The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

nearer, and he noted with satisfaction the very deliberate path they walked, one after another, marking it clearly in the grass. They reached the sprung trap, perhaps twenty yards from where he watched, and it quite visibly dawned on them that they saw no writhing man in the grass, nor heard any further screaming. They looked around with suspicion.
    Chang smiled again. The coal dust absorbed the light and made him nearly invisible. The men were speaking low to each other. He couldn’t hear them. It didn’t matter. Three were Dragoons, in brass helmets that caught the torchlight, but the one in front was from the household, his head bare, his coat flapping about his knees. The soldiers had torches in one hand and sabers in the other. The man held a torch and a carbine. He planted the torch in the sandy ground and inspected the trap, looking for blood. The man stood up, collected his torch, and quite deliberately scanned the pasture around him. Chang slowly lowered himself—there was no point botching it now—and waited, following the man’s thoughts as clearly as if he saw into his mind. The man knew he was being watched, but had no idea from where. Chang was abstractly sympathetic, but whoever’s idea the traps actually were, this was obviously the man who had set them. While Chang was a killer, he did not admire those whose traffic was agony. He made a point of fixing the man’s face—a wide jaw with grizzled side whiskers and a balding pate—in his mind. Perhaps they would meet indoors.

    After another minute, when it became clear that they were not willing to blunder around searching amongst the unsprung traps, they retreated to the house. Chang let them go, and then very cautiously followed in the safe pathway of their steps, crouching low. At the edge of the grass and the end of his cover, he waited—for all he knew they were watching from a darkened window. He was facing the same side wing, but could not place the window he’d broken through only two nights before. It had already been reglazed. Chang smiled wickedly, and felt around him for a stone. With Mrs. Marchmoor having arrived before him, the only way he was going to get inside was by creating a bit of fuss.
    He rolled to one knee and threw—it was a lovely, smooth stone, and sailed very well—as hard as he could at the window to the right of the doorway where the men had emerged, which shattered with a gratifying crash. Chang ran toward the house, vaulting a border of flower beds, to the left of the door, reaching the wall as he heard cries within and saw answering light flooding out from the broken window. The door opened. He pressed himself flat. An arm appeared holding a torch, and just after it the man with the grizzled whiskers. The torch was between his face and Chang, and the man’s attention—naturally—was toward the broken window, in the other direction.
    Chang snatched the torch from his astonished grasp and kicked him soundly in the ribs. The man went down with a grunt. Behind, through the door, Chang saw a crowd of Dragoons. He thrust the torch in their faces, driving them back until the handle of the door was in reach. Before they could react he threw the torch into the room, against what he hoped was drapery. He slammed the door shut, turned to the grizzled man, who was rising, and slashed the stick against his head. The man cried out, with shock at the impropriety as much as pain, and raised his arms to block another blow. This allowed Chang to kick him again in the ribs, and shoulder him aside, knocking him off balance and down with another squawk of outrage. Chang bolted past him along the wall. With luck the Dragoons would prevent the house from catching fire before giving chase.
    He rounded the corner and kept running. Harschmort was a kind of nearly closed horseshoe, and he was on the far right end. In the center was the garden, and he quickly raced for the depths of its ornamental trees and hedges, putting as much distance as he could between himself and any pursuers. During the day, he was sure the garden gave the impression of being rigid and arid, nature subdued to the strictures of geometry. Now, in his headlong rush to escape, it seemed to Chang a murky labyrinth fabricated solely to provoke collision, as benches, fountains, hedges, and pedestals loomed abruptly up at him through the fog and the night. But if he could elude pursuit here they would be forced to re-group and look for him
everywhere,
which would