The Chemickal Marriage

This was the moment. If they had orders to prevent an escape at all costs, the bullets must fly. But Chang did not believe these men possessed such autonomy. Foison ruled them with as tight a hand as Vandaariff ruled him. Chang pressed the blade into his captive’s brown throat, against the vein. The Sergeant lowered his pistol and barked at the others. They fell back.

Chang looked at Svenson. He had no idea where they ought to go, yet it was crucial this ignorance not be conveyed to their enemies. But the Doctor turned to Miss Temple. She swallowed with a grimace, and her words came out a croak. ‘Follow me. The tunnels.’

Chang kept his face a mask, but marvelled at the size of the factory – furnaces, silos, catwalks, assembly tables, projectile moulds, cooling pools. He walked backwards, holding Foison between them and the gang of soldiers, whose guns still tracked their every move.

Foison did not speak, though his eyes remained fixed on those of his sergeant.

‘This coat of yours cannot have come cheap,’ Chang whispered. ‘I did not think silk wore well enough for the expense.’

‘Silk is surprisingly warm,’ observed Doctor Svenson. ‘The north of China is very frigid.’

Chang ignored the interruption, watching the Sergeant, not ten steps away, and hissed into Foison’s ear, ‘What will your master say, I wonder?’

‘This changes nothing,’ replied Foison. ‘Three days. You are his branded stock.’

Miss Temple’s sharp call stopped Chang’s reply. ‘We require a key.’

A gate of iron bars blocked the tunnel. At Foison’s nod, the Sergeant came forward and unlocked the gate. Doctor Svenson held out his hand.

‘You shall not follow.’

Again Foison nodded and the Sergeant gave over the keys. They slipped past the bars, and Chang called to the soldiers as Phelps relocked the gate.

‘We will leave him further on, unharmed.’

The Sergeant opened his mouth to protest, but Foison shook his head.

Chang continued to walk backwards until the light had gone and their view of the soldiers with it. Then Chang drove a punch into Foison’s kidney and forced him to kneel.

‘What are you doing?’ Svenson whispered.

Chang had the knife at Foison’s throat. ‘What do you think?’

‘You gave your word …’

‘This man will kill us all. Don’t be a fool.’

‘If his men find him dead,’ hissed Svenson, ‘they will hunt us all the more!’

‘They are already hunting us. Without their leader, they will hunt us poorly –’

‘But you have given your word!’ whispered Phelps, aghast.

Chang wedged a knee into Foison’s back and pushed him face down in the dirt. ‘You do not know how he has wronged me.’

‘We do not,’ said Phelps, ‘but you cannot execute a helpless man –’

‘He is helpless because we have bested him. Are you an idiot?’

‘We have all given our word with yours,’ said Svenson. ‘I understand your impulse –’

‘Sanity is not an impulse!’

‘What on earth is happening?’ asked Miss Temple. She stood beyond the others, sagging against the wall.

‘This man must die,’ said Chang.

‘He cannot,’ said Phelps.

Svenson reached over to her. ‘Celeste, are you well?’

‘Of course I am. Have we not promised to let him live?’

Chang growled with frustration, then impatiently extended his hand to Phelps. ‘Give me your damned handkerchief.’

Having stuffed the cloth into Foison’s mouth, Chang bound Foison’s legs, pulling the knot as tightly as he could.

‘This kindness means nothing,’ he whispered. ‘If I see you again I will kill you.’

Foison remained silent, and Chang resisted a final urge to kill him anyway. He padded on to where he heard the others breathing.

‘I cannot see,’ he whispered. ‘Celeste, do you know where you’ve led us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Those men will pursue, and quickly –’

‘Yes, but do we seek the canal, or the front gate?’

‘Where are we now?’

‘The blasting tunnels. They run in all directions.’

The girl’s assurance frayed Chang’s patience. ‘How do you know this?’

Phelps cleared his throat. ‘There was a map of glass, sent by the Contessa –’

‘That is not it at all,’ croaked Miss Temple.

‘Perhaps we should press on,’ suggested the Doctor.

‘If we talk while we are walking, I will lose my way.’

‘And our pursuers will hear the echo,’ added Phelps.

‘Go how you please,’ Chang snarled. ‘We will follow like blind lambs.’

Chang’s poor eyes could discern but shadows in the chiselled ceiling, and he was forced to keep a hand on Mr Phelps’s coat-tails, last in line, wincing when his bare feet caught the edges of broken stones.

It was not the reunion he had expected, with Celeste Temple in particular. What in the world was Phelps doing here? And why had they stared so at his wound? Svenson was not one to talk – unshaven and more gaunt than ever, the man looked like he’d crawled from a crypt.

Where was Eloise Dujong? Probably somewhere minding the Trapping child …

Knowing the others could not see, Chang reached beneath the jacket and under the silk shirt … his finger ran across the ridges of a new scar, but from the scar itself he felt no contact. He gently probed … below a thin layer of flesh lay something hard.

At the tunnels’ end the ground was damp, the gravel sunk with river mud.

‘These tunnels would have been used to transport the Comte’s machines,’ explained Miss Temple. She coughed and then, to Chang’s surprise, she actually spat. ‘Do excuse me – beyond is the canal, and beyond that our boat, unless someone has sunk it. We can return to the city, or press on to Harschmort.’

‘Are we prepared for Harschmort?’ asked Svenson. ‘Two of your men have disappeared there – Cunsher himself would not risk it.’ He turned to Chang. ‘And you, Cardinal … in all gravity, had I the space and the light to examine –’

‘Who is Cunsher?’ Chang broke in curtly. ‘And what men?’

Svenson fell behind and whispered a brief and thoroughly frustrating account of their doings since they had seen him last. However gratifying it was to hear of Tackham’s death (and Chang could not help but be impressed by the Doctor’s courage), the rest of Svenson’s narrative strained any impression of sense – an alliance with Phelps, dependence on this Cunsher, and then acceptance of Miss Temple’s own ridiculous scheming. Jack Pfaff? And how many others – apparently dead? Arrant foolishness aimed at taking her money and abandoning her to peril when that was gone.

‘You had no idea she was pursuing such nonsense?’ he asked the Doctor.

‘She found me. Once I realized – well, the girl is determined.’

‘Damned little terrier.’

Svenson smiled. ‘A terrier with her teeth around a wolf’s leg, I agree. Nevertheless –’

‘We’re here again.’

‘We are. It is a comfort to have you.’

Chang shrugged, knowing he ought to return the sentiment – that it was good to have Svenson by his side – but the moment passed. He had scarcely spoken to the Doctor since their sojourn in the fishing village on the Iron Coast and almost laughed to remember how Svenson had been expected to tend any and all ailing goats and pigs.