The Dark Volume

“Her father ca

“But he is Robert Vandaariff!”

“Is he, though?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Will you not take a seat, Miss Stearne?”

“I have told you I ca

“And yet I think you should. I would go so far as to recommend it for your health.”

FOCHTMANN'S VOICE remained pleasant as ever. “You have been exposed to the glass. I can see it in your skin. Perhaps the exposure has been minimal—it has not caused you to lose any of your lovely hair. But you do know what I am talking about, and I must insist that you answer my questions.”

“What questions?”

Fochtma

The hearth. The man was in his shirtsleeves. He had cauterized Mrs. Marchmoor's shattered wrist in the kitchen hearth fire.

Fochtma

“It is an entire world of the ‘mechanical and scientific’ These are times when opportunity rides side by side with disaster.”

“And you would avoid the disaster.”

“For myself, to be sure.”

“And your… employers?”

“I only know what I've been told—nothing a man can trust. There are fissures between them—it can be the only reason I am engaged.”

Miss Temple nodded slowly. “And perhaps…I am not…exactly… who you take me to be,” she said.

Fochtma

“So which of them sent you? It is all very well to replace Lorenz, but before anything else I must know whether the blue glass has killed him. No one will hazard a guess—especially since all of them are sick as well.”

“Doctor Lorenz dead? Well, Doctor Lorenz was nothing—the Comte's dogsbody only.”

“You know the Comte? You knew him?”

“Knew? You do not mean the Comte is dead?”

Fochtma

“I wonder at your indifference. Your own cousin, Caroline Stearne, was part of the same party. She is most likely dead as well.”

Miss Temple did her best to gasp aloud.

“Do not pretend!” he scoffed, pleased at catching her out. “You yourself bear signs of this indigo decay—and here by luck you have blundered into the only man who can save you!” He snatched up his pen and searched for clean paper. “Tell me whatever you have heard them say—Lorenz, the Comte, anyone. I will make sense of it myself. Obviously a young woman has not come all this way on her own initiative—who do you serve?”

He looked up suddenly. “No no—I'm a fool! It's Vandaariff!”

He stabbed the quill at her clasped hands. “What is that case?”

Miss Temple raised it with a shrug and waggled the handle between her fingers. “It is empty. I was instructed to collect a particular item from the Comte's laboratory. But it is already gone.”

“Do you expect me to believe that? Who else but Vandaariff could marshal the resources to steal so many machines away? But he lacks something and was forced to send you to retrieve it—someone harmless who would attract no suspicion.”

“Why would Vandaariff destroy his own house?”

“Why scruple at the house when he has already sacrificed his daughter? The stakes must be beyond imagination! What were you instructed to retrieve? Where are you to take it?”

“I do not know. It was a… a thing. I was told no more.”

“But you were given details, a description…”

“I was told it was bright metal, and perhaps the size of…”

She held out her hands and extended her fingers to indicate triggers and knobs. She thought of the wicked snouty implement the Comte had employed to violate Lydia Vandaariff and began to describe it. As she spoke Fochtma

“And it would fit in your case?” he asked.

“Apparently the item folds.”

“Ah… as I assumed…”

Fochtma

“Aren't you curious where it is?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Do not be downhearted. I have seen others far worse off than you.”

“Where is the Duke of Stäelmaere?”

“Indeed,” said Fochtma

Miss Temple ignored him, suppressing the burn in her throat.

“And where is Colonel Aspiche?” she croaked.

Fochtma

“Where is Robert Vandaariff?” he demanded.

“Where is Mrs. Marchmoor?”

“Where did he take all the machinery?”

“Where is Mrs. Marchmoor?”

“No, you must answer me! Where is Robert Vandaariff? Why does he want this particular tool? Why did he send you?” He slammed both fists onto the table, his long arms like the forelegs of a powerful horse. “You ca

Miss Temple shivered to recall the glass woman hammering her mind.

“You have no choice,” he said, gently as a farmer easing a lamb onto the block.

“It's because you can see, isn't it?” she said. “You understand what this glass can do, perhaps now more than any man alive… they have employed you like a coachman, but they do not comprehend that you will gain an advantage over them all… over her, over the world.”

Fochtma

“What will you do with me?” Miss Temple asked.

“That depends. You must do what I say.”

“Must I?”

He chuckled. Miss Temple leaned across the table, as if to share a final secret, daring him to hear it. Despite himself, Fochtma

“You were given a chance.”

She swung the case with all her strength, for it was well made, with sharp metal corners—one of which caught Mr. Fochtma

“O! O damn you to hell! Help! Help me—help!”

Instead of ru

HE WAS still alive, for the bellows of his chest beat like the wet wings of a newborn insect. Miss Temple seriously considered cutting his throat with the knife in her boot—inflamed without even noticing by seven different memories of that very action, nose thick with the remembered smell, hands twitching at how hot the spray—but instead she sensibly crossed to the door and locked it. She returned to the prone man—curious at how out of their element a tall person seems when on the ground, like fish on a tar-baked dock. Ignoring the dark coagulated smears above his face, she stepped to his topcoat, hung on a chair: cigars, matches, a scented handkerchief, a brass case of visiting cards printed with swirling script on a pale green bond paper (Marcus Fochtma