'Oh…' Rossamund scowled, recognizing these parts as those that, though they went to make a person brave and strong, were dangerously habit-forming and spoiled a person's soul. 'No, nothing beyond the proper list.'
'Were you zere when zis Licurius fell?' Trudgette asked, her voice low and shaking with scarce-contained enthusiasm.
Not at all willing to explore such a memory publicly, Rossamund simply stared at her.
Rookwood intervened. 'Come! Let us not swamp the fine fellow with our zeal!'
That very moment, on a street of narrow-fronted countinghouses and clerical suppliers, the takeny overtook a gaggle of dolly-mops on their way to night-working mills and spinning halls, working even through a Domesday. Each was dressed in bright versions of maid's clobber, laughing and chatting and accosting any awkward fellow unfortunate enough to be in their path. Leaning far out from the window, Eusebus tipped his hat to them and sang loud and clear: Dance with a dolly with a hole in her stocking, a hole in her stocking, a hole in her stocking…
To this the laboring-girls shrieked friendly taunts.
'Come down here, my sweet, and we'll dance ye!'
'Ahh, modern girls.' Eusebus beamed, at which his friends laughed heartily, and they passed on.
Though Rossamund could have with fair accuracy found north, after only fifteen minutes of the carriage's mazing progress in the dark and the increasing fog down rows of storehouses and shipping clericies, he had little notion of where they arrived. Now that the carriage was still, saturnine tollings of floating hazard bells could be heard lolling on the waves-some near, some far, speaking of his proximity to the sea. Indeed, the sweet vinegar stink and the pocked precipice of the Stunt Veil sea wall confirmed it. Across the gloomy street stood a lonely house, four stories tall and built on the harbor's edge right into the sea wall. A green bright-limn hung above its cherry-red painted front door, one of the few lights visible in the miry night.
'What is this?' Rossamund asked skeptically as they huddled from the damp beneath its eaves.
'The Broken Doll, my fine fellow!' Rookwood proclaimed cheerfully.
'The merry end of the night,' Eusebus added, peering through water-splashed lenses. 'Vittles, vino and gaming vices.You'd better hope Droid is smiling down upon you.'
Droid? Rossamund frowned. He instinctively looked up to locate this heavenly light and was foiled by the obstructing cloud, a cloying roof on the night.
'How could Droid not smile on such an illustrious young man?' Rookwood returned, grinning at him grandly.
A correct answer from Eusebus to the rough challenge through an iron lattice at the top of the crimson portal had the six admitted by sleek-looking door wards in deep green soutaines. Led down a long obverse as red as the front door, Rossamund felt shrewd observation from the row of grilled loophole slits on either hand.Through double doors of dark green they were brought into a suddenly swelling din. Here was a wide room of gilt furnishings, confidentially lit by large paper lanterns of white and vermilion, both walls and floor blood-red much as the gun deck of a ram, as if wild and splattering violence was expected. Folk of all stations gathered about oval tables to play each other at cards, lots and calling games. Coins sat in unequal count by each player-golden sous, oscadril billions, grassus from the Gottlands, silvery sequins, larger carlins, Hergott doubles, strange foreign counters of unusual shapes-and with them wads of folding money. Thick and uncomfortably tepid, the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed anger and naked greed.
Chanceries-gambling houses-were illegal in Boschenberg; surely it was the same in Brandenbrass?
Gaggles of admiring spectators collected wherever aristocratic clients played, oohing and ahhing at the twists and tricks, calling encouragements and commiserations as they sought to ingratiate themselves with their chosen sponsor. In his brief review, Rossamund spotted a wit dressed in an unremarkable gray soutaine, his entire face spoored with a thick blue arrow; a sagaar wrapped in tight hide, wearing the mask of a white horse and gently rocking from foot to foot in the restless motion of the perpetual dance; and several pistoleers with their telltale curling mustachios. While he watched, there came a confused roar of dismay and delight. Cards were thrown down in disgust while one happy fellow in a high periwig gathered his winnings.
Ear bent to Rookwood's brief instruction, a footman in deep verdigris took the six on through the clamor and up broad red stairs to a smaller, quieter room arranged with a trio of gaming tables. One green wall was almost entirely formed of tall grated windows that peered north out on the rain-washed spectacle of Middle Ground at night. Harbor lights glowed dully, clustered in terrestrial constellations of blue and white and the occasional red. In one corner a highwigged quartet of string-fiddlers sat playing gentle music for the quieter collection of clientele gathered about each table.
'Ahh,' Frangipanni declared with a thin, rare smile of pleasure at the sweet melody.
'Hmm, yes, always like a snip of Stumphelhose,' Rookwood added, naming the supposed composer and smug in his cultural enlightenment.
'It is Greenleaf Whit, actually…,' Frangipanni corrected with a derisive sniff and a slight unhealthy wheeze while the other three laughed.
'Ah…' The white-haired gent's face twisted to collect itself against embarrassment.
'Don't worry, my man,' Eusebus smirked, patting Rookwood on the shoulder. 'It is easy enough to confuse the two; one is a disciple of the other, after all.'
'Certainly,' the other returned tightly, then quickly went to sit at the available table standing by a massive white hearth taller than a man. 'I'm always ardently fond of the fire here… Perfectly distinct and excellently warm!'
'You are not playing?' Avarice inquired of Rossamund, noticing him hanging back by the door as she took her seat.
'No, miss, I will just watch,' he answered, recalling with a twinge of melancholy the friendly games of pirouette and lesquin he joined with Threnody and the lighters of Wormstool, where winners and losers traded only chores. 'I might sit a hand for favors but not for money.'
'Whoever heard of such a thing!' Avarice returned.
'Perhaps he is shrewd enough to know that Droid is not in a smiling way for him,' Eusebus interjected with a sardonic smirk and an understanding wink to Rossamund.
The observation held some merit, for Rossamund had never won a single hand with the Wormstool lighters. 'I am not very good at cards,' he concurred.
'Sit with us anyway, Master Rossamund,' Rookwood murmured in his ear. 'We shall teach you proper carding.'
'We surely will, my man,' Eusebus declared winsomely to the young factotum. 'Droid and I are poor friends when I sit the table, so we can lose together, you and I.'
At such an invitation, Rossamund consented, and while food was ordered-pullet and ramsin broth, slices of warmed vinegar pie and bottles of zin-he watched the fall of cards.
The game they preferred was called flout, where-from what Rossamund could fathom by the incomplete instruction he received-low cards were high and a player had to bluff his or her way to success. When he finally joined, he kept his face as blank as possible, betting small and losing small and wishing he had a falseman's eyes. Rookwood and Trudgette seemed best at the bluff, winning almost as much as each other, and despite himself, Rossamund was drawn into the play, sipping his never-empty glass of vin with excitedly careless frequency. By the fourth round, the pot in the middle growing and growing until it was up to nigh on thirty sous, only Rookwood and Trudgette had stayed in too, their own hands spread before them, the want-to-be fulgar already triumphant with red hag and both crocidoles.
Gaze vibrating and unfocused, Rossamund looked at his hand: red selt, black selt and a black hag-it could not get any lower. Nervously, he laid down his ask-his bet-small as always. Then, rather unceremoniously, he slapped his cards down on the black velvet tabletop to a collective gasp.
Astounded faces blinked in turn at him and at his play.
He had won!
'Ah-hah!' Rookwood exclaimed, clapping him heartily on the back. 'Well done, that fellow! Droid smiles on you after all!'
Astonished, Rossamund beheld the pile of silver and golden and crisp papery loot.
Smiling through their teeth, Rookwood's friends tried to appear as enthusiastic as their white-haired friend over Rossamund's astounding win.
Perceiving this, the young factotum summoned a footman and asked for more drinks and a dish of the best
