Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

exchange for telling me where the Prince was—at the Institute. That was the curious thing, for she told me where he was, allowing me to take him away quite against the wishes of Crabbe and d’Orkancz. This was why I had thought to find her again—for while someone took the Prince from our rooftop tonight, at least some of these conspirators—Xonck and Crabbe—seemed ignorant of his whereabouts. I had hoped she might know.”

Miss Temple felt the back of her neck tingle. “Perhaps it would help, Doctor, if you could describe the woman.”

“Of course,” he began. “A tall woman, black hair, curled about her face and gathered in the back, pale skin, exquisite clothing, elegant to an almost vicious degree, gracious, intelligent, wry, dangerous, and I should say wholly remarkable. She gave her name as Madame Lacquer-Sforza—one of the hotel staff referred to her as Contessa—”

“The St. Royale Hotel?” asked Chang.

“The same.”

“Do you know her?” asked Miss Temple.

“Merely as ‘Rosamonde’…she hired me—that is what people do, hire me to do things. She hired me to find Isobel Hastings.”

Miss Temple did not speak.

“I assume you know the woman,” said Chang.

Miss Temple nodded, her earlier poise slightly shaken; as much as she tried to deny it, the Doctor’s description had conjured the woman, and the dread she inspired, freshly into her thoughts.

“I do not know her names,” said Miss Temple. “I met her at Harschmort. She was masked. At first she assumed I was one of a party with Mrs. Marchmoor and others—as you say, a group of whores—but then it was she who questioned me…and it was she who gave me over to die.” As she finished speaking, her voice seemed painfully small. The men were silent.

“What is amusing—genuinely amusing,” said Chang, “is that for all they are hunting us, we are not at all what they assume. My own portion of this tale is simple. I am a man for hire. I also followed a man to Harschmort—the man you saw dead, Doctor—Colonel Arthur Trapping. I had been hired to kill him.”

He took a sip of tea and watched their reactions over the rim of his cup. Miss Temple did her level best to nod with the same degree of polite detachment as when someone mentioned a secret keenness for growing begonias. She glanced at Svenson, whose face was blank, as if this new fact merely confirmed what he’d already known. Chang smiled, somewhat bitterly, she thought.

“I did not kill him. He was killed by someone else—though I did see the scars you mentioned, Doctor. Trapping was a tool of the Xonck family—I do not understand who killed him.”

“Did he betray them?” asked Svenson. “Francis Xonck sunk his body in the river.”

“Does that mean Xonck killed him, or that he didn’t want the body found—that he could not allow it to be found with the facial scars? Or something else? You mentioned the woman—why would she betray the others and allow you to rescue your Prince? I have no idea.”

“I was able to examine the Colonel’s body briefly, and believe he was poisoned—an injection of some kind, in his finger.”

“Could it have been an accident?” asked Chang.

“It could have been anything,” answered the Doctor. “I was about to be murdered at the time, and had no mind to reason clearly.”

“May I ask who hired you to kill him?” asked Miss Temple.

Chang thought for a moment before answering.

“Obviously it is a professional secret,” Miss Temple said. “Yet if you do not wholly trust that person, perhaps—”

“Trapping’s adjutant, Colonel Aspiche.”

Svenson laughed aloud. “I met him yesterday in the presence of Madame Lacquer-Sforza at the St. Royale Hotel. By the end of the visit, Mrs. Marchmoor—” He glanced awkwardly at Miss Temple. “Let us say he is their creature.”

Chang nodded and sighed. “The entire situation was wrong. The next day there was no body, no news, and Aspiche was useless and withdrawn, because—as you confirm—he was in the midst of being seduced. In short order, it was I who met seduction, in the form of this woman, who hired me to find one Isobel Hastings—a prostitute who had murdered her very dear friend.”

Miss Temple snorted. They looked at her. She waved Chang on.

“With this description, I searched several brothels—never, for reasons that are now obvious, finding Isobel Hastings, but soon learning that two others—Mrs. Marchmoor and Major Black—”

“Blach, actually,” said Svenson, providing the proper pronunciation.

“Blach, then,” muttered Chang. “They were both searching for her as well, and in the Major’s case at least, also searching for me. At Harschmort, I had been seen—and I am a figure some people know. When I returned to my own lodgings one of the Major’s men tried to kill me. A trip to a third brothel led me to follow a small party—your Prince, Bascombe, Francis Xonck, a large fellow in a fur—”

“The Comte d’Orkancz,” said Svenson.

“O!” said Miss Temple. “I have seen him as well!”

“He had taken Margaret Hooke from this same brothel, and was now taking another woman—I followed them to the Institute—saw you enter, Doctor, and followed you down. They are doing strange experiments with great amounts of heat and blue glass…” Chang picked up one of the blue cards from the tray. “It is the same glass, but instead of these small cards, here—and with great effort, with vast machinery—they had made a blue glass book—unfortunately the man making it was startled—by me—and dropped it. I am sure he is the man you saw on the Deputy Minister’s table. In the confusion I escaped, only to meet your Major and his men. I escaped from them as well, and found my way here…quite entirely by chance.”

He leaned forward and took up the pot, pouring another round of tea. Miss Temple cradled her fresh cup and allowed it to warm her hands.

“What did you mean when you said we are not what our enemies assume?” she asked Chang.

“I mean,” Chang said, “that they believe that we are agents of a larger power—a cabal opposing their interests that has hitherto existed without their knowledge. They are so arrogant as to think that such a body—a mighty union of insidious talents like themselves!—is all that could possibly threaten them. The idea that they have been attacked by the haphazard actions of three isolated individuals—for whom they have contempt? It is the last thing they could believe.”

“Only because it does not flatter them,” Miss Temple sniffed.

Doctor Svenson was in the other room, asleep. His coat and boots were being cleaned. For a time Miss Temple and Chang had spoken about his experience of the hotel, and the coincidence that had brought all three of them together, but the conversation had fallen into silence. Miss Temple studied the man across from her, trying to make palpable sense of the knowledge that he was a criminal, a killer. What she saw was a certain kind of animal elegance—or, if not elegance, efficiency—and a manner that seemed both brazen and restrained. She knew this was the embodiment of experience, and she found it an attractive quality—wanting it for herself—even as she found the man daunting and disquieting. His features were sharp and his voice was flat and raw, and direct to a point just before insolence. She was intensely curious to know what he thought of her—what he had thought when he saw her on the train, and what he thought now, seeing her normal self—but could not ask him any of these things. She felt he must somehow despise her—despise the hotel room, the tea, the entirety of her life—for if she herself were not born to privilege, she was sure she would carry with her a general hatred for it every day of her life.

Cardinal Chang watched her from his chair. She smiled at him, and reached into her green bag.

“Perhaps you will help me, for I am only now tackling the matter…” She pulled out the revolver and placed it on the table between them. “I have sent out for more ammunition, but have little sense of the weapon itself. If you are knowledgeable about it, I would appreciate any advice you can give me.”

Chang leaned forward and took the revolver in his hand, cocking it, and then slowly easing the hammer down. “I am not one for firearms,” he said, “but I know enough to load and fire and keep a weapon clean.” She nodded with anticipation. He shrugged. “We will need a cloth…”

Over the next half an hour he showed her how to reload, to aim, to break the gun apart, to clean it, to put it