The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

victim, he assumed) dragged through it. The path led straight beneath the woman’s feet. He met her eyes. Her expression was open and clear, though she did not smile. Chang was relieved—he had not realized how sick he’d become of his enemies’ sneering confidence—but perhaps her demeanor had less to do with him than with the bloody floor.

    “Cardinal Chang,” she said. “If you will come with me.”
    Chang pulled the glass book from the pillowcase. He could feel its energy push at him through the tip of each gloved finger, an antagonistic magnetism. He clutched it more firmly and held it out for her to see.
    “You know what this is,” he said, his voice still hoarse and ragged. “I am not afraid to smash it.”
    “I’m sure you are not,” she said. “I understand you are afraid of very little. But nothing will be settled here. I do not criticize to say you truly do not know all that has happened, or hangs in the balance. I’m sure there are many of whom you want to hear, as I know there are many who would like to see you. Is it not better to avoid what violence we can?”
    The bright blood-smeared marble beneath the woman’s feet seemed the perfect image for this hateful place, and it was all Chang could do not to snarl at her gracious tone.
    “What is your name?” Chang asked.
    “I am of no importance, I assure you,” she said. “Merely a messenger—”
    A harsh catch in Chang’s throat stopped her words. His brief sharp vision of Angelique—the unnatural color of her skin, its glassy, gleaming indigo depths and brighter transparent cerulean surface—was seared into Chang’s memory but its suddenly overwhelming impact was beyond his ability to translate to sense, to mere words. He swallowed, grimacing with discomfort, and spat again, diving into anger to override his tears. He gestured with his right hand, the fingers clutching with fury at the thought of such an abomination undertaken for the entertainment of so many—so many
respectable
—spectators.
    “I have seen this
great work,
” he hissed. “Nothing you can say will sway my purpose.”
    In answer, the woman stepped aside and indicated with her hand that he might follow along. At her movement the line of Dragoons split and snapped crisply into place to either side, forming a gauntlet for him to pass through. Some ten yards beyond them Chang saw a second line dividing itself with the same clean stamping of boots to frame an open archway leading deeper into the house.
    Behind in the turret he heard a muted roar—the crowd in the cells crying out—but before he could even begin to wonder why, Chang’s knees buckled with the sudden visceral impact of another vision thrust into his mind. To his everlasting shame, he was presented with
himself,
stick in hand, his appearance fine as he could make it—a threadbare vanity, with an expression of poorly veiled hunger, reaching to take the small hand extended to him—extended, he now knew (and now
felt
), with disinterest and disdain. He saw himself for one flashing, impossibly sharp moment through the eyes and heart of Angelique, and stood revealed within her mind as a regretted relic of a former life that she had at all times loathed with every fiber of her being.
    The vision snapped away from him and he staggered. He looked up to see each of the Dragoons gathering themselves, blinking and regaining their military bearing, just as he saw the woman shake her head. She looked at him with pity, but did not alter her guarded expression. She repeated her gesture for Chang to join her.
    “It would be best, Cardinal Chang,” she said, “that we move out of
range
.”

    They had walked in silence, Dragoons in line ahead of them and behind, Chang’s pounding heart yet to shake free of the bitter impact of Angelique’s vision, his sweetest memories now stained with regret, until he saw the woman glance down at the book in his hand. He said nothing. Chang was caught between fury and despair, physically ruined, his mind drifting deeper into acrid fatalism with each step. He could not look at a soldier, the woman—or at any of the curious well-fed faces from the household that peered at him past the Dragoons as they walked by—without rehearsing in his thoughts the swiftest and most savage angle of attack with his razor.
    “May I ask where you acquired that?” the woman asked, still looking at the book.
    “In a room,” snapped Chang. “It had transfixed the lady it had been given