Factotum

out for it to nuzzle his small black palm. 'Meadows now thy stall shall be,' the nuglung crooned, a strange flutter of authority stirring about him as, surprisingly familiar with carriage quipage, he unharnessed the poor beast. 'And cloud and star thy stable. Make wild grass and unplucked weeds your fodder. Be wary now of men and blighted things and dwell untrammeled by thy former burdens.'

At this the pony started, nostrils flaring, eyes rolling nervously. With a whinny and a kick, it galloped off down the road and away.

'No more heave and haul for her!' Freckle gurgled. 'No more switches switching or bindings binding.'

'A clever trick, Master Bogle,' Europe offered wearily. 'Might it not have been wiser to keep it for our own use?'

'We have limbs enough to hold our loads, oh Lady Lightning, and need not burden a beast,' said Cinnamon, hoisting the senseless dispensurist once more onto his shoulders and walking on without a backward look.

As the leaden western sky transmuted to sullen crimson, and the east waxed brooding dark out over the pallid waters of the distant Grume, the nuglung took them deeper into the jagged shadows of the wood hill.

Patently untroubled by the dark, Freckle kept well ahead.

Yet stumbling over roots and rocks, Rossamund, by all evidence, did not share such a sense. For his more human eyes-and for Europe and Fransitart too-he fetched his limulight from pocket and gave it to the ex-dormitory master to let the soft blue yellow effulgence guide their questing feet.

'Now, that's a handy article,' the old salt whispered.

'Mister Numps gave it to me.' Rossamund spared a thought for the poor seltzerman hidden in the slypes and undercrofts of Winstermill's ancient foundations away from the conspiracies and schemes of Podious Whympre.

'The one named Numps does well enough in his hiding holes,' Cinnamon declared, startling Rossamund with his sudden proximity. 'The clerking-master thinks him beneath his thinking, but I and my lord keep our watch on him. Many are the sparrows of Winstreslewe…' The saucers of his black eyes glittering in the gloaming with occult primordial thoughts, the nuglung raised his heavy beak to sniff at the air.

Rossamund opened his mouth to speak, to dare to ask what he feared was the unaskable. 'Lord Cinnamon, why did you have me live with everymen? Would I not be safer with the sparrow-king?'

Head now turning to him, those eyes regarded the young factotum blinkingly for several breaths. 'Safer? Why, yes, thee would certainly have been safer… and more so should you choose to retreat to him now that men hunt thee.' Cinnamon paused as if this was actually a question that needed answering.

Here once again Rossamund had a choice amid all the go and the do to pick his own path, to live with the Duke of Sparrows, removed and untouchable.

'We have wanted thee to learn of love for everymen,' the bogle-prince continued candidly. ' ' Twas a gamble, 'tis true, yet the lessons of the blightlings-if they were to find thee and keep themselves from eating thee-would have been for nought but malice, for cruel destruction and all frames of sly-born misery. With my lord, the Sparrowlengis, thee might neither find love nor hate, but learn only of the everymen from afar as thoughtless and brutal and best to be avoided.' Cinnamon stopped and turned to face him fully. 'There is much mischief and violence in everymen-as you know right well,' the nuglung said solemnly, with the merest flicker of a glance to Europe not far behind.

Rossamund heard the fulgar sniff in objection.

'Yet they are loved and there is hope, so we defend them…' Though there was little change in his face, Cinnammon seemed to brighten. 'And now too do thee, little Rossamund.You see! Our gamble has been worthy. The everymen need all the friends they can against the sunderhallows and falsely gods.' He gave a sharp chirrup! that ended conversation and set Darter Brown to expectant twitching. 'Walk on, walk on,' he declared, setting off again to lead them up an avenue of old conifers. 'Thee and thine are close to succor now.'

Wending about every fold and spur of the steepening combe into the round hills, they kept course beside a murmuring waterway, invisible in the dark to their left. Gully breezes stirred fitfully about them, rousing soft creakings and rattlings on either hand, bringing with them a profoundly earthy smell that hung heavier and heavier in the shifting valley air. By dim limulight Rossamund found that the meager cart trail became a channel through thickly knotted thorns, a soughing briar grove tingling with a subtle threwdish caution-not unfriendly, just waiting. Beyond the spiny writhen boughs and thickset trunks he glimpsed lights. It seemed to him that one glow was brighter and swung more freely than the rest. It was a lantern. Someone was coming out to them.

'Ahoo! Ahoo! Prince Cannelle?' a man's voice called, husky with caution.

Cinnamon halted, giving a birdlike chirrup! as reply.

The lantern light approached, resolving into a bright-limn lifted now in the hands of a slight young fellow with dark, intelligent eyes, a broad round nose and curly black hair tied back. Dressed in a heavy coat with a white stock about his neck, the fellow had a stylus secured behind his ear. Beside him was a heavier gent in a properly proofed jackcoat, wearing an anxious face with a nigh absent chin beneath white scratch wig and broad-brimmed catillium. He bore a brace of unfriendly two-barrel hauncets.

With them came Freckle, looking powerfully pleased with himself.

Both men were goggling saucer-eyed from Cinnamon to Craumpalin hunched upon his shoulders.

'My dear Prince Cannelle,' the slender young man said with a gracious bow to Cinnamon, his words having the tone of formula. 'May the earth heal beneath your feet, and peace guard you-and ah… your companions wholly.' He straightened.

The bogle-prince, still bearing the insensible dispensurist, bobbed his own curtsy and replied with a formula of his own. 'May your days be long and you ever tell blight from blithe.'

'Yon Lentigo near gave us all a chordic failure with his hammering at our door!' the older, bulkier fellow grumped, the slightest northern accent in his words. He added under his breath, 'If it weren't a-troubling enough ter have hob-thrushes come by at all hours unannounced, our fellow brings comp'ny… and hurt comp'ny at that.'

Freckle grinned ever more broadly.

'Yes, thank you, Spedillo.' The young man cleared his throat and returned his attention to Cinnamon. 'You well know that you and little Lord Lentigo are welcome to Orchard Harriet at any juncture. I see tonight you have again brought us guests…,' he continued with polite understatement, bowing to the strangers. His astonishment broadened in realization at precisely who stood before him.

Europe stepped forward and introduced herself bluntly, bundling Rossamund and Fransitart and Craumpalin together as her 'staff.' Waving aside the two fellows' evident bafflement-Just what is Lord Cannelle doing with a fulgar! — she continued with rare urgency. 'I am in need of your hearth or stove, sir, so please, lead us on.'

'Ah, yes, certainly.' The young man floundered for a moment, half turning, then turning back. 'Yes, certainly, indeed, our stove… and mayhap a bath too… I shall present your need to Fabia, our housekeeper. Come along, please, good Lady Rose.' He bowed again, handing the bright-limn to his hefty companion, who huffed grumpily as he took it and led them.

Soon the thorn grove gave over to honey-perfumed blossoming thickets of low ornamental trees.The party breathed its corporate relief as the dark ramshackle bulk of a fortified house hove into view, only three of its myriad window-lights lit and the front door open in welcome.

'Orchard Harriet,' the young man proclaimed of the spreading structure with clear pride. 'And if I may, I am Amonias Silence, poet and amanuensis, and my surly compatriot is Mister Spedillo, gardener, provenderer, nightlocksman.'

The other fellow went on without acknowledgment toward the house of Orchard Harriet. Unclear in the darkness, it appeared an inky conglomeration of oddly placed turrets, high-pitched roofs and craggy battlements. A short projecting wing stood out from the building's upper story, making a porch over the foremost entrance, the arched space overlit with a friendly lamp, its seltzer clean and clear. Taken to this door, they were ushered into a narrow hall, long and doorless, walls souring white, smelling of the slate that made its floor. It was a kind of obverse, a coat stand and boot-scraper its only furniture.

Still bearing Craumpalin slumped insensible on his back, Cinnamon looked odd in such a domestic frame, yet past the sparrow-headed bogle another more disconcerting sight arrested Rossamund's attention and stopped him smartly. At the far end of the hall stood an enormous looking glass, fixed to the wall, showing a ghastly reflection. Spreading out from his nose, his lower face, neck and a good portion of his quabard were dark with old blood; his left eye was already blackened and his fringe partly singed away; much of the thread-of-silver embroidery on the arms of his coat was charred. Turning his head left, then right, he found a clotted trail of blood from his ears. With