The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

and control. Yet if the Doctor could prise the Prince from the clutches of the Cabal—Process or no—might there not be yet some hope, providing the ministers around him were responsible and sane?
    But then with a grim snort he recalled his own brief conversation with Robert Vandaariff over Trapping’s corpse. Such was the great man’s irresistible influence that any unfortunate or scandalous occurrence—like the Colonel’s death—was made to disappear. The grandson of Robert Vandaariff—especially if inheriting as a child and requiring a regent—would be the best return the financier could realize on the investment of his daughter. After thechild’s birth Karl-Horst would be unnecessary—and, given everything, wholly unregretted at his death.
    But what were Svenson’s choices? If Karl-Horst were to die
without
issue, the Macklenburg throne would pass to the children of his cousin Hortenze-Caterina, the oldest of whom was but five. Wasn’t this a better fate for the Duchy than being swallowed by Vandaariff’s empire? Svenson had to face the deeper truth of his mission from the Baron. Knowing what he did of the forces in play, if he could not prevent the marriage, which seemed impossible, he would have to shoot Prince Karl-Horst down—to be a traitor in service to a larger patriotism.
    The reasoning left the taste of ash in his mouth, but he could see no other way.
    Svenson sighed, but then, like the shift of a mountebank’s contrick, the line of light in front of him—which he had, in the darkness, taken to be a distant door—was revealed for what it was: the thin gap between two curtains, not two feet in front of his face. He gently pushed it aside, both light and sound flooding through the gap, for the fabric was actually quite heavy, as if it had been woven with lead to prevent fire. But now Doctor Svenson could see and hear everything … and he was appalled.
    It was an
operating
theatre. His catwalk door was perched just to the right of the audience and led across the stage itself at the height of the ceiling—some twenty feet above the raised table and the white-robed, white-masked woman bound to its surface with leather straps. The gallery was steeply raked and full of well-dressed, masked spectators, all gazing with rapt attention at the masked woman who spoke from the stage. Doctor Svenson recognized Miss Poole at once, if only by the woman’s irrepressible glow of self-satisfaction.
    Behind them all, on a large blackboard, were inscribed the words “AND SO THEY SHALL BE REBORN.”
    Standing unsteadily next to Miss Poole was another masked woman in white, her blonde hair somewhat disturbed, as if from physical exertion. As she stood Svenson noticed, distracted and disapproving, the very thin and clinging nature of the nearly transparent silk, making plain every contour of her body. To her other side stood a man in a leather apron, ready to support her if she fell. Behind, next to the woman on the table, stood another such man, wearing leather gauntlets and holding under his arm what looked like a brass and leather helmet—just what the Comte d’Orkancz had worn when Svenson had taken the Prince at pistol-point from the Institute. The man by the table set down his helmet and began to remove pieces of machinery from a nest of wooden boxes—the same boxes they’d seen taken from the Institute by Aspiche’s Dragoons. The man attached several lengths of twisted copper wire to mechanical elements within the boxes—from his vantage Svenson could only see that they were bright steel with glass dials and brass buttons and knobs—and then to either side of a pair of black rubber goggles, taking a moment to get the wire properly attached. Svenson realized—the electrified rubber mask, the facial scars—that they were about to perform the Process on the woman on the table, as they had no doubt just done to the woman standing with Miss Poole (the cause of the screams!).
    The man finished with the wires and raised the hideous mask to the woman’s face, pausing quickly to remove one of the white feathers that she presently wore. She shook her head from side to side, a futile bid to avoid his hands—her eyes wide and her mouth—which he saw was blocked with a gag—working. Her eyes were riveting, a cold, glittering grey … Svenson gasped. The man strapped and then brutally tightened the device across her face, his body blocking the Doctor’s view. Svenson could not determine her