The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Aspiche abruptly slam it shut. A moment later it was locked, and his bootsteps retreated into silence. Miss Temple sank back on her haunches and sighed. She dabbed at her face, still sticky with saliva and port, with the sleeve of her robe, and looked around her.
    It was, as she had speculated earlier, the exact sort of dusty, disused parlor where she had met Spragg and Farquhar, but with a cry Miss Temple saw that she was not alone. She leapt to her feet and lunged at the two figures sprawled facedown on the floor. They were warm—both warm and—she whimpered with joy—they breathed! She had been reunited at last with her comrades! With all her available strength, she did her best to turn them over.
    Miss Temple’s face was wet with tears, but she smiled as Doctor Svenson erupted into a fearsome spate of coughing, and she did her best to wedge her knees under his shoulders and help him to sit up. In the dim light she could not see if there was blood, but she could smell the pungent odors of the indigo clay infused throughout his clothing and his hair. She shoved again and swiveled his body so he could lean back against a nearby settee. He coughed again and recovered so far as to cover his mouth with a hand. Miss Temple brushed the hair from his eyes, beaming.
    “Doctor Svenson—” she whispered.
    “My dear Celeste—are we dead?”
    “We are not, Doctor—”
    “Excellent—is Chang?”
    “No, Doctor—he is right here—”
    “Are we still at Harschmort?”
    “Yes, locked in a room.”
    “And your mind remains your own?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “Capital … I am with you in a moment … beg pardon.”
    He turned away from her and spat, took a deep breath, groaned, and heaved himself to a full sitting position, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
    “My suffering Christ …” he muttered.
    “I have just been with our enemies!” she said. “Absolutely everything is going on.”
    “Imagine it must be … pray forgive my momentary lapse …”
    Miss Temple had scuttled to the other side of Cardinal Chang, doing her best not to cry at the spectacle he presented. If anything, the noxious smell was even more intense, and the dried crusts of blood around his nose and mouth and his collar, and the deathly paleness of his face, made clear the extremity of his health. She began to wipe his face with her robe, her other hand holding his head, when she realized that his dark glasses had come off as she’d rolled him over. She stared at the truly vicious scars across each eye and bit her lip at the poor man’s torment. Chang’s breath rattled in his chest like a shaken box of jumbled nails. Was he dying? Miss Temple pulled his head to her bosom and cradled it, whispering gently.
    “Cardinal Chang, … you must come back to us … it is Celeste … I am with the Doctor … we cannot survive without you …”
    Svenson heaved himself from his place and took hold of Chang’s wrist, placing his other hand upon the man’s forehead. A moment later his fingers were probing Chang’s throat and then Svenson had placed his ear against Chang’s chest, to gauge hisragged breath. He raised himself, sighed, and gently disengaged Miss Temple and searched with deliberate fingers along the back of Chang’s skull, where he’d been struck by the Colonel’s truncheon.
    She stared helplessly at his probing fingers, stalking pale through Chang’s black hair.
    “I thought you’d undergone their Process,” he observed mildly.
    “No. I was able to counterfeit the scars,” she said. “I’m sorry if—well, I did not mean to disappoint you—”
    “Hush, it sounds an excellent plan.”
    “The Contessa found me out nevertheless.”
    “That is no shame, I’m sure … I am happy to find you whole. May I ask—I am almost afraid to say it—”
    “Elöise and I became separated. She bore the same false scars—I do not think she has been taken, but do not know where she is. Of course I am not entirely sure I know
who
she is.”
    The Doctor smiled at her, rather lost and wan, his eyes achingly clear. “Nor am I … that is the strangest part of it.” He looked pointedly at Miss Temple with the same troubling open gaze. “Of course, when does one ever know?”
    He pulled his eyes from hers and cleared his throat.
    “Indeed,” sniffed Miss Temple, moved by this unexpected glimpse into the Doctor’s heart, “still, I am terribly sorry to have lost her.”
    “We have each done our best … that we are alive is a marvel …