The Chemickal Marriage

‘Bronque brought but one company. If the remainder of his regiment follows –’

‘The remainder is occupied in town. Besides, do you not have a strategy in place?’

‘Not for that many men.’

‘Mr Schoepfil, where is your late friend’s regiment?’

Schoepfil pulled his brimming eyes from the gruesome tub. ‘What?’

‘Where are the grenadiers?’

‘Aren’t they dead?’

‘What is wrong with him?’ asked Foison.

Schoepfil’s voice was small. ‘She has killed the Colonel.’

‘One is amazed,’ muttered the Contessa. ‘We need not worry, Mr Foison. Lord Axewith has given orders that no one should come near Harschmort. That the Colonel disobeyed with so few only describes the limits of his power.’

‘I would prefer to see for myself –’

‘And I would prefer you to remain.’ Without waiting for Foison’s reply – for he gave none, even when one of the soldiers came up with a three-legged stool for him to sit upon – she called, perturbed, to Doctor Svenson. ‘Are you not finished? Can we not proceed?’

‘We can.’

Miss Temple erupted in a spasm of choking, her mouth filled with the taste of rotten flesh.

‘Good Lord,’ said the Contessa. ‘Even at a distance, it’s disgusting.’

‘It will only worsen.’ Svenson stood before Miss Temple. ‘You know as well as I, Celeste. Like Francesca, you do see what will happen – and, like her, your sickness is a measure of my success with these machines, what I’m sure you see as my betrayal. The more I correctly arrange the fate of Chang and yourself, the more you plunge into distress.’

He met her eyes, took a puff on the cigarette. Miss Temple let fly a stream of dark phlegm that splattered near his boot.

‘That’s for your damned betrayal,’ she rasped, scarcely able to form the words.

‘Doctor Svenson,’ groaned the Contessa. ‘May we please –’

Svenson raised his hand in acquiescence, but his expression clouded as he saw the hoses and wires connecting the two tables. He called sharply to the acolytes standing at either side. ‘What is this? Who is responsible? These are wrong!’

‘They cannot be wrong,’ protested an acolyte. ‘Professor Trooste –’

‘I don’t give a damn about Professor Trooste.’ Svenson was on his knees, pulling at the undercarriage of each table. ‘Celeste! Look at me! Celeste Temple!’

She looked down, ready to spit again, though her eyes were swimming. He rapped his hand on the brass fittings that connected the black hose. ‘The direction of force is incorrect, Celeste? Is it not? It must pass through the tubs’ – he indicated the line of rubber reservoirs – ‘then through the mineral compounds and into the book. The whole reaches Chang and the bloodstone. The discharge, the corruption, is strained off and sent to you. But if these are misaligned, the bloodstone will come into play too soon – look at me, Celeste!’

He shoved aside the acolytes and with a few rapid tugs flipped a line of brass switches, toggling the flow of the hoses. Then, pivoting on his heels, cigarette pinched in his lips, the Doctor took a glass flask from his tunic and poured the raw bloodstone – with a spasm of pain Miss Temple knew it on sight – into a chamber beneath her own table. But she perceived within her fog of nausea that the Doctor’s actions bore no resemblance whatsoever to his words. There was no call for bloodstone on her table, and the brass switches now sent the purifying energy to her instead of Chang.

‘What are you doing?’ called the Contessa.

‘Exactly what you want, damn you!’ Svenson stood. ‘Ask Celeste!’

On cue Miss Temple began to froth and spit. She did not know what he intended, but knew what was required.

‘You’re a bastard,’ she croaked.

Svenson stepped back and wiped his hands on an acolyte’s robe. He waved for the acolyte with the Contessa’s book to join him. ‘On second thought, I should prefer my book to be cleaned as well –’

He quickly knelt and extracted the book from the leather case. As he extended his hand for the one book and offered up the other, the Doctor’s gaze fell on Mahmoud.

‘Wait – watch that man!’ he shouted.

Mahmoud had indeed stepped nearer to the tubs and at the Doctor’s cry every carbine swung its aim to his chest. Mahmoud went still, staring at the Doctor. Then, his arms raised, he slowly sank to his knees. Svenson cleared his throat to regain the acolyte’s attention and handed him a book. ‘Gently, please – and when you’ve finished, put it back in that protective case.’

‘Damn you to hell,’ growled Mahmoud.

‘I am sorry,’ Svenson told him. ‘I cannot help you more than I have. You must make your own choice. I know it is an impossible position.’

Svenson slid the glass book into the brass machine and stood.

‘My Lady Lucifera, at last, all is prepared.’

Miss Temple did not know what the Doctor had done. He stood with his cigarette – his last, perhaps – and brushed the hair from his eyes with thin fingers. She would not escape. Once the Doctor had been shot for his impudence, the Contessa would try again – or simply cut Miss Temple’s throat. But that he had done something, that he had tried to the last, touched Miss Temple in her sick isolation, like a rope snaking down into a well. She would never be pulled up, but even a glimpse of a world beyond her fate eased her heart.

She was not afraid. She had been exhausted by corruption and fever – she did not desire that life. She did not want to live without Chang either, and Chang was gone. And, since she did not imagine he would reciprocate her feelings, that they might perish together without her being subject to his rejection was perhaps an inadvertent benefit of the Contessa’s victory. Miss Temple smiled, and bile burnt the corners of her mouth.

The Contessa stood with one hand hovering over the brass knobs controlling the tubs, the other on a larger knob, the size of an apple, at the centre of the rostrum.

‘You must do it all together,’ explained Doctor Svenson. ‘Secondary cables will begin the rendering of the remaining metals. The minerals will advance in the proper sequence and temper the incarnation. The infusion of identity will travel directly to Chang. The corrupted essence will burn apart and flow to Miss Temple. Do you understand? Are you ready?’

The Contessa spoke to the green-coated guards. ‘If he has done anything, shoot him. Be ready, in fact, to shoot anyone. Your master’s survival is at stake. Doctor?’

Svenson nodded, glanced once at Mahmoud, and then stepped away.

The Contessa slid back the brass caps on three of the knobs, and then uncovered the largest, a blood-red ball of glass, like the one they had found in the Contessa’s abandoned laboratory, which had so nearly claimed Chang’s life and her own. This new red sphere was undamaged and whole. The light struck the glass and the glass transformed, glowing with heat. With a shriek the cables leading to Chang’s table rattled to life. The hoses went taut and the machines took up their escalating drone. Miss Temple jolted against the restraints as the current met her limbs. Without volition sound came from her mouth, air from her lungs.

In the same instant, sparks leapt from the three tubs. With a decisive lunge Doctor Svenson brought his heel down hard on the coupling at the front of Cunsher’s tub. A grisly crack and the coupling gave way, spitting smoke and fire. Miss Temple saw Mahmoud hesitate – the Doctor’s warning, she now realized – before flinging himself at the tub of Michel Gorine. He seized the coupling with both hands, screaming at the contact, and with a brutal wrench tore it free. Sparking smoke spewed from the broken connection. Mahmoud’s body vibrated cruelly, his fingers locked around the cable, and he fell. Both Cunsher and Gorine remained as they had been, unharmed, but the tub containing Madelaine Kraft, like the others before her, erupted with a cloud of horrid steam.

Miss Temple could no longer see for the shaking of her eyes. The machines became deafening – or was the roaring in her blood? She braced herself for the flood of cold corruption – but what she felt instead was heat, a clean consuming fire that scored each bone and every lineament of muscle and vein … and, with the agony of its