The Chemickal Marriage mtccads-3

by Gordon Dahlquist

  ‘As long as we know each other,’ said Miss Temple.

  The rest of their journey passed in silence, Miss Temple brooding again, bitter that, with the exception of some sofa-bound groping with Roger Bascombe, which she dismissed, and a single misguided kiss at Parchfeldt, her body’s charms had been sampled only by the worst of people. Kings and mistresses were nonsense, she knew full well. Most people made horrid marriages, mismatches of beauty and temper that only provoked a person to imagine the couple conjoined, as one hearing of an accident imagined the wounds. Was it so strange that her legitimate affection – if any such thing existed, and this was, the more she thought, the exact matter for doubt – had settled on a man such as Chang, suspect and unpresentable in every way?

  She glanced back. Earlier, when the Contessa had stepped into her shift, a new scar, on her thigh, had come into view, a knife-cut by Miss Temple’s own hand from their fight at Parchfeldt. She remembered the other scar across the Contessa’s shoulder, from a train window in Karthe. No doubt there were more – no doubt there were scars within – and she wondered at the woman’s continuing beauty. How long would it last? Would some rash plan finally be met with disfigurement or death? She thought of Chang’s face – did not the Contessa deserve the same? Did not Miss Temple herself?

  How – and, honestly, why – could the woman so persist?

  ‘You said before we’d swim again,’ she called. ‘Does that mean you’ve lied and you do know where we’ll go?’

  ‘Eyes ahead, Celeste. We ought to be near.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Eyes ahead, Celeste. I cannot see past you.’

  Miss Temple turned, pleased to have pricked another nerve, then sat up straight.

  ‘Celeste! You cannot just move –’

  ‘Do you hear the water? Listen! The sound has changed.’

  The channel had gone glassy calm, but, as their circle of light reached out, Miss Temple detected a shadow, an oddly shaped depression pointing down. She frantically waved her arm. ‘To the left, quickly!’

  The Contessa pulled on the tiller and the skiff shot to the side, but not before the stern crossed into the glassy oval. Their motion was checked. They were being pulled.

  ‘It’s sucking the water down!’ cried Miss Temple. ‘Like the drain in a tub!’

  ‘The pole, Celeste! Use the damned pole!’

  Miss Temple plunged the pole into the water to try to push them away but found no bottom to push against.

  ‘The landing!’

  The Contessa strained on the tiller as the skiff spun stern-first towards the sink-hole in the centre of the pool. For it was a pool, Miss Temple now saw, flowing underground instead of further on. She stabbed at a piling with the hooked end of the pole – she had not actually believed the thick hook was for fish – and it caught fast, then she squealed as the weight of the skiff nearly tore it from her gasp.

  ‘Hold on! Just a moment … there!’

  The skiff swung to the landing wall. The Contessa looped a rope around a rusted stanchion and tied it off.

  ‘You can let go.’

  Miss Temple sat back and shook her fingers. ‘How do you know about boats?’

  ‘I am a Venetian.’

  ‘And I’m from an island. Ladies don’t sail boats.’

  ‘Then ladies should be careful getting out, because if they fall in they’ll get sucked down into the gears.’

  Miss Temple again bore the hamper while the Contessa kept the leather case and the candle-box from the skiff. Harschmort’s platform was littered with broken masonry.

  ‘It does not seem as if Robert Vandaariff knew about this landing at all.’

  ‘No,’ agreed the Contessa. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t on the plans …’

  ‘How can something built not be on the plans?’

  ‘Celeste, how do you even eat breakfast?’

  Miss Temple followed her to a door that had once been formidable, ironbound planks four inches thick. Now the wood was eaten by worms and hung by a single hinge. The Contessa lifted her dress and kicked with the flat of her foot, turning her head at the dust blown up when the thing fell in. She let the cloud settle and stepped over the mess.

  ‘Why did you say we had to swim?’ asked Miss Temple.

  ‘Because we may. Or I may.’

  ‘Why not me?’

  ‘Perhaps you.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll go my very own way.’

  ‘Perhaps that is my intention.’

  ‘Your intentions can go hang,’ replied Miss Temple. ‘This leads nowhere.’

  The ceiling had collapsed, blocking the passage with debris. The Contessa set the candle-box on the leather case and bent for a tumbled stone. She lifted it with a grimace and heaved it behind them.

  ‘Put down that hamper and help.’

  ‘You cannot be in earnest.’

  The Contessa raised a second stone. ‘If you do not help me I will club out your brains.’

  Miss Temple snatched up the light and climbed the pile, dislodging bricks and gravel where she stepped. At the top, she poked an arm between two beams and then wormed her head to follow. Threads of dust traced the air around her.

  ‘Celeste, you are just making more work.’

  ‘There is a way.’

  ‘You cannot fit. I cannot fit.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Come see.’

  The Contessa gamely scrambled up, holding her dress with one hand and groping with the other until she could reach a beam to steady herself – an action that launched another spray of brick dust. She spat it from her mouth.

  ‘Look!’

  Miss Temple raised the light. Perhaps ten feet above, the darkness opened to black space.

  ‘But where does it lead? We could be trapped in a hole.’

  ‘We are trapped in a hole.’ Miss Temple handed the candle-box to the Contessa. ‘Keep it steady. I will do my best not to bury you as I go …’

  It was just like climbing a monkey-puzzle tree, not that she had done that for a decade, but Miss Temple’s limbs remembered how to wriggle from one branch to another. Only one of the beams gave way, a heart-stopping moment when – in the midst of a cascade of pebbles and dust and, from below, Italian profanity – the light went out. Miss Temple clung to where she was in the dark, waiting for all the debris to settle.

  ‘Goffo scrofa!’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  A snap of a match and the light returned, to show the Contessa covered in dust, black hair like an old-fashioned powdered wig. ‘Climb.’

  The distance was not far, and once she had a solid brace for her feet Miss Temple raised her head to the edge of a floor. ‘Half a moment … shut your eyes …’

  She pounded the broken lip with a fist, breaking away weakened brick until she was sure that what remained would take her weight. Then Miss Temple writhed up over the edge. The air was warm and dank. She could not see, but the sounds around her – water and machines – echoed from a distance.

  ‘Pass everything up,’ she whispered. ‘We are inside.’

  The Contessa joined her with an extremely sour expression, her person filthy, and shone the candle around the room: a barrel-shaped ceiling, a door cracked off its hinges and a line of furnaces, all cold.

  ‘You’ll be happy for a swim now, I wager,’ said Miss Temple as they padded on.

  The Contessa did not reply and Miss Temple realized that they must be silent now, that around any corner might be a foe. They continued on, past standing pools and buckled plaster, finally reaching a gas-lit spiral staircase. They climbed one turn to a door. The Contessa faced her.

  ‘Put the hamper down.’ Miss Temple did, warily. The Contessa held out the leather case. ‘Take it.’

  Miss Temple did, then backed away. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I cannot carry everything. Because now I do not need it. I took it from you so you’d have no weapon.’

  Miss Temple glanced at the hamper, wondering if she could snatch that up as well –
and, with both books, run.

  ‘I thought you needed me. I thought I would be used.’

  ‘And did you want that?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What do you want, Celeste?’

  ‘I want to stop him,’ she said boldly. ‘Stop all of this. I want to save Chang. And Svenson.’ She hesitated. ‘And myself.’ The Contessa pursed her lips, sceptical. Miss Temple wanted to kick her. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To find Oskar.’

  ‘What?’

  The Contessa was silent. The knife was somehow in her hand.

  ‘But why?’ Miss Temple did not understand at all. ‘And how? Oskar is dead. And he wants to consume you. You’ve seen the painting. Those people get boiled down – they get killed and cooked in tubs and what’s left is given to him, to revive.’

  ‘Reincarnate. There’s a difference.’

  Miss Temple remembered, quite vividly, the Comte’s last moments on the airship, his rage at the death of Lydia Vandaariff. His intention to wring the Contessa’s neck had been stopped only by Chang’s sabre. ‘You do not understand. He is mad. He was dead –’

  ‘But what if he wasn’t any more? What if he was just wicked old Oskar?’

  ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘Then you can kill him, if I’m wrong. And become his little Bride if I am not. You’ll want to go upstairs. And don’t confront anyone. Stay alive to the end.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Into the works, of course. Do you remember the tomb?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Really, Celeste, try not to be completely stupid.’

  ‘I am not stupid. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be on the landing.’

  ‘As ever, Celeste Temple, you underestimate everything.’ The Contessa picked up the hamper and slipped through the door.

  Miss Temple stood, undone at being suddenly alone and resenting the feeling extremely. She had not underestimated anything. She could sense the Comte’s death in the back of her throat. Why would the Contessa risk her life to restore him? She narrowed her eyes, anger building now the woman had gone. If she could not save herself, she would be damned if their two fates would be any different.

  She climbed to another door. The landing was damp and wet footprints climbed the stairs. One of the prints, the right foot, carried a swirl of red. Against all reason she wondered if this was Chang. She stopped herself from calling out. The prints continued up, past the next door, which she tried to open out of curiosity. The door squeaked – it was locked – and at the squeak Miss Temple heard a noise above her on the stairs. She did not breathe. Then faint footfalls, coming down. Miss Temple retreated in silence until she was out of sight. The footfalls stopped on the platform, and she heard the same squeak of the door being tested, then the sound of a key. The door was opened … then closed again … silence. The man had gone through. If she moved quickly she could get past without, as the Contessa warned, confrontation.

  She hurried around the turn to find Mr Foison on the landing. He leapt at her like a cat, grunting with pain as he landed and snatching at the tail of her robe. She dashed away and down, fumbling for the door at the next landing, but it was only half open before Foison was there. She swung the case at him. He dodged the blow and took her wrist.

  ‘How are you here?’ he hissed. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Where is Chang?’

  ‘Chang is lost.’

  His cold voice brought Miss Temple back to the Raaxfall works. She kicked at a bandage on his right thigh and yanked her wrist with all her strength. Foison’s grip broke, but then his fingers caught on the case. For an instant they strained against one another, but he was too strong. She let it go. He toppled back and Miss Temple raced away.

  She burst through the next door down and ran until the corridor met another pool. She looked back and realized that Foison hadn’t followed. Of course not: he’d opened the leather case and seen what she’d been fool enough to lose.

  Back on the floor where she’d started, Miss Temple stopped to think. What had Foison been doing here? A man like Foison did not repair machines. Had he been chasing someone? And what explained his being so wet?

  Across the pool she saw water pouring through an open grate, forced from above. She peered upwards, shading her face from the spray, and her heart quickened. Had Foison followed someone into Harschmort on such a dangerous route – someone like Chang?

  But if Foison had been following Chang, he would not have come after her, and he would have shouted for help. For some reason she did not understand, Mr Foison had made his own secret entry into Harschmort, through the guts of his master’s new construction.

  Steeling her courage, she returned to the stairwell. Foison was gone. In that case, Miss Temple told herself, she would chase him.

  The bloody prints continued to climb, despite – and Miss Temple’s heart leapt to her throat each time she slipped past – the noisy presence of Vandaariff’s men behind each successive stairwell door. Foison’s errand was his alone. But at the top of the staircase her search was foxed, for the bloody trail vanished into a long runner of carpet.

  She kept walking. This was Harschmort. She would meet someone – and confront them. The Contessa was wrong about that too.

  When the shouts came she hurried towards them, and the explosion that followed. Ahead, a woman careened through a smoking archway, gold-skinned and frail, black hair around her shoulders. She saw Miss Temple but did not pause.

  ‘Hurry!’ she cried. ‘Run!’

  Without thinking Miss Temple took the woman’s hand and fled. A cork slipper flew from her foot, and after three awkward steps she kicked off its mate.

  ‘All of them – every last one taken –’

  Cries and the sound of breaking glass came from behind. Miss Temple saw shadows wrestling in blue smoke, and brass-helmeted men charging into the cloud with clubs.

  The woman watched with too wide eyes, hand to her mouth. ‘My son –’

  Miss Temple tugged her on. ‘You can do nothing. Run.’

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman demanded, out of breath. ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘I have not escaped. I have entered. Wait.’

  They had reached a doorway left ajar, and Miss Temple peered through. Four green-coated men lay on the floor, though they bore no wounds. The air stank of indigo clay, and Miss Temple’s eyes stung.

  ‘Wait,’ gasped the woman. ‘In case. My name is Madelaine Kraft –’

  ‘There is no “in case” if we keep moving,’ said Miss Temple.

  ‘I cannot run. You will be taken with me. Listen. You don’t know who I am. Please. I heard him once explain a thing –’

  ‘Who?’

  She squeezed Miss Temple’s hand in a feeble request for patience. ‘The Comte d’Orkancz. The secret is light. “The chemical value of light” – as if it were as solid as earth or water, or active like fire or cold. He put a disc of glass – do not be shocked – a disc of glass on a woman’s body and opened a curtain so the sun hit it. She fairly sang with pleasure –’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘That does not matter. Her name was Angelique –’

  Miss Temple pulled her hand away. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Light. The character of blue glass –’

  ‘You mean it will not work in the dark?’

  Madelaine Kraft shook her head. ‘We are already too late – the dawn has come! The only hope now is to know – to understand his thinking –’

  ‘His thinking is as scrambled as five eggs in a bowl. Do you know Cardinal Chang?’

  ‘Of course I know Chang.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I do not know. I have misjudged him. I have misjudged myself and lost my son.’ Abruptly Madelaine Kraft pushed Miss Temple through the door. ‘I will lead them away. Go.’

  She closed the door, and through it Miss Temple heard her shouting to attract the guards.

  Miss Temple pulled a revolving pistol from the h
olster of a fallen man. She waited, bracing the weapon with both hands, ready to shoot the first man through the door. The sounds outside went quiet – Madelaine Kraft had been taken away – and no guards returned to search. Still, for some minutes Miss Temple did not move. The men at her feet, asleep or dead, lay in a heap like the bones outside an ogre’s den. She had managed an entry to Harschmort, but this room marked another degree of danger. Newly constructed for the ritual of this night, here was the true beginning of her battle with its master.

  Blocking her path was a bed of black gravel mixed with blue stones: blue glass spurs. She could not risk the spurs in bare feet. On the wall hung a line of white robes edged with green, with a pair of felt slippers at the foot of each. She exchanged the Contessa’s cotton robe for that of a Vandaariff acolyte, and helped herself to the slippers, noting how filthy and dark her feet were.

  Between the gravel and the far door lay a mosaic of large tiles. A noxious resonance in her throat warned her not to simply walk across, though she’d no idea what would happen if she did. Each tile was made of a different coloured glass, but the Comte’s memories brought only confusion. Then Miss Temple laughed aloud, for in the corner of one tile she saw an x, quite freshly scratched.

  ‘Well, thank you very much …’

  A series of hops brought her to the far side, thinking very little of the entire challenge. Like so much learnt thinking, to Miss Temple it was just another obstacle to avoid – or, like the fellow with the knot, hack through.

  She threw the hood over her face and opened the door. Here was the same acrid smell … now augmented by gunpowder. Across the room three robed acolytes lay huddled in death. Another doorway had been blown open. Miss Temple padded to it, but quickly turned from the burnt, twisted bodies. It was now clear what happened if one stepped on the wrong tile.

  She forced herself to approach the robed corpses, examining each as carefully as Chang or Svenson might have done. One man’s face was stained orange. Though the Contessa had taken such pains to bring her own supply, here was a bubbling fountain full of the stuff, from which this poor wretch had drunk. His lips were stretched and his empty eyes wide in a carnival mask of fear. The other two acolytes had been beaten and stabbed, but, judging by the blood smeared on the floor, there had been more men, hauled away. Again, she did her best to sort the passage of each one, diligence rewarded when her eyes at last caught a particular blot in a sooty footprint. These prints emerged from the blasted door and followed the drag marks leading out. She’d found Mr Foison … and he’d found someone else.