The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (41 page)

They climbed past three landings but never a door or window. At the landing of the next floor, however, the soldier took a long brass key from his coat, glanced once at Chang, and stepped to a heavy wooden door. He inserted the key and turned it several times in the lock, the machinery echoing sharply within the stairwell, before pulling it open. He stepped aside and indicated that Chang should go in. Chang did so, his attention neatly divided between the instinctive suspicion about the man at his back and the room he was entering—a short marbled corridor with another door on the opposite side, some five yards away. Chang looked back to the soldier, who nodded him on toward the far door. When Chang did not move the soldier suddenly slammed the door shut. Before Chang could leap for the knob he heard the key being turned. The thing would not budge. He was locked in. He berated himself for a credulous fool and strode to the far door, fully expecting it to be locked as well, but the brass knob turned with a well-oiled
snick.

He looked into a wide office with a deep green carpet, and a low ceiling made less oppressive by a domed skylight of creamy glass rising over the center of the room. The walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed with hundreds of massive numbered volumes—official documents no doubt, collected through the years and from around the world. The wide space of the room was divided between two great pieces of furniture—a long meeting table to Chang’s left and an expansive desk to his right—that, like oaken planets, cast their nets of gravity across an array of lesser satellites—end tables, ashtrays, and map-stands. The desk was unoccupied, but at the table, looking up from an array of papers spread around him, sat Roger Bascombe.

“Ah,” he said, and awkwardly stood.

Chang glanced around the office more carefully and saw a communication door—closed—in the wall behind Bascombe, and what might well be another hidden entrance set into the bookcases behind the desk. He pushed the main door closed behind him, turned to Bascombe and tapped the tip of his stick lightly on the carpet.

“Good afternoon,” Chang said.

“Indeed, it is,” Bascombe replied. “The days grow warmer.”

Chang frowned. This was hardly the confrontation he had expected. “I believe I was announced,” he said.

“Yes. Actually, Miss Celeste Temple was announced. And then your name of course, in turn.” Bascombe gestured to the wall where Chang could see the sending and receiving apparatus for the message tubes. Bascombe gestured again toward the end of the table. “Please…will you sit?”

“I would prefer to stand,” said Chang.

“As you wish. I prefer a seat, if it is all the same to you…”

Bascombe sat back at the table, and took a moment to rearrange the papers in front of him. “So…,” he began, “you are acquainted with Miss Temple?”

“Apparently,” said Chang.

“Yes, apparently.” Bascombe nodded. “She is—well—she is herself. I have no cause to speak of her beyond those terms.”

It seemed to Chang that Bascombe was choosing his words very carefully, almost as if he were afraid of being caught out somehow…or being overheard.

“What terms exactly?” asked Chang.

“The terms she has set down by her own choices,” answered Bascombe. “As you have done.”

“And you?”

“Of course—no one is immune to the consequences of their own actions. Are you sure you will not sit?”

Chang ignored the question. He stared intently at the slim, well-dressed man at the table, trying to discern where in all the competing spheres of his enemies he might fit in. He could not help seeing Bascombe as he thought a woman must—his respectability, his refinement, his odd assumption of both rank and deference—and not any woman, but Miss Temple in particular. This man had been the object of her love—almost certainly was still, women being what they were. Looking at him, Chang had to admit that Bascombe possessed any number of attractive qualities, and was thus equally quite certain that he disliked the young man intensely, and so he smiled.

“Ambition…it does strange things to a fellow, would you not agree?”

Bascombe’s gaze measured him with all the dry, serious purpose of an undertaker. “How so?”

“I mean to say…it often seems that until a man is given what he assumes he wants…he has no real idea of the cost.”

“And why would you say that?”

“Why would I indeed?” Chang smiled. “Such an opinion would have to be derived from actual achievement. So how
could
I possibly know?” When Bascombe did not immediately respond, Chang gestured with his stick to the large desk. “Where are your confederates? Where is Mr. Crabbé? Why are you meeting me alone—don’t you know who I am? Haven’t you spoken to poor Major Blach? Aren’t you just the slightest bit worried?”

“I am not,” replied Bascombe, with an easy self-assurance that made Chang want to bloody his nose. “You have been
allowed
into this office for the specific purpose of being presented with a proposition. As I assume you are no idiot, as I assure you
I
am no idiot, I am in no danger until that proposition has been made.”

“And what proposition is that?”

But instead of answering, Bascombe stared at him, running his gaze over Chang’s person and costume, very much as if he were an odd kind of livestock or someone from a circus. Chang had the presence of mind to realize that the gesture was deliberate and designed to anger—though he did not understand why Bascombe would take the risk, being so obviously vulnerable. The entire situation was strange—for all that Bascombe spoke of plans and propositions, Chang knew his appearance at the Ministry must be a surprise. Bascombe was delaying him at personal risk so something else could happen—the arrival of reinforcements? But
that
made no sense, for the soldiers could have stopped him at any time on the way up. Instead, what they had accomplished was to divert Chang from the entrance. Was this all a performance—was Bascombe somehow demonstrating his loyalty, or was it possible that Bascombe played a double game? Or was the delay not to bring anyone
to
the room, but to get someone away
from
it?

In a swift movement Chang raised his stick and strode to Bascombe. Before the man could half-rise from his chair the end landed viciously against his ear. Bascombe slumped down with a cry, holding the side of his head. Chang took the opportunity to press the stick roughly across his neck. Bascombe choked, his face abruptly reddening. Chang leaned forward and spoke slowly.

“Where is she?”

Bascombe did not immediately answer. Chang shoved the stick sharply into his windpipe.

“Where is she?”

“Who?” Bascombe’s voice was a rasp.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t think he knows who you mean.”

Chang whirled around and with a smooth motion pulled apart his stick. Behind the desk, leaning indolently against the bookcases, stood Francis Xonck, in a mustard yellow morning coat, his red hair meticulously curled, an unlit cheroot in his hand. Chang took a careful step toward him, risking a quick glance back to Bascombe, who was still laboring to breathe.

“Good afternoon,” said Chang.

“Good afternoon. I hope you haven’t hurt him.”

“Why? Does he belong to you?”

Xonck smiled. “That’s very clever. But you know, I’m clever too, and I must congratulate you—the mystery about the ‘she’ you so desperately seek is positively diverting. Is it Rosamonde? Is it little Miss Temple—or should I say Hastings? Or even better, the Comte’s unfortunate, slant-eyed trollop? Either way, the idea that you’re actually looking for any of them is richly amusing. Because you’re so
manly,
don’t you know, and at the same time such a
buffoon
. Excuse me.”

He pulled a small box of matches from his waistcoat and lit the cheroot, looking over the glowing tip at Chang as he puffed. His eyes shifted to Bascombe. “Will you survive, Roger?” He smiled at Bascombe’s reply—a hacking cough—and tossed the spent match onto the desk top.

Chang took another step closer to Xonck, who seemed as uncaring in his manner as Bascombe had been moments before, but oddly gay where Bascombe had been watchful. “Shall I ask you?” he hissed.

“You would do better to listen,” Xonck replied dryly. “Or, in lieu of that, to think. The way behind you is locked, as is the door behind me. If you were able to make your way through the door behind Bascombe—which you won’t—I promise you will be quickly lost within a dense maze of corridors with absolutely no chance of evading or surviving the very large number of soldiers even now assembling to kill you. You would die, Mr. Chang, in such a way as to serve no one—a dog run down by a coach in the dark.” He frowned and picked a scrap of tobacco off his lower lip and flicked it away, then returned his eyes to Chang.

“And you would suggest I serve
you
?” asked Chang.

“Serve yourself,” croaked Bascombe, from the table.

“He rallies!” laughed Xonck. “But you know, he is right. Serve yourself. Be reasonable.”

“We’re wasting time—” muttered Chang, moving for Xonck. Xonck did not move, but spoke very quickly and sharply.

“That is foolish. It will kill you. Stop and think.”

Against his better judgment, Chang did. He was nearly within reach of the man, if he lunged with the long part of the stick. But he didn’t lunge, partly because he saw that Xonck wasn’t frightened…not in the slightest.

“Whatever reason brought you here,” Xonck said, “your
search
—you must postpone. You were allowed up for the sole reason, as Mr. Bascombe has said, to make you a proposition. There is plenty of time to fight, or to die—there is always time for that—but there is no more time to find whichever woman you hoped would be here.”

Chang wanted very much to leap over the desk and stab him, but his instincts—which he knew to trust—told him that Xonck was not like Bascombe, and that any attack on him needed to be as carefully considered as one on a cobra. Xonck did not seem to be armed, but he could easily have a small pistol—or for that matter a vial of acid. At the same time, Chang did not know what to make of the man’s warning about escaping into the Ministry. While it might be true, it was in Xonck’s every interest to lie. But why
had
they let him ascend without any soldiers to take him in hand? He had too many questions, but Chang knew that nothing revealed more about a man than his estimation of what your price might be. He stepped away from Xonck and sneered.

“What proposition?”

Xonck smiled, but it was Bascombe who spoke, clearly and coolly despite the hoarseness of his voice, as if he were describing the necessary steps in the working of a machine.

“I cannot give you details. I do not seek to convince, but to offer opportunity. Those who have accepted our invitation have and will continue to benefit accordingly. Those who have not are no longer our concern. You are acquainted with Miss Temple. She may have spoken of our former engagement. I cannot—for it is impossible to say how I was then, for that would be to say how I was a child. So much has changed—so much has become clear—that I can only speak of what I have become. It’s true I thought myself to be in love. In love because I could not see past the ways in which I was subject, for I believed, in my servitude, that this love would release me. What view of the world had I convinced myself I understood so well? It was the useless attachment to another, to
rescue,
which existed in place of my own action. What I believed were solely consequences of that attachment—money, stature, respectability, pleasure—I now see merely as elements of my own unlimited capacity. Do you understand?”

Chang shrugged. The words were eloquently spoken, but somehow abstractly, like a speech learned by heart to demonstrate rhetoric…and yet, through it all, had Bascombe’s eyes been as steady? Had they betrayed some other tension? As if responding to Chang’s thought, Bascombe then leaned forward, more intently.

“It is natural that different individuals pursue different goals, but it is equally clear that these goals are intertwined, that a benefit to one will be a benefit to others. Serve yourself. You are a man of capacity—and even, it seems possible, of some intelligence. What you have achieved against our allies only certifies your value. There are no grievances, only interests in competition. Refuse that competition, join us, and be enriched with clarity. Whatever you want—wherever you direct your action—you will find reward.”

“I have no uncle with a title,” observed Chang. He wished Xonck was not there—it was impossible to read Bascombe’s true intention apart from his master’s presence.

“Neither does Roger, anymore.” Xonck chuckled.

“Exactly,” said Bascombe, with all the evident emotion of the wooden chair he sat in.

“I’m afraid I don’t actually understand your proposition,” said Chang.

Xonck sneered. “Don’t be coy.”

“You have desire,” said Bascombe. “Ambition. Frustration. Bitterness. What will you do—struggle against them until one of your adventures goes wrong and you die bleeding in the street? Will you trust your life to the whims of a”—his voice stumbled just slightly—“a provincial
girl
? To the secret interests of a German spy? You have met the Contessa. She has spoken for you. It is at her urging you are here. Our hand is out. Take it. The Process will transform you, as it has transformed us all.”

The offer was enormously condescending. Chang looked to Xonck, whose face wore a mild, fixed smile of no particular meaning.

“And if I refuse this proposition?”

“You won’t,” said Bascombe. “You would be a fool.”

Chang noticed a smear of blood on Bascombe’s ear, but whatever pain he had caused made no impression on the man’s self-assurance, nor on the sharpness of his gaze, the meaning of which Chang could not discern. Chang glanced back to Xonck, who rolled the cheroot between his fingers and exhaled a jet of smoke toward the ceiling. The question was how best to learn more, to find Angelique, or Celeste—even, he had to admit, confront Rosamonde. But had he only come here to deliver himself into their hands so effortlessly?