The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  The door the three men had used to enter and exit led to a railcar of passenger compartments—Fochtmann had said as much—so Chang crossed to the opposite door and took out his keys. Unless a dragoon had been posted on the outer platform, it was highly unlikely—with the noise of train—anyone would hear the turning of his key. Still, it was with a deliberate slowness that Chang twisted his hand until the inner lockings caught. He snatched up his stick before opening the door, ready to strike at anyone there. No one. Chang stepped into the roar of the train track, the wind flapping his coat around him.

  Ahead was another passenger car, the flaring sunlight preventing him from seeing anything inside. Chang crossed the jouncing platform and pressed his face against the window. Coming straight toward him was a red-coated dragoon, wearing his brass helmet, in that very instant glancing down to take something from an inside pocket. He would look up and see Chang. Chang spun and launched himself onto the narrow metal ladder bolted to the passenger car. As the door opened he flattened himself against the vibrating ladder, the tracks racing past below his feet.

  The dragoon stepped out onto the platform, a half-smoked cheroot in his mouth, saber knocking against the door, the horsehair crest of his helmet whipping wildly in the wind. In his gloved hand was a pewter flask. The marks on his collar and epaulettes showed a Captain's rank… then Chang saw the fair whiskers slipping out from beneath the brass helmet, pale as corn silk—it had to be his adversary from the north, the very Captain who had evaded him in the forest and in Karthe and in the darkness of Helliott Street. What was he doing with the black car—alone, and apart from his commanding officer? Or was he just nipping whisky?

  It was not the whisky. The officer peered back where he'd come— pressing his face to the glass (helmet clicking at impact), just as Chang had done against the glare—before crossing to the metal door. Chang wondered he had not been seen, but knew that where one did not expect something one often neglected to look. The dragoon stuffed the flask back in his tunic, and came out with something else… a large metal key. He inserted it quickly into the black car's lock, standing casually so anyone who happened to see him might think he was merely smoking. Chang heard the snap of the bolts in the door… but instead of pushing it open, the officer merely sealed it shut again and then tucked the key back in his tunic.

  The dragoon turned and saw him.

  The soldier's hand shot to his saber hilt. Holding tightly to the ladder Chang kicked both legs at the Captain, one sharply to his chest and the other across his jaw, knocking him back into the metal door and then, with a dangerous stumble, into the rail of chain. Abandoning his attempt to draw his weapon, the man desperately caught hold with both hands to prevent toppling over. The kick left Chang hanging for a sickening moment by his hands, boots just above the implacably deadly wheels. He caught a leg on the lowest rung and tried another kick—but the Captain, his face red where Chang's boot had landed, snatched hold of Chang's ankle and yanked hard to pull him from the ladder to his death.

  Chang held fast. The Captain pulled again, grunting aloud, boots slipping on the metal platform. Chang held, less certainly, and then, because he could not withstand a third pull, let go with one hand and stabbed his stick like a blunt court sword into the Captain's face. The officer flinched and swore aloud—blood welling under his eye. Dangling by one hand, Chang swung his other boot in a sweeping kick that caught the officer square on the ear, bouncing his brass helmet onto the trackside and the man again into the rail of loose chain, where he over-balanced and began to jackknife off the platform.

  Before he could fall, Chang shot both legs forward and wrapped them tightly around the fellow's neck. The Captain leaned perilously forward, suspended over an abyss of rushing rail track, the chain caught uselessly below his waist, his open hands pawing the air. It seemed as if he must fall, but Chang held strong, looping both arms tight around the iron rungs, grimacing with the effort. Neither man moved, the train roaring around them. Then the officer carefully twisted his head to meet Chang's gaze. He said nothing, but his eyes burned with hatred and with fear.

  “Whose key?” called Chang, loud enough for the man to hear above the wheels.

  “Yours, if you want it,” sneered the Captain. “Of course, if you drop me—”

  “I have one.” Chang dug his heel hard into the man's jugular. “Where did you get yours? Aspiche?”

  “Leveret.”

  “You searched Leveret's home. Does Aspiche know you have that key?”

  The man spat. “If he knew, why would I be out here on my own?”

  “What about the woman?”

  “What about her? No one knows where she went!”

  Chang's question had been about Mrs. Marchmoor, not Charlotte Trapping. But he nodded, playing along.

  “Where do you think she went?”

  “We can have this chat perfectly well on the damned platform,” the officer grunted. “I can feel your bloody legs slipping. We may well be of use to one another.”

  “You're a liar.”

  “My point exactly,” the Captain wheezed. “You have caught me out on forbidden business… the advantage is all yours…”

  The man's point was echoed by a growing ache in Cardinal Chang's arms. With a grunt he heaved the Captain back toward the platform.

  The man wavered, his fair hair blowing around his face, then caught the chain and dropped safely to his knees. By the time he looked up Chang had vaulted onto the shaking platform and pulled apart his stick, the dagger held ready at the level of the Captain's eyes. The officer looked past Chang at the compartment door.

  “Not the best place for a private conversation,” he called.

  Chang ignored this. “Why were you in that car at all? Why not in the back, with your betters?”

  “Would you trust them—my betters?”

  “If I were you—or your betters' master?”

  The man shrugged, as if the question answered itself.

  “What is your duty here?” asked Chang, impatiently.

  “What was my duty in the north?” the Captain replied. “As one says in the Latin, ad hoc.”

  The man's features were boyish, but his eyes were hard, as if too early disillusioned by the temptations available to his station.

  “A great deal has changed in the city since we both left it,” said Chang.

  The man shrugged again. Chang nodded at the key in the man's tunic.

  “But I suppose change begets opportunity.”

  “Have you seen their faces?” replied the Captain, with a wicked smile. “My God, by the smell alone—very soon there will be gaps in the upper echelons. And every gap needs filling.”

  “You were telling me about the woman.”

  The officer smiled, rubbing his throat. As he did, Chang noticed the man's face seemed more pale than it had in the woods, only days earlier. Fatigue? Or was he sick too, without knowing it?

  “Mrs. Trapping has disappeared.”

  “So has Leveret.”

  “Leveret's a dull clot. He will be as obvious in his hiding place as a schoolboy crouching under a table.”

  “Is Charlotte Trapping a clot?”

  “Even more than Leveret! She is a society widow. She is marooned—she has no skills. The powerful brother has lost his mind, and the other brother… has vanished.”

  “Along with the Contessa, and everyone else on the airship.”

  “Quite a tragic journey, that,” said the Captain. “A comprehensive loss for the nation.”

  Chang studied the man's face, as he knew the man studied his. The Captain had been in the train yard along with Chang—it was entirely possible he too had seen the Contessa and Xonck. In fact, he must have seen them—why else would the Ministries be searching Stropping with such vigor?

  “As you say… there may be opportunities… Mrs. Trapping—” The Captain spoke carefully.

  “What can a woman matter?” Chang interrupted. “Especially her?”

  “The Privy Co
uncil believes Mrs. Trapping matters a great deal. Makes a fellow think…”

  “Think what?” asked Chang, stepping closer.

  The dragoon glanced at the knife blade and then up to Chang, girlish curls framing a mirthless smile. “That the Privy Council has lost its head.”

  “Get out your key.”

  CHANG TOSSED the dragoon's saber behind him on the chaise. He looked into the open coffin where the Captain lay, arms tucked tightly to his sides, face set with displeasure.

  “What is your name?” asked Chang.

  “Tackham. David Tackham.”

  “They will find you when we arrive, if not before.”

  “I assure you, it is not necessary—”

  “It is this or cutting your throat,” said Chang.

  “My point being, such a choice does not have to be—”

  “What do you know of this Fochtmann?”

  Tackham sighed. “Nothing at all. Engineer—invented some useful… thingummy.”

  “And Rawsbarthe?”

  “Another Foreign Ministry stick insect. Why the Duke entrusts such weak tea to do his bidding—”

  “Where is Margaret Hooke?”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Marchmoor.”

  “Who?”

  “Where is Charlotte Trapping?”

  “As I have told you—”

  “Who is Elöise Dujong?”

  “I've not the slightest idea—”

  “Then where is Captain Smythe?”

  Tackham was taken aback and smiled, unsure of the question's intent.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Captain Smythe,” snarled Chang. “Your brother officer.”

  “Yes, of course—I just don't know why you would be asking, of all people!”

  “Answer me.”

  “Captain Smythe is dead. Shot in the back and strangled where he lay—on the roof of Harschmort House, before the airship went aloft. Shot and strangled by you, according to every account I have heard. Assuming you are the infamous Cardinal Chang…”

  Chang was no longer listening. He dropped the glass lid into place and shot the bolts, trapping Tackham inside. Perhaps the man would be able to kick his way free. Chang did not especially care.

  THE LIGHT in the next car was all wrong—brighter than it should have been. Chang craned his head around the wall of what he assumed was the first compartment, only to see that the compartment was not only empty of people, but of seats and luggage racks as well. Moreover, the walls between this compartment and the next two had been knocked down. Chang silently crossed this opened space, and craned round again to find another three compartments enlarged into one. This new room was cluttered with boxes and occupied by a man in a black coat, sitting with his back to Chang at a table of stacked crates piled high with notebooks. Chang did not move… and neither did the man. Chang stalked closer, slipping the dagger from his stick. The man's face was pale, red around the nose and eyes. A crust of blood lined his nearer ear. He rocked gently with the motion of the train, upright but quite asleep.

  If the train was going to Harschmort with so much empty space, its aim must be to collect whatever of the Comte's scientific paraphernalia still remained. What would prompt such an expedition, and on such a scale? It could not have been the return of Francis Xonck— Aspiche and his men had orders to collect the black car before Xonck arrived at Stropping, probably even before Tackham could have confirmed Xonck was alive. Chang imagined all the titled and moneyed adherents the Cabal had suborned for various schemes, all waiting greedily, desperate for the orders that would make them exceedingly rich and powerful… and yet it was clear, from the soldiers controlling Stropping Station and the reclamation of the black car, that something was happening. Was the plotting of Aspiche and Rawsbarthe part of it? Or were they already the first sign of rebellion?

  There was one more compartment. Going to it would put Chang in the line of sight of the sleeping man, but even if the fellow woke, who could he call for help?

  Chang peered around the wall. Curled on the far seat lay a girl in a lilac dress, perhaps eight years old, and next to her, his head having sagged into the girl's lap, a boy of five in a black velvet suit. The near row of seats held a still-younger boy, in a matching suit, save he had kicked off his shoes. He sat next to another sleeping man in a black coat with a sheaf of papers on his lap. Chang tilted his head to see the man's face: fair, with a pale waxed moustache, just enough like the dip lomat Bascombe to spark contempt. The face bore no signs of the degenerative pallor. The man's fingernails, however, were splitting and red. Another look at the man's face—the eyelids were noticeably gummed—and Chang stepped back from view.

  These were Charlotte Trapping's three children.

  He looked again, only to find the girl, eyes now open, staring directly back at him. Chang froze. The girl did not make a sound. She glanced quickly to her sleeping Ministry guardian, then to Chang's black lenses. Her face betrayed no fear—though he knew her world had been uprooted like a tree, both parents gone, in the custody of men she did not know. His own appearance must seem to her like something from a carnival. Yet the girl merely watched him.

  The chilling air above a winter stream

  A stab of doubt enrobing every day

  Why did this come into his head now? More of DuVine's “Christina,” a poem Chang did not so much enjoy as feel subject to. With his painstaking reading habits he had lived in the work's incandescent world for days—an archaic story of a woman bewitched by a wizard who had died, taking to his grave the secret of her enchantment, and of her doomed lover, unable to penetrate the magic—“a sheet of lead enwrapping a corse”—yet unwilling to abandon his love… or was it merely impossible to remember a life before his efforts?

  None of this was helping.

  He could do nothing for the Trapping girl. In two steps Chang was through the far door, hoping the sudden rush of noise from the platform did not wake the other children or the man. Before him was the coal wagon. As he climbed to it, the train rattled past Raaxfall Station without slowing. At this pace they would reach the Orange Locks in under an hour.

  CHANG LEAPT off the train—hanging from the coal wagon ladder— half-way between St. Porte and Orange Locks. He landed without breaking his ankle and rolled into the cover of a copse of low trees. He stayed down until the train was well past, collected his stick from where he had thrown it before jumping, and began his hike to Robert Vandaariff's mansion.

  Why had he not cut Tackham's throat? Was it because the man had revealed himself as the greedy minion of fools? Or was Chang still hesitant to spill the blood of any 4th Dragoon? Captain Smythe had saved his life more than once, and the lives of Miss Temple and Svenson. Chang felt his jaw tighten at the utter waste of the man's death—shot from behind, on the roof of Harschmort, and no doubt finished off by Francis Xonck. Was that a surprise? What other reward did decency receive in this world? Chang shook his head. Tackham must be newly promoted in Smythe's stead—Aspiche's handpicked favorite. And yet, for all that he despised Aspiche as a hypocritical ass, Chang had to allow that the man knew his soldiering—and knew his men. Tackham's character was no mystery to Aspiche—and the choice simply confirmed where Aspiche's intentions truly lay, as fully evidenced by the conversation he'd just overheard in the black railcar. It was the ambition of such trusted underlings as Roger Bascombe and Caroline Stearne that had brought the Cabal to ruin in the airship. Why should Colonel Aspiche be any more loyal?

  Chang's mind went back to Tackham. That he had been an instant away from killing him in the woods meant nothing—such careening circumstances could happen to anyone. The man was unquestionably dangerous. Chang spat into a ditch as he jumped across, his heels sinking into the muddy earth. No, it did mean one thing: Tackham would be particularly keen to cut him down.

  The idea was a whetstone for Chang's bitterness. He vaulted another ditch, wider than the last, the water's surface swirling with what looked like ash. Harschmort was
visible now, like the ridged scar of a bullet in an expanse of unblemished skin. He wondered about its master, shut indoors under false quarantine. Was there anything remaining of the man who had once bent a continent to his will?

  BEARING IN mind that the party from the train might arrive before him in their coaches, Chang angled his approach well to the far side of the gardens, between the estate and the sea. Several hollows within the dunes had been flecked with ash, probably just the normal burning of leaves or scrub that came with any garden the ridiculous size of Harschmort's. By the time he approached a scatter of outlying sheds his attention was focused on anyone watching from the French doors or an upstairs window. Chang waited, saw no one, and dashed across to the nearest fragile glass door. A quick jab of his dagger into the lock, and one sharp turn to pop the bolt. He was in.

  Robert Vandaariff's office and private apartments lay on the opposite side of the massive house, but Chang was near to at least one of his targets. He poked his head into a white-tiled corridor that ran the length of the entire wing, off of which lay the stairway to the lower levels. He readied his stick, for the corridor was not empty.

  An elderly man in black livery lay on his back, his face dark and wet. Chang advanced quietly, close to the wall. The servant's eyelids fluttered. Blood had poured from his nose and smeared itself over the near half of his face, but the nose itself was not bruised or red—it did not seem he had been struck. Chang looked up. Farther down the hallway, toward the center of the house…a strangled cry…a man's voice? He waited. Silence, but in it as he listened, even to his limited senses, penetrated the odor of smoke. Could the garden fires have drifted indoors? Chang abruptly stepped to the staircase door, and hurried down.