“What has happened to our enemies?”
If Elöise replied Miss Temple did not hear it. Bette emptied another bowl over her head, and another after that, pouring slowly to wash out the suds. Miss Temple carefully stepped free of the tub as Bette dabbed at her dripping hair.
“I suppose it is impossible that my hair be curled,” she said to Elöise.
“The curls are quite natural to you, are they not?” Elöise carefully replied.
“Of course they are,” snapped Miss Temple. “It does not mean they are not better when managed.”
She raised her arms, the better for Bette to dry her, and nodded at Elöise's hands rather pointedly.
“Where is my other boot?”
GREEN-SHOD once more, Miss Temple stepped from the wooden house into a pallid light. The trees above were leafless and the path to their wagon—a simple affair drawn by one weathered nag—was still moist from the rains. She smelled the sea and even heard the distant waves somewhere behind the house, tracing the air like a restless rope of wind. Lina and Bette stood in the door, watching them go with, Miss Temple recognized with annoyance, expressions of relief. She turned to Elöise to remark on the fact but saw for the first time the line of men that waited on the far side of the wagon—raw, hard-faced fellows with knives at their belts and staves in their hands.
“Are they coming with us?” she whispered to Elöise.
“Ah, no,” Elöise replied with a tight smile. “They have come to make sure we go.”
Miss Temple looked with more attention—perceiving women and children now peering out behind the line of men—and felt their gazes could not have been more cold had she and Elöise been diseased interlopers with the plague. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped at the sight of a small girl with a haunted pale face, hands gripped by two grey matrons—no mother or father near her. Her view of the girl was blocked by one of the men with staves, who met Miss Temple's curiosity with a frown. The man sported a new pair of knee-high black leather riding boots, incongruous with his rough wool garments and fisherman's beard.
Before she could point this out to Elöise, their driver—an aged man whose wrinkled face seemed crushed between an untamed beard and a close-pulled woolen cap—reached down with hard knobbed hands to lift Miss Temple aboard. A moment later Elöise stood beside her and a moment after that they groped for awkward seats on a pallet of straw as the driver snapped the reins without a word. The bitter nameless village and its silent people receded from view.
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.