CHAPTER THIRTY

The decanter smashed into Pergen’s face, and he fell to his knees. Caroline swung it again, and the thick glass shattered as it hit the side of Pergen’s head. Pergen toppled, red wine showering around him. Caroline dropped the last shards of broken glass and raced for the door.

It was too late to escape, but she didn’t need to escape to alert Michael and save his life. If she only made it out into the Great Hall, she would be witnessed by the entire gathered, gossiping crowd, her long white gloves stained with her own blood from the shattered glass, as she was subdued and taken prisoner on the emperor’s command. Michael would see or be told about the spectacle as rumors swept the crowd, and he would suffer in the knowledge, yes, but he could run, as he’d been running all his life—as he should have been running tonight, if she hadn’t stopped him—and he would be free.

Michael, run! Don’t wait for me this time.

The door handle turned beneath Caroline’s bleeding hand, pushing even more tiny fragments of glass through her thin gloves. Ignoring the sharp bites of pain, she pulled it open. The cool air of the outer corridor brushed against her skin . . .

And a hand closed around the back of her dress, yanking her back into the room.

“Now, that is the Karolina I remembered.” Pergen’s smile cut through raw, gaping wounds. It wasn’t his smile, though, but the wounds themselves that made the bile rise in Caroline’s throat as he kicked the door shut behind her.

Ragged cuts from the glass covered Pergen’s sunken face and head, but they did not bleed red blood. Instead, dark shadows leaked through the cuts, swirling past his skin and hair into the air around him. They trailed through the air toward Caroline, and she flinched away, struggling to escape. Pergen’s hand held her firm as the shadows brushed against her skin, burrowing against her cheeks as if seeking a way inside. A moan escaped Caroline’s closed lips as the shadows wiggled against her nostrils and crept up her face toward her eyes.

What monstrous new development was this?

“Afraid?” Pergen asked. His voice had calmed into the scientific detachment he’d always assumed when beginning a lecture to the emperor or one of the other rare observers of his experiments on her. “The shadows themselves cannot harm you, having no mind or purpose of their own. However . . .” Satisfaction overcame the detachment as he reached into his waistcoat. “I must thank you for giving me the opportunity to carry out a new experiment. I was afraid you had become too docile to need it after all.”

Caroline clenched her jaw to hold back a sob as shadows wriggled into her nose and worked their way up inside her.

Pergen’s hand reappeared in her line of sight. “Do you recognize this, Karolina?”

Caroline blinked rapidly, trying to focus through the raw fear.

It was a small silver tube, etched with unfamiliar markings and sealed at the top with a flat cap. Caroline had never seen it before in her life.

“No?” Pergen shrugged. “Perhaps a familiar face will remind you.”

Still holding her arm, he turned his head toward the dark, inner passageway through which he’d first emerged.

“Mr. Weston? You may come out now.”

As Peter opened his eyes, Michael’s face swam into focus. His lips were moving, but it took a moment for his words to penetrate the pain in Peter’s head.

“Can you hear me?”

Peter started to speak, then stopped as the pain intensified. He pushed himself up as far as his elbows. Nausea overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes, fighting to keep the bile down.

“Let me give you a hand.”

Peter opened his eyes and found Michael reaching out to him. It hurt too much for Peter to scowl. He accepted Michael’s outstretched hand and pulled himself painfully to his feet. Grünemann’s crumpled body lay nearby.

“There you are,” Michael said. “The pain will wear off soon, I promise. You can trust me on that, by the way—I’ve had it happen to me too many times to count.”

“I can’t trust you on anything,” Peter said. He dropped Michael’s hands and stepped back . . . and bumped into a solid figure.

“Ah, that’s Henry, who saved me,” Michael said genially. “He doesn’t speak German, I’m afraid, but I’m sure he’s pleased to meet you, too.”

Peter turned and met the measuring gaze of a toughly built, middle-aged man wearing a coachman’s multi-caped coat and holding a bronze-handled whip in his right hand. Peter had never seen that whip before, but his throbbing head made immediate and excruciating connections.

“And now that you’ve made each other’s acquaintance . . .” Michael turned to the coachman and pointed to Grünemann’s limp figure.

Peter couldn’t understand the stream of English that came next, as the two men argued over something, but it was only too easy to read the suspicion on the coachman’s face as he glanced at Peter and gestured with his whip.

Michael waved off the other man’s protests, though, and flashed Peter a grin. “We don’t want that fellow waking up here to turn us both in to his employers, now, do we? So it’s really better to stash him somewhere safe.”

Peter didn’t smile back. He was well aware of the real meaning behind Henry’s reluctance to leave right now, and it had nothing to do with Grünemann . . . and everything to do with leaving Peter unguarded. The fact that Michael was treating him as a comrade now, rather than as a prisoner, only made him more uneasy.

He didn’t move away, though. As the coachman dragged Grünemann’s limp—but still breathing—body away, Peter kept his eyes on Michael. The pain in his head was slowly subsiding, leaving room for his wits to revive.

Michael didn’t mean to harm him, it seemed . . . or, at least, not yet. That had to mean that he wanted something else. Peter narrowed his eyes as he studied the other man’s body language, gauging the messages that it sent with a director’s eye—all easy friendship and fellow-feeling, drawing them together.

So, Michael had devised another scheme, and he had made the decision, once again, to use Peter to help himself. Was he mad, to believe he could trick Peter again so soon? Or full of such overweening arrogance that he couldn’t even see the inherent flaw in his plan?

Regardless . . . Peter shifted, letting his weight balance evenly on his legs. It was a pose he’d perfected in his training as an actor; it let him move rapidly in any direction. At the same time, he took control of his wayward expression, forcing open suspicion to metamorphose into mere confusion—the face of an easy dupe.

He couldn’t overpower Michael here, where he was outnumbered. And if he let his nemesis go free, Peter would give up all his own chances at life, freedom, and the safety of his company. That left only one remaining option.

Peter would have to agree to Michael’s plan, whatever it was . . . and wait until the first available moment to turn on him.

“Charles?” Caroline whispered.

Held within Pergen’s grip, she could turn only her head to look toward the secret passageway, her vision half-blocked by Pergen’s shoulder. But the figure she saw in the dark opening was instantly recognizable.

“Lady Wyndham.” Charles Weston gave a stiff bow. His face was deadly pale.

Caroline forced the words out of her suddenly tight throat. “How much did Pergen offer you?”

“Oh, we didn’t need to bribe Mr. Weston with money,” Count Pergen murmured. “You needn’t fret yourself imagining that a mere rise in pay would have secured his loyalty.”

“I rather thought I had that already.” Caroline fought to keep her voice light. “What did you offer him instead, then?”

“Knowledge,” Charles said. “Power.”

“And revenge,” Pergen added. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Weston. She might as well know the full truth at the outset.”

“Revenge on me, you mean?” Caroline asked.

Pergen’s head tipped in a nod, trailing shadows.

Charles’s face twisted. Perhaps he meant to look nobly defiant, Caroline thought. To her eyes, it looked like the grimace of an angry child.

“You tricked me!” he said.

“Perhaps,” Caroline said. “But you also tricked yourself.” She met his gaze and held it. “Was it truly worth such a betrayal as this?”

Charles looked down, his expression mutinous. Pergen answered for him.

“I’ve already found Mr. Weston an apt pupil. And a useful one. This tube, for instance . . .” Pergen turned it gently from side to side. “Your own blood, he tells me. And I find . . .” He glanced pointedly at the visible bump beneath her left glove, where a discreet white bandage was still wrapped around her forearm. “I believe him. Shall we attempt an experiment?”

“Charles?” Caroline stared at his downturned face, searching for any sign of recognition. “Are you really going to help him with this?”

Charles looked back up and met her gaze. His face was hard and set.

“I will,” he said. “And I’ll enjoy every moment of it.”

Unease trickled down Michael’s spine as Riesenbeck’s face softened into a frown of simple confusion. Open suspicion had made sense, after the actor’s earlier experiences; to show signs of softening so soon, before Michael had even attempted any persuasion, hinted at either a lack of common sense or else something more sinister.

Still, it was too late to turn back now.

Michael began to put on his most confident smile, then stopped. Nothing would do now except for utter sincerity . . . the one thing he hadn’t had much practice at, over the years.

“We’ve both been left in the same straits,” he said, without preamble. “You heard what that policeman told you. Catching me was no one’s priority but yours—and you were being used like a puppet on a string, to reel me in as an added bonus before being locked up again yourself.”

“Why would they do that?” Riesenbeck asked.

“Why? You could probably tell me better than I could guess myself, having spent only five minutes in conversation with Count Pergen. But from what I’ve been told of him . . .” The memory of Caroline’s broken voice choked him for a moment.

What Caroline might be undergoing even now . . .

Michael’s voice flattened with the effort of holding back his panic as he repeated the information she had given him in the hours before they’d left for this evening’s disaster. “Count Pergen feeds on fear,” he said. “Or . . . something within him feeds upon it, at any rate. I haven’t seen it happen myself, but I understand that it’s part of how he draws out your spirit, for his own use or for another’s.”

Real vulnerability flashed across Riesenbeck’s face for a moment, before it was suppressed. “That—does fit with what I experienced.”

“Mm?” Michael paused, waiting to see if Riesenbeck would expand upon it. After a moment of taut silence, Michael continued. “To reel you inexorably back into his clutches, fresh with energy from a few days’ grace, but even more frightened this time for having come so close, as you’d thought, to escaping . . . That sounds to me like what he might consider excellent fodder for his needs.”

Was it only pretense that sent such mixed emotions shifting across Riesenbeck’s face? Michael forged forward, his chest tightening. This has to work.

“If you try to escape, you’ll have abandoned your company, and you might not even be allowed out through the city walls.”

“And you?” Riesenbeck met his eyes squarely. “Why not escape now in your fine carriage? They wouldn’t know to turn you back. I couldn’t even give them the name that you’re using.”

“I . . .” Michael drew a deep breath. It was time. Time to drop all the protective layers he’d built throughout the years and give in to the inevitable.

“I can’t leave,” he said. “Not until I rescue someone who’s being held captive now, just as you were before.”

“What?” Riesenbeck stared at him. “You can’t think to break into those cells below the Hofburg. The guards, the stone walls—”

“I couldn’t do it with a sword,” Michael agreed. “But I could do it with words, if they were the right ones.”

“You . . .” Riesenbeck shook his head, letting out a pained half-laugh. “You think you can talk the imperial guards and the secret police into releasing your friend, only to please you?”

“No,” Michael said steadily. “I think I can rescue my friend, you, and your entire company . . . but only if you’re willing to help.”

As Peter listened to the other man’s plan, his thoughts whirled as quickly and uncontrollably as a flight of pigeons rising from Prague’s Old Town square.

He had been an actor all his life, and he could swear Michael wasn’t acting now.

No, Michael was going back for love, not for profit. He was willing to run the greatest of physical and supernatural risks, purely to save someone he cared about from torture and death. To choose to face that creature himself . . .

It was the most heroic thing Peter had ever heard of in real life. It was genuinely worthy of a play.

Perhaps it was a ruse, after all. And yet . . .

Peter remembered a cold room and a voice hissing into his ears through a muffling hood. Every bone in his body wanted to freeze in terror at the memory. He’d thought he could never risk going back to that—and that no one else could ever know, or understand, how it had felt. How it had melted away every other consideration but self-preservation, turning all the high ideals he’d ever acted out onstage into mere words and empty gestures.

But now . . .

Peter could have dismissed promises of a fortune or bribes of fabulous appointments at foreign courts. No matter how strong the ring of truth, he could even have dismissed Michael’s suspicions of the minister of secret police’s motivations.

But it seemed, after all, that there was one thing in life that Peter couldn’t resist, no matter how hard he tried.

“I swore I wouldn’t try to be a hero anymore,” he said.

Michael’s shoulders slumped with relief. He smiled crookedly at Peter. “Think of it as your greatest role.”

“Mr. Weston, why don’t you place her . . . ah, there. Yes, that should do nicely.” Count Pergen pointed at the black settee that was set against the wall.

Caroline braced herself for the handover. She couldn’t escape pain or even death—not while Pergen kept her blood—but she might be able to escape this, at least. Better to die three blocks from here, and free, than be a helpless prisoner again. The moment when Pergen passed her to Charles would be the one chance she would have. She counted down as Charles crossed the room toward her, his face full of guilty defiance.

Three . . . two . . .

“I should add,” Pergen added calmly, “that she always tries to escape, no matter how impossible the circumstances. Do make certain you have a very firm hold on both her arms.” He kept his own grip as tight as an iron vise around Caroline’s forearm as Charles grasped her from behind.

“I have her,” Charles said grimly. His hands clenched around her upper arms, fingers digging into flesh.

“No, no, that leaves her hands free to attack you, Mr. Weston. Clearly, you haven’t had much experience dealing with recalcitrant subjects.”

“I’ll learn,” Charles said.

His hands felt damp with sweat. Caroline shifted slightly, testing his grip, and he clamped his fingers around her wrists with excruciating pressure. She forced back a gasp of pain.

“There,” Pergen said. “That looks far better. Now.”

He released Caroline’s arm.

Now.

Caroline lunged sideways, throwing all her weight into the move—even if it broke her wrists, anything for freedom. She felt Charles lurch off-balance behind her. She kicked his shin, hard, and he shouted with surprise and pain. His hands loosened. She started forward—

And Pergen’s fist smashed into her face, knocking her backward. Charles’s arms closed bruisingly around her.

“As I said,” Pergen murmured. “She always tries. I don’t know why. She’s quite bright in every other way.” He nodded to the settee. “Set her down there, and we’ll begin.”