The Dark Volume

pine roof of an over-priced, underkempt room in a town he had no desire to know, the Doctor felt the weight of his isolation. Chang, by catching that train, could even at that moment have reached Stropping Station—back in a city where he lived as easily as a crow amongst carrion. But Svenson's escape from Karthe meant merely another destination for exile.

Should he offer himself to a workhouse hospital? Or to the brothels as an abortionist? He lit a cigarette and blew smoke above his head. How recently—how very recently—had his heart been as light as a fool's? What ridiculous visions had inflected the corners of his mind? During one evening meal at Sorge's, Eloise had described her uncle's cottage, near some park, her summers there as a child… a glimpse of another sort of life. It was all veneer, the very idea of taking walks, for goodness sake, or possessing genuine concern for a garden, or tending the feelings of another. The more the Doctor imagined it, the more it seemed beyond his abilities—as well as quite beyond hope.

SVENSON SAT listening to Mrs. Daube's distant puttering, and used both hands to quickly remove his boots. Walking softly in his stocking feet, the Doctor crept with the candle to the other guest rooms. The first was empty, the pallet rolled up against the bed frame. The next held Mr. Potts' things—travel valise, trousers and two shirts hanging from hooks on the wall, and a small pile of books on the bedside table— the navy's official book of tide tables, an engineering pamphlet on salvaging shipwrecks, and a distressingly thick serial novel, Handmaids to Messalina, which from randomly opened pages proved to be quite vigorously obscene.

Svenson peered beneath the bed. A second pair of shoes, a ragged newspaper—the Herald, folded to dire proclamations on “Privy Council Defiance” and “Epidemic Silences Industry”—and beyond them both, poking out from the far side of the bed frame, what looked like another book. Svenson stood, leaned carefully over the bed, and extracted a thin volume of poetry—without question the same he had seen belonging to Chang. Svenson craned his head toward the stairway, heard no one, and flipped through the book with both hands. What could have made Chang forget it—especially if his time with Mrs. Daube was so fraught with suspicion?

Chang would not have forgotten it—the man was, in his habits if not in his person, fastidious as a cat. He had left it for a reason, but it had been discovered by Mr. Potts. Svenson found a folded down page and Chang's terse note: “Our enemies live. Leave this inn …”

He crept back to his own room and hid the book beneath his bed.

THE DOCTOR sat near the hearth with a mug of beer. It was not especially good, but to the first beer to pass his lips in nearly a fortnight he was forgiving. Mrs. Daube clattered away in the kitchen. He wondered what Eloise was doing even then—most likely dismal conversation with Lina and Sorge. He wondered if Miss Temple was awake.

The front door opened to admit Mr. Bolte.

“I am afraid I must borrow your guest for a little time, Mrs. Daube,” he called, smiling in such a way as to let the woman know she had no say in the matter.

Mrs. Daube snorted at the Doctor. “What's it to me if you eat it cold?”

“WE HAVE found something,” Mr. Bolte explained once they were outside. “A clue.”

In the road waited Mr. Potts, and—his work at the train yards evidently finished—Mr. Carper, both with lanterns, and some men Svenson did not recognize, each standing with either a new-sharpened stave or a bright lantern.

“It was Mr. Potts' idea.” Bolte nodded to the crisply dressed city man. “Perhaps you will show the Doctor, Martin.”

Doctor Svenson disliked this newfound familiarity, but forced himself to smile with curiosity at Potts, aware that the man's own earnest expression was an untrustable veil. Svenson had been attached to the Macklenburg diplomatic party as personal physician to the late Prince, but everyone with a brain knew his true task, to control the young man's penchant for excess and scandal. If Potts was from the Ministry he must know of Svenson…which meant he must also know that Macklenburg had declared Svenson a criminal. Yet here was Potts, saying nothing, leading them all to a patch of scrub grass near the road, half-way between the dead boy's house and the Flaming Star.

Mr. Potts stroked his chin like a preening bird. “Indeed—well, it was this notion of the killer—the wolf— chasing the boy from the deathbed of his father to the rocks. I simply took a lantern and searched for any signs connecting the two—for example a trail of blood.”

“And was there?” asked Svenson.

“My word, yes,” replied Potts with a smile. “But not of blood! It's most strange, you see—nothing other than marbles! Beads of what to me looks like glass!” He crouched low, holding the lantern.

There in the dirt lay a scatter of flattened, bright stones that in the flickering light seemed to contain the blue shimmer of a tropical sea. Svenson saw instantly that this had been some fluid ejected in a stream—a jet of coagulating blood, or clotted saliva—that had then hardened in the cold air. Could the boy have been wounded in the house? Had he fled to the rocks, leaving this unnatural trail?

He realized Potts was watching him closely. Svenson cleared his throat.

“Do you gentlemen know their… source?”

“We rather hoped you did,” replied Bolte.

“I am afraid this is beyond my knowledge. But perhaps Mr. Potts—”

“Not I.” Potts fixed his gaze on Svenson.

“Then let us hurry on,” Mr. Bolte urged. “Back to the rocks.”

AS THEY walked, Mr. Bolte speculated whether the blue marbles might have come from some hitherto unknown mineral deposit or whether the boy's father had cadged them from unsavory dealings— here Bolte's voice dropped low—with a gypsy.

“I should not think Karthe has traffic with gypsies,” offered Svenson.

“We do not,” insisted Bolte.

“Because of the isolation, I mean.”

“Precisely.”

“Then perhaps…” Potts risked a glance to the Doctor. “… we have not found a gypsy's marble. Perhaps it comes from a wolf… eating something unnatural.”

Mr. Carper called over their shoulders, for he had fallen behind, his voice thick with effort. “A hungry wolf will eat anything!”

Svenson felt Potts watching him and groped for some reply, but then they reached the rocks. With so many lanterns lighting up the inner clearing like an unnatural dark-skied summer day, the horrifying nature of the boy's last hour was inescapable. The rock face below his cleft of refuge was thickly striped in both blood and gleaming blue. The child had been clawed to pieces like a cornered rat—his assailant striking again and again from below, hacking at the legs but never able to catch a grip to pull the boy to the ground. Svenson turned away, dismayed to his heart. His gaze fell upon a ring of blackened stones, a fire pit. Potts called to him.

“It seems to have been recently used, does it not?”

“It might have been the boy,” Svenson speculated aloud. “Or a miner in transit with no money for the inn.”

“But if it wasn't?” asked Potts.

“Who do you mean?” asked Bolte.

“I do not know. But if someone else might have been here…”

“I saw no one,” said Svenson, “when I found the boy.”

“Perhaps they too fell victim,” wheezed Mr. Carper, who did not seem the better for the walk. “Or perhaps they ran away.”

“Perhaps they left a trail themselves,” observed Svenson, and he looked meaningfully at Mr. Potts. Immediately Potts was snapping orders at the other men—without a qualm for Mr. Bolte's ostensible authority— spreading them out to search the ground.

Svenson looked up at the mournful crevice where the boy had lain. He turned to Mr. Carper. “If I might trouble you for a push, sir?”