coastal deeps where great forests of the weed grew and made the inshore 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 amp; 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 pass 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 bluster 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 shore, 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 shore 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 muffled 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 embarrassment, 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.'
