Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

against each other…”

“We knew you were not a fool.” Eloise sighed, hopelessly.

Mr. Blenheim did not at once reply, and Miss Temple, though she did not risk a glance at Eloise, took the moment to squeeze her hand.

“While the Comte is down in the prison chamber,” she said, speaking with bland speculation, “and the Contessa is in a private room with the Prince…where is Mr. Xonck? Or Deputy Minister Crabbe?”

“Or where are they thought to be?” asked Eloise.

“Where is your own Lord Vandaariff?”

“He is—” Blenheim stopped himself.

“Do you know where to find your own master?” asked Eloise.

Blenheim shook his head. “You still have not—”

“What do you think we were doing?” Miss Temple allowed her exasperation to show. “We escaped from the theatre—escaped from Miss Poole—”

“Who came with Minister Crabbe in the airship,” added Eloise.

“And then made our way to overhear the actions of the Contessa in your secret room,” resumed Miss Temple, “and from there have done our best to intrude upon the Comte in his laboratory.”

Blenheim frowned at her.

“Who have we not troubled?” Miss Temple asked him patiently.

“Francis Xonck,” whispered Mr. Blenheim.

“You have said it, Sir, not I.”

He chewed his lip. Miss Temple went on. “Do you see…we have not divulged a thing…you have seen these things for yourself and merely deduced the facts. Though…if we were to help you… Sir…might it go easier with us?”

“Perhaps it would. It is impossible to say, unless I know what sort of help you mean.”

Miss Temple glanced to Eloise, and then leaned toward Blenheim, as if to share a secret.

“Do you know where Mr. Xonck is…at this very moment?”

“Everyone is to gather in the ballroom…,” Blenheim muttered, “…but I have not seen him.”

“Is that so?” replied Miss Temple, as if this were extremely significant. “And if I can show you what he is doing?”

“Where?”

“Not where, Mr. Blenheim—indeed, not where…but how?”

Miss Temple smiled and, slipping it from Eloise’s grasp, held up the blue glass card.

Mr. Blenheim snatched at it hungrily, but Miss Temple pulled it from his reach.

“Do you know what this—” she began, but before another word could be uttered Blenheim surged forward and took hard hold of her arm with one hand and wrenched the card free from her grip with the other. He stepped back, and licked his lips again, glancing back and forth between the card and the women.

“You must be careful,” said Miss Temple. “The blue glass is very dangerous. It is disorienting—if you have not looked into it before—”

“I know what it is!” snarled Blenheim, and he took two steps away from them, toward the door, blocking it with his body. He looked up at the women a last time, then down into the glass.

Blenheim’s eyes dulled as he entered the world of the glass card. Miss Temple knew this card showed the Prince and Mrs. Marchmoor, no doubt more entrancing to Mr. Blenheim than Roger ogling her own limbs on the sofa, and she reached out slowly, not making a sound, to the nearest display case to take up a sharp short dagger with a blade that curved narrowly back and forth like a silver snake. Mr. Blenheim’s breath caught in his throat and his body seemed to waver—the cycle of the card had finished—but a moment later he had not moved, giving himself over to its seductive repetition. Taking care to position her feet as firmly as she could and recalling Chang’s advice for practical action, Miss Temple stepped to the side of Mr. Blenheim and drove the dagger into the side of his body to the hilt.

He gasped, eyes popping wide and up from the card. Miss Temple pulled the dagger free with both hands, the force of which caused him to stagger in her direction. He looked down at the bloody blade, and then up to her face. She stabbed again, this time into the center of his body, shoving the blade up under his ribs. Mr. Blenheim dropped the card onto the carpet and wrestled the dagger from Miss Temple’s grasp, tottering backwards. With a grunt he dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his abdomen. He could not draw breath nor—happily for the women— make noise. He toppled onto his side and lay still. Miss Temple, gratified to see that the carpet bore a reddish pattern, knelt quickly to wipe her hands.

She looked up to Eloise, who had not moved, fixed on the fading breaths of the fallen overseer.

“Eloise?” she whispered.

Eloise turned to her quickly, the spell broken, eyes wide.

“Are you all right, Eloise?”

“O yes. I am sorry—I—I don’t know—I suppose I thought we would creep past—”

“He would have followed.”

“Of course. Of course! No—yes, my goodness—”

“He was our deadly enemy!” Miss Temple’s poise was suddenly quite fragile.

“Of course—it is merely—perhaps the quantity of blood—”

Despite herself, the prick of criticism had punctured Miss Temple’s grim resolve, for after all it was not as if murder came to her naturally or blithely, and though she knew she had been clever, she also knew what she had done—that it was murder—not even strictly a fight—and once more she felt it all had moved so quickly, too fast for her to keep her hold on what she believed and what her actions made of her. Tears burned the corners of each eye. Eloise suddenly leaned close to her and squeezed her shoulders.

“Do not listen to me, Celeste—I am a fool—truly! Well done!”

Miss Temple sniffed. “It would be best if we dragged him from the door.”

“Absolutely.”

They had each taken an arm, but the effort of transporting the substantial corpse—for he had finally expired —behind a short bookcase left them both gasping for breath, Eloise propped against a leather armchair, Miss Temple holding the dagger, wiping its blood on Mr. Blenheim’s sleeve. With another sigh at the burdens one accepted along with a pragmatic mind, she set the dagger down and began to search his pockets, piling all of what she found in a heap: banknotes, coins, handkerchiefs, matches, two whole cigars and the stub of another, pencils, scraps of blank paper, bullets for the carbine, and a ring of so many keys she was sure they would answer for every door in the whole of Harschmort. In his breast pocket however was another key…fashioned entirely of blue glass. Miss Temple’s eyes went wide and she looked up to her companion.

Eloise was not looking at her. She sat slumped in the chair, one leg drawn up, her face open, eyes dull, both hands holding the blue card in front of her face. Miss Temple stood with the glass key in her hand, wondering how long her work had taken…and how many times her companion had traveled through the sensations of Mrs. Marchmoor on the sofa. A little gasp escaped Eloise’s parted lips, and Miss Temple began to feel awkward. The more she considered what she had experienced by way of the blue glass—the hunger, the knowledge, the delicious submersion, and of course her rudely skewed sense of self—the less she knew how she ought to feel. The attacks upon her person (that seemed to occur whenever she set foot in a coach) she had sorted out—they filled her with rage. But these mental incursions had transfigured her notions of propriety, of desire, and of experience itself, and left her usual certainty of mind utterly tumbled.

Eloise was a widow, who with her marriage must have found a balance with these physical matters, yet instead of reason and perspective Miss Temple was troubled to see a faint pearling of perspiration on the woman’s upper lip, and felt a certain restless shifting at her thighs at being in the presence of someone else’s unmediated desire (a thing she had never before faced, unless one could count her kisses with Roger and Roger’s own attempts to grope her body, which now—by force of absolute will—she refused to do). Miss Temple could not, for she was both curious and proud, but wonder if this was how she had looked as well.

The widow’s cheeks were flushed, her lower lip absently plucked between her teeth, her fingers white with