The Dark Volume

essential truths—claptrap— but what essence did a man like Vandaariff still possess? Even without the Comte's book, she knew the main advantage of the Process for the Cabal was the insertion of a control phrase, allowing them to issue commands the subject would be forced to obey. At once she understood—a control phrase had just been implanted in Vandaariff and given to both parties.

“Charlotte, your daughter is at stake.” Eloise pointed toward Mr. Leveret. “And that man will not tell you what you need to hear.”

“And who are you?” Leveret snorted. “That child's tutor!”

“Mrs. Trapping knows very well what I am,” answered Eloise. “And she ought to know what it has cost me. Charlotte, think! Once they get what they want, you will not matter!”

“But they have not got anything, Mrs. Dujong,” cried Leveret hotly, “nor will they!” He smugly snapped his fingers at a pair of crouching soldiers. “We stand quite completely protected—by a Xonck Armory 296 explosive shell!”

Leveret surveyed the silent room with satisfaction. “A 296 explosive shell, Mrs. Dujong, will shatter every piece of glass in this building. As our windows lack glazing, the glass I refer to stands there.” He stabbed a long, thick-knuckled finger at Mrs. Marchmoor. “And at the first sign of—of—alchemical, mind-bludgeoning, dream-sniffing, thought-eating nonsense, those men will push their plunger and that creature's newest allies shall be a broom and dustpan!”

“What side are you on, Eloise?” called Mrs. Trapping. The woman was smiling. Leveret broke into a confident grin, looking back at her.

“Charlotte,” Eloise pleaded, gesturing to Francesca, “it is not about mere sides.”

“But it is, Mrs. Dujong,” called another voice. “And you must get out of the center… before you are killed there.”

Doctor Svenson stepped toward Eloise, his arm outstretched. His uniform was shabby and his face smeared with soot, but his blue eyes were clear. Stranded in the center of the room, Eloise looked down at his extended hand. As if his gesture was especially unbearable, she veered away with a cry, standing alone with her arms crossed and one hand covering her mouth.

“WE'LL NOT waste more time,” announced Mrs. Trapping. She turned to Fochtmann and clapped her hands together, as if she were calling a dog. “I trust you are finished?”

The tall man bowed gravely and motioned Mrs. Trapping and Mr. Leveret farther away. He had secured black hoses across Vandaariff's body, strapped the black rubber mask across his face, and swaddled the black webbed gloves around his hands and bare feet. Lord Vandaariff sat wrapped like a stuporous insect, stuffed away for future consumption in some spider's larder. Miss Temple wondered at how easily people who two weeks before would have licked this man's boot heel for the merest scrap of attention now treated him like a slave. Vandaariff's fate—pathetic, degraded—seemed only what any of them would receive, or even merit.

Fochtmann turned dramatically to face them all, pulling the brass helmet onto his head. At the wash of ash in her mouth, Miss Temple gagged.

“It will not work!” she croaked.

“Of course not!” Fochtmann barked through the helmet's voice box. “We have not restored the power.”

Fochtmann signaled the men and the line of silver machines roared back to deafening life. Then he pulled down the brass handle with the flourish of a circus showman.

Nothing happened. Fochtmann raised it up, prodded a bit of wiring, and pulled it down even harder. Nothing happened. Fochtmann waved angrily at the men, and the machines powered down. Fochtmann pulled off the helmet, his face hot and the bandage on his brow flapping loose. He strode toward Miss Temple.

“Why did you say it would fail? What do you know?”

“You lack a device… to manage the flow.” Miss Temple's words slurred.

“What device?” demanded Fochtmann, taking hold of her jaw.

“She does not have it,” said Chang.

“And you do?”

“No…”

Chang turned, and every eye in the room shifted with him, toward the Contessa.

“Once again you block our way, madame!” cried Mrs. Trapping. She snapped her fingers, but before the soldiers reached the Contessa, the woman raised her hand and delved into her clutch bag.

“My goodness, Charlotte,” the Contessa replied with an icy brightness. “Allow me to help you all.”

She extracted a shining metal implement from the bag. With two tugs she doubled its size, stretching the device like a telescope until it took the shape of an old-fashioned pistol, with a ball-shaped handle on one end and a barreled tube on the other.

“The marrow sparge,” said Chang.

The Contessa spared him one glacial smile and then tossed the thing in a lazy arc to Fochtmann, who caught it with both hands.

“Now, in exchange…” the Contessa began calmly, as if her words were not an explicit plea for her life.

“O do not!” sneered Mrs. Trapping. “Because I have been powerless you think I have seen nothing! I see you now—in tatters, like a gypsy! This business no longer requires you, madame—nor my brother, who has been a ghost these many years. You have lost your wager!”

Mrs. Trapping's face was red and her hands were clutching her side. Mr. Leveret reached for her arm but she shook him away. The Contessa had not moved.

“As you desire, Charlotte,” she said. “Of course, there remains much that none of you know, despite your presumption—all of Macklenburg, for example, as ripe for plunder as Peru, and richer to our interests than a continent full of silver. And even more beyond Macklenburg— initiatives have begun in Vienna and Cadiz, in Venice—”

“What initiatives in Venice?” asked Mr. Phelps, rather quickly.

“Precisamente,” laughed the Contessa. Then the laughter caught in her throat and the light stalled in her eyes. She clawed at the air, and gasped through her open mouth, an animal panting. The glass woman withdrew. The Contessa met their gazes, eyes fierce, her voice raw as she called to the glass woman.

“You may harvest facts from my brain, Margaret. But beyond fact lies an understanding you cannot capture—and that is my instinct. I outwitted Robert Vandaariff and Henry Xonck—and it ought to be clear to a hare-lipped infant that if you proceed without me now, it is at your peril.” She turned to Fochtmann, snorting at the metal device he held. “I watched Oskar create the marrow sparge himself. Do you even know what it is?”

“It connects below the skull,” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor. “There are hidden needles.”

Fochtmann snorted upon finding the needles—as, now he had the tool, how obvious was its purpose—and set at once to its installation. Mrs. Trapping watched him for a moment but then looked away, impatient and cross.

“What is a ‘sparge’?” she asked, generally.

“A medieval term,” said Doctor Svenson, after no one else replied. “For the Comte, the meaning would be alchemical—to aerate, to infuse—”

“That tells me nothing,” Mrs. Trapping muttered.

“Why ask a German?” Leveret replied with a sneer.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “With this device in place, the energy from the book will be sent directly along Lord Vandaariff's spine, infusing the natural fluid there. This same fluid bathes the primary mass of nerves—the spinal column as well as the brain. It is the alchemical marrow.”

“Will that work?” Mrs. Trapping asked doubtfully.

“If it does not also boil his brain like a trout.”

“We have seen it,” grunted Xonck from the depths of his distress. “At the Institute—the Comte wiped the mind of a caretaker, then infused it with the memories of an African adventurer he had harvested that week at the brothel. The old man's mind became nothing but slaughtered dervishes and impregnated tribeswomen.”