The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

the station, and looked for any landmark whatsoever on the map. She saw an odd symbol near the canals themselves, which a quick check with the map’s legend told her signified “ruin”. How old was the map—could a house that size be so new? Miss Temple looked up at her aunt.
    “What is ‘Harschmort’?”
    Aunt Agathe took in a sharp breath, but said nothing. Miss Temple narrowed her eyes. Neither spoke (for in some ways at least the older lady partook of a familial stubbornness) and after a full silent minute Miss Temple slammed the atlas shut and, brusquely rising from the table, strode to her inner room. She returned, to her aunt’s great alarm, with the open revolver, reloading the bullets as she went, and making a great effort at slamming the cylinder home. Miss Temple looked up to see the two women gaping at her and sneered—did they think she was going to shoot them?—snatching up a clutch handbag and dropping the revolver into it. She wound the strap around her wrist and then proceeded to gather her pile of papers with both arms. She snapped at Marthe without the least veil over her irritation. “The
door,
Marthe.” The servant girl darted to the front door and pulled it open so Miss Temple, her arms full, was free to sail through. “I will be working where I can find
peace,
if not
cooperation
.”

    Walking down the thickly carpeted corridor, and then down to the lobby, Miss Temple felt as if she were re-entering the world, and more importantly that she was confronting the events that had overtaken her. As she walked past various maids and porters, she knew that—because it was the morning shift—these were the same that had seen her blood-soaked arrival. Of course they had all spoken of it, and of course they all cast inquiring glances her way as she walked by. Miss Temple’s resolve was firm, however, and she knew if anything had changed, it was only that she needed to be even more self-reliant. She knew how fortunate she was to have her independence, and to have a disposition that cared so little for the opinions of others. Let them talk, she thought, as long as they also saw her holding her head high, and as long as she possessed the whip-hand of wealth. At the main desk she nodded at the clerk, Mr. Spanning—the very man who had opened the door upon her bloody return. Society manners were not so different than those among her father’s livestock, she knew, or his pack of hounds—and so Miss Temple held Spanning’s gaze longer than normal, until he obsequiously returned her nod.
    She had installed herself on one of the wide plush settees in the empty lobby, a quick, hard glare alerting the staff that she required no assistance, spreading the papers into organized stacks. She began by going back to “Harschmort”, jotting down her observations—its status as a ruin, its location. She then turned first to the
Courier,
whose pages would be more likely to follow social affairs. She was determined to learn all she could about the gala evening—first as it was understood by the populace at large, and then, by way of any comments she might find about murdered men in the road or missing women, about its true insidious nature. She read through headlines without any immediate idea of what might be most important: scanning the large black type announcing colonial skirmishes, cunning inventions, international ballooning, society balls, works of charity, scientific expeditions, reforms in the navy, infighting amongst the Ministries—it was clear that she was going to have to
delve
. It had not been ten minutes before she sensed the shadow falling over her work and then heard—had someone come in the main doors?—the vaguely insistent clearing of a throat. She looked up, fully ready to audibly snarl if her Aunt Agathe or Marthe had presumed to follow, but Miss Temple’s eyes saw someone quite different.

    He was a strange sort of man, tall, crisply rumpled in the way only a neat-minded person can be, wearing a blue greatcoat with pale epaulettes and silver buttons and scuffed black boots. His hair was almost white, parted in the center of his head and plastered back, though his exertions had caused some of it to break free and fall over his eyes, one of which held a monocle on a chain. He had not shaved, and it seemed to her that he was not especially well. She could not tell his age, partly because of his obvious fatigue, but also because of the way his hair, which was long on the top of