‘Thank you for your kindness,’ said Miss Temple softly. The porter excused himself, fumbling for words. He hurried away, but not before Miss Temple noticed that the water in his bucket was stained red.
On her visit to the Customs House, Miss Temple had been shown the famous trading hall like a child visiting a grist mill is shown the great wheel. She had dutifully murmured amazement at the clamour around the dais, where busy clerks posted the latest figures in chalk. Her father’s agent had escorted her to the firm’s own office above the fray, hoping to shed her presence after a single cup of tea, but Miss Temple had insisted on examining every ledger, matching her resolve against that of the crisp-cuffed men forced to attend her. In the end she had affected a grudging satisfaction, aware that reticence and a scowling demeanour were her best defence against thievery. She had decided to get a recommendation from Roger for someone to study her accounts independently. No doubt that person would have been enmeshed with the Cabal, and she shuddered to think how near her holdings had come to being plundered …
But now the enormous trading hall was silent. Heatless shafts of morning light fell onto rows and rows of oblong bundles, quite unmistakably human beings, covering the entire floor. At first it seemed the trading hall had been given over as a dormitory for Chang’s dispossessed, but then she perceived their utter stillness, the shapeless huddling … there had to be hundreds … hadn’t the porter said the Shipping Board had been so consigned as well? He’d said something else … the cathedral –
Moving through the bodies were several cloaked figures, some standing, some bent low, making observations. Were they Ministry officials? Or perhaps the bereaved searching amongst the dead – only a few let in at a time, out of decency? One figure waved to the others. A lantern was shone on the corpse in question, and a satchel brought forward. The crouching man rifled the bag’s contents, but his back was to Miss Temple and she could not see his work.
The crouching figure rose and hobbled along the row of bodies – an elderly man, walking with a cane. He must be a doctor, or a savant from the Royal Society. Surely the authorities had found the glass spurs, but had they placed them as the source of the chaos?
Before Miss Temple could step forward or call out – not that she would have called out – Cardinal Chang pulled her from the archway.
‘The scale of it,’ Svenson whispered. Miss Temple assumed he meant the slaughter, but then the Doctor waved back towards the storage room in which they had emerged. ‘The bridge closed, the riverfront seized – now the Customs House shut down? And the Shipping Board? There are private warehouses that could be guarded to contain rumours, but they use this – by design. We know the explosions were deliberate – and now, just as deliberately, the city is strangled to a halt.’
‘Axewith and Vandaariff,’ said Chang. ‘This is why they met.’
‘But why?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘Even if Vandaariff wishes everything in ruins, why should the Privy Council agree to –’
‘The oldest lure of all,’ said Svenson. ‘He has given the Ministry an excuse to expand its power. Whether Axewith is a pliant fool or a knowing rogue scarcely matters. If money cannot move and the streets are filled with soldiers, who can fight him?’
Miss Temple did not understand at all. ‘But how does expanding Axewith’s power serve Vandaariff? I should think it makes it harder for any villainy to occur. As you say, soldiers on every street corner –’
‘But whose soldiers?’ Svenson asked with a vexing certainty. Miss Temple knew her mind was not strategic – the month after next might as well be Peru – but the Doctor spoke as if the world were a chess game worked out three moves in advance.
Chang eased himself between them, speaking quietly. ‘Whether this carnage justifies the soldiers or conceals their purpose, they are in place – and, especially after the gunplay in the Palace, they reduce our efforts to skulking.’
‘As being in hiding has reduced the Contessa’s,’ added the Doctor, ‘and if we are in her position, perhaps we can better understand her own intentions. Remember, she was in the Palace, but showed no interest in Vandaariff’s meeting with Axewith –’
‘All the more reason not to emulate her methods,’ replied Miss Temple.
‘That she follows a separate path does not make it wrong.’
Miss Temple huffed. ‘But all that has so exercised you – the soldiers, these writs, the Ministry – if those have nothing to do with the Contessa, then why do we speak of her? There are only the three of us – which would you have us address? Vandaariff, the Ministries or the Contessa?’
Svenson sighed. ‘We must address them all. I cannot see which holds the key.’
‘But that is impossible –’ Miss Temple stopped at a sour exclamation from Chang. ‘What?’
‘Keys. I had forgotten. The book that contains the Comte’s memories. The Contessa forged glass keys to read it safely.’
Miss Temple clenched her throat. ‘Even with a key that book is deadly.’
‘The Contessa is no fool.’ Svenson laid a gentle hand on Francesca’s shoulder. ‘She would recruit an exceptionally brave assistant to do the reading for her.’
The girl acted as if she did not hear, idly rubbing her shoe against the floor, proud of her secrets.
The cloaked figures had left the trading hall. At Chang’s insistence they clung to the edge on their own way across, creeping beneath the great chalkboards upon which the previous day’s figures were still visible. Atop the dais stood a massive clock, large enough to be seen from the floor. Its ticking echoed oddly – perhaps the machine contained a double works to prevent winding down in the midst of trading. To Miss Temple, the doubled ticking only made clear the narrowness of her luck. But for Chang’s swift action in the square, she might well have lain amongst these anonymous dead.
They were nearly to the other side when Svenson pressed Francesca’s hand into Miss Temple’s, to the dismay of both.
‘A moment. Keep going, I beg you.’
The Doctor dashed through the lanes of bodies to where the party of cloaked men had been. He knelt, lifting the covering from several corpses in turn. Svenson went still, staring down, then hurried to rejoin them.
Chang extended a hand for silence. They had reached the other side, and he cautiously peered into the column-swept portico. Miss Temple detected voices echoing from the front entrance.
She turned to ask what Svenson had seen, but the words died in her throat. From the field of corpses three figures had risen, wrapped in sheets like ghosts on the stage. Then the sheets fell away to reveal three cloaked men, positioned to block any angle of retreat. Beneath their cloaks Miss Temple glimpsed flashes of green. Soldiers from Raaxfall.
A dry chuckle drifted from the portico and from the columns emerged three more soldiers, Mr Foison and the man – the one amused – who’d hobbled with a cane.
‘Forgive my little ruse,’ called Robert Vandaariff. ‘Spirits from beyond! And yet you were fooled – of course you were, so inevitable as to be dull.’ The soldiers with Foison fanned out, blocking their way forward. Chang had a knife in each hand. Miss Temple tugged the revolver from her bag and felt her back touch that of Doctor Svenson, who faced the men behind.
‘The corpse I examined,’ Svenson whispered, ‘the transformed flesh had been removed, for study.’
‘For the future, Doctor! What convenience to find all three of you at a stroke …’ But then Vandaariff saw the girl. His voice took on an ugly tremor. ‘Sweet hell, the child. Is the Contessa dead?’
‘Don’t you want her dead?’ asked Miss Temple.
‘Eventually – O everything eventually. And how do you do, Cardinal? Counting the hours?’ But Vandaariff kept his gaze on Francesca. ‘Step away – let me see her. She is mine by rights, legally so. I am chief shareholder of Xonck Armaments and have been named guardian of all three Trapping orphans. Once their uncle Henry succumbs I will adopt them formally. Would you like that, my dear?’
The girl sto
od as still as a frightened rabbit. Vandaariff’s eyes glowed as he appraised her.
‘Your father – your true father – was a dear old friend. You have his eyes, and hair – now so wild …’ Vandaariff stretched out a shaking hand. ‘Come to me, Francesca. I know your sacred origins. I know your destiny. You are a princess of heaven. An angel.’
He sketched a shape in the air with stiff fingers. Francesca bit her lip. Her reply was faint, but everything the Comte d’Orkancz could have desired.
‘An angel.’
Miss Temple seized a handful of Francesca’s hair with enough force to make the girl gasp, and pressed the pistol to her skull. ‘I’ll kill her first. And then I’ll kill you.’
Francesca squirmed. A glint of metal in Foison’s hand showed a palmed throwing knife, but he did not act. The Customs House must have been full of soldiers, like the bridge. But Vandaariff did not summon them.
Keeping hold of the child’s hair, Miss Temple suddenly shifted her aim to Vandaariff. The spell was broken. Foison’s arm whipped forward. With a sharp ringing the knife was knocked wide by Chang’s own flung blade. Doctor Svenson’s revolver roared in her ear. Miss Temple squeezed the trigger of her own pistol, aiming at Vandaariff’s head, but only plucking his high collar. Before she could fire again, Chang shoved her roughly back and met the charge of Foison’s three men with a knife in one hand and his razor in the other.
She collided with Francesca, who fell, causing Miss Temple to sprawl in turn and lose the pistol. Francesca scuttled away. Miss Temple got to her knees, intending to crawl after, but instead tripped one of Foison’s soldiers – careening from Chang with a spurting wrist. She whipped the knife from her boot. As the soldier groped for her throat she slashed at his fingers. He rose before her, then arched his back with a scream. Another of Foison’s knives had buried itself in the man’s body, clearly intended for Miss Temple.
A gunshot made her turn. Doctor Svenson lay on his side, the last cloaked soldier tottering above him with a smoking revolver. Between them crouched Francesca, somehow tangled in a corpse’s cover sheet. Miss Temple flung her knife at the cloaked man’s face. It struck harmlessly on the shoulder, but caused him to spin, whipping his pistol towards her. The Doctor fired, punching a hole under the man’s clean-shaven jaw. Francesca clapped both hands over her ears. Svenson slumped back, clutching his chest.
Two more soldiers lay at Chang’s feet, a knife-hilt sticking from one’s throat. Chang flicked the blood from his razor and stepped deliberately between Foison and Miss Temple. He snatched up a cloak, twirling it around his wrist. Foison drew two more knives from his silk coat.
The two men advanced with feral precision. It was the first time Miss Temple had seen Chang treat an enemy like an equal, and it frightened her more than anything.
Vandaariff had withdrawn from the mêlée, back to the columns, and now stood waving. Behind him, at last, came the calls of soldiers. She blinked. Vandaariff was waving them away.
Because their meeting had been a surprise, she realized, an interruption. Vandaariff’s true business in the Customs House could not stand scrutiny – the soldiers would take matters in hand, clear the area, scour the premises for confederates …
What if Vandaariff had not come to the trading hall for bodies at all? Had his artist’s indulgence delayed his departure, after his true errand?
The square. The cathedral. Why not the Customs House too? Vandaariff would know when it would be released for normal work and filled with men – would know to the minute. The doubled ticking –
More voices filled the portico, the soldiers calling out at the sight of the battle. Any moment they must burst forward. Miss Temple saw her own pistol. She snatched it up.
Her shot splintered the wood of the clock case.
‘Celeste, what are you doing?’
It was Svenson. Behind her Vandaariff’s voice rose to a shriek. She marched closer, for a better shot. Her second bullet missed entirely.
An officer loudly ordered everyone to drop their weapons. Miss Temple extended her arm, imagining the clock a brown glass bottle, and fired.
Blue smoke spat out at the bullet’s impact, an instant ahead of the blast, a deafening wall of smoke and debris that choked her breath and blotted out all sight. Miss Temple was lifted off her feet and landed hard. Her last thoughts boiled with unreasoning fury. She wanted nothing more than to blind Robert Vandaariff with her own two thumbs.
She came to her senses at a blaze of agony in her left arm.
‘Pauvre petite,’ said an unpleasant voice. ‘You will regret your waking. Hold her, please … she may still be subject to the infusion.’
Firm hands clamped Miss Temple’s shoulders, and above her face loomed Mr Foison, white hair hanging down. Robert Vandaariff stood near in his shirtsleeves, an apron over his clothes. He held a pair of forceps and, as she watched, insinuated their tip into a gash running perhaps four inches along her forearm. She protested, but he only thrust deeper, beneath a crust of blue that sealed one end of the wound. With a wrench that made Miss Temple cry, Vandaariff prised up the crystallized flesh. He tore the patch free with his fingers and dropped it on a plate. Despite the pain, Miss Temple felt her thoughts clear. Vandaariff set the forceps next to a porcelain basin and washed his hands. Next to the basin she saw a lock of auburn hair, quite obviously her own.
‘Not a serious wound,’ he said. ‘Mr Foison is perfectly capable of dressing it. I have done enough for you. That you live at all, that I have not melted your soft body for candle fat …’ He sniffed and reached for a towel. ‘It goes against tradition.’
Vandaariff tucked the lock of hair into a pocket, collected his cane and hobbled to a cabinet lined with bottles – but not, she realized, bottles of liquor. He poured out an ugly mixture, like milky weak tea, swirled the glass and drank it off. ‘You were only touched the once.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Your luck persists.’
‘You do not have Francesca.’ Her voice quavered, for Foison had begun to wrap her arm. Her wool jacket was gone, her dress ash-blackened and tattered.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘My survival.’
‘I suppose you do not care – being so brave – that your friends were blown to rags. Only that you managed to vex me.’
Miss Temple’s body went cold. ‘I do not believe you.’
‘By all means, Miss Temple. Believe your heart.’
She gasped again as Foison knotted the bandage. He stepped away, and Miss Temple pushed herself up. She lay on a wooden work table in a strange room panelled with polished steel. Had there been time to reach Harschmort?
‘But this is your own natural advantage,’ Vandaariff went on. ‘Celeste Temple acts without the impediment of remorse. Though it was clever to realize a device had been set for tomorrow’s trading. And decent shooting to strike it.’
‘Are you always so generous when you’ve been bested?’
‘Bested? Miss Temple, the bee is but part of the hive, the single piraña one of its school. In the world of men, such multiplication of effort is accomplished by wealth. This is my advantage. And when such a device is set off by my enemies in the presence of officers of the 8th Fusiliers? At a stroke it is proved that I have nothing to do with such destruction – I was there only to search for a missing old friend, don’t you know, arranged as a favour from Lord Axewith. And the blame is laid fully upon the three individuals who have continually thwarted my plans. I could not have asked for more.’
Her throat closed against any reply. Foison coughed into his hand.
‘Indeed,’ agreed Vandaariff. ‘Off with you. But indulge my frailty – you’ve seen the animal.’
With a cold efficiency, Foison looped her limbs into leather restraints and pulled tight. Then he was gone.
The precaution was hardly necessary. Miss Temple could barely breathe. She saw Svenson clutching his chest and Chang, his back to the blast, unprepared … she looked down at her bandaged arm and wilfully clen
ched her fist. Pain shot up her arm and tears stung her eyes. Vandaariff was lying. She had been kept alive to be ransomed, and only Svenson and Chang would so preserve her. They had escaped with Francesca, Vandaariff’s desired prize.
Vandaariff shuffled beyond her view, making a menacing clatter of metal and glass. But, instead of the stink of chemicals or indigo clay, the room was suddenly suffused with the pleasing odour of cooked eggs and melted butter. He returned to his seat with a lacquered tray.
‘You have not eaten, I know.’ He plucked up a fresh white roll and tore it at the seam, fingers stiff as the talons of a bird. He smeared butter into the bread, then dipped a spoon into a Chinese pot and withdrew a gleaming lump of plum jam. He shook this onto the butter and cut – the shaking knife edge ringing on the plate – a wedge of soft white cheese. The finger’s-width of cheese fell off the knife, and with an exasperated grunt Vandaariff smeared it into the roll with a gnarled thumb. He wiped his hand on a napkin and sighed at the effort.
Miss Temple’s last meal had been at Raaxfall, and so poor she’d left half on her plate. She watched the tray closely. Her arm throbbed.
‘One must eat, you know, for strength.’ He swirled the eggs with a fork and raised a quivering morsel, dripping yolk. He swallowed with difficulty, as if it were a mouthful of small bones. He set down the fork and took an awkward bite of the roll. Vandaariff’s teeth were not ill favoured for an older man, but his hesitation to bear down made Miss Temple wince that one might break away. Vandaariff chewed, breath flaring his nostrils, and finally forced the bolus through. He wiped his lips and grimaced, dropping the napkin onto the tray.
‘Does it not agree?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘I would have thought you ate for pleasure. Even for art. The Comte d’Orkancz told me everything in life came down to art. Then he made me pay for his coffee. I suppose that is an art as well.’
An appreciative smile graced his lips. ‘Do you not worry for your life?’