the hiatus door.
'My, my, the plot swells thick indeed,' Europe observed, recalling the woman too as-receiving Rossamund's explanation of this new guest-she proceeded from an easy seat by the fire in her file to the hiatus. 'Hello, Lady Saphine,' she said evenly to the caladine waiting patiently, poised upon the edge of a tandem. 'It is an extraordinary cause to move a calendar to seek my door. Do you come for your sisters of Malady or for the Soratche?'
'Both, Lady Rose,' the caladine returned hollowly, standing to nod a bow. 'The two claves are joined in this enterprise, and now it appears to us that your aims and ours have junctioned.'
'By a merger of aims… ' Europe's brow lifted subtly.
'Grotius Swill?'
'That I do, Lady Rose.'
'That will be all, thank you, Rossamund,' his mistress said, excusing him. 'Please summon Condamine to bring refreshments, and then you may return to the file to finish compiling the newest of our guests' replies and the receipts that must be sent tomorrow.'
And closing the door after him, Europe remained to talk with this caladine while Rossamund was once again left with only his suspicions and a pile of unsorted gala correspondence. Long into the night he worked, brooding upon his exclusion and the violence he was certain was coming, and when his mistress finally returned to the file, he was still at his desk.
'To bed with you now, Rossamund,' she murmured tiredly. 'All this may wait for a new day. I need you fresh.'
For long moments her factotum did not move, but sat staring at the profusion of replies and letters sorted and unsorted, mind turning, courage building, then failing. Finally an exasperated sigh from Europe as she removed her coat in preparation for retiring broke into his indecision. 'I know you are preparing to make at Maupin,' he dared, looking at his mistress squarely.
A shrewd smile flickered briefly across Europe's dial. 'Do you now?' she purred.
'Why won't you tell me what is happening?' he demanded with all the heat of a long-needed but unexpected release. 'How can I serve you best as your factotum if you will not let me in on your plan?'
Her mien becoming quickly severe, the fulgar regarded him narrowly. 'You serve me best, sir, by doing as I say.'
Rossamund glowered back at her. He had sacrificed the promised security of the Sparrowdowns to remain at her side and this was all she would give in return! Yet how he could say this so starkly?
'I think you have worked overlong, little man,' Europe finally said, her tone wintry. 'Bed is the best place for you now. Good night.'
He remained, gaze locked with hers, yet his expression softened just a little, a constellation of conflicting notions dashing hither and yon in his thoughts. In the end, the silence unbroken, he relented, retreating dismissed to his set and an angry, restless sleep.
24
Percursor also pnictor or sicarian; a part of the patefact set; professional murderer working for states and kings, possessing a near-legendary facility in delivering death at distance and by stealth. Almost every state, kingdom or realm employs them, the more civilized places simultaneously denying their existence.
Grown used to daily walks in green and lively hills, Rossamund found his confinement in this bland urban setting hard to bear. After breakfast, four days out from the grand gala, he took a turn about the foreyard. Keeping clear of vintners' wagons and their hauling drudges laboring to enlarge Cloche Arde's already well-stocked wine cellar, Rossamund walked a circle about the pencil pine, watching Darter Brown hop and hunt amid the thin garden beds.
In the crystalline morning Rossamund could just make the faint tolling of far-off millhouse bells, telling of an approaching change of shift with knells loud enough to carry well across the city. He imagined the lines of stoop- shouldered swinks-mill workers-filing in and out of the dark-some mills in their sad queues. He peered up at the thin blue sky striated with icy white-unhappy fighting weather.
She will not attack Maupin today at least…
The sensation of Winstermill's fall had proliferated throughout the city, giving rise to a great unanswered fear that transformed into an impotent kind of anger. Unsatisfied, this anger was growing, becoming so palpable that even Rossamund-stuck at Cloche Arde-could near taste indignation in the very air.
On Rossamund's second turn about the yard, Doctor Crispus walked in from the Harrow Road and joined him in his stroll. 'I have been designated to be one of the orators for the gala night,' he declared after a cheerful greeting. 'I had the briefest thought to posit the existence of goodly nickers. Unwise at the best of times, I know, and in light of the current temper'-he produced a creased and doubled broadsheet from under his arm, The Assessor scripted boldly at its head-'thorough folly. Consequently, I shall be hypothesizing upon the existence of Providence over the theory of Deeper Forces, especially as a benign corrective, and, if it does exist,' he continued cryptically, 'whether it is a personal cosmic action or an impersonal and reflexive cosmic rebalancing.'
Rossamund just blinked and nodded.
'Have you read the newest papers, m'boy?' the physician asked abruptly. 'Things have certainly taken a remarkable turn,' he added, pressing the paper open at a bold heading among other bold headings on the foremost page. Expedition Relates of a Marshal 'Mongst the Fallen in the Sack of Sulk End Fastness; Survivor Gives Graphic Account of Terrible Atrocities Committed by Ravening Nickers
The survivor was named as one Laudibus Pile.
'That rascal made it out somehow,' Crispus growled. 'Probably by the cunning of his heightened senses…'
There was no mention of goodly monsters, nor of any of the dark deeds done that precipitated such atrocities.
'The sloppy erroneous scoundrel who penned the piece places Podius' rank incorrectly. He was Marshal- Subrogate, as you know, yet they have him as Marshal-Lighter. How-be-it, it is unquestionably Podius Whympre by description,' Crispus explained, pointing to the finer print. 'It is a form of due comeuppance, I suppose, though it does not make me smile…'
Such was the sum of the Master-of-Clerks' schemes.
On the next page Rossamund found a line of lesser type, yet no less stunning. Fabercadavery Uncovered in Emperor's Own Fortress!
Related by some other fellow, possibly a member of the expedition mentioned in the first report, it actually named Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill as the fabercadaverist implicated in the heading line, going so far as to make mention of his lectures held in Brandenbrass itself.
'Have you seen this, Doctor?' Rossamund asked, passing the paper back.
'So that is what you were at, Grotius!' the physician declared with grim satisfaction as if Swill were there with them. 'Lah! Who could possibly prognosticate such a twist of path, my friend?' he said to Rossamund. 'And in a mere two months?' Glancing up to a housemaid banging at a long Dhaghi carpet hung from Rossamund's set, he lowered his voice. 'It certainly puts any accusations they have brought against you or the dear Lady Rose in new light, does it not?' The physician stared with disconcerting intensity at the young factotum. 'To think he was correct…,' he said after a moment's reflection.
'You mean Swill, Doctor?' Exposed or not, saying the surgeon's name set a subtle twist in Rossamund's innards.
'Indeed.' The physician stroked his chin. 'However unwillingly, my respect for that quackeen's research is
