"Indeed! Each year."

Rossamund almost choked.

Mister Carp veritably glowed with satisfaction. "Unlike many silk-purse peers, she is a shrewd patron and financier: holds interest in many prosperous endeavors. She shall make a formidable d.u.c.h.ess should she ever consent to it."

After this, Rossamund ceased fretting.

As for the Branden Rose, she spent much of her time in her file in close counsel with a continuous flow of kapelmasters and stepmasters, orators and amphigorers, psaltists and panto troupes. Interspersed among them were drabber souls who seemed unduly stern for such a festal occasion. First that Rossamund saw among these was the colonel of a lesquin company dressed in a dark clerical suit. Arms laden with various folios, the colonel was accompanied by a strikingly harnessed captain, complete with caudial honor at waist, whose haunted eyes seemed to hold something occult and severe. Arrived early Domesday morning, they did not leave until Rossamund delivered his mistress' treacle that evening, the colonel departing with the earnest pledge, "We are ready to put our hand to whatever the lady directs."

Europe said nothing on it and Rossamund knew better than to ask.

The next morning, as he was again dispensing the fulgar's plaudamentum, a gentleman in drab proofing and blue-tinted spectacles obscuring laggard-colored eyes was shown into the file. Introducing himself in clipped tones as a Mister Rakestraw, speculator privite, he went immediately into a report. "We are near to weaseling out that dastard's bolt-hole."

At this point the fulgar stopped the fellow and bid her young factotum to depart to his needful gala preparations. Lingering at the file door as he closed it, he still managed to catch, "The fall of that lighters' fortress spooked him greatly and has driven him more deeply into cover.Yet I believe by tomorrow morn I shall be able to inform you of his exact locale."

Swill? Rossamund pondered. Not for the first time he wondered upon his mistress' real intent. Whatever it might be, her determination to leave him out of the scheme was abundantly clear.

In the afternoon, he sat in the file with Europe and her hired pen-a certain Mister Chudleigh.Together they were sorting the next dispensing of seemingly endless invitations to be handed to the platoon of scopps waiting in the vestibule, when Wenzel, red-faced and panting, bustled in to announce, "Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike!"

In a gray dress of flashing satin with sash of black tied in a great bow at the small of her back, the Lady Madigan's most striking feature was her sky blue eyes. Sad and penetrating, they lingered intelligently wherever she fixed her attention. Of similar generation to Europe, she bore a small, solid diamond etched under her lower lip like a deep blue dimple in her chin. She too was an aristocratic fulgar. A man perhaps in his thirties, dark-eyed and dark-haired with a long almost horselike face, followed her closely. Introduced as Mister Threedice, he was her factotum, a laggard of taciturn manners and blunt address. He stared at Rossamund with a callous yet melancholy intensity. Rossamund returned this untoward attention with a polite incline of his head, to which the other factotum simply looked away.

"Here is an innovation," said Lady Madigan coolly, speaking with a peculiar familiarity. "The Branden Rose turned hostess!"

Europe regarded her evenly but said nothing.

"You wish it be known to the world that all is fit and fine with you, sister," the Marchess of the Pike said as she sat on the edge of a turkoman and folded her daintily gloved hands in her lap.

THE LADY MADIGAN MARCHESS OF THE PIKE.

"I do."

"I hear, dear one," Lady Madigan continued, "that you returned to Brandentown after an especially rugged outing."

"It is about the street, then?" Europe replied.

"a.s.suredly so, sister; certain streets, at least," Lady Madigan added wryly. "Is there a responsible party for this especial ruggedness?"

"Yes."

"Are you to do anything about them?"

Europe's eye gleamed as she quickly glanced to Rossamund. "I may yet, my dear," she said.

"Am I invited?"

"Perhaps I shall tell you more at my little rout," the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting returned.

"Until then, sister."

"Indeed."

The Marchess of Pike stood, bowed and left.

Absorbed in his penmanship, Mister Chudleigh seemed not at all exercised by this odd conversation of lofty women, nor did he notice the Lady Madigan's departure, and Rossamund kept his increasingly bemused ponderings to himself.

Into this contemplative silence there came a muted yet clear stentorian clatter and with it a loud "Whoop!" sounding very much as if it originated in the floors above. Sent upstairs to investigate, Rossamund soon discovered Fransitart laid out on the ludion floor, cradling his arm, a scale toppled beside him and with it the embellishment he had clearly been attempting to fix to the wall.

"Broke it, lad," the ex-dormitory master, lying on the boards as the young factotum skidded to stop beside him, explained with wry grimace. "Tumbled like some self-for-gettin' Old Gate pensioner an' put out me wings to catch meself an' SNAP! . . . twice."

Rossamund went round-eyed at the mangle of oddly shaped sleeve his old master gripped.

Crispus arrived in a puff, physic's bag in hand, calling orders for hot water, towels and directing immediately for a tandem to be brought up.

"My, my, my." The physician clucked his tongue as he prodded the limb in initial inquiry. He tried lifting it a little and Fransitart roared with pain. "Well, well, my etiolated friend, not that way then . . . ," he murmured. "We will have to cut the sleeve."

Giving the old vinegaroon the briefest swig of some stupefacting draught-obtorpes, the physician called it-and cord of leather to clamp between his teeth, Crispus began to cut at the cloth of the frock a coat sleeve.

Under the influence of the draught Fransitart bore his discomfort with greater calm, sweating profusely, teeth clenched on the leather bit.

Putting on his complex spectacles, Crispus looked up at the watchers-a veritable audience of staff-with an exaggerated tilt of his head. "I would depart now if I were of sensitive const.i.tution," he advised.

Coming to himself, Kitchen shooed the water-bringing maids out of the room and the curious footmen with them. He, however, lingered to watch from the relatively less gruesome vantage of the door.

Uncertain as to whether he wanted to see the doctor at his work, Rossamund nevertheless remained.

With the obstruction of the sleeve removed, Crispus began his investigation in earnest, palpating the swollen flesh . . . but Rossamund could look no longer, his old master's restrained cries enough to go on.

"My, my," Crispus breathed, his tone of wonder catching Rossamund's attention. The physician was bending over some obviously fascinating item on the mess of the old salt's forearm.The bandage that Fransitart had retained was gone.

The cruorpunxis!

The mark was there as before.

Rossamund glanced anxiously to Kitchen, who was peering at it with waxing interest.

"Astonishing! Astonishing!" Crispus marveled. "Simply astonishing! Lah! To think that butchering novice got it correct!"

With the words You know! on his lips, Rossamund checked himself and instead ordered Kitchen from the room.

Looking fit to disregard the young factotum's command, the steward reluctantly departed, closing the double doors behind him with a pointed thump.

Silence hung in the room like an admission.

"Oh, I have heard all about the inquiry," Crispus said with light factuality, blinking through his apparatus in wonder at the surprise of his listeners. "I could but not; the bruit of it went all through the manse. Swill marked his own arm with a complete cruorpunxis, then went about with it conspicuously bandaged almost the moment you departed. Add this to his attempt to bully me with the menace of charges of sedornition for supporting you, my friend, and I had clues enough.What he did not divulge through his threats and allusions about the inquiry's progress, Lady Dolours clarified later." The physician peered now at Rossamund, his wondering eye enlarged and discolored by the apparatus lens. "To think that quackeen surgeon was correct . . ." He regarded Rossamund with awe.

"So we keep saying . . . ," Fransitart muttered darkly through the leather cord. He spat out the gag. "Well, will ye have to chop my wing, phiz?" he gruffed.

"No, no, not a bit of it!" Crispus almost laughed, quickly restoring his focus to his patient. "It is a complex break, certainly, but never fear, sir! They might lop off limbs like a storm-cracked mast out at sea, but this is nothing my experienced ministrations will not heal. Breaks are a common hurt in my line of physicking."

"Oh . . ." Fransitart looked almost disappointed.

"Being a follower of obligantic ossatomy I shall trice your bones what you might call 'prodigious firm'-even with a wounded wing of my own." He wagged his own slung arm. "After that I am sure your old vinegar chum can make for you some of my most excellent draughts to help the whole process along."

Aided by Rossamund, the physician helped Fransitart to a more comfortable seat and set about washing his battered limb, setting to the task with silent concentration.

"I must say, Rossamund," Crispus eventually said, "it is uncommon irony that you now work for a teratologist; almost humorous if its consequence were not so serious."

"Aye." The young factotum smiled wryly.

"Ye seem well reconciled to th' revelation, Doctor C," Fransitart observed, under the calm of the obtorpes, "but about 'ere per'aps th' less said th' better, aye?" he suggested a little tartly.

"Oh, well, yes, as you say . . . Very wise . . . Very wise."

In the dim of the evening a peculiar figure came calling: a woman with a face striped like an animal, her head crowned with a dandicomb of elegantly curved and k.n.o.bbled horns. She was a wandering caladine, clad in a bossock of prus and sable. In a peculiarly husky voice, she introduced herself as Saphine of the Maids of Malady.

Rossamund recognized her immediately as a caladine Threnody had named while they had sat with Europe months ago in the saloon of the Brisking Cat on the Wormway.

"I wish to speak with the Branden Rose upon the matter of a mutual adversary," the caladine Saphine explained to him, dipping her head with unselfconscious ease to navigate her horns through first the front and then the hiatus door.

"My, my, the plot swells thick indeed," Europe observed, recalling the woman too as-receiving Rossamund's explanation of this new guest-she proceeded from an easy seat by the fire in her file to the hiatus. "h.e.l.lo, Lady Saphine," she said evenly to the caladine waiting patiently, poised upon the edge of a tandem. "It is an extraordinary cause to move a calendar to seek my door. Do you come for your sisters of Malady or for the Soratche?"

"Both, Lady Rose," the caladine returned hollowly, standing to nod a bow. "The two claves are joined in this enterprise, and now it appears to us that your aims and ours have junctioned."

"By a merger of aims . . . " Europe's brow lifted subtly.

"Grotius Swill?"

"That I do, Lady Rose."

"That will be all, thank you, Rossamund," his mistress said, excusing him. "Please summon Condamine to bring refreshments, and then you may return to the file to finish compiling the newest of our guests' replies and the receipts that must be sent tomorrow."

And closing the door after him, Europe remained to talk with this caladine while Rossamund was once again left with only his suspicions and a pile of unsorted gala correspondence. Long into the night he worked, brooding upon his exclusion and the violence he was certain was coming, and when his mistress finally returned to the file, he was still at his desk.

"To bed with you now, Rossamund," she murmured tiredly. "All this may wait for a new day. I need you fresh."

For long moments her factotum did not move, but sat staring at the profusion of replies and letters sorted and unsorted, mind turning, courage building, then failing. Finally an exasperated sigh from Europe as she removed her coat in preparation for retiring broke into his indecision. "I know you are preparing to make at Maupin," he dared, looking at his mistress squarely.

A shrewd smile flickered briefly across Europe's dial. "Do you now?" she purred.

"Why won't you tell me what is happening?" he demanded with all the heat of a long-needed but unexpected release. "How can I serve you best as your factotum if you will not let me in on your plan?"

Her mien becoming quickly severe, the fulgar regarded him narrowly. "You serve me best, sir, by doing as I say."

Rossamund glowered back at her. He had sacrificed the promised security of the Sparrowdowns to remain at her side and this was all she would give in return! Yet how he could say this so starkly?

"I think you have worked overlong, little man," Europe finally said, her tone wintry. "Bed is the best place for you now. Good night."

He remained, gaze locked with hers, yet his expression softened just a little, a constellation of conflicting notions dashing hither and yon in his thoughts. In the end, the silence unbroken, he relented, retreating dismissed to his set and an angry, restless sleep.

24.

PLANS WITHIN PLANS.

percursor also pnictor or sicarian; a part of the patefact set; professional murderer working for states and kings, possessing a near-legendary facility in delivering death at distance and by stealth. Almost every state, kingdom or realm employs them, the more civilized places simultaneously denying their existence.

GROWN used to daily walks in green and lively hills, Rossamund found his confinement in this bland urban setting hard to bear. After breakfast, four days out from the grand gala, he took a turn about the foreyard. Keeping clear of vintners' wagons and their hauling drudges laboring to enlarge Cloche Arde's already well-stocked wine cellar, Rossamund walked a circle about the pencil pine, watching Darter Brown hop and hunt amid the thin garden beds.

In the crystalline morning Rossamund could just make the faint tolling of far-off millhouse bells, telling of an approaching change of shift with knells loud enough to carry well across the city. He imagined the lines of stoop-shouldered swinks-mill workers-filing in and out of the dark-some mills in their sad queues. He peered up at the thin blue sky striated with icy white-unhappy fighting weather.

She will not attack Maupin today at least . . .

The sensation of Winstermill's fall had proliferated throughout the city, giving rise to a great unanswered fear that transformed into an impotent kind of anger. Unsatisfied, this anger was growing, becoming so palpable that even Rossamund-stuck at Cloche Arde-could near taste indignation in the very air.

On Rossamund's second turn about the yard, Doctor Crispus walked in from the Harrow Road and joined him in his stroll. "I have been designated to be one of the orators for the gala night," he declared after a cheerful greeting. "I had the briefest thought to posit the existence of goodly nickers. Unwise at the best of times, I know, and in light of the current temper"-he produced a creased and doubled broadsheet from under his arm, The a.s.sessor scripted boldly at its head-"thorough folly. Consequently, I shall be hypothesizing upon the existence of Providence over the theory of Deeper Forces, especially as a benign corrective, and, if it does exist," he continued cryptically, "whether it is a personal cosmic action or an impersonal and reflexive cosmic rebalancing."

Rossamund just blinked and nodded.

"Have you read the newest papers, m'boy?" the physician asked abruptly. "Things have certainly taken a remarkable turn," he added, pressing the paper open at a bold heading among other bold headings on the foremost page.

Expedition Relates of a Marshal 'Mongst the Fallen in the Sack of Sulk End Fastness; Survivor Gives Graphic Account of Terrible Atrocities Committed by Ravening Nickers The survivor was named as one Laudibus Pile.

"That rascal made it out somehow," Crispus growled. "Probably by the cunning of his heightened senses . . ."

There was no mention of goodly monsters, nor of any of the dark deeds done that precipitated such atrocities.

"The sloppy erroneous scoundrel who penned the piece places Podius' rank incorrectly. He was Marshal-Subrogate, as you know, yet they have him as Marshal-Lighter. How-be-it, it is unquestionably Podius Whympre by description," Crispus explained, pointing to the finer print. "It is a form of due comeuppance, I suppose, though it does not make me smile . . ."

Such was the sum of the Master-of-Clerks' schemes.

On the next page Rossamund found a line of lesser type, yet no less stunning.

Fabercadavery Uncovered in Emperor's Own Fortress!

Related by some other fellow, possibly a member of the expedition mentioned in the first report, it actually named Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill as the fabercadaverist implicated in the heading line, going so far as to make mention of his lectures held in Brandenbra.s.s itself.

"Have you seen this, Doctor?" Rossamund asked, pa.s.sing the paper back.

"So that is what you were at, Grotius!" the physician declared with grim satisfaction as if Swill were there with them. "Lah! Who could possibly prognosticate such a twist of path, my friend?" he said to Rossamund. "And in a mere two months?" Glancing up to a housemaid banging at a long Dhaghi carpet hung from Rossamund's set, he lowered his voice. "It certainly puts any accusations they have brought against you or the dear Lady Rose in new light, does it not?" The physician stared with disconcerting intensity at the young factotum. "To think he was correct . . . ," he said after a moment's reflection.

"You mean Swill, Doctor?" Exposed or not, saying the surgeon's name set a subtle twist in Rossamund's innards.

"Indeed." The physician stroked his chin. "However unwillingly, my respect for that quackeen's research is materially increased. Ah, mistake me not, Master Bookchild! Swill was an unalloyed monster; but truth is truth, whomever alights upon it . . . If that butchering novice was correct about your nature, then he might well have been correct about how . . . well, how you came to be, my friend. The power of fecund muds and turgid earths as the source of monstrous life-indeed of all life-was once widely held, especially by the Cathars and the Phlegms, that brilliant foolhardy race without whose learning I would not have a trade . . . And if he is correct about how they connect to you, well . . ."