Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

“What do you say to the lady?” prompted Corporal Dunn.

“Nothing,” sniffed Ronald.

“It is perfectly well,” said Miss Temple. She turned to the older boy. “Put an arm around your brother, Charles—he is cold. Corporal Dunn, you have been entirely helpful. Your Colonel would be where?”

MISS TEMPLE strode confidently toward the house, measuring how far she needed to walk until the Corporal could no longer see her, fearful that by then she would have already reached Aspiche. She went as far as she could bear with her spine straight, the factory and its racket looming nearer, then looked back and saw with relief the soldier and the boys sunk in the darkness. Miss Temple dropped to a crouch and squinted toward the factory. Where was the main force of Dragoons? Had they all advanced when Tackham and his men had gone into the trees? If all the glass woman's soldiers became involved in the attack, perhaps she could ambush her enemy directly.

A loud shouting erupted to the west side of the factory, like the noise of a mob in a city square—Sergeant Bell and his dragoons. Miss Temple was suddenly afraid she had dawdled and missed her time. She broke into a hurried trot, the curls to either side of her head bobbing against her shoulders.

The shouts at the gate were answered by a crashing volley of gunshots. The shouting did not flag, not even after another volley. In stead, the cries soared into a triumphant spike—had the mob forced the gate? A third volley was answered by screams, cutting through the shouts like a scythe. The Dragoons began returning fire and the volleys from the factory grew ragged, though most of the screaming still came from the attackers.

But then Tackham's men in the ruins opened fire in the east. The bullets spattered at the factory's defenders like hot rain on a metal roof. Yet it was as if the men in the white building had an entirely different sort of weapon, firing faster and to terrible effect, even though they were clearly outnumbered. Miss Temple could not see anything of either combat, but she noticed when the defenders' gunfire came from within the building, as if they had fallen back. Would the dragoons storm the factory so soon—would it be that simple? From the gate came a rising cry, as the crowd charged forward.

A window above the crowd spat out a tongue of flame, and directly before it—from the thick of where she imagined the crowd of men to be—a column of black smoke bloomed up like a wicked night-flower. The screams were horrific, and the charging cry faltered at once. An identical blast crashed into the ruins, with its own echoing curtain of screams and the cracking of toppled trees. With an instant of forethought Miss Temple looked up at the windows facing the gravel road—facing her —and flung herself down. Another crash, and the earth around her kicked like a horse. She cried out but could not hear her own voice. Her body was spattered with pebbles and earth. The ground shook again and again. She could not move. The defenders had cannons facing every direction.

SMOKE DRIFTED up from the battered landscape, a scatter of riven pits. From beyond the trees rose moans and screams. The firing had ceased. Miss Temple shook the loose earth from her hair. A raw hole lay steaming in the center of the road, not ten yards away.

A sound cut through the ringing in her skull. Someone was speaking.

The voice was amplified as the Comte's had been inside the cathedral tower at Harschmort. With a slicking of bile in her throat, Miss Temple recalled the black speaking tube connected to the Comte's wicked-looking brass helmet, and how the great man's voice had then filled the massive chamber like a god's. But this voice was different— thin, and brittle, even cruel. It was a woman.

“As you have seen and felt,” cried the voice, “our artillery can be directed anywhere we choose, from our doorstep to the canal. You cannot hide, and you cannot advance. Your men will be slaughtered. Your business here has failed. Your soldiers and your rabble will withdraw. You yourself will come forward from your shadows, madame, alone. You have five minutes, or we will begin shelling the ground in every direction. Make no mistake. If you do not come forward, you will all be destroyed.”

These words were followed by a rasping pop , which told Miss Temple the speaking tube had been detached and the woman's fearful pronouncement was done. Miss Temple waited for any response— orders bawled out to the dragoons, cries of retreat from the crowd around the gate—but heard nothing. Miss Temple crept forward through a line of shell-holes and their rising smoke. Still she heard no response, neither to attack nor to flee. Surely staying where they were, vulnerable and in the open, was the poorest strategy of all—it could only provoke another barrage.

The smoke cleared enough for her to see that the gravel road ended at a low wooden wall, beyond which rose the factory. Its white surface seemed all windows and light, and the bricks the merest framework, like a flaming cage made from innumerable small bones. Shadows darted across its openings and along the edge of the rooftop, and above it the black smoke still rose in a billowing curtain.

The smoke cleared and Miss Temple finally saw the glass woman's army, for the low wooden wall was lined with crouching figures… more than a hundred Dragoons, with here and there an awkward fellow in Ministry black. Not one of them moved. Miss Temple went near—as if she were dreaming, for not a man acknowledged her approach—finally close enough to touch the soldiers on the face. Had Mrs. Marchmoor immobilized her own minions, as she had stilled Miss Temple in the coach? Had she grown so powerful—to touch so many minds in a stroke, and with such force? But why were the men not sent away? Did this not leave them even more vulnerable to cannon fire? Not to retreat was direct defiance of the amplified voice's demands, and when the minutes ticked away these men must die.

She had very little time herself. Miss Temple looked up to the windows, aware there must be all sorts of eyes upon her. But no one shouted, no one shot her down. She returned the knife to her boot and stepped to the nearest of the black-coated men. It was the odious drone from Harschmort, Mr. Harcourt, his blue eyes staring blankly like a fish looking up from the poaching pan. Cradled in his hand was a small six-shot revolver. She tugged it from his grip and measured the cold iron's weight in her little palm. It would absolutely do.

SHE DID not see Mr. Phelps, Mr. Fochtmann, or Colonel Aspiche, and assumed they had advanced with Mrs. Marchmoor, despite Mrs. Trapping's order—either willingly or dragged as automaton slaves— along with Francesca Trapping. But again, why Francesca alone? Miss Temple thought of the vials stopped up and smeared with blue. Had a sliver of glass been inserted into each little dram of blood? Or had Mrs. Marchmoor transformed the vials herself with the tip of her finger, like an indigo Medusa?

To enter the factory, Miss Temple stepped over two men in green uniforms, blood smeared from their upper lips down to their chin. Beyond these bodies, the entire ground floor of the factory was occupied by rattling, blazing machinery. Miss Temple winced. Oppressed by the din and nauseated by the reek of indigo clay, she stopped where she stood, one hand to her brow. Through the Comte's memories, every machine seemed to glow before her eyes as she sensed its purpose, its hideous capacity. Each polished carapace vibrated like an ungainly tropical beetle bellowing for its mate. Miss Temple knew there were only rods and shafts and oiled bolts beneath their metal covers— but to the man who had made them, these devices represented life , and somehow the shuddering things seemed ready to extend their awful legs and wings at any moment.