“The child is ill,” snapped Fochtmann. “It has no bearing on our work.”

Phelps nervously addressed the glass woman. “You must explain, madame. You looked into his mind—you told us the infusion worked, that this was the Comte—”

“It is the Comte!” insisted Fochtmann, but the glass woman's continuing distress stopped his speech.

“I could not see it in him,” Mrs. Marchmoor hissed. “Only in the girl… but it is from his body…”

“What is from his body?” demanded Aspiche.

“Nothing!” Fochtmann waved his arms. “The girl must be diseased—”

“I was forbidden by him,” said Mrs. Marchmoor. “None of the Comte's servants could enter his mind—”

“We don't understand you, Margaret,” said the Contessa.

The glass woman rolled her head as if to clear it, yet her words remained too dense, as if she could not find the way to translate her present senses into language.

“I could taste that the book held him, that he had been infused with Lord Robert—but not the character of his mind… I was forbidden, and so the corruption… eluded me…” Mrs. Marchmoor thrust her bandaged stump at Miss Temple. “She knew! She knew all along!” Her dismay rose to a keening shriek.

Fochtmann wheeled toward Miss Temple, his own frustration finally finding its object.

“Did she? It seems she has known all sorts of things! She was alone with the book—and alone with the girl! I suggest she tell us all exactly what she has done to them both!”

Miss Temple took a careful step backwards.

“The truth is before you all—the decay. You have not given a man new life… you have retrieved a corpse.”

“TRUTH BE damned!” roared Xonck, and he careened toward Vandaariff, scattering everyone. Fochtmann turned in protest, but Xonck drove his plaster fist into the man's stomach, then took Vandaariff by the collar with his other hand.

“Francis!” screamed Mrs. Trapping. “Francis, we need him—step away at once! At once or you will die!”

“Company!” cried Leveret. “Arms!”

The soldiers raised their carbines. Xonck spun Vandaariff's body before him as a shield, his foul lips pressed dripping against the man's right ear. Aspiche thrust Francesca Trapping to Phelps, sweeping out his saber as Phelps caught the girl in the crook of his cast and groped in his coat for a pistol. Leveret waved to stop the soldiers from firing, visibly furious at events being so suddenly beyond his control.

But then Xonck's whispering was answered.

From inside his raw throat came a chuckle, and the man's features settled into a heavier, petulant expression Robert Vandaariff had never worn.

“Why, Francis…” he rasped. “You seem to be in… a very bad way…”

“Oskar?” whispered Xonck with fervent relief. “Is it you?”

“You hold me rather tightly,” answered Vandaariff. “I do not like it.”

“If I release you, I will be shot.”

“Why is that possibly my concern?”

“Let me enlighten you, Oskar,” Xonck snarled. “My body is poisoned by your glass. I require you to save my life—after which I am again your willing friend. I cannot speak for Rosamonde—she too is not her best—but I can say that others, who hold the power to end both your life and mine and whose place this is, have agreed to your restoration only so you can be their slave.”

“That is only to be expected.” Vandaariff shrugged, surveying the room as if his gaze were a gun site, nodding with contempt as he recognized the faces around him. He reached up to wipe his face, the surprisingly delicate movements of his large hand entirely of a piece with the Comte d'Orkancz. He frowned at the black fluid wetting his fingertips. “What is this?”

“Margaret says you're unclean.”

Vandaariff studied the glass woman, cocking his head at her bandaged arm. “Does she? Well… poor Margaret… always so emotional.”

“They have administered the Process,” hissed Xonck impatiently.

Vandaariff reached up to the scars, his touch smearing the black fluid across the raised welts. “A perfectly good idea, I'm sure. At any rate, worth the attempt…”

Mr. Leveret stepped forward and shouted directly into Vandaariff's face. “Indigo Pilate iris sunset Parchfeldt!”

Vandaariff chuckled. “The Process is powerful,” he said with a wan shrug. “But infusion from a book is even more so. One is new-laying the essence.”

“But—but we have remade you out of nothing!” Mrs. Trapping's arrogance had taken on a plaintive whine. “We must control you!”

“Must?” Vandaariff faced her with a sudden, low intensity. “Control the worms in your own stomach, madame. Command the innocence of your daughter to return. Order your bankrupt heart to pump clean—”

Mr. Fochtmann brought down an iron wrench on the back of Francis Xonck's head, with a sickening, crushed-pumpkin thwock. Xonck collapsed on the dais, utterly still.

Vandaariff looked down, abstractly curious. “My goodness.”

Mrs. Trapping's hand was over her mouth. “Francis! Francis!” She strode toward Fochtmann. “What have you done to my brother?”

Mr. Fochtmann struck her cleanly on the jaw with his fist, knocking her into a sprawl of kicking legs.

“My God, sir!” cried Leveret, leaping to her. “You will not hit a woman!”

“I am surely finished with them hitting me,” growled Fochtmann, and he called to Mrs. Marchmoor. “Enough of this nonsense.”

Colonel Aspiche extended his saber toward Vandaariff.

“It does not sound like nonsense to me! If he can defy us—if he does not possess the knowledge to repair this sickness—I am finished with the pack of you!”

Phelps cradled the pistol in one hand and pulled the girl tighter to him with the other, addressing Mrs. Marchmoor. “Please, madame— the sickness! You call him ‘unclean’—does that mean we are doomed?”

“Don't be idiots,” began Fochtmann, “there is no need for rebellion—we are all allies!”

Aspiche spun to Mrs. Marchmoor, the naked saber daringly near her body, his voice tight and his arm shaking.

“For pity's sake, Margaret—tell us!”

But Mrs. Marchmoor said nothing. Her gaze remained locked on Robert Vandaariff. Miss Temple knew the glass woman had no answer, that she could not tell who—or what—this new person before her truly was. Vandaariff cocked his head again and licked his lips, deliberately tasting them. He abruptly began to retch but then swallowed it down with difficulty, a display that to Miss Temple was every bit as revolting as if he had vomited outright.

Still Mrs. Marchmoor said nothing, Aspiche's saber-tip dancing before her.

Charlotte Trapping cried out plaintively, “Alfred! They have Francesca—please!”

Mr. Leveret was startled to action. He swept his arm dramatically toward the soldiers with the concussive shell. “No one will do anything—unless everyone here wishes to die!”

But Leveret's next shout failed on his lips. Blood burst out from the faces of the two soldiers. They dropped their wires and fuses as cleanly as if their arms had been lopped off with a scythe. Leveret stammered, and then yelled desperately for his army. He was already far too late.

MISS TEMPLE was staggered, as if she'd been cuffed hard across the ear, while all around her carbines clattered to the floor. The soldiers toppled heedless to their faces, eyes open wide, bodies entirely still. Across the entire room it was the same. Every person was incapacitated in an instant's sudden violent pulse from the glass woman's mind. Leveret and Mrs. Trapping lay flattened. Phelps and Aspiche sprawled on their backs, pulling Francesca Trapping with them. Elöise groped on the floor, hair fallen about her face. Vandaariff slumped into the brass boxes. The Contessa was on all fours. Only Fochtmann had kept his feet and his senses… along with herself, Chang, and Svenson.