The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

the sound of approaching bootsteps. Chang pressed himself flat against the wall. Smythe stepped forward and the hallway rang with the unmistakable and imperious voice of Mr. Blenheim.
    “Captain! What are you doing apart from your men? What business, Sir, can you have in this portion of the house?”
    Chang could no longer see Smythe but heard the tightening of his voice.
    “I was sent to look for Mr. Gray,” he answered.
    “Sent?”
snapped Blenheim with open skepticism. “By whom
sent
?”
    The man’s arrogance was appalling. If Chang were in Smythe’s place, knowing the overseer had just murdered one of his men, Blenheim’s head would already be rolling on the floor.
    “By the Contessa, Mr. Blenheim. Would you care to so interrogate
her
?”
    Blenheim ignored this. “Well? And did you
find
Mr. Gray?”
    “I did not.”
    “Then why are you still here?”
    “As you can see yourself, I am
leaving
. I understand that you’ve moved my trooper’s body to the stables.”
    “Of course I have—the last thing the master’s guests want to see is a corpse.”
    “Indeed. Yet I, as his officer, must attend to his effects.”
    Blenheim snorted with disdain at such petty business. “Then you will
oblige
me by vacating this part of the house, and assuring me that neither you nor your men will return. By the wish of Lord Vandaariff himself, it is for his guests alone.”
    “Of course. It is Lord Vandaariff’s house.”
    “And I manage that house, Captain,” said Blenheim. “If you will come with me.”

    Chang struck out as best he could for the Lord of the manor’s study. His look at the prison plans had not been so detailed as he might like, but it made sense that the warden might have personal access to the central viewing tower. Had Vandaariff simply adopted—and no doubt expanded and layered with mahogany and marble—the previous despot’s lair for his own? If Chang’s guess was right, Vandaariff’s study could then get him to Celeste. It was the thought he kept returning to in his mind, her rescue. He knew there were other tasks—to revenge Angelique, to find the truth about Oskar Veilandt, to discover what falling-out between his enemies had led to Trapping’s death—and normally he would have relished the idea of juggling them all together, to carry their evolving solutions in his head as he carried the sifted contents of the Library. But tonight there was no time, no room to fail, no second chances.
    He could not risk being seen by anyone, and so was reduced to painful dashes across open corridors, creeping to corners, and scuttling back into cover when guests or servants happened by. With a scoff Chang thought of how nearly everyone in the pyramid of Harschmort’s inhabitants was some sort of servant—by occupation, by marriage, by money, by fear, by desire. He thought of Svenson’s servitude to duty—duty to
what,
Chang could not understand—and his own doomed notions of obligation and, even if he disdained the word, honor. Now he wanted to spit on them all, just as he was spitting blood on these white marble floors. And what of Celeste—had she been a servant to Bascombe? Her family? Her wealth? Chang realized he did not know. For a moment he saw her, wrestling to reload his pistol at the Boniface…a remarkable little beast. He wondered if she had shot someone after all.

    The guests, he saw, were once again masked and in formal dress, and their snatches of conversation all carried a buzzing current of anticipation and mystery.
    “Do you know—it is said they will be married—tonight!”
    “The man in the cape—with the red lining—it is Lord Carfax, back from the Baltic!”
    “Did you notice the servants with the iron-bound chests?”
    “They will give us a signal to come forward—I had it myself from Elspeth Poole!”
    “I’m sure of it—a shocking vigor—”
    “Such dreams—and afterwards such peace of mind—”
    “They will come like trusting puppies—”
    “Did you see it? In the air? Such a machine!”
    “Fades in a matter of days—I have it on the highest authority—”
    “I have heard it from one who has been before—a particular
disclosure
—”
    “No one has seen him—Henry Xonck himself was refused!”
    “I’ve never heard such screaming—nor right after, witnessed such ecstasy—”
    “Such an unsurpassed collection of
quality
!”
    “Spoken in front of everyone, ‘is not history best written with a whip mark?’ The Lady is