“I assume Doctor Lorenz pilots our craft?” asked Chang.
“He does,” answered Harald Crabbé.
“Where is Mrs. Dujong?” asked Doctor Svenson.
Xonck nodded vaguely to the room behind him. “She is quite secure … something of a return to form, I’m told.”
Svenson did not reply. Aside from Xonck, no one brandished any weapon—though, given Xonck’s prowess and the small size of the room, Miss Temple doubted whether anyone else needed one. Yet if their immediate dispatch was not their enemies’ intent, Miss Temple was mystified as to what their plan then was.
At the same time, simply where they sat revealed divisions among them: on one side Crabbé and Roger, and under their arm the Prince (though the Prince would go with whoever was ascendant), and on the other the Comte and Contessa, with Caroline under their sway (though how much she counted, Miss Temple had no clue—did she, Lorenz, and Roger make up a second tier of the Cabal, or were they simply three more drones of the Process?)—and then in the middle and unallied to either, Francis Xonck, his capacity for slaughter quite balancing, especially in these close quarters, the cunning of Crabbé, the knowledge of the Comte, and the provocative charm of the Contessa.
Crabbé looked across to the Contessa and raised his eyebrows in question. She nodded in agreement—or did she grant permission?—and Crabbé cleared his throat. He indicated a cabinet next to Mrs. Stearne.
“Before we start, would any of you care for some refreshment? You must be tired—I know I am tired, and the mere sight of you three—well, it amazes that you can stand. Caroline can get it—there is whisky, brandy, water—”
“If you are drinking,” said Chang, “by all means.”
“Excellent—of course, drinks all round—and my apologies, Caroline, for turning you into a barmaid—Roger, perhaps you will assist. Perhaps for simplicity it can be brandy for everyone.”
There followed an awkward near silence where by tacit agreement all conversation paused until the business of pouring and handing out glasses was accomplished. Miss Temple watched Roger step to Chang and Svenson with a glass in each hand, his face a mask of professional diffidence that never once glanced her way. Her study was broken by Caroline’s touch on her arm, as she was offered her own glass. Miss Temple shook her head, but Caroline pressed the glass hard into her hand, leaving Miss Temple the choice to hold on or let it drop. She looked down at the amber liquid and sniffed, detecting the familiar biting scent she associated with so much that was tiresome and foul.
The entire scene was strange—especially following the rooftop carnage, for she had braced herself for a second deadly struggle, yet here they stood, as sociably arrayed as any dinner party—save the men and women were drinking together—and all of it so patently false that Miss Temple narrowed her eyes. With an audible snort she set her glass on a nearby shelf and wiped her hands.
“Miss Temple?” asked Crabbé. “Would you prefer something else?”
“I would prefer you state your business. If Mr. Xonck will kill us, then let him try.”
“Such impatience.” Crabbé smiled, unctuous and knowing. “We will do our best to satisfy. But first, I give you all the Prince of Macklenburg and his bride!”
He raised his glass and tossed off the contents, as the others followed suit amidst mutters of “the Prince!” and “Lydia!” The Prince smiled heartily and Lydia grinned, her small white teeth showing over her glass as she too drank, but then erupted into a fit of coughing to rival Cardinal Chang. The Prince patted her shoulder as she strove to breathe, her stomach now heaving unpleasantly with the stress. Roger stepped forward and offered a handkerchief, which the young lady hurriedly snatched and held before her mouth, spitting into it wetly. The fit finally subsided and, face pale and out of breath, Lydia returned the cloth to Roger with an attempt at a smile. Roger deftly refolded the handkerchief before returning it to his pocket … but not before Miss Temple noticed the fresh, brilliant blue stain.
“Are you quite well, my dear?” asked the Prince.
Before Lydia could speak, Chang threw back his glass and gargled loudly before swallowing the brandy. Doctor Svenson poured his glass on the floor. Crabbé took all this in and exhaled sadly.
“Ah well … one cannot always please. Caroline?” Mrs. Stearne collected their glasses. Crabbé cleared his throat and gestured vaguely at the room around them.
“So we begin.”
“Through your determined efforts at destruction, we are no longer able to easily determine what you know of our plans, or in whom you might have confided. Mrs. Marchmoor is well on her way to the city, Angelique and poor Elspeth are no more.” He held up his hand. “Please know that I am speaking to you as the one most able to control my rage—if it were any of my associates, a recitation of even these facts would result in your immediate deaths. While it is true we could subject you to the Process, or distill your memories within a book, both of these endeavors demand time we do not have, and facilities beyond this craft. It is also true we could do both these things upon arrival in Macklenburg, yet our need for your knowledge cannot wait. Upon arrival we must know where we stand, and if … within our ranks … there is a Judas.”
He held out his glass to Roger for more brandy, and continued speaking as it was poured.
“This latest confrontation on the rooftop—wasteful and distressing, I trust, to all—only reinforces our earlier decision that we would have been best served with your talents incorporated to our cause—via the Process. Thank you, Roger.” Crabbé drank. “Do not bother to protest—we no longer expect any such conversions, nor—given the grief you have inflicted—would they now be accepted. The situation could not be clearer. We hold Mrs. Dujong. You will answer our questions or she will die—and I’m sure you can imagine the sort of death I mean, the time it will take, and how distressing such prolonged screams will be in such an enclosed place as this. And if she does manage to expire, then we shall merely move on to one of you—Miss Temple, perhaps—and on and on. It is inevitable as the dawn. As you have opened that door to avoid its being needlessly broken, I offer you the chance to avoid that same breaking of your comrades’ bodies—and, indeed, their souls.”
Miss Temple looked at the faces opposite her—Crabbé’s smug smirk, the Prince’s bemused disdain, Lydia’s fox-faced hunger, Roger’s earnest frown, Xonck’s leer, the Comte’s iron glare, the Contessa’s glacial smile, and Caroline’s sad patience—and found nowhere a suggestion that the Minister’s words were anything but true. Yet she still saw the factions between them and knew their deeper interest lay no longer in what she and the others had discovered, but only in how those discoveries spelled out betrayals within the Cabal’s circle.
“It would be easier to believe you, Sir,” she said, “if you did not so blatantly lie. You ask us to talk to prevent our torture, yet what happens when we reveal some morsel of deduction that points to one among you—do you expect that person to accept our open word? Of course not—whoever is denounced will demand that your cruelties be brought to bear in any case, to confirm or disprove our accusations!”
The Deputy Minister’s eyes twinkled as he shook his head, chuckling, and took another sip of brandy.
“My goodness—Roger, I do believe she is more than you’d perceived—Miss Temple, you have caught me out. Indeed, it is the case—so much for my attempts to save the woodwork! All right then—you will, all four, be killed at length, quite badly. If any of you have something to say, all the better—if not, well, we’re rid of your damned stinking disruptions at last.”
Xonck stepped forward, the saber dancing menacingly in the air before him. Miss Temple retreated, but a single step brought her flat against the wall. Once more the Doctor squeezed her hand, and then cried out in as hearty a voice as he could.
“Excellent, Minister—and perhaps Mr. Xonck will kill us before we talk—would that suit you even better?”
Crabbé stood up, impatient and angry. “Ah—here it comes! The vai
n attempt to turn us against one another—Francis—”
“By all means, Francis—kill us quickly! Serve the Minister as you always have! Just as when you sank Trapping in the river!”
Xonck paused, the tip of his blade within lunging range of Svenson’s chest. “I serve myself.”
Svenson looked down at the saber tip and snorted—even as Miss Temple could feel the trembling of his hand. “Of course you do—just pardon my asking—what has happened to Herr Flaüss?”
For a moment, no one answered, and Crabbé was glaring at Xonck to keep going when the Contessa spoke aloud, picking her words carefully.
“Herr Flaüss was found to be … disloyal.”
“The gunshot!” exclaimed Miss Temple. “You shot him!”
“It proved necessary,” said Crabbé.
“How could he be disloyal?” croaked Chang. “He was your creature!”
“Why do you ask?” the Contessa pointedly demanded of the Doctor.
“Why do you care?” hissed Crabbé to her, behind Xonck’s back. “Francis, please—”
“I just wonder if it had to do with Lord Vandaariff’s missing book,” said Svenson. “You know—the one where his memory was—what is the word?—distilled?”
There was a pause. Miss Temple’s heart was in her mouth—and then she knew the momentum toward their destruction had been stalled.
“That book was broken,” rasped the Comte. “By Cardinal Chang in the tower—it killed Major Blach—”
“Is that what his ledger says?” Svenson nodded contemptuously to Roger. “Then I think you will find two books missing—one with the Lady Mélantes, Mrs. Marchmoor, among others—and another—”
“What are you waiting for?” cried Crabbé. “Francis! Kill him!”
“Or you would,” crowed Svenson, “if there was a second book at all! For to distill Robert Vandaariff’s mind into a book—a mind holding the keys to a continent—to the future itself!—would have opened those riches to any one of you who owned it, who possessed a key! Instead, the man given the task to do just that did not create a book—so yes, there is one book broken, and another never made at all!”
The Contessa called out firmly to Xonck—“Francis, keep watching them!”—before turning to Crabbé. “Harald, can you answer this?”
“Answer? Answer what? Answer the—the desperate—the—”
Before the Minister could stop sputtering Chang called out again, a challenge to Roger. “I saw it myself, in Vandaariff’s study—he wrote it all down on parchment! If I hadn’t smashed a book they would have had to do it themselves—convincing you all that Vandaariff’s memories were gone, when they held the only copy!”
“A copy I took from the Minister himself,” cried Svenson, “in a leather satchel—and which Bascombe took from me in the ballroom. I’m sure he still has it with him—or is that what Flaüss noticed when he joined you at Lord Vandaariff’s study … and why he had to die?”
In the silence Miss Temple realized she had been holding her breath. The words had flown so quickly back and forth, while in between stood Francis Xonck, eyes shifting warily, his blade an easy thrust from them all. She could feel the fearful state of Svenson’s nerves, and knew Chang was tensed to futilely spring at Xonck—but she could also sense the changing tension in the room, as the Minister and Roger groped to refute their own prisoners.
“Aspiche took the satchel from Svenson in the ballroom,” announced Xonck, not turning to the others. “And Bascombe took it from him … but I did not see it when we met up in the study.”
“It was packed away,” said Caroline Stearne, speaking quietly from her place. “When all was being readied for the journey—”
“Is the satchel here or isn’t it?” snapped Xonck.
“I have its contents with me,” said Roger smoothly. “As Caroline says, safely stowed. Doctor Svenson is wrong. They are Lord Vandaariff’s planning papers—notes to himself for each stage of this enterprise. I do not know where this idea of Lady Mélantes’s book comes from—two books—no books—”
“Doctor Lorenz identified the missing book as Lady Mélantes’s,” spat Svenson.
“Doctor Lorenz is wrong. Lady Mélantes’s book—also containing Mrs. Marchmoor and Lord Acton—is safely stowed. The only book missing—the one broken in the tower—is that of Lord Vandaariff. You can check my ledger, but anyone is more than welcome to look in the books themselves.”
It was an effective speech, with just the right amount of protest at being accused and an equally moving touch of professional superciliousness—a Bascombe specialty. And it seemed as if his upset superiors, perhaps persuaded by his own subservience via the Process, were convinced. But Miss Temple knew, from the way Roger’s thumb restlessly rubbed against his leg, that it was a lie.
She laughed at him.
He glared at her, furiously willing her to silence.
“O Roger …” She chuckled and shook her head.
“Be quiet, Celeste!” he hissed. “You have no place here!”
“And you have surely convinced everyone,” she said. “But you forget how well I know your ways. Even then you might have convinced me—for it was a fine speech—if it wasn’t you who actually shot Herr Flaüss, after convincing everyone of his disloyalty, I am sure … or was it to keep him quiet? But it was you who shot him, Roger, … wasn’t it?”
At her words the cabin went silent, save for the low buzz of the rotors outside. Xonck’s saber did not waver, but his mouth tightened and his eyes flicked more quickly back and forth between them. The Contessa stood.
“Rosamonde,” began Crabbé, “this is ridiculous—they are coming between us—it is their only hope—”
But the Contessa ignored him and crossed the cabin slowly toward Roger. He shrank away from her, first striking the wall and then seeming to retreat within his own body, meeting her gaze but flinching, for her eyes were empty of affection.
“Rosamonde,” rasped the Comte. “If we question him together—”
But then the Contessa darted forward, sharp as a striking cobra, to whisper in Roger’s ear. Miss Temple could only catch the odd word, but when she heard the first—“blue”—she knew the Contessa was whispering Roger’s own control phrase, and that by speaking it before any of the others, the woman had made sure Roger must answer her questions alone. The Contessa stepped away and Roger sank down to sit on the floor, his expression empty and his eyes dulled.
“Rosamonde—” Crabbé tried again, but again the Contessa ignored him, speaking crisply down to Roger, his head at the level of her thighs.
“Roger … is what Doctor Svenson tells us true?”
“Yes.”
Before Crabbé could speak the Contessa pressed Roger again.
“Were Lord Robert’s memories distilled into a book?”
“No.”
“They were written down.”
“Yes.”
“And those papers are on board?”
“Yes. I transferred them to the Prince’s bag to hide them. Flaüss insisted on managing the Prince’s bag and realized what they were.”
“So you shot him.”
“Yes.”
“And in all of this, Roger, … whom did you serve? Who gave the orders?”
“Deputy Minister Crabbé.”
Crabbé said nothing, his mouth open in shock, his face drained of any color. He looked helplessly to the Comte, to Xonck, but could not speak. Still facing Roger, the Contessa called behind her.
“Caroline, would you be kind enough to ask Doctor Lorenz exactly where we are on our route?”
Caroline, whose gaze had been fixed on Roger Bascombe’s slumped form, looked up with surprise, stood at once, and left the cabin.
“I say,” muttered the Prince, aggrieved. “He put those papers in my bag? And shot my man because of it? Damn you, Crabbé! Damn your damned insolence!” Lydia Vandaariff patted her fiancé’s knee.
“Your Highness,” hissed Crabbé urgently, “Bascombe is n
ot telling the truth—I do not know how—it could be any of you! Anyone with his control phrase! Anyone could order him to answer these questions—to implicate me—”
“And how would that person know what these questions were to be?” snarled the Contessa, and then pointed toward the captives. “At least one of them has been provided by Doctor Svenson!”
“For all any of us know, whoever has tampered with Bascombe’s mind could be in league with these three!” cried Crabbé. “It would certainly explain their persistent survival!”
The Contessa’s eyes went wide at the Deputy Minister’s words.
“Bascombe’s mind! Of course—of course, you sneaking little man! You did not halt the examinations in the ballroom for Lord Robert or the Duke—you did it because Roger was suddenly forced to accompany Vandaariff! Because otherwise the Comte would have seen inside his mind—and seen all of your plotting against us plain as day!” She wheeled to the Comte, and gestured to Bascombe on the floor. “Do not believe me, Oskar—ask your own questions, by all means—some questions I will not have anticipated! Or you, Francis—help yourself! For myself I am satisfied, but do go on! Roger—you will answer all questions put to you!”
The Comte’s face betrayed no particular expression, but Miss Temple knew he was already suspicious of the Contessa and so perhaps was genuinely curious, unsure which—or was it both? Or all?—of his confederates had betrayed him.
“Francis?” he rasped.
“Be my guest.” Xonck smiled, not even moving his eyes as he spoke.
The Comte d’Orkancz leaned forward. “Mr. Bascombe, … to your knowledge, did Deputy Minister Crabbé have anything to do with the murder of Colonel Arthur Trapping?”
The Contessa spun to the Comte, her expression wary and her violet eyes dauntingly sharp.
“Oskar, why—”
“No,” said Roger.
The Comte’s next question was interrupted by Caroline Stearne, whose return had brought Doctor Lorenz into the doorway.
“Contessa,” she whispered.
“Thank you, Caroline—would you be so good as to fetch the Prince’s bag?” Caroline took in the tension of the room, her face pale, bobbed her head once and darted from the cabin. The Contessa turned to Lorenz. “Doctor, how good of you to come—though I do trust someone remains at the wheel?”