Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

What had happened in the garden? And where was everybody now ?

She staggered and put a hand over her mouth, turning her face and groping for the nearest table to support her. What had just happened?

She had framed the questions in her mind… and then suddenly received a sickening flick of an answer… the glass woman had been in here, and in such distress that the agony projected from her mind had sickened the minions around her. The knowledge had come from the Comte's memories—Miss Temple's own mind drawing unbidden from that pool, dangerously and without warning…

Miss Temple bent over and did her best to rid herself of the nausea, but nothing came. She felt the blood rushing to her head and stood, grim and once more consumed with an anger not altogether hers.

THE CORRIDOR ended at another swinging door and she pushed through to an elegant dining room. A crystal chandelier in the shape of a three-masted frigate hung over an enormous long dark table. The glass craft floated like a ghost ship, bearing a mere half-dozen candles, their glow abetted by a standing candelabrum on the table itself, set next to a man in his shirtsleeves. He sat in the master's own thronelike seat, and busied himself amidst a mass of papers. One ink-stained hand held an old-fashioned feather pen and the other a metal tool she had seen used on a ship to measure distance. Beyond him lay the doorway out.

The man was not Robert Vandaariff.

Miss Temple cleared her throat. He looked up and showed himself to be younger than she'd first assumed. His hair had receded to the rear of his skull—but upon seeing his face she doubted he was much older than Chang, and his firm jaw and strong hands bespoke a masculinity that made her twitch. He set down the quill and the metal tool and stood, a politeness that took her by surprise.

“I did not know there were any ladies in the house…”

“I am Miss Stearne, a friend to Lydia Vandaariff. I fear I am interrupting all sorts of things everywhere.”

“Not at all, I'm sure.”

“There seems to have been a fire.”

The man gestured broadly with a wry smile. “And yet the house is of a size that some fifty rooms remain for civilized occupation. Would you care for tea?”

“No thank you.” The last thing Miss Temple wanted was to be introduced to a servant as a friend of Lydia's. “I trust I am not disturbing your work.”

“Not at all.”

A silence hung between them, to her mind fetid with possibility.

“You have not said your name,” said Miss Temple, a little appalled for blinking her eyes as she did so.

“My apologies. I am Mr. Fochtmann.”

“What a very interesting mass of papers,” she said, pointing. “They look very… goodness, mechanical and scientific .”

Still smiling, Mr. Fochtmann turned the top page of each pile facedown, hiding their contents from her eyes. “A woman like yourself cannot be interested in anything so tiresome. Will you sit?”

“No, thank you. I'm sure I will be late for the train—”

“Caroline Stearne I am aware of,” he said. “But you said ‘Isobel’—”

“We are cousins,” said Miss Temple easily. “Caroline has traveled with Lydia to Macklenburg.”

Miss Temple wondered if Captain Tackham and his dragoons were searching for her, whether they might appear at any time.

“Apparently there has been no word sent from her party,” Fochtmann observed. “Though they are gone now over a week.”

“Who writes postcards after getting married?” The skin above her breasts flushed with memories from the glass book (… a blindfolded man straining at the touch of two tongues at once… the careful liquid insertion, one at a time, of a string of amber beads…). She blinked to find he had cocked his head, watching her.

“But there has been word. From the court at Macklenburg. The party did not arrive.”

“Not arrive? That is impossible.”

“It is at the least strange.”

“Sir, it is difficult to credit at all! Where is the outcry? Where are the journalists—the naval search parties, troops of lancers scouring the coasts? If the heir to Macklenburg is missing —” She stopped, staring at Mr. Fochtmann quite seriously. “Has anyone told Lydia's father ?”

“Her father cannot be found.”

“But he is Robert Vandaariff!”

“Is he, though?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Will you not take a seat, Miss Stearne?”

“I have told you I cannot.”

“And yet I think you should. I would go so far as to recommend it for your health.”

FOCHTMANN'S VOICE remained pleasant as ever. “You have been exposed to the glass. I can see it in your skin. Perhaps the exposure has been minimal—it has not caused you to lose any of your lovely hair. But you do know what I am talking about, and I must insist that you answer my questions.”

“What questions?”

Fochtmann glanced to the door, then back to her, staring hard, as if what he found in her countenance would determine his choice— that he was making a choice, right then. Miss Temple smothered another spasm of nausea. A cold shaft of understanding from the Comte's memories pierced her thoughts, the tip of a blade shoving past a cupboard lock and splintering it open.

The hearth. The man was in his shirtsleeves. He had cauterized Mrs. Marchmoor's shattered wrist in the kitchen hearth fire.

Fochtmann indicated the papers before them on the table.

“It is an entire world of the ‘mechanical and scientific’ These are times when opportunity rides side by side with disaster.”

“And you would avoid the disaster.”

“For myself, to be sure.”

“And your… employers?”

“I only know what I've been told—nothing a man can trust . There are fissures between them—it can be the only reason I am engaged.”

Miss Temple nodded slowly. “And perhaps…I am not…exactly… who you take me to be,” she said.

Fochtmann rapped the papers sharply, as if some inner gamble had been won.

“So which of them sent you? It is all very well to replace Lorenz, but before anything else I must know whether the blue glass has killed him. No one will hazard a guess—especially since all of them are sick as well.”

“Doctor Lorenz dead? Well, Doctor Lorenz was nothing—the Comte's dogsbody only.”

“You know the Comte? You knew him?”

“Knew? You do not mean the Comte is dead?”

Fochtmann squinted at her as if she were a strangely behaving insect.

“I wonder at your indifference. Your own cousin, Caroline Stearne, was part of the same party. She is most likely dead as well.”

Miss Temple did her best to gasp aloud.

“Do not pretend!” he scoffed, pleased at catching her out. “You yourself bear signs of this indigo decay—and here by luck you have blundered into the only man who can save you!” He snatched up his pen and searched for clean paper. “Tell me whatever you have heard them say—Lorenz, the Comte, anyone. I will make sense of it myself. Obviously a young woman has not come all this way on her own initiative—who do you serve?”

He looked up suddenly. “No no—I'm a fool! It's Vandaariff!”

He stabbed the quill at her clasped hands. “What is that case?”

Miss Temple raised it with a shrug and waggled the handle between her fingers. “It is empty. I was instructed to collect a particular item from the Comte's laboratory. But it is already gone.”

“Do you expect me to believe that? Who else but Vandaariff could marshal the resources to steal so many machines away? But he lacks something and was forced to send you to retrieve it—someone harmless who would attract no suspicion.”