The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

a spring.
Was
he near the kitchens? He frowned for a moment, placing himself in the house. On his previous visit, he had come in the front entrance with the Prince and spent his entire time in the left wing—around the ballroom—and then in the garden, where he’d seen Trapping’s body. He was now in unknown territory. He pushed the swinging door gently until there was enough of a gap to peek through.
    It was a room of bare wooden tables and a plain stone floor. Around one table were two men and three women—two sitting, and a younger woman pouring beer from a jug into wooden cups—all five in plain, dark woolen work clothes. Between them on the table was an empty platter and a stack of wooden bowls—servants taking a late repast. Svenson threw his shoulders back and marched forward in his best impression of Major Blach, deepening his accent and worsening his diction for maximum haughtiness.
    “Excuse me! I am requiring after the Prince Karl-Horst von Maasmärck—he has come this way? Or—excuse me—
this
way he shall be found?”
    They stared at him as if he were speaking Chinese. Again Doctor Svenson assumed the natural actions of Major Blach, which was to say he screamed at them.
    “The Prince! With your Miss Vandaariff—this way? One of you tells me at once!”
    The poor servants shrank back in their chairs, the pleasant end of their evening meal ruined by his insistent, threatening bellow. Three of them pointed with an abject eagerness at the opposite door and one of the women actually stood, nodding with cringing deference, indicating the same door.
    “That way, Sir—not these ten minutes—begging your pardon—”
    “
Ach
, it is very kind of you I am sure—please and be back to your business!” snapped Svenson, stepping to the door before anyone thought to question who in the world he was and why a man in such a filthy, unkempt state was following the Prince in such a hurry. He could only hope that the demands of the Cabal were as oblique, and the figures just as imperious.
    It was not difficult to believe.
    Once through the swinging door, Svenson stopped again, reaching behind him to still its movement. He stood at one end of a wider, open drawing room—a sort of servants’ corridor with a low overhanging ceiling, designed to allow passage without it being intrusive to the room at large. Above him was a musicians’ balcony from which Svenson could hear the delicate plucking of a harp. Directly across the corridor was another swinging door, perhaps ten yards away, but the way across was fully open to the larger room. He threw himself against the small abutment of wall that hid the swinging door and listened to the raised voices of those people directly beyond it.
    “They must
choose
, Mr. Bascombe! I cannot suspend the natural order indefinitely! As you know, beyond this immediate matterlooms the Comte’s transformations, the initiations in the theatre, the many, many important guests identified for collection—to all of which my personal attention is crucial—”
    “And as I have told
you
, Doctor Lorenz, I do not know their wishes!”
    “One way or the other—it is very simple! He is made use of at once or he is given over to putrefaction and waste!”
    “Yes, you have made those choices clear—”
    “Not clear enough that they will act!” Lorenz began to sputter with the condescending pedantry of a seasoned academic. “You will see—at the temples, at the nails, at the lips, the discoloration—the seepage—you will no doubt, even
you
, discern the
smell—
”
    “Berate me as you please, Doctor, we will wait for the Minister’s word.”
    “I
will
berate you—”
    “And I remind you that the fate of the Queen’s own brother is not for
you
to decide!”
    “I say … what was that noise?”
    This was another voice. One that Svenson felt he knew but could not place.
    More importantly, it referred to the sound of his own entry through the swinging door. The others stopped their argument.
    “What noise?” snapped Lorenz.
    “I don’t know. But I thought I heard something.”
    “Aside from the harp?” asked Bascombe.
    “Yes, that lovely harp,” muttered Lorenz waspishly. “Exactly what every slaughtered Royal needs when lying in state in a leaking tub of ice—”
    “No, no … from over
there
…” said the voice, quite clearly turning to the side of the room where Svenson stood, quite minimally concealed.
    The voice of Flaüss.
    * * *
    The Envoy was with