The Dark Volume (73 page)

“Celeste—” he began, but she did not bother to listen.

“Doctor Svenson!” she shouted into the woods. “Doctor Svenson! Where are you?”

Chang seized her shoulder and hissed, “Do not call out! We do not know who is here!”

“Do not be ridiculous,” she cried, “and let me go!”

She pulled her arm free and stalked away, stumbling on a thicket of vines before locating a path.

“Celeste,” Chang whispered, following. “There is still Aspiche— and Phelps—who knows who else—”

“Then I suppose you will have to kill them. Unless you prefer I do that as well. I'm sure I have no idea of your preferences in anything.”

“Celeste—”

Miss Temple wheeled where she was and struck out with her right hand, slapping Cardinal Chang's chest. Chang caught her hand, and so she struck him with the other, this time a fist across his jaw, dislodging his glasses. Chang stabbed the cavalry saber into the ground and caught that hand as well. Miss Temple kicked his leg. He shook her.

“Celeste!”

Miss Temple looked at him, her hands held tight, and saw with a piercing despair the beauty of his jaw, the broad grace of his shoulders, and his especially elegant throat, bound as it was by a filthy neck cloth. Then with a swallow she looked into Chang's eyes, visible past the skewed black lenses… squinting and damaged… confused and hideous… and she realized that this man was the exact image of everything that had gone so horribly wrong, of so much she had lost and could never recover.

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.

His saber slapped Svenson's blade to the side and shot forward unopposed, slicing a bloody dark trough across the Doctor's chest. The Doctor reeled back. Tackham snapped upright, all his training at the fore, ready to launch a second blow.

But then Tackham wavered. A jet of blood spat from the side of his throat, and then, the gash primed, sprayed out like a fountain, for the Doctor had indeed taken his own desperate cut while opening himself to death.

Tackham toppled into the dirt. Svenson dropped the saber and slipped to his knees. Miss Temple screamed and ran to him, easing his body to the ground. The Doctor's voice was already a shuddering whisper.

“No, no! Run! Escape!”

Miss Temple was shoved aside by Mr. Phelps, who had taken off his coat and balled it up to staunch Svenson's seething wound. More gunfire rang through the trees.

“Go!
He has given his life for yours! Don't be a fool!”

Doctor Svenson arched in agony as Phelps tried to peel free his tunic. Miss Temple held her hand to her mouth, sobbing, and wheeled away half-blind with tears.

SHE KNEW she was a coward, but she could not stop. She tripped headlong more than once, scuffing her hands, scratching her face and her arms, each time hauling herself up and running on. She cried for Chang, for the Doctor, and for herself—for every instant when she had failed—so very many of them—for how she had misplaced every part of her life that mattered.

When she fell the last time she lay in the dirt, overtaken with sobs. She did not know how far she had run—a hundred yards or a mile— nor did she care. The sky blazed with stars. She lay in an open space ringed with ivy-covered stones… more ruins.

Miss Temple pushed herself to her knees, brushing the hair from her face and the tears from her eyes. Something lay on the ground, catching the light… a ring of orange metal. She felt the weight in her bodice and knew Chang had placed the rings there to protect her.

“Celeste,” came a hesitant whisper. “What has happened?”

In the shadows crouched Elöise Dujong and, clasping her hand tightly, Francesca Trapping. Miss Temple spat in the dirt, weeping again, all of her bitterness and regret suddenly finding their vent.

“They are
dead
, Elöise! They are both
dead
!”

Elöise gasped, her hand over her mouth, and began to sob as well. Miss Temple rose to her feet and staggered toward the woman. As soon as she was in reach she struck her across the face with all her waning strength, knocking Elöise to the ground. Francesca leapt away with a whimper of fear.

“Get up!” Miss Temple snarled at Elöise. “They are both
dead
, and you killed them as much as anyone—your foolish, prideful, reckless, selfish—”

Elöise lay on her side sobbing. Miss Temple kicked her as hard as she could and nearly fell over. She kicked Elöise again and dropped awkwardly to her knees.

“He would not come with us!” Elöise whimpered. “He would not
come
!”

Tears streamed down Miss Temple's face.

“I have tried to protect him, Celeste,” Elöise cried to her, “to protect everyone—and not one thing has been saved! I am a fool—not one thing!”

Elöise's words stopped in her throat, her shoulders rocking.

MISS TEMPLE slumped onto her back, her ragged breath fogging in the midnight chill. Chang shoving her to safety with his last strength. The Doctor exposing his heart to a sword. Of course he had returned at her cry. Of course Chang had protected her to the end. Despair swallowed up her rage and she felt unbearably alone.

Miss Temple heard Elöise move and knew the woman was watching her, miserable, desperate for any crumb of forgiveness or care.

“It is not your fault,” Miss Temple said finally, her voice a stricken whisper. “It is only mine, and always has been. I am extremely sorry. I am… I am… nothing at all.”

Elöise shook her head. “We could go back.”

“If we go back we will die as well, and their sacrifice is made meaningless.” The words were hollow and false in Miss Temple's mouth. She felt the black coating of the Comte's book in her throat—felt the
truth
of it—and could find no other answer.

“I do not care,” shuddered Elöise.

Miss Temple turned her head and found herself staring into the face of the silent girl. Francesca Trapping's lower lip was trembling, her blue eyes frightened and remote. What nightmare had the poor girl lived? Miss Temple struggled to sit.

“You must take
her,”
she said, swallowing, kicking at Elöise's nearest leg.
“She
has to be saved, Elöise. You must take her away from this.”