Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

you feel—like a fool.”

Another savage elbow. Chang could taste the bile in his throat. He’d have to be a little more direct if he wanted to avoid vomiting into his own lap. He forced another smile.

“Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious about what I saw just now? Your men heard the shots—don’t you want to know who was killed? I would expect it to change all sorts of things—balance of power, all that. Excuse me, may I? Handkerchief?”

The Major nodded, and Chang very slowly reached into his outside pocket. His hand was only just there when the man to his left slapped it away and reached into the pocket himself, pulled out the bloody handkerchief and passed it to Chang. Chang smiled his thanks and dabbed at his mouth. They had been traveling for some minutes. He had no idea in what direction. It was most probable that they would take him out to the country or down to the river, but that only meant they could be anywhere in between. He looked up. The Major was watching him closely.

“So,” continued Chang. “Indeed. A struggle—shots—but the main point of interest being an odor—perhaps you have known it—strange, overpowering—and a noise, an excruciating buzzing noise, like a great mechanical hive, with the force of a steam engine. I’m sure you know all this. But what they were doing—what they had done, to that woman…” Chang’s voice faltered for a moment, his momentum broken by the image of Angelique writhing beneath the mass of black hose, the men around her in leather masks —

“I do not care about the whore,” said Major Black in a thick Prussian accent, his voice as cold and hard as an iron spike. Chang looked up at him—already things had become easier—and coughed thickly into the handkerchief, wiping his mouth, muttering apologies, and as he spoke he casually stuffed the handkerchief into the inside pocket of his coat.

“So sorry—no, of course not, Major—you are concerned with the Prince, and with the Minister, the figures of industry and finance—all pieces in the great puzzle, yes? While, I beg your pardon, I—”

“You are no piece at all,” the Major sneered.

“How kind of you to say,” answered Chang, as he swept his hand from his pocket, flicking open the razor and laying it against the throat of the man with the pistol. In the moment of disorientation caused by the touch of cold steel, Chang closed the fingers of his other hand around the pistol and wrenched the aim away from him and toward the Major. The men in the coach froze. “If you move,” Chang hissed, “this man dies, and the two of you must kill an angry man who holds a weapon that is very, very useful in tight spaces. Let go of the pistol.”

The man desperately looked to Major Black, who nodded, his face furrowed by rage. Chang took the pistol, aimed it carefully at the Major’s face, and pushed himself across the coach. He sat next to Black, placed the razor against his neck and then turned the pistol on the two troopers. No one moved. Chang nodded to the trooper nearest the door. “Open it.” The trooper leaned forward and did so, the noise of the coach was abruptly louder, menacing, the dark street whipping past them. It was a paved road. They were still in the city—they must have been aiming for the river. Chang threw the pistol out of the coach and reached over for his stick. He knocked on the roof with the stick, and the coach began to slow. He glared at the two troopers and then turned to the Major. “I will tell you this. I have killed one of you already. I will kill all of you if I must. I do not appreciate your ways. Avoid me.”

He launched himself through the door and tumbled into an awkward roll on the hard cobblestones. He pulled himself to his feet, stumbling ahead, and stuffed the razor into his coat. As he feared, the two troopers had leapt from the coach after him, along with one from the driver’s seat. They had all drawn their sabers. He turned and ran, the bravado of a moment before vanished like any other hopeful bit of theatre.

Somehow, when he had fallen and rolled, his glasses had stayed on. The side pieces wrapped closely around his ears for that very reason, but he was still amazed that they were there. He was running on a block with gas lamps, so he could see something, but he had no idea where in the city he was, and so in that sense was running blind—and at top speed. He did not doubt that if they caught him they would cut him down—both that they would be able to do it, and that whatever plan they’d entertained of taking him away in the coach was quite fully abandoned. He rounded a corner and tripped on a broken stone, just managing to avoid sprawling on his face. Instead he careened full into a metal rail fence, grunted with the impact and drove himself forward, along the block. This was a residential street of row houses without coach traffic. He looked behind and saw the troopers gaining ground. He looked ahead and swore. The coach with Major Black had doubled back and was coming toward him on the street. He searched wildly about him and saw an alley looming to his left. He drove his legs to reach it before the coach, which was heading straight for him, the driver lashing his team for speed. Chang was close enough to see the horses rolling their white eyes when he darted into the dark passage, his foot slipping on the filthy brick, grateful that it was too narrow for the coach, which thundered past. For a moment he wondered about stopping, facing the troopers—perhaps one at a time. It was not narrow—or he yet stupidly desperate—enough for that. He ran on.

The alley separated two large houses, without any doors that he could see, or windows lower than the second story. With a sinking feeling he realized that if he were cut off at the other end, it would turn into another trap. His only immediate consolation came from knowing that the soldiers’ boots were even less suited to this than his own, and even more prone to slipping on the slimy broken surface. He cleared the alley at a full run, saw no coach, and paused—his momentum carrying him well out into the street, lungs heaving—to grope for his bearings, for any sign or landmark he knew. He was in a part of the city where decent people lived—the last place he would know. Then, ahead of him, as sweetly welcome as a child’s answered prayer, he saw that the next road began to slope down. The only downward slope in the city went toward the river, which at least told him where he was on the compass. He pushed himself after it—looking back to see the first trooper clearing the alley—for that almost certainly meant pushing himself into fog.

He raced down the street, careening a bit as the slope began to alter his balance. He could hear the troopers clattering after him, their determination positively Germanic. He wondered if Black and the Doctor were in league and if the soldiers were part of Karl-Horst von Maasmarck’s retinue. Ragnarok was a Norse legend of destruction—it would have been adopted as a badge by only the harshest of regiments—and he could not immediately associate that with the intemperate insensible Prince. The Doctor he could understand—someone having personal charge of a Royal made a certain sense—but the Major? What interest of the Prince (or the Prince’s father?) was served by killing Chang, or by hunting Isobel Hastings? Yet who else could he serve? How else could he be in a foreign country in such force? The first wisps of fog drifted over his feet as he ran. He inhaled the moist air in gulping lungfuls.

The road turned and Chang followed it. Ahead of him he saw a small plaza with a fountain and like a key turning open a lock he knew where he was—Worthing Circle. To the right was the river itself, to the left the Circus Garden, and straight ahead the merchants’ district and beyond it the Ministries. There were people here—Worthing Circle was a place of some nefarious business after nightfall—and he veered to the right, for the river and the thicker fog. It was nearly his death. The coach was there in wait. With a whip crack the horses leapt forth, charging directly at him. Chang threw himself to the side, clawing his way clear. He was cut off from the river, and from the merchants—he scrambled to his knees as the coachman wrestled with the horses, trying to make them turn. Chang reached his feet and heard a shot whistle past his head. Black leaned out of the coach window with a smoking pistol. Chang cut across the plaza just ahead of the three troopers, once more right on his heels, and toward the Circus Garden into the heart of the city.

His legs were on fire—he had no idea how far he’d run, but he had to do something or he was going to die. He saw another alley and barreled into it. Once in he stopped and threw himself against the wall, pulling apart his stick. If he could take the first of them by surprise—but before he’d even finished the thought the first trooper charged around the corner, saw Chang, and raised his saber in defense. Chang slashed at his head with the stick, which the man parried, and then lunged with the dagger—but he was too slow and off target. The blade ripped along the man’s front, cutting his uniform, but missing its mark. The trooper seized Chang’s dagger arm around the wrist. The other troopers were right behind—a matter of seconds before someone ran him through. With a desperate snarl, Chang kicked at the man’s knee and felt a horrible snap as it gave. The man shrieked and fell into the legs of the trooper behind. Chang wrenched his arm clear and stumbled back, his heart sinking as the third man hurtled past his struggling comrades, saber extended. Chang continued to retreat. The trooper lunged at him—