“Are you quite alive?” she asked.
“My apologies.”
“Come back to the fire,” she said. “We have little time after all, and urgent matters to discuss.”
DOCTOR SVENSON took a cigarette from his case and lit it before he sat down, as if his habit might shield his weakness, but her expression made plain he was the least of her concerns. Grateful, if also childishly stung at his peripherality, he returned to his place across the fire.
“Where is Cardinal Chang?”
It was not at all what Svenson expected her to say, and he was strangely crestfallen.
“I have no idea.”
The Contessa was silent. Svenson exhaled and tapped his ash onto the stones.
“If you hope Chang will aid you any more than I—”
“Aid?” she snapped. “You are a presumptuous Teuton.”
Her mood had sharpened, or she had stopped bothering to hide it.
“Upon surviving the airship, madame, you must have assumed you were the only one of your Cabal—”
“Cabal?”
“What else does one call you and your… associates?”
“Anything else. The word smacks of businessmen playing with corn harvests.”
“My point,” continued the Doctor, “is that your allies must have been few—thus your enlistment of the poor boy in Karthe. He was quite badly killed, you know.”
The Contessa's eyes were harder. “The subject is not diverting.”
“You ask for Chang because you are alone and seek greater numbers—and since you do ask, since you do expect my help—”
“How very dramatic,” she sneered. “Ganz tragisch.”
Svenson's cigarette had burned nearly to his fingers. He took one last puff and dropped it into the fire. He looked the Contessa in the eye.
“You left the train deliberately to come here, to this spot in Parchfeldt Park. While this building is of a size to be a manor house, the construction is made for industry. The location of the canal allows the swift passage of goods—and yet the road and the canal are new-made. That you are here suggests you are one of the people who has new-made it—just as it is you who have made Xonck your enemy. You met him—in the village or on the way to Karthe. You most likely stole his horse, you certainly stole his book—and yet even after recovering it he was still doing his level best to find you.”
“Once wronged, Francis is most persistent in his rage. As you put a bullet in his chest, you might bear it in mind.”
The Doctor ignored her mocking smile. “He has had several opportunities to take my life, yet I am here. Which means this place too is entirely related to Xonck.”
This last did not come from any deduction about the Contessa, but from the crates of Xonck munitions on the barge with Mr. Fruitricks. Svenson was sure now that Fruitricks was an agent of Francis Xonck, who had intended all along to seize control of the Comte's machinery. And now Charlotte Trapping had the Comte's paintings along with Vandaariff Whatever she knew of the Cabal—through her brother or her husband or even, he had to admit it, Elöise—had been enough to send her on her own extreme journey. Did the woman hope to challenge Fruitricks? Or was she hoping only to survive?
Svenson swallowed. Would he see Elöise again after all?
“In any event,” he muttered, “you must expect Xonck here, if he still lives.”
“I do. And you and I have been here far too long.”
The Contessa stood, reached behind for her bag, and smiled as Svenson struggled to his feet.
“You have caused me so much trouble, Abelard Svenson, yet as you say, you are here.” She flicked a bit of grime from his hair. “It shows something more than your decency—passion, lust, despair, one scarcely cares—but something in you uncontrolled. I find it spurs my trust.”
“But I do not trust you at all.”
“If you did I should think you quite a worm,” she replied. “The fire will die on its own, and by now we will be unseen on the road. Come, it is time.”
THEY WALKED without speaking to the gravel road, a rough carpet threading the wood to either side. With night fallen full, the building glowed even more brightly. The Contessa reached for his arm, and then her touch became a tug on his uniform sleeve. He quickly followed her off the path, crouching low and keeping silent. A thin glimmer of yellow drifted toward them from the white building: the gleam from a mostly closed lantern. Svenson had not even glimpsed it— without the Contessa he would have blundered on and been taken. Behind the lantern came a double line of figures dragging two low, flat carts. These were the bargemen going back for the final load from the canal. Once they had passed, the Contessa's lips touched his ear.
“They will find him. We must hurry.”
In a rustle of leaves she was back on the road and walking as quickly as the dark and her injury would allow, and Svenson broke into a rapid jog to catch up.
“What is this place? I know they have brought the Comte's machines …”
She ignored him. Svenson caught the Contessa's uninjured shoulder and pulled the woman to a stop, her furious glare causing him to take back his hand at once.
“If you expect my help, you must say.” He gestured at the bright building. “You and Xonck were both to have been cavorting in Macklenburg for how long? Another month? Two? All this was set in motion without regard to your present state or his. It is either Xonck's secret plan against you all, or it is mutiny in his absence.”
“Francis is coming—that is all that matters.”
“Whatever of his you have—whatever his book contains—can you really want it for yourself?”
“Really, Doctor, I want him not to kill me—whether Francis dies or we make peace, I care little. But at this moment I care least of all to be caught on the road!”
Behind them Svenson heard a cry—distant, but telling. The barge-master had been found. The Contessa picked up her dress and quickened her pace to a run. Svenson dashed after her.
“We must hide!” he hissed.
“Not yet!”
“They will see us!”
She did not reply, bearing straight toward the house. Over his shoulder Svenson saw a lantern wink on and off in sequence. Figures silhouetted in an upper window of the white building replied with their own signal. With a sinking realization he knew the bargemen would assume him to be the murderer.
Abruptly the Contessa dodged from the road. The Doctor followed, the undergrowth whipping around his knees. The Contessa vanished into the trees. An instant afterward the branches were slapping Svenson's face in the dark. The double doors of the building had opened wide—pools of light bobbed forward and over the trees. Then the Contessa stopped and he was right upon her, nearly knocking her down.
“There is a party, coming down the road,” he whispered, “from the—the—”
“Factory,” she finished his sentence. “Follow me. Walk on the leaves!”
She darted ahead again, not quite so fast, moving with hushed footfalls under a line of high, old elms. He followed, making up the ground with his longer strides, and saw she held her dress with only one hand, to favor her injury. The minutes passed in silence, the moonlight flickering through the treetops onto her shoulders. With a puncturing loneliness, Svenson marveled at how delicate a woman the Contessa truly was, in contrast to the enormity of her character. He tried to imagine possessing the same determination, for he too had driven himself to extremes, but it had always been in the service of someone else.