a chin, and with eyes reminiscent of uncooked oysters. But past all of these figures her gaze moved quickly to the second divan, upon which sat the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, her cigarette holder poised perfectly, a thin thread of smoke curling up to the ceiling. The lady wore a tight violet silk jacket with a fringe of small black feathers to frame her pale bosom and throat, and dangling amber earrings. Below the jacket her dress was black and it seemed, as if she were some elemental magic being, to flow down her body and directly into the dark floor…where the previous litter of garments had been joined by the wholly savaged contents of Miss Temple’s slashed and ruined carpet bag.
With the exception of Miss Vandaariff’s, every set of eyes stared at Miss Temple in complete silence.
“Good evening, Celeste,” said the Contessa. “You have returned from the book. Quite impressive. Not everyone does, you know.”
Miss Temple did not reply.
“I am happy you are here. I am happy you have had the opportunity to exchange views with the Comte, and with my companion Mrs. Marchmoor, and also to acquaint yourself with dear Lydia, with whom you must of course have much in common—two young ladies of property, whose lives must appear to be the very epitome of an endless horizon.”
The Comte exhaled a plume of blue smoke. Mrs. Marchmoor smiled into Miss Temple’s eyes and slowly turned the ruddy tip of her breast between her thumb and forefinger. The row of men did not move.
“You must understand,” the Contessa went on, “that your companion Cardinal Chang is no more. The Macklenburg Doctor has fled the city in fear and abandoned you. You have seen the work of our Process. You have looked into one of our glass books. You know our names and our faces, and the relation of our efforts to Lord Vandaariff and the von Maasmarck family in Macklenburg. You even”—and here she smiled—“must know the facts behind the impending elevation of a certain Lord Tarr. You know all of these things and can, because I’m sure you are as clever as you are persistent, guess at many more.”
She raised the lacquered holder to her lips and inhaled, then her hand floated lazily away to again rest on the divan. With a barely audible sigh her lips parted in a wry, wary smile and she blew a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.
“For all of this, Celeste Temple, it is certain you must die.”
Miss Temple did not reply.
“I confess,” the Contessa continued, “that I may have misjudged you. The Comte tells me I have, and as I’m sure you know the Comte is rarely wrong. You are a strong, proud, determined girl, and though you have caused me great inconvenience…even—I will admit it—
Miss Temple did not reply. Her legs were weak, her heart cold. Chang was dead? The Doctor gone? She could not believe it. She refused to.
As if sensing defiance in her quivering lip, the Comte took the cheroot from his mouth and spoke in his low, rasping, baleful manner.
“It could not be simpler. If you do not agree, your throat will be cut straightaway, in this room. If you do, you will come with us. Be assured that no duplicitous cunning will avail you. Abandon hope, Miss Temple, for it will be expunged…and replaced by
Miss Temple looked at his stern expression and then to the forbidding beauty of the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza, her perfect smile both warmly tempting and cold as stone. The four men gazed at her blankly, the Prince scratching his nose with a fingernail. Had they all been transformed by the Process, their bestial logic released from moral restraints? She saw the scars on the Prince and on the stout man. It seemed that the older fellow shared their glassy-eyed hunger—perhaps his marks had already faded—only the other soldier bore a normal expression, where certainty and doubt were both at play. On the face of the others was only an inhuman, uncomplicated confidence. She wondered which of them would be the one to kill her. She looked finally to Mrs. Marchmoor, whose blank expression masked what Miss Temple thought was a genuine curiosity…as if she did not know what Miss Temple would do, nor what, once she did submit, might possibly come of it.
“It seems I have no choice,” Miss Temple whispered.
“You do not,” agreed the Contessa, and she turned to the large man seated next to her and raised her eyebrows, as if to signal her part in the matter was finished.
“You will oblige me, Miss Temple,” said the Comte d’Orkancz, “by removing your shoes and stockings.”
She had walked in her bare feet—a simple stratagem to prevent her from running away with any speed through the ragged filthy streets—down the stairs and out of the St. Royale Hotel. Mrs. Marchmoor remained behind, but all of the others descended with her—the soldier, the stout scarred fellow, and the older man going ahead to arrange coaches, the Comte and Contessa to her either side, the Prince behind with Miss Vandaariff on his arm. As she walked down the great staircase, Miss Temple saw a new clerk at the desk, who merely bowed with respect at a gracious nod from the Contessa. Miss Temple wondered that such a woman had need of the Process at all, or of magical blue glass—she doubted that anyone possessed the strength or inclination to deny the Contessa whatever she might ask. Miss Temple glanced to the Comte, who gazed ahead without expression, one hand on his pearl-topped stick, the other cradling the wrapped blue book, like an exiled king with plans to regain his throne. She felt the prickling of the carpet fibers between her toes as she walked. As a girl her feet had once been tough and calloused, used to running bare throughout her father’s plantation. Now they had become as soft and tender as any milk-bathed lady’s, and as much a hindrance to escape as a pair of iron shackles. With a pang of desolating grief she thought of her little green boots, abandoned, kicked beneath the divan. No one else would ever again care for them, she knew, and could not but wonder if anyone would ever again care for her either.
Two coaches waited outside the hotel—one an elegant red brougham and the other a larger black coach with what she assumed was the Macklenburg crest painted on the door. The Prince, Miss Vandaariff, the soldier, and the scarred stout man climbed inside this coach, with the older man swinging up to sit with the driver. A porter from the hotel held open the door of the brougham for the Contessa, and then for Miss Temple, who felt the textured iron step press sharply into her foot as she went in. She settled into a seat opposite the Contessa. A moment later they were joined by the Comte, the entire coach shuddering as it took on his weight. He sat next to the Contessa and the porter shut the door. The Comte rapped his stick on the roof and they set forth. From the time of the Comte’s demand for her shoes to the coach moving, they had not spoken a word. Miss Temple cleared her throat and looked at them. Extended silence nearly always strained her self-control.
“I should like to know something,” she announced.
After a moment, the Comte rasped a reply. “And what is that?”
Miss Temple turned her gaze to the Contessa, for it was she at whom the question was truly aimed. “I should like to know how Cardinal Chang died.”
The Contessa Lacquer-Sforza looked into Miss Temple’s eyes with a sharp, searching intensity.
“I killed him,” she declared, and in such a way that dared Miss Temple to speak again.
Miss Temple was not yet daunted—indeed, if her captor did not want to discuss this topic, it now constituted a test of Miss Temple’s will.
“Did you really?” she asked. “He was a formidable man.”
“He was,” agreed the Contessa. “I filled his lungs with ground glass blown from our indigo clay. It has many effective qualities, and in such amounts as the Cardinal inhaled is mortal. ‘Formidable’ of course is a word with many shadings—and physical prowess is often the simplest and most easily overcome.”
The ease of speech with which the Contessa described Chang’s destruction took Miss Temple completely aback. Though she had only been acquainted with Cardinal Chang for a very short time, so strong an impression had he made upon her that his equally sudden demise was a devastating cruelty.
“Was it a quick death, or a slow one?” Miss Temple asked in as neutral a voice as she could muster.
“I would not call it
