'Well done,' she said, with a wry look. 'You're learning.'
He beamed with joy and hurried off. He had a smile for every person he passed: elegant couples out for a Domesday stroll; stevedores bearing loads; striped-shirted vinegaroons taking shore leave; flamboyantly wigged rams' captains in gorgeous frock coats doing much the same; important-looking men stuffed into stiff, ludicrously high collars talking on important things beneath feathered and furred thrice-highs. How wonderfully strange it felt to have that little time of liberty in this gorgeously foreign city!
With awe he stepped through the great iron gates that split the mighty seawall and allowed access to the city from the piers and berths. The wall's foundations were blackened by century-long lapping of the bitter waters of the Grume. All along its lofty summit were batteries of cannon; catapultlike devices called tormentums-for throwing great smoking bombs of the most venomous repellents; and lambasts-machines of war that flung spears dipped in various wicked poisons. As with all coastal cities, High Vesting was in deadly earnest about keeping the cunning monsters of the deep away.
Rossamund skipped past the seawall and down a long stone pier way. It was intersected by many long, high wooden wharves and lined with many smaller craft, some ironclad, some with hulls of wood. So many vessels were there, with their clutter of tall masts, that walking among them was like moving through a strange forest. Out beyond all this, however, out in the deeper waters of the Mullhaven, were the rams. It was these mighty vessels of war that he wanted to see. It was upon these that he had been expected to serve.
At the end of the pier, moored on a low dock that went out to the right, he discovered a frigate. These were one of the smaller oceangoing rams, with a shallow enough draft to be this close to shore. It was about the length of a monitor, but sat much higher out of the water, so that it could survive the swell of the sea. Fascinated, he happily let his head swell with all the instruction he had received and reading he had done on them. He inspected the single row of ports out of which the cannon would be run, counted each one-twenty-eight in all; he admired the graceful curve of the bow, which gave these warships their name as it ran out and down to the ram; he read the brass nameplate fixed to the fo'c'sle. Surprise, it said. Rossamund almost swooned. This vessel was famous! It was the fastest of its type in the whole navy, perhaps even the whole world. He had read of it in pamphlets and had even been taught of it at Madam Opera's. It had served faithfully for over one hundred years!
Then his gaze fixed upon an enormous, dark vessel out in the Mullhaven.
A main-sovereign!
These were the largest of all the rams and this one was absolutely gigantic, dwarfing all the vessels about. Its bow-ram did not jut nearly so far as the frigate's, for it was thought too big and too slow to successfully charge other vessels. It relied instead on its thick strakes-the iron plates that armored the hull-and the two decks of 120 great-guns that armed either broadside. Rossamund had always thought this an excellent number of cannon: it meant that for a main-sovereign to fight effectively, she needed a crew of at least fourteen hundred men…
'Hello, Rosy Posy!' The cry intruded upon his technical romance.
He knew that voice.
Looking about, quickly he found a face he recognized aboard the Surprise. It was a fellow foundling two years his senior who had shipped off to serve in the navy eighteen months ago. His name was Snarl. He was taller, broader, looked stronger-but it was still Snarl. While at Madam Opera's, he had been, after Gosling, one of those most active in tormenting Rossamund.
He looked up at his fellow foundling of old, squinting into the glare of sunlit clouds. 'Oh… hello, Snarl,' he returned coolly. It should have been an occasion of pride to learn that one of his old bunk-mates was now serving aboard so renowned a ram, but the character of Snarl undid any feelings of such camaraderie.
'Well, well, by and by, it's ol' Missy-boots himself, come to see me sitting high on me mighty boat!' Snarl swaggered along the gangway to stand directly above Rossamund. He called to his fellow crewmen. 'Look 'ere, lads, here's a fellow I grew up with.'
Some of the younger members of the crew looked down upon the foundling standing upon the pier. Some even gave him a genuine grin.
Rossamund smiled back cautiously.
'As fine a grummet as ever there was, this one, all manners and kindness,' Snarl continued in his high-handed voice. 'Got a girl's name to go with it, haven't you, Rossamund?' Snarl had not changed.
Rossamund turned and walked back up the pier. 'Good-bye, Snarl,' he muttered.
He stepped onto a wharf with the brash laughter of the fellow society boy ringing after him. Though he had only been away from his old way of life for less than a fortnight, it already felt like a long time ago. To meet another child from there, rather than bringing it all back, only made this feeling of dislocation stronger. He wondered if Snarl had leaped from the decks of a moving cromster, watched a lahzar in a fight, thrown bothersalts in the face of some grinnlings or dragged an ailing fulgar to a wayhouse. Rossamund marveled that he had seen and done more in the last two weeks on his own than in two years in the foundlingery.
For a while he wandered about the many smaller craft berthed along either side, taking turns carelessly, trying hard not to brood upon this encounter. He had somehow thought that his fellow foundlings would all grow up once they had left the little world of Madam Opera's and become a little more sober, a little kinder.
He approached the end of yet another wharf. The clock over the square was still visible through all the masts. Rossamund checked again as he had several times so far: it was time to return. He went to turn back when a powerful smell briefly overpowered the perfume of the Grume. He knew that stink…
Swine's lard!
A firm hand cunningly pinched the back of his neck. 'Well, what's this 'ere then, an' ol' chum returned to the fold?' It was Poundinch. The oily rivermaster loomed over the boy. 'Miss us, did ye, Rosey-me-lad?'
Rossamund went slack and pale with terror, a deep, sinking terror that made him want to vomit.
'Ah, look-'e's gone all emotion'l at such an 'appy reunion,' purred Poundinch.
Somehow Rossamund found his tongue. 'Ah-ah-hello, Rivermaster P-Poundinch.'
'Hello, Rosey-ol'-boy. I'm called Cap'n Poundinch when I'm in these parts, tho', so ye'll need to reschool yer tongue.'
The pressure upon Rossamund's neck increased subtly but so skillfully that he was compelled to step forward toward a gangplank before him. There she was, the Hogshead, listing slightly to the aft ladeboard quarter but still very much intact. That was where the oh-so-familiar smell had come from. It would always be the smell of dread for Rossamund.
'Huh-how did you escape the monitors?' he somehow managed.
'Ah, Rosey-me-lad,' Poundinch purred, tapping his greasy nose with the scarred and grubby forefinger of his free hand, 'that's ol' Poundy's way-slipperier than swine's lard, me… Aren't ye 'appy for me?'
'… Um…' was all the foundling could offer.
Poundinch pushed him up the gangplank and followed closely behind. Rossamund thought briefly of leaping into the water, but he had been instructed, over and over, that the caustic waters of the Grume were no place for a person to find himself bobbing about. With that escape route unavailable, he found himself where he thought he would never be again-upon the deck of the Hogshead. Only Gibbon was here, no other crew. He was chewing his black fingernails as he stood by the splintered stump of the tiller.
'Look 'ere, Gibbon, th' lad couldn't stay away, 'e missed us so!' Poundinch kept shoving the foundling all the way to the hatchway. Rossamund pushed against each shove stubbornly.
Gibbon peered dumbly at the foundling for a moment, then his gaze sharpened. 'Oh aye, oi rememb'r. 'Ello, boi'o.'
Rossamund kept his head down. He was too far away, he knew, for Fouracres or Europe to spy him. He reckoned also that at this less-than-salubrious end of the docks other sailors would pay little heed to the subtle struggle taking place aboard the Hogshead.
The hatchway was open, as it usually was, and with that cunning neck-pinch, Poundinch forced the boy to start his way down the ladder. 'Just goin' to finish up an ol' con-vosation with this'un 'ere,' he called to Gibbon as he himself started down.
Rossamund descended slowly, his senses reacquainting themselves with the profound lack of light and the overwhelming stench. He could just make out that the hold had been cleared of all its barrels, yet the powerful odor of the swine's lard had remained, soaked into the very wood of the cromster's frames and decking-and with it the hint of some far worse fetor. Yet these smells were not all that had been left. A bright-limn hung from a central beam about halfway between the ladder and the bow. It helped little but was enough to show, to Rossamund's
