Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

that I speak with one of your guests, a Madame Lacquer-Sforza.”

“Ah. The Contessa.”

“Contessa?”

“That is not possible. You are a doctor?”

“Yes—my name is Svenson—I’m sure she will see me—”

“Doctor Svenson, yes. No, I am afraid it is not possible.”

The clerk looked past Svenson to the street and called out with a brisk clicking of his tongue—the sound one makes to move a horse. Svenson wheeled to see who he was addressing. From the shadows across the street, in answer, stepped four men. Svenson recognized them by their cloaks—they were the guards from the Institute. He turned back to the door—the clerk had pulled it closed and was locking it. Svenson knocked his fist on the glass. The clerk ignored him. Svenson spun to face the men in the street. They stood in a loose semi-circle in the middle of the road, blocking his escape. His hand dug for his coat pocket, feeling for the revolver.

“No need for that, Doctor,” hissed a low rasping voice to his right. He looked up to see the broad daunting figure of the Comte d’Orkancz standing in the shadows beyond the window front. He wore a top hat and a heavy fur coat, and held his silver-topped stick in his right hand. He looked at Svenson with a cold appraising eye.

“It may serve you later…for the moment there are more pressing matters to discuss, I assure you. I had hoped you might arrive, and you did not disappoint—such agreement is a good way to start our conversation. Will you walk with me?”

Without waiting for an answer, the Comte turned and strode into the fog. Svenson glanced at the men, swallowed uncomfortably, and hurried after him.

“Why would you be waiting for me?” he asked, once he had caught up.

“Why would you be calling on the Contessa at such an improper hour?”

Svenson’s mouth worked to find a response. He glanced back to see the four men following some yards behind them.

“You need not answer,” d’Orkancz whispered. “We each have our mysteries—I do not doubt that your reasons are real. No, when it came to my attention that you were of the Prince’s party, I remembered your name— you are the author of a valuable pamphlet on the effects of frostbite?”

“I am the author of such a pamphlet—whether or not it has value…”

“A chief point of interest, if I recall, was the ironic similarity between the damage inflicted by certain types of extreme cold, and certain kinds of burns.”

“Indeed.”

The Comte nodded gravely. “And that is why I was waiting for you.”

He led Svenson down an elegant side lane, bordered on the east by a walled garden. They stopped at a wooden door, set into an alcove vaulted as if it was part of a church, which d’Orkancz unlocked and led him through. They stepped into the garden, walking across thick, springing turf—behind them Svenson heard the guards enter and close the door. Around him he saw great empty urns and beds, and hanging leafless trees. Above was the fog-shrouded sky. He hurried to keep up with the Comte, who was striding toward a large glowing greenhouse, the smeared windows diffusing the lantern light within. The Comte unlocked a glass-paned door and entered, holding it open for Svenson. Svenson walked through and into a wave of moistly cloying hot air. D’Orkancz shut the door behind, leaving the four guards in the garden. He nodded to a nearby hat stand.

“You will want to take off your coat.”

The Comte pulled off his fur as he crossed the greenhouse—which Svenson realized was carpeted—to a large canopied bed, the curtains drawn tight around it. He placed the coat, his hat, and his stick on a small wooden work table and delicately peeked through a gap in the curtains. He stared in for perhaps two minutes, his face impassive. Already Svenson could feel the sweat prickling over his body. He put his medical kit down and peeled off his greatcoat, feeling the weight of the pistol in the pocket, and hung it on the rack. He disliked being apart from the weapon, but he didn’t expect he could shoot his way past d’Orkancz and all of the guards in any case. With a glance, d’Orkancz gestured him to the bed. He held the curtain aside as Svenson drew near.

On the bed lay a shivering woman, wrapped in heavy blankets, her eyes closed, her skin pale, her breathing shallow. Svenson glanced at the Comte.

“Is she sleeping?” he whispered.

“I don’t believe so. If she were not cold, I should say it is a fever. As she is cold, I cannot say—perhaps you can. Please…” He stepped away from the bed, pulling apart the curtains as he did.

Svenson leaned forward to study the woman’s face. Her features struck Svenson as slightly Asiatic. He pulled up her eyelid, felt the pulse in her throat, noted with unease the cobalt cast of her lips and tongue, and with an even greater distress the impressions across her face and throat—similar to the kind of marks a corset (or an octopus) might imprint on a woman’s skin. He reached under the blankets for her hand, felt the cold of it, and listened to her pulse there as well. He saw that on the tip of each finger the skin had been worn away. He reached across the bed to find the other hand, where the fingers were identical. Svenson pulled the blankets back to her waist. The woman was nude, and the bluish impressions on her skin ran the length of her torso. He felt a movement at his side. The Comte had brought over the medical kit. Svenson fished out his stethoscope, and listened to the woman’s lungs. He turned to the Comte. “Has she been in water?”

“She has not,” rasped the Comte.

Svenson frowned, listening to her labored breathing. It sounded exactly like a person half-drowned. He reached back into the bag for a lancet and a thermometer. He would need to know her temperature, and then he was going to need some of her blood.

Some forty minutes later, Svenson had washed his hands and was rubbing his eyes. He looked out to see if the sun was coming up, but the sky was still dark. He yawned, trying to remember when he had last been up through an entire night—when he was more resilient, in any case. The Comte appeared at his side with a white china cup.

“Coffee with brandy,” he said, handing the cup to Svenson and walking back to the table to pick up his own. The coffee was hot and black, almost burned, but perfect. Along with the brandy—a rather large amount of brandy for so small a cup—it was exactly what he needed. He took another deep drink, finishing the cup, and set it down.

“Thank you,” he said.

The Comte d’Orkancz nodded, then turned his gaze to the bed. “What is your opinion, Doctor? Is it possible she will recover?”

“It would help if I had more information.”

“Perhaps. I will tell you that her condition is the result of an accident, that she was not in water—I can only assure you of this, not explain it convincingly—yet water was permeating her person. Nor was this mere water, Doctor, but a liquid of special properties, an energetically charged liquid. The woman had laid her person open to this procedure. To my great regret the procedure was interrupted. The direction of the liquid was reversed and she was—how to say this—both depleted and flooded at the same time.”

“Is this—I have heard—I have seen, on the Prince—the scarring—the Process—”

“Process?” d’Orkancz snapped in alarm, but then as quickly his voice became calm. “Of course, the Prince… you would have spoken to him, he would have been in a state to hold back nothing. It is regrettable.”

“You must understand that my interests here are my duty to protect him, and my duty as a doctor—in good faith—and if this”—Svenson gestured to the woman, her pale flesh almost luminous in the lantern glow—“is the danger you have exposed Karl-Horst to—”

“I have not.”

“But—”

“You do not know. The woman, if you please, Doctor Svenson.”

The sharpness of his tone stopped further protest in Svenson’s throat. He wiped the sweat from his face.

“If you’ve read my pamphlet enough to remember my name you know yourself already. She bears all the evidence of having been rescued after prolonged immersion in freezing water—the winter Baltic, for example. At certain temperatures the bodily functions slow precipitously—this can be both deadly and a preservative. She is alive, she breathes. Whether this has irreparably damaged her mind, I cannot say. Whether she will ever awake from this—this winter sleep—I cannot say either. Yet, I—I must ask about the marks across her body—whatever