Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“We did not know if you would revive, Doctor,” he called. “Not that we cared overmuch, you understand, but if you did it seemed advantageous to try and speak with you about your actions and your confederates. Where are the others—Chang and the girl? Who do you all serve in this persistently foolish attempt to spoil things you don’t comprehend?”

“Our conscience, Minister,” answered Svenson, his voice thicker than he’d expected. He wanted very much to sleep. Blood was creeping into his arm, and he knew abstractly that he was going to be in agony very soon as the nerves flooded back to life. “I cannot be plainer than that.”

Crabbe studied him as if Svenson could not possibly have meant what he said, and therefore must be speaking in some kind of code.

“Where are Chang and the girl?” he repeated.

“I do not know where they are. I don’t know if they’re alive.”

“Why are you here?”

“And how’s the back of your head?” chortled Aspiche.

Svenson ignored him, answering the Minister. “Why do you think? Looking for Bascombe. Looking for you. Looking for my Prince so I can shoot him in the head and save my country the shame of his ascending its throne.”

Crabbe twitched the corners of his mouth in a sketch of a smile.

“You seem to have broken this man’s arm. Can you set the bones? You are a doctor, yes?”

Svenson looked at Phelps and met his pleading eyes. How long had it been? Hours at least, with the raw fractures cruelly jarred with each step the poor fellow took. Svenson raised his shackled wrist. “I will need out of this, but yes, certainly I can do something. Do you have wood for a splint?”

“We have plaster, actually—or something like it, Lorenz tells me—they use it for mining, or for shoring up crumbling walls. Colonel, will you escort the Doctor and Phelps? If Doctor Svenson diverges from his task in the slightest, I’ll be obliged if you would hack off his head directly.”

They walked across the quarry, past the impromptu schoolroom, toward Lorenz. As they passed, Svenson could not help but glance at Miss Poole, who met his eyes with a dazzling smile. She said something to her listeners to excuse herself and a moment later was walking quickly to catch him.

“Doctor!” she called. “I did not think to meet you again, or not so soon—and certainly not here. I am told ”—she glanced wickedly at Aspiche—“that you have made yourself a most deadly nuisance, and have nearly slain our guest of honor!” She shook her head as if he were a charmingly disobedient boy. “They say that enemies are often closest in character—what separates them is but an attitude of mind, and as I think we all must see, those are eminently flexible. Why not join us, Doctor Svenson? Forgive me for being blunt, but when I first saw you in the St. Royale, I had no idea of your status as an adventurer—your legend grows by the day, even to the heights of your unfortunate friend Cardinal Chang, who I am led to understand is, well, no longer your competition in heroic endeavors.”

Svenson could not help it, but at her words he flinched. To the obvious anger of Colonel Aspiche, Miss Poole draped her arm in Svenson’s and clucked her tongue, leaning in to his face. Her perfume was sandalwood, like Mrs. Marchmoor’s. Her soft hands, the overwhelmingly delicate scent, the sweat around his neck, the hammering in his skull, the woman’s galling blitheness: Doctor Svenson felt as if his brain would boil. She chuckled at his discomfort.

“Next of course you will tell me you are a rescuer and defender of women—I have heard as much this very evening. But look”—she turned and waved to the Bascombe woman, sitting on the bench, who immediately waved back with the hopeful vigor of a whipped dog’s wagging tail—“there is Pamela Hawsthorne, the present Lady of Tarr Manor, and happy as can be, despite the unpleasant misunderstanding.”

“She has undergone your Process?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure she will. No, she has merely been exposed to our powerful science. Because it is science, Doctor, which I hope as a scientific man you will credit. Science advances, you know, just as must the moral fiber of our society. Sometimes it is dragged forward by the actions of those more knowledgeable, like a recalcitrant child. You do understand.”

He wanted to offend her, call her a whore, to crassly violate this pretense of companionable flirtation, but he lacked the presence of mind to form the appropriate insult. Perhaps he could vomit from dizziness. Instead, he tried to smile.

“You are very persuasive, Miss Poole. May I ask you a question—as I am a foreigner?”

“Of course.”

“Who is that man?”

Svenson turned and nodded to the tall figure next to Crabbe on the stair landing, looking over the quarry as if he were a Borgia Pope sneering down from a Vatican balcony. Miss Poole chuckled again and patted his arm indulgently. It occurred to him that she had not possessed this sort of power before the Process, and still searched for its proper expression—was he a child to her, a pupil, an ignorant tool, or a trainable dog?

“Why, that is the Duke of Staelmaere. He is the old Queen’s natural brother, you know.”

“I did not know.”

“Oh yes. If the Queen and her children were to perish—heaven forbid—the Duke would inherit the throne.”

“That’s a lot of perishing.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me. The Duke is Her Majesty’s most trusted sibling. As such he works most intimately with the present government.”

“He seems intimate with Mr. Crabbe.”

She laughed and was about to make a witticism when she was brusquely interrupted by Aspiche.

“That’s enough. He’s here to fix this man’s arm. And then he’s going to die.”

She bore the intrusion gracefully and turned to Svenson.

“Not much of a prospect, Doctor. I would consider a switch in alliances, if I were you. You truly do not know what you are missing. And if you never do, well…won’t that be too sad?”

Miss Poole gave him a smiling, teasing nod of her head and returned to her benches. Svenson glanced at Aspiche, who watched her with evident relish. Had she been groping Aspiche or Lorenz in the private dining room at the St. Royale? Lorenz, he was fairly sure—though it looked as if Lorenz was quite occupied with his smelting and could not be bothered. Svenson saw the man empty one of the bandolier flasks into a metal cup that his assistants were preparing to stuff into the raging kiln. He wondered what the chemical process really was—there seemed to be several distinct steps of refinement…were these for different purposes, to convert the indigo clay to distinct uses? He looked back at Miss Poole, and wondered where her glass book was now. If he could manage to capture that…

He was interrupted again by Aspiche, tugging his tingling arm toward Mr. Phelps, who was painfully attempting to take off his black coat. Svenson looked up at Aspiche, to ask for splints and for some brandy at least for the man’s pain, when he saw, looming in the orange kiln-light like the tattoos of an island savage, the looping scars of the Process scored across his face. How had he not noticed them before? Svenson could not help it. He laughed aloud.

“What?” snarled the Colonel.

“You,” answered Svenson boldly. “Your face looks like a clown’s. Do you know that last time I saw Arthur Trapping—which was in his coffin, mind you—his face was the same? Do you think, just because they have expanded your mind, that you are any less their contingent tool?”

“Be quiet before I kill you!” Aspiche shoved him toward Phelps, who began to move out of the way and then flinched with pain.

“You’ll kill me anyway. Listen—Trapping was a man with powerful friends, he was someone they needed. You can’t pretend to that—you’re just the man with the soldiers, and your own elevation should demonstrate how easily you too could be replaced. You mind the hounds when they need to hunt—it’s servitude, Colonel, and your expanded mind ought to be broad enough to see it.”

Aspiche backhanded Doctor Svenson viciously across the jaw. Svenson sprawled in a heap, his face stinging. He blinked and shook his head. He saw that Lorenz had heard the sound and turned to them, his expression hidden