The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

her feet, a pooling of watered blue fluid streaked with curling crimson lines. The embroidered hem of Lydia’s robe had been flipped down in a meager gesture toward modesty, but there was no ignoring the flecks of blue and red on her white thighs. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking.
    Slumped in a nearby chair, a half-full glass in his hand and an open bottle of brandy on the floor between his legs, sat Karl-Horst von Maasmärck. The Comte wore his leather apron, his black fur slung over a pile of chairs behind him, and cradled a bizarre metal object, a metal tube with handles and valves and a pointed snout that he wiped clean with a rag.

    On the walls behind them, hung on nails hammered carelessly into the bookcases, were thirteen distinct squares of canvas. Miss Temple turned to Chang and pointed. He had seen them as well, and made a deliberate gesture to flatten his hand and then turn it over, as to turn a page. At the St. Royale, Lydia had muttered something about the
rest
of the
Annunciation
fragments—indicating that she had seen them collected. Miss Temple knew the squares of canvas represented the entire reconstituted work, but she had not expected the Comte to hang each painting face to the wall, for what she saw was not the complete blasphemous image (which she was frankly by now more than a little curious to see), but its canvas backing—Oskar Veilandt’s alchemical formulae as they traveled across every piece, for which the painting was but a decorative veil, a detailed recipe for his own Annunciation, the unspeakable impregnation of Lydia Vandaariff by way of his twisted science. Around each canvas were pasted scores of additional notes and diagrams—no doubt the Comte’s own attempts to understand Veilandt’s blasphemous instructions. Miss Temple looked down at the girl on the bed and bit her knuckle to keep silent…
    She heard an impatient sigh below her and the flicking catch of a match. Miss Temple scooted forward on her belly and gained a wider view of the room. With a tremor of fear she saw, almost directly beneath, the Contessa’s large party. How had they not heard them in the corridor? Next to the Contessa—smoking a fresh cigarette in her holder—stood Francis Xonck and Crabbé, and behind them at least six figures in black coats, carrying cudgels. She glanced again to Chang and Svenson and saw Chang’s attention focused elsewhere, underneath the opposite balcony. Glittering in the shadows, as the orange flames from the Comte’s crucibles reflected off her skin, stood the third glass woman, Angelique, silently waiting. Miss Temple stared at her, and was just beginning to examine the woman’s body with the new understanding that it was the object of Chang’s ardent affection—and in fact, its consummation, for the woman
was
a whore—which meant…Miss Temple’s face became flushed, suddenly jumbling her memories from the book with thoughts of Chang and Angelique—when she shook her head and forced her attention to the rather agitated conversation below.
    “We would not have bothered you,” began Xonck, his eyes drawn with some distaste to the spectacle before them, “save we are unaccountably unable to locate a workable
key
.”
    “Where is Lorenz?” asked the Comte.
    “Readying the airship,” replied Crabbé, “and surrounded by a host of soldiers. I would prefer to leave him be.”
    “What of Bascombe?”
    “He accompanies Lord Robert,” snorted the Contessa. “We will meet him with the trunk of books and his ledger—but he does not have a key either, and for any number of reasons I would prefer not to involve him.”
    Crabbé rolled his eyes. “Mr. Bascombe is absolutely loyal to us all—”
    “Where is
your
key?” the Comte asked, glaring pointedly at the Deputy Minister.
    “It is not
my
key at all,” replied Crabbé somewhat hotly. “I do not believe I am even the last to have it—as the Contessa says, we were collecting the books, not
exploring
them—”
    “Who
was
the last to have it?” cried the Comte, openly impatient. He shifted his grip on the repulsive metal device in his hand.
    “We do not
know,
” snapped the Contessa. “I believe it was Mr. Crabbé. He believes it was Mr. Xonck.
He
believes it was Blenheim—”
    “Blenheim?”
scoffed the Comte.
    “Not Blenheim directly,” said Xonck. “
Trapping
. I believe Trapping took it to look at one of the books—perhaps idly, perhaps not—”
    “
Which
book?”
    “We do