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The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Titel: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Gordon Dahlquist
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of bright orange fluid. At the sight of it the men took another step back, their expressions shifting in a trice from curious lust to supplication.
    The moment Elöise was clear Miss Temple released the button and stepped directly to the man without the tray and shoved him with both of her hands and all of her strength back into the man who held it. Both servants retreated tottering through the metal door and onto the slick black and white marble, their attention focused solely on not dropping any of their precious breakables. Miss Temple helped Elöise to her feet and took the orange bottle from her. Behind them the dumbwaiter clanked into life, disappearing downward. They dashed into the foyer, but the servants, recovered somewhat, would not let them past.
    “What do you think you’re
doing
?” shouted the one with the tray, nodding urgently at the bottle in Miss Temple’s hand. “How did you get that? We—we could—we
all
could have—”
    The other simply hissed at her. “
Put that down
!”
    “
You
put it down,” Miss Temple snapped. “Put down the tray and leave! Both of you!”
    “We will do no such thing!” snapped the man with the tray,narrowing his eyes viciously. “Who are you to give orders? If you think—just because you’re one of the master’s
whores—

    “
Get out of the way
!” the other man hissed again. “We have work to do! We will be whipped! And you’ve made us wait
again
for the dumbwaiter!”
    He tried to edge around them toward the tower door, but the man with the tray did not move, glaring with a rage that Miss Temple knew arose from injured pride and petty stakes.
    “They will not! They’re not going anywhere! They need to explain themselves—and they’ll do it to me or to Mr. Blenheim!”
    “We don’t need Blenheim!” his partner hissed. “The
last
thing—for God’s sake—”
    “
Look
at them,” said the man with the tray, his expression growing by the moment more ugly. “They’re not
at
any of the ceremonies—they’re running
away
—why else was she screaming?”
    This thought penetrated the other man, and in a pause both studied the two less-than-demurely-clad women.
    “If we stop them I wager we’ll be rewarded.”
    “If we don’t get this work done we’ll be sacked.”
    “We have to wait for it to come back up anyway.”
    “We do … do you reckon they’ve stolen those robes?”
    Throughout this fatiguing dialog, Miss Temple debated her course, edging farther from the door, half-step by half-step, as the two men hesitated and bickered—but she could see that they were about to be ridiculous and manly, and so she must act. In her hand was the orange bottle, which evidently held some appallingly violent chemical. If she broke it over one of their heads, it was probable that both men would be incapacitated and they could run. At the same time, the way everyone flinched from it, like schoolgirls from a spider, she could not depend that once shattered it might not—by fumes, perhaps—afflict herself and Elöise. Further, the bottle was an excellent weapon to keep for a future crisis or negotiation, and anything of value Miss Temple much preferred to possessrather than spend. But whatever she did must be decisive enough to forestall these fellows’ pursuit, for she was deeply annoyed at all this seemingly endless
running
.
    With a dramatic gesture Miss Temple drew back the bottle and with a cry brought her arm forward, as if to break it over the head of the man who held the tray and who—because of the tray—could not raise his own hands to ward off the blow. But such was the threat of the bottle that he could not stop his hands from trying and as Miss Temple’s arm swept down he lost his grip on the tray, which dropped to the marble floor with a crash, its contents of bottles and flasks smashing and bursting against each other with an especially satisfying clamor.
    The men looked up at her, both hunched at the shoulders against the impact of her blow, their faces gaping at the fact that Miss Temple had never released—had never intended to release—the orange bottle. At once the gazes of all four dropped to the tray, whose surface erupted with hissing and steaming and a telltale odor that made Miss Temple gag. This odor was not, as she would have anticipated, the noxious indigo clay, but one that brought her back to the coach at night as she struggled free of Spragg’s heavy spurting body—the concentrated smell of human blood.

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