The Chemickal Marriage

‘Proceed.’

Trooste clapped his hands and several acolytes followed him out. More attended to the tubs, wary of the Doctor’s interference, but he was too stricken at seeing whom they held: Mr Kelling, Colonel Bronque, Matthew Harcourt, Michel Gorine and, last of all, poor Cunsher, his lank hair suspended in the viscous liquid.

‘Abate your concern, Doctor – worse decisions await. Nothing is forbidden. Habituate yourself to that fact.’

Svenson did not reply. Any attempt to save them now would fail – he could not, unarmed, defeat so many – and cast away any chance of saving them later. That every tub was fitted with a glass-charged undercarriage meant that a vast amount of power would be channelled into each: the thought of a well-seasoned broth came foully to mind. These were living beings, laid out like stew-meat in a kitchen. The entire enterprise, every lusciously fashioned, brass-bound inch of it, was obscene.

‘It won’t work,’ he shouted to the glass. ‘I see the sepsis in your hands – you’re rotting from within. That you can stand is a miracle.’

‘No miracle, Doctor – deliberately timed. Though time does run short …’

Svenson followed Vandaariff’s eyes. Mr Foison limped into the room, a bloody bandage wrapped around his right thigh. Vandaariff’s dapper captain had become as dishevelled as the Doctor. In one hand he held a silver knife and in the other a leather case. With a horrible certainty Svenson knew it was the same case he’d passed to Miss Temple in the Therm?.

On Foison’s heels bustled Trooste and his acolytes, bearing Cardinal Chang, naked to the waist and senseless. Before Svenson could move, Foison raised the knife.

‘Is – is he …’

‘Dead? No.’ Foison nodded to the leather case. ‘But neither, would I say, is Cardinal Chang at home.’

Chang was strapped face down on a table, head in a padded frame, as if for surgery. An acolyte carefully cleaned the scar at the base of his spine. Svenson grimaced at the increased inflamation.

‘Mr Foison has been impetuous, but the vessel has arrived.’ Vandaariff broke into a gurgling cough, groped for a shallow bowl and then retched into it, a clot of curdled aspic. ‘I am … unclean – not meant for such a fragile basin … yet to be rid of it is to die.’

‘You will find no relief.’ Svenson called. ‘Robert Vandaariff was a healthy man at Parchfeldt, before contact with that book, and in a few months his body’s been destroyed. Though Chang is healthier still, the same will happen. No matter how you may try to prepare him alchemically, you will find only the same unstoppable decay.’

‘Contact with a book?’ murmured Vandaariff. ‘What book? I have consulted physicians by the score. The precipice I occupy is due to consumption aggravated by an especially grievous bout of blood fever. With no other avenue available, I have turned to the late Comte’s intriguing research.’

He shrugged at Foison, as if to apologize for Svenson’s offensive theories.

‘That is a lie,’ Svenson said to Foison. ‘He needs you to protect him.’

Trooste took a beaker of red liquid from Mrs Kraft’s tub and raised it to the light. An acolyte stood ready with a tray of flasks. Trooste poured the beaker back into the tub and selected a flask, sprinkling its contents judiciously … bright flakes gleaming gold. The flask was capped and they moved on to Mr Harcourt. Another beaker to the light, and another flask, but for Harcourt it was a sprinkling of dark pellets.

The Doctor pressed at Foison. ‘Today, at the Institute, you asked the Professor if he found Lord Vandaariff’s interests troubling –’

‘A test, obviously,’ said Vandaariff.

‘Obviously,’ echoed Trooste. Foison said nothing.

Svenson’s voice rose to a shout. ‘These are good men – Cunsher, Gorine! They do not deserve this barbaric treatment! This is cannibalism – forbidden by every sane precept – Lord, how can you not see?’

Foison said nothing. Vandaariff tapped the glass with his stick.

‘If your outrage can bear it, Doctor, I have a question for Mr Foison myself. Actually I have two. The first from the confession – upon initiation to the Process, secrets will out – of Professor Trooste. He swears that Doctor Svenson destroyed two glass books at the Institute today, and kept one for himself. Somehow, the Doctor lost that book, most likely at the Royal Therm?, as you have obviously found it. Yet, in the tumult of Cardinal Chang’s arrival and subsequent harvest, I have not had the details of that acquisition. One winnows the list of those who might have taken such a book from the Doctor – Drusus Schoepfil? The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza? If you had bested any of these enemies I should expect to hear of it.’

‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Foison’s thin voice held not an ounce of contrition. ‘It was my intention to report whenever you had time to hear. I found the book in the house of Drusus Schoepfil, in a secret room painted in the manner of the Comte d’Orkancz.’ Foison glanced, impassively, at Svenson. ‘Mr Schoepfil is a dangerous man. As his people occupied the Harschmort train, I was forced to find my own transport, and entrance.’

Vandaariff waved away this inconvenience, along with Foison’s concern. ‘I well know of my nephew’s painted room, and that he has collected every artefact of the Comte he could find. Who do you think made them available? Who instructed those powerful men to promote Drusus Schoepfil as a figurehead in the first place? Though he credits his own ludicrous destiny, he remains as he ever was, an insignificant worm.’

‘You underestimate the power of his belief,’ said Doctor Svenson.

‘The man believes nothing. His heart is inert.’

Svenson had given the book to Miss Temple. Foison must have had it from her, have seen her. But why had he hidden that from Vandaariff? Not from any weakness or wavering of purpose – Foison had used the book to reduce Cardinal Chang to a mindless husk, after all – a fact Trooste’s examination had just confirmed. Had Foison taken the book from the Contessa instead? Was that the alliance? Was Miss Temple even alive?

Foison cleared his throat. ‘There was a second question, my lord?’

‘Indeed, for Doctor Svenson. You were given entry in the company of another man. A Mr Pfaff. Where is he now?’

‘We parted ways.’

Foison cut in, softly but insistently: ‘Pfaff is an ally of the Contessa, my lord. He collected Miss Temple from the tomb. A criminal for hire, like Chang.’

‘Are you in league with Rosamonde, Doctor Svenson? I should find that … amusing.’

‘I am not.’

‘I wondered if you had forgotten poor Mrs Dujong so very soon.’

‘Burn in hell.’

‘I have a better notion – why don’t you come join me?’

Leaving nothing to chance, six acolytes escorted the Doctor past three different locked doorways, the last edged with a band of black rubber to make an airtight seal. Brass helmets hung on pegs, two taken by acolytes and a third given to Svenson. The door was opened and, the seal of the helmet pulling at his neck, he followed the acolytes through.

In the corners of the room stood copper braziers, each heating a bowl of orange-coloured oil, a tonic for Vandaariff’s condition, and evidently fatal for anyone else. The ceiling was honeycombed with small holes, aglow with growing light.

Vandaariff waited at a table, blackened fingers tracing the edges of a blue glass key. An acolyte with gloved hands set a gleaming book before him. Vandaariff carefully inserted the key into its binding, lengthwise from the base, and the bright glass clouded, ever so slightly. He opened the cover and ran a fingertip down the first page.

‘Delicious.’ He gently closed the book. ‘Time enough … time enough.’

The braziers with their oil, the glass balls with their somnolent gas, the explosions and the sharp-edged spurs – in how many other ways had Vandaariff expanded the Comte’s initial discoveries? Schoepfil was a fool to underestimate him. And where was Schoepfil? If Vandaariff’s men had not brought him down like Bronque, they must have sent word of his intrusion … but the fact did not appear to perturb.