The Chemickal Marriage

Reliquary

Chang ignored the gunshots. It was up to Svenson to deal with the men behind them. The slightest break in concentration and Foison would have Chang’s life: he could no more heed the commotion around him than a surgeon marked a patient’s screams.

The razor was open in Chang’s right hand. In his left he held a black cloak, long enough to tangle a blade and which, accurately thrown, could baffle Foison’s vision. Foison matched him with two knives, balanced to throw, made for thrust, heavy enough to snap the razor clean. Instead of broad strokes to keep Chang back, Foison would favour point: one blade to entangle Chang’s defence, then the other for the kill. Chang’s options were more limited. The razor might spill quantities of blood, but to incapacitate a man like Foison the edge must reach his throat. Nothing less would prevent the second knife from stabbing home.

An observer would have sworn that neither man moved, but to Chang it was a flurry of threats and counters signalled in subtle shifts of weight, flexing fingers, pauses of breath. Skill ran second to what advantage could be seized from circumstance: a blade, a chair or a shove down a staircase, Chang hardly cared, and expected the exact lack of courtesy in return. He was no fop to entertain the notion of a duel.

Fast as a bullet, Foison moved, a high thrust at Chang’s face. Chang whipped the cloak in the air, hoping to catch the knife-tip –

Both men were blown off their feet in the roar of flame and debris, and the whistle of flying glass.

Chang rose and pushed off the cloak that had caught the debris of the blast. Not two yards away, Foison groped for his knives in the smoke. Chang’s swinging fist caught him below the eye, and then a merciless kick dropped Foison flat.

Chang’s ears rang. The soldiers’ shadows already danced in the portico. Any moment the trading hall would be swarmed. A writhing movement at his feet – the kicking legs of Francesca Trapping, her body shielded by the arms and greatcoat of Doctor Svenson. Chang pulled the girl to her feet and raised Svenson by the collar, unsure if the man was alive. The Doctor’s hand slapped at Chang’s arm and Svenson erupted into a coughing fit, dust caking his face and hair.

Chang did not see Celeste Temple.

All around lay corpses whose white coverings had been blown away by the explosion. With the dust and smoke and so many women and children amongst them, it was impossible to isolate one small body with auburn hair. The fact entered his brain like a bullet. Body. The dead were everywhere. Nothing else moved.

He had failed her. Without further hesitation, Chang sprinted to the nearest archway, the girl beneath one arm and Doctor Svenson hauled along by force.

He kicked out a window, heaved his squirming burdens through, then compelled them the length of the alley to a low brick hut. He knew exactly where they were.

The girl was in tears.

Chang snatched two lanterns, set them alight and crossed to a greasy stone staircase, leading down. He held one out, impatiently, for the Doctor.

‘Hold hands, the way is slick.’ Chang’s voice was hoarse. They kept the wall on their left and the dark, stinking stream to the right, until they reached a place where the steps were relatively clean, and at Chang’s gesture the others sat.

‘We are in the sewers. We may travel unseen.’ Svenson said nothing. The girl shuddered. Chang held the lantern to her face. ‘Are you hurt? Can you hear me – your ears?’

Francesca nodded, then shook her head – yes to hearing, no, she was unharmed. Chang looked to Svenson, whose face was still streaked by white dust, and nearly dropped the lantern.

‘Good Lord, why did you not speak!’

The bullet hole was singed into the front of Svenson’s greatcoat, directly above his heart. Chang tore open the coat … but there was no blood. For all their running, Svenson’s front ought to have been soaked. With a wince the Doctor extracted his mangled cigarette case, a lead pistol slug flattened into the now misshapen lid. Svenson turned it over so they could all see the opposite side – bulging from the bullet’s impact, but never punched through. He worked a handkerchief gingerly under his tunic, pressed it tight against his ribs and then pulled it out to look: a blot of blood the size of a pressed tea rose.

‘The rib is cracked – I felt it running – but I am alive when I ought not to be.’

Chang stood. Francesca Trapping’s eyes gazed fearfully up to his. Behind him in the dark, the trickle of sewage. He felt the smoke in his lungs, heard its abrasion when he spoke.

‘I did not see Celeste. I could not find her.’

Svenson’s voice bore the same ragged edge. ‘You were occupied with that fellow – you saved us all.’

‘No, Doctor, I did not.’

‘Celeste set off the explosion. She fired into the clock. I don’t know how she guessed it held another explosive charge. Who knows how many lives she saved – if it had gone off tomorrow …’ Svenson placed a filthy hand across his eyes. ‘I could only reach the child –’

‘I do not blame you.’

‘I blame myself – quite fiercely. She was … Lord … a remarkable, brave girl –’

‘I will have that bastard’s head.’

Chang’s words echoed down the sewage tunnel. Doctor Svenson struggled to rise, and placed a hand on Chang’s shoulder. Chang turned to him.

‘Are you well enough to go on?’

‘Of course, but –’

Chang pointed to a wooden door above the stairs. ‘You will be in the lanes behind the cathedral – the blast there will explain your appearance, and you should be able to walk freely.’ He shifted his gaze to Francesca. ‘You will take the Doctor where the Contessa asked?’

The child nodded. Chang clasped Svenson’s arm and took up the lantern. ‘Good luck,’ he managed, and strode into the dark. The Doctor called after him.

‘Chang! You are needed. You are needed alive.’

Chang hurdled the fetid stream in a running leap. They were lost behind him. He increased his pace to a jog, already caught up with all he had set himself to do.

The great Library, like every other civic institution, was shot through with privilege and preference. Inside it lay elaborate niches, like endowed chapels in a cathedral, housing private collections that the Library had managed to wrest from the University or the Royal Institute. Though every niche held one or two bibliographical gemstones, these collections attracted more dust than visitors, access being granted only through referenced application. Chang had learnt of their existence quite by accident, searching for new ways to reach the roof. Instead he had found the hidden wing of the sixth floor, and with it the old Jesuit priest.

The Fluister bequest would never have attracted Chang’s interest under normal circumstances. The fancy of an admiral in whom a curiosity for native religions had been instilled by a posting to the Indies, and whose prize money had been lavishly spent on acquiring any volume relating to the aboriginal, esoteric, heretical or obscure – to Chang it was a fortune wasted on nonsense. To the Church, Admiral Fluister’s bequest – pointedly made to the public, yet diverted into its present inaccessible location through proper whispers in the proper ears – represented an outright gathering of poisons. Conquering through kindness, the Bishop had offered the services of a learned father to catalogue such a haphazard acquisition. The Library, caring less for knowledge than possession, had naturally accepted, and so Father Locarno had arrived. Ten years at least he had sorted through the Admiral’s detritus (it was an open wager amongst the archivists as to when the porters would find Locarno dead) with scarcely a word to anyone, a black-robed spectre shuffling in when the doors opened and out only when the lamps were doused.

In Chang’s experience, there were two kinds of priests: those with their own life history, and those who had taken orders straight away. The latter he dismissed out of hand as fools, cowards or zealots. Amongst the former, he granted one might find men whose calling rose from at least some understanding of the world. In the case of Father Locarno, his nose alone set him in that camp, it having been deliberately removed with a blacksmith’s shears. Whether this marked him as a reformed criminal or an honest man whose misfortune had led to a Barbary galley, no one knew. It was enough to speculate why this weathered Jesuit had been given the task of managing the Fluister bequest – which was to say, Chang wondered how many of the books Father Locarno had secretly