The Chemickal Marriage

soldiers with Foison fanned out, blocking their way forward. Chang had a knife in each hand. Miss Temple tugged the revolver from her bag and felt her back touch that of Doctor Svenson, who faced the men behind.
    ‘The corpse I examined,’ Svenson whispered, ‘the transformed flesh had been removed, for study.’
    ‘For the
future
, Doctor! What convenience to find all three of you at a stroke …’ But then Vandaariff saw the girl. His voice took on an ugly tremor. ‘Sweet hell, the child. Is the Contessa dead?’
    ‘Don’t you
want
her dead?’ asked Miss Temple.
    ‘Eventually – O everything eventually. And how do
you
do, Cardinal? Counting the hours?’ But Vandaariff kept his gaze on Francesca. ‘Step away – let me see her. She is mine by rights, legally so. I am chief shareholder of Xonck Armaments and have been named guardian of all three Trapping orphans. Once their uncle Henry succumbs I will adopt them formally. Would you like that, my dear?’
    The girl stood as still as a frightened rabbit. Vandaariff’s eyes glowed as he appraised her.
    ‘Your father – your true father – was a dear old friend. You have his eyes, and hair – now so wild …’ Vandaariff stretched out a shaking hand. ‘Come to me, Francesca. I know your sacred origins. I know your destiny. You are a princess of heaven. An
angel
.’
    He sketched a shape in the air with stiff fingers. Francesca bit her lip. Her reply was faint, but everything the Comte d’Orkancz could have desired.
    ‘An
angel
.’
    Miss Temple seized a handful of Francesca’s hair with enough force to make the girl gasp, and pressed the pistol to her skull. ‘I’ll kill her first. And then I’ll kill you.’
    Francesca squirmed. A glint of metal in Foison’s hand showed a palmed throwing knife, but he did not act. The Customs House must have been full of soldiers, like the bridge. But Vandaariff did not summon them.
    Keeping hold of the child’s hair, Miss Temple suddenly shifted her aim to Vandaariff. The spell was broken. Foison’s arm whipped forward. With a sharp ringing the knife was knocked wide by Chang’s own flung blade. Doctor Svenson’s revolver roared in her ear. Miss Temple squeezed the trigger of her own pistol, aiming at Vandaariff’s head, but only plucking his high collar. Before she could fire again, Chang shoved her roughly back and met the charge of Foison’s three men with a knife in one hand and his razor in the other.
    She collided with Francesca, who fell, causing Miss Temple to sprawl in turn and lose the pistol. Francesca scuttled away. Miss Temple got to her knees, intending to crawl after, but instead tripped one of Foison’s soldiers – careening from Chang with a spurting wrist. She whipped the knife from her boot. As the soldier groped for her throat she slashed at his fingers. He rose before her, then arched his back with a scream. Another of Foison’s knives had buried itself in the man’s body, clearly intended for Miss Temple.
    A gunshot made her turn. Doctor Svenson lay on his side, the last cloaked soldier tottering above him with a smoking revolver. Between them crouched Francesca, somehow tangled in a corpse’s cover sheet. Miss Temple flung her knife at the cloaked man’s face. It struck harmlessly on the shoulder, butcaused him to spin, whipping his pistol towards her. The Doctor fired, punching a hole under the man’s clean-shaven jaw. Francesca clapped both hands over her ears. Svenson slumped back, clutching his chest.
    Two more soldiers lay at Chang’s feet, a knife-hilt sticking from one’s throat. Chang flicked the blood from his razor and stepped deliberately between Foison and Miss Temple. He snatched up a cloak, twirling it around his wrist. Foison drew two more knives from his silk coat.
    The two men advanced with feral precision. It was the first time Miss Temple had seen Chang treat an enemy like an equal, and it frightened her more than anything.
    Vandaariff had withdrawn from the mêlée, back to the columns, and now stood waving. Behind him, at last, came the calls of soldiers. She blinked. Vandaariff was waving them
away
.
    Because their meeting had been a surprise, she realized, an interruption. Vandaariff’s true business in the Customs House could not stand scrutiny – the soldiers would take matters in hand, clear the area, scour the premises for confederates …
    What if Vandaariff had not come to the trading hall for
bodies
at all? Had his artist’s indulgence