The Chemickal Marriage

Foison’s men, stripped of their jackets, made the nearest pursuit. The rest, including Bronque’s grenadiers, came at a safer distance. Chang walked between Bronque and Foison, still chained. After a quarter-mile Bronque leant across Chang’s chest to Foison, a sympathetic gesture intended to evince tact.

‘Lord Vandaariff’s rapid decline is most dispiriting. Is there truly no hope?’

‘He does not entertain any.’

‘But what of the nation?’ Bronque ventured.

‘Nations are vanity,’ replied Foison.

The restive wanderers they passed echoed this fatalism, feral in the glare of bonfires. All his life Chang had seen inequity, implacable and institutionalized, and people bore it all, even their own children dead before their eyes. This night these desperate faces had found the spark of rebellion. But he knew their momentary gains – windows broken or constables driven off with stones – would only provoke harsher measures when law was restored.

Was this not the arc of any life – from oppression to revolt to still deeper servitude? He thought of Cunsher, how the man’s competence was but a shell encasing a long-shattered heart. Who didn’t nurse sorrow at their core? Chang’s discontents were nothing new or precious. Had Foison lost a family, a lover, a language, a home? Of course he had – most likely all in one vicious stroke. And in exchange, offering his life to another man of power, he had survived … the doomed chain of service. Phelps, Smythe, Blach … and Svenson – perhaps the most miserable of them all. To a man they would be finished, and that he would be finished with them, Chang did not doubt.

The young messenger skulked to the gate of a livery yard and disappeared inside. The Colonel quickly positioned his men, then drew their eye to a line of gabled windows.

‘With luck the woman has gone to ground. If we enter in force –’

Foison shook his head. ‘If it is merely an agreed-upon place to leave word, such action will keep her away. Let us see if the messenger stays or returns whence he came.’

Bronque looked at Chang. Chang kept silent, allowing their disagreement to stand.

Gunshots echoed from inside the livery. All three charged for the door. On the floor of the stable lay the young man they’d followed, shot twice in the chest. Bronque’s grenadiers crowded a far doorway, their officer holding a smoking revolver. Near the body lay another gun.

‘He was trying to leave,’ the young lieutenant explained to Bronque. ‘Saw us, sir, and drew his weapon.’

Bronque knelt over the messenger – little more than a boy – pressing two fingers to the jugular. ‘God-damned cock-up.’ He thrust his chin at a staircase in the corner. ‘Search the premises. No more killing. If the woman is here, we need her alive.’

The soldiers clattered off. Bronque exchanged a bitter look with Foison and set to emptying the dead boy’s pockets. ‘Idiots. Ruined everything.’

‘Unless she is upstairs,’ said Foison mildly.

Chang brushed the straw from around the boy’s gun with his foot – it was a service revolver, heavy and difficult to fire.

‘Lieutenant!’ Bronque roared at the staircase. ‘Report!’

The officer stomped back into view at the top of the steps. ‘Nothing, sir. All empty.’

‘Hang your idiocy! Get your men formed in the courtyard.’

The soldiers marched down the stairs and out. Bronque tossed the contents of the dead boy’s pockets into the straw: a clasp-knife, a scatter of pennies, a dirty rag.

Through the boy’s half-open lips gleamed a brighter touch of red, blood risen from a punctured lung. Chang cocked his head.

‘What is it?’ asked Foison.

‘His cloak is untied.’

‘What of that?’ asked Bronque.

‘It wasn’t before, when we were following him.’

‘So he untied his cloak upon coming in – that’s natural enough.’

‘Not if he wasn’t going to stay. Not if he was attempting to leave through the rear door.’

Bronque’s voice deepened. ‘Are you saying he wasn’t? Wait a moment …’

The Colonel slipped two gloved fingers into the messenger’s boot and came out with a folded square of paper. ‘A message, by God.’

He handed the paper to Foison, who opened it for them all to see: a page torn from an old book, a woodcut depicting a muscular black man in a turban, with an axe. At his feet lay an open casket, a jewel box that contained a human heart. But the woodcut had been freshly amended by its sender: with the crude stroke of an ink pen the axeman’s eyes had been wholly covered by a thick black bar, like a blindfold.

Bronque frowned at the corpse, as if to doubt such a message could have come from such a courier. ‘What can it mean?’

‘The Executioner,’ said Chang. ‘From The Chemickal Marriage.’

‘What does that mean?’ demanded Colonel Bronque.

Foison sighed, almost sadly, and refolded the page. ‘That Drusus Schoepfil must die.’

Foison sent another man into the night, this time on foot, with news of their discovery.

‘But what have we found?’ Bronque looked at them hopefully, then exhaled through his nose in the general direction of the corpse. ‘We can leave this lot here, and I’ll set my men to search the surrounding houses –’

Foison shook his head. ‘You don’t have enough men both to search and to establish a cordon. Anyone wary, and they are, would escape. Of course, with the messenger unable to speak and the message so obscure, we do not even know if it was meant for Mrs Kraft.’

‘Who else?’

‘Drusus Schoepfil – his people passing on your threat, no doubt to advise surrender.’

Bronque let this go. His men stood formed and ready. ‘Well, what next? Are we finished or aren’t we?’

‘Perhaps we are.’

‘Good.’ Bronque did not bother to hide his relief. ‘Where will you go? We can provide an escort –’

‘Cardinal Chang and I can make our own way.’

‘To Harschmort? On foot? It would take two days.’

‘Perhaps Stropping, and an east-bound train.’

‘Then let us walk together; Stropping Station is not so far from where Lord Axewith –’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘But what will I tell Lord Axewith?’

‘That we arrived too late. Our search was a fool’s errand – and now you are relieved of it. Best of luck in the night.’

Foison flicked Chang’s chain and began to walk, his three remaining men trotting across the courtyard to join him. Chang looked over his shoulder. Framed first by his grenadiers and then by the disaffected crowds, Bronque watched them go, a statue in the torchlight.

Around the first turn Foison stopped, listening. ‘Will he come?’

‘He must,’ Chang replied. ‘Once there are fewer witnesses.’

They had entered a walled avenue offering little cover. Foison stepped behind Chang to unwrap the chain. ‘When did you know? Before the clumsy murder?’

‘The interrogation of Gorine.’

‘How so?’

‘Svenson. If he cured Madelaine Kraft, we ought to be looking for him. We aren’t – because someone already has him. And not Vandaariff, or you would know.’

Foison coiled the chain into a loop he could carry, then thought better of it and threw it to the side. ‘Svenson could be dead.’

‘Then why not say so?’

Foison set off without replying. Chang kept pace, rubbing his wrists. Two green-coats jogged before them, while the third hung back to guard the rear. At the cross street, the lead men paused, peering cautiously ahead. Foison and Chang stopped as well, waiting.

‘The message was for Bronque,’ Chang said, ‘commanding our deaths. The Executioner’s resemblance to