Cheeks burning from her rebuke, Rossamund shrank back, confronted with how little he knew of this pugnacious woman.
'How can we not be violent when violence breeds in the very mud and makes monsters of us all?' Europe persisted. 'Stay here and you will be fighting just as you have been, always fighting: if not with nickers then with men.What did you think a life of adventure was?' She smiled condescendingly. 'It is a life of violence. Come with me, and at least your foe will be clear.'
'Not all monsters are our enemies,' Rossamund insisted doggedly.
Europe regarded him with an unfathomable expression. 'Truly?' she said eventually. 'You might want to shift yourself to Cloudeslee if you insist on spouting talk like that. Sedorners get short shrift in the Emperor's countries.'
'But what about that poor Misbegotten Schrewd? He was just simple, not wicked, yet you killed him all the same. And you wanted to slay Freckle when he had helped me. I could never join you in that!'
Europe sat back, her gaze dangerously glassy, a threat in her tone. 'Next you'll be telling me those triply undone blightlings were right for killing my dear Licurius.'
'No!' he said quickly, eyes wide with horror. 'I would never say that!'
There was a strained silence.
Europe sipped at a glass of deep red toscanelle and looked away. 'You are a small and ignorant urbanite; once you have lived and watched and been forced to such things as I have you will not be so simple-headed.'
Rossamund could not collect his thoughts sufficiently to answer. He was right but so was she, though he wished she was not. Mercifully they were interrupted by the arrival of meals.
For a time they ate and did not speak.
'Little man,' Europe finally offered between bites, 'tell me of this pig's head and that Snooks fellow, the surgeon.'
'Oh, the Snooks is not the surgeon, that's Grotius Swill-'
Europe stopped eating. 'Did you just say Swill? Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill?'
'Aye.' The young prentice stopped his chewing too.
'Hmm. I have heard of the man,' the fulgar said gravely. 'He has an evil reputation in Later Sinster.What has he done to you?'
'Naught! I only took up the guts and head of a pig to him,' Rossamund explained, and told of the attic surgery and the books and the flayed skin. 'What is his reputation?'
'I heard that the fellow was caught dabbling in the darker habilisms and had traffic with folks all but the most scurrilous butchers avoid. Rumor is a poor transmitter of truth, but it was said that the Soratche were becoming increasingly curious about his exertions.'
Rossamund frowned at this revelation. 'The who, miss?'
'The Soratche: they are a loose confederacy of those do-good calendar-kind keen on foiling massacars.'
'Is Swill a massacar, then?' Rossamund gasped. 'We should tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!'
Europe raised a calming hand. 'There was much conjecture in Later Sinster, but nothing proved. I am sure your kindly old Earl has things well in view. In such a tight place as this fortress, genuinely nefarious deeds would be hard to hide.'
Aye, but what if the fortress is not as tight as it should be? Rossamund wondered. Even he could tell the manse was creeping to disarray in the failing grip of the overworked marshal-lighter, a punctilious clerk-master and men so stretched that there were none left to plug the breaches. Rossamund shifted his thoughts. 'Miss Europe?'
'Yes, little man?' the fulgar replied absently, taking out and chewing on a little rock salt.
'What was it like going to Sinster?' he asked. 'What did you do there?'
Europe cocked her head and looked to him, a wry, energetic twinkle in her eye. 'The journey was brief,' she said. 'I left High Vesting the same day as you; took a fast packet down to Flint-where the doughty crew discouraged a curious sea-nicker with their fine gunnery and well-aimed lambasts. Then a barge up the Ichabod and I was under the transmogrifer's catlin not more than two weeks after I first met you.'
'You saw a sea-nicker, miss?' Rossamund's imagination ran with the image of a ram firing its broadside at some enormous, marauding, eel-like thing with spines and needle teeth. He had never seen a sea-nicker or a kraulschwimmen, nor any such creature-not for real-just poorly executed etchings in his pamphlets.
'I actually saw very little of it but for a great amount of splashing and some distant screaming,' the fulgar answered. 'I was directed to the seating deck soon after it appeared. It was a close-run thing for a time, but the fast packet was truly that and we outran the beast in the end. A good thing, for I do not think I would have been much help had the thing won its way aboard us. Even if I had been at my best, the puddles and splashes on deck would have taken my arcs to places they were not intended.'
'Did the surgeon mend you?' Rossamund pressed.
'Yes, he did.' Europe straightened, rubbing her arm as if it ached. 'I feel greatly improved. He told me to keep to my treacle and it will be less likely for my organs to vaoriate in future as they did that night in the Brindleshaws.' Bitterness returned briefly to her countenance.
'Vaoriate, miss?'
The horn of a post-lentum sounded, dulled by wall and window.
'Spasm,' she said distractedly.
There was a hasty knock at the door. It opened and a porter put his head inside. 'The post's ready, m'lady. Do ye need yer bags lumbered out?'
Europe nodded and handed him a chit so he might retrieve her luggage from a stowage closet below.
'Listen, Rossamund, I am leaving on the last post today. I would sooner have you with me than not-your flair for a good treacle is hard to forgo.Yet as you say, you have taken the Emperor's Billion and a solemn oath on the day of joining. Imperial Service is not something that can be put on then off again like some ill-tailored jackcoat. If you proved faithless in this, then what trust could a girl put in you?' she said slowly, with deliberate calm. She stared at the floor, lips pressed thin. 'However, I wonder if you young prentices should not first be schooled in the rotten core of the Empire you serve before being offered a shiny Emperor's Billion.'
'A rotten core, Miss Europe?'
'Ask your Marshal, little man-he is more recently schooled in Imperial machinations than I. Such things I escaped a long time ago.' She paced out of the room without a rearward glance.
Down in the foreparts of the coach yard, the Branden Rose mounted the lentum ready to depart for the Idlewild and the mysteries of the east. Standing on the highest step, she stared darkly for a time at the spandarion rumpling in the fitful wind that moved above the battlements, and at the house-watch that moved along them.
Below, waiting, Rossamund watched her silently.
'I go to do my usual labors-find a nicker, kill a nicker,' said Europe finally by way of farewell. 'I may be wintering at the Brisking Cat on the highroad at the Sourspan Bridge. If you wish to write me, send to there and I shall get it either way.'
'I will,' the prentice answered. There was a pause. He wanted to say that he sometimes regretted not taking up her repeated offer of work, yet could not think how. Moreover, after his refusals such sentiments seemed a little late and a little foolish. Either way, he could never willingly accept a living made through a perpetual, thoughtless slaughter of bogles.
Europe peered at him knowingly.
'Do not be troubled, little man,' she said finally. 'The last word is yet to be said on your service: just because you begin along one way does not mean it will be your end. Go back inside, Rossamund. I will wait for thee, if thou wouldst come with me. Go back to your lampsmen chums,' she said as she entered the carriage. 'And stay well clear of that Swill fellow.' The lentum door was shut with an impatient bang by the splasher boy.
'Good-bye, Miss Europe,' Rossamund called to her.
With a brash hoot of its horn the post-lentum was whipped on and took the Branden Rose-still without a factotum-out of Winstermill. As suddenly as she had arrived, so she left.
Watching her depart, Rossamund was caught in a collision of many emotions, but above them all he felt as if he had been left behind.
