The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

disquieting whimper. Caroline’s attention of course went the same way, as did the Macklenburg trooper’s.
    Miss Temple darted for the inner door, reaching it and turning the handle before anyone even noticed what she was doing. She had the door open and was already charging through before Caroline called out in surprise … and then Miss Temple cried out herself, for she ran headlong into the Comte d’Orkancz. He stood in heavy shadow, fully blocking the doorway with his massive frame, somehow even larger for the thick leather apron over his white shirt, the enormous leather gauntlets sheathing his arms up to each elbow, and the fearsome brass-bound helmet cradled under one arm, crossed with leather straps, great glass lenses like an insect’s eyes and strange metal boxes welded over the mouth and ears. She flung herself away from him and back into the room.
    The Comte glanced once, disapprovingly, at Caroline, and then down to Miss Temple.
    “I have come myself to collect you,” he said. “It is long past time you are redeemed.”

TWO
Cathedral
    C hang made a conscious effort to bend his knees—knowing that a rigid leg could easily mean a shattered joint—and did so just as he collided hard with a curving, hot wall of filthy, slippery metal. The actual time in the air, undoubtedly brief, was enough to allow a momentary awareness of suspension, a rising in his stomach which, due to the total darkness in the shaft, was exceptionally disorienting. His mind made sense of the fall—he’d struck a curve in the pipe, after a drop of perhaps ten or fifteen feet—as his body crumpled and rolled, losing all pretense of balance or control, and then dropped again as the pipe straightened into vertical once more. This time he slammed down even harder, knocking the breath from his lungs on a welded corner—he’d struck a gap where his pipe was joined by another, his upper body striking the seam and his legs continuing past, dragging him downwards. He scrabbled for a grip, couldn’t get one on the slick metal—covered with the same slimy deposit caked onto the lattice in the urn—and slid down into the darkness, just keeping hold of his stick as it clattered from under his coat. But the impact had slowed his descent, and he was no longer falling but sliding—this pipe was set at an angle. The air rising up to Chang was more noxious and becoming hotter—it seemed grimly probable that this path would feed him into their furnace. He pressed his legs and his arms to the side of the pipe, grudgingly but surely slowing his descent. By the time he slammed into the next junction he was able to catch hold of the lip and stop himself completely, legs swinging below him in the dark. He pulled himself up with an effort and wedged his torso into the opening, so he was nearly balanced and could relax his arms. Chang caught his breath, wondering how fardown he had come, and what in the utter world he had been thinking.
    He shut his eyes—he couldn’t see anything anyway—and forced himself to focus on what he could hear. From the pipe below came a steady, metallic rattle, in time with regularly spaced gusts of steaming, chemically fouled air. He leaned into the second, joining pipe, which was not as large—large enough to hold him?—and cooler to the touch. He waited, allowing time for a longer cycle, but heard no such rattle from its depths nor felt any such toxic exhalations. He realized absently that his head hurt. The first tendrils of bilious nausea were rising in his stomach. He had to get out. He wrenched himself around in the narrow space and slipped his feet into the narrower pipe. There was just room to fit, and Chang pushed from his mind the prospect of the pipe getting thinner mid-way down—he did not want to think about trying to claw his way back against the slippery interior. He tucked his stick under his coat and pinned it with his left arm, and eased himself down as slowly as he could, pressing his legs against the side of the shaft. There was less of the greasy accretion and Chang found that he could more or less manage his descent, for the pipe went down at a milder angle. The farther he sank from the main shaft, the clearer became the air, and the less he worried about being dropped into a cauldron of molten glass. The pipe continued for some distance—he stopped even trying to guess—and then flattened out, blessedly without narrowing, so that he was on his back (and doing his best to keep his