She did not reply, giving him the clear impression that his entire manner only made things worse.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I have been thinking,” she replied, not to his question at all. “You asked me of Francis Xonck. Whatever glass he used to stab me, I know it was from a book that had been imprinted. Because I felt myself— my flesh, but also my mind—being penetrated, not by a blade, but by… experiences.”
“Do you recall them?”
Elöise sighed. “Will you not put that thing away?”
Svenson looked down at the pistol. “You do not understand. The conductor is missing.”
“Yet if he has only gone to the engine—”
“Xonck is on the train—somehow—I am not certain where. The conductor may have discovered him and paid the price.”
“You should not have lied to that boy—you ought to have enlisted his help!”
“There is no time, Elöise, and too much to explain. He and everyone else on this train would think me mad—”
“It would be mad to face Francis Xonck alone when there is no need! Or are you set on some ridiculous notion of revenge?”
Svenson swallowed an angry reply. That she could so easily mock the very notion of revenge, that he might be owed anything, or that he was incapable of taking it… or even that despite everything she might be correct—he slapped the metal door frame with an open palm. The anger was pointless, and he let it go, his emotion stalling like a Sisyphean stone at the crest. She was waiting for an answer. Svenson seized on the first unkempt thought that came to mind.
“You… Yes, before—you mentioned the glass, dreaming—the fragment. Do you recall what you saw?”
“I do,” she sniffed, shuffling to a sitting position. “Though I cannot see it helps us.”
“Why?”
“Because it was broken. The thoughts inside, the sense of the memory… the content of the glass had been deranged. Like the ink running on a waterlogged page, but in one's mind… I cannot describe it.”
“It was a very small piece—”
Elöise shook her head. “The matter is not size. There was no logic—as if five memories, or five minds, were overlaid one on top of another, like patterns of paper held to a window.”
“Was there any detail to suggest who might have been the source?”
She shook her head again. “It was too full of contradiction—all tumbled into one place, which was not one place… and all the time… I had forgotten, music…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It means nothing—though I'm certain the memories themselves are true. Each portion flickered… overlapping the seams between them.”
“And none of these… elements seemed… significant?”
“I do not believe so,” she said. “Indeed, now that I try, I can scarcely recall a thing.”
“No no, this is useful.” Svenson nodded without conviction. “A wound with the blue glass—as contact with blood creates more glass— necessitates some exclusive contact between the glass and the victim, do you see? Blood congeals against the original glass and is itself crystallized—the flesh becomes solid. But what is the nature of this newly made glass? Since it is in—is of—your body, does it contain some memory from you? How is this raw glass different from that smelted by the Comte?”
Svenson's mind genuinely raced with the consequences of Elöise's broken shard, and what this implied about the structure and workings of the glass books. A torn piece of paper would show only the fragment of type printed upon it, but a similarly sized spear from a blue glass page apparently contained an overlay of multiple memories. It meant that the books were not read (or “written”) in any linear way, but that the memories were shot through the glass like color in paint, or seasoning in soup, or even tiny capillaries in flesh. Whatever aspect of the glass normally allowed a person to experience the memories in sequence had been dislodged on the broken fragment, and the different memories it contained had been jammed into one jagged, unnatural whole.
He looked over at Elöise. “On the airship, the mere touch of a glass book on her bare skin drove the Contessa to distraction.”
“She killed the Prince and Lydia for no reason but pique—”
“Francis Xonck has used broken glass to cauterize a bullet wound, and now carries that glass within his body. He may well be insane.” Svenson winced to think of it. Given the wound, the lump of glass would be the size of a child's fist; what visions gnawed—no, tore—at Francis Xonck's mind? “He also possesses a glass book, saved in particular from the wreckage. I do not know what that book holds, I can only say that a perfectly sound man who did look into it was turned to a gibbering wreck. That Xonck has selected this of all books must mean something.”
He knelt near her. “Elöise, you may be closer to his thoughts than any other soul alive.”
“And I have told you—”
“He knows the glass will kill him,” said Svenson sharply. “In the Comte's absence, he will attempt to find the man's notes, his tools— anything to reverse what has been done. I must find him.”
“Abelard, he will kill you.”
“If you know anything more, Elöise. Anything at all, his aims— his cares…”
But she shook her head.
AT THE far door he finally found a lantern on a hook. Svenson struck a match, tamped the wick to a steady glow, and stepped out to face the blank wooden wall of the freight car. He sniffed the air to no avail, then leaned cautiously over the rail with the lantern. An iron ladder was bolted to the freight car, but he saw no sign of blood or indigo discharge. He returned to the corridor, striding willfully past Elöise and the other occupants, back to the front of the train. He drew out the revolver, took a breath, and then—acutely aware of being watched by the businessmen—realized he could not open the door with both hands occupied. He fumbled the lantern handle into his gun hand and groped for the knob.
The ceiling above him thumped with an impact. Someone had leapt onto the passenger car from the coal wagon—in itself a prodigious feat—and was racing toward the freight cars. Svenson broke into a run. He clawed open the connecting door, just as a second thudding impact echoed Xonck's leap from the first passenger car to the second.
Svenson sped down the corridor, just a few steps behind the man on the roof, and shouted for Elöise to stay where she was. He reached the rear door and yanked it wide. The footsteps were gone. Xonck must have leapt ahead onto the freight car, but Svenson could not see him, nor—above the clattering wheels—hear a thing. He spun round to find that all four of the young laborers had followed.
“Mrs. Dujong!” he called to them. “She is in danger! There is a man aboard the train—the roof—a murderer!”
Before they could reply, he stepped fully onto the platform. With the lantern at arm's length, he judged the distance between the platform and the ladder, swallowing with fear. Svenson stuffed the pistol into his belt and, gripping tightly to the rail, swung one leg over it. He shifted his grip, too aware of the vibrating rail, how the fluttering stripe of train ties whipped past beneath him, the slippery soles of his boots. He jammed his toes between the bars of the railing—and swung his other leg over. The ladder was still too far away. He would have to jump.
A lurch of the train caused Svenson to lose his balance completely and he flew into space between the cars. His body cannoned into the iron rungs and slid toward the flashing wheels. The lantern burst onto the rocky trackside, a bloom of flame gone instantly from view. He cried out like a child as his right boot heel was kicked by a tie. His hands finally seized hold, tight as a rigorous corpse, on a cold, rust-chipped bar.
The sound of the train had changed… it was slowing down.
THE TRAIN came to a halt with a final great wheeze of steam. Svenson dropped trembling to the track and looked to the engine—a small station platform, men with lanterns, perhaps other passengers. He turned the other way, pulled the revolver from his belt, and ran for the caboose. There were at least fifteen closed freight cars, each with a wide door shut with a heavy metal hasp. He raced past, sparing only such attention to see whether they might have been pried open, but saw nothing untoward. Svenson looked back to the engine, wondering how long they would be stopped. If he did not return, Elöise would be at Xonck's mercy.
The Doctor's breath heaved as he hauled himself onto the caboose's platform and rapped on the door with the pistol butt. Without waiting for an answer the Doctor pushed the door open, the revolver before him. A small man in a blue coat, his pink face scumbled with an uneven swath of bristle, looked up with alarm, a metal mug in one hand and a blackened teapot in the other.
“Good evening,” said Doctor Svenson. “I am so sorry to intrude.”
The porter's arms rose higher, still holding the mug and teapot.
“There is no m-money,” he stammered. “The ore is still raw— p-please—”
“It could not be further from my mind,” said Svenson, peering in each corner: a table, a stove, chairs, maps, a rack of shelves stuffed with tools, but no place another person might hide. “Where is the conductor?”
“Who?” replied the trainsman.
“I am looking for a man.”
“The conductor would be up front.”