Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

of so many—so many respectable—spectators.

“I have seen this great work,” he hissed. “Nothing you can say will sway my purpose.”

In answer, the woman stepped aside and indicated with her hand that he might follow along. At her movement the line of Dragoons split and snapped crisply into place to either side, forming a gauntlet for him to pass through. Some ten yards beyond them Chang saw a second line dividing itself with the same clean stamping of boots to frame an open archway leading deeper into the house.

Behind in the turret he heard a muted roar—the crowd in the cells crying out—but before he could even begin to wonder why, Chang’s knees buckled with the sudden visceral impact of another vision thrust into his mind. To his everlasting shame, he was presented with himself, stick in hand, his appearance fine as he could make it—a threadbare vanity, with an expression of poorly veiled hunger, reaching to take the small hand extended to him—extended, he now knew (and now felt), with disinterest and disdain. He saw himself for one flashing, impossibly sharp moment through the eyes and heart of Angelique, and stood revealed within her mind as a regretted relic of a former life that she had at all times loathed with every fiber of her being.

The vision snapped away from him and he staggered. He looked up to see each of the Dragoons gathering themselves, blinking and regaining their military bearing, just as he saw the woman shake her head. She looked at him with pity, but did not alter her guarded expression. She repeated her gesture for Chang to join her.

“It would be best, Cardinal Chang,” she said, “that we move out of range.”

They had walked in silence, Dragoons in line ahead of them and behind, Chang’s pounding heart yet to shake free of the bitter impact of Angelique’s vision, his sweetest memories now stained with regret, until he saw the woman glance down at the book in his hand. He said nothing. Chang was caught between fury and despair, physically ruined, his mind drifting deeper into acrid fatalism with each step. He could not look at a soldier, the woman—or at any of the curious well-fed faces from the household that peered at him past the Dragoons as they walked by—without rehearsing in his thoughts the swiftest and most savage angle of attack with his razor.

“May I ask where you acquired that?” the woman asked, still looking at the book.

“In a room,” snapped Chang. “It had transfixed the lady it had been given to. When I came upon her she was quite unaware of the soldier in the process of her rape.”

He spoke in as sharp a tone as he could. The woman in the black feather mask did not flinch.

“May I ask what you did?”

“Apart from taking the book?” Chang asked. “It’s so long ago I can barely recall—you don’t mean to say you care?”

“Is that so strange?”

Chang stopped, his voice rising to an unaccustomed harshness. “From what I have seen, Madame, it is impossible!”

At his tone the Dragoons stopped, their boots stamping in unison on the marble floor, blades ready. The woman raised her hand to them, indicating patience.

“Of course, it must be very upsetting. I understand the Comte’s work is difficult—both to imagine and to bear. I have undergone the Process, of course, but that is nothing compared to what…what you must have seen…in the tower.”

Her face was entirely reasonable, even sympathetic—Chang could not bear it. He gestured angrily behind them to the blood-stained floor.

“And what happened there? What difficult piece of work? Another execution?”

“Your own hands, Cardinal, are quite covered with blood—are you in any place to speak?”

Chang looked down despite himself—from Mr. Gray to the troopers down below, he was fairly spattered with gore—but met her gaze with harsh defiance. None of them mattered. They were dupes, fools, animals in harness… perhaps exactly like himself.

“I cannot tell you what happened here,” she went on. “I was elsewhere in the house. But surely it can only reinforce, for us both, how serious these matters are.”

His lips curled into a sneer.

“If you will continue,” she said, “for we are quite delayed…”

“Continue where?” asked Chang.

“To where you shall answer your questions, of course.”

Chang did not move, as if staying would somehow put off the confirmation of the deaths of Miss Temple and the Doctor. The soldiers were staring at him. The woman looked directly into his dark lenses and leaned forward, her nostrils flaring at the indigo stench but her expression unwavering. He saw the clarity in her eyes that spoke to the Process, but none of the pride or the arrogance. As he was closer to the heart of the Cabal, had he here met a more advanced and trusted minion?

“We must go,” she whispered. “You are not the center of this business.”

Before Chang could respond they were interrupted by a loud shout from the corridor ahead of them, a harsh voice he knew at once.

“Mrs. Stearne! Mrs. Stearne!” shouted Colonel Aspiche. “Where is Mr. Blenheim—he is wanted this instant!”

The woman turned to the voice as the line of Dragoons broke apart to make way for their officer, approaching with another squad of his men behind him. Chang saw that Aspiche was limping. When Aspiche saw him, the Colonel’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened—and he then pointedly fixed his gaze on the woman.

“My dear Colonel—” she began, but he bluntly overrode her.

“Where is Mr. Blenheim? He is wanted some time ago—the delay cannot be borne!”

“I do not know. I was sent to collect—”

“I am well aware of it,” snarled Aspiche, cutting her off, as if to expunge his previous employment of Chang he would not even allow the speaking of his name. “But you have taken so long I am asked to collect you as well.” He turned to the men who had come with him, pointing to side rooms, barking orders. “Three to each wing—quickly as you can—send back at once with any word. He must be found— go!”

The men dashed off. Aspiche avoided looking at Chang and stepped to the woman’s other side, offering her his arm—though Chang half-thought this was to help his limp, rather than the lady. He wondered what had happened to the Colonel’s leg and felt a little better for doing so.

“Is there a reason he is not in chains, or dead?” asked the Colonel, as politely as he could through his anger at having to ask at all.

“I was not so instructed,” answered Mrs. Stearne—who, Chang realized as he studied her, could not be older than thirty.

“He is uniquely dangerous and unscrupulous.”

“So I have been assured. And yet”—and here she turned to Chang with a curiously blank face—“he truly has no choice. The only help for Cardinal Chang—whether it merely be to soothe his soul—is information. We are taking him to it. Besides, I have no wish to lose a book in an unnecessary struggle—and the Cardinal holds one.”

“Information, eh?” sneered Aspiche, looking around the woman at Chang. “About what? His whore? About that idiot Svenson? About—”

“Do be quiet, Colonel,” she hissed, fully out of patience.

Chang was gratified, and not a little surprised, to see Aspiche pull his head back and snort with peevishness. And stop talking.

The ballroom was near. It only made sense to use it for another such gathering—perhaps already the crowds from the great chamber were convening too, along with those from the theatre at the end of the spiral staircase. Chang suddenly wondered with a sinking heart, not having found her in the great chamber, if this theatre was where Miss Temple had been taken. Had he walked right past her, just close enough and in time to hear the applause at her destruction?

With Aspiche in tow, their pace had slowed. The stamping bootsteps of the Dragoons made it difficult to hear any other movement in the house, and he wondered if his own execution or forced conversion was to be the main source of entertainment. He would smash the book over his own head before he allowed that to happen. To all appearances it seemed a quick enough end, and one equally horrible to watch as to experience. It would be