THE GHOST AND THE MACHINE

Warning: This story is dark, as in double dark with extra dark and a side of dark. There are references to rape and child abuse, though neither is depicted. There is also murder, manipulation, and a whole lotta chess.

Feedback: zipplic@gmail.com. If you care to drop me a line, I will respond in your choice of sonnet or mime.

______________________________________________________________________________

Chapter Four: Queen's Gambit

Take a minute, if you please, to reflect upon what Eleanor was seeing as we waited. I was dressed only in a thin boy's nightshirt which Rush had bought for me four or five years earlier, plus one stocking (right foot). My face was probably red and puffy; it gets that way when I sleep. Eyes too. My hair, short as the bristles of a scrub brush, would have been sticking upwards in spikes. Dust bunnies and dog hair clung to every square inch of me, since I'd been sleeping with Towser under the table. Add to all that the fact that I'd first gaped at Eleanor and then screamed in her face, and I don't think I made a very good first impression.

None of which mattered, particularly, because Eleanor wasn't supposed to be seeing me in the first place. That was the damn rule.

Of course, there had been slip-ups and near misses before. I'd been with Rush twelve years, and in twelve years, accidents happen. When I was seventeen, on a long leg of a journey between Venice and Rome, the carriage pitched over and went into a ditch. (Guess who was driving. Guess whether she was drunk.)

We were "rescued"- and I use the term loosely- by some git in a blue velvet suit. He let us ride with him to the next town but he also talked everlastingly about how music was his paaaaaassion and how all the common rabble would never, never, never understand. Rush had to put up with it, since we wouldn't have gotten any distance in our own carriage with the wheels smashed to kindling, but all the length of that endless road, there was a slow slow smoulder going on under her skin. Especially when he shot curious glances at me. Rush had wrapped me up in a cloak, with a scarf over my face, and told him that it was because she didn't want me to catch a cold. He accepted it because his sluggish little mind couldn't come up with any other explanation, even though we were in bloody Italy and the salamanders were fainting in the heat.

I did faint, a couple of times, with all the sweltering wool wrapped around me. When we finally reached an inn, Rush gave me a dose of something and then parked me on the sofa, wedged in by cold compresses. I sat there all evening, feeling vague and blurry, while Rush punished Von Hausen for letting the carriage capsize. I'd rather not go into details, if you wouldn't mind. Suffice to say, Von Hausen's bloated stomach was always tender and it took very little to make her puke. Rush knew how to use that weakness to make Von Hausen regret her mistakes. She did indeed.

And that wasn't the only close call. Another time- I was still quite small- the Rajah was performing at a manor house with thin walls, and someone heard me talking inside a guest room, and he got all inquisitive. Rush managed that one by claiming that the mysterious voice was her own- that she had been reading the Bible aloud to her Uncle Gregory. That didn't quite satisfy the nosy questioner, who proceeded to ask why Rush had been reading the Bible aloud in a child's voice and with a French accent. Rush said that she happened to like reading the Bible in a child's voice and with a French accent, and was that a problem? Was it? No? Good.

Another time...oh, you get the idea. There were little slips and little emergencies and Rush smoothed them over exactly as you'd cover up a blemish on your face with rouge. As I've mentioned, people are so eager not to notice things that they're very easy to fool.

But there had never been a slip quite like this one. I'd never actually unlocked a door, yanked it open, and gaped in somebody's face. Which was why I was fairly sure that my life was forfeit.

The protocol for situations such as this was simple: I was supposed to shout for Rush and then stand rigid, eyes closed, saying nothing no matter what happened, until Rush arrived. That's what I did, while Eleanor the Austrian Bitch asked me, repeatedly and with increasing frustration, just what in the world was wrong.

Then there was a creak of a door and a rushing draught and Rush came gorgoning into the room.

Her footsteps came to an abrupt halt- that meant she was scanning the scene, taking everything in. Then they started up again, decisive and quick. Rush reached me in three quick strides, put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back against her. In spite of my panic, I understood why. I'd put on the nightshirt shortly after being beaten the night before, and the thin fabric was glued to my back with blood and seepage. Even for Rush, that would be hard to explain away.

"Good morning, madam," Rush began, with breezy, effortless ease. "I see you've met my cousin."

"Your cousin?" Eleanor's voice was edgy.

"My cousin, yes. (Stand up straight, Kit, you're slumping.) I would have introduced her to you yesterday, but she's been ill. Scarlet fever. (Open your eyes. Smile.) We had a long stopover in Munich while she convalesced. She's recovered now, but as you can see, she's anything but ornamental. We had to cut her hair off while she was ill, and burn all her clothing. I would have bought her new things in Germany, but you know what girls are like. She insisted on seeing the new fashions in Vienna before we restocked her wardrobe. Well, cousin? Don't just stand there. Say good morning to the lady."

Rush gave me a hard pinch to let me know that she meant it, so I licked my lips and stiffened my spine and managed to get the words out: "Good morning, the lady."

Eleanor the Austrian Bitch was scrutinizing me so hard that it felt physically uncomfortable, as if she was harrowing my skin with a rake. I tried a smile, tentatively, because that was a thing that you did when you were introduced to people. I remembered that.

Abruptly- so abruptly that both Rush and I took a step back- she thrust her hand out towards me. "Please. Eleanor. Call me Eleanor. There are so few of us in this house that it's ridiculous to stand on ceremony."

I stared blankly at her for a few seconds before I realized that she wanted to shake hands, as if we were men. Her hand felt strange. Hands were supposed to be hard and bony like Rush's, or soft and sweaty like Von Hausen's, or furry and clawed like Towser's. Hers was firm and slim instead. I didn't have the first idea what to do with it and probably kept shaking it longer than I should have.

"And you are?" she said, when that was finally over.

"I'm..."

I looked at Rush, over my shoulder, and she managed to give me an encouraging smile and an icy glare all at once. The message was clear enough. Don't mess it up.

"I'm Rush's cousin," I announced at last. That seemed safe enough, but Eleanor shook her head.

"I mean, your name."

"My name..."

I swear I wasn't trying to be defiant when I answered. I honestly didn't know what Rush would want me to say. Her pet name for me, Kit, would have been the easy answer, but the name was her property, like everything else that she'd given me. It seemed that it would be almost a betrayal to let someone else use it. And so, somehow, without thinking about it at all, I answered another way.

"Katherine," I said. "My name was Katherine."

Rush's quick intake of breath let me know that I had made the wrong decision- but it was a little late now to do anything about it. It wasn't like I could say, Oh, no, wait, I meant to say "Mildred."

Maybe my mistake was to speak in the past tense?

"My name was Katherine and it still is," I said, trying to fix things. "Katherine, is the name that used to be my name and that continues to be my name. I'm Katherine. Katherine is me."

Look, chess is my thing. I never claimed to be an actor.

Rush drew in a long, measured breath, obviously bracing herself to make the best of it. "You'll have to forgive...Katherine," she told Eleanor. Somehow, she managed to make my name sound like something slimy that she didn't want to touch. "She forgot a few things during those six weeks of vomiting, raving, and bed rest. Things like manners, for example."

I stayed quiet. It seemed better for all concerned.

Eleanor actually smiled. Rather than answering Rush, she spoke directly to me. "As I said, we don't stand on ceremony in this house. Unmannerly conduct is what we expect, and any politeness is mainly accidental. And if we're speaking of politeness, it's not very courteous of me to burst into your room at dawn and start demanding explanations. I'll tell you what, I'll make amends by offering you hot coffee and then best omelette to be had this side of the Vienna Woods. Would you like some breakfast, Katherine?"

Katherine. Katherine. The sound of another person calling me by my real name, for the first time in twelve years, did most peculiar things to my stomach. I swallowed hard, even as I glanced at Rush to get her verdict on the breakfast question.

"We would love to," Rush said, with a fair imitation of pained regret. "But, you see, Katherine is still in a rather delicate state where her digestion is concerned. I've been giving her all her meals in private- mostly soups and gruel, you know. Eggs and hot bread could be injurious to her health. Besides, I'm trying to keep her out of draughts."

Once again, Eleanor behaved as though Rush wasn't there. "Katherine, if you've been shut up in a bedroom eating nothing but slop, it's no wonder you look like death warmed over. I think that a mutton chop and a strong cup of tea would do you a world of good."

"I said no," Rush said. Irritation was beginning to seep through her smooth veneer.

"So you did," Eleanor said pleasantly. "Which would have settled the question for good, leaving me slighted and miserable, if I had asked you. But, you see, I didn't. Katherine?"

That name again. I had a mad wild moment during which I considered asking Eleanor to forget about breakfast and just say Katherine a few hundred times in succession instead. Another hard pinch from Rush brought me back to sanity.

"I can't," I muttered.

Eleanor's quirked eyebrow invited an explanation, but I'd already talked too much. I stared down at my bare toes. If I squinted while I wiggled them, I could pretend they were a nest of ivory-coloured snakes.

"Fine," Eleanor said at last. She moved towards the door, but before Rush had finished exhaling in relief, she turned back. "Luncheon, then. You'll come to luncheon. I insist. I'll have the cook make something guaranteed not to kill you, and I'll have the winter drapes put over the dining room windows so you won't catch a chill. And if necessary, I'll walk around behind you with a pillow in case you faint- but honestly, Katherine, you're staying in my aunt's home. You must at least have a meal with her. Are we agreed?"

Rush tried to butt in. "I think-"

"I'm sure you do, Miss Rushmore, and that's reassuring, because people who don't think are a menace to society. Luncheon, Katherine? Is that agreed? Good." (I hadn't said a word but it didn't seem to be necessary or expected.) "One o'clock, then. Dress informally. No need for a ball gown. Do you prefer rabbit or duck? Never mind. I'll surprise you. Good morning."

She swept out, the door clicking shut behind her. And I had the perfectly novel experience of seeing Rush at a loss for words.

* * *

Von Hausen's appearance on the scene a few minutes afterwards did much to help Rush find her tongue.

Von Hausen wasn't drunk, when she came in. Instead, she wore the look of near-desperation that meant she had been searching for liquor and not finding any. She would have thrown herself on Rush's mercy then and there, I think, if Rush hadn't started speaking first.

As a speech, it was one of Rush's best. In a few well-chosen words, she gave Von Hausen to understand that she, Von Hausen, was a fool, an ass, and a brute of the worst variety, and the only reason that Rush bothered to let her live was because she wasn't worth the price of a coffin.

"You filthy animal," Rush concluded with emphasis. "I know that thinking isn't your strong point, but I thought that I had pounded a few basic rules into your head. When I tell you to watch Kit, you watch Kit. You don't let her out of your sight. You stay. You watch. That's it. I've been very patient with you, Caroline, but even I have my limits, and this is unacceptable. The next time you commit an act of such supreme stupidity, you'll have no liquor for a month and no bread for three. Now sit."

Rush threw herself into a chair to think. She was always very still when she was deep in thought, and the tips of her fingers and thumbs rubbed ever so gently against each other. Von Hausen and I sat at opposite ends of the sagging couch to wait, trading a glance every now and then. At crisis times like this, there was a sort of fellow feeling between us, in spite of everything. It was as if we were mortal enemies who lived on opposite slopes of the same volcano. No matter what our history was like, we both risked destruction when the lava started to run.

"You two don't understand anything, do you?" Rush said abruptly. "Look at your blank faces."

Von Hausen, with an effort, roused herself. "What do you want?" she asked tiredly. "You want me to whip her again?"

"Yes. Whip her. Splendid idea. It's not as if anyone will notice if I take her down to luncheon bloody and screaming. Caroline! I was being sarcastic, you stupid brute! Sit down!"

There was more silence, as Rush stared into the unlit grate. I fancied I could hear her brain ticking like a well-oiled clock.

As I've said before, Rush was a genius. I say "was"- I presume Rush is still a genius now, as I write this, though I haven't seen her in some time. Not since the day that she decided to sell me- the day when I found out exactly who was screaming in the attic, the day when I was put into the red room.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned those details quite yet. You'll have to forgive me. I have a bad habit of telling a story out of order, or so I'm told. I've been doing my best, but these things slip out, and- oh, just forget that I said it.

As I was saying, Rush was a genius. She was at her best, in a way, during times when her entire being was focused on solving some impossible problem. She was at her most frightening, too.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quite calm, but that meant nothing. Rush could do all manner of things in a state of perfect calmness.

She said, "You two don't appreciate the precariousness of our position."

Von Hausen shrugged her soft round shoulders. "The Countess and the Austrian bitch- they don't know anything."

"Don't they?" Rush's head snapped around. "This is what they know. They know that I have a young woman travelling with me- a small woman. They know that this small woman wasn't introduced to them yesterday. They know that she wasn't in attendance when the Rajah played that game. That may be all they know, but if they have a brain between them, they'll suspect far more. Of course they will. Anyone would. They must suspect that Kit was operating the Rajah."

"What does it matter if they suspect?" Von Hausen said doggedly. "Half the people in Europe suspect that the Rajah's a hoax."

"Half of the people in Europe are not in a position to test their theories. Those foul Austrians are. All they have to do is insist that Kit join them in the drawing room tonight to watch the Rajah play. I won't be able to refuse- any excuse I offer will seem pathetically threadbare."

I thought it might be safe to put in a word. "Are we going to run, then?"

Rush was up now, pacing, but she stopped long enough to stare at me with eyes that flamed. "Run now? Leaving rampant suspicion and a dissatisfied customer behind us? And without getting paid? That is not an option."

"We can put on a show someplace else- make some of the money back."

"Of course. So simple. Nothing to it. Making money is a mere matter of putting up a flyer and playing a game of chess in public. Kit, you know nothing about these things!"

"But-"

"But? But nothing! How long have I had you now, Kit? Twelve years? In all that time, have you ever had to wonder where your next meal was coming from, or whether you would have a roof over your head in winter? No. No, you haven't. You're lucky enough to have someone who handles these details for you. So stop pretending that you have the right to an opinion."

"But we have to leave," I protested, somehow forgetting myself enough to argue. "If they ask me to come to the drawing room tonight-"

"We won't give them the chance to ask." Rush stared at the window, as though she could see straight through the heavy drapes to the landscape beyond. "We will offer. We will tell them that you will attend the game tonight."

"And then?"

"And then you will attend the game tonight. You will sit in plain view smiling pleasantly at the Austrian bitch while the Rajah plays chess. That should satisfy them."

I was beginning to wonder whether I'd been overestimating Rush's intelligence. It was either that, or I had finally gone insane. "Rush, I can't work the Rajah if I'm sitting beside the Austrian bitch watching the game!"

"You figured that out all on your own, did you? Kit, are you an idiot, or just an egomaniac? It's not as if you're the only one who can operate the machine."

* * *

Here is something I remember.

I was ten years old, early in my time with Rush; it was barely a month after she won me. Thumb jammed into my mouth, I was hiding under a chaise-lounge in the mildew-smelling hotel room. As I listened to Rush and Von Hausen argue, all I could see of them was their two shadows, bobbing like angry puppets on the wall.

I'm telling you, it won't work! I'm too big for it now- hell, I was too big a year ago- I thought that was why you picked up the brat in the first place!

She's not ready, pet. It'll take a while longer to break her in.

I thought the brat was supposed to be some prodigy. Some little paragon...

Jealous already, Caroline? You've no reason to be.

One puppet's shadow-hand moved up to caress the other puppet's shadow-head. For a few seconds I heard nothing- then Rush's voice resumed.

It's early days still, and she can't go an hour without snivelling. I can't afford to have the Rajah breaking into tears in the middle of a performance. So it'll take some time. Until I've gotten her ready, you'll just have to cope.

You promised, Rush. You promised that if I helped you get her...

Caroline, my Caroline. Hush, pet. Calm down.

From my hiding place under the chaise lounge, I could hear Von Hausen's shaky breathing. I didn't know, then, whether she wanted to be comforted or just left alone, and I guess I still don't.

The shadow-puppets bent double as the two of them sat down, and folded into each other as Rush brought Von Hausen's head to rest against her shoulder. A third shadow padded past them. That would be Blackie, Von Hausen's dog. I'd tried to make friends with him, thinking that he would be a good ally to have in my confusion and loneliness, but whenever I stretched out a hand to pat him, Von Hausen screeched at me and pulled him out of reach.

Finally, Von Hausen's voice, as exhausted as if she had fought a mighty battle: Can I have a drink before the game? At least?

And Rush, soothing, in answer: Of course, pet. Anything for you.

* * *

"No," Von Hausen whispered. "Suffering Christ, you know I can't anymore."

"Can't?" Rush asked pointedly. "Can't? That's a defeatist attitude, don't you think? I've always found that nothing is impossible if you're willing to put in the effort it takes. Indeed, after many years of research into the subject, I think it's accurate to say: I can do anything I want."

"Well, I can't."

Rush's lips curled upwards. "You, too, can do whatever I want, Caroline."

They weren't paying the least bit of attention to me. I almost felt that I could crawl away and hide under the furniture, just as I did when the two of them were fighting when I was a child.

"I'll never fit," Von Hausen said, desperate, the sweat prickling all over her forehead.

"Think small thoughts," Rush advised. "Because you see, you're either going to fit in the Rajah, or I'll have to start cutting parts off of you until what's left does fit. Don't worry. I'll start with something that you haven't been using much lately. Your head, perhaps."

Von Hausen swallowed hard. "Do you expect me to win?"

Rush raised an eyebrow, but she didn't answer. Didn't have to. It was a stupid question to begin with. She always expected the Rajah to win.

"I can't," Von Hausen grated. "Kit almost lost to the Countess, and I'm..."

"You're a drunken sot with nothing but mush in your skull," Rush said flatly. "You weren't always, though. Hard to believe- but true nonetheless. Once upon a time, you possessed a functional brain. Now, if I were you, then I would dig deep tonight, and remember what you used to be, and try to pull it together- because you know I don't tolerate failure."

"As for you," Rush added, wheeling abruptly on me. "We'll have to get you into a dress."

* * *

"There's one thing," Rush said, circling me. "You're going to look so utterly ridiculous, the Countess and the Austrian Bitch won't be able to ask many questions. They'll be too weak with laughter."

Silently, I agreed. I was swamped in a maroon-coloured crinoline that properly belonged to Rush, and it was so long that the stiff fabric pooled on the floor around me. The sleeves covered my hands entirely, making me look like I had flippers. But those were details. Far worse were the corset with its ribs of whalebone, and the petticoats which puffed the skirt out to the size of a tent. I had never worn such stupid things before, and was at a loss to understand how women put up with them every day of their lives.

Towser, from his pillow across the room, gave me what I chose to interpret as a sympathetic glance. I nodded my thanks to him. It was nice to have somebody on my side.

"Arms up, Kit," Rush ordered, and she dragged the dress over my head. "Caroline, get the sewing kit. You'll need to take a hem in this of about a foot. Do something about the sleeves, too."

Von Hausen looked up, reluctantly. She had been hunched over the ivory chessboard for half an hour without making a single move. "Now?"

"No, next September…of course now, you stupid brute. Let's see. The corset should be fine. Thank God I've been watching Kit's figure. We'll be able to cinch her waist to a fairly respectable size. What else?"

"Hair," Von Hausen mumbled, her mouth full of pins and needles as she inspected the seams of the gown.

Rush pinched a few short wisps of my hair between her finger and thumb, blew out a frustrated breath, and let them drop. "We can't do a damn thing about her hair. The story about the scarlet fever should explain it, in part, but maybe I should say that she's had lice, too."

"She could wear a cap?" Von Hausen suggested.

"Only married women wear caps indoors."

"You could tell them that she's married."

Rush gave a disgusted snort and then, at last, returned her attention to me. "Kit, listen carefully, because I won't have any slip-ups. Your name is Katherine Rushmore and you're the daughter of my mother's brother. Your parents Horace and Abagail died when you were ten- let's say that they ate some bad bacon- and I've paid for you to be educated in Switzerland. I am your guardian until you're of age."

"I am of age. I'm twenty-two."

"As of now, you're nineteen. Remember that. You've just recovered from a virulent attack of scarlet fever. You recuperated at a hostel outside of Munich. You're still rather woozy. If anyone asks a question, blink at them emptily until they give up. If they don't give up, pretend to faint. Speak as little as possible, and only when spoken to. Do that and we might just get through the day."

I nodded, dry-mouthed but calmer now that there was a plan. Then I saw the crucial flaw, and my skin turned cold. "Rush...if we're eating in the dining room...there might be an open window."

Rush feigned astonishment. "Goodness gracious, I suppose there might!"

An open window...sunlight, fresh breeze, a glimpse of blue sky...just the thought of it nearly made me vomit and scream. I hadn't always been this way. There was a time when neither sunlight nor sky held any terrors for me, but that time was so distant as to be past all understanding.

"But what'll I do?" I asked, desperate. "What if I have one of my attacks?"

"Well, you would have a problem," Rush mused, as if this was an abstract intellectual question that didn't really interest her. "After all, I wouldn't really be in a position to help you. Yes. If you have a fit in the dining room, then you stand a fair to middling chance of suffocating or choking to death on your own sick. Keep that in mind, the next time you think about flinging the door open to an Austrian harpy you don't know."

* * *

The stairs were tricky. I was out of practice when it came to stairs. Every time I groped for the next step with my foot, I was seized with vertigo, convinced that my foot would hit nothingness and I would fall into space. Rush had my arm linked in hers, and for once I was glad, because I was dizzy before we neared the halfway mark.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I had been wearing my own clothes. At a time of crisis, well-fitting trousers do much to boost one's confidence. But instead, I was drowning in Rush's old maroon dress, swathed in endless folds of heavy cloth. I couldn't make up my mind whether it felt more like manacles or a winding sheet.

We reached the bottom of the staircase. Rush adjusted her grip on me, her nails biting in hard, and began to lead me down the hall, her pace so slow and measured that she could have been taking me to the gallows.

The regular rhythm of our footsteps, as we walked down the hall, brought to mind the rules that governed my life with Rush, sounding in the background like a steady drum-beat. Rule one: Nobody sees Kit. Rule two: One does not argue with Rush. We passed dark gloomy portraits of Austrian men who seemed to be contemplating us both with disapproval. Rule three: One does not interrupt Rush. Rule four: Don't expose Kit to the outdoors. The floorboards were wobbly underfoot and the carpet smelt of mushrooms. Rule five: No cursing. Rule six: Rush must approve everything eaten. Rush sniffed loudly and groped for a handkerchief. Rule seven: The bloodstone never comes off. Rule eight...rule eight...rule eight...

The door lurched open without any warning.

"There you are," said Eleanor the Austrian Bitch. "Good. The chicken was about to get cold."

* * *

The windows in the dining room, as it turned out, were covered by the same heavy drapes as those that hung in the bedrooms upstairs. That should have been a relief, but wasn't really- my panic just directed itself in other directions. The table was too huge. The food was too hot. My knife and fork were too heavy and my palms were too sweaty as I fumbled with them.

I don't remember much about what we ate, except that there was the chicken, and a little glass of clear crimson jelly stood next to my plate. I'm sure it was all delicious, but it was hard to concentrate on flavour when Rush's jealous eyes were following my fork each time it travelled up to my mouth. I gave up eating long before I was full.

I remember wine, too. It was a beautiful golden colour, the wine, but it smelled like Von Hausen's breath, strained through Von Hausen's old stockings. I took two sips, almost choked, and then emptied the glass under the table when nobody was looking.

At the end of the table, the Countess and Rush were arguing about politics.

"Oh, come, come," the Countess was saying. "You're honestly disappointed to see a queen on the throne of England? And you a woman yourself?"

"The problem is not that Queen Victoria is a woman," Rush said. She was speaking through her teeth, and they were making that grinding noise again. "The problem is that she's a girl. It's ridiculous to have a child of nineteen on the throne, without a regent to impose some kind of sanity."

The Countess snorted loudly. "And who would serve as regent? That hectoring monster of a mother of hers?"

That vein in Rush's neck was starting to tick. "I've always thought of the Duchess of Kent as a lady of the most profound common sense."

"Huh!" The Countess stabbed a mutton-chop viciously, thrust it into her mouth, and chewed with a vigour that sent bits of flesh spraying all over the tablecloth. "I've always thought of her as a domineering old frump and I suspect that she and her secretary are making the beast with two backs whenever they have a spare minute. But maybe that's what passes as common sense in England."

Eleanor the Austrian Bitch spoke up for the first time. "Have you heard of the Kensington System, Miss Rushmore?"

"I might have heard it mentioned once or twice," Rush said, carving her own mutton with extravagant care.

"I haven't."

Three faces snapped towards me when I spoke. Reflexively, I began to pull up an edge of the tablecloth, intending to hide underneath it, but Rush's hard glare brought me back to my senses. I stared down at my plate instead.

"It's a system of rules, Katherine," answered Eleanor's low smooth voice. I knew the word melodious from my reading, and had never really asked myself what it meant before. Now I thought that Eleanor's voice might just qualify. "It's been in the papers lately. The Kensington System is a set of rules made up by the Duchess of Kent, the mother of your Queen Victoria. They were designed to control every aspect of the young Victoria's life. Until she ascended the throne last year, Victoria wasn't allowed to sleep outside of her mother's room, or spend so much as half an hour alone. She always had to be with her mother or some other chaperone. She was kept away from other children, she was watched every minute, her every action was recorded..."

"But-"

Eleanor nodded. "I knew you would ask that. Why would anyone do that to a child?"

That wasn't it at all. I had intended to ask why the Kensington System deserved comment, if the rules were as simple and obvious as all that.

"You know why," the Countess said in answer to Eleanor. She shoved an entire roast potato in her mouth and talked around it, while gravy dribbled onto her chin. "Victoria's monstrous mother wanted to turn her into a puppet. Wanted to keep her weak and dependant. Wanted to make sure that she'd never be able to do a thing for herself- not even after she was crowned queen. But the joke was on her in the end."

My lips formed the question: What do you mean? I didn't say it aloud though; didn't have to. Eleanor answered.

"Victoria grew to hate her mother," she said. "The very first thing she asked for, when she ascended the throne, was to be allowed an hour by herself. From what I understand, she rules very much as she herself thinks best, and her relationship with her mother is rather more frigid than Scandinavia."

The Countess contributed a reflective burp. "Victoria will probably boot her mother straight out of the palace as soon as she gets married. I would wager a bushel of very large and fragrant cigars on it."

For some reason- temporary insanity, most likely- I dared a glance at Rush. She stared straight back, icy fire flickering in the depths of her eyes, and I dropped my glance back to my plate.

"I wouldn't underestimate the Duchess of Kent if I were you," Rush said quietly. "Women of purpose and dedication tend to win in the long run, even if they suffer a temporary setback or two."

* * *

I don't remember what we had for pudding. I do remember that Rush coughed loudly when I picked up the dessert spoon, and didn't stop until I'd reluctantly put it down again.

While the plates were being cleared away, the four of us retired to the parlour. Eleanor seemed strangely nervous as we walked down the hall.

"Now, don't be intimidated when you see it," she warned me. "There's no reason to be intimidated. My aunt has rather strange taste when it comes to interior decoration, that's all."

"Fuss, fuss, fuss," the Countess complained, stumping along with her cane. "I wish you wouldn't warn people, Eleanor. I prefer it when they're unprepared. I like to watch all the jaws hit the floor."

"Jaws aren't the only thing that hit the floor. You remember when Baroness von der Recke fainted?"

"Do I remember? It's about the fondest memory that I possess, except for that projectile vomiting incident involving the emperor's cousin-by-marriage. Don't roll your eyes at me, Miss Rushmore. We all have our little amusements."

* * *

"I'm a collector," the Countess said, by way of explanation, when we entered the parlour. "I like to get my hands on oddities."

I didn't see what was all that odd about the decorations. Plenty of people have paintings on their walls. I suppose that paintings of violent bloody executions are a little atypical, but what the hell. Tastes differ.

The collection of handcuffs and thumbscrews was a bit stranger, perhaps, but they were almost attractive, hanging there in neat glinting rows by the piano. And there's nothing wrong with keeping a battleaxe or two over the fireplace, even if the axes have a strange black crust along their blades as if they've been used and never cleaned.

"They've never been used," Eleanor put in wearily. You got the sense that she had explained this many times before. "They're just for decoration."

"I'd like to get a guillotine someday," the Countess said, through a serene puff of blue cigar smoke.

"Aunt Maria, really."

"Oh, just a little one. You never know when a guillotine might come in handy."

We all sat down except for Eleanor, who wore a look of pained embarrassment. She went around the room making futile efforts to clean up- twitching a curtain in front of an especially bloody painting, straightening out the hanging manacles, that kind of thing.

She wasn't accomplishing much and I think she knew it, because presently she sighed, gave up, and retreated to the piano. She played for an hour or so, and all the songs had a heavy, irritated cadence, as if she was swearing over and over and over.

* * *

There were two days left until the murder, by the way. Just in case you're still counting.

* * *

The afternoon crawled by at a glacial pace, which was odd. I had so many things to look at and wonder about- many many more than on an ordinary day, when I would be shut up with Von Hausen, practising chess defences and being force-fed cod liver oil. Yet today time seemed almost to be standing still. Maybe it was because I had to listen to Rush and the Countess arguing about politics, hour after hour after hour. Maybe it was because Rush gave me a sharp glare whenever I slumped in my seat or glanced at a nearby painting. Or maybe it was because I'd gotten used to spending half of my days asleep.

Yes- that was probably it. By half-past three, I was long overdue for a nap. While Eleanor rattled out a final crescendo on the piano, the notes crashing DOOM DOOM DOOM, I was yawning into my drooping maroon sleeve.

I think I must have dozed, in fact, because I woke with a jolt when a hand touched my shoulder.

Eleanor's hand. I stared at it blankly, and then at her face. She was wearing an expression I didn't recognize. In retrospect, I think it was concern.

She seemed to be asking a question- her mouth was moving- but I didn't hear the words, so I blurted out an answer entirely at random. "Sixty-four?"

She showed surprise. "I asked whether you were all right."

"Oh," I said. I wracked my brains for a few seconds, and, by happy accident, remembered how people usually answered that question. "I'm fine, thank you."

That satisfied her. She smiled at me apologetically. "You're a little bored, perhaps. The days are rather long here, I'm afraid. We don't get out much. At all."

* * *

Eleanor asked if I would, perhaps, like to borrow a book. I made a huge supreme vast almighty effort, and managed not to scream, "Yes, yes, yes!"

She led me to a shelf at a far end of the room, next to the hanging thumbscrews. There, in a dusty row, were books, so very many books, thirty of them at least. I couldn't see any titles, but I didn't care. Whether they were geometry textbooks or pornographic novelettes, the idea of that much printed text was intoxicating. I stood dumbly, staring, and, I suppose, drooling just a tiny little bit.

"Do you want a recommendation?" Eleanor asked. "I've read all of them about six thousand times, so I'm qualified to give you some guidance."

I shut my mouth, swallowed the drool, and willed my voice to work. "What's your favourite?"

"That's easy. Das Fräulein Von Scuderi." Eleanor's finger skimmed along the leather-bound spines, and then tipped a sleek red book free of the row. "Have you read it?"

"No."

"You'll like it. It has everything. Poison and watchmakers and murders and jewel thieves and torture. And lawyers. All the good stuff. Here, take it."

I took it, hands trembling. Part of me wanted to wrench it open immediately and start devouring it, stuffing the words into myself the way a starving man gulps bread. Another part of me, a cold, distant part, wondered if I was still capable of reading a book that I didn't know by heart. Bits of my brain, I knew, had been numb for years.

"Are you sure you don't mind?" I asked.

"Mind? Of course I don't mind. I've read it so many times that I've forgotten why it used to excite me. But the first time I read it, I was completely transported. I wanted to go bouncing through the streets of Vienna, solving mysteries and hunting down criminals. Read it yourself, and talk to me about it, and it'll be like I'm reading it again for the first time. By the way, Miss Rushmore tells me that you'll be watching the Rajah play tonight."

"Yes," I confirmed. "Should be exciting."

"Exciting? Why? Miss Rushmore's your cousin. You must have been to hundreds of performances."

"Yes," I said, backtracking. "Should be very boring."

"I should apologise to you, then. It's my fault you're here. My fault the Rajah is here, I mean," she corrected herself, seeing my look of confusion. "You see...well, it's like this. Have you heard of the Turk?"

I took a quick look backwards over my shoulder, to make sure that Rush hadn't heard that fatal word, Turk. The last thing I needed was for Rush to launch into yet another defensive speech about the Rajah's superiority to its forerunner. But it was all right: Rush was still busy arguing with the Countess. They had moved on to matters of international business. Rush was in the middle of a long and blustery rant about how, if Queen Victoria kept trying to halt the African slave trade, she would destroy the economy of the entire British empire.

"The Turk?" I asked Eleanor innocently, once I was fairly sure that Rush wasn't about to storm across the room and start killing everyone. "No, I don't think I've heard of it. Oh- wait. It was another chess-playing automaton, wasn't it?"

"It's still around. Still performing. The owner, Johannes Maelzel, has been touring America with it for- oh, about twelve years."

That I knew well, although I didn't know why. According to Rush, America was a cess pit populated entirely by savages and cotton farmers. It didn't seem like there would be much of a market for chess in a place like that.

Then again, Rush wasn't always the most reliable source of information.

For the millionth time, I wondered who was operating the Turk. This was one of my favourite things to wonder about, just because the picture was so seductive. Somewhere on the other side of the world was a person who lived a slightly slanted version of my life. Somewhere on a far continent was a person who knew all the secrets of the machine: the dials and springs and levers that powered the mystery. I doubted that my dark twin was a young woman, like me. The Turk, with its larger dimensions, was big enough to accommodate a full-grown man, and it probably did. (More men play chess than women. Sad, but true.) But that didn't matter- not really. No matter who the other operator was, the two of us were connected, as if we were the only two people on earth who spoke a certain language.

"So this has something to do with the Turk?" I asked Eleanor.

"That's how I developed the unhealthy obsession with which I am currently wrestling. I saw the Turk perform, you see. Years ago, before Maelzel took it to America. I was still at school and I had to sneak out of my dormitory to attend the show. They caught me sneaking back in and I spent a week on bread and water. It was worth it, though."

I sat up straighter. I'd read a number of printed newspaper accounts of the Turk's games, but of course, I'd never seen the thing with my own eyes. Finding out that Eleanor had was a great deal like learning she'd met some sibling of mine, from whom I'd been separated at birth. "Really? What was it like?"

Eleanor's eyes closed halfway as she sank into reverie. "Thrilling. Everything about it was thrilling. The crowded hall and the audience all gasping and jostling to see. The showman- Johannes Maelzel- strutting around in patent-leather boots. And the Turk itself, of course, all smoke and varnish and splendour and shadow and must and mystery. When I saw it begin to move, my heart leapt straight from my body. It was that sense that I was encountering something truly miraculous, something beyond explanation, and even though I was in the centre of a crowd, it somehow felt as if the experience was for me and me alone."

She had been speaking as if in a trance, but now sighed, seeming to wake up. "I was still young enough back then to believe in magic."

For no good reason that I could detect, this sparked a twinge of guilt in me. The Rajah, and the Turk before it, were con games rather than miracles, but I'd never felt bad about that before. So what if we were deluding the gullible masses? If they were that eager to be deceived, they probably deserved everything that they got. But here was a woman whose sense of wonder had been fed by the experience, only to be crushed later on. How it had been crushed, I didn't know. Probably just by life.

"Well," I said, "the Rajah isn't magic, but it is a clockwork machine that knows how to play chess. So it's still nifty."

Eleanor's face tilted to the side. She studied me. "Is the Rajah a clockwork machine that knows how to play chess, Katherine?"

It wasn't just the dangerous nature of the question that struck me dumb, nor the fact that she had, once again, said my name. It was the way her eyes held mine. I wasn't used to that- to being seen, I mean.

"Of course it is," I said belatedly, and then tried to cover for my misstep by moving onto the offensive. "Surely you're not one of those lunatics who thinks that there's a demon inside the box."

"Demon? A little fire and brimstone imp? No, no. If I were a demon, I'd have better things to do than cower inside a box shoving chessmen to and fro. If there's something supernatural inside the Rajah, it's more likely to be a ghost, don't you think?"

"Ghost, demon, what's the difference?"

"All the difference in the world. Ghosts used to be human- that's the theory, anyway. They died and somehow became trapped. All the ghosts one hears about, they repeat the same actions endlessly. Stalking up and down one particular alleyway, or haunting the same bedchamber. Why do they choose to carry on that way, rather than slipping into nothingness? Because they're clinging to the last few fragments of their life and they're refusing to let go. That's the kind of supernatural being which would take up residence in a chess-playing automaton. That's what I think. Or that's what I would think, if I believed in ghosts, which I don't."

I thought of Von Hausen, who was supposed to be preparing for the game that night up in our room, and who was probably cowering in a corner instead, hyperventilating. "Von Hausen- I mean, our servant- she thinks that there's a ghost in your attic."

"Does she? Well, I suppose that makes as much sense as thinking that there's a demon in the Rajah. Your cousin wants you."

I spun. Rush was beginning to rise from the sofa. I raced across the room and slid onto the seat beside her just in time to arrest the motion. When her hand came over to rest on my knee, there was a sudden calm in my mind, as though something beginning to wake had turned over and gone to sleep again.

Rush's eyes sought and found the book. "Where did that come from?"

I tried to think of a clever lie, failed, sighed, and braced myself. "Eleanor gave it to me."

"How very kind of Eleanor," Rush said, with an artificial smile. She stretched out two fingers like pincers and plucked the book from my grip. "I'll just keep it safe for you, shall I? We both know how careless you can be sometimes."

For the rest of the endless afternoon, Rush kept me right beside her, and I sat rigid, not trying to speak. Eleanor played the piano again, and almost in a stupor, I watched her arms moving up and down the keys, smooth and regular as clockwork.

* * *

At five o'clock, we all went upstairs to dress for dinner. Going upstairs proved a lot more difficult than going downstairs. Rush almost had to drag me up the last flight.

"Getting a little bit cosy with the Austrian devil-spawn, aren't you?" she asked as she yanked me along.

"I wasn't...trying...to be," I managed to say, between panting breaths.

"Weren't you? No, I suppose you weren't. You're smarter than that. Do you know what will happen if they find out the truth about you, Kit? If they find out that you've been hoaxing the aristocracy all these years? They'll throw you into a dungeon cell head first before you can get out a please, sir." We had reached the door of our room, and Rush fumbled with the key. "Even if they don't hang you, they'll keep you in prison until you're mad and diseased, and then throw you on the streets to beg or whore for the rest of your life. By the age of forty, your clients will have smashed your teeth in so that they don't get in the way while they're using you, and both your skin and your brain will be rotten with syphilis. Keep that in mind if you feel an urge to make conversation."

The door swung open, and we saw what Von Hausen had been up to while Rush and I were downstairs. Every bag and trunk in the room had been turned out and ransacked, the contents lying where she had flung them. Cushions had been torn from sofas, papers ripped from portfolios, clothes turned inside out. Even the ink bottles had been uncorked and upturned, leaving puddles of black and blue on the wood flooring. I wondered if Von Hausen had actually tried drinking the ink, or if she had just smelled it to make sure that Rush wasn't hiding any brandy in the bottom of the bottles. Von Hausen hadn't found any liquor, I was sure- Rush was much too careful for that- but she'd had a damn good try.

While I was still gawking at the scene of devastation, Rush pounced forward. She stormed into the wreckage, thrust out an arm, and dragged Von Hausen from behind an overturned chair. At once, it was obvious that the big woman was having the horrors. Her skin was the colour of paper, almost transparent, and sweat was running down it in rivulets. She was shaking so hard that I could hear her teeth clatter, and her eyes rolled in their sockets.

"Please," she was whispering. "Ah, God, Rush, just a glass, just a glass, that's all I'm asking for. I swear I won't live until evening if you don't give me something."

"Oh, Caroline," Rush murmured in that tone of mild disappointment.

"It's true, I swear, it's true. My guts are burning, I swear it, they're on fire, the worms are biting at me, they're eating me alive. I can feel the maggots crawling behind my eyes. Just a glass, that's all I'm asking, Christ, Rush, you know I'll do anything, Rush, please, please, please..."

"What do you think, Kit?" Rush asked me, over the sound of Von Hausen's moaning and whimpers. "Does she deserve a glass?"

Von Hausen's eyes, wide with pleading, shot to mine. As I looked at her then, with her face almost animal in its pain and need, her hair matted with sweat and grease, I wondered whether I hated her less or more at times like this.

"She won't be able to play at all tonight if you don't give her something," I said. Rush already knew that, but if Rush wanted me to state the obvious, then that was Rush's business.

"True." Rush let Von Hausen fall, and wiped her hand off on her skirt. "A glass, then. I hope you'll be suitably appreciative. But I doubt it. Gratitude has never been your strong suit, Caroline."

* * *

Right about then, things went black.

That's what I called it. I'm sorry that I can't be any more explicit than that, but I don't have a ready label for what happened. I didn't faint. Nor did I die or have a stroke or get snatched up to heaven by an archangel. Nor did I go to sleep, dope myself with opium, or stick my head in a sack. My brain just went out for a while, as if it was a gas lamp, turned down until the flame snuffed.

This happened to me every so often. Mostly it happened on the nights when Rush needed me, but things went black on other occasions as well. Such as the time when Von Hausen decided to find out whether I would bounce if dropped onto the floor from head height. Repeatedly. Von Hausen wasn't what you would call a scientist, but she did, on occasion, show flashes of an inquiring mind.

When things went black, the world didn't pause. Everything kept going on, including me. Sometimes my brain went out while we were eating dinner, and when I came back to myself, I'd be scraping my plate clean. Sometimes my brain went out when I was playing chess in the Rajah, and I'd refocus just as I was winning the game. If things went black on a night when Rush needed me, I'd emerge from the blackness when Rush was done. I don't think she ever noticed anything. She never mentioned it.

It wasn't painful. Mostly, it helped, letting me drift unaware through times that I otherwise would have had to endure moment by moment. But it could be a little disorienting when the shadows fell from my eyes and the world came roaring back.

And so it was this time around. One minute I was swaddled in a dark cocoon, seeing and feeling nothing; the next minute I was under attack, stabbed by shards of light and piercing voices. I grabbed the nearest solid object (it turned out to be the dining room table) while I got my bearings. The shards of light were candle-flames, in a line down the centre of the table, illuminating the silver plate and glassware. The voices were the Countess, laughing at her own joke, and Rush, dutifully laughing along in a forced and brittle key.

Dinner was almost over. The tablecloth bore crumbs of bread and mutton and a few smears of gravy. I stared blankly at my fork, which was spearing a slice of yellow pear, and mechanically brought it up to my lips. It was while I was chewing that I caught sight of Eleanor's worried face.

"Are you quite sure you're all right, Katherine?" she asked. "Are you quite sure? You've barely said a word all evening."

Rush, I knew, would want me to gape and say nothing. Or give a non-answer, like Fine thank you or I have a headache. But wouldn't that be a bit too transparent? Conversation, I was beginning to learn, was a game as much as chess was, and it had its own gambits and feints. Perhaps the best way to deal with a question like this was not to try to answer it, but to respond in so frivolous a way that the questioner was thrown off guard. Luckily, I was still chewing, which gave me a chance to think. I swallowed. I put down my fork.

"Floccinaucinihilipilification," I announced.

Eleanor showed confusion. "What?"

"That's a word. Now I've said a word during the evening."

"True," Eleanor admitted, after a moment's confused hesitation. "Just the one word, though."

"Well, it was a particularly good word. I doubt that you have anything better in your arsenal."

"A challenge! Wait a minute, then. Let me think."

* * *

It had all turned a little dreamlike. Eleanor talked to me- easily, effortlessly- as we paraded into the parlour after supper. At some point, she threaded her arm into mine. I could feel Rush's angry stare on my back like a hot knife, but it wasn't as if I could just kick Eleanor away.

Rush had to leave the parlour to go and fetch the Rajah. She held the door for me, expecting me to follow her, but just that moment, Eleanor asked me about my Swiss boarding school. Rush hovered for an instant, breathing hard, until the Countess snapped at her, asking whether she planned to get on with the performance any time in the coming millennium. Rush somehow managed to smile and glower all at once before she stalked off.

I would pay for that later on, I knew. Well, what the hell. Add it to the bill for the evening.

I bluffed out some meaningless answer to Eleanor's question about my non-existent school, saying that the classrooms were cold and the students all wore trousers and got to drink chocolate every day. Then I quickly changed the subject, asking Eleanor about her parents.

I only wanted to move the conversation into safer lines, but I knew immediately that I had picked the wrong subject. Eleanor's face didn't change, but her eyes suddenly darkened, as though someone had drawn a curtain across them from the inside.

"Oh," I said. "Are they dead?"

"Not dead," Eleanor said. "No."

I didn't ask her to elaborate. It honestly didn't occur to me that I could, or should. But she volunteered more details regardless.

"We don't get along," she said. "We never really got along. That's why I'm with Aunt Maria."

She idly flapped her fan. It was blue on one side, the same colour as her evening dress, and gold on the other. If I squinted, it looked like the wing of a blue-and-gold bird, fluttering in an attempt to escape Eleanor's hand.

"Are you her heir?" I asked. "Will you be a countess one day?"

At this, Eleanor sighed, and launched into a long description of how so-and-so had married so-and-so, and had so many children on such-and-such dates, and I couldn't make head or tail of it but I understood the bottom line, which was that Eleanor had no title of her own, or property, or money. All of which made her dependant on her aunt's generosity.

"You're living on her bounty!" I announced, happy that I had caught up.

Eleanor shrugged- a mannish gesture, but it suited her. "There are worse places to live than on my aunt's bounty."

"Oh, thanks ever so," the Countess brayed from across the room. "That being the case, Eleanor, would you kindly get me a goddamned drink before I wither away and perish?"

Eleanor gave me a rueful look- see what I put up with?- before rising and heading to the corner cabinet where liquor bottles waited in a glinting row. The Countess, meanwhile, fidgeted in her chair.

"What is that bloody woman doing upstairs?" she complained. "I told her to go and get her chess machine, not construct a new one from scratch."

If we were lucky, I thought, then Rush had been delayed by a simple logistical problem: how to squash one hundred and eighty pounds of Von Hausen into a space that was barely large enough for me. If we were not lucky, then Von Hausen had the screaming horrors, in spite of the wine she'd been given at noon. If so, she would be writhing on the floor, moaning, clutching at her head, gibbering about worms of fire and goblins with hook-pointed sabres. Rush would tell her to get a grip, would threaten her, slap her around, but if that didn't work, there would be very little she could do to rescue the situation. That would do nothing to improve Rush's mood- but it would also deflect her anger onto Von Hausen rather than me, which was something.

The thought cheered me so much that I was almost disappointed when I heard the Rajah rolling down the corridor, with Rush's footsteps pacing alongside it.

The Rajah made its entrance, rolled into the parlour by the creaky footman. Smoke and varnish, Eleanor had said about the Turk. Smoke and varnish and splendour and shadow and must and mystery. It was a fairly good description of the Rajah, I guessed. In the light of the gas lamps, which Eleanor had just lit, it did make an impression.

There was a sheen of sweat all over Rush's face, as if she had been oiled. So whatever had gone on upstairs, it had involved some exertion on her part. She mopped at her cheeks with a wadded handkerchief. "Shall we proceed, then? Would you like to inspect the machinery before we begin?"

"No, sir," the Countess said, cracking her knuckles. "No stalling. You're not going to weasel free this time, Rushmore. Let the slaughter commence."

* * *

The slaughter didn't commence. Not right away. Chess is like that. You have to work up to slaughter.

The Countess and the Rajah exchanged their first few moves, and there was nothing dramatic about it. Von Hausen didn't burst out of the cabinet screaming, or try to stuff a chessman into the Rajah's ear. But the tension was radiating from Rush in hot acid waves.

If Von Hausen didn't win this game, then Rush would quite literally explode. On the other hand, if Von Hausen succeeded in beating the Countess when I had failed, then Rush would break me in half and set what was left on fire. I honestly wasn't sure what I outcome should hope for, but the stakes were high, whatever happened. And instead of being safely inside the cabinet, where I could make whatever agonized faces I wanted, I was out in the open. I felt the way an oyster must feel when shucked from its shell- and to top it all off, I was wearing a stupid dress.

The game was going forward at glacial speed, and the suspense was maddening. Again and again, the Rajah's wooden arm swung: up, right, down, grasp a chessman, up, down, drop the chessman, up, left, down to the cabinet top. The Countess would sit back in her chair for what seemed like eons at a time, sucking her teeth, and then her gnarled hand would dart forwards. The Rajah wasn't playing badly- Von Hausen showed some flashes of her old skill in developing her side. But as the action crawled towards middlegame, I saw where the Countess was headed. She hadn't taken a single piece yet, but she had laid ambushes everywhere. The chessboard was a maze of pitfalls and traps, so thickly clustered that the mere sight of it made me dizzy. The genius of it, the pure brilliance, made me ache with longing. Why the hell, why the hell wasn't I the one playing this game?

Von Hausen was doomed, utterly outclassed. I knew that now. And the worst part was, the stupid beast didn't have the wit to appreciate how beautifully she was going to be beaten. She wasn't even going to enjoy it! And if I watched any longer, I knew, then I would go demented with sheer jealousy. I wouldn't be able to help it. I'd go mad. I'd run amok with a fish on my head.

Everyone has limits. This was mine. I simply couldn't watch.

I turned to Eleanor. She seemed completely engrossed in the game, leaning so far forwards in her chair that she was at risk of falling out. Only her hand was moving, the one that held the fan. To and fro it fluttered, making little splashes of gold and blue in the gaslight.

I knew that what I was about to do was impolite, but, as Rush liked to remind me every other day, I was born in a slum. I reached out and poked Eleanor in the ribs- hard.

She jumped in her seat, almost dropped her fan, caught it, began to say a bad word, checked herself, and snapped, "What?"

"Eleanor?"

"Yes, what?"

I cast about desperately for something to say, and came up with this: "Have you read anything by Mr. Charles Dickens?"

She seemed startled by the question. Admittedly, it was random, but I'm rubbish at that kind of thing.

Eleanor glanced from me, to the Rajah, and back to me. "Not yet, no," she admitted. "Honestly, I don't know whether Mr. Dickens puts enough action in his books to keep me happy. He doesn't write about jewel thieves or murder, after all."

"But he's funny," I argued, trying to engage her. "Sketches by Boz is hilarious. That alone makes it worthwhile. Books shouldn't be all about doom and destruction. I lost patience when I was reading Frankenstein because there seemed to be a murder in every other chapter. It was exhausting. I needed time to recuperate."

"Well, that's where we differ, then. I find murders quite rejuvenating."

"I'm going to assume that you're talking about fictional murders- because otherwise, you know, disturbing."

She actually laughed. "I've yet to encounter a real-life murder, but be assured, as soon as I do, I'll report back to you about the fun and relaxation quotient involved. Yes, fictional murders. Fictional murders and robberies and pillage and plundering and dastardly deeds of all description."

"But where's the entertainment in that? It sounds horribly stressful."

"It's just a matter of taste, Katherine. I like my coffee to be strong and my books to be violent. Maybe it's because my day-to-day life is so quiet. I told you, I don't get out much."

Well, I thought, that makes two of us.

"Literature is mainly trash nowadays," Rush cut in. She was standing over by the piano, stiff and straight, her hands folded in front of her. Fidgeting, as she had told me many times, was a lower class habit. "Publishers will buy any book, as long as it involves foul language or bad behaviour. It's one of the reasons that I'm so careful about what you read, Kit."

"You control what Katherine reads," Eleanor said slowly, stating rather than asking.

Rush's nostrils flared. "Do you have some commentary to offer, madam?"

"No, no...I was just wondering whether I should feign surprise, is all."

I think they would have gone on in this vein, if the Countess hadn't growled and dealt the floor a wallop with her walking cane. "Is there a reason that the three of you are engaging in literary criticism when I'm over here, being exceptionally clever?" she snapped. "If you don't pay attention, you're going to miss my glorious victory, and then there will be blood."

And at that, everyone was suddenly talking at once. Eleanor was saying "I beg your pardon, Aunt Maria" and the Countess was saying "It's no fun being exceptionally clever when no-one's watching" and Rush was saying "Many young people are contaminated beyond remedy when they get hold of the wrong books" and in the middle of it all, the Rajah said....

The Rajah spoke one word, and the Rajah's artificial, grunting, gravelly voice somehow managed to sound triumphant that night.

"Checkmate!"

* * *

There was no bloody way. That was my first reaction. Von Hausen had flipped her lid, and forgotten all of the rules of chess, and decided that all you needed to do to win the game was to fart exuberantly. That had to be it, that had to be what was going on, because otherwise it would mean that Von Hausen had somehow turned a hopeless situation around and there was no bloody way.

Hardly breathing, I scanned the board. In the few minutes that I'd been distracted, talking to Eleanor, the Rajah had moved four times and the Countess three. Von Hausen had made one of her signature sacrifices, dangling a rook attractively in front of one of the Countess's knights. The Countess had taken the bait, allowing Von Hausen to slash in with a bishop and put an end to the game...but why had she taken the bait? It was impossible to believe that a player as brilliant as the Countess had fallen for so obvious a trap.

There seemed to be no noise at all in the room except the sound of Rush exhaling. In a long, long sigh, she let out a breath that she'd probably been holding all night.

"My apologies, madam," Rush said to the Countess. "Your glorious victory will have to be postponed."

"Oh, bloody hell." Disgustedly, the Countess ground out her cigar on the arm of her chair. There were black-crusted scabs all along the wood where she had done the same thing before, again and again and again. "You people broke my concentration with all of your jibber-jabber about Dickens and public morals. I just took my eye off the ball for a second. Why don't we have a rematch? Here and now. Reset the thing."

"I would be delighted, madam, but it is past time for my young cousin to be in bed. As you know, she's not well. And also, there's a small matter of business that needs to be resolved before the Rajah performs again. I discussed this with your niece, madam- under the circumstances, I really must insist on a fee increase."

* * *

I barely remember getting back to our rooms. I know that Rush was gripping me by the elbow as we walked, and I kept stumbling on the hem of that cursed dress- and I have a vague memory, sometime before that, of Eleanor touching my hand as she wished me good night. But all I could see in front of me was chessmen: advancing, retreating, returning to their original positions and doing the whole thing again. Over and over, I replayed in my head the last seven moves of the game, and the more I did it, the less I understood how the Countess could have lost.

I reminded myself that everyone loses sometimes. Even the great immortal Philidor was defeated, from time to time. I reminded myself that Von Hausen was a first-rate player when she bothered to put in the effort. I reminded myself that even the best players make stupid mistakes. Mouret (the not-quite-as-great-or-as-immortal-as-Philidor-but-almost) made some truly spectacular blunders in his time, especially when he was playing drunk. I reminded myself that there were whole hours of the evening that I didn't remember. Perhaps the Countess had been knocking back wine like lemonade over dinner, and then it swam to her head all at once halfway through the game.

I reminded myself of all that- and I still didn't understand how the Countess could have lost.

She hadn't made a single, fatal error, the kind that even a grandmaster might make through momentary inattention. No. Every one of her last few moves had been wrong. Or- not exactly wrong, but not right, not in the way they should have been. When I had played the Countess the night before, each one of her moves had been part of a breathtaking, intricate structure, some spiderweb woven from strands of glass. That was how things had started out tonight, the Countess drawing her nets tighter and tighter around Von Hausen, who could only flounder in response. Then, all at once, the Countess was the one stumbling. Her last three moves had been amateurish, ham-fisted, knocking apart the beautiful formation she had been constructing on the chessboard until it lay in ruins, like shards of broken crystal.

So what happened?

I felt myself being shoved down into a chair and realized we were back in our rooms. The lid of the Rajah stood open, and Von Hausen was sprawled over the wooden side, gulping air, her hair black and dripping with sweat and soot. Rush was talking: sit down, wait here, no not you, get your clothes Caroline, Kit you will not move from that chair are you listening to me you will not move.

Around me, doors were opening and closing and feet were crossing creaky floorboards. Then stillness. I was left alone in the dim and quiet of our rooms. The gas lamps were out; two candles cast feeble orange circles of light around them. Behind the thick curtains, raindrops were blatting on the window panes.

I mentally ran through the game again. It still didn't make any sense. I was on the point of beating my head against the wall in sheer frustration when, in the corner of my vision, I caught a flash of blue and gold.

Blankly, I stared down at my hand. I was holding Eleanor's fan.

Why in hell was I holding Eleanor's fan? With some effort, I cleared my mind of images of circling chessmen, focusing instead on what had happened after the game. Eleanor had said that it had been a privilege and a pleasure to meet me and she hoped to see a great deal more of me so long as the Rajah was at the manor and she had pressed her hand on my hand and- where was her fan during all this? The table. It was on the table. She had laid it down on the table so she could press her hand on mine. And right about the time Eleanor was telling me to have a pleasant night, I'd taken hold of it, slipping it up my sleeve.

That was why I was holding Eleanor's fan. Next question, better question: why in hell had I stolen Eleanor's fan?

Answer: because something about it was important.

I unfolded the thing, pulling it out to its full span. The slats were bone and the fabric felt like silk. I flapped it as Eleanor had done, so that both of the sides showed in turn. Blue, then gold. Blue, then gold.

With Rush out of the room, my thoughts were ticking as steadily as a healthy heartbeat. Something began to take shape in my brain.

The Countess had been playing brilliantly tonight. Then she suddenly lost. Why?

I had spent twelve years playing inside the Rajah. I never knew my opponents' faces, but I knew their styles, each one unique as a wine from a different vineyard. The Countess had changed over the course of the night. At the beginning of the game, she was the same mature, merciless player I had faced the day before. Then, all at once, she had transformed into a bloody amateur. She'd failed to press her advantage, allowed Von Hausen to rally, and then fell for an obvious trick.

What was the variable? What had changed between the beginning of the game and the moment when things went pear-shaped for the Countess?

Answer: I had distracted Eleanor.

Which brought me to the fan. I turned it over and over in my hands. Blue side, gold side, blue side, gold side.

I thought: Let's say that you're a fat-headed Countess. Let's say that you're very rich and very bored and you want to entertain yourself by beating the legendary Rajah at chess. You can't buy brains, no matter how rich you are, but you can make someone else do your thinking for you. A young relative, say...somebody who's in your home, living on your bounty. Somebody whose comfort depends on your goodwill.

I held the fan up in front of my face, blue side outwards, and gave it four slow flaps. Then I flipped the fan so the gold side was facing out, and flapped it twice.

A code. Four and two. File and rank. Move the piece on the fourth square of the second row. In other words, Move the queen's pawn.

Then the destination square. I flapped four times with the blue side of the fan, and four times with the gold.

Move the queen's pawn to the fourth space of the fourth row. Using nothing but the flutters of a fan, I'd just signalled the first move of the Queen's Gambit.

My ears started to sing all of a sudden, and I let out an explosive breath. This was it, this was the trick, this was how they did it. Eleanor signalled the moves, one at a time; all the Countess had to do was watch and obey. It was a primitive system but very simple, and it wouldn't matter if it took Eleanor a while to finish flapping out her directions, because who the hell was going to tell the Countess to hurry up?

You would only have a problem if the fan-flapper became distracted. Which could easily happen if she was- oh, say- discussing literature with the person sitting beside her. If that happened, then you would be thrown on your own resources. Because you couldn't very well say Eleanor, shut up about Mr. Charles Dickens and help me cheat, could you now?

I snapped the fan shut. I had my answer, and it made me want to dance. Von Hausen had beaten the Countess- because she was playing against the Countess. It was Eleanor, not the Countess, who had been my brilliant opponent the night before. It was Eleanor who was a grandmaster equal to anyone I had ever faced in Paris or London or Milan. And Rush had never guessed! Eleanor had been sitting poised and proper, demure as an old whore at a christening, using her fluttering fan to send her troops into battle. And the Countess- I had to laugh- the Countess was just her automaton!

I was giggling so hard that I had to bite a pillow, and I bit it so hard that I choked on goose down and had to pick the feathers out of my mouth. What with that, and the giggling, and the pounding raindrops, I didn't notice when the doorknob rattled. But then came a draft as the door burst open, and the candle-flames swooped sideways, and in the sudden cold and dimness, Rush stalked inside.

The first time you hear a story about vampires or shapeshifters, you wonder how a thing could possibly be human and not human, all at once. Looking at Rush that moment, I found it very easy to imagine. She was Rush, Rush as I had seen her a thousand times, with the grey over her temples and the lines making sharp wings around her eyes. Yet there was something else within her, too. You could see it in the way the knobs of her knuckles stood out, little spurs of bone.

She'd been outdoors. Raindrops sat in her hair, like gobbets of broken glass, and her dress was wet across the shoulders. In one black-gloved hand, she held her riding crop.

I wasn't frightened, not exactly. I knew Rush wasn't going to hit me. She never had. Not once. It was Von Hausen who did that, when Rush decided it was necessary. Rush just watched, with a sort of gentle sadness in her face. So I didn't flinch or cower, and yet…it would be fair to say that she had my total and complete attention. My brain wiped itself clean, like a slate crossed with a wet sponge. I didn't know what I'd been laughing about, or what I'd been thinking about, or why I would bother to laugh or think about anything.

"Did you have a good evening?" Rush asked me.

I didn't answer. Somehow I got the sense that it was a trick question.

"We couldn't speak about this earlier. We didn't have the time. But now we have the time and now we're going to. I want you to stand up."

I did, of course, keeping a careful eye on the riding crop. "Rush, please. I didn't mean to break the rule. I never would have disobeyed you on purpose, it was just an accident, I never meant for her to see me-"

"But she did and you'll take the consequences. All of our sins go down in the recording book, Kit, whether or not we mean for them to happen. I can't shield you from that. Come here."

I went to her, wishing that I had changed into my own clothes. I wanted my trousers.

"Where are we going?" I whispered.

"Oh, Kit." She wasn't smiling, and yet her eyes were bright. "As if you didn't know."

* * *

There was a narrow hall leading to a set of back stairs. Rush made me walk in front of her, and I had to take two steps for each one of hers. She hadn't bothered to bring a candle. Rush knew I didn't need light to see in the dim passageway, after all the time I'd spent in the dark.

The boards underfoot were creaky as an old man's bones, and the walls creaked too, buffeted by the shrilling wind. I thought I could still hear the whipping of rain through thick leaves. And then I heard the shriek.

And were those footsteps overhead, making the rafters shudder, or just branches banging against the roof?

"Why, in the name of God, have you stopped?"

Rush's voice was dangerously calm. It made muscles prickle all the way up my back. "I was just- "

"Don't just. Walk."

"But the screaming-"

"Did I tell you to think about the screaming?"

"No, Rush."

"Then do you need to think about the screaming?"

"No, Rush."

"Walk."

We descended the winding, rickety staircase, and I was so close to Rush that I could feel her chest tremble in time to her heartbeat. Twice I stumbled, she was moving so fast. The first time she just hissed impatiently, but the second, she seized the chain of my bloodstone necklace, winding the slack twice around her hand. She led me by the chain down the last two turns of the stairs, and I had to bend almost double to keep myself from being throttled.

Von Hausen was waiting for at the bottom of the steps, holding the side door open. Her dress was even more drenched than Rush's, and yet she seemed to only barely be awake. Her eyes- glass globes with a little grey mist swirling in them- flicked over me as if I wasn't there.

"Did you see anyone outside?" Rush asked, handing over her riding crop.

Von Hausen shook her head, no.

"Then I won't be needing you for a few minutes. Stay here until I call."

Von Hausen nodded, and then, just for an instant, she did look at my face. We knew, both of us, why Rush wanted her to wait. If things went the way they normally went, then someone would have to carry me back inside.

Rush led me out past the stable yard, past the gravel path, into the gloomy green of the grounds. She was moving more slowly now, as if savouring something, some wonderful taste or strain of music.

And then we were outside. Outside.

The rain was still sluicing down and I was soaked already but even so, there was sweat pooling under my arms, running down my back. The vastness outside, the space and the green, the sheer hugeness of it all, were gigantic hammers pounding on my chest. If I stayed out here much longer, my lungs would be crushed. The sky, that great void, would suck me up, swallow me and I couldn't take it, I couldn't, I couldn't.

The only thing connecting me to earth was Rush's hand, the one that held my chain.

She brought me to a halt in the middle of a field. There was nothing, not even branches, between me and the great yawning mouth of the sky overhead. My knees were liquid, my blood screeched through my veins like hot steam. I gasped, desperate for air.

"Enjoying yourself?"

The scorn in Rush's voice was stinging. I couldn't answer her- too busy trying to breathe- and she gave the chain a sharp jerk.

"I told you not to talk to the Austrian bitch. I told you to keep quiet. Why do I give you these instructions, Kit?"

"Because...because you're trying to protect me."

"You know that. You know that and yet you take every opportunity to sabotage my efforts. Look at the sky. Look at it Kit."

I looked at it: an ocean of black boiling acid, seething, searing. I bucked frantically in Rush's grip. She gave me a shake.

"Is this what you want, Kit? To be out here? To be set loose?"

The panic surged like vomit. I managed to choke out: "No."

"Do you want me to leave you? Do you want to be out in the great wide world, all alone?"

"No!"

My legs were trembling too badly to hold me up, and I crumpled to my knees, sinking a full two inches into sodden grass and mud. Rush's hand slid along the back of my neck, finding the clasp of the chain. Somewhere distant, there was a church bell tolling.

"So," she said. "Why did you let that bitch see you?"

"It was an accident. An accident!"

"How do I know it was an accident?"

She was still holding me, but only barely. Her fingers were on the clasp. My chest heaved frantically. I couldn't speak. The distant bell tolled a last stroke, and the vibrations shuddered in my ears. Then Rush jerked the chain again.

"I grow impatient," she said, "so I advise you to collect your thoughts. How can I be sure that it was an accident? Why wouldn't you let that bitch see you?"

I forced the words out. "Because I promised!"

"Promised what?"

"I promised- oh God Rush, please don't, please, please, please…"

"PROMISED WHAT?"

"I promised I would never try to run again!"

There was just the faintest click as Rush sprung the clasp of the necklace. The chain came loose, and I fell forward.

Until that moment, the world had been the way I understood it. Rush had me in her grip, handling me, steering me, but also anchoring me in the void. Now she was nowhere and I was adrift, lost in shadow hot and dark as a wolf's mouth. Darkness didn't bother me, darkness I was used to. It was the space, the space yawning on every side, impossibly broad, impossibly huge. There was nothing shutting me in. No walls or boxes or bonds. No Von Hausen to block the way. If I got up and started running now, I could keep running forever.

My heart was pounding so fast that every beat felt like the kick of a horse. I folded, retching, shaking, still gasping. My lungs were on fire. My skin was on fire. The sky was going to eat me, suck me up into that vastness and chew me apart, and bolts of lightning would sear what was left of me into carbon. Inside my head I was howling, but I couldn't make a sound.

I flailed, trying to find something to hold onto, but my fingers met nothing but sopping grass. When I tried to grip a handful of that, it just ripped wetly away from the ground, as if the whole world was coming apart. There was nothing to anchor me, I was nothing, I had nothing, and this time it would kill me for sure.

I had no air, no air, no air, no air…

"Do you want help?"

Rush's voice: almost a whisper now. She was somewhere nearby, but I couldn't see her. Dark pools were spinning in my vision.

"Do you want me to help you?"

I jerked my head, trying to nod.

"Out loud, if you please, Kit. Do you want me to help you?"

Jesus above, why did she always make me beg? I took a desperate, strangled breath. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

Didn't she realize I was running out of time? "Help me!"

"Help you how?"

"For the love of God, Rush, take me back!"

For five sick seconds, I thought she was going to refuse. Then there was a hand gripping my hair, pulling me upright. The chain slipped back around my neck. The clasp clicked shut. Her hand gripped the chain, then twisted, pulling me tightly back against her.

The tightness in my chest eased, just the slightest degree- but it wasn't enough. She knew it wasn't enough.

"Hands, Kit. Now."

I thrust them out in front of me, wrists pressed together. Rush's fingers glided over them, lightly. Then there was pressure, as Rush buckled the leather strap tightly around them, binding my arms. She wrapped the end of the strap around her own hand, letting me feel the tautness, letting me know how securely she had me.

Better, better, but I could still feel that gaping sky…

Rush's hand cupped the back of my head, gently, and brought it forwards. Now I was crouching, my hands bound in front of me, my head almost resting in Rush's lap. I couldn't see, smell, feel anything but her, she surrounded me so completely.

And now, at last, I could breathe.

* * *

It took both Von Hausen and Rush to carry me back up the stairway to our rooms. I probably looked like I was sleeping. I wasn't. My mind had sort of disconnected, that was all. I could see what was going on when they brought me in, when they stripped the sopping-wet gown off of me, when they pulled a dry shirt over my head, when they finally laid me on Rush's bed. I saw Von Hausen leave, her eyes as blank as ever. I saw everything. I just didn't have the strength to participate.

When Von Hausen had gone, Rush settled herself in the chair by the fire. Propped up on a pile of pillows, I watched her through half-closed eyes. She was holding the leather strap that she had used to bind my arms- was flexing it slowly back and forth.

Eventually, she said, "Sit up."

She knew that I was awake. She always knew. I pulled myself upright and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn't like me to look away, so I didn't.

She wound the leather strap into a neat coil, taking her time, before she glanced up. "You understand, Kit, don't you? The simple truth of the matter is that you can't survive without me. Isn't that right?"

I said, "Yes, Rush."

"Well. So long as you remember that, then we won't have a problem, will we?"

"No, Rush."

"And if you ever forget?"

"Then you'll remind me."

"And when I remind you?"

"I'll be grateful."

"Will you really?"

"Yes, Rush."

And that was true. It wasn't love, what Rush felt for me- it was a kind of hunger. Yet that hunger was more dependable than love could ever be. People fall out of love much more often than they lose their appetites. There was a kind of certainty in being the thing that Rush hungered for, and I was grateful for the certainty, if nothing else.

There was hunger in Rush's eyes right then, as she tapped on the arm of her chair with the rolled-up strap of leather.

"Very well, then," she said. "Come here."

To be continued in Part 5 - Castle