The Chemickal Marriage

had broken, but none were of the same deep shade.
    ‘If this
is
indigo clay … the refining is not what we have seen. I would guess each piece has been mixed with different compounds – no doubt to alter its alchemical efficacy –’
    ‘Doctor Svenson?’
    Miss Temple stared at Chang, who remained gazing into the glass ball, as still as a stone.
    Svenson swore in German and rushed to Chang’s side. He wrenched the ball from Chang’s grip. A warm vibration touched his hand, but nothing that stopped him from setting it back on the platter.
    ‘Is he poisoned?’ Miss Temple squeaked. ‘Save him!’
    Chang’s naked eyes stared at nothing. Svenson felt his forehead and his pulse. He tapped Chang’s cheek sharply, twice. Nothing. ‘His breathing is not strained. It is not a fit … Celeste, do you have your rings – the rings of orange metal?’
    She rummaged in her clutch bag and came out with a canvas pouch. The Doctor extracted a single ring and – feeling something of a fool – held it close to Chang’s eye. Chang did not react. Svenson pressed the whole pouch against Chang’s cheek.
    Like a wine stain seeping through thick linen, the skin in contact flushed pink, then red, then went purple, like a deepening bruise. Miss Temple shrieked.
    ‘What is happening? Take it away!’
    Svenson dropped the pouch. A pattern had been scorched onto Chang’s face, the colour of cherry flesh. The Doctor looked hurriedly around him.
    ‘The mattress! We must set him down –’
    Miss Temple leapt to the mattress, dragging it close. Svenson lugged Chang off the worktop and they laid him down. Already the scorched ring had faded again to the pink of health. How had the effects reversed so quickly? Svenson seized Chang’s shoulder and belt. With a heave he rolled the man over, face down on the mattress.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Celeste, when you saw Chang’s wound, at Raaxfall, did you query your own memories of the Comte?’
    She nodded, then choked in the back of her throat. ‘I found nothing.’
    ‘As I thought. You see, he is attempting something new. Our friend will not be another Lydia Vandaariff.’
    The Doctor lifted Chang’s coat. The brief glimpse at Raaxfall had been in poor light.
    ‘Celeste, please look away –’
    She shook her head. Svenson raised the silk shirt.
    The wound lay to the right of the lumbar vertebra. The original puncture had been enlarged through what looked like at least three different surgeries,expanding the scar to the shape and size of a child’s splayed, thumbless hand. The scar tissue was an unsettling vein-blue, with a rough, thickened surface like the hide of a starfish. But it was the flesh
around
the wound that had made them gasp in the wicked room at Raaxfall, and the Doctor winced to see it again. Like dye dropped into a milky basin, virulent streaks of red radiated from the centre, as if signifying a flowering of infection.
    ‘The same colour as the ring against his face,’ Miss Temple whispered.
    Svenson delicately palpated the discoloured area. The flesh was cold, and beneath it his fingertips met an unnatural resistance.
    ‘Something has been placed inside.’
    Her voice was small. ‘Will he die?’
    ‘If the Comte had wanted to kill him, he would be dead. We saw the other bodies –’
    ‘Then what has happened? Can you remove it? Why has he collapsed when he was perfectly fine?’
    Svenson caught her flailing hand. ‘Clearly he was not
fine
. I cannot hope to remove it, even had I the tools. Whatever is
implanted
lies too near the spine. The slightest mistake and he is a cripple.’
    ‘That isn’t true!’
    ‘Please, Celeste – you must let me
think
–’
    ‘
But he will die!
’
    Svenson looked helplessly around him, searching for any idea. The orange metal had always been effective in reversing the predations of the blue glass, but its application here had worsened Chang’s condition … could it be as simple as that, a matter of opposites? Svenson crawled to the china platter and pawed through the jumble of glass … was all of it so discoloured? He shouted to Miss Temple.
    ‘The card – the blue glass card!’
    She dug in her bag and he snatched the card from her grasp, protecting his fingers with his coatsleeve. He rolled Chang onto his back. The man’s eyes remained disturbingly open. Svenson dropped to his knees and thrust the card before them.
    At first he saw no reaction, his close observation echoed by Miss Temple’ssilence as