The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

(it was difficult for Chang to think of a more loathsome member of the Royal Family) had indeed served to disrupt the ceremony in the great chamber, then Chang was committed to causing as many additional disturbances as he could. He whipped apart his stick—still no one intruded—he was halfway down the hallway. Could everything have already started in spite of what Smythe had said? Chang stopped. To his left one of the doors was ajar. He crept to it and peered through the crack: a narrow slice of a room with red carpet and red wallpaper and a lacquered stand upon which balanced a Chinese urn. He listened…and heard the unmistakable sounds of rustling clothing and heavy breathing. He stepped back, kicked in the door with a crash, and charged forward.
    Before him on the carpet was a Macklenburg trooper with his trousers around his knees, desperately trying to pull them up at the same time he hopelessly groped for his saber—the belt and scabbard tangled around his ankles. The man’s mouth was opened in fearful protest and there was just time for Chang to register his expression shifting, from shame to incomprehension as he saw who had surprised him, before driving the dagger to the hilt into the trooper’s throat, choking off any cry of alarm. He yanked the blade free, stepping clear like a bullfighter of the attending spray of blood, and let the man topple to the side, his pale buttocks uncovered by his dangling shirt-tails.
    Was there anything that more signified the helplessness of humanity than the exposed genitals and buttocks of the dead? Chang did not think so. Perhaps a single discarded child’s shoe…but that was mere sentiment.
    Beyond the dead soldier, lying on the carpet with her dress above her waist was a richly clad woman, hair askew, her face aglow with perspiration around a green beaded mask. Her eyes were wild, blinking, and her breathing coarse and drawn…but the rest of her body seemed unresponsive, as if she were asleep. The man had clearly been about her rape, but Chang saw that her undergarments were yet only half-lowered—he had been surprised in the midst of his attack. Yet the woman’s vacant expression suggested her utter unconcern. He stood for a moment over her, his gaze drawn both to her beauty and by the twitches and spasms that rippled across her frame, as if she lay in the midst of a distended fit. He wondered how long it had taken the soldier to advance from hearing her heavy breathing in the hall, through cautious entry and voyeuristic observation, to outright violation. Chang shut the door behind him—the hall was still empty—and then bent down to restore the woman’s dress. He reached up to pull the hair away from her face and revealed, beneath her head like a pillow, what her apparently unseeing eyes so greedily devoured…a gleaming blue glass book.
    The woman’s exhalations rose into a moan, her skin as hot and red as if she had fever. Chang looked at the book and licked his lips. With a decisiveness he did not wholly feel he took hold of the woman beneath her arms and lifted her from it, his eyes flinching from the bright gleam of the uncovered glass. As he pulled her away she whimpered in protest like a drowsing puppy separated from its teat. He set her down and winced—the light from the book stabbed to the center of his head. Chang snapped it closed, his lips stretched back in a grimace, feeling even through his leather gloves a strange pulsing as he touched it and a protesting energetic resistance when he pushed it shut. The woman did not make another sound. Chang watched her, idly wiping his dagger on the carpet—it was already red, what was the harm?—as her breath gradually calmed and her eyes began to clear. He gently pushed aside the hanging mask of beads. He did not recognize her. She was merely another of the great ladies and gentlemen drawn into the insidious web of Harschmort House.
    Chang stood and snatched a pillow from the nearby settee. He ripped open one end with the dagger and he brusquely turned the lining inside out, dumping yellowed clumps of cotton wadding onto the floor. He inserted the book carefully into the pillowcase and stood. The lady could take care of herself as she woke—her fingers fitfully groped against the carpet—and forever wonder about her mysterious delivery…and if she started to scream, it would cause the disturbance he wanted. He stepped back to the door and paused, looking behind him at the room. There was no