disabled— the light of the factory had dimmed, and its harsh song reduced to the hacking clatter of a carriage with one broken wheel. Their way to the front was barred by smoking wreckage and struggling men. Chang pulled her the other way, to the ruins, and they burst into the darkness, gasping in the cold night air, soldiers in green and red sprawled in death across the grass.
“Where are the others?” she whispered, looking around them at the empty yard.
“They have run on,” replied Chang, releasing her to pick up a fallen dragoon's bloodied saber. He pointed with the blade to a ladder set against the rough stone wall. “We must follow.”
“But where?” asked Miss Temple, running ahead of him, one hand on the ladder and the other gathering her dress so her feet might find the rungs. She gasped again as Chang's hands found her waist, lifting her up—which was not strictly necessary, her legs simply kicked in the air—and setting her down at a higher rung. As long as he did not meet her gaze the man seemed perfectly able to touch her body in the most presumptuous of ways.
“What will happen to the Comte?” she cried. “Or the Contessa?”
“They will be destroyed.” She felt Chang's weight behind her on the ladder.
“But if this mob knows them—if this factory becomes theirs—”
“Without their mistress these minions will not stand up to the soldiers, if enough soldiers survive to face them down.”
“Is that why you would not kill her yourself?” snapped Miss Temple, angrily. She reached the top of the wall and looked back over her shoulder. “You will not be encumbered with me, but are perfectly happy to protect a pestilent
Chang looked up as if she had spoken French and, for the first time in her memory, stammered. “If—if I had taken her head—her power balanced the others'—without her to stop the soldiers—or the Contessa—we all would have—”
Miss Temple snorted, this being no response at all, and threw a leg over the wall, clambering down an unstable slope of tumbled stone into the darkening shadows of the wood. She reached the bottom in a rush, staggering into the undergrowth. Chang descended more carefully behind her.
“Celeste—” he began, but she did not bother to listen.
“Doctor Svenson!” she shouted into the woods. “Doctor Svenson! Where are you?”
Chang seized her shoulder and hissed, “Do not call out! We do not know who is here!”
“Do not be ridiculous,” she cried, “and let me go!”
She pulled her arm free and stalked away, stumbling on a thicket of vines before locating a path.
“Celeste,” Chang whispered, following. “There is still Aspiche— and Phelps—who knows who else—”
“Then I suppose you will have to kill them. Unless you prefer I do that as well. I'm sure I have no idea of your preferences in anything.”
“Celeste—”
Miss Temple wheeled where she was and struck out with her right hand, slapping Cardinal Chang's chest. Chang caught her hand, and so she struck him with the other, this time a fist across his jaw, dislodging his glasses. Chang stabbed the cavalry saber into the ground and caught that hand as well. Miss Temple kicked his leg. He shook her.
Miss Temple looked at him, her hands held tight, and saw with a piercing despair the beauty of his jaw, the broad grace of his shoulders, and his especially elegant throat, bound as it was by a filthy neck cloth. Then with a swallow she looked into Chang's eyes, visible past the skewed black lenses… squinting and damaged… confused and hideous… and she realized that this man was the exact image of everything that had gone so horribly wrong, of so much she had lost and could never recover.
Like a striking snake Miss Temple stabbed her face up to his, her lips finding the rough stubble of his cheek and then his mouth, which was so much softer than she ever expected.
CHANG ARCHED his back with a cry and then, his eyes finding hers once more, shoved Miss Temple away from him with all his strength. She caught her foot on another vine and tumbled to her back, watching helplessly as Chang tried to turn, groping for the saber, only to collapse facedown on the forest floor. Behind him stood the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. In one hand she held her recovered spike, and in the other Lydia Vandaariff's leather case… but had not the book been destroyed by the shell? Could it have been protected inside its brass casing? Without pausing to cut Chang's throat—a sure sign of haste and anger—the Contessa lurched straight for Miss Temple, her face grim and cold. Miss Temple screamed aloud and kicked herself backwards through the leaves, finally rolling to her feet just as the Contessa was snatching at her dress.
Miss Temple tore away and broke into a run, careening blindly through the darkness, heart thudding in her chest, eyes streaming with tears.
She could not think at all but sobbed aloud each time she gasped for breath. Patches of moonlight pierced the treetops, but the heart of the forest remained dark. Miss Temple dodged unthinkingly between ruins and thin saplings, the branches whipping her face and limbs. She glanced behind, but saw no one—with the gash on her leg the Contessa must not be able to run.
Miss Temple knew she should go back, go die next to him—even as she kept running. What had she done? What had she lost? She sobbed again and then stumbled suddenly to a stop, blinking without comprehension.
The forest around her was flooded with light.
“LOOK WHO it is,” sneered an easy, careless voice from beyond the boxed lantern, whose gate had been flung open in a stroke to blind her. “Little Miss Stearne. Or should I say Temple?”
Miss Temple looked over her shoulder, terrified that the Contessa would appear, and wheeled back to the clearing, crying aloud at what she had not seen. On the ground lay Colonel Aspiche, curled around a pooling wound in his chest, matched by a smaller stain on his back where a blade had run him full through.
“Didn't see him in the dark,” explained Captain Tackham. “Terrible thing, he being my commanding officer. Still, mistakes happen in wartime—awful,
The men to either side of him, two dragoons, chuckled at his words.
“Are you alone?” asked Tackham, lifting his bloody saber blade toward her with a frank brutality. “We heard you call for that doctor … then you screamed.”
“One… one of the factory soldiers,” she said breathlessly. “I killed him… with a rock.”
“A rock?”
Miss Temple nodded and swallowed.
“Poor fellow. Was
“I don't know. I didn't see.”
“It seems you are
“I don't know—I—I am
Tackham snorted, and nodded to his soldiers. “Make sure, be careful, then come back.”
The troopers pushed past Miss Temple and vanished into the darkness. Tackham pointed with his blade just past the circle of lantern light, to where Mr. Phelps huddled on his knees, utterly cowed.
“I have been told what happened inside,” explained Tackham.
“My considered strategy is to safely wait, and then partake of what spoils remain.”
“There are
Tackham laughed in her face.
“Darling, I am looking at one top-shelf spoil this very instant.”
TACKHAM SPUN at a rustle in the leaves behind him, sweeping his saber to the figure who emerged… but when he saw who it was, the Captain laughed. Doctor Svenson advanced warily with a scavenged saber of his own, looking extremely tattered and worn. He met Tackham's gaze with contempt and then called to Miss Temple.
“Celeste… you've not been harmed?”
She shook her head, unable to say a thing about Chang, her throat closed tight against the words.
“Where…?” Mr. Phelps' voice was a croak. He gestured behind Svenson. “Where is…?”
“Mrs. Dujong?” Doctor Svenson gestured vaguely behind him. “I do not know. At the canal.”
“And the child?” asked Phelps.
“No longer your concern,” said Svenson.
“Put down your blade or die,” Tackham said coldly.
“Well,
