The Dark Volume (6 page)

Staring into this barren landscape Miss Temple cast her mind back to the airship. She attempted to recall the fates of each member of the villainous Cabal—it
had
been frenetic. The Contessa had leapt—unseen by anyone—from the dirigible's roof into the freezing sea. Francis Xonck and Roger Bascombe had been shot, the Comte d'Orkancz shot
and
stabbed, the Prince of Macklenburg horribly killed, and of course poor Lydia Vandaariff… Miss Temple closed her eyes and shook her head to dispel the image of the blond girl's head splitting off from her body even as the crack of stiffening blood echoed out from her mouth. The airship had become a tomb of icy water as the cabin filled—she herself had seen the sodden corpse of Caroline Stearne, murdered by the Contessa, bobbing against the rooftop hatch… But if no one had survived, or no one aside from the Contessa, then how could she explain identical murders on the shore?

Miss Temple sighed again. Was this not a good thing? Was it not better the hair had belonged to Mrs. Jorgens, and the plague of wolves exactly that? Was it simply that she could not trust such luck, or was it that the absence of further intrigue forced her to face her recent actions in a more sober light? It was all well and good to have killed in the heat of battle, but what of life afterward? And could she truly convince herself that Roger Bascombe had been shot in battle? Certainly her fiancé had been angry, even perhaps dangerous—but she had been
armed.
Why had she not simply left him there alone, locked in a closet? Miss Temple took another bite of bread, swallowing it with difficulty, her throat gone dry. The airship had been sinking—would she have allowed Roger to drown? Would drowning have been any less a murder? She saw no way past what she had done, apart from wishing—and then taking it back at once—that Chang or Svenson had taken Roger's life instead. The task had been hers—to kill him or set him free.

And could she not have done that? Did not her entire adventure prove how little Roger Bascombe had come to matter? Could he not have lived? Why had she pulled the trigger?

Miss Temple had no answer it did not hurt to think on.

The sun had set by the time their cart entered the tiny town of Karthe, a stretch of low stone huts, and here and there a larger storehouse or barn. The driver had stopped in front of a two-story wooden structure—wood seeming to Miss Temple to be an expensive commodity, given the total lack of trees—with a hanging painted sign, its image a flaming star passing across a black sky.

“The inn,” he muttered. In an uncharacteristic gesture of politeness, the driver climbed from his bench and helped first Elöise and then Miss Temple down from the cart. “I will settle the horse. I will stay at the livery, but return to take you to the morning train.”

He paused and turned his slightly damp eyes toward Elöise.

“As to the price we had discussed…”

Though she had anticipated (and looked forward to smashing) this stratagem for extracting more money from two ostensibly helpless women, Miss Temple barely marked what the man was attempting to say.

“We must discuss your suggestions between ourselves,” she announced quite firmly, stopping the driver's narrative of desert in its tracks. Immediately she hooked her arm in Elöise's and pulled the woman a half turn so Miss Temple's mouth was pressed against her ear.

“It is the perfect opportunity to answer all of our questions! I will ascertain if any village horses have arrived, whether there have been any riders from the north, while
you
locate signs of any unexpected persons here at the inn! Also the Doctor and Chang—we will know they have traveled safely!”

“But—wait—Celeste—if they have left us—and they
have
—perhaps they have no wish to be found.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Miss Temple. “I will find you in our room!”

She pressed two coins into Elöise's hands—having taken a moment during the day to pull off her boot and ascertain their financial state—and then indicated with an extended arm that their driver ought to remount and proceed directly to the stable with her as a passenger. Neither Elöise nor the driver seemed particularly pleased, but neither could they find any persuasive reasons to protest. The driver helped her back into the cart and climbed into his seat. Miss Temple went so far as to wave as her companion receded into the dark.

THE STABLE was as modest as the rest of Karthe, making plain by the meager number of stalls exactly how few horses were owned in the environs. Miss Temple watched the driver arrange for his nag—an earnest, aging creature who would certainly prick her heart if allowed to do so, thus her choice to ignore it utterly—before stepping herself into a sharp haggle with the groom, agreeing to cover the costs for both man and beast as a fair extension of their original bargain. Hoping for more but sensing the steel in her tone, the driver agreed—yet was more than a bit surprised when she followed along as the groom installed the horse and acquainted the driver with his place of rest. Miss Temple did so solely intent upon her investigation. It did not occur to her that she was seeing where the man would lay, as if in advance of some later assignation—the idea was too absurd—until the flicking, curious glance of the groom to the driver and the driver, somewhat abashed, back to the groom, stopped her cold. She reddened with anger and waved brusquely at the stalls.

“As a livery this seems rather
meager,”
she huffed. “I suppose you must depend on strangers for your pay—are we your only tenant?”

The groom grinned at what now seemed to be an inquiry about
privacy.

AND IT was then, in the midst of her sneering exasperation at the foul minds of men in general that Miss Temple's thought was seized from within, over-borne for a desperately clotted instant with a swirl of memory from the blue glass book. As ever, these experiences—and her own unnatural participation in them—were in that first moment irresistible. Set off by the smirking men, the details of the stable dredged into her memories like hooks, catching echoes of straw, horse stalls, leather, sweat, and musk. Miss Temple became in her flashing mind both man and woman—and indeed man and man—as each detail of an assignation caught hold: her ripened lady's body, shoulders braced against a wall, pushing her hips back like a stretching cat… or feeling, as a boy, the rough imprint of straw on her knees, quivering at the difficult entry of the older boy behind… or her own hard, masculine fingers mauling the soft flesh of a farm girl, legs wrapped round his waist, pulling tight inside her, the fervid quickening… she bit her lip to draw blood and blinked.

The driver and the groom were staring at her. How much time had passed?

“I ASK OF course because I will be staying at the inn,” explained Miss Temple. “A lady is often well prepared to know who else may be in residence at such an establishment—whether to expect gentlemen, or figures of trade or unsavory adventurers, all of whom must in turn billet their mounts with you.”

The groom opened his mouth, then shut it, his hand floating up to indicate the stalls. For the first time Miss Temple noticed the pallor of the young fellow's complexion. Was he ill? She cleared her throat importantly, rising up to her toes and peeking into a stall.

“I see we are not your only tenant after all—excellent. Are these animals locally owned?” The horse inside ignored her, snuffling at its feed. “Who in a mining town such as this would own a horse?”

“P-people need to ride,” stammered the groom.

“Yes, but who could
afford
one?” asked Miss Temple.

“Foremen,” offered her driver. “Or to let out to travelers.”

Miss Temple could not imagine anyone traveling to Karthe for any reason at all. She peeked into the next stall. It was empty, but strewn with straw and droppings.

“This horse is gone,” she called. “Is it let out, as he says, or did it belong to a traveler?” She turned to face the groom.

“T-traveler.”

“And this traveler has gone?”

The groom's stretched throat bobbed nervously as he swallowed. Miss Temple could not prevent her mind, for it was now a trait she associated with grooms in general, from drifting to an image of that bobbling throat slashed wide.

“One horse or two?”

“T-two.” The single word emerged in parts, as if traversing an ill-swallowed bone. What was possibly making the fool so unsettled?

“And when? When did these
two
travelers leave? And who
were
they? Were they together?”

“I never saw them.”

“Why not? Who did?”

“Willem. The morning boy—but—but he—he—”

“He
what
?”

“You should ask the others.”

“What others?”

“If anyone's there.”

“Where?”

“At the inn.”

The driver laughed lewdly, as if even mentioning the inn was to conjure rooms and assignations. Miss Temple brusquely pushed past both men to the tack room, where the driver was to sleep. The humble room was wholly unremarkable, as was the tattered straw pallet the man would use.

“A whole silver penny for this?” Miss Temple scoffed loudly. “It is not worth the half!”

“Beg pardon—”

“No doubt he is used to no better,” she sneered. “Yet on principle— this pallet, for example…”

With a heave she lifted up one corner, wincing at the dust that rose to her face. Feeling ridiculous—why had she gone farther into the stable instead of just walking away?—she flung the pallet from her, flipping it over. Miss Temple looked down, turned back at the now-silent groom, and then down again. Seeped into the pallet's canvas cover was a brilliant blue stain the size of a tea saucer.

A FURTHER SEARCH before the gaping faces of her social inferiors revealed no more than the Jorgenses’ cabin had disclosed after the single hair. Miss Temple strode back up the darkened lane to the inn, dis-missing any suggestion that she be accompanied by either man. What did it mean that the blue stain was positioned on the pallet precisely near a sleeper's head? Or that there were two horses from the north? Could this be what the Doctor had discovered—why he had so swiftly followed the Cardinal? But how could the two men have left her—both of them!—with such danger in the village, and only Elöise to protect her, or—as Miss Temple was already refiguring their likely dealings in her busy mind—for her to protect?

Miss Temple turned at a rustling noise. There was nothing. She looked at the tiny cottages, each showing a chink of light beneath a bolted door or between closely drawn shutters…but one, just ahead to her left, showed no light at all, nor did a plumed shadow of smoke rise from its chimney. Miss Temple stared. The door was ajar. Some thing was wrong in Karthe… something had been wrong with the groom… she had found the blue stain…Miss Temple stepped quickly off the road. The door opened silently at a push and she went in.

She allowed her eyes to penetrate the dark until she located a standing bureau where one might expect to find, and then did, a tallow candle and a match. Shutting the door to hide her house-breaking from any prying eyes in the street, she examined the room with a light in one hand and, after a deft reach to her boot, Mr. Jorgens’ sharp knife in the other.

The hut differed from the Jorgenses’ cabin in that it contained at least three rooms, receding one after another in a line, but the size and low ceiling of the first, main room was nearly the same, a fact that only accentuated Miss Temple's disquiet upon seeing a bed stripped of its linens, a cold stove, and a large trunk whose lock had been pried open with force. The floor was such a jumble of footprints that no inferences—apart from a lamentable lack of house care—could be made. The trunk was empty. She turned to the various shelves and cupboards. These were also bare. The only exceptions were the candles to one side of the door, and to the other, on the floor, a wadded ball of cloth. Miss Temple was not at all surprised to find it stained with blood.

The next room was windowless. It was clotted with furniture, chairs and tables and bureaus, stacked all against each other and pressed to each wall, the piles topped with a spinning wheel, wrapped burlap bundles, and heaps of bedding. Either the occupants were leaving Karthe, or someone had died.

On the threshold of the final room Miss Temple paused. At her feet lay the crushed stub of a cigarette. She crouched down but could not determine if the unlit edge had been crimped in the Contessa's lacquered holder, or if it had been consumed by Doctor Svenson, again availing himself of that filthy habit.

The last room—and then she really must rejoin Elöise—was as empty of furnishings as the second was full, but its smell—a smell Miss Temple never would forget—remained pungent. It was a stomach-turning mix of burning tar and sulpherous, smoking ore—the smell of indigo clay… the noxious raw mineral the Comte d'Orkancz used to make the blue glass. She'd had a whiff of it off the stable pallet, but that was nothing compared to the saturation in the hut—almost as if someone had been smelting clay, or if some hapless citizen of Karthe had fallen victim to the Process—the Cabal's cruel procedure to imprint their authority onto a victim's mind, making the man or woman a willing slave to the dreams of indifferent masters. But this required machinery, and there could be none—it was all back at Harschmort, or under the sea in the sunken airship. She held the candle high and turned slowly—nothing but an empty room with cheap, patterned paper pasted to each wall. Miss Temple crossed to the one window, leaning close to the sill. At first she saw nothing, then suddenly squeaked with shock and dropped the candle to the floor, where it went out, plunging the room into darkness.

SHE'D SEEN a face, and stumbled back blind before crouching and scuttling until she reached the wall, the knife held before her. She heard nothing save her own breath, and held her breath only to hear her pounding heart. She waited. The face had been pale, disfigured— no face she felt she knew by sight, yet exuding in the scarcely remembered instant the baleful malevolence of a ghoul.

She must leave at once.

But she could not do so without one last look at the window. Miss Temple crept to the wall beneath, peered into the darkened doorway, then seized her courage and popped to her feet, staring into the glass. A clouded fluid had been sprayed, dark and clinging, on the window. It had not been there before. Miss Temple turned and ran.