The Dark Volume Part 21

She glanced fearfully at Mr. Phelps, but the man's attention seemed split between discomfort and curiosity. Miss Temple forced herself to shrug and began to rattle away in as blithe a tone as possible.

"Well, it all depends on where one starts-I don't know if the events at Harschmort House are known to you, but on the airs.h.i.+p nearly everyone was killed, and the airs.h.i.+p itself-with all the books and machinery and most of the bodies-has been sunk beneath the sea. The Prince, Mrs. Stearne, Doctor Lorenz, Miss Vandaariff, Roger Bas...o...b.., Harald Crabbe, the Comte d'Orkancz I saw dead with my own eyes-"

"Francis Xonck is still alive," spat Mr. Soames. "You were with him. You were seen."

Miss Temple felt an icy blue pressure against her skull, the pressure escalating to pain.

"He was in Karthe," squeaked Miss Temple. "I saw him get off the train and followed him."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know-he disappeared! I took his book and ran!"

"Where is the Contessa?" asked Soames. "What will she do?"

"I cannot say-her body was not found-"

"Do not lie. I can feel her."

"Well, you know more than I do."

Mr. Soames twitched his fingers. "I can see her near you," he whispered. "I can sense her... on your mouth."

"I beg your pardon?" said Miss Temple.

"Tell me I am wrong," rasped Mr. Soames.

Mr. Phelps crossed to Soames. He placed a hand on Soames' forehead, and then-with some distaste-peeled back the lid from the man's left eye. Its white had acquired a milky blue cast that, as Miss Temple watched, crossed into the brown iris.

"There is not much time," whispered Mr. Phelps.

"Where is the Contessa?" cried Soames.

"I do not know!" insisted Miss Temple. "She was on the train. She left in the night."

"Where?"

"I do not know!"

"Scour the length of the train tracks!" Soames barked to Phelps. "Every man you have-near the ca.n.a.ls! She must be near the ca.n.a.ls!"

"But," began Phelps, "if it was Francis Xonck-"

"Of course it was Xonck!" screeched Soames.

"Then surely we must keep searching-"

"Of course!" Soames coughed thickly, spattering saliva on his moustache and chin. He turned his attention back to Miss Temple. "Xonck's book!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Why did you take it?"

"Why would I not take it?" replied Miss Temple.

Soames coughed again. His eyes were almost entirely blue.

"Bring her upstairs," he croaked. "This one is spent."

In an instant, like the snuffing of a candle, the presence that had inhabited Mr. Soames was gone. He toppled to the floor and lay still, gasping like a fish in the bottom of a boat, a ghastly rasp that filled the room. She looked up to Phelps.

"I will escort you to his Grace's chambers," he said.

WAITING OUTSIDE the door were two servants with an a.s.sortment of mops and bottles.

"You will manage the gentleman," Phelps said to them. "Be sure to scrub well with vinegar."

He took Miss Temple's arm and guided her down to the corridor. Her eyes darted to each new door and alcove they pa.s.sed. Phelps cleared his throat discreetly.

"Any attempt to flee is useless. As is any hope to employ that weapon in your boot. At the slightest provocation-and I do mean slightest-you will be occupied. You have seen the consequences."

His tone was stern, but Miss Temple had the distinct feeling that Mr. Phelps also found himself a prisoner, forever wondering when he in his turn would become as expendable as a nonent.i.ty like Soames.

"Will you tell me where we are?" she asked.

"Staelmaere House, of course."

Miss Temple saw no "of course" about it. Staelmaere House was an older mansion that lay between the Ministries and the Palace, connecting each to each through its ancient drawing rooms-a stucco-encrusted architectural pipe-joint. It was also home, she a.s.sumed, to the very horrid Duke.

In the ballroom of Harschmort House, Miss Temple had seen the Duke of Staelmaere addressing the whole of the Cabal's gathered minions-making clear, for he was the new head of the Privy Council, how powerful the Cabal had finally become. But Miss Temple knew that the Duke had been shot through the heart not two hours before that speech. Using the blue gla.s.s and the mental powers of the gla.s.s women, the Comte d'Orkancz had extended the Duke's existence by trans.m.u.ting him into a marionette, without anyone seeing through the trick. This fact had left Miss Temple, Svenson, and Chang with a dilemma-whether to prevent the Duke from seizing power or stop the airs.h.i.+p sailing to Macklenburg.

But Miss Temple had discovered that every "adherent" undergoing the alchemical Process (a fearsome alchemical procedure that instilled loyalty to the Cabal) had their minds inscribed with a specific control phrase. This was a sort of verbal cipher that, when invoked, allowed the speaker to command the adherent at will. Miss Temple had learned the control phrase of Colonel Aspiche, and when the Duke of Staelmaere returned to the city with Mrs. Marchmoor, the sole surviving gla.s.s woman, Miss Temple had sent Aspiche in pursuit, with orders to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Duke at all costs.

She had hoped that the unrest at Stropping and in the streets might be due to the Duke's a.s.sa.s.sination by the Colonel. But Mr. Soames had insisted it was not the case. Her cunning plan had failed.

THEY REACHED a wooden door. Phelps rapped the wrought-iron knocker and the door was opened by a crisply dressed servant. Miss Temple noticed with some alarm-did the fellow have mange?-that a patch of hair was missing from behind the man's ear. His complexion was even paler than Mr. Phelps' and his lips unpleasantly chapped. As the servant closed the door behind them she saw a smudge of b.l.o.o.d.y grime beneath his stiff white s.h.i.+rt cuff, as if the fellow's wrist had been cut and poorly bandaged.

Phelps led her past high, dark paintings and ma.s.sive ebony gla.s.s-front cabinets stuffed with every conceivable dining article one might fas.h.i.+on out of silver. Apparently ancient servants darted silently around them, but then Miss Temple saw with some alarm that they were not old at all, merely exhausted-faces horribly drawn, eyes red, and their swan-white collars and cuffs chafed with rust-colored smears. She looked fearfully to Phelps, wondering if he had delivered her to some hideous epidemic. What she had first taken to be a well-kept corridor was in fact littered with smatterings of-she could find no other words-interior decay: dust thick on the paintings, a tangle of cleaning rags pushed into a shadowy corner, candle wax pooled onto a Turkish carpet, another carpet blackened by coal dust. And yet there were servants everywhere. She stepped around a man crouched with a dustpan and a broom, and looked back to see him sag against the wall, eyes shut, succ.u.mbing to thin, sickly sleep.

"This way," muttered Phelps. They climbed to another high-ceilinged hallway, the landing littered with loose pages of parchment. Three men in black coats stood with their arms full of similar doc.u.ments, while a fourth crouched on his hands and knees, attempting to peel a sheet of paper from the floor without removing his white gloves. Near them sat an elderly man with a close-trimmed beard and a steel-rimmed monocle. Phelps bowed and addressed him with grave respect.

"Lord Acton."

Lord Acton ignored Phelps, barking impatiently at the secretary on his knees. "Pick it up, man!"

With a protesting whine the secretary raised a hand to his mouth, caught the tip of one gloved finger in his teeth-his gums unpleasantly vivid-and pulled it off, leaving the glove to dangle as his bare hand scrabbled to gather the parchment. Miss Temple winced to see the fellow's nails were ragged, split, and yellow as a crumbling honeycomb.

Phelps made to edge past, when Lord Acton turned and, as if echoing his servant, called to Phelps in a bleating complaint.

"If we are to do the Council's business we must see him, sir! His Grace cannot take hold of the Council if he will not lead!"

"Of course, my Lord."

"We cannot even gather enough of our number for the simplest work-Lord Axewith, Henry Xonck, Lord Vandaariff-none will answer my entreaties! Nor have we any news from Macklenburg, none at all! We are prepared-all the instructions have been observed-the regiments, the banks, the ca.n.a.ls, the sea ports-but they must hear from the Duke!"

"I will inform his Grace at once," said Phelps, nodding.

"I have no desire to trouble him-"

"Of course, my Lord."

"It is simply-he now rules, yet remains absent-and I have been waiting outside his door for so very long..."

"Of course, my Lord."

Lord Acton said nothing, out of breath, waiting for Phelps to respond more fully. When Phelps did not, he then abruptly nudged a foot at the man on the floor, still collecting pages.

"At this rate we will be here all day," he complained to no one in particular. "While my head, you know... it aches most cruelly-"

While Phelps muttered his condolences for Lord Acton's head, and the Lord's aide continued to grapple with his armload of papers, Miss Temple's attention turned to the far end of the corridor, where a man in a red dragoons' uniform had just stumbled into view. The man was tall and slim, with fair hair and side whiskers, and held his bra.s.s helmet under one arm. With his other arm against the far wall he bent over, as if gasping for breath or vomiting. Without looking in her direction, the officer recovered himself, squared his shoulders, and strode out, disappearing down a much smaller staircase. She looked back to Phelps.

"You will tell him, won't you?" whined Lord Acton. "I am not without enthusiasm!"

"Of course, my Lord-if you will excuse me..."

Lord Acton sneezed, which gave Phelps exactly enough time to reclaim Miss Temple's arm and sweep her directly toward the set of high, carved doors from which the dizzied officer had emerged.

"The Duke's chambers. You will be presented by his manservant." Phelps pa.s.sed a hand over his brow, and sighed. "In your interview... downstairs... you mentioned Deputy Minister Crabbe. That he is dead. We... we at the Ministry did not know."

Miss Temple indicated Mr. Phelps' broken arm. "I think you knew enough, sir."

Phelps looked back down the corridor, his expression once more pained, and absently scratched at his s.h.i.+rt-front. Miss Temple's eyes widened as she noticed a tiny bead of red soaking up into the fabric from where Phelps' nail had touched.

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps we are beyond them all..."

He rapped the iron door knocker, cast in the shape of a snarling hound's head.

The door opened and Miss Temple suppressed a gasp. If the other occupants of Staelmaere House had seemed unwell, the man before her looked as if he'd spent a fortnight in the grave. While his body may have once stood tall and thin, now it was skeletal. His stiff topcoat tented like a bedsheet hanging from a tree. His pale hair hung lank and unkempt, and there were clumps of it on his lapel. Miss Temple flinched against the foulness of his breath.

"Mr. Fordyce," said Phelps, his gaze turned to the wall.

"Mr. Phelps." The voice was moist and indistinct-Miss Temple heard it as "Fauwlpth"-as if the man's tongue had lost the ability to s.h.i.+ft within his mouth. "The Lady will follow me..."

Fordyce stepped aside and extended a brittle arm, his gloved hand and white cuff divided by a wrist wrapped with a rust-soaked twist of cloth. Miss Temple entered a dimly lit ante-room. A single silver candelabrum flickered on a small writing desk. The room's ma.s.sive windows were curtained tightly, and when the door was closed behind her the darkness deepened that much more.

"Etiquette," slurred Mr. Fordyce, "demands you not speak... unless the Duke requests that you do so."

He crossed to the candelabrum and raised it to the level of his face, the orange glow dancing unpleasantly across the man's mere scattering of teeth. In his other hand he held the canvas sack.

"In the Duke's presence, you are no longer required to keep to your knees. You are free to do so, but such deference is no longer enforced."

He led her across a carpet littered with tumbled books and cups and plates that clinked or snapped beneath Fordyce's feet, never once looking down, nor minding the wax that dripped freely from the candelabrum. She walked with a hand over both her mouth and nose. The reek of the man extended to every corner of the apartments. What had happened? What sort of disease might be so eroding everyone within the confines of Staelmaere House? Would she too succ.u.mb to its effects?

Fordyce knocked discreetly at a heavy door, meticulously carved from ebony wood. She was just realizing that the carving was actually a picture-an enormous man, flames coming off his body like the sun, in the act of swallowing a writhing child whole-when Fordyce opened the door and coughed hideously, as if gargling a piece of his own disintegrating throat.

"Your Grace... the young woman..."

There was no reply. Miss Temple darted forward, before the rancid man could take hold of her arm, into an even dimmer chamber, hung with high tapestries and even larger paintings-dark oil portraits whose faces loomed like drowning souls staring up through the sea. The door closed behind her and the room was silent, save for her own breath and the thudding of her heart. A faintly glowing gas-lit sconce, shaped like a tulip, floated in the gloom near a large straight-backed chair. In it sat a very tall man, staring into the darkness, his spine as rigid as the wood he leaned against. She recognized the collar-length iron-grey hair and sharply forbidding features that would not have seemed amiss on an especially intolerant falcon.

"Your Grace?" Miss Temple ventured.

The Duke did not stir. Miss Temple crept carefully closer. The smell here was different, the noisome, waxy reek smothered in jasmine perfume. Still he did not move, not even to blink his gla.s.sy eyes. She took another hesitant step, slowly extending one arm, and at the tip of that arm a finger toward his nearest hand, large-knuckled and knotted with rings. When her finger touched the clammy skin, the Duke's face snapped toward her, a movement as sharp as a cleaver cutting meat. Miss Temple yelped in surprise and leapt back.

Before she could gather words to speak, her ears-though not her ears at all, for she felt the noise erupt within her head-rebounded with brittle, sliding laughter. The gla.s.s woman emerged through a gap in the tapestries, wrapped in a heavy cloak, her hands and face reflecting the gaslight's glow.

"You are alive!" whispered Miss Temple.

In answer, the unpleasant laughter came again-like a needle dragged across her teeth-and with a sudden flick of intention Mrs. Marchmoor-the gla.s.s woman-caused the Duke to turn his head just as sharply away.

Miss Temple ran for the door. It had been locked. She turned to face the woman-the gla.s.s creature-the slick blue surface of her flesh, the impa.s.sive fixity of her expression belied by the wicked amus.e.m.e.nt in her laugh, and the subtle curl of her full, gleaming lips.

She had seen three gla.s.s women paraded by the Comte before the gathered crowds at Harschmort, each naked but for a collar and leash- like strange beasts from deepest Africa captured and sent to Rome to astonish a dissolute Emperor. The last of the three, Mrs. Marchmoor-a courtesan, born Margaret Hooke, the daughter of a bankrupt mill owner-was quite obviously no longer human. But was she sane?

"At your feet," hissed the voice inside Miss Temple's skull. "Bring it to me."

The canvas sack lay on the carpet, where Fordyce must have set it.

"Do it. No one will come. No one will hear you."

Miss Temple walked forward with the sack and set it onto the desk with care. Then, glancing once into Mrs. Marchmoor's unsettling and predatory blue pearl eyes, she shucked the canvas away without touching the surface of the blue gla.s.s, exposing it to the air.

"Explain."

"I took it from Francis Xonck," said Miss Temple, with a sort of shrug that she hoped conveyed that this had been no particular challenge for her. "I can only a.s.sume he took it from the trunk of books on the airs.h.i.+p."

Mrs. Marchmoor floated closer to the book, gazing intently into its depths.

"It is not from the trunk..."

"But it must be," said Miss Temple. "Where else?"

"The book itself perhaps, but not what lies within-the mind... is new..."

Mrs. Marchmoor extended one slender arm toward the book, the cloak falling away to either side, the fingers of her hand uncurling like the stalks of some uncla.s.sified tropical plant. Miss Temple gasped. At the point where the woman's fingertip ought to have clicked against the cover like a tumbler striking a table top, it instead pa.s.sed directly through, as if into water.

"Gla.s.s... is a liquid..." whispered Mrs. Marchmoor.

At the first intrusion of her finger the book began to glow. She slowly inserted the whole of her hand, and then, like the curling smoke from a cigarette, twisting, glowing azure lines began to swirl inside the book. Mrs. Marchmoor c.o.c.ked her head and extended her fingers, as if she were tightening the fit of a leather glove. The lines wrapped more tightly around her and glowed more brightly-yet Miss Temple was sure that something was wrong. Then the gleam went out, and Mrs. Marchmoor retracted her hand, the surface of the book top never once betraying a single ripple at her pa.s.sage.

"Can you... can you read it?" asked Miss Temple.

Mrs. Marchmoor did not respond. Miss Temple felt a harsh pressing at her mind, cold and uncaring, and stumbled backward in fear.