The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

flooded with gas and boiling fluid. Her body arched on the table, and the air was filled with a hideous rising whine. Chang could not look away. The Comte pulled a second lever and her fingers and toes began to twitch … a third, and to Chang’s growing terror their color began to change even more, a deadening, freezing blue. D’Orkancz pushed in two stops at once, and shifted the first lever back. Thewhine redoubled its intensity, ringing within every pipe and echoing throughout the vaulted cathedral. The crowd above them gasped and Chang heard voices shouting from the cells—cries of excitement and delight, hoots of encouragement—that grew into a second buzzing chorus. Her body arched again and again, rippling the hoses like a dog shaking off the rain, and then within the screams and roars Chang heard another tone that pierced his heart like a spike: the rattle of Angelique’s own voice, an insensate moan from the very depths of her lungs, as if the final defenses of her body were expending themselves against the vast mechanical assault. Tears flowed unheeded down the Cardinal’s face. Anything he did would kill her—but was she not being destroyed before his eyes? He could not move.
    The whining roar snapped at once to nothing, silencing the entire chamber like a gunshot. With a sudden rippling shimmer that Chang could scarce credit he was seeing, a wave of fluid rushed beneath her skin along each limb from her feet and hands, flooding up to her hips and torso and finally enveloping her head.
    Angelique’s flesh was transformed to a brilliant, shining translucent blue, as if she herself … her very body … had been before them all transmuted into glass.
    The Comte pulled up his stops and pushed in his final lever. He turned up to the throng of spectators and raised his hand in triumph.
    “It has been done!”
    The crowd erupted into ecstatic cheering and applause. D’Orkancz nodded to them, raised his other hand, and then turned to Blach, for a moment pulling the speaking hose from its place.
    “
Kill him
.”
    The obscenity of what d’Orkancz had perpetrated on Angelique—was it not a rape of her
essence
?—at once spurred Chang into action and turned his heart to ice. He launched himself around thethird table at the two Macklenburg guards at Miss Poole’s head, the lessons of a thousand battles pouring into each relentless, bitter blow. Without the slightest pause he swung at them, a feint—their sabers rising to his chest with the unison of German training—and then swept both blades aside with his stick. He slashed his dagger at the nearest man’s face, laying it open from the tip of the jaw to the nose—a spray of blood against the silver pipes—the trooper wheeled away. The other riposted, stabbing hard at Chang’s body. Chang broke his stick deflecting the thrust past his shoulder, and knew the lunge had brought the trooper too close. He jabbed the dagger beneath the young man’s ribs and ripped it free, already—for each second seemed to arrive from a great distance as he watched—dropping to his knees. Above his head, another bullet from Blach flew into the wall of pipes. The third trooper came around from Miss Poole’s feet, stepping over his fallen companions. Chang turned and dove forward to Angelique. Blach stepped near Angelique’s head to give himself room to shoot. The Comte d’Orkancz stood at Angelique’s feet. Chang was boxed in—the trooper was right behind him. Chang wheeled and cut through a handful of hoses. The hideous, reeking gas, spitting out like a polar flame, flew into the trooper’s face. Chang wheeled, knocked the saber aside, and drove a fist into the fellow’s throat, stunning him where he stood. Before Blach could shoot, he bull-rushed the trooper around the head of the table directly at the Major. A shot crashed out and Chang felt the trooper lurch. Another shot and he felt a burn—the bullet (or was it bone?) blowing through the soldier to graze his shoulder. He shoved the dying man at Blach and immediately dove for the door.
    But Blach had done the same thing and they faced each other directly, perhaps two feet apart. Blach swept the gun to bear, firing as Chang slashed at the Major’s hand. The shot went wide as the dagger bit into Blach’s fingers and the pistol fell to the floor. Blach cried out in a rage and leapt after it. The door was still blocked by the metal cart and the two helmeted men behind. Chang shoved with all his strength,