by D M Cornish
“Wasp paper,” Pauper Chïves had explained, “will get wet but not puff and wrinkle like the common kind, and the gauld-leather cover makes excellent protection . . . May it never be required.”
The second was an exquisite pair of digitals that Craumpalin had insisted—with dogged generosity—upon buying for him They were compact devices of black enamel and silver—much smaller and more convenient to carry than stoups. “These are as fine as I have seen afore.”The old fellow had smiled in satisfaction, pressing at the clasps of each of the six slots to prove their mechanism. “Wear them on thy belt or satchel-strap.They’ll keep yer potives dry should thee get it in thy intellectuals to leap into another river.”
Rossamünd grinned to himself, fondly turning one of his sleek new devices over and over, admiring the compact knots of silverwork perfectly set in the glistening black enamel.
Alighting by Cloche Arde’s shut-fast gate, Rossamünd overpaid the takenyman—“Well, a goodly night to thee, good sir!”—and hefted his purchases from the cabin and the back-step trunks and wondered how he might gain entry. Beyond the dark, lonely shadow of Europe’s abode, pale violet-gray clouds roiled, massive rising structures edged in radiant yellow light making the sky a glory of splayed sunbeams.
After a quick observation he discovered a blackened chain hung in a groove at the side of the right-hand gate post. Pulling this in assumption that it would summon a gate ward or yardsman, Rossamünd stood back to wait.
A flurry above him.
A sparrow perched upon the petrified snarl of the bulging-eyed, blunt-snouted dog statue that capped the right-hand post, observing him frankly.
He peered at it narrowly. Was it that sparrow, the sparrow-spy of the Duke of Sparrows that had dogged him all the way from Winstermill to Wormstool, come here to watch and bring more mischief? His first reaction was to cry at it to leave him be! and drive the bold and beady-eyed mite away. Yet a curious, almost threwdish, inkling made him change his plan. “Hello, my shadow,” he said softly to the tiny bird.
It blinked at him in a familiar and forward way, but remained silent.
Buoyed by the delights of the day, Rossamünd carried on as if in amiable conversation. “Does the sparrow-king fare well?”
This time the creature did respond, a single chirrup that sounded ever so disturbingly like “Yes!”
At the report of footsteps approaching behind the garden wall, the sparrow took wing with an irritable squeak.
“Until again,” Rossamünd murmured.
“Did you speak, sir?” A sour voice startled him. It was Nectarius, the sleek nightlocksman. He was bearing a truncated double-barreled fowling piece and a vigilant expression.
“Ah—just to myself, Mister Nectarius,” Rossamünd stammered.
“Forgot our key, did we?”
“I was not given one in the first,” the young factotum answered unconcernedly.
Let in the gate, Rossamünd hefted the several small yet cumbersome chests of his parts-shopping booty thoughtlessly under either arm—much to Nectarius’ bemusement. Making some shuffling excuse that they were “really not that heavy . . .” he proceeded hurriedly to the saumery to make treacle.
With a happy flourish he opened his compleat to the thaumacra for Cathar’s Treacle and, feeling like a proper skold, gleefully—though needlessly—followed its cues for the making. If he had known how, he would have whistled while he worked, yet instead took up a joyously tuneless humming.
The treacle brewed to perfection, he went—potive, papers and all—to the fulgar’s file. Here he found Europe, legs perched carelessly upon desktop, looking as if she had remained in that attitude since their morning’s meeting. She downed the plaudamentum and gave a satisfied lip-smack. “Your excursion was a success, then?”
“Aye.”
“Do you have a driver for the landaulet?”
“Not specifically . . .”
“However do you mean, specifically? Have you found a driver or no?”
“Not a proper lenterman, no . . .”
“Well, who then?”
“I thought . . . I thought Master Fransitart could do it, with Master Craumpalin to help him.”
Europe’s expression contracted skeptically. “Truly? You thought, did you?”
“They are far less expensive than hired lentermen,” he explained quickly, “and aren’t afraid to face dangers when they come.” He paused, casting about for something more sellable. “Besides which, Master Craumpalin is a brilliant dispensurist.”
The fulgar closed her hazel eyes. “As you like, little man,” she said softly, stroking the diamond-shaped spoor on her left brow.
“I have my receipts from buying potives too.”
Europe took the papers, cursorily at first but then, looking more closely at the chits, hesitated. “Shall such displays of free will be a feature of your service to me, Rossamünd?” she said, with a return of familiar wintriness.
He blinked at her uncomprehendingly.
“Who is this Pauper Chives?” she demanded, mispronouncing the name to sound like the herb.
“Oh, Master Craumpalin holds Mister Chïves”—Rossamünd pointedly pronounced the “ee” of Chïves—“to be the best saliere in all the city!”
“And your dear master would know, would he?”
“Aye, Miss Europe,” Rossamünd declared firmly, “he surely would.”
The fulgar raised a wry brow. “Look at your precious loyalty flaring,” she said coolly. “I would hope you defend me with the same solemn vigor when others speak ill of me.”
“Aye, I would, Miss Europe.”
She regarded him for many long breaths. “What, pray, is that?” The fulgar indicated a curl of pamphlets thrust up under Rossamünd’s left arm. In a fit of enthusiasm he had bought them from a wandering paper-seller as he left Pauper Chïves. The most obvious had its title clear: Defamière.
“That is not a scandal, is it?” she demanded. “I thought you more discerning in your reading tastes than to peruse such gossip-mongering poison.”
“I got it as a handful with these other pamphlets. They were sold as a lot for five guise by the pamphleteer down on the Sink Street, some still warm straight from the pressing.”
“Scandals are the vomit of famigorators and the sputum of pox-riddled gossips, fit only for weathercocks and flimsymen,” she said, her mild voice contradicting the spirited words. “I myself have been the subject of more than one barbed article within their pages . . . and most of all in that particular paper you grasp there. Almost none of it is true and even less of it maintained with proof. If you are to insist on plunging into the sordid sheaves of the sewer press, then at least read something with some pretension to wit—Quack! or the Mordant Mercer might suit you better. Otherwise I would stick to the more sensible readers you have there.” She nodded to the next pamphlet—Military & Nautical Stores—in Rossamünd’s slipping grip. “Now! Dine with me, and then your day is done.”
Released from duty at meal’s ending—parched flake in seethed winkle sauce washed down with a fresh grass-wine that Europe hailed absently as an excellent accompaniment—Rossamünd stared out from the set window as night grew at the green and yellow window lights on either bank of the Midwetter, glad to be lifted away from the claustrophobic city.
Changing out of harness, he snuggled into the unfamiliar downiness of bed in that pitch-colored room and took out his compleat and the pamphlets, ready to lose himself in their delights. Morbid curiosity guided his hand to the large magnum folio of the Defamière. A dark thrill thrumming in his innards, he flicked over the first pages, but was soon slowed by the manner of titles he read: cruel jibes and asinine gossip that by comparison made his usual pamphlets lofty works of literature. Little wonder Europe despised it so.
One self-righteously horrified heading line stopped him flat:
It was accompanied by a crude cartoon of a rather fictional Europe, shooting lightning from one hand and hugging a monster with the opposit
e, while the trefoiled heart of Naimes hovered in the air beside them. About all the blighted fabulist has got right is her crow’s-claw hair tine, he thought angrily, barely able to credit what he saw.
The article was brief; written by a certain Contumelius Stinque, it said:
The “bee’s buzz”—as the vulgar cant goes, and come to me this very day from the bumpkin lands of the Sulk End—is that the Branden Rose is rumoured to have wielded QGU in the defence and release of a suspected yet unproven sedorner. With firm reputation for Erratic Conduct, the particulars of the terrible astrapecrith’s newest and most appalling deviancy remain obscure. A Private Voice for the Lady-Rose told of the loss of a most Valued Servant, and it can only be guessed that this may well be a cause of this latest aberration. The identity of the sedorner (accused) remains undisclosed.
The printing and distribution of pamphlets within a city was typically quick—a matter of days.The calculation of the movement of information about the Empire was, however, measured in weeks; for this shocking report to have found its way already into such a gazette was surely a feat of deliberate and malicious alacrity.
The Master-of-Clerks must have sent an agent riding through day and night for passage on a fast boat to Brandenbrass to get this here already!
Rossamünd was not free of his accusers yet.
With one angry action he twisted the pamphlet into a tight ball and threw it clear across the room. In distress he turned the bright-limn and lay in the waning light, staring through an open window at Phoebë, three-quarter-faced and rising amid thin inky strands of silver-lined cloud.
The night was old by the time sleep overtook him.
5
OF WRITS AND SINGULARS
Singular Contract, a ~ also known as a personal assignment or simply a singular; an offer of employment made by a private citizen or organization seeking a teratologist to hunt and claim the prize-money for killing a troublesome nicker. Singulars are the private counterpart of the bureaucratic Writs of the Course; that is, official, governmental commissions to slay teratoids. Both can be obtained at a knavery, though singulars, often offering less prize-money, are surprisingly preferred, as typically they are more promptly paid.
IN the clarity of a new morning, Rossamünd rescued the ruined pamphlet from the far corner of his chamber. Flattening it out as best he could, he removed the vile cartoon with its slander of Europe, folded the tearing and stowed it in his wallet. Yet as he supped on breakfast with her in the solar—the finest milling of porridge Rossamünd had ever broken his fast upon—he kept the offending article to himself. “I told you, little man,” is all she’ll say. “Tilly fally, it’s all spit and dribble!Why did you insist on reading it?” Instead he asked, “Miss Europe, what would happen if the Master-of-Clerks tried to get at us?”
“He would be a very foolish fellow!” The Branden Rose scowled at him as if he were the offending subject. She was at queenly ease in a soft robe of darkest green streaked with curling waves in cloth-of-gold. Two embroidered orange crawdods reached up from either hem, their great spiny feelers curling up to the collar and out over either shoulder. Her hair was held up by a rounded comb of dappled jade, thrust straight down into the mass of locks. Since he had known her, Rossamünd had not once seen her looking ruffled in the morning. Even ailing from spasmed organs and grinnling bites at the Harefoot Dig she had kept an air of fathomless repose. “I do not doubt the blaggardly little fly will seek yet to buzz in my face. Let him go to his buzzing and discover how heavy a blow a peeress of the Empire can bring. As for now, I shall not be bothered by him or any other—the lords of Naimes are not so easily troubled.”
Were it not so far from one end of the dining table to the other, Rossamünd might have leaped up and given the fulgar a hug.
The Branden Rose, however, did not notice such lifts of fine sentiment. Rather, as she ate, she picked through a hefty stack of letters and calling cards, reading some, tossing others aside with an impatient sniff. “One might think that after so many refusals these dreary people would tire of inviting me to their dreary routs.Yet no . . .” She lifted an unfurled fathom of glittering card dripping with seals and crimped ties. “I am scarcely arrived and . . .” She made as if reading the card. “To her most irritable Duchess-in-waiting, Europa of Naimes; please come and stuff yourself piglike on twelve dozen courses at my interminably dull fête as our most honored patron and garnish to dessert.With all respect and starved felicitations, et cetera, Lady Tish Tosh of Beanpaste.”
Unsure if she was angry or making fun, Rossamünd stifled a laugh in his juice-of-orange.
The heiress of Naimes dropped the offending favor to the floor. “All these fat magnateers and low-order peerlets want me to give their tawdry turnouts legitimacy. I will not be made the ornament of some upstart’s public posturing.”
Having never been to even a humble country fête, Rossamünd would not have minded one jot to be an ornament at a rout, however small or tawdry. He wisely kept this to himself.
Europe picked up another card.This was smaller, a sedate gray with scant decoration beyond finely formed writing. “Fortunately,” she said after a quick reading, “some are worthy of an answer . . .”
From out in the yard came the grinding of feet on the gravel. After a gentle knock and a murmur of greetings in the vestibule hall beyond the solar door, Mister Kitchen eased himself in to interrupt their breakfast.
“Lord Finance, m’lady,” he offered in the tone of an apology.
“Of course it is.” Europe sighed heavily, waving her hand like a capitulation and allowing in a well-fed, smartly dressed man of later middling years in the almost feminine curls of a natural wig of pale blond and a frock coat of magenta silk.
“My lady! My lady!” he declared with all the vigor of a cheery spring day. Possessing a particularly long and narrow nose, rouge-rosied cheeks and wide, sparkling, cheerful eyes of the thinnest blue, he was the very picture of the perfect grandsire.
Europe regarded the man with curiously candid fondness. “Finance, dear fox, you come to me so soon, sir,” she said. “Are there not more pressing wants of state to occupy you?”
“No need of our state is more pressing than the well-being of its next duchess, noble lady,” Mister Finance returned with unfazed and frank affection. “And slander’s wings are swift!”
The heiress of Naimes peered down her shapely nose at him.
“I am beginning to apprehend the most peculiar reports of you, gracious lady, of sedonition, QGU and the taking of a child in replacement of dear departed Licurius . . . And here I find that at least one portion is true and now wonder upon the rest.” He looked askance at Rossamünd and then abruptly bent to him half a bow. “Hello to you, sir. I must say, your arrival brings complexity.”
With a clatter of chair legs the young factotum stood and simply said, “Good morning, sir.”
“Rossamünd Bookchild,” Europe made introduction. “Here is Lord Idias Finance, the Baron of Sainte, Captain-Secretary and Chief Emissary of my mother’s diplomatic mission here in Brandenbrass.”
“A society child.” The Baron of Sainte seemed to beam, yet regarded Rossamünd narrowly. “Delighted. You must possess remarkable parts for my lady to take you on, sir . . .”
“I—uh . . .”
Europe intervened, a wily glimmer in her eye. “He is everything I require, Baron.”
The man smiled warmly. “Of course, of course.” He became quickly grave. “The Duchess has expressed most pointedly her regrets at Licurius’ passing—”
“I am sure she has,” the fulgar said heavily. “Enough with your subtleties, fox! Out with it now; why have you come to me so promptly?”
The Baron dipped his head obediently. “I have come so that I might give your mother, the Duchess Magentine, a better report of your wielding of quo gratia than the worrisome distortions that bruit and rumor will bring.”
Europe blinked slowly at him. “You may tell my mother that its use was just and apt a
nd done in the defense of the defenseless.”
“It is said, gracious duchess-daughter, that this defense was done for a . . . a sedorner . . .” The barron’s voice dropped ever so slightly.
Sitting once more, Rossamünd felt the man’s regard turn to him and kept his attention on his porridge.
“A flimsy pretext devised by dastardly men of creeping ambition,” the fulgar declaimed, “seeking only to magnify themselves at others’ cost and so cover their own scheming.”
“Ahh, the fall of Dido writ small,” Finance murmured, his bright, unconvinced eyes belying his smiling mien.
“Indeed.” The fulgar’s tone was frosty, yet her own gaze glimmered with amusement.
“That is all, gracious lady?”
“That is enough . . .”
The Baron drew a highback out close to Europe and sat. “You must know that unkind eyes are upon you, that your application of QGU weakens you, especially under such . . . confused circumstances.”
Weakens? Rossamünd repeated inwardly, innards sinking in dismay. What trouble have I brought?
“I know it, sir.” Europe’s hazel eyes became genuinely hard.
Standing, the Chief Emissary conceded with a gracefully extended bow.
An inordinately loud pounding at the front door was soon followed by the reappearance of Mister Kitchen bearing offers of coursing work delivered directly by scopp from the knaving house. Come as a parcel, the offers were covered in black leather and bound with black ribbon.
“And timely too!” Europe pronounced, and immediately sent summons for Mister Carp. “You must excuse us, my Lord Finance. I have work of my own, as I am sure you do too.”
“Absolutely, m’lady!” Finance proclaimed, and stooped once more.
Rossamünd smiled to himself. He certainly likes a good bow.