The Chemickal Marriage

trumpets. Horsemen in bright cuirasses had formed a line between the crowd and the Ministries and pushed forward to clear a lane. Every third horseman had a brass trumpet to his lips, while the men in between rested drawn sabres against one shoulder. The crowd gave way.
    Chang searched for some other avenue. He saw the black coach again, in the thick of the crowd, and a figure – only half seen – slipping from it. At once the driver whipped his team into motion. But who had been left behind?
    ‘What is it?’ Phelps went to his toes, following Chang’s gaze. ‘Do you see Vandaariff?’
    The trumpets came again and Svenson touched Chang’s shoulder. Behind the horsemen came a train of coaches, skirting the square. In an open brougham sat Robert Vandaariff, hatless, waving to the sea of staring faces. Lord Axewith of the Privy Council sat opposite. They swept through the ceremonial iron gate that marked the Palace proper.
    ‘Mr Ropp!’
    Miss Temple pointed across the crowd. It took a moment for Chang to place the man she meant – barrel-chested in a black greatcoat. She shouted again, her words lost in the trumpets and the noise. Ropp was Pfaff’s man, a former soldier. Had he escaped from Harschmort? Miss Temple pushed towards him. The Doctor tried to catch her hand. Ropp vanished in the shifting crowd, then reappeared. Something was wrong. Ropp walked stiffly, as if his torso were made of steel. Had he been stabbed? Miss Temple hopped up and down, waving. Ropp finally turned to her squeaks. Even at thirty yards Chang was shocked by the man’s dull eyes. Ropp tottered and thrust a hand into his topcoat, as if he were clutching a wound.
    Chang’s mind cleared. The white-wigged figure in the coach had been Foison. The barrels at the Raaxfall dock. The boxed carapace of Ropp’s body.
    ‘
For God’s sake – get down!
’
    Chang tackled Miss Temple, doing his best to cover her body. His ears were split by a deafening roar as a blast of smoke and fire consumed the air. An inhuman high-pitched shrieking, dense as a cloud of arrows, whipped at the crowd, which answered with a chorus of blood-curdling screams. Changraised his head, glasses askew, ears throbbing. All around them bodies were flattened, pulped, writhing – a perfectly scythed circle of destruction. Where Ropp had stood was a scorched and smoking hole. A grey-haired woman thrashed beside Chang, mouth flecked with foam, a blue glass spur embedded in her eye. As he stared, the white orb filled with indigo and the woman’s screams turned from shrill agony to blind wrath.

Three
Palace
    Doctor Svenson’s mind was elsewhere. After years of bleak service to the Duchy of Macklenburg, he had glimpsed in Elöise Dujong another possibility – had felt his heart crack into life – only to have that hope laid bare as the groundless optimism of a fool. He blamed no one save himself, mourning Elöise yet allowing no claim to her memory, for he had shamed himself enough as it was. Instead, still haunted and, if he could admit it, stunned, Svenson had thrown himself back into service as soon as his health allowed – assisting Phelps and Cunsher. Now he had been reunited with the quite obviously disturbed Celeste Temple, and the wilfully grim Cardinal Chang, but the company of these comrades reminded him only of what he’d lost. As he stood with his back to the cold stone of St Isobel’s statue, he wondered how much of his life had passed without purpose, every abdication punctuated with a crisp bow and a click of his heels?
    The Doctor exhaled sharply and shook his head. He had his own discipline, and his own pale fire.
    The action saved his life. Svenson heard Chang’s warning and at once dropped to the ground, the hail of glass shards screaming past his head.
    He staggered up, ears ringing. Next to Chang lay an old woman, one of hundreds brought down. Though never in an outright battle, Svenson had witnessed accidents involving artillery ordnance and seen his share of shredded human beings. St Isobel’s Square had been thronged. Svenson stared at the scorched black spot where the bomb had detonated.
    All around him, victims struggled with an unholy energy – howling and lashing at whomever they could reach, flailing like horses in a coach collision – unable to rise, unable to comprehend their condition. Changrolled off Miss Temple, who seemed unharmed. Behind him, Phelps and Cunsher, both alive, wrestled with a man in a blood-spattered waistcoat.