Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Miss Temple, its expression unreadable and its eyes as depthless as a Roman statue’s, slick, gleaming, and swirled indigo marbles, that Miss Temple understood the woman—or creature—was alive. She was fully rooted to the ground with amazement, and could not have cried out to Chang if she had wanted.

Caroline Stearne pulled Miss Temple’s white mask down around her neck. She waited through agonizing seconds of silence, sure that someone would denounce her…but no one spoke.

Chang’s mouth opened haltingly, as if he could not form words or gather breath to speak.

Then, as if everything was happening too quickly to see, Colonel Aspiche was swinging his arm and whatever he held in it smashed down onto Cardinal Chang’s head, knocking him flat in a stroke. With a brusque nod from their Colonel, two Dragoons detached themselves from the ring of men keeping back the crowd and took hold of Chang’s arms. They dragged him past her, his body utterly lifeless. She did not turn to follow his passage, but made herself look up, despite her racing heart and the pressing nearness of her tears, into the intelligent, searching face of Caroline Stearne.

Behind, the voice of the Contessa snapped through the air like the crack of a particularly exultant whip.

“My dear Celeste,” she called, “how fine it is that you have…joined us. Mrs. Stearne, I am obliged for your timely entrance.”

Caroline, who was already facing the Contessa, sank into a respectful curtsey.

“Mrs. Stearne!” called the rasping voice of the Comte d’Orkancz. “Do you not wish to see your transformed companions?”

Caroline turned along with everyone else in the ballroom, for the Comte’s gesture was one of grand showmanship, to see two more glass women stalking into the open circle with their deliberate, clicking gait, arms strangely floating, their uncovered bodies an arrogant assertion of ripe, ghastly, unsettling allure. It took Miss Temple a moment—what had the Comte said to Caroline, “companions”?—to recognize with shock Mrs. Marchmoor and, some new disfiguring scorch across her head, Miss Poole. What did it mean that her enemies had— willingly?—been transformed, transfigured, into such…such things?

The Comte gathered up Miss Poole’s leash and flicked her toward Mrs. Stearne. Miss Poole’s lips parted ever so slightly with a chilling smile and then Caroline staggered where she stood, her head lolling to the side. An instant later, as the effect spread to the first rank of the crowd like a rippling pool, Miss Temple felt herself swallowed up and thrust into a scene so enticingly real that she could scarcely remember the ballroom at all.

She was on a plush settee in a dark, candlelit parlor and her hand was occupied with stroking Caroline Stearne’s lovely, soft unbound hair. Mrs. Stearne wore—as Miss Temple saw that she (that is, Miss Poole) wore as well—the white robes of initiation. On the other side of Mrs. Stearne sat a man in a black cloak and a tight mask of red leather, leaning over to kiss her mouth, a kiss to which Mrs. Stearne responded with a passionate moan. It was like Mrs. Marchmoor’s story of the two men in the coach, only here it was a man and two women. Mrs. Stearne’s hunger caused Miss Poole to condescendingly chuckle as she turned to reach for a glass of wine…and with this action her shifting gaze took in an open door and a lurking figure half-visible in the light beyond…a figure whose shape Miss Temple knew at once as that of Roger Bascombe.

The vision was withdrawn from Miss Temple’s mind, like a blindfold whipped from her eyes, and she was back in the ballroom, where every person she could see was blinking with confusion, save for the Comte d’Orkancz, who smiled with a smug superior pleasure. He called again to Caroline—some vulgar jest about sisterhood and opportunities for taking the veil—but Miss Temple did not mark their conversation, so provoked were her thoughts by what she’d just beheld….

Miss Poole and Caroline Stearne had been wearing their white robes, and the man with them on the settee —she had seen him, she had taken that very cloak for her own!—was none other than Colonel Trapping. Miss Temple groped to make sense of it, as if she were in a hurry to open a door and could not get the right key in the hole…it had been that same night at Harschmort…and just before the Colonel’s murder, for the women had changed into their white robes but not yet undergone the Process. This meant it had been while she was creeping through the hall of mirrors and past the queer man with the boxes—only minutes before she herself had entered Trapping’s room. She had already worked out that Roger and the Contessa were the Cabal members nearest to the Colonel at his death…could these women have killed him instead—on instructions of the Comte? If the Colonel had been in secret agreement with Lord Vandaariff…but why, she suddenly wondered, had Miss Poole chosen to share this memory—one that must obviously stir up questions about the murdered Colonel— with Caroline Stearne? There had been a rivalry between them in the theatre—was it merely to mock Caroline’s affections for a dead man, and what was more a dead traitor to the Cabal? In front of everyone?

She was startled—was she an idiot? She must pay attention—by a hoarse cry and then the total immersion without warning into another vision: a tall wooden staircase, lit by orange torchlight under a blackened sky, a sudden rush of men, a scuttling figure in a black topcoat—Minister Crabbe!—and then the mob converging upon and raising up a kicking figure in a steel-blue greatcoat, a flash of his drawn face and ice-pale hair confirming him as Doctor Svenson an instant before, with a heaving surge, the crowd of men launched him without ceremony over the rail.

Miss Temple looked up—just piecing together that this must be an image from the quarry at Tarr Manor— back in the ballroom again, to see a disturbance in the crowd, an undulating progress toward the center that with a lurch deposited the haggard figure of Doctor Svenson, breathless and battered, onto his hands and knees—exactly where Chang had been. Svenson looked up, his wild eyes searching for some escape but instead finding her face, the sight of which stopped him cold. Colonel Aspiche stepped forward, ripping a leather satchel from the Doctor’s grasp with one hand, and then bringing his truncheon down pitilessly with the other. It was a matter of seconds. Like Chang before him, Doctor Svenson was dragged past Miss Temple from the room.

Unable to watch him go without giving herself away, Miss Temple instead found her gaze rooted to the gleaming glass women. As disturbing as they were—and the sight of Miss Poole, if this unconscionably animated statue could still so be named, licking her lips with the slick, livid tip of a cerulean tongue caused Miss Temple to shiver with an unnameable dismay—it nevertheless put off the moment when she must face the Contessa’s piercing violet eyes. But then Caroline took her hand, spinning her to the raised dais where the members of the Cabal stood—the Contessa, Xonck, Crabbe, and then the Prince and Lydia Vandaariff, still in her mask and white robes, and behind this pair, like a furtive eavesdropping child, lurked the Envoy, Herr Flauss. Against all reason Miss Temple’s eyes went straight to the Contessa, who met her glance with an implacably cold stare. It was to her great relief when it was Harald Crabbe, and not the Contessa, who stepped forward to speak.

“Assembled guests…devoted friends…faithful adherents…now is the time when all our plans are ripe…hanging like fruit to be plucked. It is our present labor to harvest that fruit, and prevent it from falling fallow and uncared-for to the insensate ground. You all understand the gravity of this night—that we in truth usher in a new epoch—who could doubt it, when we see the evidence before us like angels from another age? Yet tonight all rests in the balance—the Prince and Miss Vandaariff will depart for their Macklenburg wedding…the Duke of Staelmaere is appointed head of the Queen’s Privy Council…the most mighty figures of this land have in this house given over their power…and all of you—perhaps most importantly of all!—all of you will execute your own assignments—achieve your own destinies! Thus shall we here construct our common dream.”

Crabbe paused and met the eyes of first Colonel Aspiche—who rapped out a sharp command that cut through the buttery flattering tone of the Deputy Minister’s speech, at which point every door to the ballroom was slammed shut with a crash—and next of the Comte d’Orkancz, who flicked his leashes like an infernal circus master, sending each glass creature stalking toward a different portion of the crowd. The impression was very much of lions in an arena sizing up an impressive number of martyrs, and Miss Temple was no less unsettled to find it was the third woman—the one of her own size and shape—the Comte had sent toward her. The creature advanced to the end of its leash and having pulled it taut stood flexing its fingers with impatience, the people nearest inching away with discomfort. Miss Temple felt a pressing on her thoughts—thoughts clouded now with sensations of ice-blue cold…

“You will all accept,” continued Crabbe, “that there is no room for risk, no place for second thoughts. We must have certainty—every bit as much as all of you, having pledged yourselves, must have it of each man and woman in this ballroom! No one in this room has not undergone the Process, or submitted