Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

path toward—he assumed—the ballroom. The guests were formally dressed and masked, usually all smiles and eagerness—much like the two men he’d overheard in the drawing room earlier, and they tended to stare at the soldiers and the three in their midst—Chang, Aspiche, and Mrs. Stearne—as if they made some strange allegorical puzzle to be read: the soldier, the lady, the demon. He made a point of leering wickedly at anyone who looked for too long, but with each such meeting Chang felt more his isolation, and saw the extreme degree of his presumption to come to Harschmort at all…and the imminence of his doom.

They walked for perhaps another forty yards before they approached a short figure in a heavy cloak and dark spectacles, with an odd sort of bandolier slung across his chest from which hung perhaps two dozen metal flasks. He held up his hand for them to stop. Aspiche shook himself free of Mrs. Stearne and limped forward, speaking low, but not low enough that Chang could not hear.

“Doctor Lorenz!” the Colonel whispered. “Is something amiss?”

Doctor Lorenz did not share the Colonel’s need for discretion. He spoke in a needle-sharp tone directed equally to Aspiche and the woman.

“I require some number of your men. Six will do, I am sure. There is not a minute to spare.”

“Require?” snapped Aspiche. “Why should you require my men?”

“Because something has happened to the fellows detailed to help me,” barked Lorenz. “Surely that is not too much to grasp!”

Lorenz gestured behind him to an open doorway. Chang noticed for the first time a bloody handprint on the wooden frame, and a split in the wood clearly ripped by a bullet.

Aspiche turned and with a finger snap detailed six men from the first line, limping with them through the doorway. Lorenz looked after them but did not follow, one hand idly tapping one of the dangling flasks. His attention wandered to Chang and Mrs. Stearne, and then pointedly settled on the book under Chang’s arm. Doctor Lorenz licked his lips.

“Do you know which one that is?” The question was put to Mrs. Stearne but his gaze did not shift from the glass book.

“I do not. The Cardinal tells me he took it from a lady.”

“Ah,” replied Lorenz. He thought for a moment. “Beaded mask?”

Chang did not answer. Lorenz licked his lips again, nodded to himself.

“Must have had. Lady Melantes. And Lord Acton. And Captain Hazelhorst. And I believe, actually, originally Mrs. Marchmoor herself. If I recall correctly. Rather an important volume.”

Mrs. Stearne did not reply, which was, Chang knew, her way of saying she was well aware of its importance and not in need of Doctor Lorenz to apprise her.

A moment later Aspiche appeared at the head of his men, all six of them carrying an apparently very heavy stretcher, covered by a sheet of canvas that had been sewn to the frame, sealing in whoever was beneath it.

“Excellent,” announced Lorenz. “My thanks to you. This way…” He indicated a door on the opposite side of the hall to the stretcher-bearers.

“You’re not joining us?” asked Aspiche.

“There is no time,” replied Lorenz. “I’ve lost precious minutes as it is—if the thing’s to be done at all it must be done at once—our supply of ice has been exhausted! Please do offer my respects to all. Madame.” He nodded to Mrs. Stearne and followed the soldiers out.

They walked on to the end of the corridor and stopped again, Aspiche sending a man forward to confirm they were clear to continue. As they waited, Chang shifted his grip on the book. The line of Dragoons in front had diminished now from ten to four. An accurate throw of the book could incapacitate them all and open the way…but the way to where? He studied the backs of the soldiers walking in front of him and pictured how the book might shatter…and then could not but think of Reeves, and of his delicate alliance with Captain Smythe. What had the Dragoons done to him? How could he face Smythe after slaughtering any of his men in such a foul manner? If there was no other way, he would not hesitate…but if there was truly no way out, why should he bother with the Dragoons at all? He would keep the book—either as a way to kill what main figures in the Cabal that he could— Rosamonde or the Comte—or use it to bargain, if not for his own life then Svenson’s or Celeste’s. He had to hope they were alive.

He swallowed with a grimace and saw Mrs. Stearne’s eyes on him. Whether it had been intentional or not, their deliberate passage from the turret had taken long enough that the fire of his rage had faded, leaving his body to bear the full weight of exhaustion and sorrow. He felt something on his lip and wiped it with his glove—a smear of bright blood. He looked back at Mrs. Stearne, but her expression betrayed no feeling at all.

“You see I have very little left to lose,” he said.

“Everyone always thinks that,” commented Colonel Aspiche, “until that little bit is taken away—and feels like the whole of the world.”

Chang said nothing, resenting bitterly the slightest glimmer of actual insight coming from the Colonel.

The Dragoon reappeared in the doorway, clicking his heels and saluting Aspiche.

“Begging your pardon, Sir, but they’re ready.”

Aspiche dropped the cheroot to the floor and ground it with his heel. He limped forward to enter the ballroom at the head of his men. Mrs. Stearne watched Chang very closely as they followed, and had quite subtly drifted beyond the immediate reach of his arms.

When they entered the ballroom, there were so many people gathered that Chang could not see through the throng as their path was opened by the wedge of Dragoons, spectators retreating like a whispering tide of elegance. They made their way to the center, when at a crisp bark from Aspiche, the Colonel and his Dragoons expanded the open area, marching some six paces in each direction, driving the crowd farther back, before wheeling to face Cardinal Chang and Mrs. Stearne, alone in the open circle.

Mrs. Stearne took a deliberate step forward and curtseyed deeply, dropping her head as if she faced royalty. Before them all, standing like a row of monarchs on a raised dais, were the uncrowned heads of the Cabal: the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Deputy Minister Harald Crabbe, and, his arm satisfyingly swathed with bandages, Francis Xonck. To their side was the Prince, with Herr Flauss, masked and apparently having regained the power to stand, to his left and to his right, clinging smilingly to his arm, a slim blonde woman in white robes and a white feather mask.

“Very well managed, Caroline,” said the Contessa, returning the curtsey with a nod. “You may go on with your duties.”

Mrs. Stearne stood again and looked once more at Cardinal Chang before walking quickly away through the crowd. He stood alone before his judges.

“Cardinal Chang—” began the Contessa.

Cardinal Chang cleared his throat and spat, the scarlet mass flying perhaps half the distance to the dais. An outraged whisper ran throughout the crowd. Chang saw the Dragoons nervously glancing at one another as the guests behind them inched forward.

“Contessa,” said Chang, returning her greeting, his voice now unpleasantly hoarse. His gaze fell across the rest of the dais. “Minister…Mr. Xonck…Highness…”

“We require that book,” stated Crabbe. “Place it on the floor and walk away from it.”

“And then what?” sneered Chang.

“Then you will be killed,” answered Xonck. “But killed kindly.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then what you have already seen,” said the Contessa, “will be a trivial prologue to your pain.”

Chang looked at the crowd around him, and the Dragoons—still no sign of Smythe, Svenson, or Celeste. He was acutely aware of the luxurious fittings of the ballroom—the crystal fixtures, the gleaming floor, the walls of mirror and glass—and the finery of the masked spectators, all in contrast to his own filthy appearance. He knew that for these people the state of his garments and his body were definitive indicators of his inferior caste. It was also what pained him about Angelique—in this place as much a piece of chattel as he, as much a specimen of livestock. Why else had she been first to undergo the hideous transformation—why had she been taken to the Institute to begin with? Because it did not matter if she died. And yet she could not see their contempt—just as she could not see him (but this was wrong, for of course she did—she merely rejected what she saw), nor beyond her own desperate ambition to the truth of how she had been used. But then Chang recalled the great figures of the city he’d found, one after another, slumped over the glass books in the string of private rooms, and Robert Vandaariff,