The Dark Volume Part 10

On curved spurs of track to either side stood empty open-topped cars to carry ore. Ahead were two squat wooden buildings, one fitted with scaffolding to load ore, the windows of the other glowing with yellowed lamplight. Beyond these, a short line of pa.s.senger railcars- he could hear the engineers shouting to men on the trackside-was being connected to a steaming engine. His enemies could have gone inside the square building to wait, but given their mutual desire for secrecy, it seemed unlikely.

Behind the pa.s.senger cars and the engine, but not yet connected to them, ran a longer line of ore cars, piled with rock, at the end of which was a break van whose windows were dark. Chang crouched next to a rusted pair of iron wheels and studied the yard: no sign of the Captain, of the Contessa, or even Willem. If the Captain had indeed gone to the train some hours before, he might be in a pa.s.senger car, if only because the presence of other pa.s.sengers and a conductor might provide, with witnesses, more security. At the same time, he might well be hiding in an ore car... but such logic only made sense if he was frightened, and the man with the saber had not seemed frightened at all.

Chang loped to the rear pa.s.senger car, its platform bracketed by two lamps, and vaulted silently over the rail. He heard nothing from inside. The door was not locked-was there such confidence and trust still in the world?-and Chang eased it open to find the rear compartment had been converted into a comfortable little room for the conductor, with a stove, wooden chairs, lanterns, maps, and any number of small metal tools set on hooks in the wall. On a side table sat a welcome pot of tea, and he poured half a cup into a nearby metal mug-the brew still steaming as it met the air-and drank it off in one set of swallows. He set the cup down, moved to an inner door, and carefully, silently, turned the k.n.o.b.

Chang stepped into the hallway of a standard pa.s.senger railcar, with gla.s.s-doored compartments to his right-hand side, bathed in the dim half-light of lanterns hung at either end. The pa.s.senger cars formed one long interlocked corridor straight to the engine, where he a.s.sumed the conductor presently was. But before the train left, the conductor would make his way down the length of it, accounting for every pa.s.senger. It would be better if Chang could locate the Captain before that happened. He strode quickly down the car, glancing into each compartment, and then through the next, with the same result- every compartment was empty. The train shuddered: the line of ore cars had been attached. They would leave momentarily.

He entered the third car. The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza burst through the far door, out of breath, her expression hard as h.e.l.l itself. She saw Chang just an instant after he saw her. Neither moved. Then the Contessa launched herself straight at him with all speed, dress held up with both hands, black boots pounding against the polished planking. Chang's lips curled back with pleasure.

"Contessa! How completely superb..."

He raised the iron pole and strode deliberately forward-free hand raised, fingers open, to catch or turn aside whatever she might fling-awaiting their collision with an animal eagerness.

The Contessa suddenly dodged from the corridor into a compartment. Chang swore under his breath and leapt forward, tearing at the compartment door. She had shot the bolt, and he could see her through the gla.s.s clawing at the window latches. Chang stabbed the pole through the gla.s.s and cleared a ragged hole. The Contessa turned once as he thrust his gloved hand through to grope for the bolt, and then with all her strength, the latches not yet free, hurled herself full against the window. Its gla.s.s cracked, starring raggedly like the web of an opium-sick spider. She cried out, stumbled back, and Chang saw the bleeding slash across her shoulder. He wrenched the door open. The Contessa threw herself at the cracked window again, sailing through in a shower of dagger-sharp shards to land in a glittering heap on the rocky trackside below. Chang leapt to the window, looking down. The Contessa groped to her hands and knees, blood gleaming on her dress.

"Don't be a fool, woman! You cannot escape!"

The Contessa groaned with a savage, desperate effort and reached a stumbling, drunken run. Chang looked at the shattered window with distaste, and cleared as much of the remaining gla.s.s as he could with the iron pole, sweeping it along the lower frame.

He turned in time to see a dark shadow fill the entire doorway, the compartment air suddenly thick with indigo clay. He turned a thrust with the pole, raising it swiftly before him, and heard more shattering of gla.s.s. The second blow, fast upon the first, was a stone-hard fist, catching Chang square on the jaw and sprawling him onto the compartment seats. At once Chang rolled to his side, just evading a shard of gla.s.s slicing down to shred the upholstery where his head had been. Chang rolled again, whipping the iron pole at his a.s.sailant's face. The man blocked it on his forearm without the slightest cry-a blow meant to shatter bone-but as he did Chang landed a kick square in the fellow's stomach. The man grunted and staggered back. Chang scrambled to his feet, jaw numb, trying to see who-for it was not the Captain-had determined to kill him.

His attacker was tall, wrapped in a black woolen cloak, its hood pulled forward. Chang could see only his pale jaw, a mouth with broken teeth, lips nearly black, and s.h.i.+ning with what might have been blood but for the smell. It was the same blue discharge Chang had seen on the lips of Lydia Vandaariff, after the doomed heiress' body had been corrupted by the Comte's alchemical injections. The man snarled-a mean, rasping exhalation like the grinding of flesh between two stones-and Chang's eyes darted to his hands. The left was wound thick with cloth and held a squat spear of blue gla.s.s, the shattered edge bristling like a box of needles, while the right-no wonder Chang's jaw felt as if it had been broken-was wrapped in plaster. Then the instant was over. As his attacker surged forward, Chang cracked the pole against the man's left hand, knocking the blue gla.s.s to the floor, and received another blow from the plaster-covered right, which drove the air from his lungs. He was thrown back through the open compartment door and slammed into the corridor wall. The man was right after him, groping for Chang's throat with one hand and clubbing at his head with the other. Chang dropped the pole and tore at the ice-cold squeezing grip with both hands, his boots slipping on broken gla.s.s. The man pressed close. The indigo stench was near to nauseating, p.r.i.c.king the back of Chang's throat-part of his mind vaguely curious as to whether it was possible to vomit while being strangled to death. Chang found his footing at last and snapped forward, sharply striking the man's face with his forehead, then driving his knee between them, sending his a.s.sailant back into the doorway.

But the man was incredibly fast, and lashed out with his plaster-cast fist, catching Chang's shoulder like a hammer. Chang gasped at the impact as if he had been nailed to the wall behind him. The man dug under the black cloak and came out with another dagger-length spike of blue gla.s.s.

The man spat a rope of fluid from the side of his mouth and extended the dagger mockingly toward Cardinal Chang's right eye. Chang could not run-he'd only be gashed in the back. His mind ran through each feint and counter-feint he might attempt, and every possible attack-just as he knew his enemy was doing, the entirety of a chess match in one instant.

"She's escaped you," Chang whispered. "Just like at the stables."

"No matter." The man's voice was a slithering limestone grind.

"She will survive us all."

"You, certainly."

"You are no portrait of good health."

"You have no idea."

Like a bullet from a gun, the man's stone fist swept forward, smas.h.i.+ng into the wall as Chang dodged away and then dropped to his knees, just below the dagger hacking at his face. Chang dove forward, catching his opponent around the waist, and bull-rushed him backward into the compartment. The man roared, but in three quick steps was pinned against the shattered window frame, then toppled through with a cry. His flailing boot caught Chang across the face as he fell, knocking the Cardinal to the gla.s.s-littered floor. By the time Chang could lurch to his knees and peer out of the window, his mysterious enemy had vanished.

CHANG STOOD wincing at the pain scoring across the whole of his body, catching his rasping breath and taking in the ruined compartment-window and door destroyed, upholstery slashed, the floor scratched and pitted by the gla.s.s ground beneath their boots. He took in the fact that the Contessa had never especially feared Chang at all, that her only concern-at the stable and on the train-had been that hooded, implacable killer. The man had chased her from the front of the train toward Chang-what did that mean with regard to the Captain? Chang had a.s.sumed the disfigured man was another of the Captain's soldiers, who'd run afoul of the blue gla.s.s... but Chang realized that the man-and by extension, the Captain?-had been trying to kill the Contessa. One of the most subtle achievements of the Cabal had been their insinuation into the highest levels of government- suborning powerful figures throughout the Ministries and the Palace to the extent that state policy would be now executed to serve their particular interests. What was more, an entire regiment of dragoons had been rea.s.signed to "unspecified duties" at the Palace, an unprecedented gesture that had allowed the key figures in the Cabal-Minister Crabbe, the Comte, Francis Xonck, the Contessa-to protect their every endeavor with seasoned troops. Chang frowned, for given all of this, what he'd seen made little sense. If the search party had been sent by the Palace, were they not the Contessa's allies?

Was the Captain in the pa.s.senger cars or had he talked his way into the engine itself? Chang wanted to leap out the window and run after the Contessa, but knew that stopping the Captain, stopping any discovery of their survival-especially if he did not truly understand who the Captain served-was more important than revenge. Yet if Chang remained on the train, he was now leaving two deadly enemies behind him, when all of his companions would be pa.s.sing through Karthe village.

But who knew when Svenson and the women might arrive? It could be another week, even more. By driving the Captain and Josephs away from the fis.h.i.+ng village, Chang had ensured his companions would be safe there. The Contessa wanted only to escape Karthe, and the disfigured man had shown he would pursue her above anything.

The Contessa was one woman. If no one stopped the Captain delivering his news, Chang and the others would be hunted everywhere, by hundreds of men... and he had left his warning note at the Flaming Star...

The splitting ache in his head prevented further thought. There was no clean choice-either way he risked d.a.m.ning both the others and himself. He needed to sleep, to eat-to eat opium, he thought with no small longing.

Chang staggered against the row of seats. The train was moving. He looked at the dark trackside moving past, weighing the possibility of leaping out, but did not move. The decision had been made.

IT HAD taken the whole of that night's travel to descend from the dark mountains into a land of treeless hills marked, as by the scrawls of a child's pencil, with arbitrary seams of lichen-speckled slate. He had bartered with the trainsmen for some meat and bread and tea. To his great frustration, the Captain was not in the pa.s.senger cars, nor the coal wagon, nor the engine. Nothing was said of the ruined compartment-the gla.s.s was swept up and the broken doorway stretched with canvas by the time he had finished his search in the forward cars- even if the men seated around the stove cast more than one wary glance at Chang's unsettling eyes and his battered, nonsensical garments. He paced the length of the train, fruitlessly hoping he had overlooked some nook or cupboard, but only frightened the other pa.s.sengers-three men with business at the mines, an old woman, and two young laborers on their way to shackle their lives to a mill, or one of the new factories setting up outside of the city.

Given that Chang had no way to search the ore cars himself while they were in motion, and barring an open attack on his person, there was nothing he could do for the remainder of the journey.

He did not know who the disfigured man was-either one of the Captain's men...or not. Had the Contessa contaminated some woodsman? Chang s.h.i.+vered to recall the agony of the ground blue gla.s.s inside his own lungs. If this fellow had the same torment... was he even in his own mind? And what had been in the strange trunk? The orange felt marked it as salvage from the dirigible... if a priceless gla.s.s book had been brought to sh.o.r.e only to smash into weaponry, what else could be still more valuable?

The question made Chang think of the airs.h.i.+p. Just when the members of the Cabal had stood at the very brink of success- unimaginable wealth and power all but in their grasp-the suspicions and rivalries between them had been inflamed to open, violent antagonism. Chang had seen it before, thieves turning on each other in the midst of a crime, but these were no common thieves. What they had schemed to steal was nothing less than the free thought of a nation- of many nations-to fas.h.i.+on an empire of oxen. That extreme ambition had fed their fears and distrust of one another, of which the violence on the dirigible was only the final, sudden flowering. Chang knew that Xonck, the Contessa, the Comte, and Crabbe had all hatched their own secret plans against the others-either for insurance or outright betrayal. As he wondered what was in the trunk, he also wondered what private schemes remained in place, like loaded weapons in an unlocked cupboard, just waiting to be found.

Chang spent the next day paralyzed with waiting, watching the landscape descend from the brown hills to cultivated fields and villages and then small towns, each indicated from afar by its brittle spire. By the time night had fallen again he sat slumped in the seat, his gla.s.ses folded in his lap and a hand pressed over his eyes, hating the confinement, hating the docile pa.s.sengers around him, hating every prim little town he pa.s.sed. It was ridiculous, patently ridiculous. The woman was dead. He pulled away his hand and looked up, squinting at the yellow lantern light that came from the corridor.

Then for no particular reason he thought of the Contessa on her knees at the trackside. The image was impossibly vivid-her face flushed, hair wild, the scarlet gash on her shoulder. He recalled striking her in the stable, and the exquisite movement of her body as she had stumbled back but kept her feet... the elegance of her pale hand touching her new-bruised jaw... Cardinal Chang covered his eyes with a groan. He was insane.

THE SKY was dark when the train pulled into Stropping Station. Chang dropped down on the gravel trackside a good distance from the main station floor and its crowd. He looked down the line of ore cars, knowing the Captain could be anywhere. The scattered pages of a newspaper blew toward him with a blast of steam from the engine, and Chang reached down to catch one. Although his eyesight made reading anything but the largest type difficult, he'd been gone from the city for days and knew he ought to see where things stood. It was the Courier, an inflammatory, vulgar rag, of two days previous. The headline read "Market Crisis!" Chang sneered-the markets were always in crisis-and allowed his eyes to drift down the page. The other stories seemed no less dire-"Blood-Fever Fear," "Industry at Standstill," "Privy Council Delay"-but that was the Courier. Chang balled up the paper and threw it aside.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Behind the ore cars, between the wheels-for an instant only-had been a shadow. It was a crouching man, and that man was watching him. Chang broke into a jog across the tracks, ducking beneath the railcars until he reached a side exit he'd found on a Royal Engineers' architectural survey plan some years before and employed on numerous occasions since. A quick kick to the half-rusted door, up two stories of metal staircase in pitch black-just slow enough for the Captain to follow-and Chang was groping for the bolt of a small iron door. He paused... smiled at the sounds of footfalls in the darkness below... and emerged onto h.e.l.liott Street, narrow and high-walled, and dangerous at anytime to the careless or unarmed. Chang left the door ajar behind him and smiled again, pleased to be back where he knew his way.

h.e.l.liott Street fed into the Regent's Star, a square formed by the meeting of five roads and once dominated by the apartments of the old Queen's utterly unregretted father. The district was steeped in the louche sort of traffic those apartments housed-at the Prince's death the Royal apartments had been vacated, but the place only became more deeply the province of the lawless and depraved.

The hideous Stropping clock had marked the time as nine o'clock. Even without being followed, Chang could not go back to his rooms until he knew his status with the law, nor could he show his face at the Raton Marine tavern. Chang knew he must choose a path. But he waited-detecting the slightest squeak of the rusted door-then loudly cleared his throat and spat toward the gutter.

Two men, one of them abnormally large, had stepped forth from the shadows of St. Piers Lane and walked toward him... the exact last thing he needed.

THE LARGE man, whose throat bulged like a toad's above a soiled, tightly knotted cravat, wore a shapeless wool cap pulled close around his ears. Chang knew him to be bald, with a mouth full of worn-to-stump brown teeth, and that his hands, presently in the pockets of a too-small greatcoat, were caged in chain-mail gloves. The second man wore a battered top hat and a green military jacket, all of its gold braid removed. His face was thin, unshaven, and his yellow hair flattened back on his skull with grease. This man's left hand, scratching a groove along his scalp as they advanced, was empty. His right, tucked neatly behind his back, would hold a belled bra.s.s cutla.s.s hilt set with a fat, squat double-edged blade. Chang drifted along the square so his back was no longer to h.e.l.liott Street. He did not care for the Captain to strike from behind.

"Cardinal Chang," the big fellow called. "It was said you'd run away."

"That you'd come to your senses." The other man shook his head ruefully. "Yet here you are, mad as ever."

"Horace," Chang called to the large man, and then with a wry nod to his companion, "Lieutenant Sapp. I suppose I ought to have expected such a meeting."

"Why is that?" asked Sapp.

"Because I am sought by parties with little knowledge of the town," said Chang. "Being ignorant, they were certain to employ the likes of you to find me."

Horace exhaled with a snort and took his chain-sheathed fists from his coat. Chang carefully measured the distance between them- perhaps four feet of cobbled walkway-and exhibited his own empty hands for them to see. "Unfortunately, I am quite helpless."

Horace snorted again.

"Will you convey me to your employer?" asked Chang.

"We will convey you to the dog-heap," Sapp told him. "A pleasure I have been antic.i.p.ating these long years."

Chang smiled back coolly. "And whose feet are you licking to night, Sapp? Do you even know? Or are you licking something other than a foot and enjoying yourselves too much to care?"

CHANG SNAPPED his head back as Sapp's arm swept forward, attempting-with some skill-to cut a small ca.n.a.l across the width of Chang's throat. The stroke went wide. Sapp slashed again, then feinted at Chang's stomach as Chang hopped back another step, keeping Sapp between him and Horace's meaty fists.

"Slow as ever, Sapp," observed Chang.

"Choke on your own blood," snarled the former officer. Sapp had been cas.h.i.+ered for selling his regiment's ammunition to the local population to pay his gambling debts, but persisted in wearing his rank-stripped coat in defiance of his shame.

Sapp stabbed across Chang's face-too close. This time, Chang did not give ground but s.h.i.+fted so the blade shot past, then he seized hold of Sapp's wrist. Sapp tried to pull away, which gave Chang room to kick him viciously in the groin. As the wheezing Sapp crumpled to the cobbles, Chang tore his blade free and called sharply to the big man, who stood murderously flexing his ring-wrapped fingers.

"Stay and think, Horace," hissed Chang. "As you say yourself, I am mad. It also means I will have no qualms about killing you. I will kill you, Horace. I will bury this blade in your throat if you take one more step in my direction."

Horace did not move. Sapp whimpered, his breath huffing clouds against the night-wet stone.

"No," Horace announced. "I'm killing you." He came at Chang like a bull.

It was all Chang could do not to laugh. For the stinging impact of one blocked fist on his forearm, Chang slashed Sapp's very sharp blade once across Horace's bulging stomach, opening a seething, surging line of red. Horace grunted and swung again. This time Chang merely stepped aside and chopped at the man's extended arm, severing the cords at his elbow. When Horace clutched at the spurting wound with his other hand-his upper body now utterly open-Chang drove the blade hilt-deep into the bulging flesh below the big man's chin. He released the weapon and Horace toppled backward to the street.

The Captain was nowhere to be seen. With the commotion, Chang's pursuer had gone on his way. Chang swore aloud, the words echoing across the filthy bricks of the Regent's Star. Everything was ruined-his entire purpose in taking the train, the risk in leaving the Contessa and the disfigured man behind...

He spun to Sapp-gaping at his companion's demise-and sent a swinging kick across the man's jaw, dropping him flat. Still snarling with anger, Chang took firm hold of Sapp's uniform collar and dragged the moaning man away from his comrade's corpse, back into the shadows.

A quick search of Sapp's pockets produced a razor, and Chang held the open edge before the former Lieutenant's blinking right eye. Chang's other hand grasped Sapp's neck, pressing the man against a brick wall. "Who has asked you to kill me?"

"I would kill you in any case-"

Chang squeezed Sapp's throat until the words rattled to a stop. "Who has asked you to kill me?"

"You killed Horace-"

"He had his chance, Sapp. This-right now-is yours."

Chang squeezed again. Sapp gasped, and whined with discomfort- had the kick broken a tooth?-but then nodded vigorously.

"I'll tell you. Don't kill me. I'll tell you."

Chang waited, not easing his grip. Sapp swallowed.

"Word came down to the Raton Marine-money to be made. Everyone had seen the soldiers, outside your room-and the dead German in the alley behind-more Germans watching the Library..."

Soldiers of the Prince of Macklenburg. With his disappearance and the death of their commander, Major Blach-at Chang's hand in the depths of Harschmort-Chang a.s.sumed they had been recalled to the Macklenburg diplomatic compound.

"Word from where?"

"Nicholas..."

Nicholas was the barman at the Raton Marine. Chang's dealings with him had always been respectful, but he knew-for this was the heart of the tavern's unique marketplace-that the barman held himself scrupulously neutral with regard to fugitives, feuds, even outright a.s.sa.s.sinations.

"What about Nicholas?"

"Said a man had come. In a black coat-from the Palace- official."

"No one in the Palace knows the Raton Marine exists!"

"Then someone told them, didn't they?" spat Sapp.

"And he told you to watch the trains?"

"Of course he didn't! I know you, Chang! I know how you think!"

Chang lowered the blade from Sapp's eyes and released his throat, taking a moment to pat the street grime from each ragged epaulette. "Now why should the Palace care about the likes of me?"

"Because of the crisis."

"What crisis?"

"The Ministry men. I'm not so stupid I can't follow them just as well-and I heard them whispering-"

"I've seen the Courier. Nothing new."

"Men of power, Chang. Men used to half a dozen fools leaping around at a flick of their little finger. I heard them myself. And they were terrified."

"I'm supposed to believe I'm wanted by the Palace-because they're frightened of me?"

"Believe what you want." Sapp's contempt returned with his confidence. "Or maybe you don't want to admit that you don't know already-from your Library-"

Chang dipped the razor beneath Sapp's jaw, slicing just deep enough toward the man's gnarled right ear, and with his other hand spun Sapp's shoulder so the spray shot onto the wall behind them. He folded the razor into his coat and returned to the light of Regent's Star. His footfalls scattered two curious dogs already sniffing at Horace. The sputtering gasps of Lieutenant Sapp were inaudible beneath the clipped echo of Chang's boots against the city stone.

HE HAD no money for a proper hotel, and the sorts of rooms he could afford would put him in view of a bothersome host of fools, less clever than Sapp if just as b.l.o.o.d.y, all chasing the same reward. Chang shrugged his coat closer around his shoulders. Of course, he could find someplace... yet if he had no safe haven of his own, did it make sense to bring the battle to his enemies?

The Contessa surely retained her rooms at the St. Royale-but there would be no information there, and secret entry would be difficult. There was Harschmort House, the home of Lord Robert Vandaariff... with the mighty financier reduced to the status of a mindless slave and his daughter Lydia brutally murdered on the airs.h.i.+p, might not their sprawling mansion be the perfect place to do mischief? Chang shook his head-mischief was not the point. He was being hunted by men from the Palace, but the Palace-the many, many Ministry buildings, the Queen's residence, the a.s.sembly chambers, Staelmaere House-was a labyrinth. It made even Harschmort look like a country garden maze. Each option brought danger without any clear sense of advantage-he did not know enough, nor who to truly fear.

In the morning he would buy every newspaper and confirm Sapp's information, just as he would find out the fates of those Cabal underlings left behind-whether the Duke of Staelmaere and Colonel Aspiche were still alive... and perhaps most important of all, what had befallen Mrs. Marchmoor, the last of the Comte's most powerful creations, three women he had transfigured into living gla.s.s. Was she still alive-if her present state of existence could be termed life at all? Or had she too been destroyed? They were all questions for tomorrow. Tonight Chang needed another refuge, unexpected, yet not without some purpose.

AFTER SO long in the train, Chang was happy enough to walk, and made for the empty lanes behind the White Cathedral. Named for the pale stone used to rebuild it after a fire, the Cathedral had remained unfinished for years, its broken-toothed dome, crusted with scaffolding, a mighty testament to corruption. The streets were narrow and had been meticulously lined with a spiked iron fence, but for Chang they made a convenient path between the evening crowds at the Circus Garden and the less-savory gatherings closer to the river. He swung his arms with satisfaction, pa.s.sing through the motions of parry and attack and slash. It had pleased him immensely to dispatch Horace and Sapp. He had despised them for years, of course, but, after so much that had been inconclusive, simply doing something was a profound relief. And he had even warned them!

In another thirty minutes he had entered a world of well-kept street lamps and shade trees, of courtyards and small private parks. Chang made a slow ambling circuit of an especially neat and proud little square, first along the main walk and then, with the silent hop of a locked gate, through the servants' alley behind, to crouch in the shadows of an impressive townhouse. It was well after ten o'clock. The rooms on the ground floor were still lit, as were the gabled attic rooms that housed the servants. Executing a plan whose origin seemed to lie in another lifetime, Cardinal Chang followed a line of sculpted juniper bushes to a drain pipe bolted to the wall. He took hold with both gloved hands and pulled himself rapidly to a narrow eave, his legs hanging free, and then swept first one and then the other over the ledge, until he knelt outside a dark second-story window. The window had not been locked during his previous reconnoiter. It was not locked now. Chang silently slid up the sash and stepped through, starting with one long leg-his boot soft against a runner of rose-colored carpet-then his torso and finally the remaining leg, carefully folded through like an insect tucking in its wing. Chang eased Sapp's razor from his pocket, orienting himself from his research as to the exact location of Mrs. Trapping's bedroom.

HOW LONG ago had Chang been hired by Adjutant-Colonel Noland Aspiche-the very beginning of his involvement in this wretched affair-to murder his commanding officer, Arthur Trapping, Colonel of the Prince's Own 4th Dragoons? Trapping was an ambitious rake, rising by virtue of his wife's powerful brother, the arms magnate Henry Xonck. It was Xonck who had purchased Trapping's commission and then maneuvered the 4th Dragoons' a.s.signment to Ministry service, thus inserting his brother-in-law at the center of the Cabal's activity. For Trapping, it was a chance to climb to the Cabal's upper ranks, playing them off against one another-his intentions unfortunately far outstripping his ability. Both Trapping and Henry Xonck had all been outmaneuvered by the youngest of the three Xonck siblings- Francis, as capable an adversary as Chang had ever seen. Decadent and disregarded, Francis Xonck had manipulated his brother's use of Trapping, Trapping himself, and his sister's hope that her worthless husband's rise might provide the social status her dour eldest brother denied her. Francis Xonck's plans to usurp the family empire even went so far as to involve the Trapping children's tutor-Eloise Dujong. Only a bullet from the Doctor on the sinking dirigible had finally forestalled the man's ambition.

But before any of this, hired by Aspiche, Chang had crafted a detailed plan to penetrate the Trapping home in secret, to eliminate Colonel Trapping in his bed, if necessary. He had never employed it- Chang had instead followed the Colonel to Harschmort, the mansion of Robert Vandaariff, where his quarry had been murdered by someone else before he could act. But now... now, even though she was a marginal figure in the whole intrigue, Chang was certain Trapping's widow might possess some insight on what had transpired during the week he had been marooned in the north. With any luck a few good words about her children's missing tutor would gain him a clean bed and breakfast... once the woman got over the shock of his arrival, of course.

His study of Arthur and Charlotte Trapping had not shown either to be an especially doting parent: at this time of night the children should be asleep in their rooms-directly behind him-and their mother in her own chamber on the third floor. The lights down below would be servants, some cleaning up that night's dinner and others preparing the meals and linens for tomorrow. Chang strode quietly to the staircase. Keeping close to the wall, he climbed three steps at a time to the next landing, pausing to crane his head around the corner. He heard nothing. To the right lay Colonel Trapping's bedchamber. To the left was that of the Colonel's new widow. A bar of yellow gaslight peeked out beneath the door. Chang took gentle hold of its ivory k.n.o.b. From within he heard a m.u.f.fled squeak... the opening of a drawer. Was Mrs. Trapping awake? Would her back be to the door? If he could just enter without her screaming...

Chang turned the k.n.o.b with the deliberate patience of a man stroking a woman's leg during church service, but then the bolt released with a snap that echoed down the hall. He thrust the door wide. A trim man in a long black coat wheeled in alarm from a writing table strewn with papers, his mouth open and his eyes wide-a man perhaps of Chang's age, hair combed flat, each cheek bristling with side whiskers. Chang backhanded the man savagely across the face, knocking him past the table and onto a ta.s.seled square of Turkish carpet, where he lay still. Chang returned to the open door, listening for any alarm, heard nothing, and eased it closed.

Charlotte Trapping was not in the room.

The drawers of each cupboard and trunk had been pulled open, their contents put in piles, the bedding heaped on the floor, and her papers spread wide for meticulous scrutiny. The man-one of Sapp's Palace functionaries?-remained insensible. Chang picked up a letter from the table-by its signature, from Colonel Trapping-and turned it over to see if there was a date.

He frowned, set it down, sorted through three more letters in turn, and then set them down as well, gazing around him at the room.

It was quite large, and a mirror in size of the Master's suite at the opposite end of the hallway. Chang entered its expansive closet. The locked door inside led without question to an identical closet in Colonel Trapping's own rooms-just what one might expect between a modern husband and his wife. Chang looked at the clothing hanging about him, none of it overly fine, but there-no doubt freshly cleaned because it had been more recently worn-was a pale, demure dress he knew. He had seen it at Harschmort House, watching from afar on the night of Lydia Vandaariff's engagement celebration... the night it had all begun, not thirty minutes before the Colonel had been poisoned.