Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

more.”

He reached in his pocket for another cigarette. They did not answer, though he noted with some satisfaction their eyes had widened with discomfort. He replaced his monocle and nodded. “I do beg your pardon…” and made his way to the corridor.

Once there Svenson found a match and lit his cigarette, breathing deeply and attempting to gather his scattered mind after this ridiculous interruption. The train was racing north, the trackside lined with hovels and debris and tattered stunted trees. He could see clustered figures around cooking fires, and ragged children running, followed by excited dogs. Moments later these were gone and the train shot through a luxuriant royal park, then past a small square of white stone monuments that reminded him of France. He exhaled, blowing smoke against the glass, and noted the differences between traveling by land and by sea—the relative density and variety of spectacle one saw on the land versus the sparse nature of even the richest seascape. It was an irony, he noted, that the relative plenty of the land absolved him of thought—he was content to watch it flow by—whereas the sameness of the sea drove him inward. Life on land—though he welcomed it, in some northern sort of self- criticism—struck him as somehow lazy and distracted from the higher goals of ethical scrutiny, of philosophical contemplation that the sea enforced upon a man. The couple in the compartment—apes, really—were a perfect example of land-bound self-satisfaction. His mind drifted painfully to Corinna, and her life in the country—though she had read so voraciously that it seemed to him she carried an ocean in her mind—for they had spoken of this very thing…she had always promised to visit him and sail…Doctor Svenson pushed his thoughts elsewhere, to Miss Temple. He reflected that her own experience of the sea, on an island and on her passage over, must inform the part of her character he found most remarkable.

He forced himself to walk down the corridor, glancing again into the compartments—perhaps there was a more hospitable place for him to sit. The other passengers certainly represented a variety—merchants and their wives, a party of students, laborers, and several better-dressed men and women that Svenson did not recognize, but could not help (for such was the world of Lacquer-Sforza, Xonck, and d’Orkancz) but view with great suspicion. What was more, it seemed that in every compartment there were couples of men and women—sometimes more than one—but never another single traveler, except possibly in one compartment, which held a single man and woman, sitting on opposite sides and apparently not speaking to each other. Svenson crushed his cigarette on the corridor floor and entered their compartment, nodding as each looked up at the sound.

Both were in the window seats of their respective row, so Doctor Svenson installed himself on the man’s side, nearest the door. Upon sitting he was at once markedly aware of his fatigue. He removed his monocle, rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, and replaced it, blinking like a dazed lizard. The man and woman were looking at him discreetly, not with the hostility of the couple in the first compartment, but rather with the mild civilized rebuke of suspicion that is natural when one’s relative solitude on public transport has been disturbed by a stranger. Svenson smiled deferentially and asked, by way of a conversational olive branch, if they were familiar with the Floodmaere line.

“Specifically,” he added, “if you might know the distance to Tarr Village, and the number of stops in between.”

“You are bound for Tarr Village?” asked the man. He was perhaps thirty and wore a crisp suit of indifferent quality, as if he were clerk to a lawyer of middling importance. His black hair was parted in the center and plastered flat to either side, the rigid grooves from his comb revealing furrows of pale flaking scalp contrasting with the flushed pink of his face. Was it hot in the compartment? Svenson did not think so. He turned to the woman, a lady of perhaps his own age, her brown hair braided into a tight bun behind her head. Her dress was simple but well- made—governess to some high-placed brats?—and she wore her age with a handsome frankness Svenson found immediately compelling. Where were his thoughts? First Corinna, then Miss Temple, the rutting dogs of Paradise, now he was ogling every woman he saw—and the Doctor chided himself for, even within that moment, examining the tightly bound swell of her bosom. And then in that same instant, he looked at the woman and felt a vague prick of recognition. Had he met her before? He cleared his throat and answered briskly.

“Indeed, though I have never been before.”

“What draws you there, Mr….?” The woman smiled politely. Svenson returned the smile with pleasure—he’d no idea where he might have seen her, perhaps in the street, perhaps even just then in the station—and opened his mouth to reply. In that very moment, when he felt it was just possible for his heavy mood to shift, his eyes took in the black leather volume she held in her lap. He glanced at the man. He had one as well, poking out from the side pocket of his coat. Was this a train of Puritans?

“Blach—Captain Blach. You will know from my accent that I am not from this land, but indeed, the Duchy of Macklenburg. You may have read of the Macklenburg Crown Prince’s engagement to Miss Lydia Vandaariff—I am attached to Prince Karl-Horst’s party.”

The man nodded in understanding—the woman did not seem to Svenson to react at all, her face maintaining its friendly cast while her mind seemed to work behind it. What could that mean? What might either of them know? Doctor Svenson decided to investigate. He leaned forward conspiratorially and dropped his voice.

“And what draws me are dire events…dire events in the world—I’m sure I have no need to elaborate. The cities of the world…well, they are realms of living sin. Who indeed shall be redeemed?”

“Who indeed?” echoed the woman quietly, with a certain deliberate care.

“I was traveling with a woman,” Svenson went on. “I was prevented—perhaps I should say no more about her—from meeting this lady. I believe she may have been forced to take an earlier train. In the process, I was deprived of my”—he nodded to the book in the woman’s lap—“that is, my guide.”

Was this too thick? Doctor Svenson felt ridiculous, but was met by the man shifting his position to face him fully, leaning forward in earnest concern.

“Prevented how? And by whom?”

This type of intrigue—play-acting and lies—was still awkward for Doctor Svenson. Even in his work for Baron von Hoern, he preferred discretion and leverage and tact over any outright dissembling. Yet, faced with the man’s open desire for more information, he had—as a doctor—enough experience with conjuring credible authority when he felt helpless and ignorant (how many doomed men had asked him if they were going to die? To how many had he lied?) to frame his immediate hesitation—trying to think of something—as the troubled moment of choice where he decided to trust them with his tale. He glanced at the corridor and then leaned forward in his turn, as if to imply that perhaps their compartment alone was safe, and spoke just above a whisper.

“You must know that several men have died, and perhaps a woman. A league has been organized, working in the shadows, led by a strange man in red, a half-blind Chinaman, deadly with a blade. The Prince was attacked at the Royal Institute, the powerful work there disrupted…the glass…do you know…have you seen…the blue glass?”

They shook their heads. Svenson’s heart sank. Had he completely misjudged them?

“You do know of Lord Tarr…that he—”

The man nodded vigorously. “Has been redeemed, yes.”

“Exactly.” Svenson nodded, more confident again—but was the man insane? “There will be a new Lord Tarr within days. The nephew. He is a friend of the Prince…a friend to us all—”

“Who prevented you from meeting your lady?” the woman asked, somewhat insistently. The nagging sense he had seen her persisted…something about the slight tilt of her head when she asked a question.

“Agents of the Chinaman,” Svenson answered, feeling an idiot even as he said the words. “We were forced to take separate coaches. I pray she is safe. These men have no decency. We were—as you well know—to travel together—as arranged…”

“To Tarr Village?” asked the man.

“Exactly.”

“Could any of these agents have boarded the train?” the woman asked.

“I do not believe so. I did not see them—I believe I was the last to board.”

“That is good at least.” She sighed with a certain small relief, but did not relax her shoulders, nor her cautious gaze.

“How should we know these agents?” asked the man.