Two-thirds of the way up the dribble-stained foundation by the slipway jutted a balcony of blackened iron beribboned in black and white and emerald green. Upon this three enormous men now appeared: elephantines, the presumed owners of Hullghast Articled Ordnance. Each took his turn to speak, bellowing through wide copper trumpets held up for them by lesser men, addressing the people both above and below with jowly movements of their flabby jaws. Crowded in the scant s.p.a.ce behind them, their staff-a gaggle of the usual bureaucrats and secretaries-listened and nodded their approbation in fixed and gla.s.sy-eyed rapture. Among them Rossamund identified three lean spurns-one a wit, and two fascin-wrapped scourges-standing taut and ready, and with them two fals.e.m.e.n reviewing the crowd critically. Automatically, the young factotum shrank from their gaze.

With a final flourish of music, and a "Hurrah!" from the throng and a splash of sour wine on its sharp ram, the iron-clad man-of-war slid stern first with surprisingly little noise into the Grume, the workers on its deck riding the motion with practiced ease. A great swirl of milky green waves and the half-done vessel was free, all the pent potential of its gastrines in their element at last, the shackled beast set free. Soon they would be turning, taking the weight of the screw and the vast bulk of wood and iron for the first time.

The former longing to serve a'sea beat a weak memorial in Rossamund's bosom, making time with the drumming. Yet his enthusiasm for a life in the Senior Service was surprisingly diminished, a memory of hope. Bidding mute farewell to this old dream, he watched sheer-drudges come to tow the new-launched ram to a watery berth where masts, cannon and all the appurtenances of a fighting vessel would be added.

The elephantines were wheeled away through doors in the stone at the back of the balcony, the band packed instruments in carriages and trundled away, and the mult.i.tude dispersed until Rossamund was one of the few still watching on the sand.Wishing to hear the soft lapping of the vinegar removed from the pounding of industry, he decided to take an amble south, away from the slipways and the piers and the sheer mill-side walls. With great expectation he took off his boots and, for the first time ever, walked unshod upon an ocean sh.o.r.e. He squeezed the swarthy sand with his toes in delight, grinning unselfconsciously at the cool air puffing against his cheeks. Insensible in his glee to the filth and kelp-rot, he walked about the many slight curves and bays in the seaside and through the high leg-frames holding aloft the cable housings of tidal millwheels. He jumped over the faucetlike openings of creeks and drains, stopping to examine the ooze and the rippling filament algae in their effluent while swallows darted overhead, dashing to and from modest nests poked into rotten stonework cavities and under eaves, soft clicks in the sky as they snapped at near-invisible bugs.

Farther yet he went until the throb of gastrine enginry became muted to something almost tuneful. In quiet joy he watched the stocky red crabs that diddled jaunty sideways dances, waving cheerfully at him with their singular large claws. With a twist of iron he found half entombed in the silt he prodded at the kelp, washed from the coastal deeps where great forests of the weed grew and made the insh.o.r.e waters less caustic. A hiss of flight caused him to look up and see a blue heron, neck bent back on itself, swoop in to harry a crab. With a mighty whoop, Rossamund danced down the strand, waving his hat and driving the bird off before it could make a meal of the pitiable critter. He laughed for pure delight as the heron flapped a quick retreat, winging past him with a single croak and a glare of wounded dignity. This, he decided, would have to be the best Domesday vigil of his brief span in the world.

With a hungry lurch in his innards, Rossamund chewed an insubstantial morsel-a crust end from the Dogget & Block-and pressed on south. Enjoying the lack of urgency beyond his own empty innards, he watched a row of weed-bunts and their diligent kelp-gathering crews draw about the sagging frame of a disused cofferdam and pa.s.s a wallowing prison hulk, ugly, black and rusting. He could not help but imagine the poor souls-deser ving and undeserving together-mouldering in its dark holds: souls like those miserable shackled people he had seen in the spokes.

A mute fluttering dart and a Tweet! above him drew Rossamund's attention. He looked up to find his little sparrow-spy hopping along the stone arch of the gateway to another flight of steps. It peered down at him in turn, beadily unafraid. In a kindly, thoughtless gesture, the young factotum offered his last morsel of crust to nibble. To his amazement the diminutive bird landed boldly in a bl.u.s.ter of nervous wings on the knuckle of his thumb and pecked with remarkable strength at the morsel, black defiant eyes regarding him closely.

Marveling at this plucky bird, Rossamund suddenly declared, "You need a name!"

The sparrow blinked at him.

Nothing clever came to mind.

He is brown, I suppose . . . , the young factotum observed rather obviously. And he dashes and darts about, he pondered a little lamely, sooo . . . Darter . . . Brown?

"Darter Brown." He spoke it out.

It was an odd name, yet the self-important little creature chirruped brightly as if in approval.With something akin to excitement it leaped up to perch on Rossamund's hat brim, causing the thrice-high to list over his eyes.

Rossamund drew his coat collar about his neck and continued his little seaside adventure. Back on the sand he walked farther south, following the meager convex strand, Darter Brown flitting along before him, chasing fat, lazy maritime flies. Going about an outward kink in the sh.o.r.e, they came across a boneyard of vessels left rib-exposed in the tidal muds, stripped of iron, masts and cordage. Their chines protruded corpselike from the silt, skeleton wrecks wallowing unwanted to rot in the shallows, sheltering wading flocks of dappled sandpipers and red-legged stilts.

Maybe a hundred yards away on the inward bend of the kink, a group of well-dressed gentlemen were loitering on the sand, looking powerfully out of place in their urban finery. Something oddly furtive in their manner gave the young factotum pause, and one striking fellow caught his particular attention. Standing maybe forty yards apart from the main group, this gent was resplendent in a long frock coat of slick carmine with black longshanks and high bright-blacked boots; his hair-tied in a whip-stock-was of the most surprising milk-white. Though he knew of white-blond hair, Rossamund had never seen such a thing, and its singularity was magnified by the peculiar location in which it was discovered. Words he did not catch were traded between this white-tressed gallant and the group. A second individual stepped from their midst, his baton-tailed hair a more ordinary brown but his attire of iridescent forest green no less splendid. There was a shout and the group stood away, scaling the begrimed sea wall by a long, jointed ladder that they must have brought themselves, leaving White-hair and Brown alone on the black strip. Another call and the two were suddenly flourishing pistols, one in each hand, brought out quick like true pistoleroes testing their speed. The quadruple hiss-CRACK! of their discharge came as a single stuttering report, their flashes of smoke whipped away by the rising winds.

At the sound Rossamund naturally ducked as if a mere bundle of drying kelp could protect him, hands fumbling for his potives in their unfamiliarly new digitals.

Darter Brown took wing and vanished over the wall.

Both had shot, yet only White-hair went down, folding in on himself like the closing of a well-made test-barrow. With a kick of sand in his foe's direction, Brown-hair sprang laughing up the ladder, his chums peering down from above sharing the joke. Once he was safely at the top, the ladder was hauled away and the white-haired duelist left writhing on the sh.o.r.e alone.

The cold, tingling touch of the encroaching tide on his toes brought Rossamund to sense. Running as quickly as only partly firm sand will permit, the young factotum approached the man, calling as he got close, "Ahoy, sir! Are you well? Ahoy!" Skidding as he stopped a few cautious feet from the double-bent fellow, Rossamund bent down himself. "Are you badly done in, sir? Where are you shot?"

"I'm not shot," came the m.u.f.fled reply, filled as much with impatience as pain.

"Pardon?" The young factotum craned further, trying to see the fellow's face, still buried in the huddle of his arms.

White-hair suddenly sat back and in a fright Rossamund did the same.

"I am not shot!" the fellow insisted in tetchy embarra.s.sment, lean face frightfully wan, hazel eyes streaming. "It was sack."

"Sack?"

"Yes, we load our irons with sack."

"Irons?"

"Yes! Irons! Dags! These!" The white-haired fellow lifted a beautiful black and silver pistola and waggled it irritably. "Firing-irons . . . Pistols . . ."

What kind of person is this? Rossamund nodded his comprehension. "Do you need help, sir?"

Wincing, White-hair sucked deep, deep breaths before answering. "No . . . no, I shall . . . shall soon . . . soon walk again . . ." Another even deeper and ruttling gasp. "That pursemouse simply hit me in . . . in the bullet-bag-a lucky shot he won't ever repeat . . . but it will teach me for not wearing a likesome . . . Always wear a likesome," he said again, in the tone of repeating an instruction.

Likesome? This was a proofed covered frame of stiffed leather some in the fighterly line liked to wear over their groin. Suddenly the nature of the man's discomfort became clear to the young factotum, and, clearing his throat awkwardly, he reached into his stoup. "Might I at least offer you this," he said, producing a vial of levenseep from his skolding collection, "and help you to a stairway?"

White-hair peered at the bottle and then looked a little doubtfully to Rossamund. "Leven-water, is it? I've not had that since Aunty saw me through the consumptive palsies of eighty-five. Well, thank you, my man." He took the vial and a healthy swig-more than necessary for a single dose-and smacked his lips as he gave the draught back. "There's the business!" he declared more cheerfully, with a couple of rapid, revivified blinks.

Peering about, Rossamund helped him to his feet, taking the weight as White-hair pressed heftily on him to rise.

"My word, you're a stout fellow," the young man declared in open surprise, shaking sandy grains from his sumptuous coat hems. Picking up his pistols, he examined them intensely for a moment with a deeply unhappy expression. "Sand in the workings," he muttered glumly, shaking his head.

"They look like fine pieces, sir," Rossamund observed conversationally.

"And well they are, sir!" the white-haired fellow exclaimed. "If you value your life over your purse, you will not spare even double money to buy a good dag: better an empty pocket than a cooling corpse, I say . . ." He blew hard over the locks and flints, cheeks bulging with the effort. With a quick glance to the sea, he returned them to the bright-black holsters hanging at either hip. "I believe it's time to depart. I suggest we go that way." He nodded back north, from where Rossamund had already come. "The closest grece is there."

The young factotum readily submitted to what he presumed was the man's superior local reckoning. He had felt the sting of the acrid Grume before and had no wish to soak in it again. The fellow shook off his discomfort, and his pace, though at first slow, soon picked up. They walked in silence, the young factotum pondering black beach and white sea, until the white-haired fellow piped, "What do they call you?"

"Uh . . . Rossamund . . . Rossamund Bookchild."

"Is that so?"

Rossamund could not tell whether the catch in his companion's voice was hesitation or the simple taking of a breath.

"How do ye do, Rossamund Bookchild. I am Rookwood-Rookwood Saakrahenemus Fyfe."

For all his mature airs, this Rookwood fellow was actually rather young-certainly a lot younger than, say, Fouracres or Mister Sebastipole. In light of the fellow's recent humiliation, there was something smilingly winsome and altogether pleasant in his expression, and Rossamund decided he liked him.

"Who was that other gentleman?" he asked.

"Oh." Rookwood became sheepish. "Uh-a friend . . . with a pretty wife . . . a strange turn of humor . . . and an overly fortuitous aim. Come! Let us be off before we are drowned."

ROOKWOOD.

With only a foot of treadable sand left between water and wall, they found a stairway off the beach.

"Here we are, still dry in cheery Pebble Knife," Rookwood said with a wry look to the lowering afternoon sky, the neglected seaside facades and the dour expressions and faded apparel of the few pa.s.sing people. "This is no place to strut alone . . . Perhaps we can walk each other out of here as we look for a takeny each and then go upon our ways?" he finished, with a look left and right.

They walked north along the sh.o.r.efront for a time, going by blunt bastion-towers on the right and once-bright paint and once-gaudy awnings now moldy and frayed on the left. Down alleys and blindways Rossamund caught sight of twinkling pebbly eyes and tall twitching ears, quickly followed-when he tried to look closer-by the hasty bobbing flash of retreating cotton tails.

Rabbits!

In their own progress, Rookwood drew some dark looks himself from lowlier souls. He did not seem to mind them. Rather, walking with less of a limp now, he chatted merrily enough about airy things, and mostly about himself. "Being a Bookchild would make you orphaned, yes? As am I, sir, as am I. My mother perished of the fevers . . ." He paused, reflective, for a breath. "And my father was sunk at sea at the Battle of Maundersea."

"Your father is Rear Admiral Fyfe?" Rossamund asked in astonishment, easily connecting this celebrated name from pamphlet tales and oft-taught lessons of naval matter; his admiration and wonder at this fellow were increasing with every moment.

"Indeed he was!" Rookwood frowned. "The great man himself, who died even as he won himself immortal fame defeating the Lombardy picaroons and so leaving me to the capricious generosity of my aunt Saakrahenemus-my mother's sister and of the main branch of family line," he added in rapid parenthesis. "Under her stringent care I have had a scant living paid at the start of each month that is-Ah-hah!" he exclaimed abruptly, interrupting himself. "The Lots grin on us! A moll potny!" He pointed to a lamppost corner where an olive-skinned girl in maid's smock and bonnet stood by a deep black pot sat atop a portable cast-iron stove. "Are you hungry, Master Bookchild?"

Rossamund most certainly was, and eagerly admitted it.

This moll potny was selling the reputedly famous bunny daube, the dish proving to be a surprisingly meaty stew livened up with scringings and "extras"-as she called them. For a gosling-a half-guise piece-she dished the dark brown ma.s.s from the pot into simple wooden pannikins bought for another gosling. Indeed, even rudimentary turnery was for sale.

"With enough money a fellow might never need to own his own kitchen!" Rookwood grinned.

Eating as they walked-Rossamund working hard to keep the sloppy daube from slipping down his coat front-they found a better quality of street that took them inland.

"If I may, how did you come by your hair?" Rossamund asked.

"Oh . . ." The fellow made a wry face. "I am told it is evidence of a Turkeman skeleton in our esteemed familial closet, some shameful connection-upon my father's side, of course-with one of our Empire's northern rivals hidden in the shades of antiquity. My aunt will not suffer it to be spoken on, yet here I am as a constant reminder of her shame." He grinned.

"I think too many folk are far too troubled by others' wherefores," Rossamund said seriously despite his own answering smile.

Rookwood peered at him wonderingly. "Just as I say, sir, just as I say . . . Isn't it always the way of it!" he complained suddenly. "When you are in need of a takeny, they are never there, and when you don't, they are all about you pestering for a fare! There should be a stand of them about that next corner."

Indeed there was, five in a row on Tomwither Walk, a thin curving street of limners and upholsterers and low-fashion perruquiers.

"Harkee, I thank you, young Rossamund, for your a.s.sistance," the white-haired fellow declared with all the manner of one set on departing. "I have places to be this evening and must be away."

"As have I, sir," the young factotum concurred. "And treacle to brew when I get there," he added with an anxious glance to the glow of the latening sun, hiding now behind steep roofs and making cryptic shadows of chimneys and spouts.

"Treacle, is it?" Rookwood seemed suddenly more attentive. "As in plaudamentum?"

"The same, sir."

"I take it then that you are a factotum?"The young man's interest was definitely piqued.

"That I am, sir." Rossamund doffed his thrice-high and gave a slight yet gentlemanly bow. "Factotum to the Branden Rose," he said proudly, then immediately regretted it as needless showing away. With another bow to cover his error he made to leave.

However, the effect of this revelation on his companion was marked.

"Come, come, fine fellow," Rookwood declared with a new animation, halting Rossamund with a light touch on his upper arm. "I was so eager to honor my appointments I have done you discredit! You have helped me at my lowest and not left me in my embarra.s.sment.The least I can return is some quisquillian deed as thank-you."

"Oh-uh-really, it is not-," Rossamund tried to say, wondering just what a quisquillian deed might be.

"Please, please! I insist you join me this evening-my appointment can become yours as well; I am diaried to join good friends at a rather well-acclaimed panto-show, The Munkler's Court-hilariously cackleworthy, or so I am told. Have you seen it?"

"Ah . . . no, sir, I have not." Rossamund did not know how to proceed. He had barely met the fellow, yet . . . what a grand finish it would be to step out with this flash son of the celebrated Rear Admiral Fyfe-a hero of both the pamphlets and real matter. On either hand, he had to get back to test the treacle, and said as much to Rookwood.

For a moment the young gent pressed a knuckle to musingly pursed lips. "I propose a plan that shall have you doing both," and even as he said this, he hailed a takeny-coach with an economic wave and a streetwise wink to the driver. "I shall accompany you to wherever you need to be to make your plaudamentum and, that done, you can don your gladdest threads and we shall make directly for the Hobby Horse, where the panto is playing."

Rossamund hesitated in an agony of indecision. Curious and cautious in one, he agreed, and in the very next breath was aboard the takeny. "I've never seen a panto before," he admitted as they rattled along the darkening lanes back to Cloche Arde.

"Ah, Mister Factotum, then you will be in for a spectacle," Rookwood enthused. "Memories of my first show are still my most vivid. They are like an ever-giving gift; I have to but recall it and I return to bliss. I hope it turns the same for you, sir!"

In the waxing gloom Rossamund could see scruffy black-coated streetlimners in stovepipe hats emerging to wind the shorter, distinctive red-posted seltzer lamps with their flimsy hooks-slight devices, nothing like the heavy martial fodicars employed by the Imperial Lighters of the Emperor's Highroads.

Keen to have Europe's plaudamentum made and be swiftly away again, the young factotum sprang enthusiastically from the takeny as it drew to a halt in the yard of Cloche Arde, leaving the young white-haired gent to keep the hired lentum waiting. "I might be some time," Rossamund called behind him, before dashing through the front door of his new home.

"Take all the revolutions of the clock you require, sir!" Rookwood proclaimed munificently through the carriage window, ogling Cloche Arde with untoward fascination. "We have the time, and my friends will happily accept my excuses when they find who it is I have brought with me."

At mains on her own in the solar, Europe c.o.c.ked Rossamund a quizzical look as he bustled in to her with her late-made treacle and breathy apologies.

"And here was I, worried you'd chosen naval life after all . . . ," she said mildly, a droll glimmer in her eye. "Ugh! Step away, little man," she said curtly with a flick of her hand. "You stink of the Grume! Clearly your day was spent at the seaside . . ." Her draught drunk, she had no objections to his request to go out again. "I am not your mother, little man, to tell you how best to spend your free hours. I myself shall be elsewhere this evening, visiting with the Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike-one of the few folk in this city worth the time-and would have invited you with me . . . But no matter. Go, see, enjoy."

Now that he knew of this option, Rossamund was mightily curious to accompany Europe and see the manner of person she might call friend. Yet having first accepted Rookwood's gesture, he stayed to his original course.

"Incidentally," the fulgar continued as Rossamund turned to go, "your masters pa.s.sed through this afternoon, rather keen to see you. Evidently you did not meet with them today, so I informed them that I have decided they will drive for me. They shall return tomorrow for a proper interview." About to turn back to her meal, she added, "Oh, and there is something waiting for you in your chamber."

Hurrying to his set, Rossamund found a harness case open on the chest at the end of his bed. Inside was laid the most costly and truly splendorous set of fresh-gaulded proofing-evidently Brugelle labored on a Domesday. Foremost was a broad-frocked coat in the richest midnight soe curling with bracken-frond brocade, st.i.tched in cloth-of-silver along its hems and cuffs and pockets. With it came a quabard half rouge, half viole-scarlet and pale magenta-and a sash checkered with the same colors. The mottle of Naimes. With the help of Pallette it took the long side of a quarter-hour to have it all properly adjusted. Next, he hung the two digitals-already charged with repellents and fulminants-from beneath his sash at either hip. When all was finally fitted, Rossamund admired the delicate shimmer of the swarthy silk, the gleam of the silver fancywork, the sheen of the black enamel, feeling like the fine-dressed prince of some sumptuous court. After a quick redistribution of valuables from old coat to magnificently new, he returned, all breathless thanks, downstairs.

Shooing aside his grat.i.tude, Europe had him turn about thrice to show the fine cut, inquiring as he slowly spun, "Tell me, Rossamund, what play will you see?"

"Oh, The Munkler's Court, I believe," he answered with rapid gusto, peering from the front hall through the door into the solar. "At the Hobby Horse."

"Truly?" The fulgar raised a knowing brow. "An interesting choice . . . ," she said slowly and gave Rossamund a pointed glance he did not understand. "Have a care, little man" was all she said in parting.

"I shall," he said eagerly as he turned to go, yet as he stepped out to the waiting takeny, her warning repeated inwardly like a twist in his conscience.

7.

A NIGHT IN THE TOWN.

Droid second-brightest star in the Signal of Lots, the constellation presiding over choices and chances; it is the superlative (Signal Star) most sought when testing fate and taking knowing risks, its position in the heavens relative to other lights telling on your future, should you care to heed such stuff-though such scrying is said to be the province of scoundrels, mendicants, and the weak-headed.

SLOTTED on Paneglot Street in the playwrights' suburb of Pantomime Lane between drab three-story tenements, the Hobby Horse was a brilliant, blatant red, with a domed roof of stark cobalt blue. The apex of the crimson facade was topped with a curling escutcheon in white bearing the head and legs of a laughing horse.

Beneath it, set in hollows, were two pallid statues, the ancient patrons of the stage: the immortal blank-masked clown Ratio in comic pose on the right, and on the left the ageless tragedian Stillicho, wrapped in heavy drapes and reaching down imploringly to high-minded theatasts and common vigil-night revelers alike.

Scarcely missing some limnla.s.s lighting the way of a grog-swaying couple along the street, the takenyman deposited the two pa.s.sengers on the very edge of the panto-going night steppers. Censured by other takeny-drivers for daring to halt in their way, and in his own hurry to be off again with another fare, the takenyman demanded his fee with a snarl.

"If you get this'un, Mister Bookchild," Rookwood said as he reached for his wallet, "I'll go in for the entry."

The wait at Cloche Arde made the price steep, yet Rossamund had sufficient change from the original twenty sous folding money and the refund of the crossing fee and was happy to cover his share of the night. Intent on some destination well within the blue-and-yellow foyer of the Hobby Horse, Rookwood took him by the cuff and wheedled them through the squeeze. Close with a confusion of perfumes, rumspice and the breath of a hundred souls, the panto house bubbled with every variety of accent: familiar Bosch, Brandenard with its flatter vowels, near-incomprehensible Gott, the Patricine lilt, the rolling pa.s.sion of Sedian voices-these and more, all raised in animated and amiable clamor. Beggarly gleedupes moved through it all, deep trays full of folios and overripe vegetable matter hanging from their shoulders, boasting the low, low price of their articles. "Songs for the singing and fruit for the throwing!"

Amid the crush and the magnificence Rookwood finally found his friends: a trio of young women in peculiar costume standing by a sky blue pilaster. They made an aloof group, maintaining s.p.a.ce about themselves with long looks aimed at anyone insensible enough to come too near. At Rossamund's approach they turned this disapproval on him.

"Hale night, young damasels," Rookwood cried to them. "What's to do with you?"

"We are a-puzzle, Mister Fyfe, wondering what manner of creature you have brought us?" the middle of the trio demanded. She was dressed mannishly-a little like Europe-in shimmering black frock coat with high collar and long cuffs, the top of her tall boots edged with white fur. "Is this the reason you are so late?"