The Chemickal Marriage

Miss Temple was already across the room. She heaved open the door to find a red envelope on the tunnel floor. She tore it open.

‘What does it say?’ cried the Duchess. ‘Is it from her?’

The rest of the candelabrum broke apart and Lord Pont-Joule’s rooms echoed with the voices of men. Miss Temple leapt through, yanked the door closed and spun the wheel, leaving the hapless Duchess on the other side.

They would not know which door she’d used, but for how long? She groped in the darkness, knowing she must hurry. Would Schoepfil strike the Duchess down? Was Doctor Svenson still alive?

Her outstretched hand touched a wall and her feet found stairs. The blackness was leavened by a tallow stub, wedged into the rock. She stood before a hissing pool of black water, its surface seamed by blooms of effervescence. Miss Temple gasped. On the ground lay the Contessa –

She cursed her own credulity. Heaped on the ground was the Contessa’s black dress. Miss Temple glanced back. She dropped into a squat, opened the case, pulled the star chart from the leather tube and folded it, wincing at the creases, until it fit atop the book. She took the small pouch holding Francesca’s key and wormed it into the bosom of her corset. She stopped. She dug her fingers deeper. The handkerchief with Vandaariff’s glass spur was no longer there.

There was no time. Without care, for she would never see it again, she ripped her dress to the waist and let it drop next to the Contessa’s. A metallic scrape from the passage behind her. Had the Contessa left her petticoat? She had. Miss Temple thrust hers off and kicked free. A shaft of light in the tunnel. The door was open. She closed the case and set the red envelope onto the candle flame, where it caught and began to curl. Inside had been a single carelessly scrawled line: ‘And so they shall be redeemed.’

Miss Temple inhaled as deeply as she could. Hugging the case to her body, she stepped into the black water and sank like a stone.

Eight Fontanel

When Vandaariff reclaimed the glass card from Matthew Harcourt, the young man dropped to his knees and, shaking like an opium eater, emptied his stomach onto the carpet. When the heaving subsided, Foison hauled the overmatched Interim Minister to his feet and marched him out. Vandaariff followed at his own slow speed, humming under his breath.

Blood instructs us on the use of flame

Fire’s indulgence sings the end of shame

Chang had hoped to erode Foison’s devotion to his master, and Phelps had paid the price. He watched in silence as the green-coats cut the corpse from the chair and took it away. When they returned it was with Foison, and for him.

His arms were bound behind his back with chain. Outside waited a large vehicle, unlike any Chang had ever seen. Sheathed in metal, the smaller front was like any rich man’s coach, but was attached to a second portion, as large as a goods wagon.

Were the trains no longer safe?

Two lackeys led Chang into the long rear car and looped his chain over a hook in the ceiling. The height of the hook gave Chang no choice but to stand. They pulled forward, Chang balancing like a seaman on a heaving deck. He looked to Foison, slouched on a bench against the inner wall.

‘The spur that killed Phelps,’ said Chang. ‘It wasn’t like the ones we found at Raaxfall. It didn’t hold rage, but something more like despair. He’d been cut with it before, under questioning, hadn’t he, just nicks to help him along? The man was ruined.’

Foison waited, as if this required no comment.

‘Blue glass in the throat. It’s what killed Lydia Vandaariff. She was decapitated. Did you know that?’

Foison gripped a metal hook for support as the coach swept round a turn. ‘Lord Robert was so informed, yes.’

‘By whom?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Only five people survived that crash. Francis Xonck is dead since. If any of the four – I include myself – had described that scene for your master, you would know it. I’ll wager they have not, and yet he knows. How is that possible? Because those memories – memories of a dead man, also on that airship – have been placed inside his mind.’

A panel slid open and through a barrier of steel mesh loomed Vandaariff’s haggard face.

‘Such an interesting conversation, Cardinal. One is reminded of those Greeks, groping to understand the world – everything wrong, of course, the logic of intelligent children, fumbling in their mother’s kitchen, rising on their toes in the hope of buttering bread. You observe – of course you do, you’re a hunter – but do you comprehend?’

‘I know you’re going to die.’

‘But not alone, Cardinal Chang. Do not let the news deject you.’

Vandaariff turned from the panel, but left it open. He resumed his hoarse humming.

Love is a severance sure as any blade

Flesh is a table where God’s feast is laid

The carriage took another turn and the iron shackle dug into Chang’s wrist. Foison watched him with a bone-deep readiness, and in the man’s posture Chang recognized himself: at the Old Palace, present only by sufferance, waiting for a message from Madelaine Kraft – which would be his signal to depart. His eyes were ever fixed on Angelique, shining amidst the wealthy men who might at any moment signal the house manager, Gorine, and claim her for however long desire might last. Chang watched her, but what had he ever seen? Tiny hands holding a wine glass. Smiling lips. Black eyes. Scraps of whoever she might, truly, have been.

Even after so much time, so many lives, Chang preserved Angelique in his heart, but only – he knew – like a doll, a dream. What had all that longing served? Did his life merit survival? Had he punished wicked men? Of course. Had he done so within his own web of wickedness? Undeniably. Who spared a fowl-eating fox because it also dined on rats?

This was rhetoric and pity. Chang looked again at Foison – at his own futile past – and glimpsed what he stood to lose now.

She was not beautiful, not like Angelique. She was not kind. She was undoubtedly – in her heart, glass books be damned – an ignorant prude. She was a perfectly spoilt example of a class he despised. He did not honestly know if he could stand her presence for one entire sustained day. He did not know if she was alive.

But he thought of her in his arms, wading through the freezing surf. Her courage at Parchfeldt. Guiding them from Raaxfall, the acceptance of her doom. Against every instinct and all logic, these thoughts uncoiled like the sticky wings of a butterfly. He felt the rush in his soul. It was absurd. He could choose to suppress it – that was in his power. Yet he was dying too. He did not choose. He shut his eyes and let go.

Robert Vandaariff cleared his throat, a coach wheel crunching gravel. ‘Wither your thoughts, Cardinal Chang?’

‘How best to end your life.’

‘I think not. No, you were far away.’

‘What do you care?’

‘All flesh may be cursed, but there are degrees. There are tigers and there are sheep. And tigers – though rare – can be anywhere in life. I am no snob, Cardinal. One finds as many sheep in a palace as in a poorhouse.’

‘You seek to count my stripes, then? So I am remembered?’

‘You’d prefer to be forgotten?’

‘I’d prefer to set myself on fire.’

Vandaariff scowled. ‘Posturing.’