Part 22 (1/2)
”Simply ask me!” she squealed.
”You will lie.”
”Not when I know you can enter my mind as easily as one sticks a spoon in a bowl!” Miss Temple held out her hand. ”Please-I have seen what you have done to the people in this place-I have no desire to lose my hair or see my skin split by sores!”
”Is that what I have done?” asked Mrs. Marchmoor.
”Of course it is-you must know very well!”
The gla.s.s woman did not respond. Miss Temple heard her own quick breath and was ashamed. She forced herself to swallow her fear, to pay attention, to think. Why was her enemy silent?
”I do not see anyone, Celeste,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor, carefully. ”I remain in this room and only rummage what minds are near. I cannot go out. I am not unaware of your reaction to my ... form- yours and everyone else's. I am alone. I am alone in the world. I have been waiting for word, but no word has come.”
”You sent soldiers, didn't you?” asked Miss Temple. ”Did they tell you nothing?”
”What happened on the airs.h.i.+p?”
”Quite a lot happened,” replied Miss Temple nervously. She pointed to the Duke. ”What happened to Colonel Aspiche?”
A trilling series of clicks in Miss Temple's head told her Mrs. Marchmoor was chuckling.
”That was very clever of you. But I stopped the Colonel in time. I cleansed his mind. I can do that. I have discovered that I can do all kinds of things.”
”But you can't do anything with him.” Miss Temple gestured again toward the sepulchral Duke. ”If anyone but Fordyce gets a glimpse- or a whiff-of him, they'll know something's wrong. Everyone outside is most agitated, you know.”
Mrs. Marchmoor's rage struck Miss Temple's mind like a hammer.
”I could kill you,” the gla.s.s woman snarled. ”I could skin your mind like a cat and keep it dancing in an agony you cannot conceive.”
”The city is in turmoil,” spat Miss Temple, on her hands and knees, a strand of saliva hanging from her lip. ”Someone will force their way in, or the Duke will decay beyond what perfume can hide. His palace will be burned to the ground like a plague house-”
Another hammer blow and Miss Temple felt the carpet fibers p.r.i.c.kling against her cheek. She was lying flat, unable to think. How much time had pa.s.sed? Had the gla.s.s woman already ransacked her memories? Her eyes stung and her teeth ached. The unnatural face loomed above her, its eyes s.h.i.+ning as if they'd been slickened with oil. The fingers of Mrs. Marchmoor's hands moved slowly as her mind worked, like sea gra.s.ses in a gentle current.
”In the airs.h.i.+p,” Miss Temple gasped, ”every one of your masters plotted against the others. You say you have discovered new talents, yet I am certain the Comte set controls on your independence. Why else would you hide in this tomb?”
”I am not hiding. I am waiting.”
Despite her aching mind, Miss Temple smiled.
”I wonder... are you more frightened that none of the others possesses his knowledge... or that one of them does?”
”I have nothing to fear from the Contessa or from Francis Xonck.”
”Is that why you sent men to kill them?”
”I sent men to find them, Celeste. And to find you. I can take whatever I need from your mind. I can leave you dead.”
”Of course you can,” admitted Miss Temple, with a nervous breath. ”You kept me alive to talk to me-but if I live still, it has to do with that book... and everything you fear.”
Mrs. Marchmoor was silent, but Miss Temple could see flecks of brightness flitting inside her like sparks from an open fire at night. There was no telling what secrets the woman had plucked from the minds of those around her. Like a hidden spider at the heart of the Palace, with every day Mrs. Marchmoor extended her knowledge beyond the Cabal.
The door opened for Fordyce, shuffling his feet and breathing wetly. He tottered directly to the seated Duke and executed as deferential a bow as his precarious balance might allow. From the Duke's decay-riddled chest came a rotting meat wheeze that drove Miss Temple to put a hand across her mouth.
”Fordyce... the large brougham... private steps... at once.”
”At once, your Grace.”
”And those fellows...”
”Fellows, your Grace?” Fordyce tipped toward the desk and reached out a subtle hand to steady himself.
”Phelps...” rasped the Duke, stretching the name on the rack of his breath to three ugly syllables. ”Crabbe's man... and the other... newly posted... Soames... I require them.”
”Excellent, your Grace.”
”And the corridors... as always... cleared.”
”As always, your Grace. At once.”
Fordyce tottered from the room without the slightest glance in their direction. Miss Temple flinched as the abrasive hiss filled her mind.
”You will take the Duke's arm.”
THE CORRIDORS were indeed empty of all human traffic. With everyone in Staelmaere House waiting anxiously for the Duke's appearance, the decaying chamberlain's announcement of his departure must have been a blow. Were there topcoated diplomats and Ministers kneeling behind every keyhole as they walked? The Duke's steps were deliberate and slow, but he was stable enough-or Mrs. Marchmoor's control so powerful-that she could brace him with one hand and keep the other over her mouth, for the Duke's perfumed stench was extremely disagreeable. The gla.s.s woman herself followed behind, swathed in her thick dark cloak, its hood pulled forward. Only the m.u.f.fled click of her footfalls betrayed her to Miss Temple's ears, though to anyone else the sound would have merely suggested fas.h.i.+onably Spanish, metal-capped boots.
Fordyce led the way, his left leg dragging more than before, to a portrait of the young Duke dressed in a das.h.i.+ng hussar uniform, his vicious face and long black hair at odds with the merry profusion of ta.s.sels and plumes. To the side of the portrait-the background of which, Miss Temple noticed with a shock, showed a line of severed brown heads on fence-spikes-was another over-carved wooden door. Fordyce clawed it open with shaking hands and stepped aside for them to enter a narrow vestibule, waiting for Mrs. Marchmoor without ever seeming to acknowledge her presence. He nodded gravely and shut them in. Miss Temple grimaced-the air was impossibly close. Were they hiding here while the rest of the Privy Council crept past? She gagged into her hand. Suddenly the entire chamber shuddered. Miss Temple looked over at the gla.s.s woman, whose lip curled with a stiff amus.e.m.e.nt. The entire vestibule was a dumbwaiter-and they were descending.
The vestibule came to a stop. The door was unlocked from the outside by Mr. Phelps. Behind him waited Mr. Soames-face drawn, eyes ringed with red-earnestly staring down at the floor. Neither man acknowledged Mrs. Marchmoor as she glided past them into a corridor flagged with slate tiling. The air was cooler, as if they had descended far beneath the house.
”The large brougham...” rasped the Duke. ”It is prepared?”
”It is, your Grace,” answered Phelps. ”May I ask our destination?”
The Duke's voice was a baleful sc.r.a.pe. ”The driver knows.”
BEFORE THEM waited a large black coach, strangely constructed with two distinct compartments, the whole pulled by six enormous black horses. The rear compartment was windowless-almost as if it were part of a hea.r.s.e-while the forward was every bit a normal sort of carriage. Liveried footmen stood waiting, utterly attentive though avoiding any eye contact, as Mrs. Marchmoor very slowly scaled the small steps into the rear compartment, whose interior was as lushly upholstered as a Turkish sofa. The footmen relieved Miss Temple of the Duke's arm and eased their master up. Once he was settled, they shut the door and opened the front compartment. Miss Temple raced to the far corner without anyone's help. Phelps sat across from her. Soames perched nervously next to Phelps, plucking at the frayed skin of his lower lip with his teeth. The footmen shut the door, called out to the driver, and the coach eased forward so gently it might have carried a cargo of eggs.
At first the way around them was dark, but then they safely emerged into a cobbled avenue dotted with well-dressed scowling men striding about importantly.
”The rear of the Kingsway,” observed Phelps, and then, as Miss Temple had no comment, ”We are behind the Ministries.”
”A shame you've no more idea than I where we are off to,” replied Miss Temple.
Phelps said nothing.
”What of you, Mr. Soames?” she called, doing her best to smile brightly.
”I'm sure I couldn't say!” he managed, in an earnest sort of yelp.
The coach left the white stone warren of the Ministries and flanked the river itself, for she recognized its stone walls and iron railings and saw beyond them open sky.