Chang cracked open the far doors and looked into the corridor Smythe had described, the whole of its length lined with doors. One of these doors had led him to Arthur Trapping’s body. At one end he could see the spiral staircase. He was convinced that Vandaariff’s study must lay in the other direction if it held a way down into the great chamber.
But where to start? Smythe had said the house was full of guests—as he had said the hallway was full of guards…but for this moment it was unaccountably empty. Chang could not expect it to stay so while he tried each of what—at a quick glance—seemed to be at least thirty doors. All this time…was there any hope that Celeste was alive?
He stepped boldly into the hall, striding away from the staircase. He passed the first doors, one after another, with a rising sense of anticipation. If whatever had happened to Aspiche and the Duke (it was difficult for Chang to think of a more loathsome member of the Royal Family) had indeed served to disrupt the ceremony in the great chamber, then Chang was committed to causing as many additional disturbances as he could. He whipped apart his stick—still no one intruded—he was halfway down the hallway. Could everything have already started in spite of what Smythe had said? Chang stopped. To his left one of the doors was ajar. He crept to it and peered through the crack: a narrow slice of a room with red carpet and red wallpaper and a lacquered stand upon which balanced a Chinese urn. He listened…and heard the unmistakable sounds of rustling clothing and heavy breathing. He stepped back, kicked in the door with a crash, and charged forward.
Before him on the carpet was a Macklenburg trooper with his trousers around his knees, desperately trying to pull them up at the same time he hopelessly groped for his saber—the belt and scabbard tangled around his ankles. The man’s mouth was opened in fearful protest and there was just time for Chang to register his expression shifting, from shame to incomprehension as he saw who had surprised him, before driving the dagger to the hilt into the trooper’s throat, choking off any cry of alarm. He yanked the blade free, stepping clear like a bullfighter of the attending spray of blood, and let the man topple to the side, his pale buttocks uncovered by his dangling shirt-tails.
Was there anything that more signified the helplessness of humanity than the exposed genitals and buttocks of the dead? Chang did not think so. Perhaps a single discarded child’s shoe…but that was mere sentiment.
Beyond the dead soldier, lying on the carpet with her dress above her waist was a richly clad woman, hair askew, her face aglow with perspiration around a green beaded mask. Her eyes were wild, blinking, and her breathing coarse and drawn…but the rest of her body seemed unresponsive, as if she were asleep. The man had clearly been about her rape, but Chang saw that her undergarments were yet only half-lowered—he had been surprised in the midst of his attack. Yet the woman’s vacant expression suggested her utter unconcern. He stood for a moment over her, his gaze drawn both to her beauty and by the twitches and spasms that rippled across her frame, as if she lay in the midst of a distended fit. He wondered how long it had taken the soldier to advance from hearing her heavy breathing in the hall, through cautious entry and voyeuristic observation, to outright violation. Chang shut the door behind him—the hall was still empty—and then bent down to restore the woman’s dress. He reached up to pull the hair away from her face and revealed, beneath her head like a pillow, what her apparently unseeing eyes so greedily devoured…a gleaming blue glass book.
The woman’s exhalations rose into a moan, her skin as hot and red as if she had fever. Chang looked at the book and licked his lips. With a decisiveness he did not wholly feel he took hold of the woman beneath her arms and lifted her from it, his eyes flinching from the bright gleam of the uncovered glass. As he pulled her away she whimpered in protest like a drowsing puppy separated from its teat. He set her down and winced—the light from the book stabbed to the center of his head. Chang snapped it closed, his lips stretched back in a grimace, feeling even through his leather gloves a strange pulsing as he touched it and a protesting energetic resistance when he pushed it shut. The woman did not make another sound. Chang watched her, idly wiping his dagger on the carpet—it was already red, what was the harm?—as her breath gradually calmed and her eyes began to clear. He gently pushed aside the hanging mask of beads. He did not recognize her. She was merely another of the great ladies and gentlemen drawn into the insidious web of Harschmort House.
Chang stood and snatched a pillow from the nearby settee. He ripped open one end with the dagger and he brusquely turned the lining inside out, dumping yellowed clumps of cotton wadding onto the floor. He inserted the book carefully into the pillowcase and stood. The lady could take care of herself as she woke—her fingers fitfully groped against the carpet—and forever wonder about her mysterious delivery…and if she started to scream, it would cause the disturbance he wanted. He stepped back to the door and paused, looking behind him at the room. There was no other door…and yet something caught his eye. The wallpaper was red, with a circular decoration of golden rings that looked vaguely Florentine. Chang crossed the room to a section of wallpaper, perhaps as high as his head. In the middle of one of the golden rings the pattern appeared to be frayed. He pressed at it with his finger and the interior of the ring popped through, leaving a hole. A spy hole. Chang strode past the woman—dreamily shaking her head and struggling to raise herself to one elbow—and out to the corridor.
Once more, Chang’s notion that most things are only effectively hidden because no one ever thinks to look for them was confirmed. Once he knew what he sought—a narrow corridor between rooms—it was easy enough to identify what door might lead to it. While it was possible that the other side of the spy hole was in another normal room, Chang felt this went against the entire idea—as he understood it—of Harschmort House, which was the integrated nature of the establishment. Why have a spy hole into one room, when one might construct an inner passage that spanned the length of many apartments to either side, so one man with patience and soft shoes could effectively gain the advantage on a whole collection of guests? He chuckled to think that he had here explained Robert Vandaariff’s famed success at business negotiation, his uncanny aptitude for knowing what his rivals were planning—a reputation side by side with his renown as a generous host (especially—Chang shook his head at the cunning—to those with whom he most bitterly strove). Not three yards from the one he’d entered Chang found two doors quite closely set together—or more accurately, one door in the space that, elsewhere in the corridor, was only blank wall.
Chang dug out his keys—first Gray’s and then his own—and struggled to open the lock. It was actually rather tricky, and differed from others he’d found in the house. He looked around him with growing alarm, trying a second key and then fumbling for a third. He thought he heard a rising noise from the far end, near the staircase…applause? Was there some sort of performance? The key did not work. He felt for the next. With a click that echoed down the length of the corridor, a door was opened in the balcony above the staircase—and then the sound of steps, many people…they would be at the railing any instant. His key caught, the lock turned, and without hesitation Chang slipped the door open and darted through into the bitter dark. He closed it as quickly and silently as he could, with no idea if he’d been seen or heard.
There was nothing for it. He turned the lock behind him and felt his way deeper into the blackness. The walls were narrow—his elbows rubbed the dusty brick on either side as he went—but the floor was smoothly laid stone (as opposed to wood that might warp and in time begin to creak). He felt his way along, hampered by his restored stick in one hand and the wrapped book in the other, and by Miss Temple’s boots jostling the walls from his pockets. The spy hole in the woman’s room had been at head height, so he placed his hands there as he walked, to feel for any depression in the brick. Surely it had to be near…his impatience nearly caused him to pitch headlong into the dark as his foot struck a step in the blackness below him and he tripped forwar
d—only saved from falling outright, despite a cruel barking on his knee, by another two steps on top of that. He found himself kneeling on what was effectively a small stepladder spanning the width of the passage. Chang carefully set down his stick and the book, and then felt the wall for the hole, finding it by the small half-circle of light caused by his partial dislodging of its plug from the room. He silently pulled the plug free and peered in. The woman had crawled away from the dead soldier, and crouched kneeling on the carpet. Her hands were under her dress—restoring her undergarments or perhaps attempting to see how far along the dead soldier’s obvious intentions had proceeded. She still wore her mask, and Chang was curious to see that despite the tears on her cheeks she seemed calm and determined in her manner…was this a result of her experience with the book?
He replaced the plug in the wall and wondered that the stair-step should be built across the entire passage…was there another spy hole on the opposite wall? Chang shifted his position and felt for it, finding the plug easily. He worked it free as gently as he could and leaned forward to gaze into the second room.
A man sprawled with his head and shoulders on a writing table. Chang knew him despite the black band across his eyes—as he came to know any man he’d followed through the street, identifying him from behind or within a crowd merely by his size and manner of being. It was his former client, the man who had apparently recommended his talents to Rosamonde, the lawyer John Carver. Chang had no doubt the secrets Carver held in his professional possession would open many a door to the Cabal across the city—he wondered how many of the law had been seduced, and shook his head at how simple those seductions must have been. Carver’s face was as red as the woman’s, and a pearling bead of drool connected his mouth to the table top. The glass book lay flickering under Carver’s hand. The upper part of his face lay pressed against it, eyes twitching with an idiot rapture, transfixed by its depths. Chang noted with some curiosity that the lawyer’s face and fingertips—the ones touching the glass—had taken on a bluish cast to the skin…almost as if they’d been frozen, though his sweat-sheened face belied that explanation. With distaste he noticed Carver’s other hand clutched at his groin with a spastic, dislocated urgency. Chang looked around the room for any other occupant, or any other useful sign, but saw nothing. He was not sure what such exposure to the book actually gained the Cabal—apart from this insensibility on the part of the victim. Did it re-make them like the Process? Was there something in the book they were supposed to learn? He felt the weight of the book tucked under his own arm. He knew—from the glass in his lungs and Svenson’s description of that man’s shattered glass arms—that the object itself could be deadly, but as a tool, as a machine…he hadn’t even a glimpse into its true destructive power. Chang replaced the plug and felt with his stick for the next set of stairs.
When it came he looked again, prying the plug first from the left, the side where he’d seen the woman. Chang’s conscience gnawed at him—should he not ignore the holes and move directly for the office? Yet to do so was to pass up information about the Cabal he would never be afforded again…he would go more quickly. He peered into the room and suddenly froze—there were two men in black coats helping an elderly man in red onto a sofa. The churchman’s face was obscured—could it be the Bishop of Baax-Saornes? Uncle to the Duke of Stäelmaere and the Queen, he was the most powerful cleric in the land, an advisor to government, a curb to corruption,…and here having the spittle wiped from his chin by malevolent lackeys. One of the men wrapped a parcel in cloth—assuredly another book—while the other took the Bishop’s pulse. Then both turned to a knock at a door Chang could not see and rapidly walked from the room.
Without a further thought for the ruined Bishop—what could he do for him anyway?—Chang turned to the opposite hole. Another man slumped over a book—how many of these hellish objects had been made?—his red face and twitching eyes pressed down into the glowing surface. It was without question Henry Xonck, his customary aura of power and command quite fully absent…indeed, it seemed to Chang that the man’s normal attributes had been drained away…drained into the book? The thought was absurd, and yet he recalled the glass cards—the manner in which they became imprinted with memories. If the books managed the same trick on a larger scale…suddenly Chang wondered if the memories were simply imprinted from the victim’s mind…or actually removed. How much of Henry Xonck’s memories—indeed his very soul—had here been stripped away?
The following spy holes revealed more of the same, and even though Chang didn’t recognize every slumped figure, those he did were enough to reveal a naked assault on the powerful figures of the land: the Minister of Finance, the Minister of War, a celebrated actress, a Duchess, an Admiral, a high court judge, the publisher of the Times, the president of the Imperial Bank, the widowed Baroness who ran the most important, opinion-setting salon in the city, and finally, tempting him to postpone his search even further and intervene, Madelaine Kraft. Each one discovered in the throes of a fitful, nearly narcotic state of possession, utterly absent of mind and unresponsive of body—their only point of attention being the book that had been set before their eyes. In several cases Chang saw masked figures—men and women—monitoring a stricken victim, sometimes collecting the book and starting to wake them, sometimes allowing more time to steep in those blue glowing depths. Chang recognized none of these functionaries. He was certain that but a few days ago their tasks would have been performed by the likes of Mrs. Marchmoor or Roger Bascombe—and a few days before that by the Contessa or Xonck themselves. Now their organization had grown—had absorbed so many new adherents—that they were all freed for more important matters. It was another spur to Chang that something else was happening in the house, perhaps as cover for the subjugation of these particular, spectacularly placed figures, but important enough to draw the Cabal’s leaders. He rushed ahead into the dark.
He ignored the remaining spy holes, driving on to the end of the passageway and hoping that when he got there he would find a door. Instead, he found a painting. His stick struck something with a light exploratory touch that was not stone and his hand reached gingerly forward to find the heavy carved frame. It seemed similar in size to the portrait of Robert Vandaariff that had masked the door to the tier of cells, though the passage was so dark that he’d no idea what it actually portrayed. Not that Chang wasted any time on the matter—he was on his knees groping for a catch or lever that might open the hidden door. But why was the painting on the inside? Did that mean the door rotated fully on each usage and someone had already come through? That was unlikely—a simple concealed hinge, opening and closing normally, would be far easier to use and to hide. But then what was on the canvas that it should remain unseen in the dark?
He sat back on his haunches and sighed. Injuries, fatigue, thirst…Chang felt like a ruin. He could keep on fighting—that was instinctive—but actual cleverness felt beyond him. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, thinking about the other side of the door—the catch would be concealed…perhaps it was not around the frame, but part of it. He ran his fingers along the inside border of the ornately (overly, really) carved frame, concentrating first on the area where a normal doorknob might be…when he found the curved depression, he realized the only trick was the knob being on the left side rather than the right—the kind of silly misdirection that could have easily flummoxed him for another half hour. He dug his fingers around the odd-shaped knob and turned it. The well-oiled lock opened silently and Chang felt the weight of the door shift in his hands. He pushed it open and stepped through.
He knew it was Vandaariff’s study immediately, for the man himself sat before him at an enormous desk, scratching earnestly away at a long page of parchment with an old-fashioned feathered quill. Lord Robert did not look up. Chang took another step, still holding the door open with his shoulder, his eyes darting around at the room. The carpets were red and black and the long room was sub-divided into functional areas
by the furniture: a long meeting table lined with high-backed chairs, a knot of larger, more upholstered armchairs and sofas, an assistant’s desk, a row of tall locked cabinets for papers, and then the great man’s desk, as large as the meeting table and covered with documents, rolled-up maps, and a litter of glasses and mugs—all driven to the edge of his present work like flotsam on a beach.
No one else was in the room.
Still, Lord Vandaariff did not acknowledge Chang’s presence, his face gravely focused on his writing. Chang remembered his main errand, a secret way to the great chamber. He couldn’t see it. On the far wall beyond the table was the main entrance, but it seemed like the only one.
As he stepped forward something caught Chang’s attention at the corner of his eye…it was the painting behind him—he hadn’t looked at it in the light. He glanced again at Vandaariff—who gave Chang no attention at all—and opened the door wide. Another canvas by Oskar Veilandt, but no similar sort of image…instead its front was like the back of the Annunciation fragments and other paintings—what at first glance seemed mere cross-hatched lines was in truth a densely wrought web of symbols and diagrams. The overall shape of the formulae, Chang saw more with instinct than with understanding, was a horseshoe…mathematical equations made in the shape of Harschmort House. It was also, he realized with a certain self-consciousness, wondering if the insight was merely the product of his own low mind, perversely anatomical—the curving U of the house and the peculiarly shaped cylindrical figure, longer than he had imagined, of the great chamber clearly inserted within it…whatever else Veilandt’s alchemy intended, it was quite clear that its roots lay as much in sexual congress as any elemental transmutation—or was the point that these were the same? Chang did not know what this had to do with the ceremony in the chamber, or with Vandaariff. And yet…he tried to remember when Vandaariff had purchased and re-fitted Harschmort Prison—at most a year or two previously. Hadn’t the gallery agent told them Veilandt had been dead five years? That was impossible—the alchemical painting on the door was definitely the same man’s work. Could it be that Veilandt hadn’t died at all? Could it be that he was here—perhaps willingly, but given the degree to which Vandaariff and d’Orkancz were exploiting his every discovery it seemed suddenly more likely he was a prisoner, or even worse, fallen victim to his own alchemy, his mind drained into a glass book for others to consume.