“What is your opinion of my bandage?” she asked.
“I think you did very well to tie it yourself,” he answered, reaching carefully beneath her arm to redo the knot.
“It was not me at all,” said the Contessa, “but someone with much smaller fingers. It was a very long journey, you see, and just the two of us together.”
For an unguarded second Svenson imagined himself trapped in a freight car with the Contessa. Sharing an open fire was difficult enough. But the woman alone with Celeste Temple… what had they spoken of, and what—what else, it did not matter… nothing mattered as long as Miss Temple had emerged alive and unscathed. If only he could believe it.
“There you are,” said Doctor Svenson, sitting back on his knees.
She turned to face him, testing the ease of her arm and the tightness of the bandage, but not moving to do up her dress. Doctor Svenson swallowed, his medical objectivity steadily more confounded, like distant moonlight disappearing under cloud, as he stared. He forced his gaze up to hers, expecting a twinkling mockery, but the Contessa's eyes were warm and clear.
“If any girl could ever be dear to me, I can imagine Celeste Temple such a one, though my first impulse on seeing such a determined little beast was to snap her neck between my teeth. So to speak, you understand … and yet… perhaps it was this wound… perhaps the need to huddle together for warmth …”
“She—she is ferocious,” the Doctor stammered. “But still innocent.”
“I think you retain some innocence as well,” whispered the Contessa.
The moment was as dangerous as any Doctor Svenson had ever known. Despite all perspective and sense, her violet eyes remained pools into which he could, even now, be utterly lost, and in that losing give over all loyalty, all faith, all decency to her uncaring purpose. If he leaned forward to her lips, would she kiss him? Would she laugh? He licked his lips and dipped his gaze across her body. He could no longer recall the color of Elöise's eyes.
Doctor Svenson sprang to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers, and at once stumbled on a stone and toppled backwards into the undergrowth, landing with a grunt as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay gasping, the green leaves of forest ivy brushing at his face, and shoved himself onto his elbows. The Contessa had returned her arm to her dress, and was doing up the shining black buttons with her left hand.
“Are you quite alive?” she asked.
“My apologies.”
“Come back to the fire,” she said. “We have little time after all, and urgent matters to discuss.”
DOCTOR SVENSON took a cigarette from his case and lit it before he sat down, as if his habit might shield his weakness, but her expression made plain he was the least of her concerns. Grateful, if also childishly stung at his peripherality, he returned to his place across the fire.
“Where is Cardinal Chang?”
It was not at all what Svenson expected her to say, and he was strangely crestfallen.
“I have no idea.”
The Contessa was silent. Svenson exhaled and tapped his ash onto the stones.
“If you hope Chang will aid you any more than I—”
“Aid?” she snapped. “You are a presumptuous Teuton.”
Her mood had sharpened, or she had stopped bothering to hide it.
“Upon surviving the airship, madame, you must have assumed you were the only one of your Cabal—”
“Cabal?”
“What else does one call you and your… associates?”
“Anything else. The word smacks of businessmen playing with corn harvests.”
“My point,” continued the Doctor, “is that your allies must have been few—thus your enlistment of the poor boy in Karthe. He was quite badly killed, you know.”
The Contessa's eyes were harder. “The subject is not diverting.”
“You ask for Chang because you are alone and seek greater numbers—and since you do ask, since you do expect my help—”
“How very dramatic,” she sneered. “Ganz tragisch.”
Svenson's cigarette had burned nearly to his fingers. He took one last puff and dropped it into the fire. He looked the Contessa in the eye.
“You left the train deliberately to come here, to this spot in Parchfeldt Park. While this building is of a size to be a manor house, the construction is made for industry. The location of the canal allows the swift passage of goods—and yet the road and the canal are new-made. That you are here suggests you are one of the people who has new-made it—just as it is you who have made Xonck your enemy. You met him—in the village or on the way to Karthe. You most likely stole his horse, you certainly stole his book—and yet even after recovering it he was still doing his level best to find you.”
“Once wronged, Francis is most persistent in his rage. As you put a bullet in his chest, you might bear it in mind.”
The Doctor ignored her mocking smile. “He has had several opportunities to take my life, yet I am here. Which means this place too is entirely related to Xonck.”
This last did not come from any deduction about the Contessa, but from the crates of Xonck munitions on the barge with Mr. Fruitricks. Svenson was sure now that Fruitricks was an agent of Francis Xonck, who had intended all along to seize control of the Comte's machinery. And now Charlotte Trapping had the Comte's paintings along with Vandaariff Whatever she knew of the Cabal—through her brother or her husband or even, he had to admit it, Elöise—had been enough to send her on her own extreme journey. Did the woman hope to challenge Fruitricks? Or was she hoping only to survive?
Svenson swallowed. Would he see Elöise again after all?
“In any event,” he muttered, “you must expect Xonck here, if he still lives.”
“I do. And you and I have been here far too long.”
The Contessa stood, reached behind for her bag, and smiled as Svenson struggled to his feet.
“You have caused me so much trouble, Abelard Svenson, yet as you say, you are here.” She flicked a bit of grime from his hair. “It shows something more than your decency—passion, lust, despair, one scarcely cares—but something in you uncontrolled. I find it spurs my trust.”
“But I do not trust you at all.”
“If you did I should think you quite a worm,” she replied. “The fire will die on its own, and by now we will be unseen on the road. Come, it is time.”
THEY WALKED without speaking to the gravel road, a rough carpet threading the wood to either side. With night fallen full, the building glowed even more brightly. The Contessa reached for his arm, and then her touch became a tug on his uniform sleeve. He quickly followed her off the path, crouching low and keeping silent. A thin glimmer of yellow drifted toward them from the white building: the gleam from a mostly closed lantern. Svenson had not even glimpsed it— without the Contessa he would have blundered on and been taken. Behind the lantern came a double line of figures dragging two low, flat carts. These were the bargemen going back for the final load from the canal. Once they had passed, the Contessa's lips touched his ear.
“They will find him. We must hurry.”
In a rustle of leaves she was back on the road and walking as quickly as the dark and her injury would allow, and Svenson broke into a rapid jog to catch up.
“What is this place? I know they have brought the Comte's machines …”