The Chemickal Marriage

Foison.
    ‘Whatever he wants. A life of random expertise, a thousand tasks half done.’
    ‘Another arrogant wastrel?’ asked Bronque.
    ‘If he was a wastrel,’ said Chang, ‘we should not be here. Is he capable of striking at his uncle?’
    ‘Anyone is capable,’ said Foison.
    ‘Because he’s threatened his uncle before?’
    ‘No,’ Foison sighed. ‘Because he hasn’t.’
    One of Bronque’s soldiers waved from the corner. The chase had begun.
    Their quarry was a young man in a shapeless coat, hurrying from the rear of Schoepfil’s house. Two of Foison’s men, stripped of their jackets, made the nearest pursuit. The rest, including Bronque’s grenadiers, came at a safer distance. Chang walked between Bronque and Foison, still chained. After a quarter-mile Bronque leant across Chang’s chest to Foison, a sympathetic gesture intended to evince tact.
    ‘Lord Vandaariff’s rapid decline is most dispiriting. Is there truly no hope?’
    ‘He does not entertain any.’
    ‘But what of the nation?’ Bronque ventured.
    ‘Nations are vanity,’ replied Foison.
    The restive wanderers they passed echoed this fatalism, feral in the glare of bonfires. All his life Chang had seen inequity, implacable and institutionalized, and people bore it all, even their own children dead before their eyes. This night these desperate faces had found the spark of rebellion. But he knew their momentary gains – windows broken or constables driven off with stones – would only provoke harsher measures when law was restored.
    Was this not the arc of any life – from oppression to revolt to still deeper servitude? He thought of Cunsher, how the man’s competence was but a shell encasing a long-shattered heart. Who didn’t nurse sorrow at their core? Chang’s discontents were nothing new or precious. Had Foison lost a family, a lover, a language, a home? Of course he had – most likely all in one vicious stroke. And in exchange, offering his life to another man of power, he hadsurvived … the doomed chain of service. Phelps, Smythe, Blach … and Svenson – perhaps the most miserable of them all. To a man they would be finished, and that he would be finished with them, Chang did not doubt.
    The young messenger skulked to the gate of a livery yard and disappeared inside. The Colonel quickly positioned his men, then drew their eye to a line of gabled windows.
    ‘With luck the woman has gone to ground. If we enter in force –’
    Foison shook his head. ‘If it is merely an agreed-upon place to leave word, such action will keep her away. Let us see if the messenger stays or returns whence he came.’
    Bronque looked at Chang. Chang kept silent, allowing their disagreement to stand.
    Gunshots echoed from inside the livery. All three charged for the door. On the floor of the stable lay the young man they’d followed, shot twice in the chest. Bronque’s grenadiers crowded a far doorway, their officer holding a smoking revolver. Near the body lay another gun.
    ‘He was trying to leave,’ the young lieutenant explained to Bronque. ‘Saw us, sir, and drew his weapon.’
    Bronque knelt over the messenger – little more than a boy – pressing two fingers to the jugular. ‘God-damned cock-up.’ He thrust his chin at a staircase in the corner. ‘Search the premises. No more killing. If the woman is here, we need her alive.’
    The soldiers clattered off. Bronque exchanged a bitter look with Foison and set to emptying the dead boy’s pockets. ‘Idiots. Ruined everything.’
    ‘Unless she is upstairs,’ said Foison mildly.
    Chang brushed the straw from around the boy’s gun with his foot – it was a service revolver, heavy and difficult to fire.
    ‘Lieutenant!’ Bronque roared at the staircase. ‘Report!’
    The officer stomped back into view at the top of the steps. ‘Nothing, sir. All empty.’
    ‘Hang your idiocy! Get your men formed in the courtyard.’
    The soldiers marched down the stairs and out. Bronque tossed the contents of the dead boy’s pockets into the straw: a clasp-knife, a scatter of pennies, a dirty rag.
    Through the boy’s half-open lips gleamed a brighter touch of red, blood risen from a punctured lung. Chang cocked his head.
    ‘What is it?’ asked Foison.
    ‘His cloak is untied.’
    ‘What of that?’ asked Bronque.
    ‘It wasn’t before, when we were following him.’
    ‘So he untied his cloak upon coming in – that’s natural enough.’
    ‘Not if he wasn’t going to stay. Not