The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

quickly and clearly, looking him straight in the eye.
    “Blue Apostle blue Ministry ice consumption.”
    Roger’s face went slack.
    “Sit down,” Miss Temple told him. “We will talk when there’s time.”

    “Where is the Contessa?” asked Elöise.
    “I do not know,” said Miss Temple, “how is Chang?”
    Doctor Svenson crawled to the Cardinal. “Elöise, help me move him. Celeste—” He pointed to the iron steps, to the Prince. “The orange bottle, if it is not broken, fetch it at once!”
    She ran to it, stepping carefully around the glass—grateful for her boots—doing her best to avoid eye contact with the disfigured corpses.
    “What is in it?” she called.
    “I do not know—it is a chance for the Cardinal. I believe it is what saved Angelique—in the greenhouse, the mattress was stained orange—”
    “But everyone we met was terrified of it,” said Elöise. “If I made to break it they ran the other way!”
    “I am sure they did—it must be deadly indeed, and yet—fire to fight fire, or in this case, ice.”
    Miss Temple found the bottle, nestled in the crook of the Prince’s arm. She pulled it free, glancing just once at his horrible face, the open mouth with its stained teeth and blood-red gums, the lips and tongue now tinged with blue, and then looked up the stairs. The trunk of books was where it had been, and she heard no sound from the wheelhouse save the wind. She ran back to Chang. Elöise knelt behind him, propping up his head and wiping blood from his face. Svenson doused a handkerchief in the orange fluid and then, with a determined sigh, clamped it over Chang’s nose and mouth. Chang did not react.
    “Is it working?” asked Miss Temple.
    “I do not
know,
” replied the Doctor. “I know he is dead without it.”
    “It does not
appear
to be working,” said Miss Temple.
    “Where is the Contessa?” asked Elöise.
    Miss Temple looked down at Cardinal Chang. The Doctor’s cloth had partially dislodged his spectacles, and she could see his scars, wounds of a piece with the blood that dripped down his face and neck. And yet beneath this history of violence—though she did not doubt it was integral to his soul—Miss Temple also saw a softness, an impression of what his eyes had been like before, of that underpinning and those margins where Chang located care and comfort and peace—if he ever did at all, of course. Miss Temple was no expert on the peace of others. What would it mean if Chang was to die? What would it have meant to him if their positions were reversed? She imagined he would disappear into an opium den. What would she do, lacking even that avenue into depravity? She looked down at Elöise and the Doctor working together, and walked back to Roger. She took the pistol from his hand and made her way to the iron steps.
    “Celeste?” asked Svenson.
    “Francis Xonck has your silver cigarette case—do not forget to collect it.”
    “What are you doing?” asked Elöise.
    “Collecting the Contessa,” said Miss Temple.

    The wheelhouse was silent, and Miss Temple climbed past the dead crewman and onto the bloody deck, looking down at Caroline’s body. The woman’s eyes were open in dismay, her beautiful pale throat torn open as if a wolf had been at it. The Contessa was nowhere to be seen, but in the ceiling above another metal hatch had been pushed open. Before she climbed up, Miss Temple stepped to the windows. The cloud and fog had finally broken apart. Whatever its course had once been, the dirigible’s path had become hopelessly skewed. She could see only grey cold water below them—not far below either, they were perhaps at the height of Harschmort’s roof—and the pale flickers of white on top of the dark waves. Would they drown in the icy sea after all? After all of this? Chang was perhaps already dead. She’d left the room in part so as not to watch, preferring even at this extremity to avoid what she knew she would find painful. She sighed. Like a persistent little ape, Miss Temple clambered onto the shelf of levers and reached up to the hatch, pulling herself into the cold.
    The Contessa stood on the roof of the cabin, holding on to a metal strut beneath the gasbag, wind whipping at her dress and her hair, which had become undone and flowed behind her head like the black pennant of a pirate. Miss Temple looked around her at the clouds, head and shoulders out of the hatch, her elbows splayed on the freezing metal roof. She wondered if