The Dark Volume (12 page)

Chang stopped, aware that his hunting knife was no match for the other's heavy blade. He considered throwing it, but the knife's hilt was an awkward curve of brass and badly weighted. Instead, Chang spat into the leaves and nodded at the saber.

“Strange weapon for hunting.”

“Not true.” The man smirked. “Given the prey.”

“You must have ridden hard to get here.”

The man shrugged.

“That you are only two says you are part of a larger effort—searching the entire Iron Coast. I suppose there's less need to search a populated area—one would have heard of a fallen airship crammed full of dignitaries.”

“And criminals.”

Chang nodded at the saber. “Is that yours, or have you robbed some soldier?”

“You want to know if I can use it?”

“I want to know how much of a criminal you are too.”

“Why not come at me and see?”

By the man's obvious comfort with the military blade, Chang knew he was a soldier. Who had sent the search parties so quickly? Who could have known so soon of the crash, or guessed its location? Every fear of exposure and retribution he had expressed to Svenson was staring him in the face.

Why had he dropped the carbine? Because the noise would rouse the villagers to something he wouldn't want to explain. And because he would miss his shot and die in the bargain.

Assuming his opponent knew his business, the attack would be a snapping overhead slash, the whole happening so fast that Chang must choose blindly where to parry—and with the short-bladed knife, there was not the slightest margin for error. He would have to make one parry—he could not hope for more—and then dive forward, slashing and stabbing before the soldier could land a second blow.

Chang stepped forward until he was just at the far reach of the saber, the hunting knife held before him. “You will have much to answer for with these villagers.”

In response, the man feinted once at Chang's legs and then hacked upwards at Chang's face. Chang stopped the blow but was caught flat-footed by its strength and could not charge. The man swung again, this time the overhead slash that Chang had dreaded. Chang moved his knife and felt the ringing of steel at his correct guess. On sudden impulse, he twisted his wrist. The brass hilt of the hunting knife pinned the saber blade and for just an instant held it fast. The soldier grunted in anger and ripped the saber free, but Chang followed the saber as it pulled back and sent the tip of the hunting knife lancing straight for the soldier's eye. At the last moment the man's left hand seized Chang's wrist and the knife went wide. Chang lowered his shoulder and tackled his opponent to the ground.

The soldier landed hard but flailed his sword's brass pommel into Chang's back. Chang swore aloud and clubbed his forearm across his opponent's throat, but then let pass the chance to bring the hunting knife down into the man's heart. He knew he should take him alive— as proof to the village and to learn their true peril—so instead snapped his fist into the soldier's face. The brass guard left a cruel red mark, but to Chang's surprise the soldier arched his back and flipped Chang over. The man clawed to get away. Chang seized his boot and dropped him facedown in the leaves. He stabbed the knife at the back of the man's knee, but the soldier rolled again and the edge cut across his leather boot. Chang snarled with frustration, aching to simply kill the man, and chopped the hunting knife at the soldier's ribs, hoping for a bloody wound that would break his spirit without piercing any organs. But the soldier stopped it with a desperate parry, the metal ringing through the trees. Both pulled free—Chang on his knees, the soldier on his back—gauging their next blows. But Chang knew he had his opponent. As soon as the soldier swung, Chang would deflect the blade and leap forward, the knife against the man's neck. As if he too was perfectly aware of his peril, the soldier cried out with effort, sweeping the saber with all his strength at Chang in a wild slash. Chang threw himself just clear of the blow, ready to attack—but his rear foot slipped straight over the edge of a five-foot drop. The rest of him followed, landing only to roll through fallen branches and leaves for another ten yards, where the woods began to give way to the sea.

Chang shook his head and looked up. There was no sign of the soldier.

CHANG STOPPED, bent over and gasping. The leaves had given way to a muddy clearing spattered with prints. He saw one line of hooves, and then—wide apart and deep, as if made at a run—the prints of a man. Was the soldier trailing his own horse? They would worry for him back at the village, no doubt, but the man's knowledge was too great a danger. Chang paused long enough to drink muddy water from the pooling bootprints.

He had followed as quickly as possible, hoping the man had lost his horses, or lost enough time in recovering them to allow Chang to catch up. By the time Chang was sure the soldier had regained his mount, the village was far behind him. He recalled from Svenson's torporous talks with Sorge after supper that the next town to the south, Karthe, was a mining settlement, with a distant spur of the train line. If the soldier was part of a larger force, their search would be headquartered there. It was also possible, given the town's isolation, that the trains ran on an irregular basis. If so, Chang might catch up with the soldier in town—no matter if he'd arrived a day earlier by horse— and take him, along with whatever fellows were there, before the news could spread south to their masters.

The forest gave way to tall grasses and hard, gnarled shrubs. The land began to rise, and Chang reached the tall blackened rocks as darkness fell, deciding it would be as good a place as any to stay the night—continuing on was idiotic, given his eyesight and ignorance of the area. He'd no means to make a fire, nor food to cook. Chang curled himself to the most wind-protected nook of rock. He stared up at the sky, starless, shrouded in black cloud, waiting far too long for sleep.

When he woke the ground was wet with dew. Ten minutes after opening his eyes Chang was on his way.

IT TOOK him another day to reach Karthe. There had been no further signs of the soldier, though as he had spent so much time cutting across open country and then still more lost amongst identical piles of rock, this was no surprise. Chang trudged up the last turn of the road into the town, assuming the worst, that his enemies would be fully prepared and waiting for revenge.

Chang's battered red coat blended in with the brown dirt road and the grey rock houses, rendering him all but invisible in the twilight. The doors of Karthe were closed and its shutters drawn. As he stalked its length Chang heard snatches of talk, the ringing of pans, the high voices of children, but everything remained hidden behind layers of wood and stone.

He passed the village's only inn—a ramshackle wooden building that filled Chang with a palpable longing for a bed, warm food, and several pints of ale—in favor of going directly to the train. Knowing whether the soldier had already escaped would dictate everything.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw a young boy in a pale canvas coat racing toward him without heed.

“You! Boy!”

The boy stopped short, eyes widening at Chang's appearance, and began to edge backwards. Chang calmed him with an open hand.

“I am a traveler in need of the train. Where is the train yard?”

The boy backed up another two steps and pointed over his shoulder, to where the road wound from sight beyond the last few buildings.

“When did the last train leave—to the south?”

“Not for these two days.”

“Two days? You're sure?”

The boy nodded, his eyes darting between Chang's red coat and his black glasses.

“And when is the next?”

“This night, sir. As soon as they finish loading the ore—it'll be some hours.”

Chang looked behind him, back toward the inn. It could not be more than five o'clock now, by the light. Would the soldier be there?

“Where were you running—”

But the boy had dashed back to where he'd come from—a tall wooden structure that from its wide, high double doorway must be the village stables. One door was open, yellow lantern light pooling through it across the muddy yard. Chang strode after him. If he did not need to reach the train at once, the stable was an excellent way to discover if the soldier had arrived by horseback, and if he might have any companions with him at the inn.

THE BOY was nowhere to be seen as Chang walked in, one hand loosely on the hilt of the hunting knife in his belt, though he could hear scuffling from a tack room in the rear. The last stall held a white horse he knew he'd never seen. The horse snorted, sensing his gaze, and pawed the straw. It was obviously spent, still wet with perspiration, nostrils pink and flaring, and shifting its feet with an unsettled, stumbling fearfulness. Was the animal ill, or had it been driven mad from mistreatment? Chang stepped away, uncomfortable as ever in the presence of infirmity, and crossed to the tack room.

The boy he'd seen in the street stood in the doorway. He looked up to Chang as he entered, his face already turned to a grimace of nausea. Curled at his feet lay another groom—breath ragged and face pale—the planking before him pooled with vomit. Near the stricken groom's hands—shaking and compulsively clutching together—lay a dagger-sized spike of blue glass.

Chang took the young boy's shoulder and turned the boy's face to his.

“What is your name?”

“Willem, sir.”

“Willem, your fellow is sick from that piece of glass. Bring me water.”

Chang scuffed a wad of straw into the vomit with his foot and stepped carefully around it, scooping up the groom and dragging him to a rolled straw pallet, which lay beneath a row of pegs dangling bridles and stirrups. Chang very carefully picked up the wedge of glass and laid it on the seat of a wooden stool. Willem reappeared with a wooden bucket and a cup. Chang dipped the cup and without ceremony splashed the water in the older groom's face, then refilled the cup as the man coughed and snorted.

“Drink,” he said, and then called over his shoulder to Willem, as the boy was even then peering at the dagger of glass, “Get
away
from that—can you not see what it's done to him?”

The groom gagged on the water but Chang was able to turn his head before what he'd drunk shot back out on top of the pallet, staining the dirty canvas bright blue. Chang refilled the cup and forced it into the groom's hands.

“Keep drinking,” he said, and once more took Willem's shoulder, pulling the boy after him back to the stalls.

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 glass 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 Elöise 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 snatched 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 glass next to the white mare.”

“Is it your glass, 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 glass 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 glass 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?