The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

chuckled, pulling it open—“to leave an open door … you’d think they might have learned.”
    He spun to look behind them, his face abruptly stern, at the sound of approaching footsteps.
    “Or
we
would have …” muttered Doctor Svenson, and Chang hurriedly motioned them through the door. He closed it behind them, letting the lock catch. “It will delay them,” he whispered. “Quickly!”
    They heard the door being pulled repeatedly above them as they followed the spiral staircase for two turns, reaching anotherdoor, also ajar, where Chang eased past Miss Temple and Svenson to peek through first.
    “Might I suggest we acquire
weapons
?” whispered the Doctor.
    Miss Temple nodded her agreement, but instead of answering Chang had slipped through the door, his footfalls silent as a cat’s, leaving them to follow as best they could. They entered a strange curving corridor, like an opera house or a Roman theatre, with a row of doors on the inner side, as if they led to box seats, or toward the arena.
    “It is like the Institute,” Svenson whispered to Chang, who nodded, still focused on the corridor ahead. They had advanced, walking close to the inner wall, just so the staircase door was no longer visible behind them, when a scuffling noise beyond the next curve caused Chang to freeze. He held his open palm to indicate that they should stay, then carefully moved forward alone, pressed flat against the wall.
    Chang stopped. He glanced back at them and smiled, then darted forward in a sudden rush. Miss Temple heard one brief squawk of surprise and then three meaty thuds in rapid succession. Chang reappeared and motioned them on with a quick toss of his head.
    On the ground by another open door, his breathing labored, blood flowing freely from his nose, lay the Macklenburg Envoy, Herr Flaüss. Near his feebly twitching hand lay a revolver, which Chang snatched up, breaking it open to check the cylinder and then slamming it home. While Doctor Svenson knelt by the gasping man, Chang extended the weapon for Miss Temple to take. She shook her head.
    “Surely you or the Doctor,” she whispered.
    “The Doctor, then,” replied Chang. “I am more useful with a blade or my fists.” He looked down to watch Svenson briskly ransack the Envoy’s pockets, each search answered by an ineffectualgesture of protest from the injured man’s hands. Svenson looked up, behind them toward the staircase—footsteps. He stood, abandoning the Envoy. Chang pressed the pistol into Svenson’s hands and took hold of the Doctor’s sleeve and Miss Temple’s arm, pulling them both farther down the corridor until they could no longer see the Envoy. Svenson whispered his protest.
    “But, Cardinal, they are surely
inside
—”
    Chang tugged them both into an alcove and pressed a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough. Down the corridor Miss Temple heard rushing steps … that suddenly fell silent. She felt Chang’s body tense, and saw the Doctor’s thumb moving slowly to the hammer of the pistol. Someone was walking toward them, slowly … the footsteps stopped … and then retreated. She strained her ears … and heard a woman’s haughty, angry hiss.
    “
Leave
the idiot …”
    Chang waited … and then leaned close to them both.
    “Without getting rid of the body, we could not enter in secret—at this moment they are searching the room, assuming we have entered. This alone will halt whatever is happening inside. If we enter
now
, there is a chance to take their rearmost by surprise.”
    Miss Temple took a deep breath, feeling as if she had somehow in the last five minutes become a soldier. Before she could make sense of—or more importantly, protest against—this wrong-headed state of affairs Chang was gone and Doctor Svenson, taking her hand in his, was pulling her in tow.
    The Envoy remained in the doorway, raised to a sitting position but still incapacitated and insensible. They stepped past with no reaction from Herr Flaüss save a snuffle of his bleeding nose, into a dim stone entryway with narrow staircases to either side to balconies that wrapped around the room. Chang swiftly ducked to the left, with Svenson and Miss Temple directly behind him, crowding as quietly as possible out of sight. Miss Temple wrinkled her nose with distaste at the harsh reek of indigo clay. Ahead of them, through the foyer, they heard the Contessa.
    “He has been attacked—you heard nothing?”
    “I did not,” answered the dry, rumbling