The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

With a sudden urge toward self-preservation, Miss Temple restored her feathered mask into position. She sighed again. She could not go anywhere…but perhaps she could measure the strength of her cage. She turned to Captain Smythe and smiled.
    “Captain,…as you have seen
me
interrogated…may I ask
you
a question?”
    “Miss?”
    “You seem unhappy.”
    “Miss?”
    “Everyone
else
at Harschmort House seems…well, eminently
pleased
with themselves.”
    Captain Smythe did not answer, his eyes flicking back and forth between his nearest men. Accordingly, Miss Temple dropped her voice to a demure whisper.
    “One merely wonders
why
.”
    The Captain studied her closely. When he spoke it was near to a whisper.
    “Did I hear Mr. Xonck correctly…that your name is…
Temple
?”
    “That is so.”
    He licked his lips and nodded to her robes, the slight gaping around her bosom that allowed a glimpse of her own silk bodice showing through the layers of translucent white.
    “I was informed…you did favor the color green…”

    Before Miss Temple could respond to this truly astonishing comment, the doors behind her opened again. She turned, composing her face to a suitable blandness, and met the equally distracted Caroline Stearne, so preoccupied and so surprised to see Miss Temple in the first place as to pay no attention whatsoever to the officer behind her.
    “Celeste,” she whispered quickly, “you must come with me at once.”

    Miss Temple was led by the hand through a silent crowd that parted for them impatiently, each person begrudging the distraction from what held their attention in the center of the room. She steeled herself to be calm, expecting that at the words of Francis Xonck she must now submit to public examination by the entire Cabal in front of hundreds of masked strangers, and it was only this preparation that forestalled her gasp of shock at the sight, as she was pulled so briskly onto the open floor by Caroline Stearne, of Cardinal Chang, on his knees, spitting blood, his every inch the image of a man who had passed through the pits of hell. He looked up at her, and with his gaze, his face pale and bloodied, his movements slow, his eyes blessedly veiled behind smoked glass, came the gazes of those other figures before her—Caroline, Colonel Aspiche, and the Comte d’Orkancz, who stood in his great fur holding a leash that went to the neck of a small figure—a lady of perhaps Miss Temple’s own height and shape—distinguished first by her nakedness and secondly, and more singularly, by the fact that she seemed to be completely fabricated of blue glass. It was when this statue turned
its
head to look at Miss Temple, its expression unreadable and its eyes as depthless as a Roman statue’s, slick, gleaming, and swirled indigo marbles, that Miss Temple understood the woman—or creature—was
alive
. She was fully rooted to the ground with amazement, and could not have cried out to Chang if she had wanted.
    Caroline Stearne pulled Miss Temple’s white mask down around her neck. She waited through agonizing seconds of silence, sure that someone would denounce her…but no one spoke.
    Chang’s mouth opened haltingly, as if he could not form words or gather breath to speak.
    Then, as if everything was happening too quickly to see, Colonel Aspiche was swinging his arm and whatever he held in it smashed down onto Cardinal Chang’s head, knocking him flat in a stroke. With a brusque nod from their Colonel, two Dragoons detached themselves from the ring of men keeping back the crowd and took hold of Chang’s arms. They dragged him past her, his body utterly lifeless. She did not turn to follow his passage, but made herself look up, despite her racing heart and the pressing nearness of her tears, into the intelligent, searching face of Caroline Stearne.

    Behind, the voice of the Contessa snapped through the air like the crack of a particularly exultant whip.
    “My dear Celeste,” she called, “how fine it is that you have…
joined
us. Mrs. Stearne, I am obliged for your timely entrance.”
    Caroline, who was already facing the Contessa, sank into a respectful curtsey.
    “Mrs. Stearne!” called the rasping voice of the Comte d’Orkancz. “Do you not wish to see your transformed companions?”
    Caroline turned along with everyone else in the ballroom, for the Comte’s gesture was one of grand showmanship, to see two more glass women stalking into the open circle with their deliberate,