Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

But the tunnel was farther away than it seemed. By the time he reached it, Chang was winded and the darkness echoed with the sounds of other trains. What was worse, the dragoons had not stopped. Instead, the ones in front had paused, allowing the rest to catch up— some ten men in all, sabers out, forming a line between the tracks. Chang spat out another curse and pulled off his glasses, stuffing them into the inner pocket of his coat. He could barely see a thing. He held his stick out before him to find the tunnel's wall, hoping for an alcove to hide in. Instead, he tripped over a half-buried stretch of unused track and fell to his knees. He groped for his stick and looked back, blinking. The line of dragoons raced directly toward him, moving faster than Chang had anticipated. He found the stick and plunged into the darkness, landing hard on the tar-soaked stones. A train roared past—inches away, it seemed, though he knew this was but the speed and violence of its passage. In the doorway of its final car stood a conductor with a lantern, illuminating for a teasingly brief instant the vaulted tunnel where Chang crouched.

One line of tracks veered into a deeper side tunnel. It was the sort of place that might be a trap—even the best ambush would not catch Aspiche and all of his men—but Chang was drawn to it anyway on the chance of another side exit, and an easy escape. Once he'd stumbled in, however, the side tunnel's isolation became its own difficulty, for the blackness was total. Chang felt his way, knocking with his stick, wasting time. He could hear the dragoons calling to one another and then, shadows playing about the cavern, saw with a sick realization that they had fetched lanterns. They would pick him out like a rat cornered in the pantry.

But the flickers of light at least showed him where to go. He broke into a reckless run as the neglected side cavern echoed with the approach of another train. Yet instead of roaring past, this train broke speed to actually enter the cavern. Knowing there were only seconds before he must be found, Chang sprinted toward the curving cavern wall, the bricks black with soot. The wall was a series of arches, each one penetrated by a set of rail tracks, all fanning out from a central spur. Chang ducked inside the nearest arch and flattened himself against the wall. The cavern had become much brighter, both from the train—now easing its way slowly and backwards into the vast hall—and the dragoons waving their lanterns. Chang retreated farther, and was suddenly surprised to see the lantern light reflecting back. His alcove archway was not empty, but exactly designed to house—as it did now—a detached train car.

He edged between the train car and the filthy wall. The dragoons came nearer. Chang flung himself down and rolled beneath the car. He felt for the cross-braces above and hauled himself up off the ties, wedging his boots to each side and wrapping his arms around the cables. In a matter of seconds his tunnel was bright with lantern light. Chang held his breath. The gravel crunched as two soldiers marched the length of each side of the car. Their light passed by and left him in a momentary shadow. He released the air in his lungs and carefully inhaled. The men came back. They thrust their lanterns beneath the car, but Chang remained suspended just out of view. The light was withdrawn. He heard the soldiers walk on to the next tunnel.

Chang slowly lowered himself onto the bed of rail ties, listening to the sounds in the cavern, feeling the pressure of the wood and gravel against his back, and the cool, foul air of the cavern on his face. What if he merely died where he was? How long until his bones would be discovered? Or would they be taken apart by rats and scattered across the whole of the tunnel?

He peered past his boots. The light in the cavern was moving again. Divested of its cars, the engine had reversed direction back toward the station proper. In its wake came the smaller bobbing glows of the individual dragoons. Chang relaxed on the wooden ties—he would wait another few minutes before moving—and turned his mind to more useful matters. Francis Xonck was alive. Colonel Aspiche was diseased. There was growing unrest in the city.

In hindsight, it seemed stupid not to have recognized Xonck during their struggle in the train compartment at Karthe, and his reappearance was a reminder that Chang could take nothing for granted when dealing with the Cabal. For all he knew, not a single person had perished aboard the dirigible. But then Chang recalled the severing of Lydia Vandaariff's head and the Prince of Macklenburg's legs, and then Caroline Stearne floating facedown in the rising flood. The servantry always died.

Chang rolled out from under the rail car, brushing at his coat from habit. Barely able to see a thing—but suddenly curious—he walked, one hand against the wall, to the car's far end. Chang patted his hands across the platform, and found a metal ladder welded to its side. He climbed up and felt for a waist-high railing of chain around the platform's edge. He threw a leg over it and ran his hands across the door. It was metal, cold, and lacking any handle.

Chang retraced his way to the car's other end, finding an identical platform, ladder, and flat metal door. He pulled the glove from his right hand and ran it over the cold surface. His fingers found the depression of a key hole.

He fished out a ring of skeleton keys, sifting through them by feel for three particularly heavy and squat specimens he had acquired in trade from a Dutch thief named Rüud, after Chang had secured him a hiding space on a smuggler's ship to Rotterdam. Chang had more than once contemplated discarding them, annoyed by the weight they added to the ring and having only a thief's word as to their value. He brought the first key to bear with the keyhole, but it would not go in. The second key slipped inside, but did not turn. He jiggled it free with some effort and no little irritation. The third key went in—again the fit was tight—and turned to the right. It did not move. With another burst of impatience, Chang turned the key sharply to the left. The lock caught and the key spun a complete circle, rolling the bar free with a muffled clank .

THE INTERIOR of the car glowed blue from a hundred bright points, as if he had wandered into a grotto of fairies. He stood inside the Comte's specially fabricated car. Chang leaned to the closest glowing array—bulbs of blue glass set into a hanging rack, drilled with holes the size of the Doctor's monocle. Similar racks were hung along each wall of the open room. Chang wondered why, with such a supply of glass, the car had been sent to storage, and in such a relatively public space. Perhaps because the order had come from the Comte, and no one yet dared to countermand him? Were the tunnels under Stropping parceled out to the wealthy to store their private cars? Was the old Queen's own silver anniversary coach, made at such public expense (for a figure so dyspeptically viewed) gathering soot but another stone arch away?

Chang left the door ajar—the last thing he wanted was to be locked in by yet another mechanism he didn't understand—and stepped to a glowing rack of glass. It held perhaps thirty bright bulbs and reminded Chang of an array of ammunition for an imaginary weapon. If this was just-refined blue glass, there would be no memory imprinted on it, merely the substance's own raw, untreated properties … of which Chang had no real idea. Each hole was covered by a disk of clear glass, held in place by a thin metal ring. Chang frowned. Was the metal copper… or brighter than that, more distinctively… orange? Chang dug a fingernail under the metal ring—the instant of pressure conjuring the image of his entire nail peeling hideously back—and popped both the metal ring and the clear disk out of place. With his gloved hand, he extracted the bolt of blue glass, the size of a very large bullet—for elephants perhaps—and completely smooth and symmetrical.