The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

the Cardinal holds one.”
    “Information, eh?” sneered Aspiche, looking around the woman at Chang. “About what? His whore? About that idiot Svenson? About—”
    “Do be
quiet,
Colonel,” she hissed, fully out of patience.
    Chang was gratified, and not a little surprised, to see Aspiche pull his head back and snort with peevishness. And stop talking.

    The ballroom was near. It only made sense to use it for another such gathering—perhaps already the crowds from the great chamber were convening too, along with those from the theatre at the end of the spiral staircase. Chang suddenly wondered with a sinking heart, not having found her in the great chamber, if this theatre was where Miss Temple had been taken. Had he walked right past her, just close enough and in time to hear the applause at her destruction?
    With Aspiche in tow, their pace had slowed. The stamping bootsteps of the Dragoons made it difficult to hear any other movement in the house, and he wondered if his own execution or forced conversion was to be the main source of entertainment. He would smash the book over his own head before he allowed that to happen. To all appearances it seemed a quick enough end, and one equally horrible to watch as to experience. It would be something to at least, in his last moments, unsettle his executioners’ stomachs.
    He realized that Mrs. Stearne was looking at him. He cocked his head in a mocking invitation for her to speak…but she was, for the first time, hesitant to do so.
    “I would…if I may, I would be grateful—for as I say, I was elsewhere occupied—if, with the Comte…if you could tell me what you saw…down below.”
    It was all Chang could do not to slap the woman’s face.
    “What I
saw
?”
    “I ask because I do not know. Mrs. Marchmoor and Miss Poole—I knew them—I know that they have undergone—that the Comte’s great work—”
    “Did they go to him
willingly
?” demanded Chang.
    “Oh yes,” Mrs. Stearne replied.
    “Why not you?”
    She hesitated just a moment, looking into his veiled eyes.
    “I…I must…my own responsibilities for the evening—”
    She was interrupted by a peremptory snort from Aspiche, a clear admonishment at this topic of conversation—or indeed, conversation with Chang at all.
    “Instead of you, it was Angelique.”
    “Yes.”
    “Because
she
was willing?”
    Mrs. Stearne turned to Aspiche before he could snort again and snapped, “Colonel, do be quiet!” She looked back at Chang. “I
will
go in my turn. But you must know from Doctor Svenson—yes, I know who he is, as I know Celeste Temple—what happened to that woman at the Institute. Indeed, I am led to understand that you yourself were there, even perhaps responsible—I do not mean
intentionally
,” she said quickly as Chang opened his mouth to speak, “but only that you well know that her state was grave. In the Comte’s mind this was her only chance.”
    “Chance for
what
? You have not seen what—what—the
thing
she has become!”
    “Truly, I have not—”
    “Then you should not speak of it,” cried Chang.

    Aspiche chuckled.
    “Does something amuse you, Colonel?” snarled Chang.
    “
You
amuse me, Cardinal. A moment.”
    Aspiche stopped walking and pulled his arm from Mrs. Stearne. He reached into his scarlet coat and removed one of his thin black cheroots and a box of matches. He bit off the tip of the cheroot and spat. He looked up to Chang with a vicious grin and stuck the cheroot into his mouth, fiddling with the matches for a light.
    “You see, I was introduced to you as a man of unfettered depravity—a figure without scruple or conscience, ready to hunt and kill for a fee. And yet, what do I find—in your final hours, with your life boiled down to its essence? A man in shackles to a whore who thinks as little of him as she does yesterday’s breakfast, and working in league—the lone wolf of the riverside!—with an idiot surgeon and an even more idiotic girl—or should I say spinster? She is what—twenty and five?—and the only man who’d have her has come to his senses and thrown her aside like a spent nag!”
    “They’re alive then?” Chang asked.
    “Oh…I did not say
that
.” Aspiche chuckled, shaking out the match.
    The Colonel inhaled through the cheroot’s glowing tip and sent a thin stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth. He offered his arm again to Mrs. Stearne, but Chang made no move to continue.
    “You will know, Colonel, that I have