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octor Abelard Svenson stood at an open window overlookingthe small courtyard of the Macklenburg diplomatic com-pound, gazing at the thickening fog and the few sickly gaseouslights of the city bright enough to penetrate its fell curtain. Hesucked on a hard ginger candy, clacking it against his teeth, awarethat a lengthy brood about his current situation was a luxury hecould not indulge. With a shove from his tongue he pushed thecandy between his left molars and smashed it to sharp pieces,smashed these pieces again, and then swallowed them. He turnedfrom the window and reached for a porcelain cup of tepid black coffee, gulping it, finding a certain pleasure in the mix of sweetginger syrup coating his mouth and the bitter beverage. Did they drink coffee with ginger in India, he wondered, or Siam? He fin-ished the cup, set it down and dug for a cigarette. He looked overhis shoulder at the bed, and the still figure upon it. He sighed,opened his cigarette case, stuck one of the dark, foul Russian ciga-rettes in his mouth, and took a match from the bureau near thelamp, striking it off of his thumbnail. He lit the cigarette, inhaled,felt the telltale catch in his lungs, shook out the match, and ex-haled longingly. He couldn’t put it off anymore. He would have tospeak to Flaüss.He crossed the room to the bolted door, skirting the bed,and—sticking the cigarette into his mouth to free both hands topull the iron bolt clear—glanced back at the pale young manbreathing moistly underneath the woolen blankets. Karl-Horst vonMaasmärck was twenty-three,though pervasive indulgence and a weak constitution had added ten years to his appearance. His

honey-colored curls receded from his forehead(the thinness espe- cially visible with the hair so clumped together by sweat), his pal-lid skin sagged below his eyes and around his family’s weak mouthand sunken jaw, and his teeth were already beginning to go.Svenson stepped over to the insensible man—overgrown boy,really—and felt the pulse at his jugular, antic despite the lau-danum, and once more cursed his own failure. The strange loop-ing pattern seared into thePrince’s skin around the eyes and acrosshis temples—not quite a burn, not exactly even raw, more of adeep discoloration and with luck temporary—mocked DoctorSvenson’s every previous effort to control his willful charge. As he looked down, he resisted the impulse to grind the ciga-rette intothe Prince’s skin and chided himself for his own mis-taken tactics, hisfoolish trust, his ill-afforded deference. He’dfocused on the Prince himself and paid far too little attention tothose new ﬁgures around him—the woman’s family, the diplo-mats, the soldiers, the high-placed hangers-on—never thinkinghe’d be tearing the Prince away from them at pistol-point. Hebarely even knew who they were—far less what part in their planshad been laid aside for the easily dazzled Karl-Horst. All that hadbeen the business of Flaüss, the Envoy—which had either gonehorribly wrong or...hadn’t. Svenson needed to report to Flaüss onthe Prince’s health, but he knew that he must use the interview with the Envoy to determine whether he was truly without alliesin the diplomatic compound. He noticed his overcoat slung acrossthe bedpost and folded it over his arm—heavier than it ought to befrom the pistol tuckedinto the pocket. He looked around theroom—nothing particularly dangerous should the Prince wake upin his absence. He pulled the bolt on the door and stepped into thehall. Next to the door stood a soldier in black, carbine at his side,stifﬂy at attention. Doctor Svenson locked the door with a largeiron key and returned the key to his jacket pocket. The soldier’s at-tention did not waver as the Doctor walked past and down thehallway, nor did the Doctor think twice about the guard. He was

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used enough to these soldiers and their iron discipline—any ques-tion he had would be aimed at their officer, who was unaccount-ably still absent from the compound.Svenson reached the end of the hall and stood on the landing,his gaze edging over the rail to the lobby three floors below. Fromabove he could see the black and white checkerboard pattern of the marble floor—an optical illusion of staircases impossibly lead-ing ever upwards and downwards to one another at the sametime—with the crystal chandelier hovering above it. For Svenson, who did not like heights, just seeing the chandelier’s heavy chainsuspended in the air before him gave him a whiff of vertigo.Looking up to the high top of the stairwell, where the chain wasanchored above the fourth floor landing—which he could nothelp but do, like an ass—made him palpably dizzy. He steppedaway from the rail and climbed to the third floor, walking close tothe wall, his eyes on the floor. He was still staring at his feet as he walked past the guards at the landing and outside the Envoy’sdoor. With a quick grimace he squared his shoulders and knocked. Without waiting for an answer, he went in. When Svenson had returned from the Institute with the Prince,Flaüss had not been present—nor could anyone say where he’dgone. The Envoy had burst into the Prince’s room some forty min-utes later—in the midst of the Doctor’s squalid efforts to purge hispatient of any poison or narcotic—and imperiously demanded what Doctor Svenson thought he was doing. Before he could reply,Flaüss had seen the revolver on the side table and then the markson Karl-Horst’s face and began screaming. Svenson turned to seethe Envoy’s face was white—with rage or fear he wasn’t sure—butthe sight had snapped the last of his patience and he’dsavagely driven Flaüss from the room. Now, as he entered the office, he waskeenly aware that of Conrad Flaüss he actually knew preciouslittle. A provincial aristocrat with pretensions toward the cosmo-

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Surgeon