The Chemickal Marriage

Chang flung himself at the door and wrenched it wide.
    Blackened figures lay on the buckled tiles – grenadiers, to judge by their singed and tattered uniforms. Then the smoky air parted and a soot-faced man cracked a rifle-butt into Chang’s chest. Chang tumbled back, the breath knocked from his body. A sharp seizing took his lungs. His dark glasses were swatted away.
    Vandaariff shouted from the other room: ‘Excellent! Subdue him!’
    Chang had lost the knife. He groped for the helmet. A kick into his ribs knocked him flat again. He saw the face above him and took it for Mahmoud – for Vandaariff’s black Executioner – but this man was shorter and too lithe. Then he saw the white hair.
    Foison fell onto Chang’s chest, pinning an arm with each of his knees. He’d a leather case slung across his chest, and snapped it open.
    ‘No, no!’ cried Vandaariff. ‘The draught – give him the
draught
!’
    Chang arched his back but could not shift Foison’s weight. His lungs were on fire.
    One of Foison’s hands sought Chang’s battered eyes and peeled back the lids. The other slapped an open glass book onto Chang’s face and pressed down hard.
    For a blinding, screaming instant Cardinal Chang perceived the whole of his soul, suddenly naked, balanced on a precipice. Then every part of him was taken away.

Nine
Indenture
    Doctor Svenson swung the pistol calmly between Bronque’s soldiers, Kelling and Schoepfil. Any show of weakness would spark their attack.
    ‘Give my best wishes to Her Majesty. All of Macklenburg is at her service.’
    The words were meaningless. He was a criminal in Macklenburg and a criminal here. How many times would he fling himself at death before the black wings caught him up?
    He saw Schoepfil move, but the man’s damned speed was such that to stop him meant shooting to kill – and, while he knew Schoepfil to be a villain, the man
had
committed himself to bringing down Robert Vandaariff. Was this – lust apart – any different from his
détente
with the Contessa?
    Schoepfil seized Kelling’s crate of paper and hurled it like a stone into the chest of a footman, pages flying in the air. The soldiers charged. Svenson swore in German.
    He shot one trooper in the thigh and the other, sabre raised to open the Doctor’s skull, neatly under the arm. His third shot went to the ceiling as the falling soldier’s sabre slapped Svenson across the forehead and knocked him to his knees. He looked up to see the door close behind Miss Temple, Schoepfil battering the second footman to the ground. The footman, with more than thirty pounds and seven inches on Schoepfil, collapsed, groaning. Schoepfil turned a raging gaze at Svenson, fists clenched.
    ‘Why should I spare you? Why should you not die?’ Schoepfil kicked Svenson’s pistol away and spun round to Kelling. ‘Open this damned door!’
    Kelling barked at the Ministry men, standing off to the side, well clear of the struggle. Now that the prevailing wind of power was established, theywillingly joined Kelling at the oval door – Kelling grunting at the pain, but heaving nevertheless – all straining at the iron wheel.
    Svenson crawled on his hands and knees. Schoepfil hopped in front of him. ‘Where the devil do you think
you’re
going?’
    ‘These men.’ Svenson pointed to the soldiers. ‘Someone must bind their wounds.’
    ‘
And perhaps you should not have shot them!
’ But Schoepfil stepped aside, then shrieked at the courtiers: ‘And
you
! I will remember each of your names!
O I will remember your names!
’
    Despite his patients’ hateful looks, Svenson bent to examine each soldier. The leg would heal easily, bone and artery spared, but the arm would be a trial, for the bullet had pierced the shoulder joint.
    ‘What’s the old crone thinking?’ Schoepfil asked, ostensibly to Kelling, but his secretary was hard against the wheel. Schoepfil thrust his face between the labouring men and shouted, ‘I am not deceived, Your Grace!’
    His searching little eyes found Svenson, his only audience. The courtiers had fled.
    ‘The Duchess claims the Queen is within. She is a
liar
.’
    ‘Is it some Eastern system of combat?’ asked Svenson.
    ‘Beg pardon?’ Schoepfil chuckled. ‘O! O no, not at all.’
    ‘You move with an unnatural speed.’
    ‘And I shall do something unnatural to the Duchess of Cogstead, you may be sure of it! I
know
who is there! Why should she protect the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza – of all