The Dark Volume Part 8

Chang nodded to the bay gelding. "Whose horse is this?"

"Mr. Bolte's, sir-one of the mine directors."

"He's the only man with a horse in Karthe?"

"No, sir. The others are let out to folk coming to Karthe-traders, hunters-Mr. Bolte's too. To the Captain-just came back today!"

"Who is this Captain?"

"A hunter! The Captain has a whole party, sir-hunting wolves!"

"But he came back alone?"

"I expect he'll be riding out again."

Chang leaned closer to the boy.

"Did your friend over there perhaps help himself to the Captain's saddlebags?"

"No, sir!" The boy was touchingly vehement, and Chang shook his head tolerantly.

"I do not care, Willem."

"But he did not! He found that in the yard-outside!" Willem wheeled and pointed to the crazed white horse. "Christian-that's him there-found the mare and the gla.s.s too, and didn't tell me about it either. Half-mad she is-you can see for yourself."

"Found when?"

"Not two hours," said the boy, and he pointed to the fresh oats and hay in the trough. "She won't eat anything!"

Chang stared at the horse, and its too-large rolling eyes. "Where is the saddle? What do you call them-the traces, the bridle."

"She didn't have any." Willem bobbed his head fearfully at Chang. "She wouldn't be your horse, would she, sir?"

"You mean you don't know whose it is?"

Willem shook his head.

"Can you tell me if this horse has come from a particular stable- from the north?"

"Are you from the north too, sir?" asked Willem.

"Can you tell me?" repeated Chang, more sharply.

"If she has their mark."

"I will give you this to know," said Chang, and he took a silver penny from his pocket-Chang had, without the slightest scruple, filched his own small supply from Miss Temple's boot while the Doctor and Eloise were elsewhere. The boy slithered over the stall door and carefully approached the skittish animal, his calming whispers at odds with his eagerness to earn the penny. Chang took two steps closer to the animal-just enough to detect the odor of indigo clay clinging to its flesh.

"I have found the mark, sir!" Willem cried. "It belongs to a merchant in fish oil. He lives here in Karthe, but his team and driver have been trading between villages in the north."

Chang flipped the silver penny into the air and with a smile the boy s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the air.

"You are quite sure the train will not leave for two hours at the soonest?"

"At the very soonest, sir."

"Then let us see what else your comrade can say."

Christian still gripped the wooden cup between his hands, but his senses had cleared enough for him to look up as Chang re-entered the tack room.

"Willem says you found that gla.s.s next to the white mare."

"Is it your gla.s.s, sir?" His words were thick and slurred. "I'm ever so sorry-"

"Did you touch it?" asked Chang, but then he saw the groom wore leather gloves. "Did you look into it?"

The groom nodded haltingly.

"Tell me what you saw."

"It was a rainstorm... a trampled rainstorm... every drop was... broken..."

Chang picked up the gla.s.s shard with his gloved hands and squinted, holding it at an angle. The entire shard was riven with cracks, finer than a spider's thread, a ruined lacework just beneath its surface. What effect would this have on the memories inside-would they remain legible? Would looking into broken gla.s.s offer only broken memories, or something worse? If the boy had looked longer, would it have burned a hole in his mind, like the tip of a cigar punching through a sheet of parchment?

Chang kicked open the stove with his boot. He shot the shard of gla.s.s into the bed of white-orange coals and closed it again. Then he turned back to the groom with a smile as false as any quack physician's.

"You will be fine. I know you both for honest lads-perhaps you will tell me more about this Captain..."

Chang looked around him for the younger boy, but he was gone.

"Where is Willem?" he asked.

The older groom smiled weakly. "Gone to announce you at the inn, sir, so they can prepare a room and a proper dinner. As you have been good to us, Willem was happy to go."

CHANG CURSED under his breath as he loped back through Karthe, just imagining the way he would be eagerly described. Alone or with a gang of allies, the Captain would now have ample time to lay an ambush. Above Chang lurked the same dim carpet of cloud, seemingly fed by the pale twists of smoke from each smug little stone house in the town. The illusion of safety provided by stone walls so easily climbed and wooden shutters so simply pried apart-the naivete made him suddenly sick.

The white horse had carried the reek of indigo clay-and the privy had been stained with blue. He had allowed himself to a.s.sign all those killings to Josephs and this Captain, yet neither man had shown signs of any sickness, nor were their mounts deranged as the white horse so obviously was. Did this mean someone else had survived the airs.h.i.+p? Or had another of the Captain's party run as afoul of the blue gla.s.s as the naive groom? Had there perhaps been another broken book in the sand-had the man looked into it or tried to transport the pieces and exposed the horse? Perhaps this man was even now with the Captain at the inn, fouling an upstairs room...

Chang stood below the inn's hanging sign, deciding how best to enter. The windows above were shuttered. No doubt there was an exit to the rear, but if the Captain intended to bolt out the back, it only postponed their meeting until the train yard. Chang reached into his coat and took firm hold of the hunting knife. Then he rapped on the door.

IT WAS opened by an older woman in an ap.r.o.n, her hair wrapped tight with a cloth. Chang's gaze went past her to the room beyond-lined with benches, a fire freshly laid-and then back to the woman. Her face bore a practiced smile and her eyes balanced with a professional skill the likelihood of his having money against his causing trouble. It did not seem any man with a weapon lurked behind her door. Chang brushed past, turning when the hearth was at his back and he could see the entire room in a glance.

"I will need a meal," he said. "Have you any other guests?"

"A meal, you say?" answered the woman. "Let me see-"

"Yes. I will be taking this evening's train."

"My name is Mrs. Daube-"

"I have not asked your name, madame. Have you any other guests?"

Chang craned his gaze toward a staircase leading to what he a.s.sumed were rooms upstairs. The woman looked back to the still-open door behind her, as if he should consider leaving.

"I cannot discuss my tenants, present or future, with every fellow-unsavory fellow-coming in off the street."

"There is no street! In a town like this, one is known by all or is a stranger." He stepped closer to her. "Like the Captain."

"Captain?"

Instead of answering, Chang advanced past her to the front door and quietly closed it. The innkeeper pursed her lips.

"I do not think there will be room at table-"

A movement in the kitchen caused Chang to turn. A burly young man with his sleeves rolled up and his hands black with coal dust stood in the doorway.

He stared darkly at Chang. "Mrs. Daube?"

Chang held out an open palm, his words deliberate and simple. "I require this Captain. Is he alone?"

"What Captain?" called the one with dirty hands.

"We do get so few travelers in Karthe," began the woman.

Chang ignored her. He stepped to the staircase, drawing the hunting knife and reaching the first landing in two long strides. The rooms above him were dark and silent. Normally he would not trust his sense of smell, but even he could detect the reek of indigo clay... yet there was no trace. Chang darted up to the upper landing, bracing for an attack. When none came he stepped quickly into each room, looking behind the doors and under the beds. When he reappeared from the third, he found Mrs. Daube on the lower landing, holding a lantern, her eyes fixed on the wide-bladed weapon in his hand.

"When did he go?" Chang asked.

"I'm sure I haven't-"

"There has been murder, madame-more than one innocent life taken-in the north." He returned the knife to his belt. "This Captain came to Karthe and then rode north, did he not?"

Mrs. Daube frowned, but did not deny it. Chang gently took the lantern from her hand.

UNDER LANTERN light, the three rooms revealed nothing. With a sudden thought, Chang sat on the bed of the center room and pulled the book of poetry from his coat. He folded the spine back and scrawled a terse warning on the open page to whoever followed. He bent the corner of the page and stuffed the book beneath the pillow. A futile gesture, but what wasn't?

When he reached the kitchen, the young man had installed himself behind the table, gripping a mug of beer, his blackened hands reminding Chang of an animal's paws. Mrs. Daube muttered bitterly, moving efficiently between her stove and table, tending a large number of steaming and bubbling pots while slicing a loaf of bread, pouring a mug of beer, and placing salt and b.u.t.ter in front of an empty chair. She looked up and saw Chang at the door.

"It will be two silver pennies," she announced.

"I thought there was no room."

"Two pennies," she replied, "or you are welcome to go elsewhere."

"I would not dream of it." Chang reached into his pocket and came out with two bright coins. "What an excellent-seeming meal. You must be the finest cook in Karthe village."

Mrs. Daube said nothing, looking at his hand.

"We have not understood each other," continued Chang. "I am strange to you-it is only natural for a woman to have suspicions. Will you sit with me, that I may explain, as I ought to have done when first I reached your door?"

He smiled, impatient, tired, and wanting nothing more than to shove the woman into a seat so hard as to make her squawk. She sniffed girlishly. "As long as Franck is here, I am sure you will be civil."

She sat at the table, helping herself to a slice of thick black bread. She chewed it closely, like a rabbit, peering over the slice at her guest. Franck eyed the knife in Chang's belt and took another pull of beer. Chang remained standing, the various mashed piles suddenly nauseating.

"My name is Chang." He sighed heavily for their benefit, as if deciding against his better instincts to trust them. "As you have guessed, I too am from the city, to which I must return as soon as possible, by train. I am in Karthe to find this Captain and his men."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Daube. "The Captain was a proper gentleman, you are a-a-just look at-at-at..."

Her twitching fingers stabbed at his ruined leather coat, his unshaven face, and then up at his shuttered eyes.

"I am indeed," Chang agreed gravely.

"And admitting it!" sneered the woman. "Proud as a peac.o.c.k!"

Chang shook his head. "And I'm sure neither the Captain nor the men with him could hide what they are any better-soldiers for the Queen, on a secret errand. At times such work requires the efforts of men like myself, who ply the darker ways of life, if you will understand me."

"What secret errand?" whispered the young man, his upper lip wet with beer froth.

"And why were you waving that wicked knife about?" asked the innkeeper, still suspicious.

"Because terrible things have happened up north," said Chang. "You will remember Mr. Josephs."

"Mr. Josephs and the Captain rode together," said Franck.

"Then the Captain will know what attacked his fellow. I myself was to meet them by way of a fis.h.i.+ng vessel-you will see I have no horse-but Mr. Josephs was killed."

"Killed!" gasped Mrs. Daube.

"Dead as a stone. And the Captain driven away... by something" He paused, giving them both significant looks.

"What is the secret errand?" the young man whispered.

Chang sighed and glanced quickly back into the common room, then leaned forward, speaking low, wondering how much time he still had to reach the train. "There is a sunken craft, of an enemy nation, driven to the rocks, a craft containing certain stolen doc.u.ments... detailing hidden ways where an unprincipled foreigner might enter the Queen's unguarded treasury."

Mrs. Daube and her man were silent, and Chang could sense the breathless reverberations of his last word within their minds.

"You still have not said why the likes of you would be part of it," she said.

Chang smiled, the better to resist his natural impulses in the face of such disdain. "Because the doc.u.ments are in code, a complicated cipher that only a man like myself-or a certain elderly savant of the Royal Inst.i.tute-is able to make clear. With the old gentleman too feeble to make the trip, only I can tell the Captain if the doc.u.ments are genuine. If I do not, my own debts to the Crown-for you are right, I have been a criminal-will not be paid. Thus, I must ask you again, for your own souls, if you know where I may find the Captain."

"What will you do with those, then?" Mrs. Daube nodded at the hand that held the silver pennies.

Had she listened to a single word? He slapped the coins onto the table top. "There is no time-"

"I have not seen him," said Mrs. Daube with a smirk. "And as you have seen, neither he nor his fellows are in Karthe."

The innkeeper's hands darted out to collect the coins. Chang caught her wrist. Her expression hovered between fear and greed.

"What I've said is true, Mrs. Daube," he whispered. "Pitiless murder. If I find you have lied to me, you are doomed."