The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

together by sweat), his pallid skin sagged below his eyes and around his family’s weak mouth and sunken jaw, and his teeth were already beginning to go. Svenson stepped over to the insensible man—overgrown boy, really—and felt the pulse at his jugular, antic despite the laudanum, and once more cursed his own failure. The strange looping pattern seared into the Prince’s skin around the eyes and across his temples—not quite a burn, not exactly even raw, more of a deep discoloration and with luck temporary—mocked Doctor Svenson’s every previous effort to control his willful charge.
    As he looked down, he resisted the impulse to grind the cigarette into the Prince’s skin and chided himself for his own mistaken tactics, his foolish trust, his ill-afforded deference. He’d focused on the Prince himself and paid far too little attention to those new figures around him—the woman’s family, the diplomats, the soldiers, the high-placed hangers-on—never thinking he’d be tearing the Prince away from them at pistol-point. He barely even knew who they were—far less what part in their plans had been laid aside for the easily dazzled Karl-Horst. All that had been the business of Flaüss, the Envoy—which had either gone horribly wrong or…hadn’t. Svenson needed to report to Flaüss on the Prince’s health, but he knew that he must use the interview with the Envoy to determine whether he was truly without allies in the diplomatic compound. He noticed his overcoat slung across the bedpost and folded it over his arm—heavier than it ought to be from the pistol tucked into the pocket. He looked around the room—nothing particularly dangerous should the Prince wake up in his absence. He pulled the bolt on the door and stepped into the hall. Next to the door stood a soldier in black, carbine at his side, stiffly at attention. Doctor Svenson locked the door with a large iron key and returned the key to his jacket pocket. The soldier’s attention did not waver as the Doctor walked past and down the hallway, nor did the Doctor think twice about the guard. He was used enough to these soldiers and their iron discipline—any question he had would be aimed at their officer, who was unaccountably still absent from the compound.
    Svenson reached the end of the hall and stood on the landing, his gaze edging over the rail to the lobby three floors below. From above he could see the black and white checkerboard pattern of the marble floor—an optical illusion of staircases impossibly leading ever upwards and downwards to one another at the same time—with the crystal chandelier hovering above it. For Svenson, who did not like heights, just seeing the chandelier’s heavy chain suspended in the air before him gave him a whiff of vertigo. Looking up to the high top of the stairwell, where the chain was anchored above the fourth floor landing—which he could not help but do, like an ass—made him palpably dizzy. He stepped away from the rail and climbed to the third floor, walking close to the wall, his eyes on the floor. He was still staring at his feet as he walked past the guards at the landing and outside the Envoy’s door. With a quick grimace he squared his shoulders and knocked. Without waiting for an answer, he went in.

    When Svenson had returned from the Institute with the Prince, Flaüss had not been present—nor could anyone say where he’d gone. The Envoy had burst into the Prince’s room some forty minutes later—in the midst of the Doctor’s squalid efforts to purge his patient of any poison or narcotic—and imperiously demanded what Doctor Svenson thought he was doing. Before he could reply, Flaüss had seen the revolver on the side table and then the marks on Karl-Horst’s face and began screaming. Svenson turned to see the Envoy’s face was white—with rage or fear he wasn’t sure—but the sight had snapped the last of his patience and he’d savagely driven Flaüss from the room. Now, as he entered the office, he was keenly aware that of Conrad Flaüss he actually knew precious little. A provincial aristocrat with pretensions toward the cosmopolitan, schooled for the law, an acquaintance of a royal uncle at university—all the qualifications required to meet the diplomatic needs of the Prince’s betrothal visit, and if a permanent embassy were to result from the marriage, as everyone hoped it would, to take over as the Duchy’s first full ambassador. To Flaüss—to