The Chemickal Marriage

double doorway made of new-cut planks. Nailed to it was an envelope of parchment. Chang tore it open: a lock ofauburn hair, tied with black twine. He knew the colour at once. Celeste had come, and whatever her hopes or the Contessa’s plans, Vandaariff had claimed her.
    Chang turned the iron knob, a glass globe ready in his other hand. On the floor inside lay an envelope sealed with blue wax. Chang tore it open and tipped a blue glass disc onto his palm. Words had been stamped round its edge. He had enough Latin from his student days, before his life had changed, but disliked the memory.
    Date et dabitur vobis
. Give and it shall be given to you.
    White robes edged in green hung in a line on one wall. Below each robe waited a pair of felt slippers – as at the Raaxfall works, to prevent any hobnailed spark near the powder. Chang tucked the disc into a trouser pocket, with the lock of hair. Before him, extending for ten yards from wall to wall, a bed of gravel barred his way – like an ornamental path, save the rocks were dark as coal, and amongst them glittered hundreds of glass spurs. The black stones must be the concentrated explosive that had powered the devices, the same they’d set off on the dock. The gravel bed was too wide to leap, and from the felt slippers outside he assumed that to advance wearing boots such as his own risked triggering the charge.
    But if the explosives showed what Vandaariff had pillaged from the Xonck arsenal, beyond them lay the first real sign of the Comte’s alchemy. Between the explosives and the far doorway the floor was covered by seven rows of wide coloured tiles. A glance told Chang that the plates were not flush with the floor. Had they been laid atop the layer of explosives? Even if the felt slippers permitted a person to cross the exposed area safely, the first pressure on the metal tiles would create the same effect as his nailed boots and set off an inferno. As he stared he realized the tiles were made of the blended glass that Vandaariff had developed, each tempered by the infusion of different metals. Suddenly the puzzle was clear: the proper seven tiles – which lay atop inert material – would carry a person safely to the door. One only needed to know the alchemical order.
    He kicked off his boots and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. He carefully laid one foot onto the bed of explosive coal and sharpened discs,trusting the thickness of the felt. He took another step … then another … finally reaching the glass tiles. Could he put his weight upon them without the tiles breaking? What if it was only Vandaariff’s joke? And if it wasn’t – which tile to choose?
    He let his mind return to the room at Raaxfall … the table … Vandaariff and the different coloured cards … ‘We start with iron’ …
    The light in the horrid room at Raaxfall had been bad, and his eyes even worse. He could not recall what the cards had truly looked like. Chang pulled off his left glove and extended his hand over the tiles, gently touching them with the tips of his fingers. At the third tile the taste of blood filled his mouth, as had happened with the first glass card. He stepped carefully onto the tile. No explosion. Suddenly he wondered who else might need to follow this path. What if that person was Svenson or Cunsher? He took out Foison’s knife and scratched an
x
in the corner of the tile.
    Next came gold, and a memory of a cracking heat inside his bones. This required an accurate hop of several feet, but he landed neatly. Another
x
.
    He advanced two more rows, but each time the memory grew fainter, for the cards had begun to derange his senses. At the fifth row, Chang frowned. Past a certain point he’d shut his mind to the pain. Three tiles remained. He knew proper reasoning existed, that the metals in each tile carried associations with planets, the zodiac, the Hebrew alphabet, bodily parts –
    Chang looked back. In the doorway stood four men in green, with carbines, but they did not shoot. Their task was to prevent retreat. Chang stepped – the very length of his long stride – to a tile shot with streaks of milky white. How he’d known it came next he could not say. He scraped the knife against the glass.
    This very trial showed the ridiculous nature of the Comte’s alchemy. It was not a question of whether it worked – something
always
worked – but if the choice between an infusion of mercury or silver was rendered consequential only by volatile