The Dark Volume

their care, and so eased the animal's pace. He passed a stand of birch trees, planted as an estate boundary, but all of the surrounding lands had been gobbled up by Vandaariff's agents to ensure his privacy. Beyond the birches was a proper road, and on that road an inn. Chang pulled up and walked the horse to a trough of water. He was debating whether to slide from the saddle himself when a boy ran out from the inn with a mug of beer and a wadded cloth. He handed the mug to Chang and began at once to rub the horse with the cloth. Feeling he had been given a role to play—and since it only required drinking beer—Chang drank deeply, suddenly aware of how thirsty he was. He returned the empty mug, feeling one could enjoy country life after all, and dug in his coat for a coin, asking the boy in an idle tone where the road might take him. One direction looped back toward the Orange Canal station, and the other led all the way to the lonely coastal fortifications at Maxim-Leduc. He wondered aloud that the inn must not see many travelers, and the boy shook his head, accepting the tarnished old florin—he'd seen no other rider stop all day. Chang flicked his heels and nearly lost his perch as the mare shot forward, appalled at the figure he made, but far too occupied with staying aboard the animal to care.

HE CLATTERED across a small wooden bridge, children fishing down in the reeds to either side, thinking to inquire about Xonck but not wanting to again wrestle with a horse that had no inclination to stop. The road topped a gentle hill. At its crest Chang stood in the stirrups and saw, miles ahead, what must be Parchfeldt's thick green canopy. Then the road dropped down into an even denser wood, and Chang felt the air grow colder.

With a determined tug, Chang reined the mare until she walked, slow enough to study each side of the path as they went. If Xonck knew he was being followed, this was the best location so far for an ambush. Chang tried to remember what else he knew of Parchfeldt, from the maps and the newspapers, and from whatever Eloise had told them about her uncle's cottage—Eloise…the woman had slipped from Chang's thoughts!

Where was she now? He had not, frankly, expected to see her again—any more than a hundred others who had crossed his path on one unsavory matter or another: the widow Cogsall, the old ship's clerk, the basement- dwelling apothecary, or that Russian cook… or was she Hungarian? He remained haunted by her arm—the inch-long scar, from a stove. The ragged diffusion of his memory was echoed in the colors of the forest, trees in such number and variety to make him think he had never truly seen one in life before. But the vivid density of the wood only drove Chang's thoughts deeper. He pulled his collar up against the chill. Moisture leached into the earth here, giving off a cold that touched his very bones. In nature's eyes, human desire seemed a brief-lived thing, no more notable than the blind hopes of a fox for its cubs or a lark for the contents of each fragile egg.

THE ROAD was barred by a low wrought-iron gate, beyond which lay a wooden landing and the brick-lined canal. Chang listened in vain for any voices or recognizable sounds, then gripped tight to the saddle and swung himself to the ground. He patted the mare's neck as he had seen other horsemen do, and walked her to the gate.

The gate's clasp was sticky—he could imagine Xonck wiping his mouth on a sleeve, the slick fluid brushed onto the metal—but there was no lock. Chang looped the mare's reins around the gatepost to examine the situation unencumbered: there was no bridge, nor any tow-path to a bridge farther down. Chang peered into the black swirling water, seeing his own reflection with distaste. There was no further sign of Xonck, nor of Xonck's horse, which meant the beast had not been abandoned. Had they swum across? The drop from the facement to the water was perhaps two feet—easy enough to leap into, but to climb out again? Chang glanced back at the mare, contentedly watching him with her placid brown eyes, and shuddered. He pushed up his glasses and squinted at the far bank. Was it possible? Xonck was a gentleman, and could ride even a crazed horse to its limit.

Directly opposite the wooden landing was another just like it, and a continuing path. Chang dropped to a crouch. Beneath the other landing was some sort of ironwork, hanging down… after a moment of feeling especially dim he craned his head below his own landing and found a cast-iron lever. Chang pulled it and jerked back as the bridge speared forward across the black canal, slamming into the far couplings with enough force to skewer a wild boar. He stood and studied it with dislike: the bridge was but a yard in width and did not look to hold a man, much less a horse. Yet on the center plank, smeared by retraction and extension, gleamed another patch of blue.

The mare crossed as blithely as it had borne his ignorance. It took Chang three attempts to regain the saddle, but she stood patiently through them all.

THE NARROW path wound uphill through trees, to meet a more proper country road covered with leaves. Chang did his best to place the direction of the road by the fading light, and orient that direction with reference to the factory—or where he, without having paid special attention to the map, conjectured it being. He clapped his heels, spurring the mare to a trot. He would only discover if he'd made a mistake in the brief time before the light was gone. He needed to hurry.

The path veered deeper into the woods and he began to pass ruins—broken boundary fences, road markers, the remnants of walls—all echoing the gnawing discomfort of his body. The path skirted a tumbled gatehouse, but Chang could detect no sign of the manor it once had guarded. He detected no sign of Xonck either, and so rode on, still hoping to reach De Groot's factory. And who would he find there? And what did Chang expect to do? Destroy the machines? See to it that Xonck's illness consumed him? That the Comte's legacy disappeared? Chang felt a fresh spark of irritation that he was so very out of his element, while the Doctor and Eloise might be—who knew, perhaps not two stone's throws away—settling in with cups of tea before a warm fire, the woman blinking shyly as Svenson did his level, failing best not to stare at the single button undone at the top of her black dress. Chang clutched tightly at the mare's mane and snarled, nearly slipping again.

When he looked up, something caught the corner of his eye. Stopping the horse, he pushed his dark glasses down his nose, for the curling plume of white smoke blended so cleanly into the color of the dying sky that he could not at first be sure if it was fire or cloud. Chang clumsily slid from the saddle and walked the mare off the road. He looped the reins over a low branch, saw with satisfaction that there was thick grass around the tree for the horse to eat, and then rolled his eyes at his own solicitousness.

THE GROUND fell steeply toward a trickling watercourse, edged on either bank by a trough of rich black mud. Chang slid down through a moist layer of last year's leaves—doing his best to avoid snapping twigs or low- hanging branches—along the tight, muddy valley to where the smoke seemed to rise. He had assumed it was a campfire— woodsmen or hunters—but was surprised to meet the crumbled remnants of an outlying wall, netted with vines that seemed intent on pulling the stones back to the torpid earth. Over the wall lay an abandoned garden, thick with high-grown weeds. Beyond the garden stood the roofless frame of a redbrick house, the windows empty… yet out of its still-standing chimney rose the white plume.

Crossing the tangled garden in silence was impossible, so Chang crept around the wall, sinking to his ankles in the black mire. The watercourse fed an unkempt pool lined with stonework and once fitted with a mill wheel, now toppled half-rotted to one side. The pool's surface was thick with green scum, like the spittle of toads, and the air above it beset by hovering insects. On the bank near the ruined house lay a small flagged yard. The stones would allow a silent approach.

Chang studied the back of the house: two windows with a doorway leading out between them. One window had been covered with planking, and the other draped with oilcloth. He looked up at the smoking chimney—most likely it was a refuge for gypsies, or a rough lodge for hunters… had it not been for the lack of any sign of another horse, he would have thought it a perfect refuge for Xonck. Chang advanced to the oilcloth-covered window and listened.

The last thing he expected was the sound of a woman in tears.

There, there…” It was the voice of a man, hesitant and low. “There, there…”

“I am fine, thank you,” the woman whispered. “Do sit down.”

A scrape of a chair and then silence. Chang reached for the oilcloth, pausing as he heard footsteps.

“A cup of tea,” announced a clipped new voice. Another woman. Chang could hear the fatigue and impatience beneath her simple words. “One for each of you.”

“Thank you,” said the man, and at once he whimpered.

“It is hot,” the second woman snapped. “Take it by the handle! It is lemon verbena.” The woman sighed bitterly after a sip of her own. “Too weak.”

“It will do perfectly well,” said the first woman. Chang felt a spark on the back of his neck. He knew her. Why was she crying? And who was the man?

“I'm sure it will have to,” responded the other, tartly. “I am not used to making tea at all, of course—still less in such a pot, on such a fire. Any more than I am used to any of what has happened to my former existence!