Barely on her feet, the Branden Rose let Rossamund go and lunged, leaping at the dexter through the glister. Leading now with her left, the d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting of Naimes began pounding upon Anaesthesia, sending out arcs at every clout, yet the dexter, unharmed, seemed to catch each hit and return it with arcing knocks of her own. Blow after crackling, coruscating blow they pummeled at each other, boxing and blocking punches with deft pivots of arm and torso, catching hits with a flash and throwing them off again, neither able to do real harm to the other.

Abruptly, shockingly, Europe shouted in pain.

Anaesthesia had found the fulgar's worst wound and was striking at her opponent's flank again and again.

Rossamund pounced to his mistress' defense, Darter Brown with him.

"Rossamund!" Europe cried, her voice thin. "No!"

The dexter flung her arm at him, and he was instantly smitten with the bizarre and fiendish amalgam of witting and arcing. He was hurled away, thrown clear across the quadrangle yard, the thennelever he yet held flying from his grasp as he skated along his rump to collide with a shock into a heavy supporting post in the gloom well under the floor above. The world convulsing, Rossamund shook his head and squeezed his eyes to try to bring clarity.

Emerging from behind the protection of his deadly dexter spurn, Maupin approached as quickly as his injured gait would allow.

Rossamund tried to rise on legs rebelliously unstable.

"h.e.l.lo, little bird," the proprietor of the Broken Doll purred. "You are a very small little bird to have a place in this fight."

Limbs needling painfully, the young factotum labored to his feet only to be instantly witted; a stifling trammeling frission drove the young factotum back to his knees.WHERE IS EUROPE? his galloping thoughts screamed, they alone free of the dexter's wicked work. He was suddenly aware of the dark form of Anaesthesia looming over him, bleeding and bruised.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed Rossamund by his hair and tore his sparrow mask and vent away.

"Our prize has come to us, it seems!" Maupin declared, his voice exhausted yet triumphant. " 'Tis a brave little mouse who dares trespa.s.s into the mouser's den . . ."

Tormented, the young factotum writhed and swatted at the dexter spasmodically as she scratched and clutched to keep a hold on him. A wicked jolt zapped through him, driving down into his very core. His vision narrowed to a dazed circular slot filled with oddly writhing checkers.

"Try not to kill him, dear," came Maupin's cool voice. "His living bones will fetch good price; I might yet salvage something from this shambles."

This will not be! With a vigor called from the very depths of his milt, Rossamund forced out a cry. Hoa.r.s.e at first, it rose to a bellow that sounded like the roar of some wounded ettin in his own ears, banishing for a glimpse the worst of the writhing frission. He planted his feet and refused his abduction, gripping the hands that gripped him, tearing them free of his hair, feeling follicles go with them. Instantly he was an agony of sparks.

At a clap of pistol shot the arcing abruptly ceased.

Rossamund was released.

With another roar, the young factotum twisted his whole frame, and with another roar joined by the tiny ferocity of Darter Brown threw the dexter bodily in a blur of black gauze and satin into a near post, the vile woman colliding with such force that wood cracked as she sagged lifelessly.

Liberated, stumbling, Rossamund was instantly dealt a mouthful of some foul repellent, burning down his wind-pipe before he could react and shut breath away. Lurching backward, he grasped at the air, retching powerfully as his vision swayed. There came a strangely loud slap! right in his face. Rossamund felt something clout him powerfully in the throat through his stock and collars, and could make out Maupin pointing a smoking pistol directly at him. I'm shot! flashed through Rossamund's mind like panic. Grasping his neck, the young factotum swooned and sat with an inelegant flop on the cold stone. Convulsing, he struggled for breath-even a single gasp of cleansing air. His sight narrowed to a pivoting, pulsating slot, and in it loomed Maupin, the venomous therimoir now in his grasp, its tip hovering mere inches from Rossamund's face.

"If you will not come easily living, I will have you dead!" Maupin seethed, all scruples for the sake of salvage clearly abandoned.

In a rush of deep, desperate fort.i.tude, Rossamund sucked in a rattling gasp of wind. Forcing himself to move, he scrambled away from the proprietor and his dread weapon, trying to put a balcony post between him and a ghastly end.

"You truly are a monster . . . ," Maupin breathed with all the pa.s.sion of a d.a.m.ning accusation as he rounded the pillar in pursuit.

Glowering in utter fury, Europe emerged from the thinning fight, gripping her abdomen, the tingle of growing power already about her as her disheveled hair stood on end. Snarling, she bore down on the chancery proprietor.

"No, you filthy blaggard," she spat, "we are the monsters . . ."

Lurching away, Maupin tried to hack her with the therimoir but tripped on a wounded lesquin's legs, his wig tumbling from his crown to reveal his clothbound head.

Catching the once-relentless fellow by his coattails, Europe hauled Maupin to her. Seizing his head in both hands, she cried out-somewhere between triumph and despair-and poured all the power she possessed into the wretched man. Eyes forced wide by the currents arcing through him, unable to voice his agony, Pater Maupin, owner of the Broken Doll and patron of the roust, suddenly blackened, and with a look of exquisite dismay burst into a flurry of ashen atoms and flying empty clothes.

28.

A LIFE OF ADVENTURE, A LIFE OF VIOLENCE.

occludile of lazarin one of the rare scripts employed by transmogrifers immediately upon inserting memetic organs into a person to make them a lahzar. Its rarity is in part attributable to the illicit and very difficult-to-obtain parts in its const.i.tution, and also the limits of its use. As any transmogrifer worth his or her fee will tell you, it also can serve as an aid for fortifying the memes (foreign organs) already within a lahzar's body.

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

Rossamund'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 Rossamund. 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, Rossamund 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!" Rossamund 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."

Rossamund 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 d.u.c.h.ess-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."

Rossamund'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, Rossamund 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 a.s.serted 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 Rossamund-"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 Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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 postic.u.m.

Looking often to the rudimentary bandaging about Europe's side-slowly reddening despite the strupleskin-Rossamund 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 b.u.mp 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, d.u.c.h.ess-daughter!" he exclaimed in undisguised consternation as he beheld the d.u.c.h.ess-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 Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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!" Rossamund 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 th.o.r.n.y chimneys drew their attention to a bright, upward-hurtling flare of pallid green.

The d.u.c.h.ess-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, Rossamund 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 that 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, Rossamund," Europe murmured, head lolling to the steady rock of the Baron's carriage, face afflicted with a gray pallor.

Rossamund 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 . . . ," Rossamund 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. Rossamund'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," Rossamund 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 st.i.tch 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund returned and, despite the other factotum's obvious reluctance at sharing the task, a.s.sisted 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, Rossamund paced in the vestibule before the infirmary, refusing the little triangles of b.u.t.tered 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 Rossamund 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 b.u.t.tered 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 Rossamund. 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-b.u.t.ter 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 Rossamund 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 Rossamund 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 . . . ?" Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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."

Rossamund's innards dropped at the mention of this infamous city where lahzars are made, full to its ridge-caps with ma.s.sacars 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 Brandenbra.s.s, Rossamund mar veled inwardly. How could we prevail in a place crammed with ma.s.sacars 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 d.u.c.h.ess-daughter."