The Foundling's Tale: Factotum Part 4

"Oh," the man-of-business answered complacently, "you'll find them to be loan defaulters, pinch-dough bakers, fraudulent mendicants, suspected grabcleats, hat-s.n.a.t.c.hers and thimble-rig sharpers; contrarified malcontents and cheap-souled tricksters all-folk not worth your anxious looks."

Slowing easy among the clutter of other carriages waiting beneath the beetling loom of the Letter and Coursing House, Mister Carp deposited his dyphr to the care of the bridle-minders, scruffy fellows disguised by fine coats. Round-eyed, mind spinning at all this novelty, Rossamund followed the man-of-business closely as they joined the pedestrian throng. Pushing through a line of water caddies, shooing aside pleading crossing-sweeps and nosegay sellers, Carp negotiated his young charge about a rather noisome pile of various excretions of dung-including a great many rabbit pellets-but was brought up short by a quarto of serious gents. Robustly harnessed and bearing pistols and cudgels, they were moving through the crowd as a single ma.s.s, making a way for a singularly enormous fellow shambling with them, the very one who had bawled at him from the pack drag. Between the cleats of a tentlike soutaine, Rossamund spied a wheeled frame extending down from the overlarge man's waist-a lard-barrow-the device straining to hold up the pendulous ma.s.sing of the man's satin-wrapped flesh. Here was one of the infamous elephantines of the Grumid states, the wealthiest, most powerful magnates who boasted their great affluence and influence by the equal extremity of their girth.

Mister Carp blessed the bloated fellow with a solemn bow.

Tiny porcine eyes coldly calculating, the sweating elephantine sneered at the man-of-business, said nothing, and the humorless a.s.sembly moved on.

"That was His Most Elephantine Pendulous Ib," Carp breathed with disturbing admiration, shepherding Rossamund before him to climb the broad steps of the coursing house. Between ma.s.sive trunk-thick columns were two doors, the right-hand admitting and releasing a steady rush of scopps and postmen in their distinctive Imperial mottle hauling great bags of letters.

"Right for post! Left for knaves!" the man-of-business said, pausing only briefly at the left-hand portal to wait gallantly for an ebony-skinned skold in white conice, fitch and cloak with startling white spoor-stripes down either side of her dark face. A scion of lands well to the north, far away N'go or somesuch, this skolding woman nodded gratefully to Carp and dazzled Rossamund with her brilliant smile as she led a long line of servants from the knavery.

The interior of the Letter and Coursing House was a wide s.p.a.ce divided down its middle by a ma.s.sive wooden structure that reached up to the carbuncles of small, ever-glowing gretchen-globes hanging from a lofty dome punctured with a constellation of portholes. At the very back of the hall was a pair of huge arched windows, their central panes...o...b.. of fiery scarlet encircled with rays glazed alternately deep transparent brown or translucent white. An arcade of pillars ran left along the wall, each post painted from base to capital with murals of teratologically violent scenes. Gazing up to the balconies, Rossamund saw bureaucratical folk leaning on the bal.u.s.trades taking their ease and looking down smugly over the variety of adventuring sorts gathered beneath them.

A whole collection of teratologists and attached staff were milling in the echoing expanse, even more fabulous than the sell-swords who had paraded through Winstermill. Here were wits, fulgars, skolds, pistoleers, sagaars, ledgermains, leers and startling combinations of the same in one soul. Most sat easy in the arcade beneath the balconies, waiting for their servants to sort the finer points. Less gaudy, threadbare pugnators waited in line themselves, queuing with the ordinary factoti and agents before the lattice-windows of the knaving-clerks. It was an entire room of monster-slayers.

What was Europe thinking to send me here? Swallowing hard, Rossamund was heartily glad he had fresh splashings of Exstinker wrapped about his middle.

"Longest line shrinks quickest," Carp proclaimed, and went straight to the end of a lengthier queue. "Though not that line," he continued quietly, indicating the largest collection of people farther on, most carrying some fashion of stained or heavy-looking bag. "They are waiting to claim their prizes."

Well reckoning what grisly trophies these contained, Rossamund did not dwell on them long.

Carp peered askance at the motley teratologists lined before him. "Goose-a-score incompetents," came his snide mutter. "A knave cannot be much chop if he has to represent himself to an underwriter." He breathed a know-it-all sigh. "It is easy enough to buckle on proofing, sling an arm at your side and pretend to yourself and others that you are thew, but only a scant few are what you would call true teratologists."

Bothered as he was by the man-of-business' superior tones, Rossamund had to agree it would have been entirely unseemly for Europe to stand there like some common agent, meekly waiting her turn. Even he, in his weathered blue frock coat, looked finer than many of the dowdy bravoes ahead of him. With so many teratologists about, he could well imagine why some might struggle to make enough to even keep themselves "in biscuits"-as Master Fransitart might say. Staring at this collection of gaudily dressed destroyers, he suddenly felt acutely anxious for monster-kind. How could they survive such a horde, incompetent or not?

"What is laughable," Carp continued, low-voiced, "is that there are many places in the Empire that would be fortunate indeed to see even one such inferior sort in half-a-dozen months, let alone a pugnator of proper capability. Such as these might make themselves a vizer's h.o.a.rd from work in lonely habitations if they dared to forsake city comforts."

Rossamund thought of Wormstool sacked and Bleak Lynche in terror of the monsters marauding out in the Frugelle, isolated folks at the mercy of carnivorous nickers.Yet these honest folk were there to take the land for themselves by force, subtle or overt.

"Still," Carp rattled on in his dry, supercilious tone, "there is always work here if they wish to spurn themselves to the magnates and lords."

A slight, hungry-looking skold in front frowned vaguely over her shoulder, her eyes sunken and haunted. Mister Carp smiled a self-satisfied smile at her. As she was called forward, a leer-obvious with a sthenicon strapped to his face-walked near, clad in a haubardine of woodland hues. The fellow seemed to pause as he pa.s.sed. Rossamund instinctively shied, pushing before Mister Carp, seeking to hide behind the man-of-business.

"My word! Steady on, young fellow," Carp exclaimed.

Yet in a hall filled with all manner of residual monstrous smells the leer did not pay him especial heed and moved on.

"Well-a-day, child, how might I aid you?" came a bored voice through the lattice in front of them.

Mister Carp gave a cough and c.o.c.ked a brow toward the speaker.

"Oh." Rossamund stepped forward hastily, peering at the barely discernible figure-a knaving underwriter. He held up Europe's vaingloria and announced steadily, "I am the factotum of Europa, d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting of Naimes, the Branden Rose."

"Are you now?" was the amused response. "You are certainly of lesser proportions to her usual man. Is he poorly?"

"Aye, I am, and no, he is not poorly. He died in the Brindleshaws not six months ago."

"This is all true and correct," Carp confirmed, leaning into the view of the lattice.

There was a moment's silence. "Oh" was the eventual response. "Well-a-day, Pragmathes Carp . . . I-I take it her ladyship will be expecting advertis.e.m.e.nts of work to be sent to her as is usual?"

"Aye," Rossamund replied, and then repeated the formula Europe had given him. "The Branden Rose wishes it to be known that she is at her usual seat and awaiting coursing work, either writ or singular."

"If you but pay the clerking fee, sir," the clerk stated with breathy efficiency, "two sous to register your mistress' intent and ten sequins for the clerk-at-foot to bring the advertis.e.m.e.nts to you.We shall fill an intent for you and send all writs and singulars to your mistress as soon as we might." There was a pause accompanied by the sound of pages turning behind the screen. "Cross your hands over your soul," the clerk eventually added.

With a quick blink, Rossamund obediently put one hand over the other, right where his ribs met his stomach, feeling the folds of the nullodoured bandage hidden beneath.

"Now answer me this if you would, sir," the underwriter declared with a slightly more officious tone. "Do you, upon your solemn, continuing and mortal affirmation, declare that you are the true and foremost representative of Europa of Naimes, astrapecrith and teratologist; that you accept all culpability should the aforesaid prove to be false whether by intent or ignorance; and that you accept that I, Dandillus Pym, Coursing Underwriter, inquisit this by general and representative authority in the name of His Most Serene Highness, the Emperor Haacobin, and of His Rightful Plenipotentiary, the Duke of the Sovereign State of Brandenbra.s.s, and his Cabinet: how say you?"

"Ah-aye," Rossamund answered, understanding the intent of the question, if not the actual words. With that said, and monies paid from his own purse so as not to break the newly writ twenty-sou bill, he was back out on the steps of the grand knavery above the clatter and bustle, feeling not a little relieved that his first clerical duty as factotum was completed.

By the light of the westering sun, Rossamund returned via takeny-coach to Brandenbra.s.s' substantial suburbs, restored at last to the starkly glorious bosom of Cloche Arde after a long day in town.

Many hours earlier he had been deposited by Carp at the Dogget & Block alehouse, where, over a lunch of griddled scringings and tots of ol' touchy, Craumpalin had insisted he knew a better supplier of parts than Perseverance Finest.

"So artful is he," the old dispenser had waxed, "I fathom even this confectioner of whom thy mistress is so fond gets their finer properties from him."

This vaunted fellow proved to be a humble script-grinder by the name of Pauper Chives, found on Sink Street right by the pungent chalky waters of Middle Harbor.Yet the sheer size, excellence and completeness of his proporium-his salt-store-filled floor to ceiling with drawer upon drawer of parts and complete scripts-bore out Craumpalin's high estimation, and the saumiere's keen understanding and wise affability only elevated him in Rossamund's own esteem.

Now, finally returning home and in an acme of satisfaction, the young factotum clutched the most prized of his myriad purchases. First was a thick compleat-a listbook of scripts-its crisp wasp-paper pages bound in st.u.r.dy black ox-buff and tied shut with a ribbon of deep green velvet.

"Wasp paper," Pauper Chives 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."

Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, ma.s.sive 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 a.s.sumption that it would summon a gate ward or yardsman, Rossamund 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. "h.e.l.lo, 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, Rossamund 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," Rossamund 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," Rossamund stammered.

"Forgot our key, did we?"

"I was not given one in the first," the young factotum answered unconcernedly.

Let in the gate, Rossamund hefted the several small yet c.u.mbersome chests of his parts-shopping booty thoughtlessly under either arm-much to Nectarius' bemus.e.m.e.nt. 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 att.i.tude 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, Rossamund?" she said, with a return of familiar wintriness.

He blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Who is this Pauper Chives?" she demanded, misp.r.o.nouncing the name to sound like the herb.

"Oh, Master Craumpalin holds Mister Chives"-Rossamund pointedly p.r.o.nounced the "ee" of Chives-"to be the best saliere in all the city!"

"And your dear master would know, would he?"

"Aye, Miss Europe," Rossamund 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 Rossamund's left arm. In a fit of enthusiasm he had bought them from a wandering paper-seller as he left Pauper Chives. The most obvious had its t.i.tle clear: Defamiere.

"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 weatherc.o.c.ks 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 Rossamund'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 gra.s.s-wine that Europe hailed absently as an excellent accompaniment-Rossamund 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 Defamiere. A dark thrill thrumming in his innards, he flicked over the first pages, but was soon slowed by the manner of t.i.tles 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 opposite, 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 b.u.mpkin 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sage on a fast boat to Brandenbra.s.s to get this here already!

Rossamund 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 Phoebe, 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 a.s.signment 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, Rossamund 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 Rossamund 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 ma.s.s of locks. Since he had known her, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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 d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting, Europa of Naimes; please come and stuff yourself piglike on twelve dozen courses at my interminably dull fete 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, Rossamund 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."