‘What child?’ asked Foison sharply.
Bronque glared at the interruption. ‘I don’t know – a girl. Dead in the fellow’s arms. Smoke, I believe.’
‘The child is dead?’
‘What can it matter? Do you know her?’
But Foison had already crossed to his green-coated mercenaries. He spoke low and rapidly. One man broke for a tethered horse, leapt into the saddle and clattered off.
‘Is there a problem?’ called Bronque.
‘Continue.’
Displeased at Foison’s evasion, Bronque snapped his fingers at an aide, who brought a map of the city. The soldier bent so the map could be spread across his back.
‘We need to know where she’d go to ground.’ Bronque traced a circle with his finger. ‘Now, these districts are presently inaccessible because of the fire …’
Chang was astonished. The area was massive – a full quarter of the city. He tried to figure for wind, but Bronque was ahead of him, sketching the likely path of the blaze and filling in where the authorities – always before neighbourhoods of wealth – had entrenched their resources to prevent its spread.
‘She can’t have reached the river, and coach travel is all but impossible. They are thus probably on foot, heading north or east. My own guess would put them here.’ Bronque tapped on what Chang knew to be a nest of warehouses. ‘She has wealthy backers – how else does a half-caste operate a place like that? One might easily hide her on his premises –’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Chang.
‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘Only if she wants to hide.’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
‘Because she’s been wronged. She’ll want revenge.’
‘Just her and a servant?’
‘He’s not her servant,’ said Chang. ‘He’s her son. And he could snap your spine like a baguette. No, the question isn’t where they’ve hidden; it’s where they will attack.’
Bronque considered this, but shook his head. ‘I still can’t see it. I grant her intelligence, but how she can hope, even with this chaos –’
‘It depends on whom she blames, doesn’t it?’ Chang turned to Foison. ‘Assume she knows who formed the Cabal behind the blue glass. Any of those names could be a target.’
Colonel Bronque nodded, again admitting his awareness of this secret history.
‘The Comte d’Orkancz is dead,’ observed Foison carefully.
‘And Crabbé, and Francis Xonck,’ added Chang. ‘Who else remains?’
‘The Italian woman.’
‘We don’t know where she is,’ said Bronque.
But Bronque knew who the Contessa was. ‘Madelaine Kraft was invited to Harschmort along with a hundred other guests,’ said Chang. ‘That was where her mind was plundered.’
‘Invited by Robert Vandaariff.’ Bronque sighed. ‘If you are right, their destination will be Harschmort House. Which isn’t to say that reaching Harschmort won’t be extremely difficult.’ He peered at the map. ‘I can post men at these crossroads –’
‘Do you know Mr Drusus Schoepfil?’
Bronque looked up, but Foison’s question was for Chang. Chang shook his head.
‘With the death of Lydia Vandaariff, Drusus Schoepfil has become his uncle’s heir. Do you know him, Colonel?’
‘We’ve met in passing. Queer duck.’
‘Indeed.’ Foison traced a slim finger across the map. ‘As you set your roadblocks, you might also post men to the Crampton and Packington railway stations. Any train to Harschmort must pass them both – that way we needn’t bother with the madhouse of Stropping. We ourselves will visit Mr Schoepfil’s home.’
‘My understanding is that Mr Schoepfil and his uncle do not speak. Why would Mrs Kraft fix her revenge on him?’
‘Not her revenge, Colonel, theirs. What the woman needs is an ally.’
Bronque hesitated. ‘I’ve no wish to be indelicate, but, in all honesty, why would he betray his uncle now? If Lord Vandaariff’s health is on the wane –’
‘Will you join us or not?’ asked Foison.
Bronque slapped the map hard. The aide grunted at the impact, then rolled it up. The Colonel gave his orders, detailing men to roadblocks and the railway stations, and others to accompany them on their search. Bronque’s hand found the hilt of his sabre, gloved fingers curling around the guard.
‘So. Let us see if this insight into her mind is sound.’
Foison extended a finger to Bronque’s gold epaulette. ‘Spot of blood.’
The path to Schoepfil’s house, even accompanied by two dozen soldiers, required detours – around refugees, looting and roadblocks. The last they could have negotiated with Bronque, but the Colonel avoided the contact, preferring their errand to remain unknown.
‘Why didn’t you bring Gorine?’ Chang asked. ‘He could have been your hostage.’
‘I didn’t plan this,’ Bronque replied testily. ‘I came with dispatches from Her Majesty to Lord Axewith – this is at Lord Vandaariff’s insistence. I should not have rated the fate of a brothel-mistress above a burning city, but he does, and now every other duty must hang.’
‘You came all the way from Bathings?’
‘None of your damned business.’
The chaos Chang had witnessed in his flight with Cunsher had grown worse. Each face they passed – whether helmeted soldier or stricken citizen – showed how beyond the grip of authority the crisis had become. Even the men he walked with – Bronque’s soldiers and Foison’s lackeys, ostensibly agents of order – passed through the city as if it were a place for which they bore neither responsibility nor affection. It burnt around them, and by all it was ignored. Surely these men had wives, children, homes – why hadn’t they fled to save their own? Instead, every one did his best to save Robert Vandaariff.
Schoepfil’s residence was a cube of soot-stained granite whose unadornment spelt out the estrangement from his mighty uncle’s wealth. Bronque sent men to the rear of the house before mounting the steps. A servant welcomed them in and explained that Mr Schoepfil was not home.
‘Do you know where we might find him?’ asked Foison. ‘Our errand comes from the Privy Minister.’
‘I cannot say, sir.’ The servant did not blanch at Foison’s appearance or Chang’s, not even at the leash of chain.
‘The matter is extremely important. It concerns his uncle, and Mr Schoepfil’s inheritance.’
‘Indeed, sir. If I do hear from him, what message shall I give?’
‘That Lord Vandaariff’s health –’ began Foison, but Bronque cut in.
‘Tell him the woman and the black man were seen and his only hope is immediate surrender.’
The servant nodded, as if this threat was of a piece with everything else that had been said. ‘Very good, sir. I will do my best to convey the message.’
Back on the street, Foison whispered. ‘Do not apprehend the courier – we must follow.’
‘I know my business,’ the Colonel replied tersely. At a signal his men melted into the darkness. ‘As you see, I am happy to provoke the man, though I remain unconvinced Lord Vandaariff’s nephew will lead us to this woman. More likely, her own people hide her –’
‘Madelaine Kraft is not hiding,’ said Chang.
‘You don’t know that. Any more than I see how she’s worth our time.’
Chang said nothing, yet the Colonel’s comment raised a question as to the true – with regard to Robert Vandaariff – object of their search.
‘What does Drusus Schoepfil do?’ Chang asked Foison.
‘Whatever he wants. A life of random expertise, a thousand tasks half done.’
‘Another arrogant wastrel?’ asked Bronque.
‘If he was a wastrel,’ said Chang, ‘we should not be here. Is he capable of striking at his uncle?’
‘Anyone is capable,’ said Foison.
‘Because he’s threatened his uncle before?’
‘No,’ Foison sighed. ‘Because he ha
sn’t.’
One of Bronque’s soldiers waved from the corner. The chase had begun.
Their quarry was a young man in a shapeless coat, hurrying from the rear of Schoepfil’s house. Two of Foison’s men, stripped of their jackets, made the nearest pursuit. The rest, including Bronque’s grenadiers, came at a safer distance. Chang walked between Bronque and Foison, still chained. After a quarter-mile Bronque leant across Chang’s chest to Foison, a sympathetic gesture intended to evince tact.
‘Lord Vandaariff’s rapid decline is most dispiriting. Is there truly no hope?’
‘He does not entertain any.’
‘But what of the nation?’ Bronque ventured.
‘Nations are vanity,’ replied Foison.
The restive wanderers they passed echoed this fatalism, feral in the glare of bonfires. All his life Chang had seen inequity, implacable and institutionalized, and people bore it all, even their own children dead before their eyes. This night these desperate faces had found the spark of rebellion. But he knew their momentary gains – windows broken or constables driven off with stones – would only provoke harsher measures when law was restored.
Was this not the arc of any life – from oppression to revolt to still deeper servitude? He thought of Cunsher, how the man’s competence was but a shell encasing a long-shattered heart. Who didn’t nurse sorrow at their core? Chang’s discontents were nothing new or precious. Had Foison lost a family, a lover, a language, a home? Of course he had – most likely all in one vicious stroke. And in exchange, offering his life to another man of power, he had survived … the doomed chain of service. Phelps, Smythe, Blach … and Svenson – perhaps the most miserable of them all. To a man they would be finished, and that he would be finished with them, Chang did not doubt.
The young messenger skulked to the gate of a livery yard and disappeared inside. The Colonel quickly positioned his men, then drew their eye to a line of gabled windows.
‘With luck the woman has gone to ground. If we enter in force –’
Foison shook his head. ‘If it is merely an agreed-upon place to leave word, such action will keep her away. Let us see if the messenger stays or returns whence he came.’
Bronque looked at Chang. Chang kept silent, allowing their disagreement to stand.
Gunshots echoed from inside the livery. All three charged for the door. On the floor of the stable lay the young man they’d followed, shot twice in the chest. Bronque’s grenadiers crowded a far doorway, their officer holding a smoking revolver. Near the body lay another gun.
‘He was trying to leave,’ the young lieutenant explained to Bronque. ‘Saw us, sir, and drew his weapon.’
Bronque knelt over the messenger – little more than a boy – pressing two fingers to the jugular. ‘God-damned cock-up.’ He thrust his chin at a staircase in the corner. ‘Search the premises. No more killing. If the woman is here, we need her alive.’
The soldiers clattered off. Bronque exchanged a bitter look with Foison and set to emptying the dead boy’s pockets. ‘Idiots. Ruined everything.’
‘Unless she is upstairs,’ said Foison mildly.
Chang brushed the straw from around the boy’s gun with his foot – it was a service revolver, heavy and difficult to fire.
‘Lieutenant!’ Bronque roared at the staircase. ‘Report!’
The officer stomped back into view at the top of the steps. ‘Nothing, sir. All empty.’
‘Hang your idiocy! Get your men formed in the courtyard.’
The soldiers marched down the stairs and out. Bronque tossed the contents of the dead boy’s pockets into the straw: a clasp-knife, a scatter of pennies, a dirty rag.
Through the boy’s half-open lips gleamed a brighter touch of red, blood risen from a punctured lung. Chang cocked his head.
‘What is it?’ asked Foison.
‘His cloak is untied.’
‘What of that?’ asked Bronque.
‘It wasn’t before, when we were following him.’
‘So he untied his cloak upon coming in – that’s natural enough.’
‘Not if he wasn’t going to stay. Not if he was attempting to leave through the rear door.’
Bronque’s voice deepened. ‘Are you saying he wasn’t? Wait a moment …’
The Colonel slipped two gloved fingers into the messenger’s boot and came out with a folded square of paper. ‘A message, by God.’
He handed the paper to Foison, who opened it for them all to see: a page torn from an old book, a woodcut depicting a muscular black man in a turban, with an axe. At his feet lay an open casket, a jewel box that contained a human heart. But the woodcut had been freshly amended by its sender: with the crude stroke of an ink pen the axeman’s eyes had been wholly covered by a thick black bar, like a blindfold.
Bronque frowned at the corpse, as if to doubt such a message could have come from such a courier. ‘What can it mean?’
‘The Executioner,’ said Chang. ‘From The Chemickal Marriage.’
‘What does that mean?’ demanded Colonel Bronque.
Foison sighed, almost sadly, and refolded the page. ‘That Drusus Schoepfil must die.’
Foison sent another man into the night, this time on foot, with news of their discovery.
‘But what have we found?’ Bronque looked at them hopefully, then exhaled through his nose in the general direction of the corpse. ‘We can leave this lot here, and I’ll set my men to search the surrounding houses –’
Foison shook his head. ‘You don’t have enough men both to search and to establish a cordon. Anyone wary, and they are, would escape. Of course, with the messenger unable to speak and the message so obscure, we do not even know if it was meant for Mrs Kraft.’
‘Who else?’
‘Drusus Schoepfil – his people passing on your threat, no doubt to advise surrender.’
Bronque let this go. His men stood formed and ready. ‘Well, what next? Are we finished or aren’t we?’
‘Perhaps we are.’
‘Good.’ Bronque did not bother to hide his relief. ‘Where will you go? We can provide an escort –’
‘Cardinal Chang and I can make our own way.’
‘To Harschmort? On foot? It would take two days.’
‘Perhaps Stropping, and an east-bound train.’
‘Then let us walk together; Stropping Station is not so far from where Lord Axewith –’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘But what will I tell Lord Axewith?’
‘That we arrived too late. Our search was a fool’s errand – and now you are relieved of it. Best of luck in the night.’
Foison flicked Chang’s chain and began to walk, his three remaining men trotting across the courtyard to join him. Chang looked over his shoulder. Framed first by his grenadiers and then by the disaffected crowds, Bronque watched them go, a statue in the torchlight.
Around the first turn Foison stopped, listening. ‘Will he come?’
‘He must,’ Chang replied. ‘Once there are fewer witnesses.’
They had entered a walled avenue offering little cover. Foison stepped behind Chang to unwrap the chain. ‘When did you know? Before the clumsy murder?’
‘The interrogation of Gorine.’
‘How so?’
‘Svenson. If he cured Madelaine Kraft, we ought to be looking for him. We aren’t – because someone already has him. And not Vandaariff, or you would know.’
Foison coiled the chain into a loop he could carry, then thought better of it and threw it to the side. ‘Svenson could be dead.’
‘Then why not say so?’
Foison set off without replying. Chang kept pace, rubbing his wrists. Two green-coats jogged before them, while the third hung back to guard the rear. At the cross street, the lead men paused, peering cautiously ahead. Foison and Chang stopped as well, waiting.
‘The message was for Bronque,’ Chang said, ‘commanding our deaths. The Executioner’s resemblance to Mahmoud was but a witty coin
cidence.’
Foison sighed. ‘So Schoepfil was home when we called.’
‘Who else could send such a message to Bronque, one that he would follow?’
‘And if Madelaine Kraft was there as well – which would, as you say, inform the image – she is gone by now too.’
‘The real question is the extent to which your master’s been betrayed. Bronque has allied with Schoepfil – but who are they? Who pulls their strings – Axewith?’
‘It makes no sense,’ said Foison. ‘He owns them all.’
The lead men waved them on, and they dashed across the open road. Once on the other side, the third man fell back and the lead two loped ahead.
Chang was aware of his own place in Foison’s catalogue of men-as-property, yet how quickly his fortunes had changed – from free man to prisoner to fleeing through the streets – all of a piece with a city set spinning on a different and degraded axis. His first struggle with the Cabal had been a battle to gain control over institutions – Crabbé suborning the Ministries, for example, but the Ministries had been left intact. Now it seemed possible that anything could fall, any edifice could be torn down.
Chang sighed. If he lived, Svenson was their prisoner – as he was Foison’s, as Celeste Temple had been taken by the Contessa. Was that what had become of their grand alliance – tethered familiars, each to a different demon?
The lead men signalled a stop. Chang bent over, still wary of the pursuit they had outpaced. Foison wiped the sweat from his neck with two fingers and then, in a disquieting gesture, licked them, an animal seeking salt. Their path had dead-ended near the sounds of a crowd, whose voices echoed over the rooftops …
‘Two more avenues and we will find a coach,’ said Foison.
‘Or more empty stables.’ Foison did not respond. Chang spat on the cobbles. ‘Come – we’re alone. No one will hear. What does it mean that the child is dead? What does it mean that Mrs Kraft is healed? Why did your master choose me over Celeste Temple?’
‘None of that is my concern.’
‘Someone might be saved. You can choose.’
‘And follow your example – the nation of one man? Vanity.’
The blend of doom and duty drove Chang mad, almost as bad as the damned Doctor –
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