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…'
'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 passing.'
'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 bluster 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 associate 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 anticipation.
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 titivate 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 classic lampoon of a nicker. Pronking 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 assault 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 noble 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- lass.
'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.'
