The Chemickal Marriage (26 page)

Keeping hold of the child’s hair, Miss Temple suddenly shifted her aim to Vandaariff. The spell was broken. Foison’s arm whipped forward. With a sharp ringing the knife was knocked wide by Chang’s own flung blade. Doctor Svenson’s revolver roared in her ear. Miss Temple squeezed the trigger of her own pistol, aiming at Vandaariff’s head, but only plucking his high collar. Before she could fire again, Chang shoved her roughly back and met the charge of Foison’s three men with a knife in one hand and his razor in the other.

She collided with Francesca, who fell, causing Miss Temple to sprawl in turn and lose the pistol. Francesca scuttled away. Miss Temple got to her knees, intending to crawl after, but instead tripped one of Foison’s soldiers – careening from Chang with a spurting wrist. She whipped the knife from her boot. As the soldier groped for her throat she slashed at his fingers. He rose before her, then arched his back with a scream. Another of Foison’s knives had buried itself in the man’s body, clearly intended for Miss Temple.

A gunshot made her turn. Doctor Svenson lay on his side, the last cloaked soldier tottering above him with a smoking revolver. Between them crouched Francesca, somehow tangled in a corpse’s cover sheet. Miss Temple flung her knife at the cloaked man’s face. It struck harmlessly on the shoulder, but
caused him to spin, whipping his pistol towards her. The Doctor fired, punching a hole under the man’s clean-shaven jaw. Francesca clapped both hands over her ears. Svenson slumped back, clutching his chest.

Two more soldiers lay at Chang’s feet, a knife-hilt sticking from one’s throat. Chang flicked the blood from his razor and stepped deliberately between Foison and Miss Temple. He snatched up a cloak, twirling it around his wrist. Foison drew two more knives from his silk coat.

The two men advanced with feral precision. It was the first time Miss Temple had seen Chang treat an enemy like an equal, and it frightened her more than anything.

Vandaariff had withdrawn from the mêlée, back to the columns, and now stood waving. Behind him, at last, came the calls of soldiers. She blinked. Vandaariff was waving them
away
.

Because their meeting had been a surprise, she realized, an interruption. Vandaariff’s true business in the Customs House could not stand scrutiny – the soldiers would take matters in hand, clear the area, scour the premises for confederates …

What if Vandaariff had not come to the trading hall for
bodies
at all? Had his artist’s indulgence delayed his departure, after his true errand?

The square. The cathedral. Why not the Customs House too? Vandaariff would know when it would be released for normal work and filled with men – would know to the minute. The doubled ticking –

More voices filled the portico, the soldiers calling out at the sight of the battle. Any moment they must burst forward. Miss Temple saw her own pistol. She snatched it up.

Her shot splintered the wood of the clock case.

‘Celeste, what are you doing?’

It was Svenson. Behind her Vandaariff’s voice rose to a shriek. She marched closer, for a better shot. Her second bullet missed entirely.

An officer loudly ordered everyone to drop their weapons. Miss Temple extended her arm, imagining the clock a brown glass bottle, and fired.

Blue smoke spat out at the bullet’s impact, an instant ahead of the blast, a deafening wall of smoke and debris that choked her breath and blotted out all sight. Miss Temple was lifted off her feet and landed hard. Her last
thoughts boiled with unreasoning fury. She wanted nothing more than to blind Robert Vandaariff with her own two thumbs.

She came to her senses at a blaze of agony in her left arm.

‘
Pauvre petite
,’ said an unpleasant voice. ‘You will regret your waking. Hold her, please … she may still be subject to the
infusion
.’

Firm hands clamped Miss Temple’s shoulders, and above her face loomed Mr Foison, white hair hanging down. Robert Vandaariff stood near in his shirtsleeves, an apron over his clothes. He held a pair of forceps and, as she watched, insinuated their tip into a gash running perhaps four inches along her forearm. She protested, but he only thrust deeper, beneath a crust of blue that sealed one end of the wound. With a wrench that made Miss Temple cry, Vandaariff prised up the crystallized flesh. He tore the patch free with his fingers and dropped it on a plate. Despite the pain, Miss Temple felt her thoughts clear. Vandaariff set the forceps next to a porcelain basin and washed his hands. Next to the basin she saw a lock of auburn hair, quite obviously her own.

‘Not a serious wound,’ he said. ‘Mr Foison is perfectly capable of dressing it. I have done enough for
you
. That you live at all, that I have not melted your soft body for candle fat …’ He sniffed and reached for a towel. ‘It goes against tradition.’

Vandaariff tucked the lock of hair into a pocket, collected his cane and hobbled to a cabinet lined with bottles – but not, she realized, bottles of liquor. He poured out an ugly mixture, like milky weak tea, swirled the glass and drank it off. ‘You were only touched the once.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Your luck persists.’

‘You do not have Francesca.’ Her voice quavered, for Foison had begun to wrap her arm. Her wool jacket was gone, her dress ash-blackened and tattered.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘My survival.’

‘I suppose you do not care – being so brave – that your friends were blown to rags. Only that you managed to vex
me
.’

Miss Temple’s body went cold. ‘I do not believe you.’

‘By all means, Miss Temple. Believe your
heart
.’

She gasped again as Foison knotted the bandage. He stepped away, and Miss Temple pushed herself up. She lay on a wooden work table in a strange room panelled with polished steel. Had there been time to reach Harschmort?

‘But this is your own natural advantage,’ Vandaariff went on. ‘Celeste Temple acts without the impediment of remorse. Though it
was
clever to realize a device had been set for tomorrow’s trading. And decent shooting to strike it.’

‘Are you always so generous when you’ve been bested?’

‘Bested? Miss Temple, the bee is but part of the hive, the single piraña one of its school. In the world of men, such multiplication of effort is accomplished by wealth. This is
my
advantage. And when such a device is set off by my
enemies
in the presence of officers of the 8th Fusiliers? At a stroke it is proved that I have nothing to do with such destruction – I was there only to search for a missing old friend, don’t you know, arranged as a favour from Lord Axewith. And the blame is laid fully upon the three individuals who have continually thwarted my plans. I could not have asked for more.’

Her throat closed against any reply. Foison coughed into his hand.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Vandaariff. ‘Off with you. But indulge my frailty – you’ve seen the animal.’

With a cold efficiency, Foison looped her limbs into leather restraints and pulled tight. Then he was gone.

The precaution was hardly necessary. Miss Temple could barely breathe. She saw Svenson clutching his chest and Chang, his back to the blast, unprepared … she looked down at her bandaged arm and wilfully clenched her fist. Pain shot up her arm and tears stung her eyes. Vandaariff was lying. She had been kept alive to be ransomed, and only Svenson and Chang would so preserve her. They had escaped with Francesca, Vandaariff’s desired prize.

Vandaariff shuffled beyond her view, making a menacing clatter of metal and glass. But, instead of the stink of chemicals or indigo clay, the room was suddenly suffused with the pleasing odour of cooked eggs and melted butter. He returned to his seat with a lacquered tray.

‘You have not eaten, I know.’ He plucked up a fresh white roll and tore it
at the seam, fingers stiff as the talons of a bird. He smeared butter into the bread, then dipped a spoon into a Chinese pot and withdrew a gleaming lump of plum jam. He shook this onto the butter and cut – the shaking knife edge ringing on the plate – a wedge of soft white cheese. The finger’s-width of cheese fell off the knife, and with an exasperated grunt Vandaariff smeared it into the roll with a gnarled thumb. He wiped his hand on a napkin and sighed at the effort.

Miss Temple’s last meal had been at Raaxfall, and so poor she’d left half on her plate. She watched the tray closely. Her arm throbbed.

‘One must eat, you know, for strength.’ He swirled the eggs with a fork and raised a quivering morsel, dripping yolk. He swallowed with difficulty, as if it were a mouthful of small bones. He set down the fork and took an awkward bite of the roll. Vandaariff’s teeth were not ill favoured for an older man, but his hesitation to bear down made Miss Temple wince that one might break away. Vandaariff chewed, breath flaring his nostrils, and finally forced the bolus through. He wiped his lips and grimaced, dropping the napkin onto the tray.

‘Does it not agree?’ Miss Temple asked. ‘I would have thought you ate for pleasure. Even for
art
. The Comte d’Orkancz told me everything in life came down to art. Then he made me pay for his coffee. I suppose
that
is an art as well.’

An appreciative smile graced his lips. ‘Do you not worry for your life?’

‘I am alive to be ransomed.’

She could not tell if he laughed at her delusion or at the chance to correct it. ‘You are like a fox intent on its prey, never noticing that the forest around her is aflame.’

‘I am not. And, if I am, my prey is still
you
.’

‘But when you so brightly speak of
ransom
, you should realize that those who might reclaim you do not know to what extent you have been harmed. One bit of glass has scratched your arm – who is to say five more did not scratch your face? What if one exploded straight into your mouth and turned your tongue to stone? You could not tell them what had happened. You could never tell anyone
anything
.’ He poked the cane at the hem of her dress and dragged it up above the knee. ‘The trick about
art
, Miss Temple,
is to understand how each moment is compounded into another,
tempers
another. You see the weakness in my body. I see the fever in yours. Does either one of us see true?’

‘I have no fever.’

Vandaariff snorted derisively. ‘I could light a match by touching the tip to your skin.’

He flipped the cane in the air and caught the opposite end, then pushed the handle – a smooth brass ball – along her calf.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Claiming my property.’ The brass ball slid up her thigh. Miss Temple squirmed.

‘You are vulgar and coarse – and no gentleman!’

‘An artist is never a gentleman. And a
lady
ought to be a better liar than you.’

The cane nudged the seam of her silk pants. Miss Temple shrank from its touch.

‘You are withered and old! You torment me because you cannot do anything else!’

He turned the brass ball with a delicate, teasing motion, and spoke with an airy distraction. ‘If I wanted your submission, I could put a piece of glass before your eyes. If I sought your degradation, I could summon Foison’s men to rape you through the afternoon. Do you think I would not dare?’

Miss Temple shook her head quickly. The cane pressed hard against her and she whimpered in fear. Vandaariff tugged her dress above her waist, and then her petticoats. He looked down with a musing expression, as if she were a food locker whose jumbled contents might just constitute a meal. He spread his palm against her pelvis, measuring the soft flare, then pressed down. He took her hips with both hands, hefting her body. His stiff fingers cupped her buttocks and squeezed.

‘Wide enough,’ he announced, ‘should other plans fail and you still live. I do appreciate your spark.’ He shoved her petticoats higher.

‘I beg you,’ she whispered. ‘Please –’

‘My interest is entirely contingent, I assure you.’ He caught the waist of her silk pants and pulled. The silk ripped. He pulled again, with a grunt, and
they came away. ‘After Rosamonde’s book, you are not intact in any
practical
sense of the word. Time enough has passed to show you made no mistakes with young Bascombe. But since then, with your mind so swimming – and I
know
it’s swimming, Celeste – have you remained so careful? This last day with Chang … more time with the Doctor … and how many others have crossed your path at that hotel?’ His thumb stroked the curls between her legs. ‘Have you surrendered or been strong? Or have you found strength to be something
else
?’ He laid his palm above the hair, against her belly, as if to listen through it. ‘I prefer to think you failed – the guilt burning even as you’ve quenched your need, with one of those paid-off soldiers – yes, Mr Ropp behind you, thrusting away. I imagine you soaked in the history of the world, so many generations of mindless rut.’ His hand slid lower, his thumb dragging along her folds.

Miss Temple flexed her fist again, but Vandaariff merely took her gasp as a sign of enjoyment.

‘What do you
want
?’ she pleaded.

‘Your confession.’ His motions became forceful, his smile more fixed and contemptuous.

‘Confess to what?’

‘Futility.’

‘You are hurting me –’

‘Pain is nothing. Desire is nothing.’ Vandaariff’s lips had stretched with effort, tight across his teeth. ‘Trappings of useless vessels … flawed from the start …’

Miss Temple yelped. Vandaariff raised his fingers, pinching between them three reddish hairs. He flicked them away and plucked again.

‘What are you doing! Stop it!’ She cried out over her shoulder towards the door: ‘Mr Foison!’

‘All signs of age must be expunged. Age is corruption, ash, decay –’

‘Stop! Mr Foison!’

‘The alchemical Bride bears no blemish. She is without colour, holds the moon – she cannot be
marked
–’

His fingers sank into Miss Temple’s hair and seized hold, tugging her pubis. She raised her hips to stave off the painful wrench, whimpering –

The door opened behind her. Vandaariff turned, eyes unfocused.