The Dark Volume (64 page)

Doctor Svenson's heart leapt in his chest, but he forced himself upwards, eyes resolutely fixed to the brick. To attempt a rescue, unarmed and alone, would merely deliver himself to Leveret's rage. Judging by the soldiers, Elöise's party—the other woman must be Charlotte Trapping, the man Robert Vandaariff—had been first captured by Mrs. Marchmoor's dragoons, and then taken again by Mr. Leveret's private army. As curious as Svenson was to see Leveret's reunion with the Xonck sister—she must be his keenest rival—it was the two dragoons that confirmed the mobilization of the Ministries, that, as he had speculated to Leveret, the whole of the military lay at their call.

The next floor was different in that the nearest windows, also unglazed, were blocked by iron bars. He peered closely at the bolts and saw no fresh scrapes on the bricks—the bars had been set in place for some time, even years. The machines here were larger, dark and oiled with heavy usage. The Doctor had no experience with industry but had been escorted by many a ship's engineer past turbines and boilers, enough to recognize that here were the guts of the factory proper, the powerhouse heart to pump life through the rest. Leveret had adapted these mill-works to animate the Comte's metallic fantasia. If one sought to bring the whole place to a halt, this was the spot to start swinging the pickaxe. Not that Svenson
had
a pickaxe, or could penetrate iron bars. He resumed his climb.

WITH A shock that nearly caused him to fall, he felt the ladder shudder with the weight of a new occupant. Svenson looked down, to see the shimmering black top of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza's head, and the purple silk of her climbing arms. Svenson hurried upwards, aware that in haste his grip was not as sure and his boot heels more likely to slide off the iron. He reached the highest line of tall windows, also barred. Each opening had been stretched with sailcloth. He could smell the reek of indigo clay, as strong as it had been amongst the forest of ducts and hoses—and detected a new sound, high-pitched and sustained, like the buzzing of porcelain wasps. He glanced down. His lead of two stories had been cut in half. The woman looked up, black hair in her eyes, and as she stabbed for the next rung she bared her teeth. The back of her dress shone with blood. She caught his eye and did not smile, the iron frame of the ladder throbbing with each determined step. Svenson groped blindly for the next rung, hauling himself recklessly toward the roof.

The irony of finding a haven on a rooftop—a place where at the best of times his vertigo would drop him to his hands and knees—was not lost on him. He would have to pull himself over the lip, an awful moment of releasing the ladder entirely and taking hold of a bare— and dusty, slippery, even crumbling—crenellation of brick with his hands. What if he mistimed his reach? What if his boots slipped? And if he took too long, would the Contessa slash the back of his knee? Useless anxiety hammered his nerves. He was at the top of the ladder. He could not see beyond the lip of brick some two feet above him. With a feral snarl he thrust his arms up and took scrabbling hold, the edge of the brickwork digging awkwardly into his bicep, flailing with his legs, scuffing his knees. The Doctor clawed his way onto a gritty, soot-smeared expanse of planking slathered with old tar.

The rooftop, an open rectangle some thirty yards across and sixty yards long, was divided lengthwise by a double line of squat brick chimneys, each perhaps the width of a barrel and twice the height of a tall man. But near to where he had emerged, on his side of the line of smokestacks, rose a squat brick hutch, with a door to the factory below. Svenson gave one quick glance to where the Contessa would momentarily emerge, and dashed to the door—reasoning one fearsome women to be less dangerous than an army of soldiers. He snatched up a length of broken wood—at one point it had been the leg of a chair (who knew how it had migrated to the rooftop, like a sheep's bone in an aerie)—and wedged it fast between the door and the frame. He heard no steps at the door, and peering through the line of chimneys he saw no guards ascending from the other side of the rooftop. How could that be?

He looked back to the ladder. The Contessa's hand shot over the brick lip, fingers splayed like the claws of a clambering cat.

Doctor Svenson stepped forward. One kick, and she would be done for. The Contessa tottered on the rooftop's edge, legs thrusting against their confines of silk. He reached his hand to the woman's good arm. She met his gaze, snorted, and took it. With a not entirely gentlemanly pull Doctor Svenson hauled her onto the rooftop and to her feet. She snorted again and tossed her head.

“If we had stayed together it would have been far more sensible.”

“I am not your ally.”

“Don't be an ass! Acknowledge the world as it is—as it has become.”

“I disagree,” he replied, feeling inadequate that he had no further words.

“You have given me your hand,” the Contessa panted. “It was that or smash your boot on my fingers and send me to hell. You did not do that, Doctor Svenson—you have made your choice, pray do not tax me with peevish distaste! Do not, or I will turn your heart's blood to a fountain!”

Doctor Svenson did not doubt the woman's rage, nor her capacity—she had this night slain how many men? But he knew she had done so by virtue of surprise, by the fact that she was a beautiful woman, whom the soldiers had no reason to think a mortal threat. Svenson had no such illusions.

“Your wound has opened.” He nodded to the smear of gore that had reached the end of her right sleeve.

“Your teeth are unpleasantly stained,” sneered the Contessa. “Neither fact is of the slightest use for being pointed out.”

“They will be coming for us, and very soon.”

“Again, you cleave to the obvious.”

“I must ask you something, and I will insist on an answer.”

“And I will insist on flinging your corpse from this rooftop—”

“I am not afraid of you, madame.”

With a shocking vulgarity the Contessa spat onto the stiff tar at her feet and met Svenson with a glittering expression that made it clear that, given the chance, she would carve her answer on his neck.

“By all means, then.
Ask.”

“You arranged for Caroline Stearne to meet with Charlotte Trapping and Elöise Dujong in a private room of the St. Royale Hotel. I want to know why, and I want to know what resulted.”

The Contessa rolled her eyes with disbelief.
“You want to know this now?”

“I do.”

“My Lord, Doctor! Because of
her?
Am
I
to determine whether you throw away your life in a futile rescue? The woman does not deserve the affection one would give a chicken whose neck one was about to wring.”

“I am not interested in your opinions, madame.”

“At least let us listen at the door—it would be stupid to be surprised—”

As she spoke the Contessa gestured with her injured hand to the rooftop door but at the same time took a sly step toward Svenson, her left hand carefully out of view behind her hip. The Doctor stepped rapidly back, beyond her reach, and spoke quite sharply.

“If you do that again, I will shout at the top of my lungs for Mr. Leveret. And then, madame, I will do my very best to end your life, even if it means carrying you off the rooftop with me.”

“You would not.”

“I would consider it a service to all mankind and a sure passage to sainthood.”

The Contessa wiped her mouth with the fingertips of her left hand, a contemptuous gesture that deliberately showed him her weapon: a band of bright metal that fit across all four fingers, sporting in the middle a sharp, almost triangular spike of steel, perhaps an inch in height: enough of a blade to slash, yet the squat base also made it a vicious adjunct to the wearer's fist. One swift blow had punctured the skull of Harald Crabbé on the airship, ending his life before he could collapse to the floor. But—and the sensation caused him to marvel, for he was in his life stricken by so many things—Doctor Svenson was
not
afraid, not of her, nor—especially of dying itself… not when survival meant so little.

“If you would,” he said to her. “The St. Royale…”

AS IF admitting she had been for the moment foxed, the Contessa smiled. Doctor Svenson braced himself. Whatever she was about to say would form the first step in her revenge.

“There is practically nothing to describe. You must know of her assignation with Trapping—merciful sin, Doctor, you met the man yourself. Is there anything more dispiriting than to be the mistress of a fool?”

Svenson wanted very much to strike her, but did not move. “I find
you
dispiriting, madame. With all your unquestioned talents, you remain the epitome of waste.”

“From a man who has thrown away his life for Karl-Horst von Maasmärck…well, I shall bear it in mind.”

“The meeting. The hotel.”

“What is there to say? I did not want Francis or Oskar or Crabbé to know of my suspicions, so I could not risk being seen. As I knew Charlotte Trapping socially, it needed to be arranged by Caroline.”

“Mrs. Trapping was not to know of your involvement?”

“She least of all,” replied the Contessa, as if this point were especially obvious.

“But why should Elöise be present? Why, if she was—” he stammered to say it, feeling his face grow hot with anger and shame “—the Colonel's mistress, and Mrs. Trapping was aware of—her—their— assignations—”

“Aware?”
laughed the Contessa.

Svenson was dumbfounded. “But—if—why—”

The Contessa laughed again. Svenson saw her assumptions change—and knew what she would tell him had changed as well. Before she could speak, he held up his hand.

“You were not getting information
from
Charlotte Trapping—
that
you would have insisted on hearing alone. Instead, Mrs. Stearne was informing
her
that some deep secret was known, and exacting a promise or payment to forestall its publication. The obvious secret is the infidelity, the Colonel's mistress…”

But suddenly Svenson knew this was wrong.

“Indeed, such would explain the presence of Mrs. Dujong. But you forget that I have seen the women arrive together to this building, as I have seen them together earlier this day: if the infidelity were indeed a breach between them, this would not be. You included Mrs. Dujong in the invitation for two reasons: first, as a sensible, observant person who must have known the secret herself, she would make sure Charlotte Trapping showed up; and second, upon being apprised of the threat to her mistress, Mrs. Dujong would exert a prudent influence—in protecting Mrs. Trapping, she would inadvertently deliver her into your control.”

It was also ironic, he thought: Elöise being made aware of the threat to Mrs. Trapping—swiftly followed by the Colonel's disappearance—explained why she had been so readily persuaded by Francis Xonck to go to Tarr Manor, where the memories of that meeting, along with the very fact of her infidelities, had been removed from her mind.

“Why should I require
prudence
?” asked the Contessa. “I find prudence
dull.”

“Because Mrs. Trapping is a Xonck,” replied Svenson. “Proud, angry, bitter, and as unpredictable as a drunken Lord.”

The Contessa smiled again. “My goodness, Doctor, your cleverness has so nearly assuaged the urge to strike you dead.”

“You have not yet told me what the secret
was.”

“And I will not.”

“You will.”

“Unfortunately, Doctor, we are no longer
alone.”

SVENSON SPUN toward the rooftop door. At once, instinct firing his limbs just in time, he threw himself back to avoid the slash of the Contessa's spike across the front of his throat. The woman staggered at the force of her erring blow. Svenson's own arm was cocked in a fist when he met her eyes and saw she was once again laughing.

“You cannot blame me, Doctor—only a fool gives up easily. Strike me if you must—or if you can—but I was telling you the truth.”

She pointed with her steel-wrapped hand at the far side of the rooftop, beyond the line of chimneys. Two men stood there, one straight, one bent as if in illness, yet however many steps apart they stood, they unquestionably stood
together
. Svenson turned back to the Contessa, wishing he still held the silver revolver. On the other side of the line of smokestacks stood Francis Xonck with—
with!
—Cardinal Chang.

The two men advanced to the line of chimneys and crossed through to Svenson's side of the tar-covered rooftop. The Contessa darted to the ladder, but once there merely leaned down, sniffed, and then called to them.

“No one climbs up. As it would be evident to an infant that we are here, I must assume Mr. Leveret considers us
managed
.”

How easily the woman had gone, in the matter of a minute, from dashing conversation to attempted murder, to a reunion with sworn enemies—and
then
shown the presence of mind to assert that any specific argument between them had been rendered trivial by their shared predicament.

“What weapons are they using?” growled Xonck, his voice thick and hoarse.

“Your special carbines, of course,” replied the Contessa. “But I do not believe they have men in the trees to shoot us here.”

“They could rush us if they cared.” Xonck nodded to the rooftop door.

“So they do
not
care,” she snapped. “It is
your
Mr. Leveret—perhaps you know his intentions.”

Xonck hacked out a wretched blue gobbet onto the tar. For an instant his eyes lost focus and his body swayed. “Leveret… merely following… orders.”

“I do not think so, Francis,” the Contessa said. “Leveret remains no more your creature than Margaret Hooke is the Comte's, or Caroline Stearne is my own.”

“He does not know that
I
have arrived.”

“Perhaps not—merely that a savage, stinking, monstrosity—”

“Rosamonde—”

“And how
bold
you were to remove Oskar's machinery from Harschmort—before anyone was even dead! Or was
everyone to
die in Macklenburg by way of a poisoned pudding?”