The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

finding the plug easily. He worked it free as gently as he could and leaned forward to gaze into the second room.

    A man sprawled with his head and shoulders on a writing table. Chang knew him despite the black band across his eyes—as he came to know any man he’d followed through the street, identifying him from behind or within a crowd merely by his size and manner of being. It was his former client, the man who had apparently recommended his talents to Rosamonde, the lawyer John Carver. Chang had no doubt the secrets Carver held in his professional possession would open many a door to the Cabal across the city—he wondered how many of the law had been seduced, and shook his head at how simple those seductions must have been. Carver’s face was as red as the woman’s, and a pearling bead of drool connected his mouth to the table top. The glass book lay flickering under Carver’s hand. The upper part of his face lay pressed against it, eyes twitching with an idiot rapture, transfixed by its depths. Chang noted with some curiosity that the lawyer’s face and fingertips—the ones touching the glass—had taken on a bluish cast to the skin…almost as if they’d been frozen, though his sweat-sheened face belied that explanation. With distaste he noticed Carver’s other hand clutched at his groin with a spastic, dislocated urgency. Chang looked around the room for any other occupant, or any other useful sign, but saw nothing. He was not sure what such exposure to the book actually gained the Cabal—apart from this insensibility on the part of the victim. Did it re-make them like the Process? Was there something
in
the book they were supposed to learn? He felt the weight of the book tucked under his own arm. He knew—from the glass in his lungs and Svenson’s description of that man’s shattered glass arms—that the object itself could be deadly, but as a tool, as a
machine
…he hadn’t even a glimpse into its true destructive power. Chang replaced the plug and felt with his stick for the next set of stairs.
    When it came he looked again, prying the plug first from the left, the side where he’d seen the woman. Chang’s conscience gnawed at him—should he not ignore the holes and move directly for the office? Yet to do so was to pass up information about the Cabal he would never be afforded again…he would go more quickly. He peered into the room and suddenly froze—there were two men in black coats helping an elderly man in red onto a sofa. The churchman’s face was obscured—could it be the Bishop of Baax-Saornes? Uncle to the Duke of Stäelmaere and the Queen, he was the most powerful cleric in the land, an advisor to government, a curb to corruption,…and here having the spittle wiped from his chin by malevolent lackeys. One of the men wrapped a parcel in cloth—assuredly another book—while the other took the Bishop’s pulse. Then both turned to a knock at a door Chang could not see and rapidly walked from the room.
    Without a further thought for the ruined Bishop—what could he do for him anyway?—Chang turned to the opposite hole. Another man slumped over a book—how many of these hellish objects had been made?—his red face and twitching eyes pressed down into the glowing surface. It was without question Henry Xonck, his customary aura of power and command quite fully absent…indeed, it seemed to Chang that the man’s normal attributes had been drained away…drained
into
the book? The thought was absurd, and yet he recalled the glass cards—the manner in which they became imprinted with memories. If the books managed the same trick on a larger scale…suddenly Chang wondered if the memories were simply imprinted from the victim’s mind…or actually removed. How much of Henry Xonck’s memories—indeed his very soul—had here been stripped away?

    The following spy holes revealed more of the same, and even though Chang didn’t recognize every slumped figure, those he did were enough to reveal a naked assault on the powerful figures of the land: the Minister of Finance, the Minister of War, a celebrated actress, a Duchess, an Admiral, a high court judge, the publisher of the
Times
, the president of the Imperial Bank, the widowed Baroness who ran the most important, opinion-setting
salon
in the city, and finally, tempting him to postpone his search even further and intervene, Madelaine Kraft. Each one discovered in the throes of a fitful, nearly narcotic state of