“Will he offer us money, do you reckon?” said the one with the hook.
“I will not,” said the Doctor. “First, because I have none, and second, because whatever money I have will be yours in any case, once you knock me on the head.”
At this the men nodded, grinning that he had guessed their unstoppable plan.
“I cannot offer you anything. But I can ask you—while I have breath—for I know you will be curious, and it would pain me to leave such honest fellows—for I know you merely do what you must—in such very, very grave danger.”
They stared at him for just a moment. Svenson swallowed.
“What danger’s that?” asked the man with the shovel, shifting his grip in anticipation of swinging it rather hard into Svenson’s face.
“Of course—of course, no one has told you. Never mind—I’m not one to interfere—but if you would, for the sake of my conscience—promise to throw this, this
Before he could say another word the one with the shovel stepped forward and snatched the card from Svenson’s hand. He took two steps back, eyeing the Doctor with a sullen suspicion, and then looked down into the card. The man went still. His companion looked at him, then at Svenson, and then lunged over the other man’s shoulder to look at the card, reaching for it with a large calloused hand. Then he stopped as well, his own attention hooked into place.
Svenson watched with disbelief. Could it be so simple? He took a gentle step forward, but as he extended his hands to take the shovel the card came to the end of its cycle and both men emitted a small sigh that stopped his movement cold. Then they sank into the next repetition, jaws slack, eyes dull. With a brutal determination, Svenson snatched the shovel cleanly away and swept it down twice, slamming the flat blade across each man’s head, one after the other, as they looked up at him, still dazed. He dropped the shovel, collected the blue glass card, and turned away as quickly as he could. He had not used the edge—with luck each man would live.
A chopping roar echoed off the stone walls—such an encompassing din that he’d barely noticed it, assuming it was inside his battered skull. It must be the dirigible—its engine and propellers! What would drive such a thing, he wondered—coal? steam? The iron-framed cabin had looked woefully fragile. Had anyone heard his conversation with the men? Had anyone seen? He looked up, squinting—what had happened to his monocle?—at the demonic airship. It had risen to the height of the iron-red stone walls, tethered to the quarry bed only by a few small cables. There were figures in the window of the gondola, too far away to see clearly. He didn’t care about them—what had happened to Eloise? If she had not been taken to the oven with him—if she was not dead—then what had they done with her?
The tall staircase seemed empty save at the very top, where a cluster of figures had gathered on a level equal to the suspended dirigible’s cabin. On the quarry floor he saw only three men minding the last ropes, their attention focused upwards. Doctor Svenson limped toward the stairs, his right leg dragging, his neck and shoulders and head feeling as if they’d been wrapped in plaster and then set aflame. He wiped his mouth on his filthy sleeve and spat, having put more dust into his mouth than he’d wiped away. There was blood on his face—his own? He’d no idea. The figures on the giant staircase had to be the men and women from the train. Would Miss Poole be with them? No, he reasoned—no one would be with them. They’d served their purpose. Miss Poole would be waving from the gondola, off to Harschmort with the others. Where was Eloise?
Svenson walked more quickly, pushing against the objections of his body. His fingers dug into his coat and came out with his cigarette case. There were three left, and he stuffed one into his bloody face as he hobbled forward, and then exclaimed with pain when he tried to strike a match on a split thumbnail. He changed hands, lit the cigarette, and drew in an exquisitely taxing lungful of smoke, shaking the pain out of his hand, dragging his right foot forward, and finally heaving a thick bolus of phlegm and blood and dust from the back of his throat. His eyes were watering but the smoke pleased him nevertheless, somehow recalling himself to his task. He was becoming relentless, unstoppable, an adversary of legend. He spat again and in another stroke of luck happened to glance down at where he was spitting—to see if there was any visible blood—and saw something in the dirt catching the light. It was glass—it was his monocle! The chain had snapped when he was being dragged, but the glass was whole! He wiped it off as best he could, smiling stupidly, then pulled out his shirt-tail to wipe it again, his sleeve having hopelessly smeared things. He screwed it in place.
Crabbe stood framed in the small opened window, shouting to someone on the stairs. It was Phelps, evidently enough recovered to travel on his own. Next to Crabbe in the window was indeed Miss Poole, waving away. He did not see Lorenz—perhaps Lorenz was flying the craft. Doctor Svenson knew absolutely nothing about how these things worked, indeed, how they stayed in the air at all. Aspiche had to be inside. Where was the body of the Duke? Would that be in a cart, going back to the city with Phelps? Would that be where he found Eloise—dead or alive? It seemed likely—he would need to climb the stairs and follow them into Tarr Village.
He was half-way across the quarry, the airship looming larger above him with each step. Still no one had seen him, not even to look for the two stupefied men. Someone would have to turn—the fellows minding the cable would release it any moment. He’d never make the stairs—he couldn’t outrun a child. He needed to hide. Svenson stopped and looked around for some niche in the rock when something fell in the dirt some ten yards away. He looked at it—couldn’t tell what it was—and then turned his gaze to where it might have possibly come from. Above him, through the back window of the dirigible’s gondola, he saw a hand against the glass and a pale, half-obscured face. He looked again at what had fallen. It was a book…a black book…leather-bound…he looked up again. It was Eloise. He was an idiot.
The Doctor charged forward just as the nearest of the men minding the cables finally happened to look his way, but his cry of alarm at the strange, running figure emerged as an inarticulate shout. Svenson lowered his shoulder and cannoned into his midsection, knocking them both sprawling and the cable loose from the grounded spike that had held it. The rope began to snake around them as the dirigible surged against its moorings. The other two men released their own lines, thinking this had been the signal—only realizing their error once the lines had actually been slipped. Svenson struggled to his feet and dove for the whipping cable—he was insane, nearly gibbering with terror—and thrust his arm through the knotted loop at its end. The dirigible lurched upwards and with a shriek Svenson was pulled off his feet, some three feet in the air. The craft surged into the black sky, Doctor Svenson kicking his legs and holding to the rope more tightly than he ever imagined human beings could do. He swept past the crowd on the steps, swinging like a human pendulum. At once he was out of the quarry and over a meadow, the soft grass close beneath him for a sudden tempting moment. Could he drop and survive? His hand was tangled in the rope. Fear had made his grip hard as steel and before he could push another thought through his paralyzed mind the craft rose again, the meadow spiraling farther and farther away.
Black night above and around him, mocked by a chilling wind, Doctor Svenson looked helplessly at the impossibly distant gondola and began to climb, hand over bloodied hand, gasping, sobbing, all the terrors of hell screaming below his feet, his eyes now screwed shut in agony.
SEVEN
Royale
Once she made a decision, Miss Temple considered it an absolutely ridiculous waste of time to examine the choice further—and so from the vantage of her coach she did not debate the merits of her journey to the St. Royale Hotel, instead allowing herself the calming pleasure of watching the shops pass by to either side and the people of the city all about their day. Normally, this was not a thing she cared for—save for a certain morbid curiosity about what flaws could be deduced from a person’s dress and posture—but now, as a consequence of her bold separation from the Doctor and Cardinal Chang, she felt empowered to observe without the burden of judgment, committed as she was to action, an arrow in mid-flight. And the fact was, she did feel that merely being in motion had stilled the tempest of feeling that had overtaken her in the Comte’s garden and, even worse, in the street. If she was not up to the challenge of braving the St. Royale Hotel, then how could she consider herself any kind of adventurer?
