The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

into the house.
    Behind in the turret he heard a muted roar—the crowd in the cells crying out—but before he could even begin to wonder why, Chang’s knees buckled with the sudden visceral impact of another vision thrust into his mind. To his everlasting shame, he was presented with
himself
, stick in hand, his appearance fine as he could make it—a threadbare vanity, with an expression of poorly veiled hunger, reaching to take the small hand extended to him—extended, he now knew (and now
felt
), with disinterest and disdain.He saw himself for one flashing, impossibly sharp moment through the eyes and heart of Angelique, and stood revealed within her mind as a regretted relic of a former life that she had at all times loathed with every fiber of her being.
    The vision snapped away from him and he staggered. He looked up to see each of the Dragoons gathering themselves, blinking and regaining their military bearing, just as he saw the woman shake her head. She looked at him with pity, but did not alter her guarded expression. She repeated her gesture for Chang to join her.
    “It would be best, Cardinal Chang,” she said, “that we move out of
range
.”
    They had walked in silence, Dragoons in line ahead of them and behind, Chang’s pounding heart yet to shake free of the bitter impact of Angelique’s vision, his sweetest memories now stained with regret, until he saw the woman glance down at the book in his hand. He said nothing. Chang was caught between fury and despair, physically ruined, his mind drifting deeper into acrid fatalism with each step. He could not look at a soldier, the woman—or at any of the curious well-fed faces from the household that peered at him past the Dragoons as they walked by—without rehearsing in his thoughts the swiftest and most savage angle of attack with his razor.
    “May I ask where you acquired that?” the woman asked, still looking at the book.
    “In a room,” snapped Chang. “It had transfixed the lady it had been given to. When I came upon her she was quite unaware of the soldier in the process of her rape.”
    He spoke in as sharp a tone as he could. The woman in the black feather mask did not flinch.
    “May I ask what you did?”
    “Apart from taking the book?” Chang asked. “It’s so long ago I can barely recall—you don’t mean to say you
care
?”
    “Is that so strange?”
    Chang stopped, his voice rising to an unaccustomed harshness. “From what I have seen, Madame, it is
impossible
!”
    At his tone the Dragoons stopped, their boots stamping in unison on the marble floor, blades ready. The woman raised her hand to them, indicating patience.
    “Of course, it must be very upsetting. I understand the Comte’s work is difficult—both to imagine and to bear. I have undergone the Process, of course, but that is nothing compared to what … what you must have seen … in the tower.”
    Her face was entirely reasonable, even sympathetic—Chang could not bear it. He gestured angrily behind them to the bloodstained floor.
    “And what happened there? What
difficult
piece of work? Another execution?”
    “Your own hands, Cardinal, are quite covered with blood—are you in any place to speak?”
    Chang looked down despite himself—from Mr. Gray to the troopers down below, he was fairly spattered with gore—but met her gaze with harsh defiance. None of them mattered. They were dupes, fools, animals in harness … perhaps exactly like himself.
    “I cannot tell you what happened here,” she went on. “I was elsewhere in the house. But surely it can only reinforce, for us both, how
serious
these matters are.”
    His lips curled into a sneer.
    “If you will continue,” she said, “for we are quite delayed …”
    “Continue where?” asked Chang.
    “To where you shall answer your
questions
, of course.”
    Chang did not move, as if staying would somehow put off the confirmation of the deaths of Miss Temple and the Doctor. The soldiers were staring at him. The woman looked directly into his dark lenses and leaned forward, her nostrils flaring at the indigo stench but her expression unwavering. He saw the clarity in her eyes that spoke to the Process, but none of the pride or the arrogance.As he was closer to the heart of the Cabal, had he here met a more advanced and trusted minion?
    “We must go,” she whispered. “You are not the center of this business.”
    Before Chang could respond they were interrupted by a loud shout from the corridor