The Dark Volume

The open room was enormous, its far end fully taken up with bright metal ducts bundled together to feed a line of silver machines. These in turn sprouted black hoses, vibrating with gases and fluid, covering the floor like creepers from an industrial jungle. The shining casings of these machines had been peeled back and white light streamed out, each cracked carapace cradling a nugget of brilliance— super-refined bolts of indigo clay, powering the machines as they had powered the airship. Behind the machines and along each side wall were lines of green-coated soldiers with carbines. The factory's defenders had been withdrawn to this center point, as if to maintain power in this room was to maintain it over all.

On a raised dais, like a carved figure above an altar, perched Robert Vandaariff. Three huge metal plates hung behind the financier from a lattice of chains, like panels in an indecipherable triptych. To each side were placed the buzzing brass box-stands, and at his feet lay long wooden boxes lined with orange felt—the whole arrangement like a bizarre icon for a religion, the deranged alchemy of the Comte d'Orkancz. The Comte's black memories surged within her like hounds against a leash. The scrawls on the metal plates jabbed at her thoughts and she gagged to recognize the ruddy purpled burn that looped around the industrialist's eyes and across his nose. The screams were now explained. Robert Vandaariff had just undergone the Process.

Next to Vandaariff, like an angel hovering near a punished soul in Purgatory, stood a slender woman with reddish hair, wearing a dark dress whose hem was crusted with dried mud. At her side lurked a man in a respectable brown topcoat, meager hair pasted optimistically upwards, whose eyes kept flicking between the soldiers along the walls and those guarding the machines directly at his back.

Forming a triangle with Vandaariff and his keepers were two other groups, divided from each other like rival suppliants before an idiot king. On the left stood Mrs. Marchmoor's party: the glass woman in her black cloak; Aspiche; and Phelps. Opposite them, in a strange little non-knot of their own—and Miss Temple did not comprehend this group at all—stood the Contessa, Francis Xonck, Cardinal Chang, and Doctor Svenson. They looked so depleted by their journey that even their hatreds had lost fire. She met their eyes—Xonck's insanely glazed, the Contessa's hard as a hunting bird's, the Doctor's pale with despair, and finally Chang's, mere smoked glass.

Had they been captured? By whom? What were they doing together?

What Miss Temple did not understand made her angry at the best of times, but now these least-expected betrayals made her furious— and this fury, so like the Comte's own bitter rage, broke her last restraint on his memories. Miss Temple choked and lost her balance. She let go of Francesca Trapping and dropped to one knee, face flaming red, trying to retain her mind against the tide of despair and spite, against the crowd of facts—sickening facts—that split her attention into slivers. All around her the insanity of the room began to make sense… she knew that the copper filaments had burned through, that the rattle of one machine that was off by a quarter-turn, that the exact temperature of the indigo clay perceived by smell was—

“Celeste! Celeste—are you all right?”

A hand had gently taken her shoulder. Miss Temple looked up with an unladylike grunt into the face of Elöise Dujong, crouching next to her. Where had she come from?

Elöise shouted to the man in the brown coat. “Mr. Leveret! Please!”

The man did not react, but then Mrs. Trapping spoke in his ear and he waved to the soldiers behind him. They pulled brass levers on each machine, and like kettles taken off their flame, their high-pitched wailing fell away. The machines far below them still rumbled, but now the upper floor stood in silence.

EVERYONE WAS staring. How long had she been on her knees? The leather case had been taken away, and was held by Mr. Phelps. The pistol was nowhere to be seen. Francesca Trapping stood with the glass woman. The child's streaked face was turned to Miss Temple without expression. Elöise spoke urgently.

“Celeste… please listen… they know everything—”

The anger caught at the back of Miss Temple's throat like a rusted spike she could not swallow.

“What have you done, Elöise? Why does everyone stand with them?”

“Celeste, it is your parcel.” Elöise pointed to Lydia's case. “You have been their pawn. She has monitored your passage all the way from Harschmort, the better to get both you and it here safely, away from the gunfire…”

Miss Temple felt ill. She was a fool, a vulgar lap-dog. She began to gag again. She swatted blindly at Elöise's hand and gasped.

“Get away from me…”

“Leave her be, Elöise,” called the red-haired woman. “It seems you've done something to offend her.”

“Charlotte—”

Mrs. Trapping dismissed Miss Temple with a toss of her head. “We do not care about her. We care that she hasn't done anything to harm that book.”

“Allow me to make sure of it.”

Mr. Fochtma

“You will notice I do not touch the glass,” Fochtma

Fochtma

Mrs. Trapping's shrill voice rang out again. “Is it what we have waited for or not? For all the time she's cost me, I should just as soon have this young lady flung headfirst out the nearest window.”

Fochtma

“Did the harvesting work at all?” added the Contessa. “Given that Oskar was dying at the time—”

“Of course it worked!” Xonck's voice was thick and labored.

“Be quiet, Francis!” shouted Mrs. Trapping. She called to the glass woman, imperious and resentful, “Tell us!”

Against her will, Miss Temple looked at Mrs. Marchmoor, flinching with dread at the invasion to come. An icy prickling resonated inside her skull… but then retreated at once, leaving only the chilly echo of a distant winter chime. Miss Temple braced herself for another, more savage penetration… but then the pressure receded altogether, and along with everyone else in the room she felt only the cold slither of the glass woman's voice.

“The book… contains… the Comte d'Orkancz.”

The room was completely still, the air abruptly pregnant with discomfort. The glass woman had spoken. Miss Temple saw the reactive loathing on the faces of Leveret and Mrs. Trapping, and on every soldier ringing the room. She waited for Mrs. Marchmoor to say more, but she did not. Had she not sensed the corruption? Or was she laying yet another trap?

“Excellent.” Charlotte Trapping smiled icily. “Let us move on.”

MISS TEMPLE was forgotten. Every eye in the room was fixed on Fochtma