The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  IN the ringing hollow that followed Maupin’s final end, silence and stillness ruled.

  Rossamünd’s senses swam, and he collapsed at last against a post.

  Have we won?

  On the edge of his awareness, he was aware of movement about him, of forms deliberate and slow in the after-math of battle. Nearby he could make out a slender figure stumbling toward him. It took a moment to realize it was Europe, sooty with the ashes of her blasted enemy, her face frightfully pale, her eyes fixed on Rossamünd. The fulgar’s expression was hard, as if expecting to discover the worst. She faltered for a few steps more, and then Europe sagged to her knees. She tried to stand, but dropped fully to the flagstones, to lie with her unraveled fringe across her face.

  Despite the acute pounding within his skull and the acrid burning in his throat, Rossamünd sucked a great gulp of wind to clear the miasma in his lungs and sat up. Grinding his teeth against the agony in his neck, he went on hands and knees to her side, fumbling bandages from his stoup as he came. He could easily see the dark wet slash in the right panels of her proofing. “You are cut, M-miss Europe . . . ,” he said rapidly, fumbling in his stoup for the pot of sealing paste. Using bindings torn from Europe’s own petticoats, he tried to stanch the laceration in her side, smearing strupleskin among all the red, wrapping the rudimentary bindings as fast as he could.Yet, for all this, the wound refused to be stanched.

  His mistress laid a shaking hand on his arm. “S-save some for your own,” she hushed, fingers vaguely gesturing to his neck where it hurt so powerfully.

  “It is nothing!” Rossamünd insisted, impatient while his mistress lay so damaged.

  “It is a hole right through the . . . the side of y-your throttle, little m-man,” the fulgar insisted. “Y-you ought to be dead.”

  Rossamünd felt at his neck and, in a thrill of fright, found on the left side a long and terrible gash where the ball had scored his flesh. “I feel well enough . . .” Quickly, he bound the wound up with his stock, as much to hide it as to stanch it.

  Stepping from the gloom beneath the balcony of the quadrangle the slender figure of Elecrobus Slitt approached, smoking pistols in hand and death in his eyes. “You set us a fine chase to find you, m’lady . . . ,” he said quietly, concern clear in his otherwise flat voice. “You have a fine victory here for me to report to my Baron Finance . . .”

  “Yes, yes, man.” Europe’s voice sounded far away. “We may sing the . . . the glory of my success to y-your master later . . .”

  “You may tell him sooner, fairest duchess-daughter,” the percusor returned. “My master awaits you in his drag down on the street you first came in by. I suggest we be quick to go to him.You look sore and in need of a physic’s help.”

  Rossamünd’s thoughts hurtled madly upon how he could make treacle in this blighted place. “There ought to be a kitchen here!” he commanded desperately, looking up into the balconies rising on every side like the sides of a grave to a pallid rectangle of early morning gray. “A pot! A fire! I can make plaudamentum! Vauquelin too!”

  “Ahh . . . I think it will take more than vauquelin, little man.”

  Fumbling levenseep to her mouth, Rossamünd would not give in. “I saved you in the Brindleshaws. I can again.” Sobbing, staggering to his feet, he took the fulgar under her arms and began to haul her just as he had on the sandy forest road so long ago.

  From the dim fume of firelock smoke and settling potive fume, Madigan emerged, bloodied and disheveled, her man, Threedice, limping close behind and clutching his arm as if it were broken.

  “I have o-overreached myself . . . ,” Europe declared to her approaching friend.

  “Nonsense, dear one,” Madigan asserted softly, grim concern darkening the tender light in her eyes as she crouched to clutch her fellow fulgar’s hand. “That wretched blade has poisoned my organs . . . M-my natural humours take their revenge . . .” Europe’s smile was alarmingly wan.

  “Indeed, sister,” Madigan agreed. “We shall make a dash ahead of you to the house of your man, Oberon; he shall set you to rights. Meanwhile, this lovely boy”—she smiled briefly at Rossamünd—“and these hefty fellows bear you to your waiting Baron.”With that, she and Threedice departed, going with all haste out by the tunnel through which they had first forced their way in.

  Smattered with gore, the handful of remaining lesquins promptly fashioned a litter of two poleaxes and the proofing cursorily stripped from fallen door wards. Upon this they—and Rossamünd with them—lifted his mistress as gently as haste would allow. Europe gave a terrible cry, an animal sound born as much of frustration and the anger of fear as it was of pain. In shock, Rossamünd clamped his teeth upon a sob.

  The lesquins went to put her down again, but she insisted they go on.

  Elecrobus Slitt at the lead and bearing the terrible therimoir, they took the Branden Rose from that hidden den, retracing the original path through the dark of the hall of posts, the secreted chute and the blasted posticum.

  Looking often to the rudimentary bandaging about Europe’s side—slowly reddening despite the strupleskin—Rossamünd refused to heed the threatening crushing hopelessness that hovered in the darkness about the edge of his soul. Head ringing with a terror far greater than any felt in the midst of battle or facing a foe, he repeated, I saved her before, I can save her again under his breath until the words lost all meaning.

  ELECROBUS SLIT

  They progressed at times with necessary yet frustrating deliberation, lest they bump or twist Europe and harm her further, finally descending the stairs of the file of Messrs. Gabritas & Thring to shuffle out onto the peaceful street, gray in the primal gleam of dawn. Baron Finance was indeed there, standing anxiously by a large and proper carriage.

  “Ahh, duchess-daughter!” he exclaimed in undisguised consternation as he beheld the Duchess-in-waiting on her makeshift cradle. “If only you had included me in your machinations, dear hope of our state, I would have sent Mister Slitt with you. He might have kept you from such a disorder as I find you in now!”

  Lifting her head, Europe made a show of strength she did not truly have. “But, Baron, y-you were my yardstick,” she said. “If I was able to keep my . . . my plan from you, then . . . then there was s-scant chance Maupin could . . . could discover it.”

  “All plans be dashed and secrets revealed!” Finance cried, taking her hand. “I have failed you, and your mother too!”

  “Dear Baron . . .” Europe’s voice was profoundly tender. “Y-you did not fail, s-sir, I b-bested you . . . that is all . . .”

  The anguish on the Chief Emissary’s face was more than Rossamünd could bear to behold, and he looked to his own feet.

  As hasty arrangement was made for Mister Slitt to remain with the lesquins and ensure that Europe’s task of annihilation was complete, the fulgar was lifted with profound tenderness into the cabin and laid endwise across the soft seats.

  Fighting to master himself among all these valiant men, Rossamünd climbed in after, heedful not to rock the fit too much.

  With scarce enough room for him in the cabin, Finance mounted up beside the driver of the park drag and shouted the fellow on. “Quick, man!” Rossamünd heard his command clear and urgent. “To Bankers Lane, Risen Mole! Fast as you can and spare our lady your jolts.”

  A shrill keening high in the southern sky above dark roof-ridges and thorny chimneys drew their attention to a bright, upward-hurtling flare of pallid green.

  The Duchess-in-waiting strained to see the sailing light through the cab window. “Ahh,” she sighed, her head dropping heavily back down. “B-bravo . . . Lady Saphine of the Maids of Malady w-wins her fight in the coven cellar . . . Maupin and his allies are done in; y-you are safe, little man . . . for now.”

  Aye, Rossamünd cried within, but at what cost! “I—I . . .” was all his mouth for a moment could say. “I have not kept you safe!”

  Europe smiled feebly, cupping his cheek and chin in her soft hand—the very hand th
at had arced him so long ago in the Brindleshaws, the very hand that had spent itself to vie and defeat his foes, now so clammy and cold. “A life of adventure, a life of violence . . . A t-teratologist is not . . . not m-meant to be safe . . .”

  “B-but you are!” he returned in an overpowering swell of grief and confusion, and insisted she swallow another dose of emunic reborate followed by a second vial of lordia.

  “M . . . my organs are souring within me, Rossamünd,” Europe murmured, head lolling to the steady rock of the Baron’s carriage, face afflicted with a gray pallor.

  Rossamünd wanted to shriek his pain, to scream at the blighted world and its blighted senselessness. He clutched her hand to his chest.

  Perched on the sill of the door, Darter Brown began to chitter loudly, a tiny avian wail.

  “I am the cause of all this . . . ,” Rossamünd breathed.

  “This was m-my choosing, little man . . . ,” Europe retorted with a cough, “the m-moment I cried QGU.”

  Perhaps this was so, but what next? His staunch loyalty to his mistress was not as virtuous as it might appear. Surely it could only bring more strife. Rossamünd’s thoughts revolved with premonitions of an unceasing and ever-escalating series of trials ahead.

  At Oberon’s house—a tidy three-story dwelling in the fine middling suburb of Risen Mole—Europe was taken with careful haste to the lone bed of the transmogrifer’s private ground-floor infirmary. Here, treacle brewed but moments before by Threedice—arrived ahead of them and already testing some subtler draughts—was given to her.

  “She is cut,” Rossamünd said in report. “by a blighted spathidril sword. I have used all my strupleskin, but she still bleeds!”

  “The wound must be abluered—cleansed—before siccustrumns will take,” the examining transmogrifer replied, peering intently at the hurt beneath Europe’s lacerated proofing. “Thus is the dread efficacy of such a blade.” Taking a stylus and slip of paper, he wrote out the script for a substance he named munditi corpum, penning it without reference to any compleat or other book. “To clear the wound and make a siccustrumn stick,” he elaborated as he returned to scrutinize the cut. “Even so, I shall have to stitch you, madam,” he continued with clear distaste, “to be certain to stop any sanguinary flow.”

  Europe’s expression soured. “Ugh . . . ,” she muttered, perplexingly flippant as her faculties failed. “A s-scar . . .”

  In waxing urgency, Oberon shooed all comers but for one maid from the room that he might examine the Branden Rose with the necessary quiet and privacy.

  His dread for his mistress in some small part quieted by the examining transmogrifer’s steady and confident manner, Rossamünd let himself be shown across the vestibule to a small but well-stocked saumery. Here he found Threedice hard at brewing, despite his wounded arm.With little room for the labor of two over the single stove, Rossamünd collected the parts the script for munditi corpum required from their various, clearly marked receptacles and set to testing in the hearth, already lit against the morning’s chill. Bearing the final, nacrescent gray draught to his mistress, the young factotum was refused entry even as the potive was taken from his grasp. Impatient, Rossamünd returned and, despite the other factotum’s obvious reluctance at sharing the task, assisted Threedice in his making of what the older factotum brewed what he named occludile of lazarin.

  Two more times he delivered necessary scripts from Threedice’s testing, and each time he was disallowed entry. Thwarted, Rossamünd paced in the vestibule before the infirmary, refusing the little triangles of buttered bread and warmed saloop served so politely by Oberon’s prim steward. He was certain that Cinnamon could fix his mistress’ hurts with ease and not need Rossamünd to be absent in the process.

  Nearby, the Lady Madigan, her face now washed of its battle-grime, sat upon a chair brought especially by servants. Her pose was straight and alert despite a whole night spent fighting, yet her eyes were closed as if she slept and the piece of buttered bread in her delicate grasp remained uneaten. Beside her stood Finance, rocking restlessly on his heels, his expression tight, his eyes rarely leaving the infirmary door and then only to look hard—almost reproachfully—at Rossamünd. For a beat the Chief Emissary appeared on the point of saying something to him, yet, perhaps to check himself, took a bite of his bread-and-butter slice instead.

  Patently sensing the man’s scarce-restrained agitation, Madigan stirred. “She pays a terrible price for her hardheadedness,” she said, without opening her eyes.

  “She always has,” Finance returned tautly. “Though perhaps not as high as she does now . . . ,” he added, looking reprovingly to Rossamünd once more. Your fault! was writ clear on his dial.

  Finally, the port sprang open and the examining transmogrifer emerged.

  “Please,” he offered somberly, bowing to Madigan, then beholding Finance and Rossamünd in turn. “Return.”

  Upon the sole infirmary bed, Europe lay, pale and drawn, her breaths coming in shallow gasps, staring at the ceiling as if consumed by her struggle. Hands and face cleansed in part of stains and Maupin-dust, and her proofing folded upon a chair beside the bed, she looked much as he remembered her lying so terribly wounded in the downy cot at the Hare-foot Dig so long ago.

  “M-miss Europe . . . ?” Rossamünd said as he approached.

  The dread fulgar turned her head and blessed him with an ailing smile. “Oberon s-says I m-may yet live to . . . to fight on . . . ,” she said, her tone bemusingly sardonic in one so hurt.

  Scarce reckoning it possible, Rossamünd felt his soul give an ecstatic leap.

  “Ah-hah!” Finance uttered in relieved delight. “Well done, sir!”

  Oberon coughed with ever-so-subtle annoyance. “Well, yes, you ought to, good madam,” he said first to Europe, then regarding his other guests continued matter-of-factly. “Yet, before we run away with our gladness, as good as my ministrations have been, time is in the pinch and our continued alacrity essential. For, as I was just concluding to our lady, she—only so soon come back from Sinster—will need to return there with all haste if she is to survive such a mis-use of her memetic tissues.”

  Rossamünd’s innards dropped at the mention of this infamous city where lahzars are made, full to its ridge-caps with massacars and bloodthirstily curious investigators. Hopes so quickly restored were complicated once again.

  “T-twice to Sinster in one year is not an . . . i-ideal record, I suppose,” Europe added mildly.

  “Indeed it is not, m’lady,” Oberon returned with all the gravity of a schooling master.

  We barely survived Brandenbrass, Rossamünd mar veled inwardly. How could we prevail in a place crammed with massacars and monster-fossicking transmogrifers? One rumor of me and we will be done for! Yet, with all these caring folk bustling and hovering about Europe’s sickbed, this was no place to say so.

  A long case clock in the vestibule struck six times.

  “The first of the day’s quick boats will be setting out soon,” Finance declared with revived hope in his voice. “I shall go immediately and secure you your own vessel, dear duchess-daughter.”

  “And, if you will, sister, Threedice and I shall join you on your quick boat as you hurry off to Sinster,” proclaimed the Lady Madigan.

  Proving his intent, the Baron Finance dashed off in his park drag for the commutation docks of Middle Ground. While a message was dispatched to Kitchen to send luggage—a day-bag and linen package for the immediate journey—forthwith to the docks, with a trunk to follow on the next available passage—Oberon’s simple carriage was brought to the front of the house.

  Before Rossamünd could catch a settled thought, he was working with the house staff to carry his mistress out to the plain black fit and they were on their way once more. The Lady Madigan and Threedice in their own carriage ahead, the young factotum and the Branden Rose rode alone, the fulgar propped on many cushions, half sitting, half lying along the whole backseat. For several suburbs neither looked at the othe
r, but both stared at the steady passing of gray, shadowy streets, Rossamünd scarcely remarking the fleeting sights or the growing activity of the city’s early risers or late finishers in his turmoil. From the corner of sight he became aware that Europe was staring at him, could feel her observation like burning in his conscience. Still he would not look at her, for to look at her would be to admit a conclusion he did not want to admit.

  “H-how fares your neck?” she asked, her tone mild.

  Humours thumping down his neck, across his scalp, in his ears, he finally looked.

  There she was, propped on the makeshift comfort of cushions, her face gray—ghastly, even—yet somehow queenly despite it all in this carriage taking them to Sinster; Sinster of hope, Sinster of dangers multiplied until all Rossamünd could foresee was that he would be nabbed the very instant he touched foot to its docks.

  He touched the thick bandage about his throat hiding the gash made by the bullet’s path. “It . . . I staunched it with a sicustrumn from Mister Oberon’s saumery . . . between treacles,” he said, then added quickly, “No one saw it.”

  His mistress nodded slowly, eyes glittering with that same part-born envy she had beheld him with at Orchard Harriet. “W-would that I might be so . . . robust . . . ,” she returned.

  Rossamünd half grinned; he thought her very robust already. Thrice now he had seen her smashed and each time recover from the brink.The silence broken, he went to open his mouth and speak his mind at last, but balked at the very moment of revelation. It must be this way, he schooled himself, and took a breath. “Miss Europe,” he began, a great tightening in his chest, “I . . . I would sail with you across the Gurgis Main and back . . . but . . . but I cannot go with you to Sinster . . .”

  The Branden Rose beheld him with serious and ponderous understanding. “Nor,” she added carefully, “c-can I keep you safe here while I am there . . .”