The Chemickal Marriage

on a side table and snapped it open. The Duchess gasped at the shining blue glass book.
    ‘Good Lord … I heard whispers …’
    Miss Temple quickly shut the case. ‘I do not know where Doctor Svenson found this, nor what it might contain, but the Contessa has in her possession another book, and her attempts to use it may kill us all.’
    The door was jolted again.
    ‘Where do the tunnels go?’ asked Miss Temple.
    ‘They all go to the baths.’
    ‘No, where do they
exit
?’
    ‘They don’t. In one or two cases, there is an outlet elsewhere in the house –’
    ‘She needs to
leave
the house.’
    The Duchess nodded. ‘I know. It makes no sense. Unless …’
    An arm of the candelabrum snapped like a gunshot. The wheel lurched halfway round.
    ‘Unless what?’ demanded Miss Temple.
    The Duchess indicated a door by a daybed. ‘That way leads to the spring itself –’
    Miss Temple was already across the room. She heaved open the door to find a red envelope on the tunnel floor. She tore it open.
    ‘What does it say?’ cried the Duchess. ‘Is it from her?’
    The rest of the candelabrum broke apart and Lord Pont-Joule’s rooms echoed with the voices of men. Miss Temple leapt through, yanked the door closed and spun the wheel, leaving the hapless Duchess on the other side.
    They would not know which door she’d used, but for how long? She groped in the darkness, knowing she must hurry. Would Schoepfil strike the Duchess down? Was Doctor Svenson still alive?
    Her outstretched hand touched a wall and her feet found stairs. The blackness was leavened by a tallow stub, wedged into the rock. She stood before a hissing pool of black water, its surface seamed by blooms of effervescence. Miss Temple gasped. On the ground lay the Contessa –
    She cursed her own credulity. Heaped on the ground was the Contessa’s black dress. Miss Temple glanced back. She dropped into a squat, opened the case, pulled the star chart from the leather tube and folded it, wincing at the creases, until it fit atop the book. She took the small pouch holding Francesca’s key and wormed it into the bosom of her corset. She stopped. She dug her fingers deeper. The handkerchief with Vandaariff’s glass spur was no longer there.
    There was no time. Without care, for she would never see it again, sheripped her dress to the waist and let it drop next to the Contessa’s. A metallic scrape from the passage behind her. Had the Contessa left her petticoat? She had. Miss Temple thrust hers off and kicked free. A shaft of light in the tunnel. The door was open. She closed the case and set the red envelope onto the candle flame, where it caught and began to curl. Inside had been a single carelessly scrawled line: ‘And so they shall be redeemed.’
    Miss Temple inhaled as deeply as she could. Hugging the case to her body, she stepped into the black water and sank like a stone.

Eight
Fontanel
    When Vandaariff reclaimed the glass card from Matthew Harcourt, the young man dropped to his knees and, shaking like an opium eater, emptied his stomach onto the carpet. When the heaving subsided, Foison hauled the overmatched Interim Minister to his feet and marched him out. Vandaariff followed at his own slow speed, humming under his breath.
Blood instructs us on the use of flame
    Fire’s indulgence sings the end of shame
    Chang had hoped to erode Foison’s devotion to his master, and Phelps had paid the price. He watched in silence as the green-coats cut the corpse from the chair and took it away. When they returned it was with Foison, and for him.
    His arms were bound behind his back with chain. Outside waited a large vehicle, unlike any Chang had ever seen. Sheathed in metal, the smaller front was like any rich man’s coach, but was attached to a second portion, as large as a goods wagon.
    Were the trains no longer safe?
    Two lackeys led Chang into the long rear car and looped his chain over a hook in the ceiling. The height of the hook gave Chang no choice but to stand. They pulled forward, Chang balancing like a seaman on a heaving deck. He looked to Foison, slouched on a bench against the inner wall.
    ‘The spur that killed Phelps,’ said Chang. ‘It wasn’t like the ones we found at Raaxfall. It didn’t hold rage, but something more like despair. He’d been cut with it before, under questioning, hadn’t he, just nicks to help him along? The man was ruined.’
    Foison waited, as if this required no comment.
    ‘Blue glass in the throat.