Chang had no such scruples. He stabbed the tip of his stick hard into the Ministry man's right kidney, deftly snatched the pistol as the man arched his back in pain, and then kicked the back of the fellow's knee, dropping him to the grass. Chang strode toward the conjoined pair of his enemies and fired, the pistol kicking at his grip. The bullet flew between them—it was not his weapon, or perhaps he could not choose which of the two he more wanted to kill—and cut across Margaret Hooke's wrist, chipping the glass and sending a single pale fissure forward into her hand. Xonck grunted with pain and twisted, exerting pressure on the damaged hand. As Chang aimed again, her wrist began to give, puffs of blue smoke rising out from the cracks. Xonck hurled himself away, screaming with agony, and the hand sheared off, its jagged stump sparking glass chips like the spout of a spitting kettle.

Chang staggered, as if he had borne the great blast of a silent explosion. He looked behind him. The servants of Harschmort had as one collapsed to their hands and knees, holding their heads in pain. He could not hear. He looked back to Mrs. Marchmoor, waving her broken limb like a smoking branch, staggering. Xonck was on his back, pulling at the shattered fingers still penetrating his chest. How had the silent explosion of Margaret Hooke's anguish left him standing while flattening everyone else?

Chang raised the pistol for another shot. Angelique… He felt the rising sensation of her flesh once more, in every limb—he shook his head, it was no time—it was never time, was not right, could not be borne, how could she be in him when he knew she had not cared? He blinked his eyes—he could not free his mind—he could not see—he fired blindly at the woman, then just as recklessly at Xonck. Angelique would not leave him. Chang thrashed like a bull beset with stinging bees, except the bees were all beneath his skin. He moaned at the complete idiocy of his predicament, even as he sank helpless to his knees, and his mind surrendered to the feel of silk pyjamas.

Six. Canal

DOCTOR SVENSON stared at the purple stone in the trainsman's open palm for three seconds, just long enough for the men encircling him to take in his silence and the stricken pallor of his face, before reaching to take it with his left hand, his right occupied with Mr. Potts' revolver. The man who had spoken still indicated with an extended arm the first compartment car of the train. Without a word Svenson walked toward it, his pace quickening. He was up the five iron stairs in two steps, and then, far too soon it seemed, standing at the compartment's open door.

Elöise lay in her black dress, with one arm pinned beneath her and the other awkwardly splayed above her head. Svenson set the revolver on the nearest seat and sank to his knees, whispering her name. Be hind in the corridor came shuffling bootsteps. Svenson turned, aware that his face was flushed and that his voice held firm by the scarcest margin.

“Send men to search! The killers! They could still be anywhere!” Svenson shifted forward, stuffing the purple stone into the pocket of his trousers, again whispering her name as if it were a spell. He placed two fingers against the pulse in her throat. Her flesh was still warm… but cooling… he felt nothing… but then—some birdlike tremor, was it possible? No, his own hands were shaking—he was unable to perform a simple examination, nerves of an untempered student. If he had only been here sooner, even a few minutes! His boots ground unpleasantly against the floor. He looked down and saw glittering dust—a scattering of shattered blue glass across the polished wood.

Francis Xonck. If Svenson had not been such a helpless wretch at the mining camp—if it had been Chang instead of him—Elöise might still be living.

He delicately rolled her onto her back, wincing at the lifeless loll of her head—at the base of her sternum, a dark circle, smaller than his monocle, soaking the black fabric and catching the lantern light… blood. The relatively small amount spoke to a deep, suddenly mortal wound. He touched the stain with a finger to judge how long ago it had occurred.

The stain was solid and clicked against his nail, like a shining black coin set into the cloth. It was glass.

“A knife—sharp as you have—at once!”

He snapped his fingers as the men hurriedly patted their pockets, aware he was again burying heartbreak under a shovelful of useless effort. He looked down at Elöise's impossibly pale face…

Doctor Svenson's breath stopped. Was it only the light? At once he feverishly dug into his coat. A man stepped forward with a knife.

“Not now—not now!” he cried, and pulled free his silver cigarette case.

He rubbed the shining surface violently across his trouser-leg and leaned forward, cradling her head and holding the polished metal directly before her parted lips. He waited… waited… bit his lip hard enough to draw blood… and then felt a surge of desperate joy as the surface fogged ever so delicately, an infinitesimal pearling.

“This woman is alive!” he cried. “Hot water! Clean linen—whatever you have! At once!”

Svenson thrashed out of the horrible stiff coat. He snapped his fingers again at the man with the knife, and snatched it away—an old penknife, its thin blade nothing near sharp enough. He put a hand again to Elöise's throat and then her forehead, which was cold and moist, and unbuttoned the black dress to either side of the tight glass disk, which seemed fixed through to her skin. Svenson carefully plucked up the dress and sawed a quick circle around the glass. The wound was just at the lowest joint of her rib cage. Had the cartilage shattered Xonck's glass stiletto, or had the blade thrust past, penetrating her vital organs? That would be an injury he could scarcely address with a fully equipped surgical theatre.

He gently palpated the paper-white skin around the dark lozenge, seeking the submerged hardness of a deeper plume of glass. The skin was colder around the wound. Her lips had darkened in the seconds she'd been on her back. Svenson turned savagely to the men clustered at the door.

“Where is the water? She will die without it!”

A man in a blue uniform edged toward Svenson and cleared his throat. “The train, sir… the schedule—”

“I do not give a damn for your schedule!” cried Svenson.

A ring of blued flesh was spreading before his eyes across Elöise's abdomen. He could not wait for the water. He pulled the skin taut with the fingers of his left hand and edged the knife beneath the disk of glass. A sharp chop and the glass came free, leaving only a few splintered chips. Elöise gasped, but when he glanced to her face she was no closer to her senses. What was more, part of the wound had coagulated at once back into glass. The remaining hole was small, perhaps a half inch wide—but how deep did it go? How could he dig without any way to control the bleeding? Would more bleeding simply transform into more blue glass and make things worse? Svenson was sure it was the toxic quality of the glass itself, more than the puncture, that was killing her. He thought back to Chang's damaged lungs. The orange liquid—if only he had some now!—had dissolved the glass Chang had inhaled, allowing him to spit it up like the gelatinous detritus of any chest cold, removing it in a way surgery never could have. And once it was done the man had regained his strength with striking rapidity.

But Svenson had no orange liquid. There was nothing else for it. He inserted the knife blade into the wound—and then cursed out loud in German as the entire compartment lurched around him. The train was moving.

“God damn!” he cried to the men in the doorway. “What is this idiocy?”

“It is the schedule,” protested the uniformed conductor. “I have tried to explain—”

“She will die!” barked Svenson.