wings curled (once an ornamental garden, since destroyed by the implosion of the dungeons beneath), faced south to the sea. To the east lay the terminal spur of the Orange Canal. The western approach, where they now stood, offered only dunes and fen.
‘Surely Bronque has reached the gates,’ said Gorine. ‘We should hear shots.’
‘I agree,’ said Chang. ‘One way or another.’
‘What of these
‘We send the least essential man to test the way.’ Chang smiled over his shoulder at Gorine. ‘Since you failed to convince Mrs Kraft, the honour is yours.’
‘Good God!’ cried Trooste. ‘Do not joke of such things.’
‘He isn’t,’ muttered Gorine. ‘In the past I have not been Cardinal Chang’s good friend.’
Chang ignored this confession and pointed ahead: the bright line of windows was broken by rooms left dark, allowing the observers within to keep their night vision. ‘His men are watching. If we run they will shoot us down. But if we advance, I believe their master’s lack of time will dictate cooperation.’
‘But why should they cooperate?’
‘Because they will have seen
As he stepped onto the mown grass that surrounded the house, a half-dozen men filed from it, looking in their green jackets and brass helmets like insects leaving a hive. Chang dropped to one knee to present a smaller target. The others, still in the high grass, did the same, so only their faces were in view. Vandaariff’s men formed a line and, in unison, each reached into a canvas satchel slung over one shoulder, reared back and threw.
Chang was already in motion, dodging one of the hurled missiles. He heard the shatter of glass and felt a stinging in his eyes. He held his breath. Cunsher’s carbine barked behind him and one of the six men fell. Glass burst at his feet in a cloud of bluish smoke – something flew past his head –
Then Chang was on them – slashing furiously, catching hands and wrenching them backwards, kicking at knees – above all staying in motion to prevent their greater numbers from pulling him down. The helmets limited their vision and made their movements awkward. Two retreated to the door, digging for weapons. Chang spun out of an attempt to seize his waist and saw Cunsher stagger from the meadow, carbine dangling from one hand, then fall, smoke swirling in his face. Chang drove his blade into an attacker’s stomach and when the man doubled over slipped behind and wrenched the helmet from his head. The man fell, hands tight around his throat. Instead of putting on the helmet, Chang charged for the two men now guarding the door with wooden clubs. More glass shattered at his feet. He felt the pressure in his chest as he collided with them, viciously swinging the helmet like a studded mace. Chang broke through and to the door, which he slammed and bolted behind.
This air too was marked by curling smoke, and in the light he saw its bluish tint more clearly. He tore off his glasses and clapped the helmet over his head. The rubber seal gripped tight around his throat. He exhaled in a gasp … and on the inhale tasted nothing but air. The door rocked on its hinges, pulled from outside. More canvas satchels hung from hooks on the wall. Chang slipped one over his shoulder and ran.
Harschmort House had changed. Chang remembered the western wing (where he’d found Arthur Trapping’s corpse, so long ago) enough to note rooms knocked through, walls stripped to prison stone. In two months this wing of Vandaariff’s luxurious residence had been returned to its original state, as unadorned as a military barracks.
He opened the satchel. Carefully insulated in sewn pockets were a dozen blue glass spheres, the size of small apples. He eased one out with a gloved hand and raised it to the light, like a float from a fishing net but for the clouds inside, swirling like milk in tea.
Alerted by a shadow on the wall, Chang turned round and threw, the globe shattering between two bareheaded green-coats. With one shuddering breath they crumpled to their faces and lay still. Were they dead? Was there hope for Cunsher and the others? He did not go near to make sure. There wasn’t time.
In the helmet he could just see straight ahead. At every room he was forced to spin like an antic dog to make sure he was alone. Three times he had not been – green-coats, servants, even a pair of housemaids – and a glass globe had preserved his liberty. Word of his penetration would spread, and Vandaariff’s forces, no matter his attempts to twist and turn,
Chang did not have to search. As he bulled his way on, new figures appeared – always in rooms with multiple doorways, leaving one open path – guards and servants alike, never moving to apprehend him, or to sound an alarm. He was being herded along, like a sheep nipped on its flank. He could have burst free of the cordon, but the lives of his allies demanded a confrontation, and so he pressed willingly into his adversary’s lair.
Chang’s path stopped at a double doorway made of new-cut planks. Nailed to it was an envelope of parchment. Chang tore it open: a lock of auburn hair, tied with black twine. He knew the colour at once. Celeste had come, and whatever her hopes or the Contessa’s plans, Vandaariff had claimed her.
Chang turned the iron knob, a glass globe ready in his other hand. On the floor inside lay an envelope sealed with blue wax. Chang tore it open and tipped a blue glass disc onto his palm. Words had been stamped round its edge. He had enough Latin from his student days, before his life had changed, but disliked the memory.
White robes edged in green hung in a line on one wall. Below each robe waited a pair of felt slippers – as at the Raaxfall works, to prevent any hobnailed spark near the powder. Chang tucked the disc into a trouser pocket, with the lock of hair. Before him, extending for ten yards from wall to wall, a bed of gravel barred his way – like an ornamental path, save the rocks were dark as coal, and amongst them glittered hundreds of glass spurs. The black stones must be the concentrated explosive that had powered the devices, the same they’d set off on the dock. The gravel bed was too wide to leap, and from the felt slippers outside he assumed that to advance wearing boots such as his own risked triggering the charge.
But if the explosives showed what Vandaariff had pillaged from the Xonck arsenal, beyond them lay the first real sign of the Comte’s alchemy. Between the explosives and the far doorway the floor was covered by seven rows of wide coloured tiles. A glance told Chang that the plates were not flush with the floor. Had they been laid atop the layer of explosives? Even if the felt slippers permitted a person to cross the exposed area safely, the first pressure on the metal tiles would create the same effect as his nailed boots and set off an inferno. As he stared he realized the tiles were made of the blended glass that Vandaariff had developed, each tempered by the infusion of different metals. Suddenly the puzzle was clear: the proper seven tiles – which lay atop inert material – would carry a person safely to the door. One only needed to know the alchemical order.
He kicked off his boots and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. He carefully laid one foot onto the bed of explosive coal and sharpened discs, trusting the thickness of the felt. He took another step … then another … finally reaching the glass tiles. Could he put his weight upon them without the tiles breaking? What if it was only Vandaariff’s joke? And if it wasn’t – which tile to choose?
He let his mind return to the room at Raaxfall … the table … Vandaariff and the different coloured cards … ‘We start with iron’ …
The light in the horrid room at Raaxfall had been bad, and his eyes even worse. He could not recall what the cards had truly looked like. Chang pulled off his left glove and extended his hand over the tiles, gently touching them with the tips of his fingers. At the third tile the taste of blood filled his mouth, as had happened with the first glass card. He stepped carefully onto the tile. No explosion. Suddenly he wondered who else might need to follow this path. What if that person was Svenson or Cunsher? He took out Foison’s knife and scratched an
Next came gold, and a memory of a cracking heat inside his bones. This required an accurate hop of several feet, but he landed neatly. Another
He advanced two more rows, but each time the memory grew fainter, for the cards had begun to derange his senses. At the fifth row, Chang frowned. Past a certain point he’d shut his mind to the pain. Three tiles remained. He knew proper reasoning existed, that the metals in each tile carried associations with planets, the zodiac, the Hebrew alphabet, bodily parts –
Chang looked back. In the doorway stood four men in green, with carbines, but they did not shoot. Their task was to prevent retreat. Chang stepped – the very length of his long stride – to a tile shot with streaks of milky white. How he’d known it came next he could not say. He scraped the knife against the glass.
This very trial showed the ridiculous nature of the Comte’s alchemy. It was not a question of whether it
