The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

the Contessa.
    “It is finished, Madame! The airship is falling!”
    Miss Temple looked back, relieved she was not dead, but having no idea why it was so. The Contessa had paused on the little landing mid-way down the stairs, where in a small alcove—emblematic of the cunning use of space so necessary aboard vessels of all kinds—her minions had lashed into place an enormous steamer trunk.
    Miss Temple heaved herself to her knees. She saw her revolver, slid half-way across the floor, and screamed at the Doctor as she flung herself toward it.
    “She has the books! She has the books!”

    The Contessa had both hands in the trunk and when she pulled them out each held a book—in her bare fingers! Miss Temple did not know how the woman did it—indeed the Contessa’s expression was ecstatic—how was she not swallowed up?
    “Roger!” called the Contessa. “Are you alive?”
    “I am, Madame,” he replied, having retreated at Chang’s approach to the other side of the unmoving Francis Xonck.
    “Contessa,” began Svenson, “Rosamonde—”
    “If I throw this book,” the Contessa called, “it will surely shatter on that floor, and some of you—particularly those under-dressed and sitting—will be killed. I have many of them. I can throw one after another—and since the alternative means the end of
every
book, I will sacrifice as many as I need. Miss Temple,
do not touch that gun
!”
    Miss Temple stopped her hand, hovering above her revolver.
    “Every one of you,” cried the Contessa. “Drop your weapons! Doctor! Cardinal! Do it now or this book goes
right
…
at
…
her
!”
    She glared at Miss Temple with a wicked smile. Svenson dropped his cutlass with a clang, and it slid with the tipping of the craft toward the Prince, who snatched it up. Chang did not move.
    “Cardinal?”
    Chang wiped his mouth and spat, his blood-smeared jaw like the painted half-mask of a red Indian or a Borneo pirate, and his bone-weary voice from another world altogether.
    “We are finished anyway, Rosamonde. I’ll be dead by the end of the day no matter what, but we’re all doomed. Look out the windows…we’re going down. The sea will smother your dreams along with mine.”
    The Contessa weighed a book in her hand. “You’ve no care for your Miss Temple’s painful death?”
    “It would be quicker than drowning,” answered Chang.
    “I do not believe you. Drop your weapon, Cardinal!”
    “If you answer a question.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous—”
    Chang shifted his grip on the saber and pulled back his arm, as if to throw it like a spear.
    “Do you think your book will kill me before I put this through your heart? Do you want to take that chance?”
    The Contessa narrowed her eyes and weighed her options.
    “What question then? Quickly!”
    “To be honest, it is
two
questions.” Cardinal Chang smiled. “
First,
what was Mr. Gray doing when I killed him? And
second,
why did you take the Prince from his compound?”
    “Cardinal Chang—
why
?” asked the Contessa, with a sigh of unfeigned frustration. “Why
possibly
do you want to know this
now
?”
    Chang smiled, his sharp teeth pink with blood.
    “Because one way or another, I shan’t be able to ask you tomorrow.”

    The Contessa laughed outright and took two steps down the stairs, nodding Svenson and Miss Temple toward Chang, her expression darkening at Miss Temple’s quite brazen snatch of her pistol before she went.
    “Join your comrade,” the Contessa hissed at them, then looked at Elöise with disdain. “
And
you, Mrs. Dujong—one wonders if you are professionally helpless for a living—
hurry
!” She turned to the Prince, her tone sweetening. “Highness…if you would climb to the wheelhouse and do what you can to slow our descent—I believe most of the panels have helpful
words
on them…Lydia, stay where you are.”
    Karl-Horst darted up the stairs as the Contessa continued down, stepping over the crewman, to face all four of them in the doorway. The Doctor had pulled Elöise to him and held her hand, while Miss Temple stood—feeling rather alone, actually—between the Doctor and Chang. She glanced once over her shoulder at Roger in the far doorway, his face pale and determined, another expression she had never seen.
    “What a gang of unlikely rebels,” said the Contessa. “As I am a rational woman I must recognize your success—however inadvertent—just as I can find myself truthfully wishing that our circumstances were