The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

other hand he held Svenson’s collar, pulling them both to the door with all his fading strength. She looked back at the Comte, who despite his rage took care to step around the sea of broken glass, and did her best to aim. Svenson got his feet beneath them as they reached the door but Chang did not let him go. Miss Temple extended her arm to fire, but Chang yanked her back and into the corridor.
    “I must kill him!” she cried.
    “You are out of bullets!” Chang hissed. “If you pull the trigger he will know!”
    They’d not gone two more steps before the Doctor turned, struggling against Chang’s grip.
    “The Prince—he must die—”
    “We’ve done enough—” Chang pulled them both forward, his voice thick, coughing with the effort.
    “They will be married—”
    “The Comte is formidable—we are unarmed and weak. If we fight him one of us—at least—will die.” Chang could barely talk. “We have more to accomplish—and if we stop the others, we stop your idiot Prince. Remember Mrs. Dujong.”
    “But the Comte—” said Miss Temple, looking behind her for pursuit.
    “Cannot chase us alone—he must secure the Prince and Lydia.” Chang cleared his throat with a groan and spat past Svenson. “Besides … the Comte’s vanity has been …
wounded
…”
    His voice was raw. Miss Temple risked a glance, now finally running with the others on her own two feet, and saw with a piercing dismay the line of tears beneath Chang’s glasses, and heard the terrible sobs within his heaving breath. She wiped at her own face and did her best to keep up.
    They reached the stairwell and closed the door behind them. Chang leaned against it, his hands on his knees, and surrendered to another bout of coughing. Svenson looked at him with concern, his hand on Chang’s shoulder for comfort. He looked up at Miss Temple.
    “You did very well, Celeste.”
    “No more than anyone,” she answered, a bit pointedly. She did not want to speak of herself in the presence of Chang’s distress.
    “That is true.”
    Miss Temple shivered.
    “Her thoughts … at the end, in my mind …”
    “She was cruelly used,” said Svenson, “by the Comte … and by the world. No one should undergo such horror.”
    But Miss Temple knew the true horror for Angelique had not been transformation, but her untimely death, and her terrible silent scream was a protest as primal and as futile as the last cry of a sparrow taken by the hawk. Miss Temple had never been in the presence, been
possessed
by such fear—held tight to the very brink of death—and she wondered if she would die the same horrible way when it came to it—which it might this very night. She sniffed—or day, she had no idea what time it was. When they’d been outside watching the coaches it had still been dark, and now they were underground. Was it only a day since she’d first met Svenson in the Boniface lobby?
    She swallowed and shook the dread from her mind. With aperhaps characteristic keenness Miss Temple’s thoughts shifted from death to breakfast.
    “After this is settled,” she said, “I should quite enjoy something to eat.”
    Chang looked up at her. She smiled down at him, doing her level best to withstand the hardness of his face and the black vacuum of his glasses.
    “Well … it
has
been some time …” said Svenson politely, as if he were speaking of the weather.
    “It will be some while more,” managed Chang, hoarsely.
    “I’m sure it will,” said Miss Temple. “But being as I am
not
made of glass, it seemed like a reasonable topic of conversation.”
    “Indeed,” said Svenson, awkwardly.
    “Once this business is settled of course,” added Miss Temple.
    Chang straightened himself, his face somewhat composed. “We should go,” he muttered.
    Miss Temple smiled to herself as they climbed, hoping her words had served to distract Chang at least into annoyance, away from his grief. She was well aware that she did not understand what he felt, despite her loss of Roger, for she did not understand the connection between Chang and the woman. What sort of attachment could such
transacted
dealings instill? She was smart enough to see that bargains of some sort ran through most marriages—her own parents were a joining of land and the cash to work it—but for Miss Temple the objects of barter—titles, estates, money, inheritance—were always apart from the bodies involved. The idea of transacting one’s own body—that this was