Doctor told him.

“I do insist. I will have no more secrets.”

“Then tell us where your fellow hunters are now? Your party.”

“What is that to do with our search?” asked Mr. Bolte. “Surely we are enough—”

“It is to do with what they hunt, as Mr. Potts well knows.”

“My companions are reputable men.”

“Soldiers of the Queen?”

“They are not well-known criminals,” spat Potts, “like your Cardinal Chang.”

“Cardinal Chang has been accounted for,” interrupted Svenson. “Your party has not. Your own arrogance shows exactly how little you do understand your prey—dangerous prey, as that poor child has proven with his life.”

“What prey, Doctor?” snarled Potts. “Tell us all!”

“The Doctor mentioned a woman,” said Mr. Carper.

Svenson wheeled to find Carper directly behind him, holding up the woolen wrap.

“Do you know it?” Mr. Bolte asked Svenson.

“Not at all,” replied the Doctor.

Mr. Bolte turned to Potts. “Do you? Do you know any woman here?”

Mr. Potts shook his head. He glanced down at the glass shards and then back to Svenson with a cold, knowing gaze. As if in silent answer to all of their questions Doctor Svenson stepped forward and with deliberate strikes of his boot heel smashed the glass fragments into glittering powder, then scuffed as much dirt as would come loose on top of the pile.

Potts pointed above them, farther into the hills.

“The trail continues. Perhaps we've argued enough.”

IT WAS another hour of steady climbing before they stopped again, by which time the air had grown quite cold. Without the slightest regard for propriety, Mr. Carper had thrown the woolen wrap across his shoulders. Ahead, at the front of the line—a line that had become distended as their journey increased and the urgency of their errand diminished with the deepening chill—Svenson saw Mr. Potts conferring earnestly with Mr. Bolte, and knew he ought to take part, if only to defend himself. But Doctor Svenson was tired and still too generally touched with despair not to instead take a cigarette from his case and light a match. He looked above him at the dense carpet of low cloud, so near it seemed he might exhale directly into its smoky mass. He offered the case to Mr. Carper, who shook his head, and then looked up to approaching footsteps—Bolte and Potts bringing the conversation to Svenson.

“It has grown late,” began Mr. Bolte. “Mr. Potts suggests we stop.”

“And go back?” asked Mr. Carper, hopefully.

“That would take half-way to morning,” announced Potts. “Apparently there is an old mine just ahead. Shelter enough, and we may make a fire.”

“Have we any food?” asked Carper.

“We did not think to bring it,” snapped Potts, glaring at Svenson, as if the lack of a dinner was his doing.

The fire was made in a long roofless hut, the far end sloping into shadows where a deep shaft had been sealed with a hammered-together wall of boards. Across a small clearing were two more huts, one also roofless and the other—because of the roof—a haven for nesting birds, its floor crusted and foul.

“I have told you exactly the truth,” said Potts, his sharp features etched deeper in the firelight. “I joined a hunting party—”

“Hunting what?” asked Svenson.

“Deer,” replied Potts. “And wild boar.”

“Boar?” asked Mr. Bolte. “At this time of year?”

“I am no expert,” said Potts. He sighed with a sudden peevishness. “I am no particular hunter at all.”

“No,” said Svenson. “That would be your Captain… what was his name?”

“Captain Tackham,” yawned Carper. “I came up with them on the train. Elegant fellow for a soldier, I must say.”

“Mrs. Daube told me the party went separate ways to hunt,” said Svenson to Potts. “I wonder who went north… and if they have returned.”

“The Captain,” said Potts. “According to Mrs. Daube he returned and then went out again, searching elsewhere—there can be nothing, no good game, in the north.”

“And what about this woman?” asked Mr. Bolte, poking the fire and looking seriously at Svenson across the rising sparks. “A woman is responsible for all this death? I confess that makes no sense to me.”

Svenson met the gaze of Mr. Potts, who seemed just as concerned about the question as he himself. Perhaps, as far as the men of Karthe were concerned, they shared a desire to keep their business as hidden as possible…

“I will tell you all I know,” Svenson replied, and reached into his coat for another cigarette. “Though I cannot pretend to possess an answer to her particular mystery. Even her name may be a fiction— Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza.” He glanced at Potts, but the man's face betrayed nothing.

“She is Italian?” asked Bolte.

“Venetian, I was told,” said Svenson, deliberately deepening his own accent. “Though that too is most likely a lie… I myself first made her acquaintance in a private room of the St. Royale Hotel, in search of my charge—the Crown Prince of Macklenburg, Karl-Horst von Maasmärck. Do you know the St. Royale? It is an extraordinary place—the lobby is like an Ottoman palace, with carved columns and walls of mirror and marble—you can just imagine the sort of woman who keeps a whole suite of rooms there to herself! But, yes, the Prince—I was the Prince's personal physician—the Contessa was an intimate of the Prince's fiancée, Miss Lydia Vandaariff, though she was more truly an intimate of the girl's father, Lord Robert Vandaariff, whose name you must know, even in Karthe, for he must be reckoned one of the wealthiest men of the age—the Contessa being in fact a member of Lord Vandaariff's inner circle of advisors with regard to a particular business strategy involving my country of Macklenburg— thus his daughter's alliance in marriage with the Prince—mining rights, to be precise, which must interest you gentlemen very much, and then in turn manufacturing, shipping, markets in general—in any case, in this particular private room, the Contessa was, if I recall correctly—and I'm sure I do, for if ever there was a striking woman, it is she—wearing a dress of red silk, a Chinese red, which as you will know is a color that possesses more yellow in it than, for example, what one would call ‘crimson’—a very striking choice when set against the woman's very black hair…”

He was gratified to see Mr. Bolte yawn, and pressed ahead with this pattern of detail and digression, giving at all times the impression of complete cooperation without ever revealing anything of substance regarding the Cabal, not even the airship and why such a woman would be in Karthe to begin with. Instead, by the time his narrative had paused to describe the labyrinthine interiors of Harschmort House, his only remaining listener was Mr. Potts, across the fire. The Doctor allowed his sentence to drift into silence and he reached for another cigarette. Mr. Potts smirked at the slumbering men around them.

“An amusing stratagem.”

“They have no need to know,” said Svenson. “I do not claim to know who has precisely sent you.”

“You will accompany me back to the city,” snarled Potts.

Svenson looked up at him. “Quite possibly.”

“Without question.”

“Mr. Potts, I appeal to you—you have seen for yourself this violence, the unnatural effects of the blue glass, the wickedness—”

“I know that, alone amongst my fellows, I have discovered my enemy.”

Svenson snapped with exasperation, “Alone amongst your fellows? Mr. Potts, what does that tell you? What do you think has happened to them?”

Potts chuckled greedily. “They are unluckily blundering about the woods, while I capture—from your own description—the prime quarry of them all!”

“Quarry? Not ally? Not mistress?”

“It can be none of your concern.”

“You tempt fate to speak before you have her in hand.”

“Not in the slightest.” Potts smiled. “If I read these signs correctly she is gravely ill. Your proud villainess has been reduced to killing children. Speaking of which…” From his pocket the man extracted a large naval revolver, the black metal gleaming with oil. “You will give me what you found.”

The large revolver was an unlikely weapon for the dapper Ministry man, one that required strength to be accurate, given the recoil, or simply a knowledge that anyone he was likely to shoot would be at point-blank range. It meant that either Potts was a cold killer or that he was ignorant of firearms altogether.

“I will not,” said Svenson, nodding to the sleeping men around them. “You will do nothing.”

Potts hesitated and then stuffed the weapon away. Svenson breathed a sigh of relief for the lack of bloodshed, but in the same moment knew he was dealing with a dangerous fool.

“It is not the time,” sniffed Potts, officiously. “And as you say, the business is not finished. But do not doubt me, Doctor. If you try to escape I will shoot you dead—no matter who sees it.”

POTTS SHOVED more wood onto the fire, and Svenson took the opportunity to excuse himself, aware that the other man would have the pistol trained on his back the entire time. He stumbled to the bird-stinking hut and relieved himself in its shadow. When he returned, Potts had lain down next to the fire, his eyes closed. Svenson smoked a last cigarette, tossed the butt into the embers, pulled the peacoat more tightly around him, and shut his eyes, the glass book in its sack at his side.

When he opened his eyes, the hut was dark. The stone pit still smoked but the fire was dead. Mr. Potts was gone. Svenson's hand went instantly to the sack, felt the weight of the book—but it wasn't right, it wasn't smooth. He opened it up, could not see inside, and with an instant's hesitation thrust his hand in and touched not glass but a rough block of stone. With a snarl, he scrambled to his feet, winding the sack around his hand so he could swing the rock like a mace.

He did not have far to walk. Mr. Potts stood in the center of the clearing, under the cloud-shrouded moon. He was not holding the book. Had the fool dropped it?

“Mr. Potts,” Svenson whispered. “Mr. Potts!”

Potts turned, eyes unfocused, as if unable to place Svenson yet knowing he ought to. The man's chin was streaked with a dark film, and Svenson wrinkled his nose at the smell of bile.

“Where is the book, Mr. Potts?”

“Who?”

“Not who, what! The book! Where is it?”

In response, Mr. Potts whimpered and rubbed his eyes. His hand was smeared with black liquid.

“Potts—yes, of course—I remember.”

“Where is the book?” Svenson reached out to shake the man's shoulder. Mr. Potts smiled weakly, but his eyes were wild.

“Most important is the quality of paint—the chemicals ground into the paint to make colors—every chemical in life possesses properties—”

“Mr. Potts—”

“Chemical properties, fundamental energies!” whispered Potts, abruptly terrified, as if this was a secret he did not care to know. “One might even ask if there is anything else to life at all!”

Svenson slapped Mr. Potts across the face. Potts staggered, blinked, opened his mouth, but found no voice. He looked into Svenson's eyes, blinked again, and the words came out in a fearful croak.

“What… has… happened?”

“Mr. Potts—”

“Who am I?”

“Where is the book, Mr. Potts? Where did you leave it?”

But Mr. Potts was biting his trembling lip, attempting to not cry.

Svenson dragged Potts to the roofless shed. He shoved Potts in and snapped a match to a candle stub—another ring of blackened stones, travelers' rubbish, with the far end of this shed also blocked off with planking, another shaft… and there, the canvas sack. It was empty.

“An important problem is viscosity,” whispered Potts.

“Tell me!” hissed Svenson. “Where is it?”

Now the man was sobbing. “She was only a girl. I have a daughter myself…”

Svenson wrinkled his nose with distaste. A new draft in the open shed had filled it with a tell-tale reek… was it from Potts or the shaft? The planking had been pulled away and then hastily pressed back into place, but at the simplest touch—as Svenson himself proved with a tug—the boards came off. The reek of indigo clay rose even stronger. He thought of the blue vomit in the privy…

“Mr. Potts… you are confused and frightened, but in no danger. You must help me find the book if I am going to help you—”

But Potts shook free, stumbling into the yard. He pointed to the larger shed, where the other men still slept.

“They are doomed,” he whispered.

A sudden spike of fear shot the length of Doctor Svenson's spine. He strode past Potts—the candle going out—and then wheeled around, digging without apology in the man's pockets and pulling out the revolver. He entered the larger shed, cocking the hammer with his other hand… each man seemed to be where he had left them, undisturbed by Mr. Potts' babbling. Svenson sighed with relief, then looked back. Potts had dropped into a crouch, hugging his knees and muttering. The Doctor's attention was taken by a shadow in the far corner, near the blocked-off shaft. Was someone else awake? Keeping his eye fixed on a darkness he could not penetrate, Svenson dug with his free hand for another match. He struck it and looked down at Bolte. A glittering line of blue like the drag of a paint-clogged brush across the man's throat.

Svenson dropped the match with a start. He raised the pistol toward the shadow in the corner, only to see it swell in size before him. He fired, the sound impossibly loud, but the shadowed figure—a man in a cloak?—darted to the side and was on Svenson before he could shoot again. A shocking blow knocked the Doctor down, the pistol flying from his hand. He groped to his knees, shouting to wake the others—the shadow was between him and the outside yard—and took another hideous blow to his shoulder, toppling him back again. Utterly dazed, Svenson felt himself picked up by the lapels of his coat. He looked into a reeking, dark-lipped, dripping mouth, a pale face whose eyes were wild. The Doctor was thrown with savage force through the wall of planking, a rag doll tumbling down into the shaft.

HE AWOKE with his head pointing downward and his legs above in an uncomfortable tangle. Something pulled at his hair and he very carefully reached down to it, probing the area with half-numbed fingers. A gash had opened on the side of his skull, not too bad, but it had bled and the blood had dried. How long would that have taken? He was terribly cold. His head throbbed cruelly, as did his shoulder and the left side of his rib cage. He feebly groped around him—damp rock and earth, a steeply angled slope. He felt for a match, wondering how many he had left, but could not find the box—had it flown from his pocket? Svenson looked above him… a fretful penumbra of light, yards above. He listened, heard absolutely nothing save his own ragged breath, and began, with the grace of an upended turtle, to turn his body and climb.

He reached the first of the broken boards that had accompanied his fall and carefully brushed them aside, mindful of the noise, but more convinced that his attacker was long gone. When he emerged into the roofless hut he saw the men of Karthe as he had left them. In the stark day, each huddled shape held a poignance he could not endure: they had been slain in sleep.

The bearlike form of Mr. Carper lay curled like a snuggling child, a glittering orchid of blue glass blooming from his jugular. Svenson staggered to the yard and saw the sprawled body of Mr. Potts, the man's chalk-white face smeared with greasy, stinking black film. Svenson sat down with his head in his hands and tried to think of simply one thing he could do.

He washed the blood from his hair with one man's water bottle, and took another's to drink. He located the pistol amongst the bodies. The glass book was gone.

He had no real idea of the time—he had not thought to purloin Mr. Bolte's pocket watch—and the heavy clouds did not aid his attempt to guess it. As he descended, the fog stayed with him, lurking over each new valley and preventing any long-range view that might point his way with more confidence. He simply followed what seemed to be the trail, and trusted it would deposit him back at the stand of black rocks. Even when the Doctor attempted to pay attention to the path, his attention wandered within minutes—back to the ravings of Mr. Potts, and to the face he had seen in shadow.

It was Francis Xonck, he was sure—though terribly, terribly altered by exposure to the blue glass. Xonck had slain the village grooms, the boy and his father… and all these men. Could a single book be so precious? Svenson scoffed—measured against human life, a hot breakfast would have been more precious to Francis Xonck.

But now… what had happened to him? Xonck had been shot in the chest on the airship… days ago. Could he have saved himself with a spike of blue glass, desperately inserted to cauterize the wound? The airship had been flooding—the only option was death. Yet if the glass had saved him then, it was killing him now, by agonizing, disfiguring increments.

And what was the book—merely the nearest Xonck could snatch up in the final moments on the airship? Or had he chosen it deliberately? Mr. Potts had looked inside it and been deranged. From what Svenson had witnessed at Harschmort, most of the books were populated with the memories of the rich and powerful… what dignitary's memories could have so terrified Potts? Could his rambling about chemicals and viscosity relate to ordnance—powder and explosives? Could the missing book contain the memories of Henry Xonck, the arms magnate?

HE STOOD once more in Karthe, doors shut tight, smoke pluming from chimneys and stovepipes, its people unaware of all those they had so recently lost. His conscience gnawed at him, but Svenson was exhausted, hungry, cold, and full of his own aches. That very night was the next train—had he missed it? Xonck would surely be on it too. Svenson told himself this was more important than speaking to widows—it was a way to make the deaths matter.

He passed by the inn with a curious frown… its door hung open. He hesitated, then forced himself to walk on—Mrs. Daube's grievances were not his concern. But then on his right came another open door… a darkened hut… he had been inside—the body of the boy's father. Was that so strange? The family was dead, and the place had not been tidy… but Svenson walked even faster, into a loping half-jog to the end of the village road, suddenly sure that he was already too late. Ahead of him in the hills, a wolf howled. Doctor Svenson reached the narrow road to the train and began to run.

THE WAY curved through a small collection of unused ore cars, and their cold emptiness struck the Doctor as another omen, like the yawning doorways, of something gone wrong. The muddy road gave out onto the graveled yard and Svenson finally saw the tracks themselves and the waiting train, its engine building up steam: two passenger cars, and all the rest either open-topped cars filled with ore, or boxed carriages to carry goods.

Before him were men with lanterns, clustered about a figure on the ground. At Svenson's call they turned—suspicion and anger on their faces. Svenson raised both hands.

“I am Doctor Svenson—I was here yesterday with Mr. Carper and Mr. Bolte. What has happened here? Who is hurt?”

Without waiting for a reply he sank to his knees, frowning professionally at the bright quantities of blood pouring from a deep gash across the fallen man's face. He snatched a rag from the hand of a trainsman and pressed it down hard on the wound.

“Who did this?” the Doctor demanded.

A half-dozen ragged voices began to answer. Svenson cut them off, realizing that the attack had already accomplished its purpose—to distract every pair of eyes around the train.

“Listen to me. There is a man—dangerous and determined to be aboard this train when it leaves. He must be found.” Svenson looked down at the injured man. “Did you see who attacked you?”

The cut across the fellow's cheek was deep and still bleeding… still bleeding—the man had not been cut with blue glass. The man tried to speak between gasps.

“Came from behind me… no idea…”

The Doctor pushed the cloth against the wound and then seized one of the other men's hands to replace his own. He stood, wiping his hands on his coat, then drew the revolver.

“Maintain this pressure for as long as you can—until the bleeding slows. It will have to be sewn—find a seamstress with a strong stomach. But we must search—a man, and also quite possibly a woman…”

The trainsmen were staring at him, almost quizzically.

“But we already found a woman,” one said.

“Where?” Svenson sputtered. “Why didn't you say so? I must speak to her!”

The man pointed to the first compartment car. But another reached out and opened his palm to Svenson. In it he held a small purple stone.

“She had this in her hand, sir. The woman's dead.”