The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

with the Comte, who was striding toward a large glowing greenhouse, the smeared windows diffusing the lantern light within. The Comte unlocked a glass-paned door and entered, holding it open for Svenson. Svenson walked through and into a wave of moistly cloying hot air. D’Orkancz shut the door behind, leaving the four guards in the garden. He nodded to a nearby hat stand.
    “You will want to take off your coat.”
    The Comte pulled off his fur as he crossed the greenhouse—which Svenson realized was carpeted—to a large canopied bed, the curtains drawn tight around it. He placed the coat, his hat, and his stick on a small wooden work table and delicately peeked through a gap in the curtains. He stared in for perhaps two minutes, his face impassive. Already Svenson could feel the sweat prickling over his body. He put his medical kit down and peeled off his greatcoat, feeling the weight of the pistol in the pocket, and hung it on the rack. He disliked being apart from the weapon, but he didn’t expect he could shoot his way past d’Orkancz and all of the guards in any case. With a glance, d’Orkancz gestured him to the bed. He held the curtain aside as Svenson drew near.
    On the bed lay a shivering woman, wrapped in heavy blankets, her eyes closed, her skin pale, her breathing shallow. Svenson glanced at the Comte.
    “Is she sleeping?” he whispered.
    “I don’t believe so. If she were not cold, I should say it is a fever. As she is cold, I cannot say—perhaps you can. Please…” He stepped away from the bed, pulling apart the curtains as he did.
    Svenson leaned forward to study the woman’s face. Her features struck Svenson as slightly Asiatic. He pulled up her eyelid, felt the pulse in her throat, noted with unease the cobalt cast of her lips and tongue, and with an even greater distress the impressions across her face and throat—similar to the kind of marks a corset (or an octopus) might imprint on a woman’s skin. He reached under the blankets for her hand, felt the cold of it, and listened to her pulse there as well. He saw that on the tip of each finger the skin had been worn away. He reached across the bed to find the other hand, where the fingers were identical. Svenson pulled the blankets back to her waist. The woman was nude, and the bluish impressions on her skin ran the length of her torso. He felt a movement at his side. The Comte had brought over the medical kit. Svenson fished out his stethoscope, and listened to the woman’s lungs. He turned to the Comte. “Has she been in water?”
    “She has not,” rasped the Comte.
    Svenson frowned, listening to her labored breathing. It sounded exactly like a person half-drowned. He reached back into the bag for a lancet and a thermometer. He would need to know her temperature, and then he was going to need some of her blood.

    Some forty minutes later, Svenson had washed his hands and was rubbing his eyes. He looked out to see if the sun was coming up, but the sky was still dark. He yawned, trying to remember when he had last been up through an entire night—when he was more resilient, in any case. The Comte appeared at his side with a white china cup.
    “Coffee with brandy,” he said, handing the cup to Svenson and walking back to the table to pick up his own. The coffee was hot and black, almost burned, but perfect. Along with the brandy—a rather large amount of brandy for so small a cup—it was exactly what he needed. He took another deep drink, finishing the cup, and set it down.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    The Comte d’Orkancz nodded, then turned his gaze to the bed. “What is your opinion, Doctor? Is it possible she will recover?”
    “It would help if I had more information.”
    “Perhaps. I will tell you that her condition is the result of an accident, that she was not in water—I can only assure you of this, not explain it convincingly—yet water was permeating her person. Nor was this mere water, Doctor, but a liquid of special properties, an energetically
charged
liquid. The woman had laid her person open to this procedure. To my great regret the procedure was interrupted. The direction of the liquid was reversed and she was—how to say this—both depleted and flooded at the same time.”
    “Is this—I have heard—I have seen, on the Prince—the scarring—the Process—”
    “Process?” d’Orkancz snapped in alarm, but then as quickly his voice became calm. “Of course, the Prince…you would have spoken to