The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

if not by impact. He slowly slid along the strut, painfully shifting his grip on the freezing metal around the intervening cross-pieces. His hands felt numb—he was gripping as tightly with his forearms as his fingers.
    It took him ten minutes to crawl ten feet. The gondola was directly beneath him. As gently as he could he let down his legs and felt the solid metal beneath his feet. His eyes were streaming—whether with tears or the wind, Doctor Svenson hadn’t a clue.
    The gondola was a smooth metal box of blackened steel, suspended some three feet below the massive gasbag by metal struts bolted to its frame at each corner. The surface of the roof was slick from the cold and the moisture in the foggy coastal air, and Doctor Svenson was both too paralyzed with fear and too numbed by exertion to allow himself so near the edge to cling to one of these corner struts. Instead, he crouched in the center of the roof with his arms wrapped around the same metal brace he’d used to climb forward. His teeth chattered as he forced his staggered mind to examine his circumstances. The gondola was perhaps twelve feet across and forty feet in length. He could see a round hatch set into therooftop, but going to it would require him to release his hold on the metal brace. He shut his eyes and focused on breathing, shivering despite his greatcoat and his recent exertion—or even because of it, the sweat over his body and in his clothing now viciously chilling his flesh in the bitter wind. He opened his eyes at a sudden lurch, holding on to the metal brace for his life. The dirigible was turning and Svenson felt his grip inexorably weakening as the force of the turn pulled him away. With an insane bark of laughter he saw himself—in a desperate attempt to manage his grip on a swiftly turning airship—in comparison to his lifelong anxiety at climbing
ladders
. He remembered just the day before—was it so recently?—emerging on his hands and knees onto the rooftop of the Macklenburg compound! If he’d only known! Svenson tightened his grip and cackled again—the rooftop! He was clinging to the very answer to the mystery of the Prince’s escape—they’d come for him with the dirigible! The rotors would be silent at a lower speed—they could have easily drifted into position and lowered men to liberate the Prince with no one being the wiser. Even the crimped cigarette butt made sense—discarded by the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza as she watched from a gondola window. What still made no sense however, was
why
the Prince had been stolen without the other Cabal members—Xonck and Crabbé at the least—being aware of it. Like the death of Arthur Trapping, it lay between his enemies without explanation … if he could just unravel either mystery … he might understand it all.
    The dirigible straightened out of the turn. The fog thickened around Svenson, and he moved forward on the strut, careful not to step too heavily—the last thing he wanted was for anyone below to know he was there. He shut his eyes once more and tried to ease his heaving breath to mere gasps and chattering teeth. He would not move until his arms fell off or until the dirigible found its destination, whichever happened first.
    When he opened his eyes the dirigible was making another turn, less precipitous than before and—he hadn’t realized, but now saw through ragged gaps in the fog—at a lower altitude, some twohundred feet above what looked like a low fennish grassland, with scarcely a single tree in sight. Were they possibly crossing the sea? He saw lights through the gloom, first dim and winking, but as they went on emerging with a growing clarity that allowed him to sketch out the entirety of their destination—for indeed, as he studied it the dirigible continued to descend.
    It was an enormous structure, but relatively low to the ground—Svenson’s guess was two or three stories—giving out an impression of massive strength. The place as a whole was shaped something like a disconnected jawbone, with the center space taken up by some sort of ornamental garden. As they soared closer he could hear a variation in the sound of the rotors—they were slowing down—as he saw more detail: the large open plaza in front, thronged with coaches and dotted with the ant-like (or as they neared, mouse-like) figures of drivers and grooms. Svenson looked to the other side and saw a pair of waving lanterns on the rooftop and behind the lanterns a group of