Miss Temple frowned and hissed sharply to her companion, “I do not know what they think we have done—were they not paid?”
Elöise glanced at the driver's back. Miss Temple huffed, quite out of patience. “What has happened, Elöise? I quite insist you say!”
“I plan to, but you must know, these people—”
“Yes, yes, the rising river in the forest, I have been told—”
“Indeed—”
“People were killed.”
Elöise nodded, and spoke carefully. “The implication is a wolf. Or wolves, actually.”
“Which is no reason to glower at me.” Miss Temple looked up at their driver. “How many wolves?” she asked waspishly.
“It depends on how one reads the attacks.”
“Well, how many attacks were there? Bette mentioned the Jorgenses. I saw her washing the bloody linen.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens died two nights ago—or that is when they were found. Without the Doctor no one could specify when in fact they died. But before that a fisherman was found in his boat. And before that two grooms at the nearest stable.”
Miss Temple snorted. “What sort of wolf goes in a boat?”
Elöise did not reply, as if, the question having no answer, nothing further might be said. Miss Temple felt no such hesitation.
“Where is the Doctor? Where is Chang?”
“I have told you—”
“You have told me nothing at all!”
“They have each gone ahead of us.”
“Why?”
“The roads, for one—they have been ruined by the weather; and as you were so very ill, we did not know if you could travel—the last thing one wanted was to be two days out and then stranded without shelter, if another storm—”
“That might perhaps convince me for the Doctor, but never Chang.”
“No, indeed, Chang departed earlier.”
“Why?”
“Did you see that Lina put together a parcel of food? How kind of her.”
Elöise smiled at Miss Temple, mildly but determined. Miss Temple pursed her lips, grudgingly working for a topic that might be safely overheard.
“This storm,” she offered with patently false interest. “One gathers it was prodigious.”
“You did well to sleep through the thing,” replied Elöise at once. “In truth we felt—for it was the very night after we'd come ashore— that all the anger of our enemies was being vented through the heavens, as if the waves were the late Comte's attempts to dash us to pieces, and the lightning bolts sent down from the dead Contessa's furious eyes.”
Miss Temple said nothing, aware that the other woman would not have mentioned the Contessa lightly. When she finally replied, her own voice had become distressingly small.
“The Contessa is dead, then?”
“Of course she is,” said Elöise.
“I did not know you'd found the body.”
“We did not need to, Celeste. She fell from the airship into the frozen sea. You and I could barely swim in our merest underthings— that woman's dress would have taken in enough water within one minute to sink her down to hell itself.”
“It is just that… I spoke to her on the roof of the airship—it must have been just before she leapt to the sea… her face… even then so proud, so uncaring. She haunts me still.”
“She is dead, Celeste. I promise you.”
Elöise put her arm around Miss Temple's shoulders and squeezed. Never one to anticipate affection of any kind, Miss Temple did not know what to do, and so did nothing, looking instead at her salt-cracked boots and the dirty planking. Elöise squeezed again and took her arm away, a trim smile on her lips, as if she were not entirely sure of the gesture either, but then she reconsidered and reached up to smooth the hair from Miss Temple's face.
“I know you feel better,” she said, “but we are traveling while you would still be best in bed. Lean against my shoulder and I will tell you what I know”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“and what has taken the Cardinal and the Doctor from our sides.”
“THE FIRST night was spent in a fisherman's hut. I do not exaggerate to say the Doctor was hard-pressed to keep you alive, while tending to Chang—for the icy sea had done nothing kindly to his lungs—and to myself, for I admit to very nearly drowning. That night the heavens erupted in a storm the likes of which I have never seen—a raging sea, the land awash, trees torn from the earth by the winds. In the morning Chang and the Doctor went for help and that afternoon, during the briefest break in the tempest, you were moved to Lina's house. You lay there for six days, quite incoherent. It was only on the fourth day that your fever finally broke and the Doctor saw fit to leave.”
“But where was Chang?” Miss Temple burrowed more tightly into the crook of Elöise's arm and allowed her eyes to slip closed.
“The Doctor felt it vital that, once the storm was over, we get a boat and return to the fallen airship, to collect what remained of the glass books, to find any papers that might tell of our enemies’ agents in Macklenburg, and to bring ashore what bodies we could for decent burial.”
Miss Temple's thoughts went to Roger, imagining with dismay what her fiancé must have looked like after two days in the sea. She had seen a drowned sailor once on a beach and remembered—indeed, could never forget—his swollen and shapeless cast, as if submersion had half transformed him to a fish, with only his unseeing eyes and hanging open mouth showing protest at the horrid injustice done to his body. She imagined Roger's thin, nimble fingers, bobbing bloated and pale in the dark water, already subject to the gnawing of scavenger fish or industrious crabs. She pictured his softening face—
“But the airship was gone,” Elöise went on. “Dragged out to sea, no doubt, by the water-logged balloon. Scraps of canvas washed ashore… but that was all.”
“What,” Miss Temple forced herself to ask, “of the… bodies?”
“We saw no sign. But they were inside the craft. They would be carried with it, down below.”
“And all the glass books?”
“All of them. And all the Comte's machines—everything they had brought to conquer Macklenburg.”
Miss Temple exhaled. “Then it is truly finished.”
Elöise shifted slightly.
“And then the dead grooms were discovered—horses driven from the stable—and then the poor fisherman in his boat. The local folk have little doubt of the killer—the victims’ throats were all torn out most savagely, and this is a land where wolves are known. But after this—after Chang and Doctor Svenson had both taken their leave— the Jorgenses were discovered—”
“But why did Chang go?”
Elöise shifted her position to look into Miss Temple's face.
“You and I have lived in the city. The villagers who took us in became frightened, in the sober light of day, by our strange appearance— you and I dressed as if we'd escaped a seraglio, and the Doctor a foreign soldier… but most of all by the Cardinal—his figure, the scars, the long red coat, the obvious capacity for violence. All of this brought suspicion upon us as these deaths began to appear so suddenly one after another. And of course Chang is a killer. Once the villagers began to whisper amongst themselves—once there were deaths—well, Doctor Svenson—”