The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

see.” Chang shot a look back at Shearing, who was gawking at them like an idiot child. The man ignored the look entirely, beaming at the woman’s splendid torso. “If you’ll walk this way”—Chang smiled stiffly—“we may speak more discreetly.”
    He led her up to the third floor map room, which was rarely occupied, even by its curator, who spent most of his time drinking gin in the stacks. He pulled out a chair and offered it to her, and she sat with a smile. He chose not to sit, leaning back against a table, facing her.
    “Do you always wear dark glasses indoors?” she asked.
    “It is a habit,” he answered.
    “I confess to finding it disquieting. I hope you are not offended.”
    “Of course not. But I will continue to wear them. For medical reasons.”
    “Ah, I see.” She smiled. She looked around the room. Light came in from a high bank of windows that ran along the main wall. Despite the grey of the day, the room still felt airy, as if it were much higher off the ground than its three stories raised it.
    “Who directed you to me?” he asked.
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Who directed you to me? You will understand that a man in my position must have references.”
    “Of course. I wondered if you had many women for clients.” She smiled again. There was a slight accent to her speech, but he could not place it. Nor had she answered his question.
    “I have many clients of all kinds. But please, who gave you my name? It is quite the final time I will ask.”

    The woman positively beamed. Chang felt a small charge of warning on the nape of his neck. The situation was not what it appeared, nor was the woman. He knew this utterly, and strove to keep it in the fore of his mind, but in the same moment was transfixed by her body, and the exquisite sensations emanating from its view. Her chuckle was rich, like the flow of dark wine, and she bit her lip like a woman play-acting the schoolgirl, doing her level best to fix him with her riveting violet eyes, like an insect stuck on a pin. He was unsure she had not succeeded.
    “Mr. Chang—or should I say
Cardinal
? Your name, it is so amusing to me, because I have known Cardinals, for I was a child in Ravenna—have you been to Ravenna?”
    “No. I should of course like to. The mosaics.”
    “They are beautiful. A color of purple you have never seen, and the pearls—if you know of them you
must
go, for not seeing them will haunt you.” She laughed again. “And once you have seen them they will haunt you all the more! But as I say, I have known Cardinals, in fact a cousin of mine—who I never liked—held such an office—and so it pleases me to see a figure such as yourself hailed with such a name. For as you know, I am suspicious of high authority.”
    “I did not know.”
    As the moments passed, Chang became painfully more aware of his rumpled shirt, his unpolished boots, his unshaven face, that his whole life was at odds with the splendid ease, if not outright grace, of this woman. “But you still, forgive my insistence, have not told me—”
    “Of course not, no, and you are so patient. I was given your name, and a notion of where you might be found, by Mr. John Carver.”
    Carver was a lawyer who, through a number of unsavory intermediaries, had engaged Chang the previous summer to locate the man who had impregnated Carver’s daughter. The daughter had survived the abortion her father—a harsh pragmatist—insisted upon, but had not been seen in society since—apparently the procedure had been difficult—and Carver was especially distraught. Chang had located the man in a seaside brothel and delivered him to Carver’s country house—not without injury, for the man had struggled hard once he realized the situation. He left Carver with the wandering lover trussed on a carpet, and did not concern himself further with the outcome.
    “I see,” he said.
    It was extremely unlikely that anyone would associate his name with Carver’s unless the information came from Carver himself.
    “Mr. Carver has drawn up several contracts for me, and has come to share my confidence.”
    “What if I were to make it quite clear to you that I have never met nor had any acquaintance with John Carver?”
    She smiled. “It would be exactly as I feared, and I must turn for assistance elsewhere.”
    She waited for him to speak. It was his decision, right then, to accept her as a client or not. She clearly understood the need for discretion, she was obviously