The Dark Volume (41 page)

“I do,” she sniffed, shuffling to a sitting position. “Though I cannot see it helps us.”

“Why?”

“Because it was
broken
. The thoughts inside, the sense of the memory… the
content
of the glass had been deranged. Like the ink running on a waterlogged page, but in one's
mind
… I cannot describe it.”

“It was a very small piece—”

Elöise shook her head. “The matter is not
size
. There was no logic—as if five memories, or five
minds
, were overlaid one on top of another, like patterns of paper held to a window.”

“Was there any detail to suggest who might have been the source?”

She shook her head again. “It was too full of contradiction—all tumbled into one place, which was
not
one place… and all the time… I had forgotten, music…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It means nothing—though I'm certain the memories themselves are true. Each portion
flickered
… overlapping the seams between them.”

“And none of these…
elements
seemed…
significant?”

“I do not believe so,” she said. “Indeed, now that I try, I can scarcely recall a thing.”

“No no, this is useful.” Svenson nodded without conviction. “A wound with the blue glass—as contact with blood creates
more
glass— necessitates some exclusive contact between the glass and the victim, do you see? Blood congeals against the original glass and is itself crystallized—the flesh becomes solid. But what is the nature of this
newly made
glass? Since it is in—is
of
—your body, does it contain some memory from
you
? How is this raw glass different from that smelted by the Comte?”

Svenson's mind genuinely raced with the consequences of Elöise's broken shard, and what this implied about the structure and workings of the glass books. A torn piece of paper would show only the fragment of type printed upon it, but a similarly sized spear from a blue glass page apparently contained an overlay of multiple memories. It meant that the books were not read (or “written”) in any linear way, but that the memories were shot through the glass like color in paint, or seasoning in soup, or even tiny capillaries in flesh. Whatever aspect of the glass normally allowed a person to experience the memories in sequence had been dislodged on the broken fragment, and the different memories it contained had been jammed into one jagged, unnatural whole.

He looked over at Elöise. “On the airship, the mere touch of a glass book on her bare skin drove the Contessa to distraction.”

“She killed the Prince and Lydia for no reason but
pique
—”

“Francis Xonck has used broken glass to cauterize a bullet wound, and now carries that glass
within
his body. He may well be insane.” Svenson winced to think of it. Given the wound, the lump of glass would be the size of a child's fist; what visions gnawed—no,
tore
—at Francis Xonck's mind? “He also possesses a glass book, saved in particular from the wreckage. I do not know what that book holds, I can only say that a perfectly sound man who
did
look into it was turned to a gibbering wreck. That Xonck has selected this of
all
books must mean something.”

He knelt near her. “Elöise, you may be closer to his thoughts than any other soul alive.”

“And I have
told
you—”

“He knows the glass will kill him,” said Svenson sharply. “In the Comte's absence, he will attempt to find the man's notes, his tools— anything to reverse what has been done. I must find him.”

“Abelard, he will kill you.”

“If you know anything more, Elöise. Anything at all, his aims— his
cares
…”

But she shook her head.

AT THE far door he finally found a lantern on a hook. Svenson struck a match, tamped the wick to a steady glow, and stepped out to face the blank wooden wall of the freight car. He sniffed the air to no avail, then leaned cautiously over the rail with the lantern. An iron ladder was bolted to the freight car, but he saw no sign of blood or indigo discharge. He returned to the corridor, striding willfully past Elöise and the other occupants, back to the front of the train. He drew out the revolver, took a breath, and then—acutely aware of being watched by the businessmen—realized he could not open the door with both hands occupied. He fumbled the lantern handle into his gun hand and groped for the knob.

The ceiling above him
thumped
with an impact. Someone had leapt onto the passenger car from the coal wagon—in itself a prodigious feat—and was racing toward the freight cars. Svenson broke into a run. He clawed open the connecting door, just as a second thudding impact echoed Xonck's leap from the first passenger car to the second.

Svenson sped down the corridor, just a few steps behind the man on the roof, and shouted for Elöise to stay where she was. He reached the rear door and yanked it wide. The footsteps were gone. Xonck must have leapt ahead onto the freight car, but Svenson could not see him, nor—above the clattering wheels—hear a thing. He spun round to find that all four of the young laborers had followed.

“Mrs. Dujong!” he called to them. “She is in danger! There is a man aboard the train—the roof—a murderer!”

Before they could reply, he stepped fully onto the platform. With the lantern at arm's length, he judged the distance between the platform and the ladder, swallowing with fear. Svenson stuffed the pistol into his belt and, gripping tightly to the rail, swung one leg over it. He shifted his grip, too aware of the vibrating rail, how the fluttering stripe of train ties whipped past beneath him, the slippery soles of his boots. He jammed his toes between the bars of the railing—and swung his other leg over. The ladder was still too far away. He would have to jump.

A lurch of the train caused Svenson to lose his balance completely and he flew into space between the cars. His body cannoned into the iron rungs and slid toward the flashing wheels. The lantern burst onto the rocky trackside, a bloom of flame gone instantly from view. He cried out like a child as his right boot heel was kicked by a tie. His hands finally seized hold, tight as a rigorous corpse, on a cold, rust-chipped bar.

The sound of the train had changed… it was slowing down.

THE TRAIN came to a halt with a final great wheeze of steam. Svenson dropped trembling to the track and looked to the engine—a small station platform, men with lanterns, perhaps other passengers. He turned the other way, pulled the revolver from his belt, and ran for the caboose. There were at least fifteen closed freight cars, each with a wide door shut with a heavy metal hasp. He raced past, sparing only such attention to see whether they might have been pried open, but saw nothing untoward. Svenson looked back to the engine, wondering how long they would be stopped. If he did not return, Elöise would be at Xonck's mercy.

The Doctor's breath heaved as he hauled himself onto the caboose's platform and rapped on the door with the pistol butt. Without waiting for an answer the Doctor pushed the door open, the revolver before him. A small man in a blue coat, his pink face scumbled with an uneven swath of bristle, looked up with alarm, a metal mug in one hand and a blackened teapot in the other.

“Good evening,” said Doctor Svenson. “I am so sorry to intrude.”

The porter's arms rose higher, still holding the mug and teapot.

“There is no m-money,” he stammered. “The ore is still raw— p-please—”

“It could not be further from my mind,” said Svenson, peering in each corner: a table, a stove, chairs, maps, a rack of shelves stuffed with tools, but no place another person might hide. “Where is the conductor?”

“Who?” replied the trainsman.

“I am looking for a man.”

“The conductor would be up front.”

“Yes,
another
man, dangerous, even mad, and perhaps a lady, or two ladies, one younger, small, and the other taller, black hair, possibly injured—even, ah, killed.”

The porter did not answer. Svenson smiled brightly.

“And where are we—this station?”

“Sterridge.”

“And what is Sterridge?”

“Sheep country.”

“How far to the city?”

“Three hours?”

“And what other stops before we reach it?”

“Only one, at the canals.”

“What canals?”

“Parchfeldt Junction, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Svenson, with the annoyance of every traveler confronted with benign native idiocy. “How long until the train moves on?”

“Any minute.” The man poked the teapot at the revolver. “You're a foreign soldier.”

“Not at all,” answered Svenson. “Still, I should advise you to lock the door and let no one inside. I apologize again for the disruption.”

The Doctor leapt off the caboose's platform, gazing to its rooftop, the revolver raised. He saw nothing. Svenson wheeled for the front of the train. Far in front of him—and by its posture
sniffing
—a sinuous figure in a black cloak stood pressed at the door of a freight car like a fox against a hen coop. Svenson broke into a run.

XONCK LOOKED up, alerted by the nearing bootsteps, the lower half of his face just visible beneath the hood of his cloak, both hands wrestling with the rusted iron clasp that held the freight-car door fast. Svenson raised the pistol but stumbled badly on the rocks, just barely keeping his feet. He looked up and Xonck was gone. Had the man darted beneath the cars—or between them to lay in wait as he passed? Or was he already scrambling to the roof? If Xonck was on the roof, he might well reach the passenger cars, and Eloise, before Svenson could cut him off. The Doctor ran past the freight car, sparing one brief glance beneath it, wondering what Xonck had smelt inside.

Xonck was not in wait—Xonck was nowhere at all. Svenson reached the landing, out of breath, just as the men at the front of the train blew their whistles. He slithered his legs over the railing with a groan. The train pulled forward and Doctor Svenson fell into the corridor, the revolver still in his hand. Staggering toward Elöise's compartment, he felt the dread lancing his spine—he was too late, she was dead, Xonck crouched at her open throat like a ghoul. But then he was at the door. Elöise lay where she had, asleep. Across from her, looking up with defiant expressions, were two of the four young men.

Svenson rolled away from the doorway to lean his back against the wall with a sigh, eyes closed. His every effort was a mindless grope in the dark.

THEY WOULD reach the Parchfeldt canals in the next two hours. Elöise would know how far from the city they were, for this would be near her uncle's cottage, but Svenson did not want to wake her, nor yet confront the young men of such galling good intent. The Doctor allowed himself another cigarette. He shook out the match and stared out the windows, at the carpet of fog that clung to the dark grassland. He blew smoke at the glass, as if to add it to the fog, and wondered what had happened to Cardinal Chang. Was he in the city? Was he alive? Svenson inhaled again and shook his head. He knew this feeling from his naval service, where men who had bonded as shipmates would, upon shifting to another vessel, leave every friendship or pledge of trust behind like the crusts and bones at the end of a meal. Svenson tapped his ash to the floor. How long had he known Chang or Miss Temple compared to the crew of the
Hannaniah
, men who never crossed his mind, though he'd sailed with them for three years?

He remembered his own advice to Miss Temple in the silence of the spiraling airship, that she ought to face Roger Bascombe while she could, or she might forever regret it… and the girl had killed the man. Had he known that would happen—had he spurred her on to murder? Bascombe was nothing. What pricked his conscience was the burden the death had set on Miss Temple's soul. Doctor Svenson recalled every death—far too many—he himself had managed, with a mortified regret. Yet he knew his advice had been correct. If Miss Temple had simply let the man drown, some vital question for her character—one that their entire adventure had, like some enormous alchemical equation, served to compound and lay before her—might not have had its answer. Did his own journey demand a similar accounting with Elöise Dujong?

HE GROUND the butt out with the toe of his left boot and returned to the doorway of the compartment, signaling with a jerk of his chin for the two young men to return to their compartment. Svenson smiled bitterly that his adoption of the behavior of braver, harder men—like Chang or Major Blach—was so
successful
, for the pair did exactly as he demanded, sullen but fully deferent. He stood in the corridor until the far door had closed, listening to the muffled racket of the train and fighting the urge for yet another smoke.

Slumping onto a seat opposite the sleeping woman, Doctor Svenson reached into his tunic and pulled out his crumpled and bloodstained handkerchief, unfolding it carefully on his palm to reveal the broken sliver of blue glass he had removed from Elöise's flesh. The sliver had been altered—no longer merely a smooth shard snapped from the rendered page of a glass book. One side now bore a whorled ridging grown from contact with Elöise's body, her blood congealing like stiff beads of sap on a newly sliced wedge of oak. He picked up the sliver between his forefinger and thumb and held it up to the dim light. Svenson felt a pressing behind his eyes and the urge to swallow, as if his throat was suddenly dry—but the glass did not absorb him. It could have been the size of the fragment, but he sensed at least some of what Elöise had said, that its contents were not
whole
, and as such perhaps offered no real point of entry. Svenson sighed. He pulled up the sleeve of his tunic and then the shirt beneath it, exposing his left arm—above the wrist, well clear of the artery. He took the glass piece delicately in his right hand and, with a quick glance to make sure Elöise still slept, stabbed the sliver's tip firmly into the meat.

THE PRICK of pain was immediately swallowed by a freezing sensation that spread with astonishing speed, and with such chilling force that Doctor Svenson very nearly lost his ability to think. He fought the sudden certainty that he had done something incalculably stupid and forced his eyes to focus on the wound: the gripping cold, though he felt it extending along his veins, did not mean the flesh of his entire arm was being turned to glass. On the contrary, the altered area was actually quite small, perhaps the size of a child's fingernail. Svenson's relief came with a growing dizziness. He blinked, aware that time had become unnaturally expanded with sensation, that each breath felt trackless, and fought down another rush of panic. There… at the edge of his attention, roiling like rats in the hold of a ship, lurked the visions he had sought—but the worlds they contained were utterly unlike the seductive realms he had found in the blue glass before. These were sharp, even painful, unhinged, without
coherence
. Again Doctor Svenson was sure he had made a grave mistake. Then the visions were upon him.