Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Celeste’s, her lips curled in a desperate mixture of anguish and delight. Chang was startled and stepped away from Mrs. Marchmoor, releasing his grip. She threw back the covers and stood, walking toward a pile of discarded clothes on the floor. She was tall and more graceful than he would have thought. Quite deliberately she turned her back to him and bent over at the waist for a robe—rather like a dancer—exposing herself lewdly in the process. As she stood—glancing back to confirm Chang’s appreciation with a smile—he noticed a lattice-work of thin white scars across her back, whip marks. She slipped into her robe—pale silk with a great red Chinese dragon across the back —and tied the sash with a practiced gesture, as if her hands were marking the well-known end, or the start, of some arcane ritual.

“I see your face is healing,” said Chang.

“My face is of no consequence,” she answered, nudging her foot through the pile of clothes, finding a single slipper as she spoke and stuffing her foot into it. “The change takes place within, and is sublime.”

Chang scoffed. “I only see you’ve left the service of one brothel for another.”

Her eyes became sharp—he had offended her, he saw with great satisfaction.

“You have no idea,” she said, affecting a lightness he knew was false.

“I’ve just watched another undergo your hideous Process—quite against his wishes—and I can tell you now, if you’ve done that to Miss Temple—”

She laughed—contemptuously. “It is no punishment. It is a gift—and the very notion—the very ridiculous notion that—that person—your precious Miss Inconsequent—”

Chang felt a moment of profound relief, a reprieve from a fear he hadn’t realized was with him—that Celeste would become one of them…almost as if he would rather she were dead. But Mrs. Marchmoor was still speaking. “…cannot appreciate the capacity, the reserves of power…” It was a quality of pride, he knew, especially in those who in their lives have been subject and then elevated—years of withheld speech turned their mouths into arrogant floodgates, and her quick turn from coy seductress to haughty lady made Chang sneer. She saw the sneer. It inflamed her.

“You think I do not know what you are. Or who she is—”

“I know you hunted us both through the brothels—without skill or success.”

“Without success?” She laughed. “You are here, aren’t you?”

“As was Miss Temple. Where is she now?”

She laughed again. “You truly do not understand—”

Chang stepped forward quickly, took a handful of the front of her robe and threw the woman bodily onto the bed, her white legs kicking free as she fell. He stood over her, giving her a moment to shake the hair from her face and look up into his depthless eyes.

“No, Margaret,” he hissed. “You do not understand. You have been a whore. Giving up your body is no longer cause for delicacy, thus you will understand, given my profession…well, just imagine what no longer causes me to hesitate. And I am hunting you, Margaret. This day I have set Francis Xonck on fire, I have defeated the Prince’s Major, and I have survived the trickery of your Contessa. She will not trick me again—do you understand? In these things—and I know these things—there are rarely second chances. Your people have had their chance to kill me— the only one of you that could—and I survived. I am here to find—quickly—whether you are of the slightest— the slightest—use to me whatsoever. If you are not, then I assure you I don’t have the slightest qualm in exterminating you as if you were just one more rat in a filthy infestation that I am—believe me—going to destroy.”

He pulled his stick apart as dramatically as he could—hoping the speech hadn’t been too much—and allowed his voice to become more conversationally reasonable.

“Now, as I have asked…Margaret,…where is Miss Temple now?”

It was then that Chang first took in the severity of the Process. The woman was not stupid, she was alone, she possessed reason and experience, and yet, even though her eyes had widened in terror when he had taken out his blade, she began to rant at him, as if the words themselves were weapons to drive him away.

“You’re a fool! She is gone—you’ll never find her, she is beyond rescue—she will be beyond your comprehension! You live like a child—you are all children—the world was never yours, and it never will be! I have been consumed and reborn! I have surrendered and been renewed! You cannot harm me—you cannot change anything—you are a worm in the mud—get away from me! Get out of this room—cut your own throat in the gutter!”

She was screaming and Chang was suddenly furious—the deep disdain in her voice pricking his composure like a venomous fang. He dropped his stick and with his left hand took hold of her kicking ankle and yanked her body sharply toward him. She sat up, screaming still, her face quite mad now, not even bothering to fend him off with her arms, spittle flying from her lips. The dagger was in his right hand. Instead of stabbing her, he forced himself to drive a punch into her jaw, his fist bolstered by the cane-hilt. Her head snapped back—his fingers were jarred cruelly—but she did not fall. Her words became more disjointed, there were tears at the corners of her eyes, her hair was ragged.

“—worth nothing! Ignorant and abandoned—alone in rooms—pathetic rooms of pathetic bodies—kennels—the rutting of dogs—”

He dropped the dagger and struck her again. She sprawled across the bed with a grunt, her head hanging over the other side, silent. Chang shook his hand, wincing, and sheathed the dagger. His fury was gone. Her contempt for him was so clearly one with her contempt for herself—he remembered Mrs. Kraft saying Margaret Hooke had been the daughter of a mill owner—that he let it pass. He wondered if anyone else in the hotel had heard, and hoped that such screams—judging perhaps by the profusion of empty bottles—were not unusual in the rooms of Rosamonde, Contessa Lacquer-Sforza. He looked down at Margaret Hooke’s body—the gapping robe showed the softness of her belly and the open tangle of her legs, somehow strangely poignant. She was a handsome woman. Her ribs rose and fell with each still-ragged breath. She was an animal like anyone else. He thought of the scars on her back, so different perhaps from the scars on her face—both testament to her submission to the desires of others more powerful, yet each also the mark of some inarticulate groping on her part, for peace of mind. Her vitriolic eruption told Chang she had not found it yet, but merely imprisoned her discontent beneath layers of control. It was perhaps more poignant than anything. He straightened her robe, allowing himself a moment to run his hand along her hips, and made his way unseen from the hotel.

As he walked in the darkened streets, Chang ran over the words of Mrs. Marchmoor in his mind…“beyond rescue”…which either meant that something had already happened to Celeste, or was so certain to happen that he would be unable to alter it. Her arrogance made him think the latter. He felt the clumping weight of Celeste’s ankle boots in each side pocket of his coat. It was likely, he felt, that they had taken her to some concentration of power—perhaps to convert her with the Process, perhaps to merely kill her—but if that were so, why not already do it? With a sickening thought, his mind went to Angelique and the glass book. Would they dare to repeat that ritual with Celeste? Their attempt with Angelique had been spoiled by his interruption—but what would be a successful outcome? He had no doubt that it was somehow even more monstrous.

The first question was where they would take her. It would be either Harschmort—where they had taken the boxes—or Tarr Manor—which Rosamonde had asked him about. Both places would offer solitude and space, without any outside interference. He assumed Svenson had reached the Manor, and so perhaps he ought to go to Harschmort…but if such forces were in fact in play, could he rely on the Doctor to effect a rescue? He had an image of that earnest man, an inert Celeste over one shoulder, trying to walk while firing the pistol at a pursuing gang of Dragoons…utterly doomed. He had to know where they had taken her. A wrong guess could destroy them all. He would have to risk a visit to the Library.

Like most great buildings, the Library was of a size to be without adjacent rooftops that might have removed the problem altogether. The high front double doors and the rear staff entrance both had regular postings of guards inside, even during the night. From a vantage point of forty yards away, Chang could also see the black Macklenburg troopers slouching in the shadow of the columns that lined the front steps. He assumed they were at the rear as well—presenting him with guards within and without. Neither mattered. Chang jogged to a squat stone structure perhaps fifty yards away from the main edifice. The door had a crude wooden bolt, but a minute of concerted effort with the dagger—sliding it through the gap, digging into the bolt, pushing it a fraction of an inch to the side, again and again—had the door open. He stepped in and closed it behind him. In the dim light from the one barred window