Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

dials and smaller hoses. He shifted back inside the pipe and extricated his right arm and once again his head and then, over the course of an awkward, desperate minute, he was able to force his left arm and torso through the gap, gouging his ribs and his shoulder in the process. Feeling like an insect emerging from its sticky cocoon—and just as feeble—Chang inched his way onto the floor and took in the room around him. It was really quite small. Hanging from a row of hooks was a collection of syringes and stoppered glass tubes, a pair of leather gloves and one of the infernal brass and leather helmets. Undoubtedly his escape hatch was employed to test whatever liquid or gaseous concoctions would be steeped in the iron cauldron. Next to the hooks was an inset sconce with the lower third of a fat, guttering tallow candle—the source of the dim light that had wormed through the latched panel. That it was alight told Chang that someone had been in the room recently…and would be coming back.

At that moment he did not care about them, the machine, or its purpose. Under the rack of pipes was a dirty leather fire bucket. Chang crawled to it and vomited without any effort at all until his stomach had nothing more to give and his throat was raw. He sat back and dug out a shirt-tail to wipe his mouth, then pulled it out farther to smear the filth of the furnace pipes from his face. Chang forced himself to his feet and looked at his red leather coat with bitter resignation. The pride of his wardrobe was most assuredly ruined. The coal dust could have been cleaned, but as he wiped at the caked chemical deposits he saw the red leather beneath had been discolored and blistered, almost as if the coat itself was burned and bleeding. He scooped away as much of the mess as he could with his fingers and then wiped his hands on his filthy pants, feeling as if he’d just swum through a demonic mire. He took a deep breath. He was still light-headed, pain pounding behind his eyes like a hammer—the kind of pain he knew, barring opium, he would be carrying with him for days. He expected that some sort of pursuit must even now be working its way to these depths of the house, if only to confirm that his bones were cracking and popping in a furnace, or he was choked to death in the pipes above it, stuck like a dead squirrel in a chimney. Chang felt the parch of his throat and the desperate dizziness in his head. He needed water. Without it he would die on the blade of the first Dragoon that found him.

The door was locked, but the lock was old and Chang was able to force it with his skeleton keys. It opened into a narrow, circular corridor of brick lit by a sputtering torch bolted into a metal bracket above the door. He could not see another torch in either direction. He quickly walked into darkness to his right. Just around the curve the way ended at a bricked-in wall whose mortar was noticeably fresher than the side walls or the ceiling. Chang walked back past the boiler room in the other direction, looking up at the oppressive ceiling and the circular path of his corridor. He was sure it corresponded to the side of the larger chamber. It was vital—to give himself some breathing room, and to find Miss Temple—that he find some way to climb.

The next torch was bracketed near an open doorway. Inside was a spiral staircase of stone with a bright iron rail on the inner wall. Chang looked up, but could only see a few yards ahead because of the curving stairs. He listened…there was a sound, a low roar, like the wind, or heavy distant rain. He began to climb.

It was twenty steps to another open doorway and another circular corridor. He poked out his head and saw its ceiling was banked as if it were the underside of a stadium. Chang stepped back into the stairwell and shut his eyes. His throat was burning. His chest felt as if it was being squeezed from within—he could just imagine the grains of glass boring into his heaving lungs. He forced himself into the hall, looking for some kind of relief, following the path back to where, on the floor below, his boiler room had been. There was another door in the exact spot, and he forced the lock just as easily. The room was dark. Chang worked the torch from its bracket and thrust it inside: another boiler with another set of metal pipes coming through the walls—perhaps this was the juncture where he’d been unable to hold his grip. His eye saw another leather fire bucket on the floor. He stepped to it and with relief saw that it held water—filthy, brackish, unwholesome, but he did not care. Chang dropped the torch, pulled off his glasses and splashed it onto his face. He rinsed the filthy taste from his mouth and spat, and then drank deeply, gasping, and drank again. He sat back, leaning against the pipe, and looped his glasses back into place. He hawked up another gob of who knew exactly what and let it fly into a dark corner of the room. It was not a night at the Boniface, but it would do.

Chang was back in the hallway, returning to the stairs. He wondered that no one had come down to search for him—either they were sure he was dead…or he’d fallen farther than he’d thought…or they were concentrating on the most important places he might have landed first…all of which made him smile, for it told him his enemies were confident, and that confidence was giving him time. But perhaps they were only making sure he didn’t reach a particular room to interrupt some particular event—after which it would not matter if they hunted him down at their leisure. It was possible—and it could only mean Celeste. He was a fool. He ran for the stairway and charged up it two steps at a time. Another door. He stepped out—another narrow, dusty hallway with a banked ceiling—and listened. The dull roar was louder, but he was convinced that these were only service corridors, that he was still below the main access. Would he have to go to the absolute top before he could find a way inside? There had to be another way—the path above was sure to be swarming with soldiers. Chang sprinted down the corridor in each direction, first to the right, where his boiler had been—another door to an empty room whose boiler had either been removed or not yet installed—and another dead end. He turned and jogged to the left. The roar became louder, and when he reached its dead end—no door at all in this part of the corridor—he placed his hand on the brick, and felt a faint vibration in time with the rumbling sound.

He raced up another rotation of the circular stairs—how far had he fallen?—and this time came not to an open doorway but a locked metal door. He looked above him, saw no one, and again strained to hear any sort of useful sound. Were those voices? Music? He could not be sure—if so, it told him he was only a few of these levels below the main house itself. He turned his attention to the door. This must be the access he wanted. He nearly laughed out loud. Some idiot had left the key in the lock. Chang took the handle and turned it in the exact instant it was turned from the opposite side. Seizing the opportunity, he kicked at the door with all his strength, driving it into whoever stood on the other side, and charged through, whipping apart his stick. Staggering away from him with a puling cry, clutching his bandaged arm—which had taken the brunt of the door—was the aged Mr. Gray, Rosamonde’s creature who had administered the Process to the unfortunate Mr. Flauss. Chang slashed him across the face with the haft of the stick, spinning him to the floor, and glanced quickly to either side. Gray was alone. This hallway was wider, the ceiling still banked, but lit with gaslight sconces instead of torches, and Chang could see doors—or niches?—lining the inner walls. Before Gray could raise his head and bleat for help—which Chang could see he was about to do—he dropped onto the man’s chest, pinning Gray’s arms cruelly under his knees, and pressed the haft of his stick hard across his throat. With a venomous hiss that caught Gray’s full attention, Chang laid the tip of his dagger on the old man’s face, pointing directly at his left eye.

“Where is Miss Temple?” he whispered.

Gray opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. Chang eased up his pressure on the fellow’s windpipe.

“Try again,” he hissed.

“I—I do not know!” pleaded Mr. Gray.

Chang doubled up his fist holding the dagger and slammed it into Mr. Gray’s cheek, knocking his head brutally against the stone.

“Try again,” he hissed. Gray began to weep. Chang raised his fist. Gray’s eyes widened in desperate fear and his mouth began to move, groping for words.

“I—don’t!—I don’t—I have not seen her—she’s to be taken to the theatre—or the chamber—elsewhere in the house! I do not know! I am only to prepare the works—the great works—”

Chang slammed his fist once more into Mr. Gray’s head.

“Who is with her?” he hissed. “How many guards?”

“I cannot tell you!” Gray was weeping openly. “There are many Macklenburgers, Dragoons—she is with the Comte—with Miss Vandaariff—they will be processed together—”

“Processed?”

“Redeemed—”

“Redeemed? ” Chang felt the natural pleasure of violence blooming directly into fury.

“You are too late! By now it will be started—to interrupt it will kill them both!” Mr. Gray looked up and saw his own reflection in the smoked black lenses over Cardinal Chang’s eyes and wailed. “O—they all said you were! —why are you not dead?”

His eyes opened even wider, if that were possible, in shock, as Chang drove the dagger into Mr. Gray’s heart, which he knew would be quicker and far less bloody than cutting the man’s throat. In a matter of seconds Gray’s