The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

in that regard—for it must mean learning more about the house, the guests, the party, the circumstances. But she had told him nothing about any of that, merely about the woman she wanted found. He clucked his tongue with annoyance as he walked, knowing that his best path to protect himself was also the path most likely to expose his involvement.

    When he reached it, Dagging Lane was still empty. This was the rear of the house, whose front overhung the river itself and allowed for easy disposal of those contentious or unable to pay. A large man lounged outside a small wooden door, whose bright yellow paint stood out in a street of dirty brick and weather-stained wood. Chang walked up to him and nodded. The man recognized him and nodded in return. He knocked three times on the door with his meaty fist. The door opened and Chang stepped into a small entryway, cheaply carpeted, and lit with yellow lantern light instead of gas. Another large man demanded his walking stick, which Chang gave over, and then indicated with a practiced leer that he should proceed past a beaded curtain into a side parlor. Chang shook his head.
    “I am here to speak to Mrs. Wells,” he said. “I will pay for the time.”
    The man considered this, then walked through the curtain. After a brief interval, which Chang passed by looking at a cheap print framed on the wall (illustrating the intimate life of a Chinese contortionist), the man returned and ushered him through the parlor—past three sofas full of half-dressed, over-painted women, all appearing equally young and equally ravaged in the dim sickly light and who seemed to be generally yawning, scratching themselves, or in several cases, coughing thickly into napkins—and then to Mrs. Wells’s own inner room, where the woman herself sat next to a crackling fire with an account book on her knees. She was grey, small, and thin, and in her work as routinely nurturing and dispassionately brutal as a farmer. She looked up at him.
    “How long will this take?”
    “Not long, I am sure.”
    “How much were you expecting to pay?”
    “I was expecting this.”
    He reached into his pocket and removed a crumpled note. It was more than he ought to have offered, but the risk in this matter was closer to his person, so he didn’t begrudge it. He dropped the banknote onto her ledger book and sat in the chair across from her. Mrs. Wells took the note and nodded at the large man, still standing in the doorway. Chang heard the man leave and close the door, but kept his gaze on the woman.
    “I am not in the custom of providing information about my customers—” she began. Her teeth clicked when she spoke—some large percentage were made of white porcelain, which rather hideously showed the true color of those real teeth that remained. Chang had forgotten how much this annoyed him. He raised his hand to cut her off.
    “I am not interested in your customers. I am looking for a woman, almost assuredly a whore, whom you may know of, even if you do not employ her directly.”
    Mrs. Wells nodded slowly. Chang didn’t quite know what that meant, but as she did not then speak, he went on.
    “Her name may be, or she may call herself, Isobel Hastings. Out of her shoes she is most likely five feet in height, with chestnut hair, in curls. The most salient fact is that she would have been seen early this morning wearing a black cloak and quite liberally—her face, her hair, her person—covered in dried blood. I expect that such a girl returning to your house, or any house, in such a manner—though it is not unheard-of—would have caused remark.”
    Mrs. Wells did not answer.
    “Mrs. Wells?”
    Still Mrs. Wells did not answer. Very quickly, and before she could slam the book, Chang darted forward and snatched the banknote away from her. She looked up at him in surprise.
    “I am happy to pay for whatever you know, but not for abject silence.”
    She smiled as slowly and deliberately as a blade being unsheathed. “I am sorry, Cardinal, I was merely thinking. I do not know the girl you speak of. I do not know the name, and none of mine came home so bloodied. I would certainly have heard, and as certainly demanded reparations.”
    She stopped, smiling. There was more, he saw it in her eyes. He returned the banknote. She took it, placed it in the heavy ledger as a bookmark, and closed the book. Chang waited. Mrs. Wells chuckled, a particularly unpleasant noise.
    “Mrs. Wells?”
    “It is nothing,”