The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

gathering crowd, their passage a spectacle for whispers and gawking—Xonck reaching to either side for handshakes and hearty back-slaps to particular men and brief kisses to similarly high-placed or beautiful women—and then beyond them, skirting the ballroom proper to an open space at the meeting of several corridors. Xonck gave Miss Temple one more searching stare, crossed to a pair of wooden doors, opened them, and leaned his head from view, whispering. In a moment he had pulled his head back and shut the door, ambling again to Miss Temple. He pulled the cheroot from his mouth and looked at it with distaste, for he was nearing the stub. He dropped it to the marble floor and ground it beneath his shoe.
    “Captain, you will position your men along this corridor in either direction, specifically guarding access to these”—he pointed to two doors farther down the hall away from the ballroom—“inner rooms. Colonel Aspiche will provide further instructions upon his arrival. For now, your task is one of waiting, and making sure of this woman’s continued presence.”
    The Captain nodded crisply and turned to his men, detailing them along the length of the corridor and at each inner door. The Captain himself remained within saber’s reach of Miss Temple, and, for that matter, Francis Xonck. Once he had spoken however, Xonck paid the officer no further mind, his voice dropping to a whisper as coiled with menace as the hiss of a snake preparing to strike.
    “You will answer me quickly, Celeste Temple, and I will know if you lie—and if you
do
lie,
do
know it means your head.”
    Miss Temple nodded blankly, as if this meant nothing to her either way.
    “What did Bascombe tell you on the train?”
    This was not what she’d expected. “That we should be allies,” she replied. “That the Contessa desired it.”
    “And what did the Contessa say?”
    “I did not speak to her aboard the train—”
    “Before that—
before
! At the hotel—in the
coach
!”
    “She said I must pay for the deaths of her men. And she put her hands upon me, quite indecently—”
    “Yes, yes,” snapped Xonck, impatiently waving her on, “about
Bascombe
—what did she say about
him
?”
    “That he would be Lord Tarr.”
    Xonck was muttering to himself, glancing over his shoulder at the wooden doors. “Too many others must have been there…what else, what else—”
    Miss Temple tried to recall what the Contessa
had
said to her, or anything provocative that might inflame Xonck’s obvious suspicions…
    “The Comte was there too—”
    “I am aware of that—”
    “Because she did ask
him
a question.”
    “What question?”
    “I do not think I was supposed to hear it—for I’m sure it made no sense to me—”
    “Tell me what she said!”
    “The Contessa asked the Comte d’Orkancz how he thought Lord Robert Vandaariff had discovered their plan to alchemically impregnate his daughter—that is, who did he think had betrayed them?”

    Francis Xonck did not reply, his eyes boring into hers with a palpably dangerous intent, doing his best to measure the true degree of her compliance. Miss Temple somehow kept the fear from her face, concentrating upon the patterns of shadow on the ceiling beyond his shoulder, but she could tell that Xonck was so provoked by these last words that he was about to slap her again, or launch into an even more debasing physical assault—when behind them, topping his rising agitation as an erupting whistle announces the boiling of a kettle, the wooden doors opened and the Macklenburg Envoy’s freshly scarred and deferential face poked through.
    “They are ready, Mr. Xonck,” the man whispered.
    Xonck snarled and stepped away from Miss Temple, his fingers tapping the handle of the dagger in his belt. With one more searching stare at her face he spun on his heels to follow the Envoy into the ballroom.

    It was perhaps the length of two minutes before Miss Temple concluded, with the rise of different voices piercing murkily through the doors, that the members of the Cabal were holding forth to their assembled guests. She was aware of the silent Captain Smythe behind her and the general presence of his soldiers, within direct call however distant their posts might be. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She could only hope that eagerness for information had blinded Xonck to her disguise—which was more designed to fool ignorant guests in the hall than seasoned members of the Cabal.