The Dark Volume

“What is the secret errand?” the young man whispered.

Chang sighed and glanced quickly back into the common room, then leaned forward, speaking low, wondering how much time he still had to reach the train. “There is a sunken craft, of an enemy nation, driven to the rocks, a craft containing certain stolen documents… detailing hidden ways where an unprincipled foreigner might enter the Queen's unguarded treasury.”

Mrs. Daube and her man were silent, and Chang could sense the breathless reverberations of his last word within their minds.

“You still have not said why the likes of you would be part of it,” she said.

Chang smiled, the better to resist his natural impulses in the face of such disdain. “Because the documents are in code, a complicated cipher that only a man like myself—or a certain elderly savant of the Royal Institute—is able to make clear. With the old gentleman too feeble to make the trip, only I can tell the Captain if the documents are genuine. If I do not, my own debts to the Crown—for you are right, I have been a criminal—will not be paid. Thus, I must ask you again, for your own souls, if you know where I may find the Captain.”

“What will you do with those, then?” Mrs. Daube nodded at the hand that held the silver pe

Had she listened to a single word? He slapped the coins onto the table top. “There is no time—”

“I have not seen him,” said Mrs. Daube with a smirk. “And as you have seen, neither he nor his fellows are in Karthe.”

The i

“What I've said is true, Mrs. Daube,” he whispered. “Pitiless murder. If I find you have lied to me, you are doomed.”

CHANG SWEPT back to the street and had not walked five steps before the sudden sound of a galloping horse rose out of the darkness behind him, from the north. He had just time to see the looming shape of the animal before flinging himself clear of its hoofs. He winced—one knee had landed on a stone—and looked up, but the rider was already beyond sight, tearing through the whole of Karthe in a matter of seconds. Could this have been another one of the Captain's men, racing to meet him at the train? But how would they have coordinated their rendezvous? Chang was sure that without his own intervention, the Captain and Josephs would still be doing their vicious work in the fishing village.

And what was that work? They'd known of him—“the criminal”— which meant they must have known of Svenson and Miss Temple as well. But the soldiers’ primary errand must have been to recover the airship and any survivors. Perhaps they'd seen enough of the Iron Coast to assure themselves there were none, and that the craft lay stricken beyond salvage. But none of that explained the origin of this new rider, nor the terrified white horse that stank of indigo clay.

AS HE came in sight of the stables he saw young Willem pushing the door closed. Chang waved, but he was too far away in the dark. He kept on until he reached the muddy yard and paused, looking above him at the sky. Six o'clock at the latest—he still had an hour. Chang straightened his coat on his shoulders, rapped his fist on the door, and called out for the boy. There was no reply. He pulled on the door. It had been barred. He pounded again, then pressed his ear against the gap… the muffled sound of horse hooves… voices—they must have heard him… was someone else preventing Willem or Christian from opening the door?

Directly above was a wooden half-door for loading hay into the loft. Chang set his foot on the door handle and launched himself up.

He balanced for one precarious moment with one knee on the rotten lip above the doorway before stabbing a hand beyond it to the loft door. At his touch it swung open just enough to slip a hand through the gap. It was held with a loop of rope, and he wormed his arm in. The rope was knotted. The wooden lip sagged beneath his weight. If it gave way he would most likely break his arm, jammed as it was into the loft. Chang swore under his breath, pulled his hand free, and fished out the knife. He sliced through the rope with one stroke.

The loft door swung open. Chang tossed the knife onto the straw and hauled his body up and in. He reclaimed the knife and picked his way silently to a hole sawn in the floor, through which rose the end of a wooden ladder. Below, he heard more clearly: Willem stowing the new horse into a stall… and the voices—just the boy… no, two boys… or was there a woman?

His blood suddenly ran cold. Chang slipped down the ladder, dropping the last five rungs to land on his feet in the straw.

THE CONTESSA di Lacquer-Sforza stood near the doorway of the tack room.

When had he last seen her? On the airship… she had just slaughtered the Prince and Lydia… her eyes had been wild, like a blood-soaked bacchante, like a sense-drugged Minoan priestess with an axe, driven to violence merely by holding two blue glass books in her bare hands. Then she had fled to the rooftop, black hair whipped by the wind…

Chang carefully stepped away from the ladder.

Behind her sat Christian, insensible in a chair. At her feet was an oddly shaped trunk, like a leather-bound octagonal hat box.

“Contessa.”

“Cardinal Chang.”

She was tired, and her head tilted to the side as she spoke, as if to tell him so—that she was only a woman, and one who, however resourceful, stood near the end of her rope. In truth, Chang had never see the Contessa look so… human, so subject to fate. Her hair was pi

He turned at the sound of Willem emerging from the stall—the horse behind him was spent but not visibly deranged. The boy cradled a canvas-wrapped bundle in his arms.

“I have your parcel from the saddlebag—” he began, but his words stopped when his eyes met Cardinal Chang's.

“It is all right, Willem,” the Contessa said, quite calmly. “The Cardinal and I are old friends.”

Chang snorted.

“I understood your wounds to be quite mortal,” she said.

“I understood you to be drowned.”

“One's life is indeed a parade of disappointment.”

She stretched the fingers of each hand, like a cat rising up from sleep. Chang did not shift his gaze from hers, but pitched his voice to the boy.

“Willem, you must leave. Set her parcel down and go home.”

The boy's eyes darted to the Contessa, and then to Chang. He did not move.

“He will not harm me, dear,” said the Contessa softly. “You may do what you like. I am grateful for your kindness.”

“I won't leave you,” whispered the boy.

“She is not your mother!” barked Chang, and then muttered, “You do not have eight legs…”

The Contessa laughed, a throaty chuckle, like dark wine poured in a rush. “Cardinal Chang and I have much to… discuss. You may be sure I am not in danger, dear Willem.”

The boy looked at Chang with a new distrust but slowly set down the canvas bag. Chang backed away to give him room, waiting as the boy shifted the bar and slipped out the door. Chang snorted again and spat into the straw.

“Not everyone around you will perish, then—even if he has no sense of his escape.”

“Is your own company any less perilous, Cardinal? I do not see Miss Temple or Doctor Svenson.”

Chang pointed with the knife to the remaining groom, still inert in his chair. “And what have you done to him?”

The Contessa shrugged, utterly indifferent. “Not a thing. I am quite recently arrived.”