But then Xonck's whispering was answered.
From inside his raw throat came a chuckle, and the man's features settled into a heavier, petulant expression Robert Vandaariff had never worn.
“Why, Francis…” he rasped. “You seem to be in… a very bad way…”
“Oskar?” whispered Xonck with fervent relief. “Is it you?”
“You hold me rather tightly,” answered Vandaariff. “I do not like it.”
“If I release you, I will be shot.”
“Why is that possibly my concern?”
“Let me enlighten you, Oskar,” Xonck snarled. “My body is poisoned by your glass. I require you to save my life—after which I am again your willing friend. I cannot speak for Rosamonde—she too is not her best—but I can say that others, who hold the power to end both your life and mine and whose place this is, have agreed to your restoration only so you can be their slave.”
“That is only to be expected.” Vandaariff shrugged, surveying the room as if his gaze were a gun site, nodding with contempt as he recognized the faces around him. He reached up to wipe his face, the surprisingly delicate movements of his large hand entirely of a piece with the Comte d'Orkancz. He frowned at the black fluid wetting his fingertips. “What is this?”
“Margaret says you're unclean.”
Vandaariff studied the glass woman, cocking his head at her bandaged arm. “Does she? Well… poor Margaret… always so emotional.”
“They have administered the Process,” hissed Xonck impatiently.
Vandaariff reached up to the scars, his touch smearing the black fluid across the raised welts. “A perfectly good idea, I'm sure. At any rate, worth the attempt…”
Mr. Leveret stepped forward and shouted directly into Vandaariff's face. “Indigo Pilate iris sunset Parchfeldt!”
Vandaariff chuckled. “The Process is powerful,” he said with a wan shrug. “But infusion from a book is even more so. One is new-laying the essence.”
“But—but we have remade you out of nothing!” Mrs. Trapping's arrogance had taken on a plaintive whine. “We must control you!”
“Must?” Vandaariff faced her with a sudden, low intensity. “Control the worms in your own stomach, madame. Command the innocence of your daughter to return. Order your bankrupt heart to pump clean—”
Mr. Fochtmann brought down an iron wrench on the back of Francis Xonck's head, with a sickening, crushed-pumpkin thwock. Xonck collapsed on the dais, utterly still.
Vandaariff looked down, abstractly curious. “My goodness.”
Mrs. Trapping's hand was over her mouth. “Francis! Francis!” She strode toward Fochtmann. “What have you done to my brother?”
Mr. Fochtmann struck her cleanly on the jaw with his fist, knocking her into a sprawl of kicking legs.
“My God, sir!” cried Leveret, leaping to her. “You will not hit a woman!”
“I am surely finished with them hitting me,” growled Fochtmann, and he called to Mrs. Marchmoor. “Enough of this nonsense.”
Colonel Aspiche extended his saber toward Vandaariff.
“It does not sound like nonsense to me! If he can defy us—if he does not possess the knowledge to repair this sickness—I am finished with the pack of you!”
Phelps cradled the pistol in one hand and pulled the girl tighter to him with the other, addressing Mrs. Marchmoor. “Please, madame— the sickness! You call him ‘unclean’—does that mean we are doomed?”
“Don't be idiots,” began Fochtmann, “there is no need for rebellion—we are all allies!”
Aspiche spun to Mrs. Marchmoor, the naked saber daringly near her body, his voice tight and his arm shaking.
“For pity's sake, Margaret—tell us!”
But Mrs. Marchmoor said nothing. Her gaze remained locked on Robert Vandaariff. Miss Temple knew the glass woman had no answer, that she could not tell who—or what—this new person before her truly was. Vandaariff cocked his head again and licked his lips, deliberately tasting them. He abruptly began to retch but then swallowed it down with difficulty, a display that to Miss Temple was every bit as revolting as if he had vomited outright.
Still Mrs. Marchmoor said nothing, Aspiche's saber-tip dancing before her.
Charlotte Trapping cried out plaintively, “Alfred! They have Francesca—please!”
Mr. Leveret was startled to action. He swept his arm dramatically toward the soldiers with the concussive shell. “No one will do anything—unless everyone here wishes to die!”
But Leveret's next shout failed on his lips. Blood burst out from the faces of the two soldiers. They dropped their wires and fuses as cleanly as if their arms had been lopped off with a scythe. Leveret stammered, and then yelled desperately for his army. He was already far too late.
MISS TEMPLE was staggered, as if she'd been cuffed hard across the ear, while all around her carbines clattered to the floor. The soldiers toppled heedless to their faces, eyes open wide, bodies entirely still. Across the entire room it was the same. Every person was incapacitated in an instant's sudden violent pulse from the glass woman's mind. Leveret and Mrs. Trapping lay flattened. Phelps and Aspiche sprawled on their backs, pulling Francesca Trapping with them. Elöise groped on the floor, hair fallen about her face. Vandaariff slumped into the brass boxes. The Contessa was on all fours. Only Fochtmann had kept his feet and his senses… along with herself, Chang, and Svenson.
Miss Temple shook her head—her ears were ringing—taking in the swathe of destruction. A moment before it seemed as if the glass woman's impossible powers had finally reached their limit, but she had smothered the rebellion in one mighty, silent stroke. Yet whatever she had intended—to escape? to eradicate her enemies?—was forever stalled when she saw they still stood to defy her. With a plangent whine Mrs. Marchmoor retreated several rapid clicking steps. If they could withstand her mental powers, Miss Temple realized, the creature was utterly defenseless. They might be children with stones intent on crushing a tortoise. Miss Temple met the glass woman's gaze and saw in her swirling eyes incomprehension and terror.
Chang lurched toward Colonel Aspiche, groping for the insensible man's fallen saber.
“Sir! I beg of you!”
Margaret Hooke cried out to Fochtmann, stirring him from his daze. As Chang took hold of the Colonel's weapon, Fochtmann took two strides and snatched up Mr. Phelps' pistol. Doctor Svenson tackled Fochtmann, and the tall man fell, crashing to the floor in a heavy tangle. Fochtmann fought against Svenson's arms to aim the gun at Chang, who was stranded between the struggling men and Mrs. Marchmoor, neither target within reach of his saber. Miss Temple darted forward and kicked Fochtmann's hand quite cleanly. The pistol flew away from them all, skittering unimpeded across the floor… until it was stopped by the Contessa's foot.
THE CONTESSA bent down unsteadily to retrieve the gun.
“Are we finished with the circus?” she asked. “I do hope so. I am tired.”
She cocked the gun and held it generally, so she might as easily fire at Miss Temple or Chang as at Mrs. Marchmoor.
“An interesting circumstance,” the Contessa observed. “Like some interlocking Chinese box. Margaret can overpower me, but not Chang. I can shoot Chang, but then Margaret is free to overwhelm my mind. And no doubt each of us would be more than happy for the others to die.”