Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

sea, the rank perfume of the brothel, silks and champagne, tears, beatings, bruises, distant embraces, and a piercingly tender hope, more than anything, that her desperate dreams had come true. Before Miss Temple’s eyes the torso split wide below the ribs and gave, the upper body breaking against the lower in a cloud of indigo smoke and glimmering deadly dust, the pieces smashing apart as they struck the stone.

Miss Temple could not tell whether the silence was due to a shared inability to speak, or if the scream had made her deaf. Her head swam with the fumes in the air and she put a hand before her mouth, wondering if she’d already inhaled blue glass dust. The steaming ruins of Angelique lay scattered across the floor, blue shards in an indigo pool. She looked up and blinked. Chang lay with his back against the wall, staring. Svenson was on his hands and knees, groping to crawl free. Lydia was on the bed, whimpering and pulling at her ropes. The Prince lay on the ground near Svenson, hissing with pain and swatting feebly at his hand, where a splinter of glass cut open a patch of skin that had since turned blue. The Comte alone still stood, his face pale as ash.

Miss Temple turned the pistol toward him and pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the chemical works on his table, spraying more glass and spattering his apron with steaming liquid. The sound woke the room. The Comte surged forward and swept up his metal implement from the bed, raising it up like a mace. Miss Temple aimed another shot at his head, but before she could fire felt Chang seize her arm. She grunted with surprise—his grip was painful—and saw that with his other hand he held Svenson’s collar, pulling them both to the door with all his fading strength. She looked back at the Comte, who despite his rage took care to step around the sea of broken glass, and did her best to aim. Svenson got his feet beneath them as they reached the door but Chang did not let him go. Miss Temple extended her arm to fire, but Chang yanked her back and into the corridor.

“I must kill him!” she cried.

“You are out of bullets!” Chang hissed. “If you pull the trigger he will know!”

They’d not gone two more steps before the Doctor turned, struggling against Chang’s grip.

“The Prince—he must die—”

“We’ve done enough—” Chang pulled them both forward, his voice thick, coughing with the effort.

“They will be married—”

“The Comte is formidable—we are unarmed and weak. If we fight him one of us—at least—will die.” Chang could barely talk. “We have more to accomplish—and if we stop the others, we stop your idiot Prince. Remember Mrs. Dujong.”

“But the Comte—” said Miss Temple, looking behind her for pursuit.

“Cannot chase us alone—he must secure the Prince and Lydia.” Chang cleared his throat with a groan and spat past Svenson. “Besides…the Comte’s vanity has been…wounded…”

His voice was raw. Miss Temple risked a glance, now finally running with the others on her own two feet, and saw with a piercing dismay the line of tears beneath Chang’s glasses, and heard the terrible sobs within his heaving breath. She wiped at her own face and did her best to keep up.

They reached the stairwell and closed the door behind them. Chang leaned against it, his hands on his knees, and surrendered to another bout of coughing. Svenson looked at him with concern, his hand on Chang’s shoulder for comfort. He looked up at Miss Temple.

“You did very well, Celeste.”

“No more than anyone,” she answered, a bit pointedly. She did not want to speak of herself in the presence of Chang’s distress.

“That is true.”

Miss Temple shivered.

“Her thoughts…at the end, in my mind…”

“She was cruelly used,” said Svenson, “by the Comte…and by the world. No one should undergo such horror.”

But Miss Temple knew the true horror for Angelique had not been transformation, but her untimely death, and her terrible silent scream was a protest as primal and as futile as the last cry of a sparrow taken by the hawk. Miss Temple had never been in the presence, been possessed by such fear—held tight to the very brink of death—and she wondered if she would die the same horrible way when it came to it—which it might this very night. She sniffed—or day, she had no idea what time it was. When they’d been outside watching the coaches it had still been dark, and now they were underground. Was it only a day since she’d first met Svenson in the Boniface lobby?

She swallowed and shook the dread from her mind. With a perhaps characteristic keenness Miss Temple’s thoughts shifted from death to breakfast.

“After this is settled,” she said, “I should quite enjoy something to eat.”

Chang looked up at her. She smiled down at him, doing her level best to withstand the hardness of his face and the black vacuum of his glasses.

“Well…it has been some time…,” said Svenson politely, as if he were speaking of the weather.

“It will be some while more,” managed Chang, hoarsely.

“I’m sure it will,” said Miss Temple. “But being as I am not made of glass, it seemed like a reasonable topic of conversation.”

“Indeed,” said Svenson, awkwardly.

“Once this business is settled of course,” added Miss Temple.

Chang straightened himself, his face somewhat composed. “We should go,” he muttered.

***

Miss Temple smiled to herself as they climbed, hoping her words had served to distract Chang at least into annoyance, away from his grief. She was well aware that she did not understand what he felt, despite her loss of Roger, for she did not understand the connection between Chang and the woman. What sort of attachment could such transacted dealings instill? She was smart enough to see that bargains of some sort ran through most marriages—her own parents were a joining of land and the cash to work it—but for Miss Temple the objects of barter—titles, estates, money, inheritance—were always apart from the bodies involved. The idea of transacting one’s own body—that this was the extent—involved a bluntness she could not quite comprehend. She wondered what her mother had felt when she herself had been conceived, in that physical union—was it a matter of two bodies (Miss Temple preferred not to speculate about “love” when it came to her savage father), or was each limb bound—as much as Lydia’s had been in the laboratory—by a brokered arrangement between families? She looked up at Chang, climbing ahead of her. What did it feel like to be free of such burdens? The freedom of a wild animal?

“We did not see Herr Flauss on our way out,” observed Doctor Svenson. “Perhaps he went with the others.”

“And where are they?” asked Miss Temple. “At the airship?”

“I think not,” said Svenson. “They will be settling their own disagreements before they can go on—they will be interrogating Lord Vandaariff.”

“And perhaps Roger,” said Miss Temple, just to show she could say his name without difficulty.

“Which leaves us the choice of finding them or reaching the airship ourselves.” Svenson called ahead to Chang. “What say you?”

Chang looked back, wiping his red-flecked mouth, out of breath. “The airship. The Dragoons.”

Doctor Svenson nodded. “Smythe.”

The house was disturbingly quiet when they reached the main floor.

“Can everyone be gone?” asked Svenson.

“Which way?” rasped Chang.

“It is up—the main stairs are simplest if they are free. I must also suggest, again, that we acquire weapons.”

Chang sighed, then nodded with impatience.

“Where?”

“Well—” Svenson clearly had no immediate idea.

“Come with me,” said Miss Temple.

Mr. Blenheim had been moved, though the stain on the carpet remained. They took a very brief time, but even then she smiled to see the curiosity and greed on the faces of her two companions as they plundered Robert