“It is senseless to consider what’s done,” the Doctor said. “Do we go after her?”
“If she is taken, she is dead.”
“Then we must part to cover more ground. It really is unfortunate—it seems but a moment ago we were each running for our lives in isolation. I will miss someone to help me scale what water pipes I must.” He smiled and extended his hand. Chang took it.
“You will scale them by yourself—I am sure.”
Svenson smiled with a pinched expression, as if he appreciated Chang’s encouragement but remained unpersuaded. “Where do we each go?” he asked. “And where shall we meet again?”
“Where would she go?” Chang asked. “Do you think she is running to her aunt? That would be easier for us all…”
“I do not think so,” said Svenson. “On the contrary, whatever distress she has felt, I believe it has spurred her to direct action.”
Chang frowned, thinking. What had she said to him in the garden, her face, the smile belied by her grey eyes.
“Then it has to be this Bascombe idiot.”
Svenson sighed. “The poor girl.”
Chang spat again. “Will she shoot him in the head or blubber at his feet—that’s the question.”
“I disagree,” said Svenson quietly. “She is brave and resourceful. What do we know about anyone—very little. But we know Miss Temple has surprised any number of powerful people into thinking she was a deadly assassin-courtesan. Without her we both could have been taken in the hotel. If we can find her, I will wager you that she will save each of us in our turn before this is finished.”
Chang did not answer, then smiled.
“What is your Macklenburg currency—gold shillings?”
Svenson nodded.
“Then I will happily wager you ten gold shillings that Miss Temple will not preserve our lives. Of course, it’s a fool’s bet—for if we are not so preserved, then neither shall we be in any position to profit.”
“Nevertheless,” said Svenson, “I accept the wager.” They shook hands again. Svenson cleared his throat. “Now…this Bascombe—”
“There’s the country house—Tarr Manor. He could well be there. Or he could be at the Ministry, or with Crabbé.” Chang looked quickly up and down the avenue—they really ought not to be standing so long in the street so near to the Boniface. “The trip to Tarr Manor—”
“Where is it?”
“To the north, perhaps half a day by rail—we can find out easily enough at Stropping—we may even catch her at the station. But the trip will take time. The other possibilities—his home, the Ministry, Crabbé—these are in the city, and one of us can easily move from one to another as necessary.”
Svenson nodded. “So, one to the country, one to stay here—do you have a preference? I am an outsider in either instance.”
Chang smiled. “So am I, Doctor.” He gestured to his red coat and his glasses. “I am not one for country gentry, nor for the drawing rooms of respectable townsfolk…”
“It is still your city—you are its animal, if you will forgive me. I will go to the country, where they may be more persuaded by a uniform and tales of the Macklenburg Palace.”
Chang turned to flag another coach. “You should hurry—as I say, you may find her at Stropping. The path to the Ministry takes me the other way. We will part here.”
They shook hands for a third time, smiling at it. Svenson climbed into the coach. Without another word Chang began to walk quickly in the opposite direction. Over his shoulder he heard Svenson’s voice and turned.
“Where do we meet?” called the Doctor.
Chang called back, shouting through his hands. “Tomorrow noon! The clock at Stropping!”
Svenson nodded and waved before sitting back down in the coach. Chang doubted that either of them would be there.
As soon as he could, Chang left the avenue for a winding trail of alleys and narrow lanes. He had not decided where he ought to go first. More than anything he wanted to orient himself to his task in his normal manner and not rush headlong into circumstances he didn’t understand—even though this was exactly what Celeste was doing. Celeste? He wondered how he used that name in his thoughts, but not to her face, nor when speaking to Doctor Svenson, when it was always “Miss Temple”. It hardly mattered—it was undoubtedly because she was behaving like a child. With this thought, Chang resolved that if he were to try and enter the offices of the Foreign Ministry, or the house of Harald Crabbé, he needed to be better prepared. He increased his pace to a loping trot. He could not brave the Raton Marine, for it would certainly be watched—he had to believe Aspiche was now one with this Cabal. He would have very much liked to reach the Library. There were so many questions to answer—about indigo clay, about the Comte and the Contessa, about Bascombe and Crabbé, about the foreign travels of Francis Xonck, about Oskar Veilandt, even, he admitted, about Miss Celestial Temple. But the Library was where Rosamonde had found him, and they would certainly be waiting. Instead, his thinking more practical and dark, he made his way to Fabrizi’s.
The man was an Italian ex-mercenary and weapons master who catered to a clientele drawn from all across the city and whose only shared characteristic was an elegant bloody purpose. Chang entered the shop, glancing to either side at the glass display cases with his usual surge of covetous pleasure. He was relieved to see Fabrizi himself behind the counter, a crisp suit covered by a green flannel apron.
“Dottore,” said Chang, with a nod of greeting.
“Cardinale,” answered Fabrizi, his tone serious and respectful.
Chang pulled out his dagger and placed it before the man. “I have had a misadventure with the rest of your splendid cane,” he said. “I would like you to repair it, if possible. In the meantime, I would request the use of a suitable replacement. I will of course pay for all services in advance.” He took the remaining banknote from the wallet and laid it on the counter. Fabrizi ignored it, instead picking up the dagger and studying the condition of the blade. He returned the blade to the counter, looked at the banknote with mild surprise, as if it had appeared there independently, and quietly folded it into the pocket of his apron. He nodded to one of the glass cases. “You may select your replacement. I will have this ready in three days.”
“I am much obliged,” said Chang. He walked to the case, Fabrizi following him behind the counter. “Is there one you would suggest?”
“All are superb,” said the Italian. “For a man like you, I recommend the heavier wood—the cane may be used alone, yes? This one is teak…this one Malaysian ironwood.”
He handed the ironwood to Chang, who held it with immediate satisfaction, the hilt curved like a black-powder pistol grip in his hand. He pulled out the blade—a bit longer than he was used to—and hefted the stick. It was lovely, and Chang smiled like a man holding a new baby.
“As always,” he whispered, “the work is exquisite.”
It was after three o’clock. Without the Library to tell him where Bascombe lived, the easiest thing would be to follow the man from the Ministry. Besides, if Celeste were truly intent on finding him quickly, she would certainly go to the Ministry herself, doing her best to meet him—kill him?—in his office. If he was not there…well, Chang would answer that when it became necessary. He weighed the coins in his pocket, decided against a coach, and began to jog toward the maze of white buildings. It took him perhaps fifteen minutes to reach St. Isobel’s Square, and another five to walk—taking the time to ease his breathing and his countenance—to the front entrance. He made his way under the great white archway, through a sea of coaches and the throng of serious-faced people pursuing government business, and into a graveled courtyard, with different lanes—paved with slate and lined with ornamental shrubbery—leading off to different Ministries. It was as if he stood at the center of a wheel, with each spoke leading to its own discrete world of bureaucracy. The Foreign Ministry was directly before him, and so he walked straight ahead, boots crunching on the gra
vel and then echoing off the slate, to another smaller archway opening into a marble lobby and a wooden desk where a man in a black suit was flanked by red-coated soldiers. With some alarm, Chang noticed that they were troopers from the 4th Dragoons, but by the time he had realized this, they had seen him. He stopped, ready to run or to fight, but none of the soldiers stirred from their stiff postures of attention. Between them, the man in the suit looked up at Chang with an inquiring sniff.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Roger Bascombe,” said Chang.
The man’s gaze took in Chang’s apparel and demeanor. “And…who shall I announce?”
“Miss Celeste Temple,” said Chang.
“Excuse me—Miss Temple, you say?” The man was well enough trained in dealing with foreign manners not to sneer.
“I bring word from her,” said Chang. “I am confident he will want to hear it. If Mr. Bascombe is unavailable, I am willing to speak to Deputy Minister Crabbé.”
“I see, you are…willing…to speak to the Deputy Minister. Just a moment.” The man jotted a few lines onto a piece of paper and stuffed it into a leather tube, which he fed into a brass opening in the desk, where it was sucked from sight with an audible hiss. Chang was reminded of the Old Palace, and found it somehow comforting that the highest levels of government shared the latest means of communication with a brothel. He waited. Several other visitors arrived and were either allowed to pass through or became the subject of another such message sent through the leather tubes. Chang glanced at the others waiting—a dark-skinned man in a white uniform and a hat with peacock feathers, a pale Russian with a long beard and a blue uniform of boiled wool with a line of medals and a sash, and two elderly men in run-down black tailcoats, as if they had been continuously attending the same ball for the last twenty years. He was not surprised to see all four of them staring at him in return. He casually looked around to make sure the exit behind was still clear, and to note the hallways and staircases on the other side of the desk, the better to anticipate any danger that might arrive. The troopers remained still.
It was five more minutes before an answering tube thumped into its receptacle near the desk. The clerk unfolded the paper, made a note in the ledger next to him, and handed the paper to one of the troopers. He then called to Chang.
“You’re to go up. This man will show you the way. I will need your name, and your signature…here.” He indicated a second ledger on the desk top, and held out a pen. Chang took it and wrote, and handed it back.
“The name is Chang,” he said.
“Just ‘Chang’?” the man asked.
“For the moment, I’m afraid so.” He leaned forward with a whisper. “But I am hoping to win at the races…and then I shall purchase another.”
The soldier led Chang along a wide corridor and up an austere staircase of polished black granite with a wrought iron rail. They moved among other men in dark suits walking up and down, all clutching thickly packed satchels of paper, none of whom paid Chang the slightest attention. At the first landing the soldier led the way across a marble corridor to another staircase blocked off with an iron chain. He unlatched the chain, stepped back for Chang to pass, and replaced it behind them. On this staircase there was no other traffic, and the farther they climbed the more Chang felt he was entering a labyrinth he might never escape from. He looked at the red-coated trooper ahead of him and wondered if it would be better to simply slip a knife between the man’s ribs here, where they were alone, and then take his chances. As it was, he could only hope that he was indeed being taken to Bascombe—or Crabbé—and not into some isolated place of entrapment. He had mentioned Miss Temple’s name on a whim, to provoke a response—as well as to see if she had been there before him. That he had gained entry without any particular reaction left him mystified. It could mean that she was there, or that she wasn’t—or that they merely wanted to find her, which he already knew. He had to assume that the people who had allowed him in did not ultimately plan for him to leave. Still, the impulse to kill the soldier was mere nervousness. All that would come soon enough.
They climbed past three landings but never a door or window. At the landing of the next floor, however, the soldier took a long brass key from his coat, glanced once at Chang, and stepped to a heavy wooden door. He inserted the key and turned it several times in the lock, the machinery echoing sharply within the stairwell, before pulling it open. He stepped aside and indicated that Chang should go in. Chang did so, his attention neatly divided between the instinctive suspicion about the man at his back and the room he was entering—a short marbled corridor with another door on the opposite side, some five yards away. Chang looked back to the soldier, who nodded him on toward the far door. When Chang did not move the soldier suddenly slammed the door shut. Before Chang could leap for the knob he heard the key being turned. The thing would not budge. He was locked in. He berated himself for a credulous fool and strode to the far door, fully expecting it to be locked as well, but the brass knob turned with a well-oiled snick.
He looked into a wide office with a deep green carpet, and a low ceiling made less oppressive by a domed skylight of creamy glass rising over the center of the room. The walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed with hundreds of massive numbered volumes—official documents no doubt, collected through the years and from around the world. The wide space of the room was divided between two great pieces of furniture—a long meeting table to Chang’s left and an expansive desk to his right—that, like oaken planets, cast their nets of gravity across an array of lesser satellites—end tables, ashtrays, and map-stands. The desk was unoccupied, but at the table, looking up from an array of papers spread around him, sat Roger Bascombe.
“Ah,” he said, and awkwardly stood.
Chang glanced around the office more carefully and saw a communication door—closed—in the wall behind Bascombe, and what might well be another hidden entrance set into the bookcases behind the desk. He pushed the main door closed behind him, turned to Bascombe and tapped the tip of his stick lightly on the carpet.
“Good afternoon,” Chang said.
“Indeed, it is,” Bascombe replied. “The days grow warmer.”
Chang frowned. This was hardly the confrontation he had expected. “I believe I was announced,” he said.
“Yes. Actually, Miss Celeste Temple was announced. And then your name of course, in turn.” Bascombe gestured to the wall where Chang could see the sending and receiving apparatus for the message tubes. Bascombe gestured again toward the end of the table. “Please…will you sit?”
“I would prefer to stand,” said Chang.
“As you wish. I prefer a seat, if it is all the same to you…”
Bascombe sat back at the table, and took a moment to rearrange the papers in front of him. “So…,” he began, “you are acquainted with Miss Temple?”
“Apparently,” said Chang.
“Yes, apparently.” Bascombe nodded. “She is—well—she is herself. I have no cause to speak of her beyond those terms.”
It seemed to Chang that Bascombe was choosing his words very carefully, almost as if he were afraid of being caught out somehow…or being overheard.
“What terms exactly?” asked Chang.
“The terms she has set down by her own choices,” answered Bascombe. “As you have done.”
“And you?”
“Of course—no one is immune to the consequences of their own actions. Are you sure you will not sit?”
Chang ignored the question. He stared intently at the slim, well-dressed man at the table, trying to discern where in all the competing spheres of his enemies he might fit in. He could not help seeing Bascombe as he thought a woman must—his respectability, his refinement, his odd assumption of both rank and deference—and not any woman, but Miss Temple in particular. This man had been the object of her love—almost certainly was still, women being what they were. Looking at him, Chang had to admit that Bascombe possessed any number of attractive qualities,
and was thus equally quite certain that he disliked the young man intensely, and so he smiled.
“Ambition…it does strange things to a fellow, would you not agree?”
Bascombe’s gaze measured him with all the dry, serious purpose of an undertaker. “How so?”
“I mean to say…it often seems that until a man is given what he assumes he wants…he has no real idea of the cost.”
“And why would you say that?”
“Why would I indeed?” Chang smiled. “Such an opinion would have to be derived from actual achievement. So how could I possibly know?” When Bascombe did not immediately respond, Chang gestured with his stick to the large desk. “Where are your confederates? Where is Mr. Crabbé? Why are you meeting me alone—don’t you know who I am? Haven’t you spoken to poor Major Blach? Aren’t you just the slightest bit worried?”
“I am not,” replied Bascombe, with an easy self-assurance that made Chang want to bloody his nose. “You have been allowed into this office for the specific purpose of being presented with a proposition. As I assume you are no idiot, as I assure you I am no idiot, I am in no danger until that proposition has been made.”
“And what proposition is that?”
But instead of answering, Bascombe stared at him, running his gaze over Chang’s person and costume, very much as if he were an odd kind of livestock or someone from a circus. Chang had the presence of mind to realize that the gesture was deliberate and designed to anger—though he did not understand why Bascombe would take the risk, being so obviously vulnerable. The entire situation was strange—for all that Bascombe spoke of plans and propositions, Chang knew his appearance at the Ministry must be a surprise. Bascombe was delaying him at personal risk so something else could happen—the arrival of reinforcements? But that made no sense, for the soldiers could have stopped him at any time on the way up. Instead, what they had accomplished was to divert Chang from the entrance. Was this all a performance—was Bascombe somehow demonstrating his loyalty, or was it possible that Bascombe played a double game? Or was the delay not to bring anyone to the room, but to get someone away from it?