"Mister Bookchild," Rookwood said, smiling rea.s.suringly, "my chums." With open palm he gestured to the leftmost, a short girl, poorly pale and wrapped neck-to-toe warm in a cloak of peac.o.c.k blue with a collar of fur in a similar hue. "First may I name Frangipanni of Worms, come to study skolding at the Saumachutra, dear confidante and rent-sharer."

About her head and neck Frangipanni wore a blue wimple topped by a s.h.a.ggy hispinster of the same cerulean pelt; across her mouth was a deep prus spoor-a thick band reaching from ear to ear and darkening her top lip, the mark of a skold . . . With the narrow, tilted eyes of her race she regarded Rossamund stonily, yet acknowledged him with a curtailed bow.

Rossamund lifted his hat politely.

"Here, with her excellent questions," Rookwood continued, indicating the middle girl, her face spoored with thin black spikes coming down from either eye to her jaw and wearing a small thrice-high fixed to her black hair with tines, "is Eustacia Brick-"

Glowering at Rossamund as if to shrivel the very contents of his soul, the girl cleared her throat very loudly and pointedly.

"I mean," Rookwood corrected, "Miss Avarice-raised on the Brandentown high streets just as I."

Composing herself, the one who named herself Avarice blinked at him languidly. "Good evening," she murmured.

With a name like Eustacia Brick, Rossamund could hardly blame her for the change. He doffed his thrice-high to her as well.

"Lastly-yet equally"-Rookwood directed attention to the final girl, most notable in that she wore a high crown of mauve wax-paper-"is Madamielle Trudgette, sent up from the south by her parents much exercised by her frolics at home and saving coin for Sinster."

Madamielle Trudgette loured at her presenter, her pale eyes made fierce by the curling black spoors figured completely about them. Wrapped tight in winds of fine, almost gossamer cloth of richly delicate pink, she clutched a thin staff to her side, much like a fuse in dimensions but with a five-pointed star at the top.

Saving coin for Sinster . . . Rossamund had a sudden flash of Europe as she was in the portrait in her file-youthful, hopeful, resolute on becoming an astrapecrith. Feeling a strange connection with this Trudgette, Rossamund graced the pink-swathed yearnling-girl with a slightly deeper beck.

Attention fixed on her friend, Trudgette ignored him completely. "I am only doing as Epitome Bile or ze Casque Rogine or Violette Lune or even ze Branden Rose 'ave done," she said defensively. "Free from Mama and Papa, I am set for ze life of adventure."

"Well, happy day for you, m'dear." Rookwood beamed. "For my new friend," he said, patting Rossamund warmly on the back, "is none other than the factotum of the very same Branden Rose you so enthusiastically emulate! Is that not so, sir?"

"It is-" The young factotum was stopped in the face of their flowering amazement as each girl stared at him as if he were the Emperor himself.

"Truly!" Avarice breathed, suddenly sociable.

" 'Ow did ze come by such an admirable appointment?" Trudgette asked, wide-eyed and now not looking nearly as fierce.

Unbalanced by such rare and open admiration, Rossamund could not help but boast, "I-I make the best treacle she has ever had."

"I thought her script-fellow was supposed to be an authentic full-formed man who came with a box on his face." Avarice's delight was soured with a slight yet sudden skepticism. "What is his name . . ."

FRANGIPANNI.

"Licurius," Trudgette answered quickly, her accent giving the foul fellow's name a lyrical lift it did not deserve. "But 'e was nicker-killed zis six months pa.s.sing."

"How did you know?" Rossamund was a little thrown that utter strangers might have tell of this.

"Because . . . ," Rookwood answered, pulling a folded bundle of paper from his pocket, "we like to know all the doings of the lahzarines and other orgulars." He tapped the top sheet.

TheWasp, it read in gaudy print. It was a scandal.

A small knot clutching in his innards, Rossamund hoped that the Defamiere was on this fellow's reading list. Clearly, these four excited young souls were obsequines, ardent devotees of monster-hunters and especially lahzars. Rossamund peered at them guardedly.

"There, we are all met!" Rookwood declared happily. At the shimmering hoom of a gong he added, "Shall we go in?" He grasped Rossamund's arm. "Come along, the show is about to begin!"

Letting himself be carried along in this bl.u.s.ter of jovial enthusiasm, the young factotum, with his new companions, was shown by a footman through a door to a balcony stall. These were very good seats-close to the small stage and looking right over the boards.

Though dim, ready for the imminent performance, the heaven-blue theater was far taller and deeper than it appeared possible from its small front upon the street. Every edge and skirting and corner was gilt-rimmed, the long ceiling painted to look like a bank of fluffy moon-shone clouds warm-lit beneath as if illuminated by the radiance of the stage itself. Every balcony stall was filling with periwigs, gleaming silk, feathery frills and peering lorgnettes, the benches all but taken by scratch-bobs, straw bonnets and tricorns.

Rookwood waved to some a.s.sociate down in the inferior benches. Rossamund saw the briefest glimpse of a thin fellow with round spectacles beckoning in return before all useful light was extinguished.

Only the soft glow from the musicians' pit to the left of the open stage remained.

The young factotum's chest thumped in antic.i.p.ation.

To the swell of reedy nasal piping and clashing tambourine, the stage light flared and the panto began. Before a backdrop of wide idealized wildlands, tableau pines and elegant poplars dotting low and aesthetically pleasing hills, a man emerged from the side shadows. Dressed in an elaborate silver frock coat and silver-gray wig, the fancy's face was paste-white, his cheeks garishly rouged. For all his finery he held an ax that he flourished like some overly eager woodsman. "Lards, ladles and gentlespoons!" he cried with high-speaking elocution and many a rrrrolling "r" that reminded Rossamund of poor Master Pinsum, burned up in the fire of the marine society. "Our opening offerrring we brrring before you is sure to t.i.tivate your humours with its happy hijinkerrry. Here now the Buffoon Courteous Players playing the Thrrree Brrrothers Hob!"

The auditorium near burst with boisterous, hallooing applause.

Flushed with enchantment and glad to have been invited, Rossamund chortled and clapped with the rest as the players pranced a-stage. They wore grotesque wide-mouthed masks with crooked horns and protuberant ears-the cla.s.sic lampoon of a nicker. p.r.o.nking about the boards, they waggled their back-ends at the cackling crowd and cried out with extreme and comic gravity. One farce steadily gave way to the next, and the entire panto unfolded as a bitter invective against monsters, the age-old anger submerged in cheap laughter and rowdy and hissing fun. Rossamund's delight diminished with each shoddy insult until he was sitting hunched in his seat.Yet beside him Rookwood laughed with such unabashed glee-rocking and hooting his approval at each new and authentically comical novelty-that the young factotum could not help smiles of his own.

Finally the show was run, and in an acme of relief, Rossamund was bustled by Rookwood and friends onto the cool street at last. Barreling aboard a takeny and on to the next venue without a pause, they were joined by the bespectacled friend seen waving from the benches: Eusebus Something . . . Rossamund did not catch his family name.Tall and thin, with strangely cropped hair, Eusebus was an initiate at the city's sole athenaeum and proved only mildly impressed at the young factotum's credentials.

"How-now, Mister Bookchild." Rookwood grinned as the driver slowly extracted them from the near-riotous profusion of carriages and carelessly cheerful pedestrians. "You did not seem to smile much as the show went on. I trust it was a tickle to your fancybone?"

"Not planning on becoming a ridiculous eeker, are you?" Eusebus offered wryly.

"Well, I . . . ah-," the young factotum began, but was happily overborne by the sickly Frangipanni.

"For the true teratologist and her devoted servant the contest with the monster is too serious to be so lightly treated," she declared imperiously in Rossamund's defense, a faint Gottish lift in her accent.

"You would surely know, Franny," Avarice responded. "I have never seen a more serious teratologist than you, and you never laugh at the pantos."

The young skold stared at her coldly, coughed feebly and said nothing.

Unable to goad her, Avarice turned to the young factotum. "So tell us, Master Factotum," she demanded happily. "Tell us of the Branden Rose."

So began an a.s.sault of questions.

"What is she like to work for? Is she overly harsh?"

"Well, she is not overly taut," Rossamund tried.

"Does she pay well?" This from Eusebus.

To this Rossamund just frowned, yet their eagerness was undiminished.

"Is she as careless of men as ze pamphlets say?"

Dumbfounded, all he could think to say was, "She is a private woman . . ."

"What first stance does she prefer? Procede sinister or procede dexter? Or does she do away with such formality and adopt perto adversus?"

"I-"

"I knew it! Perto adversus! Like any fighter with a proper, modern mind ought."

"How many effreins-nickers-has she killed?"

At this he shrugged. "A lot, certainly . . ."

"I heard she marks her arms with little crosses; is that true?" Avarice pressed, and went straight on without an answer. "I shall do just the same upon my first kill-none of these vulgar so-called n.o.ble marks more common fighters get."

"Does she add anything . . . well, additional to her treacle?" Rookwood inquired knowingly.

Rossamund could not think of what additional part might be so infamously added to treacle, beyond sweet-la.s.s.

"Ah yes!" Avarice added. "Some of Sinster's children like to have sang egregia or extract of goat weed put in their plaudamentum," she said with all the authority of a genuine factotum, "or replace xthylistic curd with lard of Nmis."

"Oh . . ." Rossamund scowled, recognizing these parts as those that, though they went to make a person brave and strong, were dangerously habit-forming and spoiled a person's soul. "No, nothing beyond the proper list."

"Were you zere when zis Licurius fell?" Trudgette asked, her voice low and shaking with scarce-contained enthusiasm.

Not at all willing to explore such a memory publicly, Rossamund simply stared at her.

Rookwood intervened. "Come! Let us not swamp the fine fellow with our zeal!"

That very moment, on a street of narrow-fronted countinghouses and clerical suppliers, the takeny overtook a gaggle of dolly-mops on their way to night-working mills and spinning halls, working even through a Domesday. Each was dressed in bright versions of maid's clobber, laughing and chatting and accosting any awkward fellow unfortunate enough to be in their path. Leaning far out from the window, Eusebus tipped his hat to them and sang loud and clear: Dance with a dolly with a hole in her stocking,

a hole in her stocking, a hole in her stocking . . .

To this the laboring-girls shrieked friendly taunts.

"Come down here, my sweet, and we'll dance ye!"

"Ahh, modern girls." Eusebus beamed, at which his friends laughed heartily, and they pa.s.sed on.

Though Rossamund could have with fair accuracy found north, after only fifteen minutes of the carriage's mazing progress in the dark and the increasing fog down rows of storehouses and shipping clericies, he had little notion of where they arrived. Now that the carriage was still, saturnine tollings of floating hazard bells could be heard lolling on the waves-some near, some far, speaking of his proximity to the sea. Indeed, the sweet vinegar stink and the pocked precipice of the Stunt Veil sea wall confirmed it. Across the gloomy street stood a lonely house, four stories tall and built on the harbor's edge right into the sea wall. A green bright-limn hung above its cherry-red painted front door, one of the few lights visible in the miry night.

"What is this?" Rossamund asked skeptically as they huddled from the damp beneath its eaves.

"The Broken Doll, my fine fellow!" Rookwood proclaimed cheerfully.

"The merry end of the night," Eusebus added, peering through water-splashed lenses. "Vittles, vino and gaming vices.You'd better hope Droid is smiling down upon you."

Droid? Rossamund frowned. He instinctively looked up to locate this heavenly light and was foiled by the obstructing cloud, a cloying roof on the night.

"How could Droid not smile on such an ill.u.s.trious young man?" Rookwood returned, grinning at him grandly.

A correct answer from Eusebus to the rough challenge through an iron lattice at the top of the crimson portal had the six admitted by sleek-looking door wards in deep green soutaines. Led down a long obverse as red as the front door, Rossamund felt shrewd observation from the row of grilled loophole slits on either hand.Through double doors of dark green they were brought into a suddenly swelling din. Here was a wide room of gilt furnishings, confidentially lit by large paper lanterns of white and vermilion, both walls and floor blood-red much as the gun deck of a ram, as if wild and splattering violence was expected. Folk of all stations gathered about oval tables to play each other at cards, lots and calling games. Coins sat in unequal count by each player-golden sous, oscadril billions, gra.s.sus from the Gottlands, silvery sequins, larger carlins, Hergott doubles, strange foreign counters of unusual shapes-and with them wads of folding money. Thick and uncomfortably tepid, the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed anger and naked greed.

Chanceries-gambling houses-were illegal in Boschenberg; surely it was the same in Brandenbra.s.s?

Gaggles of admiring spectators collected wherever aristocratic clients played, oohing and ahhing at the twists and tricks, calling encouragements and commiserations as they sought to ingratiate themselves with their chosen sponsor. In his brief review, Rossamund spotted a wit dressed in an unremarkable gray soutaine, his entire face spoored with a thick blue arrow; a sagaar wrapped in tight hide, wearing the mask of a white horse and gently rocking from foot to foot in the restless motion of the perpetual dance; and several pistoleers with their telltale curling mustachios. While he watched, there came a confused roar of dismay and delight. Cards were thrown down in disgust while one happy fellow in a high periwig gathered his winnings.

Ear bent to Rookwood's brief instruction, a footman in deep verdigris took the six on through the clamor and up broad red stairs to a smaller, quieter room arranged with a trio of gaming tables. One green wall was almost entirely formed of tall grated windows that peered north out on the rain-washed spectacle of Middle Ground at night. Harbor lights glowed dully, cl.u.s.tered in terrestrial constellations of blue and white and the occasional red. In one corner a highwigged quartet of string-fiddlers sat playing gentle music for the quieter collection of clientele gathered about each table.

"Ahh," Frangipanni declared with a thin, rare smile of pleasure at the sweet melody.

"Hmm, yes, always like a snip of Stumphelhose," Rookwood added, naming the supposed composer and smug in his cultural enlightenment.

"It is Greenleaf Whit, actually . . . ," Frangipanni corrected with a derisive sniff and a slight unhealthy wheeze while the other three laughed.

"Ah . . ." The white-haired gent's face twisted to collect itself against embarra.s.sment.

"Don't worry, my man," Eusebus smirked, patting Rookwood on the shoulder. "It is easy enough to confuse the two; one is a disciple of the other, after all."

"Certainly," the other returned tightly, then quickly went to sit at the available table standing by a ma.s.sive white hearth taller than a man. "I'm always ardently fond of the fire here . . . Perfectly distinct and excellently warm!"

"You are not playing?" Avarice inquired of Rossamund, noticing him hanging back by the door as she took her seat.

"No, miss, I will just watch," he answered, recalling with a twinge of melancholy the friendly games of pirouette and lesquin he joined with Threnody and the lighters of Wormstool, where winners and losers traded only ch.o.r.es. "I might sit a hand for favors but not for money."

"Whoever heard of such a thing!" Avarice returned.

"Perhaps he is shrewd enough to know that Droid is not in a smiling way for him," Eusebus interjected with a sardonic smirk and an understanding wink to Rossamund.

The observation held some merit, for Rossamund had never won a single hand with the Wormstool lighters. "I am not very good at cards," he concurred.

"Sit with us anyway, Master Rossamund," Rookwood murmured in his ear. "We shall teach you proper carding."

"We surely will, my man," Eusebus declared winsomely to the young factotum. "Droid and I are poor friends when I sit the table, so we can lose together, you and I."

At such an invitation, Rossamund consented, and while food was ordered-pullet and ramsin broth, slices of warmed vinegar pie and bottles of zin-he watched the fall of cards.

The game they preferred was called flout, where-from what Rossamund could fathom by the incomplete instruction he received-low cards were high and a player had to bluff his or her way to success. When he finally joined, he kept his face as blank as possible, betting small and losing small and wishing he had a falseman's eyes. Rookwood and Trudgette seemed best at the bluff, winning almost as much as each other, and despite himself, Rossamund was drawn into the play, sipping his never-empty gla.s.s of vin with excitedly careless frequency. By the fourth round, the pot in the middle growing and growing until it was up to nigh on thirty sous, only Rookwood and Trudgette had stayed in too, their own hands spread before them, the want-to-be fulgar already triumphant with red hag and both crocidoles.

Gaze vibrating and unfocused, Rossamund looked at his hand: red selt, black selt and a black hag-it could not get any lower. Nervously, he laid down his ask-his bet-small as always. Then, rather unceremoniously, he slapped his cards down on the black velvet tabletop to a collective gasp.

Astounded faces blinked in turn at him and at his play.

He had won!

"Ah-hah!" Rookwood exclaimed, clapping him heartily on the back. "Well done, that fellow! Droid smiles on you after all!"

Astonished, Rossamund beheld the pile of silver and golden and crisp papery loot.