mask, twisting with fury, her open mouth, tongue, and lips a glistening dark indigo, her blue-white teeth snapping like an animal. Chang ran up the stairs.
It was another turn before he saw the book he’d set against the wall in the pillowcase. Chang snatched it up as he ran, his right hand finally pulling the razor from his pocket. Below he heard a commotion of voices and a slamming door, and then the lurching clank of the dumbwaiter come again to life. In moments it had reached him —Chang’s energy was already beginning to flag—and then sped past. Whoever stood at the upper end would receive warning of his arrival well before Chang could climb. Was it only a matter of moments before he met Blenheim and his men coming down? Chang doggedly kept on. If he could just reach the gangway to Vandaariff’s office…
His thoughts were interrupted by the voice of d’Orkancz, echoing through the chamber to the assembled crowds above.
“Do not be alarmed! As you know yourselves, our enemies are many and desperate—dispatching this assassin to disrupt our work. But that work has not been stopped! Heaven
Chang paused on the stairs, despite himself, his mind seared with the image of Angelique’s face and arm. He looked behind him down the winding metal depths of the tower and heard outside it, like a rush of wind, a collected gasp of astonishment from the Comte’s audience in the cells.
“You see!” the Comte continued. “She lives! She walks! And you see yourselves…her extraordinary
The crowd gasped again—a hissing whisper punctuated by several screams—of fright or joy, he could not say. Another gasp. What was happening? Tears for Angelique were still hot on his face but Chang could not help it. He lurched to a viewing slot and pulled it aside. It was ridiculous to stay—his enemies would be gathering above him any minute—and yet he had to know…was she alive? Was she still
He could not see her—she must be too close to the base of the tower—but he could see d’Orkancz. The Comte was facing where Angelique must be, and had stepped back to the second table to stand next to another box of levers and stops. Each table had such a box attached to it by way of the black hoses, and Chang was just realizing on a visceral, sickening level that each of the other two women were about to be so transfigured. He looked down at the inert form on the third table and found his heart pricked by the image of Margaret Hooke, savage, wounded, and proud, writhing in agony as her flesh was boiled away to glass. Had she chosen such a fate, or had she merely given herself over to d’Orkancz out of desperate ambition—trusting, because of the first few crumbs of power he had shown her, that his final ends lay in her interest?
The crowd gasped again and Chang felt his knees give, grabbing at the rail to keep balance. His mind spun as sharply as if he’d been kicked in the head, then the moment of nausea passed and he felt himself moving—but it was movement of the mind, a swift restless rushing, as if in a dream, through different scenes—a room, a street, a bed, a crowded square, one after another. Then the momentum of thought eased, settling on one sharp instant: the Comte d’Orkancz in a doorway in his fur, his gloved hand extended and offering a shining rectangle of blue glass. Chang felt his own hand reach out to the Comte, even as he knew it fiercely gripped the iron rail, and saw it touch the glass—the small delicate fingers he knew so well—and felt the sudden rush of erotic power as he—as she—was swept into the memory held within, a rising, impossibly vivid stimulation, irresistible as opium and just as addictive, then quickly, cruelly withdrawn before he could grasp whose sweet memory it had been or even the circumstance. The Comte tucked the card back into his coat and smiled. This had been the villain’s introduction to Angelique, Chang knew, and Angelique was now, somehow, projecting her own experience of that intimate moment into the mind and body of every person within a hundred yards.
The image departed from his mind with another spasm of dizziness and he felt himself abruptly empty and cruelly, cruelly alone—her sudden presence in his mind had seemed a harsh intrusion, but once withdrawn there was a part of him that wanted more—for it was her, and he could
“You feel the power for yourselves! You experience the truth!”
The Comte’s voice broke the spell. Chang shook his head and turned, climbing as quickly as he could. He could not make sense of all he felt—he could not decide what he must do—and so Cardinal Chang retreated, as he often did, into action alone, driving himself on until he found an object for his desolated rage, looking for mayhem to once more clarify his heart.
The rising, grating whine began again, escalating to the heights of the chamber. The Comte d’Orkancz had moved on to the next woman, Miss Poole, pulling the levers to begin her metamorphosis. The sound of screaming machinery was bolstered by cries from the gallery of cells, for now that they knew what they were going to see, the crowd was even more willing to voice encouragement and delight. But Chang was assailed by the image of the woman’s arched back, like a twig bent to its limit before snapping, and he ran from their approval as if he ran from hell itself.
He still had no idea where to find Svenson or Miss Temple, but if he was going to help them, he needed to remain free. The screaming of the pipes abruptly ceased, answered after a hanging moment of rapt attention by another eruption from the crowd. Once again the Comte crowed about power and transformation and the truth— each fatuous claim echoed by another bout of applause. Chang’s lips curled back with rage. The whining rise in the pipes resumed—d’Orkancz had moved on to Margaret Hooke. There was nothing Chang could do. He ascended two more turns of the stairs and saw the door to the gangway and Lord Vandaariff’s office.
Chang stood, breathing hard, and spat. The iron door was closed and did not move—barred from the other side. Chang was to be driven like a breathless stag to the top of the tower. For a final time the roar of the pipes dropped suddenly away and the crowd erupted with delight. All three of the women had undergone the Comte’s ferocious alchemy. They would be waiting for him at the top. He had not found Celeste. He had lost Angelique. He had failed. Chang tucked the razor back into his coat and resumed his climb.
The upper entrance was fashioned from the same steel plates, held together with the heavy rivets of a train car. The massive door swung silently to reveal an elegant bright hallway, the walls white and the floor gleaming pale marble. Some twenty feet away stood a shapely woman in a dark dress, her hair tied back with ribbon and her face obscured by a half-mask of black feathers. She nodded to him, formally. The line of ten red-coated Dragoons behind her, sabers drawn and clearly under command, did not move.
Chang stepped from the turret onto the marble floor, glancing down. The tiles were marked by a wide stain of blood—quite obviously pooled from some violent wound and then smeared by something (the victim, he assumed) dragged through it. The path led straight beneath the woman’s feet. He met her eyes. Her expression was open and clear, though she did not smile. Chang was relieved—he had not realized how sick he’d become of his enemies’ sneering confidence—but perhaps her demeanor had less to do with him than with the bloody floor.
“Cardinal Chang,” she said. “If you will come with me.”
Chang pulled the glass book from the pillowcase. He could feel its energy push at him through the tip of each gloved finger, an antagonistic magnetism. He clutched it more firmly and held it out for her to see.
“You know what this is,” he said, his voice still hoarse and ragged. “I am not afraid to smash it.”
“I’m sure you are not,” she said. “I understand you are afraid of very little. But nothing will be settled here. I do not criticize to say you truly do not know all that has happened, or hangs in the balance. I’m sure there are many of whom you want to hear, as I know there are many who would like to see you. Is it not better to avoid what violence we can?”
The bright blood-smeared marble beneath the woman’s feet seemed the perfect image for this hateful place, and it was all Chang could do not to snarl at her gracious tone.
“What is your name?” Chang asked.
“I am of no importance, I assure you,” she said. “Merely a messenger—”
A harsh catch in Chang’s throat stopped her words. His brief sharp vision of Angelique—the unnatural color of her skin, its glassy, gleaming indigo depths and brighter transparent cerulean surface—was seared into Chang’s memory but its suddenly overwhelming impact was beyond his ability to translate to sense, to mere words. He swallowed, grimacing with discomfort, and spat again, diving into anger to override his tears. He gestured with his right hand, the fingers clutching with fury at the thought of such an abomination undertaken for the entertainment
