“Margaret has invaded her mind!” insisted Xonck. “The girl is marked, finished.”

“So all will be well!” the Contessa shot back at him. “If your book does arrive—and if we are not killed—and if our minds are not raped—and if Margaret and Mr. Leveret are both utter fools! And if that's the case, Francis, I suppose we must come to an agreement.”

“I am dying, Rosamonde.”

The Contessa's only reply was a haughty snort.

“None of this makes sense,” said Svenson. “Leveret knows we are here. And yet he does nothing.”

“Because he fears to cross me,” rasped Xonck.

“Because he fears us,” cried the Contessa. “We have defied his men, his weapons, his every defense—”

“He does nothing because he does not need to,” said Chang. “We are birds in a cage.”

“No.” Svenson shook his head. “He did not expect us to be here— we mean nothing to his plan. He waits for his true rivals—one he has taken captive, and the other is on her way. The one he has is insignificant. But the one he waits for—the glass woman—when she arrives, he must be ready for her. It can be the only reason for this factory to exist.”

NO ONE spoke, and then a moment after that they could have shouted at the top of their lungs and no one would have heard. The double line of chimneys burst into life, belching thick columns of black smoke and steam. The roar of their spewing left Doctor Svenson staggering as if a gunshot had gone off next to each ear.

It was perhaps two seconds after this that the rooftop door exploded in an almost silent flower of wood chips and flame. The Contessa fell to her knees and Xonck, nearest to it of all, was knocked flat. Svenson flinched at the splinters blown against his face, and looked up, blinking. Chang carefully raised his empty hands. Svenson followed his gaze and then lifted his own arms with the exact placating caution. The ragged hole where the doorway had been was now crowded with green-coated soldiers, their bright weapons aimed in an unwavering line. Another squad of soldiers had swarmed up the ladder where he had climbed with the Contessa, and a third—following Chang and Xonck on the opposite side—had crossed the roof to take positions between the chimneys.

Xonck vomited onto the tar. The Contessa struggled to her feet, her hair in disarray. The soldiers at the ruined doorway fanned onto the rooftop, and as they did so Svenson saw a figure rise through the fingers of still-flaming wood, the black chimney smoke behind her like an infernal curtain blotting out the sky.

Charlotte Trapping stepped onto the rooftop, looking with disdain at the disheveled Contessa and her ruined brother, then wrinkled her nose at Svenson and Chang, their arms still in the air.

“Collect them,” she cried over the roar, a note of pleasure running through her poised demeanor like a seam of silver through cold stone. “If any one so much as raises a finger… kill them all.”

WHEN MISS TEMPLE opened her eyes the tiny hold was still dark. She lifted her head from a burlap sack of beans she had pulled onto the bale of wool (the moist wool being raw and still smelling of sheep) and rubbed absently at the imprint its rough surface had pressed into her cheek. The barge was not moving. They had arrived. She sat up fully and restored Lydia's case to her lap from the crevice it had found between the bales. She bundled up her dress and wiped her face with her petticoat, then smoothed it down again. A very small amount of light crept in through an imperfection in the hatch cover, but it did not tell her whether it was safe to emerge.

Miss Temple felt better for sleep, though her dreams had been unpleasant. She had been once more on the roof of the sinking airship, but the sea was made of shifting plates of blue glass, and as it licked her feet she had felt them freeze and stiffen. Elöise had been there, but then Elöise had become Caroline Stearne, her neck still cruelly gashed, the ruby wound and her black hair making her skin appear achingly pale. As if to amplify this impression, Caroline had reached behind her bloody shoulders and undone the buttons on her black dress. Miss Temple had squirmed at this impropriety, but then Caroline's torso was bare, the dress draped around her hips like a funereal willow. Miss Temple swallowed, rooted by Caroline's sorrowful beauty, the gentle curve of her belly, soft, hanging breasts, nipples the color of raw meat, and the white flesh above them flecked with dried blood. Miss Temple felt her frozen toes beginning to snap. She tottered, knowing that to fall would mean death. Caroline had changed back to Elöise, but with the same body and the identical wound. It was suddenly vital that Elöise reveal some secret, but her ruined throat would hold no air. Each attempt to open her mouth was mocked by the puppetlike gape of the open gash below it. In a sudden spasm of dread Miss Temple reached up for her own throat and felt the tips of her fingers enter the cold incision carved across it…

She frowned, plucking at her hair with both hands, remembering rather more of the dream than she cared to. While she did feel restored—more physically capable, at least—this improvement was accompanied by a palpable increase in her own hunger. Not any hunger for food—though it had been some time since she had eaten, and Miss Temple would not have refused anything wholesome (save mutton)— but an erotic hunger calibrated precisely to the urges of her blue glass memories. At the same time, her sleep had placed some small distance between her and the black influence of the Comte d'Orkancz's book of death. She could taste ash in the back of her throat when she swallowed, but the impulse to despoil things lay not so heavy on her will.

Miss Temple swallowed again (having done so once to gauge the acrid taste, she could not prevent herself from repeating the gesture) and quietly shuffled off of the bales to the ladder, climbing until she touched the hatch cover. She heard nothing, and so pushed gently with the top of her head. The cover was quite heavy and did not budge until she pushed with her hand as well, when it lurched a sharp half-inch, the sudden scrape horridly loud. She peeked through the tiny crack, but could see nothing. Miss Temple raised the hatchway another two inches, waited, then raised it more, waited again, then finally raised it enough to make any further pretense of secrecy absurd. The deck was empty. She shifted the hatch cover to the side and carefully clambered through, keeping her dress and petticoats free of her feet in case she needed to run.

The lantern whose dim light had penetrated the hold hung some yards away, and in its glow she saw they were docked at the edge of the canal. Beyond the canal's bricked border lay a cleared grassy sward and a thick, dark wall of trees whose high branches stretched over the barge, the moon and stars only visible through their whispering canopy.

Miss Temple crept to a short mast half-way up the deck, the furled sailcloth at its side making a thick column to hide behind. She heard the clomp of a heavy bundle dropped onto a wooden surface, and then laughter. In the glow of another lantern loomed a knot of men hauling boxes from another hatch. But they were too far away—and then Miss Temple realized her own barge had been tied directly behind another of identical width, and that it was her very good luck to have emerged just when the crew of her own vessel had chosen to plunder their unguarded neighbor. Miss Temple seized the opportunity and scuttled to her barge's gangway. She looked once more at the men, heard the thud of another box dropped on the far deck, and picked her way down the planking, each footfall silent as a fox. She padded across the grass to a gravel road, crouching low until she reached a turn that hid her from the bargemen. Miss Temple stood straight and exhaled. The dark color of her dress and hair would hide her in the night.