The Chemickal Marriage

delayed his departure, after his true errand?
    The square. The cathedral. Why not the Customs House too? Vandaariff would know when it would be released for normal work and filled with men – would know to the minute. The doubled ticking –
    More voices filled the portico, the soldiers calling out at the sight of the battle. Any moment they must burst forward. Miss Temple saw her own pistol. She snatched it up.
    Her shot splintered the wood of the clock case.
    ‘Celeste, what are you doing?’
    It was Svenson. Behind her Vandaariff’s voice rose to a shriek. She marched closer, for a better shot. Her second bullet missed entirely.
    An officer loudly ordered everyone to drop their weapons. Miss Temple extended her arm, imagining the clock a brown glass bottle, and fired.
    Blue smoke spat out at the bullet’s impact, an instant ahead of the blast, a deafening wall of smoke and debris that choked her breath and blotted out all sight. Miss Temple was lifted off her feet and landed hard. Her lastthoughts boiled with unreasoning fury. She wanted nothing more than to blind Robert Vandaariff with her own two thumbs.
    She came to her senses at a blaze of agony in her left arm.
    ‘
Pauvre petite
,’ said an unpleasant voice. ‘You will regret your waking. Hold her, please … she may still be subject to the
infusion
.’
    Firm hands clamped Miss Temple’s shoulders, and above her face loomed Mr Foison, white hair hanging down. Robert Vandaariff stood near in his shirtsleeves, an apron over his clothes. He held a pair of forceps and, as she watched, insinuated their tip into a gash running perhaps four inches along her forearm. She protested, but he only thrust deeper, beneath a crust of blue that sealed one end of the wound. With a wrench that made Miss Temple cry, Vandaariff prised up the crystallized flesh. He tore the patch free with his fingers and dropped it on a plate. Despite the pain, Miss Temple felt her thoughts clear. Vandaariff set the forceps next to a porcelain basin and washed his hands. Next to the basin she saw a lock of auburn hair, quite obviously her own.
    ‘Not a serious wound,’ he said. ‘Mr Foison is perfectly capable of dressing it. I have done enough for
you
. That you live at all, that I have not melted your soft body for candle fat …’ He sniffed and reached for a towel. ‘It goes against tradition.’
    Vandaariff tucked the lock of hair into a pocket, collected his cane and hobbled to a cabinet lined with bottles – but not, she realized, bottles of liquor. He poured out an ugly mixture, like milky weak tea, swirled the glass and drank it off. ‘You were only touched the once.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Your luck persists.’
    ‘You do not have Francesca.’ Her voice quavered, for Foison had begun to wrap her arm. Her wool jacket was gone, her dress ash-blackened and tattered.
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘My survival.’
    ‘I suppose you do not care – being so brave – that your friends were blown to rags. Only that you managed to vex
me
.’
    Miss Temple’s body went cold. ‘I do not believe you.’
    ‘By all means, Miss Temple. Believe your
heart
.’
    She gasped again as Foison knotted the bandage. He stepped away, and Miss Temple pushed herself up. She lay on a wooden work table in a strange room panelled with polished steel. Had there been time to reach Harschmort?
    ‘But this is your own natural advantage,’ Vandaariff went on. ‘Celeste Temple acts without the impediment of remorse. Though it
was
clever to realize a device had been set for tomorrow’s trading. And decent shooting to strike it.’
    ‘Are you always so generous when you’ve been bested?’
    ‘Bested? Miss Temple, the bee is but part of the hive, the single piraña one of its school. In the world of men, such multiplication of effort is accomplished by wealth. This is
my
advantage. And when such a device is set off by my
enemies
in the presence of officers of the 8th Fusiliers? At a stroke it is proved that I have nothing to do with such destruction – I was there only to search for a missing old friend, don’t you know, arranged as a favour from Lord Axewith. And the blame is laid fully upon the three individuals who have continually thwarted my plans. I could not have asked for more.’
    Her throat closed against any reply. Foison coughed into his hand.
    ‘Indeed,’ agreed Vandaariff. ‘Off with you. But indulge my frailty – you’ve seen the animal.’
    With a cold