The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

saw a different segment of the opposite wall. Between the banks of pipes lay a tier of exposed cells—actually several tiers—bars still in place, looking for all the world like viewing galleries in a theatre. He sat back and brushed himself off by habit, wincing at how smeared with filth he was. Whatever was going to happen in the chamber, it was designed to have an audience.

    He was back in the spiral staircase, climbing quietly, both hands on his stick. The next and final door did not appear until double the usual number of stairs, and when it did, he was surprised to see it was wood, with a new brass doorknob and lock—consistent with the formal decor of Harschmort. Chang had ascended to the—probably lowest—level of the house proper. Gray had said they thought he was dead—but did that mean back at the Ministry or just now in the furnace pipes? Surely he had been recognized in the garden—did it matter? He was more than happy to play the role of avenging ghost. He opened the door a narrow crack and peered, not into the hallway he expected, but a small dark room, blocked by a drawn curtain, under which he saw flickers of light—flickers matching audible footfalls on the curtain’s other side. Chang eased through the doorway and crept close to the curtain. He delicately pinched the fabric between two fingers, making a gap just wide enough to peek through.
    The curtain merely masked an alcove in a large storeroom, the walls lined with shelves and the bulk of the open floor taken up with free-standing racks stuffed full of bottles and jars and tins and boxes. While he watched, two porters shifted a wooden crate of clinking brown bottles onto a wheeled cart and pushed it from sight, pausing to make conversation with someone Chang couldn’t see. After they left, the room was silent…save for bootsteps and a metallic knocking Chang had heard too many times before—the jostling of a saber scabbard as a bored guard paced back and forth. But the guard was hidden on the opposite side of the racks. To reach him Chang would have to leave the curtained alcove and only then decide on his angle of attack—while exposed.
    Before he could begin he heard approaching steps and a harsh commanding voice he recognized from the garden.
    “Where is Mr. Gray?”
    “He hasn’t returned, Mr. Blenheim,” answered the guard—by his accent not one of the Macklenburgers.
    “What was he doing?”
    “Don’t know, Sir. Mr. Gray went downstairs—”
    “Damn him to hell! Does he not know the time? The schedule?”
    Chang braced himself—they were certain to search. Without the covering noise of the servants there was no way to slip back through the door without them hearing. Perhaps it was better. Mr. Blenheim would pull the curtain aside and Chang would kill him. The guard might sound the alarm before he fell as well—or the guard might kill Chang—either way it was an additional helping of revenge.
    But Blenheim did not move.
    “Never mind,” he snapped irritably. “Mr. Gray can hang himself. Follow me.”
    Chang listened to their bootsteps march away. Where had they gone—what was so important?

    Chang chewed on a handful of bread torn from an expensive fresh white loaf purloined from the storeroom as he walked, recognizing nothing around him from his previous travels through the back passages of Harschmort House. This was a lower story, finely appointed but not opulent. The pipes could have landed him at any point of the house’s horseshoe arc. He needed to work his way to the middle—there he would find the entrance to the panopticon tower, to the great chamber—and do it quickly. He could not remember when he’d eaten such delicious bread—he should have stuffed another loaf in his pocket. This caused Chang to glance down at his pocket, where he felt the knocking weight of Miss Temple’s green ankle boot. Was he a sentimental fool?
    Chang stopped walking. Where
was
he? The truth of his situation penetrated his thoughts as abruptly as a blade: he was in Robert Vandaariff’s mansion, the very heart of wealth and privilege, of a society from which he lived in mutually contemptuous exile. He thought of the very bread he was eating, his very enjoyment of it feeling like a betrayal, a spike of hatred rising at the endless luxury around him, a pervasive ease of life that met him no matter where he turned. In Harschmort House Cardinal Chang suddenly saw himself as he must be seen by its inhabitants, a sort of