The Chemickal Marriage

is laughter they will choke on. Be brave still, and wipe your eyes. There is no shame. We must reclaim Cardinal Chang.’
    When the card was removed, Chang cursed and set to rubbing his eyes and the skull around them. Svenson heard a new note of hoarseness in Chang’s voice, and noted the pallor of his lips, the shine of fluid at his nostrils.
    ‘Are you ill? Is it the card?’
    ‘It is nothing at all.’
    ‘You should let me examine you.’
    ‘We have wasted enough of the evening.’
    ‘You have not
seen
the wound – truly, if you would just –’
    ‘
No
.’ Chang slipped his dark glasses back into place. ‘I am perfectly well. Certainly compared to either of
you
.’
    Despite Chang’s bad humour, Svenson was glad for the distraction. Miss Temple had done her best to restore her face, turning away as if to examine the tapestry.
    ‘The floors above are thick with people,’ said Chang. ‘We cannot hope to pass unseen. That no one has come down and found us is only due to their fear of past contagion.’
    ‘What contagion?’ asked Svenson.
    ‘The sickness! The glass woman’s legacy!’
    ‘But we are well away from Stäelmaere House, under the Palace – not twenty yards from the river.’
    Chang pointed through the archway. ‘Twenty yards will take you to the Duke’s own cellars.’
    ‘But – but the Contessa told me –’
    Chang snorted.
    ‘But why would she lie?’
    ‘To aide her own escape. Or provoke your capture.’
    ‘But you two fled deeper into the Palace,’ said Svenson. ‘Why come back?’
    ‘We knew no other way out,’ Miss Temple said. ‘And hoped we might find others in hiding – as we in fact did.’
    ‘Then we may be near Phelps and Cunsher. If they are taken, we must rescue them.’
    Chang exhaled with impatience. ‘That would be the height of folly. To search means throwing away our own lives and abandoning all hope of stopping Vandaariff and the Contessa. Phelps and Cunsher
know
this.’
    Svenson did his best to swallow his irritation, hating how expressing simple decency rendered him, in Chang’s eyes, a sentimental fool.
    ‘Well, then, if we search for Vandaariff –’
    ‘Vandaariff is
gone
,’ Chang scoffed. ‘He only came for his fireworks in the square, and for the pleasure of his hosts’ abasement.’
    ‘Then where do we find him?’
    ‘Harschmort. Raaxfall. Setting off another blast in Stropping Station. Anywhere.’ Chang jerked his chin at Miss Temple. ‘Ask
her
.’
    ‘I have no idea.’ Miss Temple spoke quietly, and to his dismay Svenson realized she had just consulted the Comte’s tainted memories, surely to compensate for displaying her weakness a moment before. He had told her to be brave, but hadn’t intended self-punishment.
    Between Chang’s distemper and Miss Temple’s distress, the Doctor felt it was for him to set their path. But he could not make sense of the most basic facts.
Had
the Contessa left him to be captured? Why reveal the Comte’s painting if she simply wanted to see him hang? Svenson fought the urge for a cigarette. What
had
the Contessa told him, exactly? And once the Doctor had eventually wrenched himself from the blue glass card, left to himself, would he not have followed her direction?
    ‘What are you staring at?’ Chang asked.
    Svenson pointed to the mirror. ‘The other side of this wall.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘Nor I. Follow me.’
    The Doctor crossed to the archway. As Chang stood, his boot slid, scraping on the floor. Svenson turned to see him pick something up, and frown.
    ‘Some idiot’s button,’ muttered Chang, and he threw it away.
    There was no other side of the wall they could reach. The corridor ended in a stack of barrels. ‘I told you,’ said Chang. ‘We are in the cellars.’
    Svenson frowned. ‘She acquainted me with the Comte’s painting to provoke some action. Saying I was near the river must have been deliberate, to send me in that direction …’
    ‘The woman is a vampire,’ said Chang. ‘Cruelty for the sake of being cruel.’
    ‘Cruelty would have meant taking my life.’
    ‘If the Contessa was civil it must have galled her terribly,’ Miss Temple observed, ‘like playing courtesan to a bitter enemy.’
    ‘Wait.’ The Doctor pointed. ‘Look at the floor.’
    Thin lines of grit curved across the tile from beneath the barrels, as if they had been moved. Chang reached for a barrel and Svenson helped him shift it, revealing a metal door set into the stone.