Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

reached the door and burst through—a third shot splitting the wood near his head—stumbled into the hall, slipped, and sat down hard in a heap. Behind him Lorenz bellowed like a bullock. Svenson lurched across the main hall to another passage, in hopes that he might find Lord Vandaariff’s trophy room…before his stuffed head took up a place of honor in it.

He limped blindly down the corridor, seeing no doors, his anxiety rising toward paralysis as he realized what he had just done—the compressed savagery, the calculated mayhem. What had happened to him—potting men from the catwalk as if they were unfeeling targets, murdering the helpless fellows through the mirror, and now this awful slaughter in the kitchens—and he had done it all so easily, so capably, as if he were a seasoned killer—as if he were Cardinal Chang. But he was not Chang—he was not a killer—already his hands were shaking and face slick with cold sweat. He stopped, leaning heavily against the wall, his mind suddenly assailed by the image of the poor man’s hand, pinned like a pale flipping fish. Doctor Svenson’s throat rose and he looked about him for an urn, a pot, a plant, found nothing, and forced his gorge down by strength of will, the taste of bile sharp in his mouth. He could not go on, careening from collision to collision, with no longer the slightest idea of what he sought. He needed to sit, to rest, to weep—any respite, however brief. All around him were the sounds of guests and preparations, music, footsteps—he must be very near the ballroom. With a grateful groan he spied a door, small, plain, unlocked, prayed with all his bankrupt faith that the room was empty, and slipped inside.

He stepped into darkness, closed the door and immediately barked his shin, tripped, and set off an echoing clatter that seemed to take minutes to die. He froze, waiting…breathed in the silent dark…there were no other noises from within the room…and nothing from the hallway. He exhaled slowly. The clatter was wooden, wooden poles…mops, brooms…he was in a maids’ closet.

Doctor Svenson carefully set down the satchel and groped around him to either side. He felt shelves—one of which he’d kicked—and his hands moved cautiously, not wanting to knock anything else to the floor. His fingers sought quickly, moving from shelf to shelf until his right hand slipped over and then into a wooden box, full of slick, tubular objects…candles. He plucked one from the box and then continued his search for a box of matches—surely they would be in the same place. In fact, the box was on the next shelf down, and crouching, Svenson carefully struck a match by feel—how often had he done the same in the darkness of a ship at night?—in a stroke transforming his little chamber of mystery into a mundane catalog of house management: soap, towels, brass polish, buckets, mops, brushes, brooms, dusters, pans, smocks, vinegar, wax, candles…and, he blessed the thoughtful maid who put it there, a tiny stool. He shifted his body and turned, sitting so he faced the door. A very thoughtful maid…for stuck into the wall near the door was a small loop of chain on a nail, made to slip around the knob and serve as a lock—but only usable from within the closet. Svenson made the chain fast and saw, near the box of matches, a cleared foot of shelf marked with melted wax—the place for occupants to place their candles. He’d ducked into someone’s sanctuary, and made it his own. Doctor Svenson shut his eyes and allowed his fatigue to slump his shoulders. If only the maid had left a stash of tobacco.

It would be terribly simple to fall asleep, and he knew it was a real possibility. With a grimace he forced himself to sit up straight, and then—why did it keep slipping his mind?—he remembered the satchel, fetching it onto his lap. He untied the clasp and fished out the contents, a thick sheaf of parchment, densely covered with finely written notes. He leafed through the stack…angling the pages so they caught more candlelight.

He read, quickly, his eyes skimming from line to line, and then from that page to the next, and to the next again. It was a massive narrative of acquisition and subterfuge, and clearly from the pen of Robert Vandaariff. At first Svenson recognized just enough of the names and places to follow the geographical path of finance—money houses in Florence and Venice, goods brokers in Vienna, in Berlin, fur merchants in Stockholm, then diamond traders in Antwerp. But the closer he read—and the more he flipped back and forward between the pages to re-sort out the facts (and which initials stood for institutions—“RLS” being Rosamonde Lacquer-Sforza not, as he’d first suspected, Rotterdam Liability Services, a major insurer of overseas shipping)—the more he understood it was a narrative with two conjoined threads: a steady campaign of leverage and acquisition, and a trail of unlikely individuals, like islands in a stream, determining each in their way how the money flowed. But more than anything what cried out to the Doctor were the many references to his country of Macklenburg.

It was quite clear that Vandaariff had undergone protracted negotiations, both openly and through a host of intermediaries, to purchase an enormous amount of land in the Duchy’s mountain district, with an ever-present emphasis on mining rights. This confirmed what Svenson had guessed from the reddish earth at the Tarr Manor quarry, that the Macklenburg hills were even richer in deposits of indigo clay. It also confirmed Vandaariff’s knowledge of this mineral as a commodity—its special properties and the insidious uses to which they might be put. Finally, it convinced him again, as he had thought two days ago, that Robert Vandaariff had been very much personally involved in this business.

Bit by bit Doctor Svenson identified the other major figures in the Cabal, noting how each one entered Vandaariff’s tale of conquest. The Contessa appeared by way of the Venetian speculation market, and it was through her that Lord Robert became acquainted in Paris with the Comte d’Orkancz as someone who could initially—and discreetly—advise him on the purchase of certain antiquities from a recently discovered underground Byzantine monastery in Thessalonika. But this was a ruse, for the Comte was truly enlisted to study and verify the characteristics of certain mineral samples that Lord Vandaariff had apparently acquired in secret from the same Venetian speculators. Yet he was surprised to see no mention, as far as he could tell, of Oskar Veilandt, from whose alchemical studies so much of the conspiracy’s work seemed to spring. Could Vandaariff have known Veilandt (or suborned him) for so long that he saw no need to mention the man? It made no sense, and Svenson flipped ahead to see if the painter was mentioned later, but the narrative quickly branched out to tales of exploration and diplomacy, from scientists and discoverers at the Royal Institute who were also invited to study these samples, the resources of industry given over to certain experiments in fabrication (here Doctor Lorenz and Francis Xonck first appeared), and then to Macklenburg proper, with the subtle interactions between Lord Vandaariff, Harald Crabbe, and their Macklenburg contact—of course, Svenson rolled his eyes—the Duke’s dyspeptic younger brother, Konrad, Bishop of Warnemunde.

With these agents in motion and his money behind them, Vandaariff’s plans moved ahead seamlessly, using the Institute to locate the deposits, Crabbe to negotiate for the land with Konrad, who acted as an agent for the cash-poor aristocratic property holders. But in a twist he saw there was more to it, for instead of gold, Konrad was selling the land in exchange for contraband munitions supplied by Francis Xonck. The Duke’s brother was amassing an arsenal—to assert control of Karl-Horst upon his inheritance. Svenson smiled at the irony. Unbeknownst to Konrad the Cabal had used him, enabling him to essentially import a secret army that, once they ruled by proxy through the Prince’s soon-to-arrive infant son (and necessarily managed Konrad’s death), they could use themselves to defend their investment—whereas bringing in foreign troops would have provoked an uprising. It was exactly the sort of stratagem that made Vandaariff’s reputation. And moving between them all were the Comte and the Contessa. For Svenson could see what Vandaariff had not, that as much as the financier imagined himself the architect of this scheme, in fact he was merely its engine. The Doctor had no doubt the Contessa and the Comte had set it all in motion from the start, manipulating the great man. The exact point where they joined forces with the others—whether they had been in league before or after Vandaariff had recruited them—was unclear, but he sensed immediately why they had all agreed to turn on their benefactor. Vandaariff uncontrolled could dictate the profit to them all…with him in thrall, the whole of his wealth lay at their disposal.

There was much Svenson didn’t understand—still no mention of Veilandt, for one, and how exactly had the Cabal managed to overcome Vandaariff, who was fully his powerful self the night of the engagement party? Could that have been why Trapping had been killed—that he had threatened to tell Vandaariff what was in store for him? But then why did at least some of the Cabal seem ignorant of Trapping’s killer? Or did Trapping threaten to tell Vandaariff about the Comte’s plans for Lydia, if Lord Robert had not known already? But no, what did Vandaariff’s feelings matter if the man was going to be made their slave in any case? Or had Trapping discovered something else—something that implicated one member of the Cabal against the others? But which one—and what was their secret?

Svenson’s head was already swimming with too many names and dates and places and figures. He returned to the pages of tightly scrawled text. So much had happened within Macklenburg itself that he’d never even glimpsed. The roots of the conspiracy had worked their way deeper and deeper, amassing property and influence