The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

mean fewer enemies in any single place—it would give him a chance. He stopped in the shadow of boxed shrubbery, pain rising damnably in his lungs like an undeterred creditor. There were bootsteps somewhere behind. He drove himself forward, keeping low, making a point to tread on the grass paths instead of the gravel. It occurred to him that he was even then moving across the great submerged chamber. Could there be any entrance left through the garden? He had no leisure to look—in any case the fog was too thick—and continued to creep across the garden to the opposite wing. That was where he had first met Trapping, where the great ballroom was. If tonight’s events were indeed of a more secretive nature, perhaps it would be unoccupied.
    The bootsteps were growing unpleasantly closer. Chang listened carefully, waiting, trying to determine how many men there were. Fighting two or three Dragoons with sabers in the open air was suicidal, even without his lungs seething blood. He padded rapidly along a waist-high hedge, bent double, and then across a gravel lane into another ornamental thicket. The few steps on the gravel would draw them like a pack of hounds, and Chang immediately changed direction, angling toward the house and the nearest of the glass garden doors. He reached the cover of another low hedge and listened to the boots converge behind him, gratified that they had not thought to send men around the borders of the garden to trap him from the sides. It was just as he congratulated himself that Chang heard the unmistakable rattle of a scabbard-belt, somewhere
ahead
of him. He swore silently and drew apart his stick—had he been seen? He didn’t think so. He took a bead on the man’s location…near a short conical pine tree…Chang crept toward it, quiet as a corpse. He inched around the tree and the back of a red coat came into view.
    Whether it was his rasping breath or the smell of the blue crystals that signaled his presence, or merely his own fatigue, Chang knew as soon as his arms shot out for the man that there would be a struggle. His left hand clamped over the Dragoon’s mouth and stifled any scream, but his right arm didn’t cleanly clear the man’s shoulder and so his blade was not at once in position. The man thrashed, his brass helmet falling onto the grass and his saber waving for some kind of purchase. In the next moment Chang pulled him off balance and dug the edge of the dagger into the man’s throat…but in that same moment he also saw that the man whose life he held in his hands was Reeves.

    What did it matter? The 4th Dragoons were his enemies, paid lackeys of the corrupt and wicked. Did he care whether Reeves was merely duped into their service? Chang recalled the man’s kindness in the Ministry and knew the answer, just as he knew any alliance with Smythe would crumble to nothing if he started killing Dragoons. All this went through Chang’s mind—along with an estimate of where the other Dragoons might be and how much noise he was making—in the time it took to place his mouth next to Reeves’s ear.
    “Reeves,” he whispered, “do not move. Do not speak. I am not your enemy.” Reeves stopped struggling. Chang knew there were perhaps seconds before they were found. “It is Chang,” he hissed. “You have been lied to. A woman is in the house. They are going to kill her. I am telling you the truth.”
    He released his hold and stepped away. Reeves turned, his face pale and his hand drifting up to his throat. Chang whispered urgently.
    “Is Captain Smythe at Harschmort?”
    Their attention was drawn by a sharp noise. Reeves wheeled. Over his shoulder Chang saw the grizzled bald man with the carbine step from the shadow of the hedges, along with a knot of Dragoons. They were well away—some twenty yards distant.
    “You there!” the man shouted. “Stand clear!”
    The man whipped the carbine to his shoulder and took aim. Reeves turned to Chang, his face a mask of confusion, just as the shot of the carbine echoed across the garden. Reeves arched his body with a hideous spastic clench and jackknifed into Chang, his face twisting with pain. Chang looked up to see the man with the carbine eject the shell and advance another into the chamber. He slammed the bolt home and raised the weapon. Chang dropped Reeves—whose legs kicked feebly, as if their action might yet undo the damage of the bullet—and dove behind the tree.
    The next shot carried past him into the