The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Staggering away from him with a puling cry, clutching his bandaged arm—which had taken the brunt of the door—was the aged Mr. Gray, Rosamonde’s creature who had administered the Process to the unfortunate Mr. Flaüss. Chang slashed him across the face with the haft of the stick, spinning him to the floor, and glancedquickly to either side. Gray was alone. This hallway was wider, the ceiling still banked, but lit with gaslight sconces instead of torches, and Chang could see doors—or niches?—lining the inner walls. Before Gray could raise his head and bleat for help—which Chang could see he was about to do—he dropped onto the man’s chest, pinning Gray’s arms cruelly under his knees, and pressed the haft of his stick hard across his throat. With a venomous hiss that caught Gray’s full attention, Chang laid the tip of his dagger on the old man’s face, pointing directly at his left eye.
    “Where is Miss Temple?” he whispered.
    Gray opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. Chang eased up his pressure on the fellow’s windpipe.
    “Try again,” he hissed.
    “I—I do not
know
!” pleaded Mr. Gray.
    Chang doubled up his fist holding the dagger and slammed it into Mr. Gray’s cheek, knocking his head brutally against the stone.
    “Try again,” he hissed. Gray began to weep. Chang raised his fist. Gray’s eyes widened in desperate fear and his mouth began to move, groping for words.
    “I—don’t!—I don’t—I have not seen her—she’s to be taken to the theatre—or the chamber—elsewhere in the house! I do not know! I am only to prepare the works—the great works—”
    Chang slammed his fist once more into Mr. Gray’s head.
    “Who is with her?” he hissed. “How many guards?”
    “I cannot
tell
you!” Gray was weeping openly. “There are many Macklenburgers, Dragoons—she is with the Comte—with Miss Vandaariff—they will be processed together—”
    “
Processed
?”
    “Redeemed—”
    “
Redeemed
?” Chang felt the natural pleasure of violence blooming directly into fury.
    “You are too late! By now it will be started—to interrupt it will kill them both!” Mr. Gray looked up and saw his own reflection in the smoked black lenses over Cardinal Chang’s eyes and wailed. “O—they all said you were!—why are you not
dead
?”
    His eyes opened even wider, if that were possible, in shock, as Chang drove the dagger into Mr. Gray’s heart, which he knew would be quicker and far less bloody than cutting the man’s throat. In a matter of seconds Gray’s body had relaxed and gone forever still. Chang rolled back onto his knees, still breathing hard, wiped the dagger on Gray’s coat, and sheathed it. He spat again, felt the stab of pain in his lungs, and muttered darkly.
    “How do you know I am not?”
    He dragged the body back to the stairwell and down one full curve before propping it up and tipping it over, doing his best to send the unregretted Mr. Gray all the way to the bottom—wherever it had landed, it was at least out of sight to anyone coming to this door. He pocketed the key Gray had stupidly left in the lock and returned to the corridor, trying to guess what Gray had been doing. Chang sighed. There had been more information to glean from the man, but he was in a hurry, and itching, after being hunted and assailed, to strike some blow in answer. That it was against an aged, wounded man was to Cardinal Chang no matter at all. Every last one of these people was his enemy, and he would not scruple to excuse a single soul.
    The niches in the inner wall were old cell doors—heavy metal monstrosities whose handles had been hacked off with a chisel and sealed shut with iron bolts driven into the brick. Chang laced his fingers in the small barred window and strained but could not shift it at all. He peered into the cell. The far wall of bars was draped with canvas. On the other side of the canvas, he knew, was the great chamber, but this was no way for him to reach it. He paced rapidly down the length of the curving hallway. Gray was another fool from the Institute, like Lorenz and the man he’d surprised making the book. As a reader of poetry, Chang believed that learning was dangerous and best suited for private contemplation, not something to put in the service of the highest bidder—as the Institute did, in thrall to the patronage of men with blind dreamsof empire. Society was not bettered by such men of “vision”—though, if Chang was