Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

She had found the knife, and Chang felt her footsteps coming near. Her fingers pulled at his coat collar as she called back to Willem, “If you would collect my parcel from where you set it down—there's an angel—and close the door.”

Chang pushed at the straw, trying to roll away, the strength in his arms no more than an infant's. The Contessa chuckled and ground a boot onto his nearest hand, as if she were crushing a spider. Chang braced for the tug of the knife against his jugular, the gush of his own hot blood against his skin—

The Contessa's gaze must have fallen across Christian in his chair, and she paused just long enough to call again to Willem.

“And perhaps you will tell me just when your fellow found this bit of glass—”

Her words stopped. The white horse began to neigh, horrible and high-pitched like a screaming child. It kicked furiously in its stall, and Chang could hear the breaking wood. The boy called to the animal, but the Contessa's voice cut across his, suddenly sharp as iron.

“ Willem! Run with the parcel—now! Out the door, to the train! I will find you—fast as you can—let no one see you— no one.”

The cries of the animal escalated to outright panic—spreading to the other horses, drowning out her further words. The Contessa was shouting—someone was shouting—Chang could not concentrate with the roaring pain.

He realized after the fact that his mind had drifted and that the stables had gone silent. He rolled onto one side. The stable door hung open. The air reeked of indigo clay. He was alone.

HE PUSHED himself first to his hands and knees and then, with an audible grunt, onto his knees. Across the room lay the trunk, open and empty, the top broken. The insides were lined with orange felt, and molded to contain an instrument of a shape he did not recognize—but it had held a tool of the Comte d'Orkancz, the orange felt alone told him that. The Comte—bear of a man, an esthete whose proclivities were as jaded as an octogenarian Sultan's—had been brilliant enough to discover the secret of indigo clay, laying the insidious foundation for the Cabal's every dream. However much the man's “science” struck Chang as an addled mixture of refined engineering and alchemical nonsense, he could not dispute its effects, nor shake a fear that its true dark power remained untapped—exactly why he took particular satisfaction in having run the Comte through with a cavalry saber.

The felt depression was not large and Chang wondered if the tool it had held might have been damaged in the scuffle. Was the Contessa lying about finding it with the horse? But how else did she acquire the trunk? It had not been with her on the roof of the airship.

Chang closed his eyes at the excruciating ache in his skull. He walked stiffly toward the tack room, but there was no drink at all. The knife was gone, so as he left the stables Chang snatched up the iron pole the boy had used to strike him, and swung it back and forth like a sword, testing the weight. He was frankly eager to thrash the next person he met.

He found the way to the train, a well-worn cart-track beyond the edge of town. He stopped at a sound beyond the immediate hills… the howling of a wolf. Chang looked back a last time at Karthe, spat into the darkness, and pressed on through a thicket of scrub, the twisted branches like the supplicating fingers of the bitter, wicked poor. He emerged to see, above an intervening rise of ground, a glow shot with rising smoke—the train. He swung the pole to loosen his arm, wondering whether he would find the Contessa or the Captain first, not especially caring, as long as he got a chance at both before the end.

On curved spurs of track to either side stood empty open-topped cars to carry ore. Ahead were two squat wooden buildings, one fitted with scaffolding to load ore, the windows of the other glowing with yellowed lamplight. Beyond these, a short line of passenger railcars— he could hear the engineers shouting to men on the trackside—was being connected to a steaming engine. His enemies could have gone inside the square building to wait, but given their mutual desire for secrecy, it seemed unlikely.

Behind the passenger cars and the engine, but not yet connected to them, ran a longer line of ore cars, piled with rock, at the end of which was a break van whose windows were dark. Chang crouched next to a rusted pair of iron wheels and studied the yard: no sign of the Captain, of the Contessa, or even Willem. If the Captain had indeed gone to the train some hours before, he might be in a passenger car, if only because the presence of other passengers and a conductor might provide, with witnesses, more security. At the same time, he might well be hiding in an ore car… but such logic only made sense if he was frightened, and the man with the saber had not seemed frightened at all.

Chang loped to the rear passenger car, its platform bracketed by two lamps, and vaulted silently over the rail. He heard nothing from inside. The door was not locked—was there such confidence and trust still in the world?—and Chang eased it open to find the rear compartment had been converted into a comfortable little room for the conductor, with a stove, wooden chairs, lanterns, maps, and any number of small metal tools set on hooks in the wall. On a side table sat a welcome pot of tea, and he poured half a cup into a nearby metal mug—the brew still steaming as it met the air—and drank it off in one set of swallows. He set the cup down, moved to an inner door, and carefully, silently, turned the knob.

Chang stepped into the hallway of a standard passenger railcar, with glass-doored compartments to his right-hand side, bathed in the dim half-light of lanterns hung at either end. The passenger cars formed one long interlocked corridor straight to the engine, where he assumed the conductor presently was. But before the train left, the conductor would make his way down the length of it, accounting for every passenger. It would be better if Chang could locate the Captain before that happened. He strode quickly down the car, glancing into each compartment, and then through the next, with the same result— every compartment was empty. The train shuddered: the line of ore cars had been attached. They would leave momentarily.

He entered the third car. The Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza burst through the far door, out of breath, her expression hard as hell itself. She saw Chang just an instant after he saw her. Neither moved. Then the Contessa launched herself straight at him with all speed, dress held up with both hands, black boots pounding against the polished planking. Chang's lips curled back with pleasure.

“Contessa! How completely superb …”

He raised the iron pole and strode deliberately forward—free hand raised, fingers open, to catch or turn aside whatever she might fling—awaiting their collision with an animal eagerness.

The Contessa suddenly dodged from the corridor into a compartment. Chang swore under his breath and leapt forward, tearing at the compartment door. She had shot the bolt, and he could see her through the glass clawing at the window latches. Chang stabbed the pole through the glass and cleared a ragged hole. The Contessa turned once as he thrust his gloved hand through to grope for the bolt, and then with all her strength, the latches not yet free, hurled herself full against the window. Its glass cracked, starring raggedly like the web of an opium-sick spider. She cried out, stumbled back, and Chang saw the bleeding slash across her shoulder. He wrenched the door open. The Contessa threw herself at the cracked window again, sailing through in a shower of dagger-sharp shards to land in a glittering heap on the rocky trackside below. Chang leapt to the window, looking down. The Contessa groped to her hands and knees, blood gleaming on her dress.