The Chemickal Marriage

pressed it tight against his ribs and then pulled it out to look: a blot of blood the size of a pressed tea rose.
    ‘The rib is cracked – I felt it running – but I am alive when I ought not to be.’
    Chang stood. Francesca Trapping’s eyes gazed fearfully up to his. Behind him in the dark, the trickle of sewage. He felt the smoke in his lungs, heard its abrasion when he spoke.
    ‘I did not see Celeste. I could not find her.’
    Svenson’s voice bore the same ragged edge. ‘You were occupied with that fellow – you saved us all.’
    ‘No, Doctor, I did
not
.’
    ‘Celeste set off the explosion. She fired into the clock. I don’t know how she guessed it held another explosive charge. Who knows how many lives she saved – if it had gone off tomorrow …’ Svenson placed a filthy hand across his eyes. ‘I could only reach the child –’
    ‘I do not blame you.’
    ‘
I
blame myself – quite fiercely. She was … Lord … a remarkable, brave girl –’
    ‘
I will have that bastard’s head
.’
    Chang’s words echoed down the sewage tunnel. Doctor Svenson struggled to rise, and placed a hand on Chang’s shoulder. Chang turned to him.
    ‘Are you well enough to go on?’
    ‘Of course, but –’
    Chang pointed to a wooden door above the stairs. ‘You will be in the lanes behind the cathedral – the blast there will explain your appearance, and you should be able to walk freely.’ He shifted his gaze to Francesca. ‘You will take the Doctor where the Contessa asked?’
    The child nodded. Chang clasped Svenson’s arm and took up the lantern. ‘Good luck,’ he managed, and strode into the dark. The Doctor called after him.
    ‘Chang! You are needed. You are needed
alive
.’
    Chang hurdled the fetid stream in a running leap. They were lost behind him. He increased his pace to a jog, already caught up with all he had set himself to do.
    The great Library, like every other civic institution, was shot through with privilege and preference. Inside it lay elaborate niches, like endowed chapels in a cathedral, housing private collections that the Library had managed to wrest from the University or the Royal Institute. Though every niche held one or two bibliographical gemstones, these collections attracted more dust than visitors, access being granted only through referenced application. Chang had learnt of their existence quite by accident, searching for new ways to reach the roof. Instead he had found the hidden wing of the sixth floor, and with it the old Jesuit priest.
    The Fluister bequest would never have attracted Chang’s interest under normal circumstances. The fancy of an admiral in whom a curiosity for native religions had been instilled by a posting to the Indies, and whose prize money had been lavishly spent on acquiring any volume relating to the aboriginal, esoteric, heretical or obscure – to Chang it was a fortune wasted on nonsense. To the Church, Admiral Fluister’s bequest – pointedly made to the public, yet diverted into its present inaccessible location through proper whispers in the proper ears – represented an outright gathering of poisons. Conquering through kindness, the Bishop had offered the services of a learned father to catalogue such a haphazard acquisition. The Library, caring less for knowledge than possession, had naturally accepted, and so Father Locarno had arrived. Ten years at least he had sorted through the Admiral’s detritus (it was an open wager amongst the archivists as to whenthe porters would find Locarno dead) with scarcely a word to anyone, a black-robed spectre shuffling in when the doors opened and out only when the lamps were doused.
    In Chang’s experience, there were two kinds of priests: those with their own life history, and those who had taken orders straight away. The latter he dismissed out of hand as fools, cowards or zealots. Amongst the former, he granted one might find men whose calling rose from at least some understanding of the world. In the case of Father Locarno, his nose alone set him in that camp, it having been deliberately removed with a blacksmith’s shears. Whether this marked him as a reformed criminal or an honest man whose misfortune had led to a Barbary galley, no one knew. It was enough to speculate why this weathered Jesuit had been given the task of managing the Fluister bequest – which was to say, Chang wondered how many of the books Father Locarno had secretly amended or destroyed.
    He stepped into the