The Chemickal Marriage

scattering of men sat outside the tavern at small tables – sailors, by the look of them – and Miss Temple passed through to the door without a glance. Inside, she saw the Raton Marine had been fitted out to serve a broad clientele – tables near the windows with light enough to read, and tables in shadows even the brightest morning would not pierce. A staircase led to a balcony lined with rooms for rent, their open doors draped with an oilcloth curtain. Her nostrils flared in imagining the reek.
    Perhaps five men looked up from their drinks as she entered. Miss Temple ignored them and approached the barman, who was polishing a bowlful of silver buttons with a rag, depositing each finished button with a
clink
into another bowl.
    ‘Good morning,’ said Miss Temple.
    The barman did not reply, but met her eyes.
    ‘I have been directed here by Cardinal Chang,’ she said. ‘I require a competent man not averse to violence – in fact perhaps several – but one to start, as soon as is convenient.’
    ‘Cardinal Chang?’
    ‘Cardinal Chang is dead. If he were not, I should not be here.’
    The barman looked past her shoulders at the other men, who had obviously overheard.
    ‘That’s hard news.’
    Miss Temple shrugged. The barman’s gaze flicked at the bandage above her eye.
    ‘You have money, little miss?’
    ‘And I will not be cheated. This is for your
own
time and attention.’ Miss Temple set a gold coin on the polished wood. The barman did not touch it. Miss Temple set down a second coin. ‘And
this
is for the man
you
would recommend for my business, taking into account that it is Cardinal Chang’s business as well. If you knew him –’
    ‘I knew him.’
    ‘Then perhaps you will be happy to see his killer paid in kind. I assureyou I am most serious. Have your candidate present this coin at the Hotel Boniface, and ask for Miss Isobel Hastings. If he knows his work, there will be more in its place.’
    Miss Temple turned to the door. At one of the tables a man had stood, unshaven, with fingerless gloves.
    ‘How’d he get it, then? The old Cardinal?’
    ‘He was stabbed in the back,’ said Miss Temple coldly. ‘Good day to you all.’
    Two restive days went by before the coin was returned. In that time Miss Temple’s headaches had gone, her maid had arrived (bearing a querulous letter from her aunt, thrown away unanswered), and she had begun regular practice with a newly purchased pistol.
    The newspapers said nothing of the Duke of Stäelmaere’s death, and thus no official appointment of a new head for the Privy Council, though the Council Deputy, a Lord Axewith, had assumed a prominence simply through his regular denials of irregularity. No word of Robert Vandaariff. No word of the Parchfeldt battle. No mention of the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. No one called round at the Boniface to arrest Miss Temple. It was as if the Cabal’s machinations had never taken place.
    Miss Temple had taken another room on a lower floor for business dealings, ignoring the attendant overtones of impropriety. She knew that to the staff of the Hotel Boniface she had become an eccentric, tolerated as long as each breach of decorum was plastered over by cash. Miss Temple did not care. She installed herself on a sofa, the clutch bag on her lap, one hand inside the bag holding her pistol.
    A footman knocked to announce a Mr Pfaff. Miss Temple studied the man who entered, and did not offer him a chair.
    ‘Your name is Pfaff?’
    ‘Jack Pfaff. Nicholas suggested I call.’
    ‘Nicholas?’
    ‘At the Rat.’
    ‘
Ah
.’
    Jack Pfaff was at most a year older than Miss Temple herself (a ripe, unmarried twenty-five). His clothing had at one time been near to fashion – chequered trousers and an orange woollen coat with square buttons – as if he were a young fop fallen to poor times. Miss Temple knew from his voice that this was not the case, and that the clothes represented an impoverished man’s desire to climb.
    ‘You can read? Write?’
    ‘Both, miss, quite tolerably.’
    ‘What weapons do you possess – what
skills
?’
    Pfaff reached behind his back and brought out a slim blade. His other hand slipped to an inner pocket and emerged with a set of brass rings across his fingers.
    ‘Those are nothing against a sabre or musket.’
    ‘Am I to fight soldiers, miss?’
    ‘I should hope not, for your sake. Are you
averse
to killing?’
    ‘The law does prohibit the practice, miss.’
    ‘And if a man spat in