Chang turned the knob with the deliberate patience of a man stroking a woman's leg during church service, but then the bolt released with a snap that echoed down the hall. He thrust the door wide. A trim man in a long black coat wheeled in alarm from a writing table strewn with papers, his mouth open and his eyes wide—a man perhaps of Chang's age, hair combed flat, each cheek bristling with side whiskers. Chang backhanded the man savagely across the face, knocking him past the table and onto a tasseled square of Turkish carpet, where he lay still. Chang returned to the open door, listening for any alarm, heard nothing, and eased it closed.

Charlotte Trapping was not in the room.

The drawers of each cupboard and trunk had been pulled open, their contents put in piles, the bedding heaped on the floor, and her papers spread wide for meticulous scrutiny. The man—one of Sapp's Palace functionaries?—remained insensible. Chang picked up a letter from the table—by its signature, from Colonel Trapping—and turned it over to see if there was a date.

He frowned, set it down, sorted through three more letters in turn, and then set them down as well, gazing around him at the room.

It was quite large, and a mirror in size of the Master's suite at the opposite end of the hallway. Chang entered its expansive closet. The locked door inside led without question to an identical closet in Colonel Trapping's own rooms—just what one might expect between a modern husband and his wife. Chang looked at the clothing hanging about him, none of it overly fine, but there—no doubt freshly cleaned because it had been more recently worn—was a pale, demure dress he knew. He had seen it at Harschmort House, watching from afar on the night of Lydia Vandaariff's engagement celebration… the night it had all begun, not thirty minutes before the Colonel had been poisoned.

Chang walked back to the bed and stood over the unmoving man. Everything in this room belonged to Elöise Dujong.

Three. Apparition

UPON waking from his first sleep after the frozen, all-night struggle to save Miss Temple from fever, Doctor Svenson felt an unaccountable lightness of heart, so unfamiliar that he wondered if he'd succumbed to fever too. He had slept in the workroom to the side of Sorge's kitchen, on a pile of linens waiting to be washed, until the fellow's wife had dragged him from sleep with her rattling pans. Svenson rubbed his face, felt his stubbled jaw, and then shook his head like a dog. He stood, plucked at his steel-grey uniform shirt—still smelling of its immersion in the sea—and rolled each sleeve to the elbow as he worked first one foot and then the other into his boots. The Doctor smeared his pale hair back and smiled. They might all die within the day, but what did it matter? They had survived so far.

His sleep had been a few snatched hours, but after collecting a mug of milky sweet tea from Sorge's daughter, Bette, hot water to shave, and a buttered slice of black bread folded over a slab of salted cod, the Doctor threw himself back into his work, re-smearing Miss Temple's many cuts and bruises with a salve he had concocted from local herbs. The fever remained high and his options in this place were impossibly few—perhaps another mixture of herbs could be brewed into a tea. The door to Miss Temple's room opened—Bette with a new pile of towels. He had not seen Elöise. No doubt she was sleeping herself.

They had not spoken at any length since the sinking of the airship— nor had they ever, save for those few impulsive words at Tarr Manor. And yet Elöise had kissed him—or had he kissed her? Did that matter? Did it retain any momentum in the present?

He applied a fresh layer of damp, cool cloths to Miss Temple's body. She had worsened while he slept. He should have insisted she stay on the airship until a boat could be fetched from the village. It might not have made any difference—the airship might have gone under before any boat could arrive—but Svenson berated himself for not even considering it, for not even realizing the danger.

HE RETURNED to the kitchen, hoping to find Elöise, but met only the concerned faces of Lina and Bette, wondering about the poor young lady. Svenson served them a practiced lie—all was improving— and excused himself to the porch, where Cardinal Chang stood at the rail with his own cup of tea. The Doctor suggested that Chang might avail himself of the salve for his own welter of cuts, but knew even before he finished describing where it was kept that the man would not. They dropped into silence, gazing at the muddied yard and the three very squat huts, one for chickens, one for drying fish, and one for nets and traps. Beyond these were the woods, mainly birch, pale bark gashed with black, branches hanging slack and dripping from the fog.

“Have you seen Mrs. Dujong?” Svenson asked.

“She went walking.” Chang nodded toward the trees. “Not that there is any notable destination.”

Svenson did not reply. He found the isolated woods and the heavy sky splendid.

“Celeste?” asked Chang.

“Grave.” Svenson patted his pocket by instinct for the cigarettes he knew were not there. “The fever has worsened. But she is a fierce young woman, and strength of character may turn the tide.”

“But as far as what you can do?”

“I will continue to do it,” said Svenson.

Chang spat over the rail. “Then it is quite impossible to say how long we are marooned here.”

Chang glanced behind him to the door, then out again at the muddy forest, for all the world trapped on the porch like a tiger in a cage.

“Perhaps I will have a walk myself,” Svenson observed mildly.

HE HAD no particular memory of Elöise's shoes—and wondered on the fact that he'd paid them no mind—but the muddy path to the shore showed small fresh prints with a pointed rear heel he doubted came from any fisherman. The surf was a brilliant churning line dragged between the nearly black seawater and the grey sky hanging heavily above it. Perhaps fifty yards away, her feet just above the reaching waves, stood Elöise.

She turned, saw him coming, and waved. He waved back with a smile, stepping clear of a sudden swipe of surf at his boot. Her cheeks were red with the cold, and her hands—in gloves, but thin wool— tucked under her arms. She wore a plain bonnet borrowed from Sorge's wife, but the wind had pulled strands of her hair loose and whipped them eagerly behind her head. Svenson was tempted to put his arm around her—indeed, upon seeing her his feelings were quite suddenly carnal—but instead he merely nodded, calling above the surf.

“Very fresh, is it not?”

She smiled and hugged her arms. “It is very cold. But a change from the sickroom.”

He saw she held something in her hand.

“What have you found?”

She showed it to him—a small wet stone, the water darkening its color to plum.

“How lovely,” he said.

She smiled, and tucked it into the pocket of her dress.

“Thank you for tending Miss Temple while I slept,” he said.

“Thank Lina—you see I am here, having left well before you were awake. You did not sleep long, you must still be quite tired.”

“Naval Surgeons are made of iron, I assure you—it is required.”

She smiled again and turned to continue walking. He fell in step beside her, closer to the rocks, where the wind was less and they could speak without shouting.

“Will she die?” Elöise asked.

“I do not know.”

“Have you told Chang?”

Svenson nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Not a thing.”

“That is ridiculous,” muttered Elöise. She shivered.

“Are you too cold?” Svenson asked.

She gestured vaguely with her hand at the waves.

“I have been walking…”

She stopped, and took a breath to start again.

“When we spoke on the stairs at Tarr Manor, when you had saved me—so long ago, a lifetime ago—well, since we have properly survived, we have not properly spoken again…”