Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

doubt and worry. For what if it was the Comte or Xonck who had interrupted her man, men who would know in a moment how she planned to betray them? He smiled to imagine that lady’s discomfort.

Chang shifted his thoughts to the great chamber, recalling the tier of cells, where prisoners—or spectators— could see the goings-on below which must, he assumed, be where he would find Celeste. He estimated how far he’d climbed—that row of cells might be on this level…but how to find it? The curtained alcove had so casually hidden the entrance to the spiral staircase…the door to these cells might be hidden in the same offhand manner. Had he already passed it by? He trotted down the hallway, opening every interior-facing door and peering into blind corners, finding nothing and feeling very quickly as if he was wasting time. Shouldn’t he follow the soldiers and Blenheim—wouldn’t they be guarding the Comte and his ceremony? Couldn’t Celeste be with them just as easily? He’d give his search another minute and then run after them. That minute passed, and then five more and still Chang could not pull himself from what he felt was the right path, rushing on through room after room. This entire level of the house seemed deserted. He unheedingly spat on the pale, polished wooden floor and winced at the gob’s scarlet color, then turned yet another out-of-the-way corner. Where was he? He looked up.

He sighed. He was an idiot.

Chang was in a sort of workroom, set with many tables and benches, racks of wood, shelves stuffed with jars and bottles, a large mortar and pestle, brushes, buckets, large tables whose surfaces were scarred with burns, candles and lanterns and several large free-standing mirrors—to reflect light?—and everywhere stretched canvases of different dimensions. He was in an artist’s studio. He was in the studio of Oskar Veilandt.

There was no mistaking the paintings’ author, for they bore the same striking brushwork, lurid colors, and disquieting compositions. Chang walked into the room with the same trepidation as if he were entering a tomb… Oskar Veilandt was dead…were these his works—more that had been salvaged from Paris? Had Robert Vandaariff made it his business to gather the man’s entire oeuvre? For all the brushes and bottles, none of the paintings seemed obviously in mid-composition—as if the artist was alive and working. Was someone else restoring or cleaning the canvases to Vandaariff’s specifications? On impulse Chang stepped to a small portrait leaning against one of the tables—of a masked woman wearing an iron collar and a glittering crown—and turned it over. The back of the canvas was scrawled, just as Svenson had described, with alchemical symbols and what seemed like mathematical formulae. He tried to locate a signature or a date, but could not. He set the painting down and saw, across the room, a large painting, not leaning but hanging in place, its lowest edge flush with the floor—a life-size portrait of none other than Robert Vandaariff. The great man stood against a dark stone battlement, behind him a strange red mountain and behind that a bright blue sky (these compositional elements reminding Chang of nothing more than a series of flat, painted theatrical backdrops), holding in one hand a wrapped book and in the other a pair of large metal keys. When would it have been painted? Vandaariff had known Veilandt personally—which meant the Lord’s involvement went back at least to Veilandt’s death.

But standing in the midst of so many of the man’s unsettling works, it was hard to believe he was dead at all, so insistent was the air of knowing, insinuating, exultant menace. Chang looked again at the portrait of Vandaariff, like an allegorical emblem of a Medici prince, and realized that it was hung lower than the paintings around it. He crossed and hefted the thing from its hook and set it none-too-gently aside. He shook his head at the obviousness of it. Behind the painting was another narrow alcove and three stone steps leading down to a door.

It opened inward, the hinges recently greased and silent. Chang entered another low curving hallway, light bleeding in through small chinks on the inner wall, like the interior of an old ship, or—more accurately—like the depths of a prison. The inner wall was lined with cells. Chang stepped to the nearest: here too the handles had been chiseled off and the doors bolted to their frames. He pulled aside the viewing slot and gasped.

The far wall of the cell, though blocked off with bars, revealed the entirety of the great chamber. Chang doubted he’d ever seen a place—so ambitiously a monument to its master’s dark purpose—that so filled him with dread, an infernal cathedral of black stone and gleaming metal.

In the center of the room was the massive iron tower, running from the closed ceiling (the chamber’s brilliant light came from massive chandeliers of dangling lanterns suspended on chains) all the way to a floor that was tangled and clotted with the bright pipes and cables that flowed down the walls to the base of the tower like a mechanical sea breaking at the foot of a strangely land-bound lighthouse. The slick surface of the tower was pock-marked with tiny spy holes. As a prisoner in the insect-hive of open cells, it would be impossible to know if anyone inside was watching or not. Chang knew that in such circumstances the incarcerated began to act, despite themselves, as if they were being watched at all times, steadily amending their behavior, their rebellious spirit inexorably crushed as if by an invisible hand. Chang snorted at the perfect ideological aptness of the monstrous structure to its current masters.

He could not see the base of the tower from his vantage point and was about to seek a better view when he heard a metallic clang and spied, in one of the cells opposite him, a flicker of movement…legs…a man was descending into the cell by way of a ladder. Abruptly he heard another clang much nearer, to his right. Before he could see where it exactly was he heard a third directly above his head, from the very cell he peered into. A hatch in the ceiling had been heaved open and the legs of a man in a blue uniform slithered through, feeling for a metal ladder bolted to the wall that Chang hadn’t noticed. All sorts of men and women were climbing into the cells across the chamber, usually a man first who then assisted the ladies, sometimes being handed folding camp chairs, setting up the prison cells as if they were private boxes at the theatre. The air around Chang began to buzz with the excited anticipation of an audience before an unrisen curtain. The man in the blue uniform—a sailor of some sort— called merrily up through the hatch for the next person. Whatever was about to start, Chang wasn’t going to do anything about it where he was. However much he’d just discovered, he’d made the wrong decision as far as locating Celeste. Whatever the Comte had arranged for all of the people to watch, Chang was sure she would be part of it—for all he knew she could be descending the central tower that very minute.

As he ran his lungs met each breath with a crest of small sharp pains. Chang spat—more blood this time— and again cursed his stupidity for not killing the Contessa outright when he had the chance. He drove himself forward—looking for a staircase, some way up to the main level, it had to be near—and saw it at the same time as he heard the sound of steps descending straight toward him. He could not get away quickly enough. He pulled apart his stick and waited, breathing deeply, lips flecked with red.

He did not really know who he expected to see, but it was definitely not Captain Smythe. The officer saw Chang and stopped dead on the stairs. He glanced once above him and then stepped quickly forward.

“Good Lord,” he whispered.

“What’s happening?” hissed Chang. “Something’s happening upstairs—”

“They think you are dead—I thought you were dead—but no one could find a body. I took it upon myself to make sure.”

Smythe drew his saber and strode forward from the stairs, the blade floating easily in his hand.

Chang called to him. “Captain—the great chamber—”

“I trusted you like a fool and you’ve killed my man,” Smythe snarled, “the very man who saved your treacherous life!”

He lunged forward and Chang leapt away, stumbling into the corridor wall. The Captain slashed at his head —Chang just ducking down and rolling free. The blade bit into the plaster with a pale puff of dust.

Smythe readied his blade for another lunge. In answer—there was no way he could possibly fight him with any hope of survival—Chang stood tall and stepped into the center of the corridor, snapping his arms open wide, cruciform, in open invitation for Smythe to run him through. He hissed at Smythe with fury and frustration.

“If you think that is so—do what you will! But I tell you I did not kill Reeves!”

Smythe paused, the tip of his blade a pace or so from Chang’s chest, but within easy range.

“Ask your own damned men! They were there!” snapped Chang. “He was shot with a carbine—he was shot by—by—what’s his name—the overseer—Blenheim—the chamberlain! Don’t be a bloody idiot!”

Captain Smythe was silent. Chang watched him closely. They were close enough that he might conceivably deflect the saber with his stick and get to the Captain with the dagger. If the man persisted in being stupid, there was nothing else for it.

“That was not what I was told…” said Smythe, speaking very slowly. “You used him as a shield.”

“And who told you that? Blenheim?”

The Captain was silent, still glaring. Chang scoffed.