“She does not matter!” Aspiche shouted at Fochtmann. “They are still coming for you !”
Fochtmann snorted and looked down for the Contessa's pistol, only to find Charlotte Trapping standing with the pistol in her hand. He reached out with one brusque, impatient arm.
“Mrs. Trapping, I will have that weapon. If you cooperate, as a gentleman I can promise you—”
Mrs. Trapping fired the pistol into Fochtmann's body, spinning the tall man headlong onto the floor. He raised his head once and she fired a second time, the bullet spattering the top of his bald head as if it had been swatted by a shovel.
CHARLOTTE TRAPPING pointed the pistol at Vandaariff's chest… but then her aim wavered to the Contessa, still on the ground, and finally to the glass monstrosity of her brother.
From the floor below came the crash of cannons and the rattle of gunfire. Around them all the soldiers awkwardly regained their senses, collecting their carbines, trying to make sense of the carnage before them.
Tears streamed down the face of Mrs. Trapping. She opened her mouth but then flinched as her brother's power touched her mind.
She gasped as he withdrew, and her eyes cleared with a terrible understanding of how he could—and would, and how fully—now possess her. With an anguished cry she pressed the pistol to her own head, but before her finger could tighten on the trigger, her features went blank and the pistol clattered to the floor.
Mrs. Marchmoor had finally turned her attention to the soldiers moving stiffly toward her. Smoke seeped from the crack on her face, and the white bandage at her broken wrist dripped blue.
Phelps ran for the door, followed a moment later by Aspiche. Elöise was already gone. Robert Vandaariff stared at Xonck, dumbly enthralled by the rebellion of his creature.
Xonck's hand slipped behind his sister's head to gather her red curls, angling her passive face up to his. With a whimper of dread, Miss Temple watched Xonck's blue tongue dip between Charlotte Trapping's coral lips, just an instant of tease before the full of his ravaged mouth fell upon her.
Chang lurched up and thrust his arm across Miss Temple's chest. Before she realized what was about to happen he threw his body over hers, turning his battered leather coat to where Francis Xonck, staring into the terrified eyes of his sister, raised one bare foot and brought it down on the 296 shell's plunger.
CHANG LIFTED Miss Temple to her feet, even as another volley of cannon from the floor below—felt but barely heard, her ears still ringing from the blast—made him stumble. The window bars where Mrs. Marchmoor had stood were coated in fine blue dust, and the unlucky soldiers who had been nearest lay horrid and unrecognizable, blasted through and apart by innumerable razor-sharp glass grains. Charlotte Trapping's body was nothing more than red tattered shreds.
Vandaariff lay on his side in a black pool on the planking. Chang glared darkly at the man, and glanced around him for a weapon.
“He must be killed…”
But then Chang spun and abruptly seized Miss Temple, bundling her desperately away just as the surging mob burst—red-faced and roaring—onto the factory's top floor. Mrs. Marchmoor's minions swept into the crawling soldiers that remained and into the bloody spectacle of her destruction. Even as they struggled, the men, confused by the sudden loss of the glass woman's summons, shouted to one another in terror and surprise, their collection of topcoats and silk cravats utterly out of place in the slaughterhouse the Parchfeldt factory had become. Chang dove with Miss Temple for the doorway. She looked back over her shoulder. Through the churning crowd she saw the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza groping like a blind beggar, feeling for the pockets of Fochtmann's topcoat.
THE PITCH-BLACK stairwell echoed with shouts and gunshots. Chang tightened his grip around her and forced a path down. The doorway to the cannons had been split open—there were still screams and fighting inside—but they did not pause until the ground, the steps hellishly strewn with bodies. Many machines had been disabled— the light of the factory had dimmed, and its harsh song reduced to the hacking clatter of a carriage with one broken wheel. Their way to the front was barred by smoking wreckage and struggling men. Chang pulled her the other way, to the ruins, and they burst into the darkness, gasping in the cold night air, soldiers in green and red sprawled in death across the grass.
“Where are the others?” she whispered, looking around them at the empty yard.
“They have run on,” replied Chang, releasing her to pick up a fallen dragoon's bloodied saber. He pointed with the blade to a ladder set against the rough stone wall. “We must follow.”
“But where?” asked Miss Temple, running ahead of him, one hand on the ladder and the other gathering her dress so her feet might find the rungs. She gasped again as Chang's hands found her waist, lifting her up—which was not strictly necessary, her legs simply kicked in the air—and setting her down at a higher rung. As long as he did not meet her gaze the man seemed perfectly able to touch her body in the most presumptuous of ways.
“What will happen to the Comte?” she cried. “Or the Contessa?”
“They will be destroyed.” She felt Chang's weight behind her on the ladder.
“But if this mob knows them—if this factory becomes theirs—”
“Without their mistress these minions will not stand up to the soldiers, if enough soldiers survive to face them down.”
“Is that why you would not kill her yourself?” snapped Miss Temple, angrily. She reached the top of the wall and looked back over her shoulder. “You will not be encumbered with me, but are perfectly happy to protect a pestilent monstrosity!”
Chang looked up as if she had spoken French and, for the first time in her memory, stammered. “If—if I had taken her head—her power balanced the others'—without her to stop the soldiers—or the Contessa—we all would have—”
Miss Temple snorted, this being no response at all, and threw a leg over the wall, clambering down an unstable slope of tumbled stone into the darkening shadows of the wood. She reached the bottom in a rush, staggering into the undergrowth. Chang descended more carefully behind her.
“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.