Like a striking snake Miss Temple stabbed her face up to his, her lips finding the rough stubble of his cheek and then his mouth, which was so much softer than she ever expected.
CHANG ARCHED his back with a cry and then, his eyes finding hers once more, shoved Miss Temple away from him with all his strength. She caught her foot on another vine and tumbled to her back, watching helplessly as Chang tried to turn, groping for the saber, only to collapse facedown on the forest floor. Behind him stood the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. In one hand she held her recovered spike, and in the other Lydia Vandaariff's leather case… but had not the book been destroyed by the shell? Could it have been protected inside its brass casing? Without pausing to cut Chang's throat—a sure sign of haste and anger—the Contessa lurched straight for Miss Temple, her face grim and cold. Miss Temple screamed aloud and kicked herself backwards through the leaves, finally rolling to her feet just as the Contessa was snatching at her dress.
Miss Temple tore away and broke into a run, careening blindly through the darkness, heart thudding in her chest, eyes streaming with tears.
She could not think at all but sobbed aloud each time she gasped for breath. Patches of moonlight pierced the treetops, but the heart of the forest remained dark. Miss Temple dodged unthinkingly between ruins and thin saplings, the branches whipping her face and limbs. She glanced behind, but saw no one—with the gash on her leg the Contessa must not be able to run.
Miss Temple knew she should go back, go die next to him—even as she kept running. What had she done? What had she lost? She sobbed again and then stumbled suddenly to a stop, blinking without comprehension.
The forest around her was flooded with light.
“LOOK WHO it is,” sneered an easy, careless voice from beyond the boxed lantern, whose gate had been flung open in a stroke to blind her. “Little Miss Stearne. Or should I say Temple?”
Miss Temple looked over her shoulder, terrified that the Contessa would appear, and wheeled back to the clearing, crying aloud at what she had not seen. On the ground lay Colonel Aspiche, curled around a pooling wound in his chest, matched by a smaller stain on his back where a blade had run him full through.
“Didn't see him in the dark,” explained Captain Tackham. “Terrible thing, he being my commanding officer. Still, mistakes happen in wartime—awful, awful mistakes.”
The men to either side of him, two dragoons, chuckled at his words.
“Are you alone?” asked Tackham, lifting his bloody saber blade toward her with a frank brutality. “We heard you call for that doctor … then you screamed.”
“One… one of the factory soldiers,” she said breathlessly. “I killed him… with a rock.”
“A rock?”
Miss Temple nodded and swallowed.
“Poor fellow. Was he alone?”
“I don't know. I didn't see.”
“It seems you are pursued.”
“I don't know—I—I am afraid—”
Tackham snorted, and nodded to his soldiers. “Make sure, be careful, then come back.”
The troopers pushed past Miss Temple and vanished into the darkness. Tackham pointed with his blade just past the circle of lantern light, to where Mr. Phelps huddled on his knees, utterly cowed.
“I have been told what happened inside,” explained Tackham.
“My considered strategy is to safely wait, and then partake of what spoils remain.”
“There are no spoils!” cried Miss Temple.
Tackham laughed in her face.
“Darling, I am looking at one top-shelf spoil this very instant.”
TACKHAM SPUN at a rustle in the leaves behind him, sweeping his saber to the figure who emerged… but when he saw who it was, the Captain laughed. Doctor Svenson advanced warily with a scavenged saber of his own, looking extremely tattered and worn. He met Tackham's gaze with contempt and then called to Miss Temple.
“Celeste… you've not been harmed?”
She shook her head, unable to say a thing about Chang, her throat closed tight against the words.
“Where…?” Mr. Phelps' voice was a croak. He gestured behind Svenson. “Where is…?”
“Mrs. Dujong?” Doctor Svenson gestured vaguely behind him. “I do not know. At the canal.”
“And the child?” asked Phelps.
“No longer your concern,” said Svenson.
“Put down your blade or die,” Tackham said coldly.
“Well, one of us will die,” said the Doctor. “I heard your comment about spoils, you see—and if other men lack the courage to stop you, I do not.”
“How excellent!” Tackham hefted his blade with a wolfish smile. “You know how to use a cavalry saber, then?”
“As much as any surgeon of the Macklenburg Navy,” answered Svenson.
Tackham laughed aloud.
“Doctor—no, no—you must not—”
“Tush, my dear. What the Captain does not understand is that, like any German university man, I have done my share of dueling…”
The Doctor snapped, to Miss Temple's eyes, into an extremely dubious en garde stance, at his full height with his legs together like a dancer, and his sword arm straight out above him, the blade upside down with its tip floating directly at the level of Captain Tackham's eyes. Tackham snorted and settled into a low crouch, his left hand tucked behind his back and his right hand bouncing with anticipation, as if debating just where to land his blow.
“Not the most flexible of stances,” Tackham observed.
“It does not need to be. The mistake you have made, young man, is in thinking that I give one brass farthing for my life.” Svenson's voice was both icy and forlorn. “It is all well to fight a man whose intention is not to be killed. Fear makes defense his priority—it is the bedrock of every sane strategy. But since I do not care for my life at all, I tell you quite clearly that you are doomed. Strike me anywhere you can. My counter-stroke will land. From this inflexible stance it takes but one turn of my wrist to open your skull like a melon.”
“You're a liar,” sneered Tackham.
“You will find out, won't you?” said the Doctor. “Attack me anywhere … and die.”
“Doctor—”
“Hush now. I must concentrate.”
THE TWO men edged slowly into the center of the clearing, eyes locked on each other. Miss Temple trembled to see, up close, how vicious the saber blades truly were—the wide bright steel, the indented curve of the blood gutter, the hatchetlike chop at the tip, wide and sharp as a cleaver. It seemed the Doctor had no chance at all, yet Tackham moved with extreme care, as if the Doctor's words were at least possibly serious.
“Advancement by assassination?”
The Doctor nodded at the Colonel's corpse, childlike and bereft, on the ground. From the factory behind them came a spattering of gunshots. Tackham frowned and glanced over his shoulder.
“It barely matters,” said Svenson. “You will not live to see your new rank. They will arrive in minutes to kill us all.”
“I beg to differ,” said Tackham.
“Celeste,” said Svenson carefully, “please be ready to flee.”
At this Tackham feinted a cut at Svenson's head, but the Doctor either saw through the move or was simply too slow to respond and did not counterattack as he'd promised. Tackham chuckled. Was the Doctor's threat just bluster after all? Tackham feinted again. Svenson slipped in the dirt and Tackham swept a vicious cut at the Doctor's side that Svenson stopped—quite barely—with a parry that rang through the trees like a ship's bell.
“Counter-stroke indeed,” sneered Tackham. “You're a lying coward.”
Behind came more gunshots, closer, within the woods.
“Your men have been killed,” gasped Svenson, the tip of his blade once more floating in front of Tackham's eyes. “You are next. Throw down your sword.”
“To hell with you,” snarled Tackham, and he lunged.