He passed the village's only inn—a ramshackle wooden building that filled Chang with a palpable longing for a bed, warm food, and several pints of ale—in favor of going directly to the train. Knowing whether the soldier had already escaped would dictate everything.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw a young boy in a pale canvas coat racing toward him without heed.

“You! Boy!”

The boy stopped short, eyes widening at Chang's appearance, and began to edge backwards. Chang calmed him with an open hand.

“I am a traveler in need of the train. Where is the train yard?”

The boy backed up another two steps and pointed over his shoulder, to where the road wound from sight beyond the last few buildings.

“When did the last train leave—to the south?”

“Not for these two days.”

“Two days? You're sure?”

The boy nodded, his eyes darting between Chang's red coat and his black glasses.

“And when is the next?”

“This night, sir. As soon as they finish loading the ore—it'll be some hours.”

Chang looked behind him, back toward the inn. It could not be more than five o'clock now, by the light. Would the soldier be there?

“Where were you running—”

But the boy had dashed back to where he'd come from—a tall wooden structure that from its wide, high double doorway must be the village stables. One door was open, yellow lantern light pooling through it across the muddy yard. Chang strode after him. If he did not need to reach the train at once, the stable was an excellent way to discover if the soldier had arrived by horseback, and if he might have any companions with him at the inn.

THE BOY was nowhere to be seen as Chang walked in, one hand loosely on the hilt of the hunting knife in his belt, though he could hear scuffling from a tack room in the rear. The last stall held a white horse he knew he'd never seen. The horse snorted, sensing his gaze, and pawed the straw. It was obviously spent, still wet with perspiration, nostrils pink and flaring, and shifting its feet with an unsettled, stumbling fearfulness. Was the animal ill, or had it been driven mad from mistreatment? Chang stepped away, uncomfortable as ever in the presence of infirmity, and crossed to the tack room.

The boy he'd seen in the street stood in the doorway. He looked up to Chang as he entered, his face already turned to a grimace of nausea. Curled at his feet lay another groom—breath ragged and face pale—the planking before him pooled with vomit. Near the stricken groom's hands—shaking and compulsively clutching together—lay a dagger-sized spike of blue glass.

Chang took the young boy's shoulder and turned the boy's face to his.

“What is your name?”

“Willem, sir.”

“Willem, your fellow is sick from that piece of glass. Bring me water.”

Chang scuffed a wad of straw into the vomit with his foot and stepped carefully around it, scooping up the groom and dragging him to a rolled straw pallet, which lay beneath a row of pegs dangling bridles and stirrups. Chang very carefully picked up the wedge of glass and laid it on the seat of a wooden stool. Willem reappeared with a wooden bucket and a cup. Chang dipped the cup and without ceremony splashed the water in the older groom's face, then refilled the cup as the man coughed and snorted.

“Drink,” he said, and then called over his shoulder to Willem, as the boy was even then peering at the dagger of glass, “Get away from that—can you not see what it's done to him?”

The groom gagged on the water but Chang was able to turn his head before what he'd drunk shot back out on top of the pallet, staining the dirty canvas bright blue. Chang refilled the cup and forced it into the groom's hands.

“Keep drinking,” he said, and once more took Willem's shoulder, pulling the boy after him back to the stalls.

Chang nodded to the bay gelding. “Whose horse is this?”

“Mr. Bolte's, sir—one of the mine directors.”

“He's the only man with a horse in Karthe?”

“No, sir. The others are let out to folk coming to Karthe—traders, hunters—Mr. Bolte's too. To the Captain—just came back today!”

“Who is this Captain?”

“A hunter! The Captain has a whole party, sir—hunting wolves!”

“But he came back alone?”

“I expect he'll be riding out again.”

Chang leaned closer to the boy.

“Did your friend over there perhaps help himself to the Captain's saddlebags?”

“No, sir!” The boy was touchingly vehement, and Chang shook his head tolerantly.

“I do not care, Willem.”

“But he did not! He found that in the yard—outside!” Willem wheeled and pointed to the crazed white horse. “Christian—that's him there—found the mare and the glass too, and didn't tell me about it either. Half-mad she is—you can see for yourself.”

“Found when?”

“Not two hours,” said the boy, and he pointed to the fresh oats and hay in the trough. “She won't eat anything!”

Chang stared at the horse, and its too-large rolling eyes. “Where is the saddle? What do you call them—the traces, the bridle.”

“She didn't have any.” Willem bobbed his head fearfully at Chang. “She wouldn't be your horse, would she, sir?”

“You mean you don't know whose it is?”

Willem shook his head.

“Can you tell me if this horse has come from a particular stable— from the north?”

“Are you from the north too, sir?” asked Willem.

“Can you tell me?” repeated Chang, more sharply.

“If she has their mark.”

“I will give you this to know,” said Chang, and he took a silver penny from his pocket—Chang had, without the slightest scruple, filched his own small supply from Miss Temple's boot while the Doctor and Elöise were elsewhere. The boy slithered over the stall door and carefully approached the skittish animal, his calming whispers at odds with his eagerness to earn the penny. Chang took two steps closer to the animal—just enough to detect the odor of indigo clay clinging to its flesh.

“I have found the mark, sir!” Willem cried. “It belongs to a merchant in fish oil. He lives here in Karthe, but his team and driver have been trading between villages in the north.”

Chang flipped the silver penny into the air and with a smile the boy snatched it from the air.

“You are quite sure the train will not leave for two hours at the soonest?”

“At the very soonest, sir.”

“Then let us see what else your comrade can say.”

Christian still gripped the wooden cup between his hands, but his senses had cleared enough for him to look up as Chang re-entered the tack room.

“Willem says you found that glass next to the white mare.”

“Is it your glass, sir?” His words were thick and slurred. “I'm ever so sorry—”

“Did you touch it?” asked Chang, but then he saw the groom wore leather gloves. “Did you look into it?”

The groom nodded haltingly.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“It was a rainstorm… a trampled rainstorm… every drop was… broken…”

Chang picked up the glass shard with his gloved hands and squinted, holding it at an angle. The entire shard was riven with cracks, finer than a spider's thread, a ruined lacework just beneath its surface. What effect would this have on the memories inside—would they remain legible? Would looking into broken glass offer only broken memories, or something worse? If the boy had looked longer, would it have burned a hole in his mind, like the tip of a cigar punching through a sheet of parchment?

Chang kicked open the stove with his boot. He shot the shard of glass into the bed of white-orange coals and closed it again. Then he turned back to the groom with a smile as false as any quack physician's.

“You will be fine. I know you both for honest lads—perhaps you will tell me more about this Captain…”

Chang looked around him for the younger boy, but he was gone.