The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

substantial must leave behind it open space—a hole in her heart, so to speak, around which her thoughts were, temporarily at least, forced to navigate. But then without warning she would find herself worrying at how Roger had placed his entire life so thoughtlessly at risk, and craving just one minute of sharp speech to wake him to his folly. Miss Temple sighed heavily and had for some reason a vivid memory of the plantation’s sugar works, the great copper pots and the spiraled coils that converted the raw cane into rum. She knew that Roger had allied himself with people who sanctioned murder—her own murder—and she feared, as cane was by rough science and fire reduced to rum, that this must inevitably lead to a mortal confrontation between Roger and herself. She felt the weight of the revolver in her clutch bag. She thought of Chang and Svenson—did they have any similar torment of feeling? They both seemed so sure—especially Chang, who was a type of man she had never before known. Then she realized that this was not true, that she had known other men with such open capacity for brutal action—in fact, her father was just such a man—but there the brutality had always been clothed in the guise of business and of ownership. With Chang, the truth of the work was worn openly. She struggled to find this refreshing—she told herself it was exactly that—but could not repress a shudder. Doctor Svenson seemed to her less formidable and more stricken by common fears and hesitancies, but then, so was she—and Miss Temple knew no one in her world would have granted her the capacity to survive what she already had. She trusted in the Doctor’s resilience then, as she trusted in her own. Besides, she smiled to think it, many otherwise capable men were not at their best around a fetching woman.
    She was at least confident that armed with her aunt’s gossip she would be able to follow the conversation. So much of her comrades’ accounts referred to a city she did not know—to brothels and institutes and diplomatic compounds—a mix of lower depths and exclusive heights quite apart from her middling experience. She wanted to feel that she brought to their partnership an equal third, and wanted that third to be something other than money to provide a room or a meal. If they were to continue in league against this—what was the Doctor’s word?—
cabal,
then she must continue to expand her capacities. What she had done so far seemed a mix of actual investigation and mere tagging along, where even the killing of Spragg and Farquhar struck her as unlikely happenstance. The figures arrayed against her were beyond imagination, her few allies equally so—what did she possess besides her change purse? It was a moment when she could easily spiral into self-doubt and fear, assurance melting like a carnival ice. She imagined herself alone in a train compartment with a man like the Comte d’Orkancz—what could she possibly do? Miss Temple looked around her at the Boniface’s stairwell wallpaper, painted with an intricate pattern of flowers and leaves, and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She wiped her eyes and sniffed. What she would
do
is to press the barrel of her revolver against his body and pull the trigger as many times as it took to bring his foul carcass to the floor. And then she would find the Contessa Lacquer-Sforza and thrash the woman until her arm was too tired to hold a whip. And then…Roger. She sighed. From Roger Bascombe she would merely walk away.

    She stood and made her way down to the second floor, but paused at the final step, hearing voices in the corridor. She peered around the corner to see three men in black uniforms and another man in a dark brown cloak standing directly outside the door to room 27. The men muttered to each other (Miss Temple was a foe of muttering in general and always resented not hearing what other people said, even if it was not strictly her business) and then as a group marched away from her, to the main stairs at the far end of the hall. She crept into the corridor, moving as quickly as she could to the door. She gasped to see it was ajar—the men must have been inside—and with great trepidation pushed the door open. The sitting room was empty. What papers she had left behind had been scattered across the room, but she saw no token of Chang or Svenson, nor of any particular struggle. She crossed quickly to the bedchamber, but it too was empty. The bedclothes