Mr. Soames drew back his lips in the unnatural leer of an ape in a cage. “Where is she, Celeste? Where are the others?”
It was a small number of people who might presume to call her Celeste and a smaller number still to whom she might grant the privilege—not half a dozen in life, and nowhere in this number stood Mr. Soames. The troubling, hideous spectacle was not—at least in terms of mind—Mr. Soames at all.
Mr. Phelps cleared his throat, and Miss Temple looked to him. “You must answer.”
Mr. Soames watched her closely, a bit of foam having appeared at each corner of his mouth.
“What others do you mean precisely?” she said to him.
“You know what I want,” hissed Mr. Soames.
She glanced fearfully at Mr. Phelps, but the man's attention seemed split between discomfort and curiosity. Miss Temple forced herself to shrug and began to rattle away in as blithe a tone as possible.
“Well, it all depends on where one starts—I don't know if the events at Harschmort House are known to you, but on the airship nearly everyone was killed, and the airship itself—with all the books and machinery and most of the bodies—has been sunk beneath the sea. The Prince, Mrs. Stearne, Doctor Lorenz, Miss Vandaariff, Roger Bascombe, Harald Crabbé, the Comte d'Orkancz I saw dead with my own eyes—”
“Francis Xonck is still alive,” spat Mr. Soames. “You were with him. You were seen.”
Miss Temple felt an icy blue pressure against her skull, the pressure escalating to pain.
“He was in Karthe,” squeaked Miss Temple. “I saw him get off the train and followed him.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don't know—he disappeared! I took his book and ran!”
“Where is the Contessa?” asked Soames. “What will she do?”
“I cannot say—her body was not found—”
“Do not lie. I can feel her.”
“Well, you know more than I do.”
Mr. Soames twitched his fingers. “I can see her near you,” he whispered. “I can sense her… on your mouth.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Miss Temple.
“Tell me I am wrong,” rasped Mr. Soames.
Mr. Phelps crossed to Soames. He placed a hand on Soames' forehead, and then—with some distaste—peeled back the lid from the man's left eye. Its white had acquired a milky blue cast that, as Miss Temple watched, crossed into the brown iris.
“There is not much time,” whispered Mr. Phelps.
“Where is the Contessa?” cried Soames.
“I do not know!” insisted Miss Temple. “She was on the train. She left in the night.”
“Where?”
“I do not know!”
“Scour the length of the train tracks!” Soames barked to Phelps. “Every man you have—near the canals! She must be near the canals!”
“But,” began Phelps, “if it was Francis Xonck—”
“Of course it was Xonck!” screeched Soames.
“Then surely we must keep searching—”
“Of course!” Soames coughed thickly, spattering saliva on his moustache and chin. He turned his attention back to Miss Temple. “Xonck's book!” he cried hoarsely. “Why did you take it?”
“Why would I not take it?” replied Miss Temple.
Soames coughed again. His eyes were almost entirely blue.
“Bring her upstairs,” he croaked. “This one is spent.”
In an instant, like the snuffing of a candle, the presence that had inhabited Mr. Soames was gone. He toppled to the floor and lay still, gasping like a fish in the bottom of a boat, a ghastly rasp that filled the room. She looked up to Phelps.
“I will escort you to his Grace's chambers,” he said.
WAITING OUTSIDE the door were two servants with an assortment of mops and bottles.
“You will manage the gentleman,” Phelps said to them. “Be sure to scrub well with vinegar.”
He took Miss Temple's arm and guided her down to the corridor. Her eyes darted to each new door and alcove they passed. Phelps cleared his throat discreetly.
“Any attempt to flee is useless. As is any hope to employ that weapon in your boot. At the slightest provocation—and I do mean slightest—you will be occupied. You have seen the consequences.”
His tone was stern, but Miss Temple had the distinct feeling that Mr. Phelps also found himself a prisoner, forever wondering when he in his turn would become as expendable as a nonentity like Soames.
“Will you tell me where we are?” she asked.
“Stäelmaere House, of course.”
Miss Temple saw no “of course” about it. Stäelmaere House was an older mansion that lay between the Ministries and the Palace, connecting each to each through its ancient drawing rooms—a stucco-encrusted architectural pipe-joint. It was also home, she assumed, to the very horrid Duke.
In the ballroom of Harschmort House, Miss Temple had seen the Duke of Stäelmaere addressing the whole of the Cabal's gathered minions—making clear, for he was the new head of the Privy Council, how powerful the Cabal had finally become. But Miss Temple knew that the Duke had been shot through the heart not two hours before that speech. Using the blue glass and the mental powers of the glass women, the Comte d'Orkancz had extended the Duke's existence by transmuting him into a marionette, without anyone seeing through the trick. This fact had left Miss Temple, Svenson, and Chang with a dilemma—whether to prevent the Duke from seizing power or stop the airship sailing to Macklenburg.
But Miss Temple had discovered that every “adherent” undergoing the alchemical Process (a fearsome alchemical procedure that instilled loyalty to the Cabal) had their minds inscribed with a specific control phrase. This was a sort of verbal cipher that, when invoked, allowed the speaker to command the adherent at will. Miss Temple had learned the control phrase of Colonel Aspiche, and when the Duke of Stäelmaere returned to the city with Mrs. Marchmoor, the sole surviving glass woman, Miss Temple had sent Aspiche in pursuit, with orders to assassinate the Duke at all costs.
She had hoped that the unrest at Stropping and in the streets might be due to the Duke's assassination by the Colonel. But Mr. Soames had insisted it was not the case. Her cunning plan had failed.
THEY REACHED a wooden door. Phelps rapped the wrought-iron knocker and the door was opened by a crisply dressed servant. Miss Temple noticed with some alarm—did the fellow have mange?—that a patch of hair was missing from behind the man's ear. His complexion was even paler than Mr. Phelps' and his lips unpleasantly chapped. As the servant closed the door behind them she saw a smudge of bloody grime beneath his stiff white shirt cuff, as if the fellow's wrist had been cut and poorly bandaged.
Phelps led her past high, dark paintings and massive ebony glass-front cabinets stuffed with every conceivable dining article one might fashion out of silver. Apparently ancient servants darted silently around them, but then Miss Temple saw with some alarm that they were not old at all, merely exhausted—faces horribly drawn, eyes red, and their swan-white collars and cuffs chafed with rust-colored smears. She looked fearfully to Phelps, wondering if he had delivered her to some hideous epidemic. What she had first taken to be a well-kept corridor was in fact littered with smatterings of—she could find no other words—interior decay: dust thick on the paintings, a tangle of cleaning rags pushed into a shadowy corner, candle wax pooled onto a Turkish carpet, another carpet blackened by coal dust. And yet there were servants everywhere. She stepped around a man crouched with a dustpan and a broom, and looked back to see him sag against the wall, eyes shut, succumbing to thin, sickly sleep.