The Chemickal Marriage

you free my hand I could feed myself.’
    Foison ignored him, glancing instead to Chang’s groin.
    ‘Do you need the bucket?’
    ‘And you’re cleaning me as well? I trust the privy-work hasn’t spoilt your lovely sleeves.’
    Foison only pulled at the chains and, satisfied with their sureness, left the room.
    ‘What about the true work of my supper?’ Chang called mockingly.
    The cold had left his body eventually, the gradual warming keeping pace until he burnt with fever. This too had passed. His back remained numb around the wound, but Chang no longer felt an invalid’s weakness.
    Vandaariff hobbled in with the cane, a leather satchel tucked beneath his arm. He set the satchel down and dug a gloved hand inside. Chang heard clicking, like the beads of an abacus, and Vandaariff emerged with a fistful of blue glass cards. He laid them on the table as if he were playing Patience, eyes unpleasantly bright.
    ‘No apron?’ Chang asked.
    ‘Not today.’
    ‘Are those for me?’
    ‘You will look into them. I prefer not to prise back your lids, but Foison is within call.’
    ‘What events do they hold? What do you want me to see?’
    ‘Nothing at all,’ said Vandaariff. ‘I want your body to
feel
.’
    The first card plunged Chang into the midst of a rousing country dance, a farm girl to either side. Fiddle music sang in his ears. Vandaariff pulled the card away and he was back in the nasty room, panting, sweat on his limbs.
    Vandaariff raised the second card. Chang balanced on the edge of an icy rooftop. Three yards away, across an abyss of five flights, stood the next building. Men ran towards him, shouting, waving clubs. He steeled himself and leapt – and once more Vandaariff pulled the card away. Chang’s breath heaved. His body pressed against the chains.
    ‘Who are these people? Whose memories –’
    The third card was a banquet. The fourth card a horserace. The fifth a game of whist. In the sixth he strangled a man with a silken rope. In the seventh he lay on a brothel sofa with a thin-limbed whore bouncing energetically above him. Vandaariff pulled the glass away and Chang looked down at his arousal, mortified and angry.
    ‘Enough,’ said Vandaariff, smiling. ‘Unless you would prefer that last again?’
    ‘Choke on your own blood.’
    ‘An admirable performance. A foundation upon which to build.’
    Vandaariff returned the cards to the satchel. He removed a second batch.These cards were like nothing Chang had ever seen, for they were not
blue
… instead, each glinted with different colours. The first was mottled with streaks of red.
    ‘We start with iron.’
    The card contained no experience, no memory, no human life. Chang’s senses fogged and he gagged at the taste of blood filling his throat. Vandaariff pulled the card away and selected another, greenish and flecked with copper …
    One after another Chang absorbed their depths. Where before the glass had implanted memories, here the transaction lay beyond his mind, as essential forces passed from the glass to his body. Each time he felt both sickened and more strong, Vandaariff tempering Chang’s body like a blacksmith working steel. When the cards were back in the satchel, pain echoed in his bones and knotted his organs. His teeth burnt like coals in a fire. Vandaariff reached into his coat and came out with an eighth card, bright orange. He gripped the back of Chang’s head and thrust it before his eyes. Chang arched against an explosion of agony near his spine.
    When it was finally taken away, Chang could barely breathe.
    ‘I’m going to cut your throat,’ he gasped.
    Vandaariff took off his gloves and snapped the satchel closed.
    ‘Three days, Cardinal. In three days you may well do just that thing.’
    But the next day he heard voices in the other room. Then the door was flung open by Doctor Svenson, with Celeste Temple screaming like a fool. Svenson leapt to the chains but Chang stopped him with an urgent whisper. ‘Where are we? Where is he? Where is his man?’
    ‘The Xonck works at Raaxfall – there are soldiers just outside –’
    Another figure in the doorway – was it
Phelps
? ‘They have heard – they are coming!’
    ‘Leave the chains!’ Chang hissed. ‘Against the wall – hide!’
    Svenson had already shut the door. The Ministry man pressed himself into the corner. Celeste Temple stood like a stone, staring at Chang’s body. Finally she noticed Svenson waving vigorously and dropped under the table.