Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and sighed.

“The question is what they are doing, and which group we ought to follow. If we agree that stopping the Duke and the Prince’s marriage are both vital, it is of course possible that we split up—”

“I should prefer not to,” said Miss Temple quickly. “In either place we shall find enemies en masse—it seems there is strength in numbers.”

“I agree,” said the Doctor, “and my vote is to go after the Duke. The rest of the Cabal journeys to Macklenburg—the Duke and Lord Vandaariff are their keys to maintaining power here. If we can disrupt that, it may upset the balance of their entire plot.”

“You mean to kill them?” asked Chang.

“Kill them again, in the case of the Duke,” muttered the Doctor, “but yes, I am for assassinations all round.” He sighed bitterly. “It is exactly my plan for Karl-Horst, should his neck ever come within reach of my two hands.”

“But he is your charge,” said Miss Temple, a little shocked by Svenson’s tone.

“My charge has become their creature,” he answered. “He is no more than a rabid dog or a horse with a broken fetlock—he must be put down, preferably before he has a chance to sire an heir.”

Miss Temple put her hand over her mouth. “Of course! The Comte is using his alchemy to impregnate Lydia— it is the height of his part of this plan—it is Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical Annunciation made flesh! And they are doing it tonight—even now!”

Doctor Svenson sucked on his teeth, wincing, looking back and forth between Miss Temple and Chang.

“I still say we stop the Duke. If we do not—”

“If we do not, mine and Miss Temple’s lives in this city are ruined,” said Chang.

“And after that,” asked Miss Temple, “the Prince and Lydia?”

Svenson nodded, and then sighed. “I’m afraid they are already doomed…”

Chang abruptly cackled, a sound as pleasant as a gargling crow. “Are we so different, Doctor? Save some of your pity for us!”

At Miss Temple’s command Aspiche led them toward the main entrance of the house, but it became quickly clear they could not go far that way, so thronged had it become with the many, many guests gathered for the Duke’s departure. With a sudden inspiration, Miss Temple recalled her own path with Spragg and Farquhar through the gardener’s passage between the wings of the house and around to the carriages. Within two minutes—Aspiche huffing as sullenly as his conditioning allowed—they had arrived, their breath clouding in the chilly air, just in time to watch a procession flow down the main stairs toward the Duke’s imperious, massive black coach.

The Duke himself moved slowly and with care, like a particularly delicate, funereal stick insect, guided on one side by the small greasy-haired man—“Doctor Lorenz,” whispered Svenson—and on the other by Mrs. Marchmoor, no longer with a leash around her neck, her gleaming body now covered in a thick black cloak. Behind in a line came the Contessa, Xonck, and Deputy Minister Crabbe, and behind them, stopping at the steps and waving the Duke on his way, stood the similarly aligned knot of Robert Vandaariff, Roger Bascombe, and Mrs. Poole, also leashless and cloaked.

The Duke was installed in his coach and joined a moment later by Mrs. Marchmoor. Miss Temple looked to her companions—now was clearly the time to dash for the coach if they were going to do so—but before she could speak she saw with dismay, boisterously shouting to the Duke and to each other as they sought their own amongst the many coaches, the rest of the guests all preparing to leave. Any attack on the Duke’s coach was all but impossible.

“What can we do?” she whispered. “We are too late!”

Chang hefted the saber in his hand. “I can go—one of us alone, I can move more quickly—I can track them to the Palace—”

“Not in your condition,” observed Svenson. “You would be caught and killed—and you know it. Look at the soldiers! They have a full escort!”

As he pointed Miss Temple now saw that it was true—a double rank of mounted Dragoons, perhaps forty men, moving their horses into position ahead and behind the coach. The Duke was completely beyond their reach.

“He will convene the Privy Council,” rasped Chang hollowly. “He will make whatever they want into law.”

“With the Duke’s power, and Vandaariff’s money, the Macklenburg throne, and an inexhaustible supply of indigo clay…they’ll be unstoppable…” whispered Svenson.

Miss Temple frowned. Perhaps it was a futile gesture, but she would make it.

“On the contrary. Cardinal Chang, if you would please return the Colonel’s saber—I do insist.”

Chang looked at her quizzically, but carefully passed the weapon to Aspiche. Before the man could do a thing with it, Miss Temple spoke to him quite firmly.

“Colonel Aspiche, listen to me. Your men protect the Duke—this is excellent. No one else—no one, mind—is to come within reach of the Duke during his journey back to the Palace. You will go now, collect a horse, and join his train—immediately, do not speak to anyone, do not return to the house, take the mount of one of your men if you must. Once you reach the Palace, being very particular to avoid the scrutiny of Mrs. Marchmoor, you will find time—the appropriate time, for you must succeed—but nevertheless before the Privy Council can meet—to hack the Duke of Staelmaere’s head clean from his body. Do you understand me?”

Colonel Aspiche nodded.

“Excellent. Do not breathe a word of this to anyone. Off you go!”

She smiled, watching the man stride into the crowded plaza, possessed by his mission, toward the nearest stand of horses, pretending not to see the astonished expressions of Svenson and Chang to her either side.

“Let’s see them stick it back on with library paste,” she said. “Shall we find the Prince?”

The Colonel had not known exactly where the Comte and his party had gone, merely that it was somewhere below the ballroom. From his own journeys through Harschmort House, Cardinal Chang was convinced he could find the way, and so Miss Temple and Doctor Svenson followed him back through the gardener’s passage and then indoors. As they walked, Miss Temple looked up at Chang, daunting despite his injuries, and wished for just a moment that she might see inside his thoughts like one of the glass women. They were on their way to rescue—or destroy, but the goal was the same—the Prince and Lydia, but the Cardinal’s lost woman, Angelique, would be there as well. Did he hope to reclaim her? To force the Comte to reverse her transformation? Or to put her out of her misery? She felt the weight of her own sadness, the regret and pain of Roger’s rejection, of her own habitual isolation—were these feelings, feelings that because they were hers felt somehow small, however keenly they plagued her, anything like the burdens haunting a man like Chang? How could they be? How could there not be an impassable wall between them?

“The two wings mirror each other,” he said hoarsely, “and I have been up and down the lower floors on the opposite side. If I am right, the stairway down should be right…about…here…”

He smiled—and Miss Temple was struck anew, perhaps by his especially battered condition, of what a provocative mix of the bodily compelling and morally fearsome Cardinal Chang’s smile actually was—and indicated a bland-looking alcove covered with a velvet curtain. He whisked it aside and revealed a metal door that had boldly been left ajar.

“Such confidence”—he chuckled, pulling it open—“to leave an open door…you’d think they might have learned.”

He spun to look behind them, his face abruptly stern, at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Or we would have…,” muttered Doctor Svenson, and Chang hurriedly motioned them through the door. He closed it behind them, letting the lock catch. “It will delay them,” he whispered. “Quickly!”

They heard the door being pulled repeatedly above them as they followed the spiral staircase for two turns, reaching another door, also ajar, where Chang eased past Miss Temple and Svenson to peek through first.

“Might I suggest we acquire weapons?” whispered the Doctor.

Miss Temple nodded her agreement, but instead of answering Chang had slipped through the door, his footfalls silent as a cat’s, leaving them to follow as best they could. They entered a strange curving corridor, like an opera house or a Roman theatre, with a row of doors on the inner side, as if they led to box seats, or toward the