It was after Cecile had collected her for afternoon tea, after so many hours of silence the maid's voice echoing up the stairway harsh as a crow's, that the girl found herself, hands washed and dress changed, waiting for Ronaldher younger brother was always troubled by shoesand staring down the main hall, through the foyer to the closed front door.
The door chime was pulled, then after the briefest interval pulled again. Mr. Flempton rushed past her, tugging at the cuffs of his jacket. Cecile touched the girl's shoulder to guide her away, but she ignored it. Mr. Flempton opened the door wide to reveal three men in long black coats and high black hats. The men to either side held leather portfolios. The coat of the man in the center was draped limply over one shoulder, the arm beneath it wrapped with white plaster.
May I help you? asked Mr. Flempton.
Ministry orders, said the man with the plaster cast. We'll require your complete cooperation.
One. Wolves
ONE of his hands tugged cruelly at her hair as the other squeezed her throat. Miss Temple could not breathehe was too strong, too angryand even as part of her mind screamed that she must not, that there must be another way, she ground the revolver into the man's body and pulled the trigger. It kicked against her wrist with a deafening crack and Roger Bascombe was thrown into the cabin wall. The red imprint of his fingers marked her windpipe, but his shocked blue eyesthe fiancé who had cruelly thrown her overshowed only dismay at her betrayal. His gaze punctured her heart like a blade. What had she done? She stumbled, aware for the first time that her feet were freezing, that she stood in six inches of icy seawater. The airship had spiraled into the ocean. They were sinking. She would drown.
Dimly, Miss Temple heard her nameCeleste! Celeste! the calls of Doctor Svenson and of Chang. Her memory seemed two steps behind they had climbed to the roof, with Elöise. She must follow, it was her only chance to survive but she looked again at Roger, crumpled and wan, and could not movewould they die together after all? But then something nudged Miss Temple's leg. She cried out, thinking of rats on a ship, and saw it was another body, floating with the rising water the Comte d'Orkancz, alchemist savant who discovered the blue glass, run through with a saber by Cardinal Chang. Miss Temple forced herself to slog past the dead man's bulk, barely able to feel her legs. Other bodies loomed as she crossed the cabin, each more gruesome than the last Francis Xonck, with his flaming red hair and elegant silk waistcoat, shot by Doctor Svenson Lydia Vandaariff, decapitated with a blue glass book the Prince of Macklenburg, legs broken clean away. Miss Temple crawled up the stairs, the foaming water keeping pace as her fingers clawed the cold metal. The cries above were fainter. With a piercing shock she remembered the one body she had not seen, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza had she jumped to her death? Had she somehow hidden and killed the others? Was she even then waiting for Miss Temple?
The cold salt water reached her throat, splashing at her mouth. Her arms became too heavy to lift. Behind lay Roger her terrible guilt. Above floated the open hatch. She could not move for the ice forming around her legs, locking her joints stiff. She would perish after all, just as she deserved
MISS TEMPLE wokeweak, starving, and riddled with achesto a sour-smelling room with dark raw-cut beams above her head. A single smeared window framed the feeble light of a heavy, cloud-covered sky, the very image of boiled wool. She sat up in the frankly noisome bed, doing her best to shake away the vision of the sinking airship.
At least it does not reek of fish, she muttered, and looked about her for any sign of where she was or, for that matter, her clothing. But the room was bare.
She crept gingerly off the bed, feeling the unsoundness of her limbs and the lightness of her head, and peered under the frame, to find a chipped porcelain chamber pot. As Miss Temple squatted down, she rubbed her eyes, and looked at her hands, which were flecked with half-healed abrasions and cuts. She stood, slid the pot back beneath the bed with her foot, and noticed a small rectangle of glass, no bigger than a page of poetry, hanging from a naila mirror. She was forced to stand on her toes, but despite the effort, stayed staring into the glass for some minutes, curious and dismayed at the young woman she there met.
Her chestnut curls hung flat and lank, which had the effect of making her facefrom a certain vantage somewhat roundeven rounder. This was only set off by her sunken cheeks, the dark circles of distress beneath each eye, and once more a scattering of livid marks the searing trace of a bullet above one ear, welts across both cheekbones, and greenish bruises on her throat that perfectly matched a vicious, squeezing palm. All this Miss Temple took in with a sigh, grateful she had not, for instance, lost a tooththat all could be mended by time, food, and the touch of a skillful maid. What struck her more fully, howeverwhat she found mysterious was what had happened to her eyes. They were still grey, still insistent, impatient, and sharp, but possessed a new quality she could not at first name. A moment later the truth appeared. She was a killer.