ten soldiers.
“Whatever is in your hand, drop it,” ordered the officer—a lieutenant by the bar on his collar and the single thin epaulette. “You are all prisoners of the Crown.”
Chang opened his palm and let the razor fall to his feet. The Lieutenant stepped into the room, the tip of his saber pricking Chang's breastbone. Chang retreated so he stood in a line with the two women and Vandaariff, who had leapt up at the crash of the door. The officer kicked the razor to the side with one muddied boot. Behind him four more dragoons entered, their saber blades glinting in the firelight.
“You are Chang,” announced the Lieutenant, as if to cross the name off a list of tasks. “Do not move.” He nodded once at Vandaariff. “Berkins, Crimpe—take him.”
Two troopers seized Vandaariff's arms and marched him away into the darkness. The officer's blade did not waver from Chang's chest.
“Ladies. I am Lieutenant Thorpe—”
“I know you very well, sir,” said Mrs. Trapping.
The Lieutenant nodded stiffly, not meeting her eyes. Instead his gaze went to Charlotte Trapping's leather travel case. Without a word he stepped to it, pulled it open, and sorted carefully through the clothing inside. He stood and then saw the clutch bag around her wrist. The Lieutenant held out his hand for it—the woman handed the thing across with a huff of indignation—and then pulled open the top. Chang heard clinking from inside, and then saw a glint of blue light reflecting off Thorpe's face. The bag was stuffed with blue glass cards… no doubt all looted from secret corners in Arthur Trapping's study.
Lieutenant Thorpe closed the bag and hardened his voice. “I have been pursuing this criminal from Harschmort House. That I have located your party as well is a kind coincidence. Sergeant!”
From the doorway came a massive man. He placed an iron hand around an elbow of each woman.
As she was pulled past Chang, Eloise whispered, “I am so sorry, so very sorry.”
Chang had no answer, and then she was gone. Thorpe sheathed his saber with a sweeping ring and followed the women outside, to whisper in his sergeant's ear. Chang stood alone, facing the firing squad of carbines in the window. Then Thorpe returned, studying him with a professional detachment.
“It was the horse, you know. We saw it from the road.”
“I know little of horses,” Chang replied.
“And that has cost you. Take off those glasses.”
Chang did so, having no other option, and took some satisfaction in the discomfort on the faces of the soldiers at the revelation of his scars. He folded the glasses into his pocket.
“I am obliged,” said Thorpe, and called behind him, “Corporal!”
A young soldier stepped forward, yellow chevrons on his sleeves. Chang smiled bitterly. The man's left leg was wet above his boot— here was the oaf who'd tripped into the pool.
“Secure him.”
The Corporal quite savagely drove a fist into Chang's abdomen, doubling him over, then stepped behind and laced his arms with Chang's, pinning them tight. With a brutal shove he drove Chang onto his knees. Chang looked up, fighting for breath. The three troopers had left the window. Thorpe was tugging on a thick pair of leather gauntlets, and the dragoon next to him held an open leather satchel. Another dragoon stood to Thorpe's other side, with a drawn saber, but Chang could no longer see any troopers through the door.
Had they all left with the sergeant and the prisoners? So they wouldn't see him die?
“My orders are simple,” said Thorpe. “You are too dangerous to keep alive, and yet what you know is extremely valuable. Therefore I have been instructed to
He reached carefully into the satchel and removed a square parcel wrapped in cloth. He looked at Chang, measuring him, and then spoke generally to his men.
“If one word of this is breathed to any other soul, I will see
Thorpe picked the cloth away with thick leather fingertips. The blue glass book flickered in the firelight. He knelt in front of Chang, so their faces were at a level, and delicately opened the book. Chang glanced once into the swirling blue depths and wrenched his eyes away.
“I am told,” the Lieutenant said, “that after this, when you are killed, you will not feel a thing. I have no relish for executions, so I hope it is true. Corporal?”
Chang felt a hand grip the hair on the back of his head and push him down. He twisted his face and shut his eyes, resisting with all his strength. This was an empty book. Gazing into it, or touching it with his flesh, would cause the whole of his memory to be drained like a wine-cask.
And why was he fighting it—merely pride? Was this not what he had wanted—oblivion after Angelique's destruction? Was this not what he sought in opium, in poetry, in the brothels? It was not a decision he cared to be made
The Corporal pushed down even harder. Chang's face was inches away. Would the orange rings in his pocket protect him? Or merely prolong his agony? He could feel the cold emanating from the slick surface—
THE DRAGOON standing guard with a saber shrieked like a woman and thrashed forward onto his face. Thorpe leapt free of the man's weapon, cradling the fragile book beneath his body. Chang just glimpsed a glittering spike of blue sticking out of the dying trooper's spine before a black-cloaked figure hurdled the body and tackled the Lieutenant into the rotting bench where Vandaariff had perched. The two men landed with a hideous crash, but then the shadowed figure rose and swept the cloak aside to reach for another blue stiletto. The officer's mouth gaped with harsh astonishment, the bulk of his torso frozen stiff, for the book had been crushed on impact and the broken sheets driven deep into his chest.
The men holding Chang went for their blades. Chang dove for the razor and slashed wildly behind him. The Corporal howled, blood spitting from his wrist, and Chang drove a heel into his groin. The Corporal doubled over and Chang kicked the man brutally across the jaw. Francis Xonck stood over the second soldier—whose open eyes gazed unnaturally backwards from his twisted head—a dragoon's saber in his non-plastered hand. Chang rolled to his feet, dropping the razor to seize the Corporal's blade.
But Xonck's face was a death mask, chin and neck dark with blue discharge, and his eyes fluttered, as if the room before him made up but a portion of what he saw, as if the effort of the attack—of controlling his mind enough to make it—had been too much. He stabbed the saber into the dirt, and held out an empty hand.
“There will be too many for myself alone… too many for you… perhaps you will accept… a temporary…
“These soldiers…” said Chang. “Mrs. Marchmoor…Margaret… she is coming.”
“I should think so.” Drool covered Xonck's lips. “That means she's found your little miss.”
AN HOUR later, twisting through the woods until even with the moon above them Chang had no idea of where they'd gone, and stopping twice for Xonck to be ill, they reached a ridge, and upon it a sudden gap of meadow. Far below curled a gleaming snake of canal water. From the canal a pale road had been cut through the trees, at the end of which loomed a bright building. Its high windows bled enough light into the black air for a Royal christening.
In the silence Chang could hear the thrum of machines.
“Frightfully bad form,” Xonck rasped next to him. “The swine have begun without us.”
Nine. Incision
DOCTOR SVENSON refused to consider himself the sort of man who might kill a woman, under even the most heinous of circum-stances, heinous being a perfectly apt word to describe the woman before him. The Contessa had requested a cigarette from the Doctor's case and was deftly inserting it into her black lacquered holder. She caught the Doctor's gaze and shyly smiled.
“Would you have any matches?”
Svenson slipped the dead barge-master's clasp knife into his trouser pocket and pulled out a box of
