“Lord knows. Where are your own earnest compatriots?”
“I have no idea. Dead?”
“How cold you are, Cardinal.”
“I thought you were an ardent admirer of the Contessa.”
“Well, you know, who isn't?”
“You tried to kill her before my eyes.”
“Again, who doesn't—eventually? Did you not yourself, on several occasions?”
“Actually, I never did,” replied Chang, surprised that this was actually true. “I should be happy to do so now.”
“How lovely to have things in common.”
Xonck looked up at the lip of the crater. There were no gunshots.
“The Contessa took your little trunk, didn't she?” Chang called.
Xonck winced at some internal pain—the blue glass ripping at the flesh it was frozen against—and merely grunted his assent.
“What was inside it?” asked Chang. “The Comte's device?”
Xonck grunted again at a still sharper pain and then, when the pain did not give way, kicked his boot at the ground, muffling a louder cry through force of will, breathing through his nose like a bull. When the attack at last subsided, the man's face was even more spent, the red around his eyes deepened to scarlet and his teeth the color—whether this was the enamel itself or the slick discharge, Chang could not tell—of lapis lazuli stones. Strands of blue stretched between his lips with each huffing breath.
“It is true,” Xonck whispered at last. “I must recover it… as I must recover my book… as I must locate the requisite power… and the requisite vessel… all true… and all unlikely. I am not a fool, Chang. If I hate the proud virtue of a real fool, like—I lose the name—your Captain of Dragoons, men the likes of whom I would happily shoot every day before breakfast… if I hate such virtue it is because… for all my rank and privilege, I have been defined by exclusion. I have studied the limits of what human beings can endure—a study undertaken without scruple, indeed, well aware that such pursuits might consume my own soul away… like Brasilan fish strip the carcass of a bull—have you been to Brasil?”
Chang snorted.
“A pity,” sniffed Xonck. “It is a crucible—destruction of men, of men's souls, on such a scale… an idiot can see what drives his enemies, only a rare man perceives what drives himself. But when men and women are bought and sold so openly… one is oneself devalued… yet made wise. In our civilized society we actually compete for the privilege of being owned by the very foulest of masters. As I am from a family of the foul, I know this to be true.”
“I thought you were describing how you were doomed,” observed Chang dryly.
“Of course.” Xonck laughed. “If only one could put such a thing in a play, its audience must be huge! ‘Francis Xonck to Perish: Extra Performances Added!’”
He shook his head and coughed, but almost immediately Chang could see the man had become rueful again, resistance to self-pity never being—in Chang's observation—a priority of the rich.
“But perhaps I should have died with the rest and been swept beneath the sea. I could have lain still and allowed the water to rise over my face with a hideous serenity. But I do not possess that sort of mind… and so, before you and I make our compact of survival, Cardinal—as it seems we must—I will tell you… a little story.”
Xonck wiped his face. When he spoke again his voice was calm.
THREE CHILDREN, the oldest by enough years to seem more an uncle, never one with whom the younger two shared interests or exchanged secrets—a figure who from his own youth had been occupied with making business out of air—that is, quite literally, from conversation, from cunning speeches both made and overheard… for the father of all three—a sort of king, or more exactly a sort of magician—had left behind a secret, a treasure horde. It was the oldest child's skill to inflame this treasure into an empire, where the secret was sold and resold and refined and resold again, innumerable times, until he became more like a king than their father ever could have hoped, and all around him kings in truth were made to kneel.
“The second and third children were nearly twins, growing up in the shadow not of their father but of their fearsome elder sibling. They had their own portion of inheritance, but not—for he would not allow it—any role in the kingdom. Their lives became nothing but appetite and ease, and no one paid either any mind, save to condemn their sloth, or blanch with disapproval at what new tastes they found. But each possessed an innate inheritance from their father, like the oldest's skill with commerce. The middle child glimpsed the father's secret itself, though she was not schooled, because she was a girl. The youngest saw only the father's lack of fear…”
Xonck paused. “Or perhaps it was not from the father at all, but the mother… she who had been slain by his birth, giving him life no matter that she would die.”
Xonck spat and went on more heartily. “And for his empire the oldest son received an idiot wife, compliant whores, and children he could barely name. For her seclusion, the second child received a husband she despised, a life of craven envy, and children she could barely see without tears. For his ferocity, the third received no wife at all, unceasing hunger, and no child to ever call his own…
“Not much of a story at all, of course,” added Xonck, after a moment of silence, “but it is a degraded plane, and one grows attached to one's fancies.”
He spun his face from Chang, cocked his head, and sniffed several times like an animal.
“It is a draft of air,” Xonck whispered, already pawing at the wreckage. “A tunnel blocked with debris. The stones are too large—I cannot shift them alone!”
Against all his best instincts, Chang scrambled across the open blast space into Xonck's shelter. Working together they cleared the aperture: one of the large metal ducts, the sort through which Chang had descended from the garden urn into the boiler room.
“That there is air shows the way is still open,” said Xonck.
“It can only lead to the lower levels of the house. All those going up have been destroyed.”
Xonck smiled. “Which means it may be crawled. If I go first, I am of course vulnerable to a knife from behind. If I go second, I may as easily be ambushed at the end.”
“As may I.”
“Indeed. I offer you the choice.”
“What if I let you depart on your own and attempt to make my own way up the walls?”
“You cannot. There is no other way.”
Chang was silent, disliking that Xonck was right, disliking their very proximity.
“Then I will follow,” he said.
Xonck wormed into the shaft, his arms ahead of his body, and disappeared. Chang dove in afterward. The pipe was greasy with soot, just wide enough to squirm through, and pitch black. Chang's attention was rooted to the scuffles and grunts of Xonck's progress. When ever Xonck paused, he readied himself for a trick, but each time the man simply pushed ahead into the darkness.
Then Xonck stopped, and Chang heard him whisper.
“There is a turn. It goes down—you will have to keep hold of my feet, for if the way is blocked, I will not be able to climb backwards.”
Without waiting for Chang's answer—not that Chang had intended to make one—Xonck slithered ahead, positioning himself at the turn. Chang crawled up and took hold of Xonck's ankles with both hands. He did not know how this might prove a trap, but he nevertheless held himself ready to release the man at a moment's notice.
Xonck dropped into the new passage and Chang felt the man's weight hit his grip. He heard Xonck's knuckles knocking the metal.
“Let me go,” called Xonck. “There is a hatch just ahead.”
With misgivings, Chang released his hold. Xonck slid away. Be fore following, Chang drew Lieutenant Sapp's razor. The pipe was suddenly pierced by a beam of light. Xonck had found a hatch after all. Chang lowered his body into the turn, holding himself in place with his legs. Xonck opened the hatch all the way and began to climb out. Chang slid down in a rush and shot out his left hand, catching Xonck's boot before it disappeared. Xonck paused, taken by surprise, and Chang flipped open the razor, ready to strike if Xonck attempted to pull free. But Xonck did not move his leg, nor did Chang creep forward. To move farther would place Chang's head in the open space of the hatchway, where Xonck might bring the hammer of his plaster cast—or a knife, or a shard of glass—down onto Chang's skull.
“An interesting situation,” chuckled Xonck. “You cannot come through without risking my attack… and yet if I attempt to free myself, no doubt you will cut the cords at the back of my knee.”
“It seems a sensible precaution.”
“Wholly unnecessary, I assure you. Come out, Cardinal—I shall do nothing to prevent it.”