The Dark Volume

“And if I had not arrived?”

“But you did arrive, Doctor.”

“You credit the notion of destiny, then?”

The Contessa smiled. “I credit the need to face facts. I am not one to entertain phantasms when I can entertain the real.”

“The objects on the blanket told you they had encountered me.”

“Why should I care?”

“Why indeed?”

Doctor Svenson reached for the cider. The bottle was two-thirds gone. “And what is this building? Surely it is your object in Parchfeldt Park.”

“To so arrantly reveal your ignorance, Doctor Svenson—it shows bad form.”

“Rubbish yourself, madame.” Could mere cider be going to his head so quickly? “Do you think I cannot see the stiffness in your right shoulder?”

“I assure you, I am quite well.”

“You have taken the bottle each time with your left hand, even when I have placed it much nearer the right. If you have been injured, I should see what I can do—it will only make it easier for you to take my life when you finally decide.”

“Or for you to take mine directly.”

“If that were a worry, you would not be here.”

In a sudden afterthought to his logic, Svenson realized that he had taken a blow square to the right side of his head, from a woman directly behind him—which meant she must have used the full force of her arm, which strongly suggested his assailant had used her right arm. It could not have been the Contessa at the cottage—just as the Contessa could not have extricated Robert Vandaariff from Harschmort. But if the woman he had glimpsed next to Eloise had taken Robert Vandaariff from Harschmort, along with the Comte's paintings… at once the Doctor suddenly knew he had been knocked into the wardrobe by Trapping's wife, Charlotte.

The Contessa glanced to the road, then back to Doctor Svenson, her violet eyes inhabited by a curious gleam. As if she had come to a wicked decision, she reached into a canvas bag behind her and came out with a bottle and a rag.

“Such professional concern. You must give me a moment to undo my dress…”

HE COULD see the wound would scar. At another time he would have certainly stitched the gash together, but here he soaked it with the alcohol.

“This was not from the glass,” he said, as the Contessa flinched— not from pain, but from the cold drips that ran beneath her dress to the small of her back.

“Not from Francis, you mean?” Her hair hung over her face to provide a clearer view of the wound. “No. I had the misfortune of passing through a window.”

“A few inches higher and it would have cut your throat.”

She had removed her right arm from the dress, and the purple silk bunched in a rustling diagonal, revealing the Contessa's corset and a good deal of her body—even paler for the blackness of her hair.

“What is your opinion of my bandage?” she asked.

“I think you did very well to tie it yourself,” he answered, reaching carefully beneath her arm to redo the knot.

“It was not me at all,” said the Contessa, “but someone with much smaller fingers. It was a very long journey, you see, and just the two of us together.”

For an unguarded second Svenson imagined himself trapped in a freight car with the Contessa. Sharing an open fire was difficult enough. But the woman alone with Celeste Temple… what had they spoken of, and what— what else, it did not matter… nothing mattered as long as Miss Temple had emerged alive and unscathed. If only he could believe it.

“There you are,” said Doctor Svenson, sitting back on his knees.

She turned to face him, testing the ease of her arm and the tightness of the bandage, but not moving to do up her dress. Doctor Svenson swallowed, his medical objectivity steadily more confounded, like distant moonlight disappearing under cloud, as he stared. He forced his gaze up to hers, expecting a twinkling mockery, but the Contessa's eyes were warm and clear.

“If any girl could ever be dear to me, I can imagine Celeste Temple such a one, though my first impulse on seeing such a determined little beast was to snap her neck between my teeth. So to speak, you understand … and yet… perhaps it was this wound… perhaps the need to huddle together for warmth …”

“She—she is ferocious,” the Doctor stammered. “But still innocent.”

“I think you retain some innocence as well,” whispered the Contessa.

The moment was as dangerous as any Doctor Svenson had ever known. Despite all perspective and sense, her violet eyes remained pools into which he could, even now, be utterly lost, and in that losing give over all loyalty, all faith, all decency to her uncaring purpose. If he leaned forward to her lips, would she kiss him? Would she laugh? He licked his lips and dipped his gaze across her body. He could no longer recall the color of Eloise's eyes.

Doctor Svenson sprang to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers, and at once stumbled on a stone and toppled backwards into the undergrowth, landing with a grunt as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay gasping, the green leaves of forest ivy brushing at his face, and shoved himself onto his elbows. The Contessa had returned her arm to her dress, and was doing up the shining black buttons with her left hand.

“Are you quite alive?” she asked.

“My apologies.”

“Come back to the fire,” she said. “We have little time after all, and urgent matters to discuss.”

DOCTOR SVENSON took a cigarette from his case and lit it before he sat down, as if his habit might shield his weakness, but her expression made plain he was the least of her concerns. Grateful, if also childishly stung at his peripherality, he returned to his place across the fire.

“Where is Cardinal Chang?”

It was not at all what Svenson expected her to say, and he was strangely crestfallen.

“I have no idea.”

The Contessa was silent. Svenson exhaled and tapped his ash onto the stones.

“If you hope Chang will aid you any more than I—”

“Aid?” she snapped. “You are a presumptuous Teuton.”

Her mood had sharpened, or she had stopped bothering to hide it.

“Upon surviving the airship, madame, you must have assumed you were the only one of your Cabal—”

“Cabal?”

“What else does one call you and your… associates?”

“Anything else. The word smacks of businessmen playing with corn harvests.”

“My point,” continued the Doctor, “is that your allies must have been few—thus your enlistment of the poor boy in Karthe. He was quite badly killed, you know.”

The Contessa's eyes were harder. “The subject is not diverting.”

“You ask for Chang because you are alone and seek greater numbers—and since you do ask, since you do expect my help—”

“How very dramatic,” she sneered. “Ganz tragisch.”

Svenson's cigarette had burned nearly to his fingers. He took one last puff and dropped it into the fire. He looked the Contessa in the eye.

“You left the train deliberately to come here, to this spot in Parchfeldt Park. While this building is of a size to be a manor house, the construction is made for industry. The location of the canal allows the swift passage of goods—and yet the road and the canal are new-made. That you are here suggests you are one of the people who has new-made it—just as it is you who have made Xonck your enemy. You met him—in the village or on the way to Karthe. You most likely stole his horse, you certainly stole his book—and yet even after recovering it he was still doing his level best to find you.”