The Chemickal Marriage

blocked from above the Circus Garden, then this is … Moulting Lane? Just so – and if we keep to it as far as the canal –’
    But Chang had already set off. The smaller man followed gamely, calling to Chang as they threaded a path through the debris.
    ‘The soldiers are not constables – that is, they do not think of suspects and disguises. The likes of us may escape notice.’
    ‘Unless they have been ordered to detain
everyone
,’ replied Chang. ‘You know full well how many of the men in your cell were innocent.’
    Cunsher looked over his shoulder at another flourish from the trumpets. A gunshot cracked out, then a spatter of five more. Cunsher stumbled into a box of rotten cabbages and came to a stop. The next chorus of trumpets came laced with screams.
    ‘Dear God.’
    Chang took Cunsher’s arm and hauled him on. ‘God is nowhere a part of it.’
    The Duke’s Canal was a narrow channel of green water, so choked with bridges and scaffolding that it vanished for wide stretches, then tenaciously reappeared, like an elderly aunt determined to survive her younger relations. But the route was bereft of soldiers and, mindful of Cunsher’s weakness, Chang spared a moment for a nearby tavern. He bought them each a pint of bitter ale, and pickled eggs from a crock for Cunsher. The small man consumed his meal in silence, sipping the beer and chewing as steadily as a patient mule.
    ‘Were you at the cathedral?’
    Chang turned to the tavern’s brick hearth, where a grizzled man in shirtsleeves sat with a serving woman. Chang nodded.
    ‘When will it be stopped?’ the woman asked. ‘Where is the Queen?’
    ‘
Queen?
’ The man rumbled. ‘Where’s the old Duke? He’s the one we need! He’d lay ’em down like mowing wheat – damned rebels.’
    ‘A mob went to Raaxfall,’ called the barman. ‘Burnt the place like a pyre.’
    The pensioner at the hearth nodded with grim relish. ‘No more than they deserved.’
    ‘Were the rebels from Raaxfall?’ asked Chang.
    ‘Of course they were!’
    ‘And yet we are just come from the Circus Garden,’ said Chang. ‘No one from Raaxfall in sight. Soldiers are shooting folk in the street.’
    ‘Rebels in the Circus Garden?’ piped the girl.
    ‘Dig ’em out!’ The old man slammed his tankard onto the bench, so the foam slopped over his hand. ‘Right into the grave!’
    Chang took a pull at his mug. ‘And what if they come here?’
    ‘They won’t.’
    ‘But if they do?’
    The old man pointed at two rust-flecked sabres over the hearth. ‘We’ll have at ’em.’
    ‘Before or after the soldiers burn the entire street?’
    The mood in the tavern went cold in an instant. Chang set down his mug and stood. ‘The Duke of Stäelmaere has been dead these two months.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ called the barman.
    ‘I saw his rotting corpse.’
    ‘By God – you’ll speak with respect!’ The old man rose to his feet.
    ‘There’s been no announcement,’ said the girl. ‘No funeral –’
    ‘Where are the funerals for the dead in the Customs House?’
    ‘What kind of priest are you?’ growled the barman.
    ‘No kind of priest at all.’
    The barman stepped back nervously. Cunsher cleared his throat. He had finished the third egg. Chang set two coins on the counter, and flipped a third to the serving girl on his way to the door.
    ‘If you cannot see who you are fighting, then you ought to
run
.’
    ‘I see no use in scaring these people,’ Cunsher observed as they continued along the canal. ‘Does one blame sheep for their shyness?’
    ‘If the sheep is a man, I do.’
    Cunsher scratched his moustache with a forefinger. ‘And if they did rise, like the mob that burnt Raaxfall – would you not despise them just the same?’
    They walked on. Chang felt the man’s eyes.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Your pardon. The scars
are
extraordinary. How are you not blind?’
    ‘A gentle nature preserved me.’
    ‘Everyone is very curious to know what happened. Doctor Svenson and Mr Phelps discussed the matter one evening, in medical terms –’ At Chang’s silence Cunsher caught himself and bobbed a mute apology. ‘You are perhaps curious about my own history. The facts of exile, life left behind –’
    ‘No.’
    ‘No doubt it is a commonplace. How many souls does each of us preserve in memory? And when we pass, how many pass with us, remembered no more?’
    ‘I have no idea,’ Chang replied crisply. ‘What do you know of the Contessa’s