The Chemickal Marriage

men. The four in helmets strode forcefully towards Svenson and Pfaff, then knelt to lift two panels in the floor, exposing a staircase leading down. The drone of machines echoed from below.
    ‘The Warden. You are expected,’ said the guard. ‘Leave the satchel and the helmet.’
    The carbines snapped back to readiness. Pfaff eased the satchel and helmet to the floor.
    ‘And the knife.’
    Svenson dropped the cleaver with a clang. The guard motioned them to the stairs. The soldiers who’d opened the stair doors stood just out of reach … but they did not spring.
    In a moment of strange calm, Doctor Svenson reached into his tunic for the red tin, took a cigarette, tucked the tin away and struck a match. He exhaled, and tossed the match aside. Still none of the green-coats attacked.Still mystified, Svenson descended, boots rapping the steel steps like a pair of mallets. Pfaff came after, and his head had just cleared the edge when the panels above them were unceremoniously slammed shut. Both men flinched, Svenson groping for the rail.
    ‘What did he mean, “Warden”?’ asked Pfaff.
    ‘I have no idea.’
    Their shadows danced above them as they went, elongated demon shapes with twisting limbs. At its base the staircase vanished into black water, like a pen in a massive inkwell. Across the dark pool, too far to jump, awaited a brick wall and a door of unpainted oak.
    ‘Do you think it’s deep?’ asked Pfaff.
    ‘I do.’ Svenson knelt and cupped a palm. The water beaded on his skin like oil. ‘It’s warm … and filthy from the machines. I should not drink it.’
    ‘I had no desire to.’
    Svenson thrust his hand into the water and shoved forward, sending small waves at the door. He stood. ‘Come.’
    ‘Where?’
    Svenson extended one foot deliberately over the pool and stepped down. The water did not rise above the ankle of his boot. He used his second foot to kick another wave.
    ‘Look where the ripples break. There are stones beneath, in a path. Simple, really.’
    He picked his way to the door, Pfaff following only after having rolled up his precious chequered trousers. ‘Why would anyone do this?’ Pfaff muttered. ‘Take all this trouble?’
    ‘To keep people like us out. And I suppose stepping stones instead of a path because the water needs to flow freely.’
    ‘
Why?
’
    ‘To power the machines.’ Svenson reached the door and turned. ‘But it isn’t salt water.’
    ‘What does
that
mean?’ Pfaff balanced on the last stone, waiting for him to open the door and make room. Svenson did not.
    ‘It means the river. Where is the Contessa, Mr Pfaff?’
    ‘How should I know?’
    ‘Of course you know.’
    ‘Open that door.’ Pfaff filled his hands with a slim knife and a brass-knuckle guard.
    Svenson nodded across the black water to the stairs. ‘You should go back. The soldiers will not harm you if you do.’
    Pfaff spat in the water. So answered, Svenson opened the door and stepped into a scene of his own hell.
    Copper wire had been strung around the room on hooks, well away from the floor, which was awash with filthy water like a slaughterhouse with blood. Around a medical table stood a dozen figures in white robes. A large man lay strapped to the table, his face obscured by a black rubber mask that bristled with tubes and wires, his skin the colour of cherrywood.
    A robed acolyte knelt to insert a bolt of blue glass into a brass box-stand, one of several strung together. Another acolyte fitted wire inside a wooden box lined with orange felt. Each discarded box cluttering the corners of the room meant another convert, and the faces looking up at their entrance, eyes peering through red livid rings, lacked any expression save cold will.
    ‘Get away from him,’ called Svenson.
    ‘We will not,’ replied an acolyte at the head of the table, gripping a brass handle.
    ‘I am named Warden of this ritual, by your master. This one is not to be reborn.’
    ‘How do we know you speak the truth?’ asked the man with the handle. His hood hung loose around his shoulders and Svenson glimpsed a grenadier uniform: one of Bronque’s adjutants, captured and already made Vandaariff’s slave.
    ‘Do you
presume
?’ Svenson replied haughtily, but felt his ignorance. Nowhere did he recall any
warden
. What was he intended to do? ‘Where is the Executioner?’ he demanded. ‘Where is the Virgo Lucifera? Where is the
Bride
?’
    The adjutant of grenadiers only shook his head.
    ‘Then find