The Chemickal Marriage

people are in danger, and your fortune –’ He checked himself. ‘Robert
Vandaariff’s
fortune – cannot be passed to dangerous fools.’
    ‘We agree again. It is a shame we have not taken tea.’
    ‘It is a shame I have not shot you through the heart.’
    ‘Don’t play-act a man you are not. Do you imagine I have not divined your
nature
?’
    ‘And what is that?’
    ‘Enough words. See those souls you – you
alone
– protect.’
    With a sudden chill, Svenson turned to the line of tubs.
    ‘Protect or sacrifice, dear Doctor, whichever you choose.’
    The acolytes Svenson had driven from below – and that many more again – returned to the room hauling a sixth porcelain tub with its brass undercarriage. Black hoses were attached and dark fluid poured inside.
    The sixth tub contained Madelaine Kraft, her honey-coloured skin covered with painted symbols, as senseless as she’d been in the Old Palace. Now she floated naked in a rust-red fluid.
    An acolyte approached the glass wall with a bow. ‘All is ready, my lord.’
    Svenson gaped at Professor Trooste’s red-scarred face. ‘Dear God.’
    ‘Very well!’ Vandaariff did not hide his pleasure at Svenson’s dismay. ‘
Proceed
.’
    Trooste clapped his hands and several acolytes followed him out. More attended to the tubs, wary of the Doctor’s interference, but he was too stricken at seeing whom they held: Mr Kelling, Colonel Bronque, Matthew Harcourt, Michel Gorine and, last of all, poor Cunsher, his lank hair suspended in the viscous liquid.
    ‘Abate your concern, Doctor – worse decisions await.
Nothing
is forbidden. Habituate yourself to that fact.’
    Svenson did not reply. Any attempt to save them now would fail – hecould not, unarmed, defeat so many – and cast away any chance of saving them later. That every tub was fitted with a glass-charged undercarriage meant that a vast amount of power would be channelled into each: the thought of a well-seasoned
broth
came foully to mind. These were living beings, laid out like stew-meat in a kitchen. The entire enterprise, every lusciously fashioned, brass-bound inch of it, was obscene.
    ‘It won’t work,’ he shouted to the glass. ‘I see the sepsis in your hands – you’re rotting from within. That you can stand is a miracle.’
    ‘No miracle, Doctor – deliberately timed. Though time
does
run short …’
    Svenson followed Vandaariff’s eyes. Mr Foison limped into the room, a bloody bandage wrapped around his right thigh. Vandaariff’s dapper captain had become as dishevelled as the Doctor. In one hand he held a silver knife and in the other a leather case. With a horrible certainty Svenson knew it was the same case he’d passed to Miss Temple in the Thermæ.
    On Foison’s heels bustled Trooste and his acolytes, bearing Cardinal Chang, naked to the waist and senseless. Before Svenson could move, Foison raised the knife.
    ‘Is – is he …’
    ‘Dead? No.’ Foison nodded to the leather case. ‘But neither, would I say, is Cardinal Chang at
home
.’
    Chang was strapped face down on a table, head in a padded frame, as if for surgery. An acolyte carefully cleaned the scar at the base of his spine. Svenson grimaced at the increased inflamation.
    ‘Mr Foison has been impetuous, but the
vessel
has arrived.’ Vandaariff broke into a gurgling cough, groped for a shallow bowl and then retched into it, a clot of curdled aspic. ‘I am … unclean – not meant for such a fragile basin … yet to be rid of it is to die.’
    ‘You will find no relief.’ Svenson called. ‘Robert Vandaariff was a healthy man at Parchfeldt, before contact with that book, and in a few months his body’s been destroyed. Though Chang is healthier still, the same will happen. No matter how you may try to
prepare
him alchemically, you will find only the same unstoppable decay.’
    ‘Contact with a book?’ murmured Vandaariff. ‘What
book
? I have consulted physicians by the score. The precipice I occupy is due to consumption aggravated by an especially grievous bout of blood fever. With no other avenue available, I have turned to the late Comte’s intriguing research.’
    He shrugged at Foison, as if to apologize for Svenson’s offensive theories.
    ‘That is a lie,’ Svenson said to Foison. ‘He needs you to protect him.’
    Trooste took a beaker of red liquid from Mrs Kraft’s tub and raised it to the light. An acolyte stood ready with a tray of flasks. Trooste poured the beaker back into the tub