took out his compleat and the pamphlets, ready to lose himself in their delights. Morbid curiosity guided his hand to the large magnum folio of the Defamiere. A dark thrill thrumming in his innards, he flicked over the first pages, but was soon slowed by the manner of titles he read: cruel jibes and asinine gossip that by comparison made his usual pamphlets lofty works of literature. Little wonder Europe despised it so.
One self-righteously horrified heading line stopped him flat:
It was accompanied by a crude cartoon of a rather fictional Europe, shooting lightning from one hand and hugging a monster with the opposite, while the trefoiled heart of Naimes hovered in the air beside them. About all the blighted fabulist has got right is her crow's-claw hair tine, he thought angrily, barely able to credit what he saw.
The article was brief; written by a certain Contumelius Stinque, it said: The 'bee's buzz'-as the vulgar cant goes, and come to me this very day from the bumpkin lands of the Sulk End-is that the Branden Rose is rumoured to have wielded QGU in the defence and release of a suspected yet unproven sedorner. With firm reputation for Erratic Conduct, the particulars of the terrible astrapecrith's newest and most appalling deviancy remain obscure. A Private Voice for the Lady-Rose told of the loss of a most Valued Servant, and it can only be guessed that this may well be a cause of this latest aberration. The identity of the sedorner (accused) remains undisclosed.
The printing and distribution of pamphlets within a city was typically quick-a matter of days.The calculation of the movement of information about the Empire was, however, measured in weeks; for this shocking report to have found its way already into such a gazette was surely a feat of deliberate and malicious alacrity.
The Master-of-Clerks must have sent an agent riding through day and night for passage on a fast boat to Brandenbrass to get this here already!
Rossamund was not free of his accusers yet.
With one angry action he twisted the pamphlet into a tight ball and threw it clear across the room. In distress he turned the bright-limn and lay in the waning light, staring through an open window at Phoebe, three-quarter- faced and rising amid thin inky strands of silver-lined cloud.
The night was old by the time sleep overtook him.
5
Singular Contract, a ~ also known as a personal assignment or simply a singular; an offer of employment made by a private citizen or organization seeking a teratologist to hunt and claim the prize-money for killing a troublesome nicker. Singulars are the private counterpart of the bureaucratic Writs of the Course; that is, official, governmental commissions to slay teratoids. Both can be obtained at a knavery, though singulars, often offering less prize-money, are surprisingly preferred, as typically they are more promptly paid.
In the clarity of a new morning, Rossamund rescued the ruined pamphlet from the far corner of his chamber. Flattening it out as best he could, he removed the vile cartoon with its slander of Europe, folded the tearing and stowed it in his wallet. Yet as he supped on breakfast with her in the solar-the finest milling of porridge Rossamund had ever broken his fast upon-he kept the offending article to himself. 'I told you, little man,' is all she'll say. 'Tilly fally, it's all spit and dribble!Why did you insist on reading it?' Instead he asked, 'Miss Europe, what would happen if the Master-of-Clerks tried to get at us?'
'He would be a very foolish fellow!' The Branden Rose scowled at him as if he were the offending subject. She was at queenly ease in a soft robe of darkest green streaked with curling waves in cloth-of-gold. Two embroidered orange crawdods reached up from either hem, their great spiny feelers curling up to the collar and out over either shoulder. Her hair was held up by a rounded comb of dappled jade, thrust straight down into the mass of locks. Since he had known her, Rossamund had not once seen her looking ruffled in the morning. Even ailing from spasmed organs and grinnling bites at the Harefoot Dig she had kept an air of fathomless repose. 'I do not doubt the blaggardly little fly will seek yet to buzz in my face. Let him go to his buzzing and discover how heavy a blow a peeress of the Empire can bring. As for now, I shall not be bothered by him or any other-the lords of Naimes are not so easily troubled.'
Were it not so far from one end of the dining table to the other, Rossamund might have leaped up and given the fulgar a hug.
The Branden Rose, however, did not notice such lifts of fine sentiment. Rather, as she ate, she picked through a hefty stack of letters and calling cards, reading some, tossing others aside with an impatient sniff. 'One might think that after so many refusals these dreary people would tire of inviting me to their dreary routs.Yet no…' She lifted an unfurled fathom of glittering card dripping with seals and crimped ties. 'I am scarcely arrived and…' She made as if reading the card. 'To her most irritable Duchess-in-waiting, Europa of Naimes; please come and stuff yourself piglike on twelve dozen courses at my interminably dull fete as our most honored patron and garnish to dessert.With all respect and starved felicitations, et cetera, Lady Tish Tosh of Beanpaste.'
Unsure if she was angry or making fun, Rossamund stifled a laugh in his juice-of-orange.
The heiress of Naimes dropped the offending favor to the floor. 'All these fat magnateers and low-order peerlets want me to give their tawdry turnouts legitimacy. I will not be made the ornament of some upstart's public posturing.'
Having never been to even a humble country fete, Rossamund would not have minded one jot to be an ornament at a rout, however small or tawdry. He wisely kept this to himself.
Europe picked up another card.This was smaller, a sedate gray with scant decoration beyond finely formed writing. 'Fortunately,' she said after a quick reading, 'some are worthy of an answer…'
From out in the yard came the grinding of feet on the gravel. After a gentle knock and a murmur of greetings in the vestibule hall beyond the solar door, Mister Kitchen eased himself in to interrupt their breakfast.
'Lord Finance, m'lady,' he offered in the tone of an apology.
'Of course it is.' Europe sighed heavily, waving her hand like a capitulation and allowing in a well-fed, smartly dressed man of later middling years in the almost feminine curls of a natural wig of pale blond and a frock coat of magenta silk.
'My lady! My lady!' he declared with all the vigor of a cheery spring day. Possessing a particularly long and narrow nose, rouge-rosied cheeks and wide, sparkling, cheerful eyes of the thinnest blue, he was the very picture of the perfect grandsire.
Europe regarded the man with curiously candid fondness. 'Finance, dear fox, you come to me so soon, sir,' she said. 'Are there not more pressing wants of state to occupy you?'
'No need of our state is more pressing than the well-being of its next duchess, noble lady,' Mister Finance returned with unfazed and frank affection. 'And slander's wings are swift!'
The heiress of Naimes peered down her shapely nose at him.
'I am beginning to apprehend the most peculiar reports of you, gracious lady, of sedonition, QGU and the taking of a child in replacement of dear departed Licurius… And here I find that at least one portion is true and now wonder upon the rest.' He looked askance at Rossamund and then abruptly bent to him half a bow. 'Hello to you, sir. I must say, your arrival brings complexity.'
With a clatter of chair legs the young factotum stood and simply said, 'Good morning, sir.'
'Rossamund Bookchild,' Europe made introduction. 'Here is Lord Idias Finance, the Baron of Sainte, Captain- Secretary and Chief Emissary of my mother's diplomatic mission here in Brandenbrass.'
'A society child.' The Baron of Sainte seemed to beam, yet regarded Rossamund narrowly. 'Delighted. You must possess remarkable parts for my lady to take you on, sir…'
'I-uh…'
Europe intervened, a wily glimmer in her eye. 'He is everything I require, Baron.'
The man smiled warmly. 'Of course, of course.' He became quickly grave. 'The Duchess has expressed most
