suit of soiled clothes.
Little wonder Mister Sebastipole found no evidence of the gudgeon I bested under the manse. It must have frothed clear away before he could.
Europe blinked slowly. 'Degenerate thantocriths!' she sneered with surprising vitriol. 'They dare to call themselves lahzar…'
As if to some cosmic prompt, they caught sight of the woman in the summer dress, a white glimpse wandering aimless among the woods and across the slope below, her hems stained and torn, her bonnet gone. She stared about with a deranged and disconcerting fervor, her head lolling then flopping back, squinting at the dull afternoon light, face wrenched with anguish and bewilderment.
'So there is our canker-headed sciomane,' Europe pronounced, a cold murmur matched by her soured mien.
Tangling in her skirts, the woman fell out of sight, uttering a thin shriek that set small birds belling in alarm. Darter Brown, perched on Rossamund's shoulder, ruffled and trilled nervously.
Despite himself, the young factotum began to descend to help.
'Leave her to her grief, Rossamund,' Europe said with hushed contempt. 'It is a fair prize for her service.' The fulgar strode to the landaulet and began fossicking about the various chests thrown from the wreck.
Doggedly, Rossamund continued down a little farther, watched a beat longer, craned his head to listen… but no peep of the white woman showed again between the trunks, nor any sound of her stumbling in the underbrush.
Time was wasting, light was failing, and Craumpalin needed a better bed.
Now for the quickest making that ever was made…
Fixed as it was to the landaulet's trunk-rail, the laborium was now wedged against the trunk of the pine that had halted the vehicle's career. Tipped on its side, its cover was twisted partly away, the off-smelling gastric contents dribbled out and soaking into the needles and dirt.
When he informed the fulgar of this impediment, she drew in a breath ready to vent her ire, yet scowled in pain and forestalled pungent words with a bitter sigh. 'We have not the time for a fire… Syntony and sangfaire will have to make do for the present!' She pushed a trunk over with her boot to draw from it a clean, gaulded frock coat of sleek inky hide.
As quick as hurts would allow, they collected the necessary articles and handy luggage. Bending to take up the small assortment of sacks and satchels he had accumulated and with them a pair of unscuffed equiteer boots, Rossamund grimaced at a dark jab in his belly as he straightened.
On the road, Freckle drew away at the fulgar's approach to sit on his haunches in the middle of the road, wide sunhued eyes winking and blinking at the Branden Rose with dismay.
Dosed on balancing draughts, the fulgar chewed upon a whortleberry and paid the little fellow no mind at all.
Cinnamon left off his ministrations on Craumpalin to insist he tend to Rossamund's hand before they went on.
Obediently, the young factotum unwound his ersatz dressings to reveal the raw weeping mess of his palm and fingers.
'Ahh, me lad!' Fransitart commiserated.
'That is why most skolds throw their potives,' Europe remarked drolly, standing near, her scrutiny never leaving the ministering nuglung.
The ex-dormitory master snorted a slight laugh.
Rossamund looked bemusedly at them both.
Taking a choice of bonny weeds and luridly blotched bulbs from his pockets, Cinnamon began to masticate them together with pronounced clampings of his bill. Gently, the nuglung took Rossamund's hand in his own, the ashen skin cool and strangely calloused, its touch a comfort, and spat a gray-green mass directly onto the blistered flesh. Wherever the salivary poultice touched, the pain was immediately balmed.
'This is how you mended Numps,' Rossamund observed frankly, refusing to be disgusted as he watched the bogle-prince's careful tending.
'Such and more, yes,' Cinnamon agreed. 'The utterworsts might have slain him else. Those vile festermen have brought as much misery to everymen as e'er they have to us.'
The young factotum watched the ancient nuglung in patent wonder, struck by Cinnamon's incongruous proportions and queer alien beauty and the fragrance of feather and blossom mingled with that of fresh-turned loam that surrounded him. The nuglung bound Rossamund's hand, palm now covered with the physicking spit, in thick weeds-weevil lily, he called it-all fixed with a final binding of more usual bandage from the stoup. Cinnamon did not offer such aid to Europe, and the fulgar did not seek it.
'That's what caused yer blast,' Fransitart called over the din of frogs that had begun to croak and trill all along the drain. Musketoon in hand, the old salt was hobbling beside the large elliptical crater. Abruptly, he kicked at an oddly bent plate of metal half buried in the upheaved soil, the iron piece torn and jagged as if mere paper. 'A belch pot!' He spat and muttered something foul. 'Breech-full o' cannon char…'
Rossamund's eyes went round.
'If it weren't for them poor daft horses halting short an' liftin' their heads when they did,' the old dormitory master went on in wonderment, 'I doubt we would be about this world any more… A miss is as good as a mile, 'ey, lad!' He smiled ruefully, forgetful of his wound and stretching the gash in his lip. 'Oh…' The ex-vinegaroon hastily stanched the flowing wound with a wad of weeds he had in his hand. 'They were a right parsthel of blackheartsth!' he declared bitterly through the leafy muffle.
'Blackhearts, indeed, Master Vinegar,' the fulgar returned flatly.
'Are you hale for the walk, Master Frans?' Rossamund inquired of the old salt, who looked a little heartier with levenseep fortifying his humours.
'I have some wind left in me yet, lad, afore ye send me off to the tumblehome.' The old fellow grinned wanly. 'Lead on, Master Sparrow, sir. I'd rather a hard stroll to a better harbor than an easy sit here out o'doors vulnerable to any wild body.'
As a final provision for their departure, Europe produced her small black-lacquered whortleberry box and offered one to Fransitart, then to Rossamund.
'For Cinnamon and Freckle too,' the young factotum said bluffly as the cheerful vigor of the dried berry swelled within.
Even in the dimming day he could feel his mistress' incredulity. 'Do nickers and bogles gain benefit from them?'
A little offended, Rossamund answered softly, 'Well, I do…'
To this, the fulgar smiled the thinnest curl of a smile.
'Chortlingberries!' Freckle called them with equal delight, not even pretending to chew.
Despite his expressionless beak, a kind of grin seemed to light Cinnamon's face when the morsel was offered. 'Periachares!' He gave a very bright birdlike chirp as he eagerly snapped down the withered thing, Darter Brown joining him in happy mimicry. With a tweet! Cinnamon gathered Craumpalin in his arms like a baby, the little nuglung's great strength clear as he shouldered a man twice his size on his back. His large bird's head bobbling as his regard twitched from one sight to the next, the bogle-prince set off, a slouching, tiny-legged lump with the dispensurist sagging on his back, looming over the little bogle and looking ready to tip to the road at any breath.
To the clamor of raucous frog song, the six of them made their way out from this terrible place, the most bizarre caravan surely to ever have wended the world.
Well ahead, Freckle and Darter Brown took turns to look farther, the sparrow streaking off and winging back to mutter in Cinnamon's hidden ears. At times the bogle-princeling would reply, uttering inexplicable phrases in sparrowlike song. Mists of minuscule bugs surged across the road, spinning about them in celebration of the arbustral evening, flying into eyes, up nostrils, into mouths opened to breathe.
A little way about the ever-bending path they found the curricle used as part of the trap set against them, its wheel still off, dragged no small distance in fright by the stolid gray pony still in its harness and gnawing ruminatively at the roadside herbage.
Putting Craumpalin ever so carefully down upon the weedy verge, Cinnamon stepped to the pony, reaching
