She sat up on one elbow and dabbed at her nose with one hand, pulling it away and looking at her red-tipped fingers. Phelps passed her a folded handkerchief, and she struggled to a sitting position, wiping her face and where the blood had dripped onto her dress. In the center of her thoughts was a buzzing, as if she had not slept for three days.

Was this how it had begun, for Soames and Fordyce and the other servants of Stäelmaere House? Would she have sores and splitting nails and her hair dropping out in clumps? Did she already? Miss Temple sniffed deeply, refolded the handkerchief, and pressed it quickly to each corner of her eyes. She looked out the window. They had left the city altogether and rode along a country road bordered to either side by wide, flat brown fields of marsh grass. Fen country—and as she formed that thought she smelled a tang of salt in the cooler air. She looked up to meet the gaze of Mr. Phelps.

“We are going to Harschmort House,” she said.

THE JOURNEY lasted another hour, during which there was little talk. Phelps had shut his eyes, with only his left hand's restless plucking at a spot of loose plaster on his cast to betray his wakefulness. Soames slept without any disguise, his mouth open and his posture slack, like a switched-off machine. Despite her own weariness, Miss Temple did not follow their example. There was no reason not to, she knew— even if she were to open the coach door and fling herself to freedom, Mrs. Marchmoor could still reach out and stop her. Miss Temple examined the front of her dress with annoyance, and lifted the stained portions to her mouth and sucked on them one after another, tasting the blood and working the fabric back and forth between her tongue and teeth. Her thoughts sank into a brood.

If she had followed Francis Xonck and stolen his book out of a determined antagonism to evil, she would have happily curled herself up for a proper nap. But Miss Temple knew, for hers was a habitually lacerating scrutiny, that the daring theft had been spurred by the confusion she felt in the wake of the Contessa's seduction and rebuff—that her stabbing action was in fact a running away. With a growing conviction she began to wonder if the entirety of her adventures, from first following Roger's coach to ending his life inside the airship, had not been a flight from a deeper and unflattering truth about her character and its essential paucity.

She had no answer for such thoughts save assertion, and her powers of insistence were low. The Contessa had advised her to abandon her adventure utterly. Even Elöise had attempted to dissuade her from any further investigation—was she so certain these warnings were wrong? Her adventures had altered her character—into a woman who had done murder, a woman whose body inflamed to depravity at the merest spark. It was a feral life like Chang's, and rootless like the Doctor's—marked by isolation and anonymity, by danger and, without any question, eventual doom. It was also, Miss Temple bit her lip to admit it, a life like the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza's.

Her thoughts were jarred by a sudden shift in the surface of the road. They had reached the cobbled drive leading to the Vandaariff estate. She cleared her throat rather deliberately and was gratified to see Mr. Phelps open one eye in response.

“Have you ever been to Harschmort House?” she asked.

He exhaled wearily and shrugged himself to a more respectable posture.

“I have.”

“With Deputy Minister Crabbé?”

“Indeed.”

“And Roger Bascombe?”

Phelps glanced at the still-sleeping Soames, and then out the window at the dispiriting landscape.

“Before the disappearance of the Deputy Minister, there were regular communications between his office, Lord Vandaariff's people, and officials of the Privy Council. It was in no small part owing to Lord Vandaariff that the Duke was able to achieve the control over the Privy Council that he presently enjoys.”

“I would say the Duke enjoys very little,” said Miss Temple, “these days.”

“My point,” continued Phelps, “is that since the disappearance of the Deputy Minister, no word has arrived from Lord Vandaariff whatsoever.”

“Of course there hasn't,” said Miss Temple.

“It is easily explained by the epidemic at Harschmort House of blood fever—”

“Blood fever!” She tossed her head at the compartment behind them. “Have you asked her?”

Phelps licked his lips. “Who?”

“Who?” She mocked him openly. “Her! Mrs. Marchmoor! Margaret Hooke! Not saying her name will not change the fact of her existence, nor lessen her power.”

“I cannot say I am… personally… acquainted with the lady.”

Miss Temple delicately blew her nose into the wadded handkerchief.

“A pity, for she is perfectly acquainted with you.”

THE COACH crossed the flagstone plaza to the wide steps. Mr. Phelps jogged Soames awake, and the man was still blinking and unpleasantly smacking his lips as he stepped from the coach. Miss Temple realized she had never seen Robert Vandaariff's mansion during the day. With out the enfolding night, the structure's harsh simplicity was even more oppressive. The building had first been constructed as a coastal fortress, then turned into a prison. Lord Vandaariff had refitted the interiors to his own lavish specifications, but to Miss Temple, isolated between a featureless landscape and the vast—and therefore somehow inherently disapproving—sky, Harschmort seemed a prison once again.

Phelps followed her from the coach and shut the door. The Duke's footmen carefully extricated the Duke—Soames taking his Grace's elbow—and then, with all the relish they might have shown toward a similarly sized spider, Mrs. Marchmoor. The footmen remained with the coach, heads lowered, as the party made its deliberate way to the stairs: Phelps in the lead, then Soames and the Duke, and last Miss Temple next to the glass woman. Miss Temple sniffed sharply and wiped her nose.

“You hurt me very much,” she said.

“You insulted me,” echoed the voice of Mrs. Marchmoor in her head.

“Resenting a fact does not make it untrue,” replied Miss Temple. “Besides, I thought the Process made that sort of shyness unimportant.”

“It is not too late for you to discover firsthand,” answered the glass woman. “All the necessary machinery is here. How very smart of you to suggest it.”

Miss Temple swallowed, her fears augmented by the ruthless grip of the glass woman's hand on her arm. They had reached the stairs, and she was compelled to assist her captor's awkward climb.

“There are no servants to meet us, your Grace,” Phelps called.

“Of course there are servants,” croaked the Duke in reply.

As if he had been pushed, Phelps stumbled to the still-shut double doors. He lifted the enormous metal knocker and brought it down with a crash, the sound echoing across the empty plaza like the bark of an enormous lonely dog. The echoes faded to silence, and Phelps rapped the knocker twice more. He was rewarded by a metal snapping from inside as the lock was turned. One door swung open enough to reveal a man in Harschmort's black livery.

“The Duke of Stäelmaere,” announced Mr. Phelps. “To see Lord Robert Vandaariff.”

The man looked up at Phelps, hesitating. “I am sorry to inform you that Lord Vandaariff—”

He got no further. The servant staggered backwards and Miss Temple heard the awkward clatter of his fall. Phelps pushed the door wide and motioned them in.

Vandaariff's footman lay inert on the tile, breathing in shallow puffs like an agitated spaniel, but his eyes were vacant and dull. The main foyer of the mansion was empty of any other person. Miss Temple wrinkled her nose, and saw Phelps and Soames doing the same.

“There has been a fire,” Phelps said.

Miss Temple turned to Mrs. Marchmoor, but the glass woman was already moving. Miss Temple followed with the others, hoping Mrs. Marchmoor's probing mind might become distracted such that a resourceful person might avail themselves of something like a heavy brass candlestick or a flingable Chinese urn. A sudden snap of pain between Miss Temple's eyes made her stumble. Phelps glanced back at her, his mouth a clenched, disapproving line.