Factotum

'How surprised I was to receive her invitation; she never responds to mine…'

'I heard our thorn-ed miss sent the Archduke packing at her most recent visit to the 'Dirk, the creature! Left him all in blushes and stutters.'

'Hush, dear! The creature's servant listens.'

'Isn't there meant to be something peculiar about her newest factotum? Something untoward…'

On the steps between the ludion and billiards and oratory, the young factotum passed the Lady Madigan. Though distinguishable in telltale gray, the fulgarine peer had come in oddly modest attire: a robe of flowing gray, its sleeves baggy to the elbow, ballooning over the sturdy vambrins of gray soe about her forearms and over her hands. Clinched about her chest and middle she wore a stomacher of spangled gray soe stiffened with buff lining fastened with a small bow at her diaphragm. But for the quality of the cloth, the obvious shimmer of gauld on harder proofing, she looked a poor moiler scratching a life out in the Paucitine. Even in such dowdy attire, whenever Rossamund spotted her, she was encircled by a host of admiring men, each making loud and flowing praise of her clever variation on the theme. She smirked and smiled and gave clever answers and kept each fellow hanging on every word. Threedice, her factotum, seemed to have come as himself, though in slightly heavier proofing than such an evening required. Staying a respectable but constant pace behind, he glowered unremittingly with more than professional intent at his mistress' gallants.

Rossamund spotted Mister Carp in the ludion, the man-of-business dressed as an elephantine, his oversized coat stuffed with great paddings of pillows and cloth, conspicuous as the only one of such fellows at the gala, real or contrived. He had come with his wife-a wife Rossamund did not know he had. Introduced as Madam Germine Carp, she was a small slender woman almost lost inside a great pile of gauzy cloth. What she was meant to be Rossamund could not tell, yet he did not think it polite to ask. Of few words and wide wet eyes, Madam Carp looked uncomfortable to be squeezed with so many of the lofty and grand. Rather strangely, Carp himself did not possess his usual swagger, and the two sat on their own at the edge of the gaieties exchanging looks and brief remarks with each other. Rossamund tried to swap a friendly word with them as often as he could and was happy when he finally saw them in close conversation with Crispus down in the billiard room.

Several times Rossamund thought he spied the brightly armored colonel of the lesquin company Europe had met with several times over the week talking closely with Mister Rakestraw, the sleuth in drab and heavy proofing.

'Well now, Mister Bookchild! A sparrow seems a rather dowdy creature for such a fine rout,' a jolly voice declared with breezy pointedness, picking Rossamund in the crowd of the hiatus despite his sparrow mask.

Turning, the young factotum found Baron Finance, come as the most fluffy, dandidawdling fluff it was possible to be, his silvered wig so high and his cheeks so rouged as to be almost feminine. 'Where is your mistress at, sir?' the Chief Emissary pressed with affable persistence as Rossamund lifted the mask up over his crown to greet him properly. 'Still at her evening toilet despite the festivities?'

'I am sorry, Baron, sir,' Rossamund offered, reiterating the formula he had repeated many, many times already that night.

'I am sure she will,' Finance replied knowingly, then said more seriously, 'Though I cannot say her guests will make much good from such excuses… Ah, but what can we do, Mister Bookchild?' He smiled suddenly. 'We are merely satellites trapped in her inexorable gravity.'

For a moment they watched a trio of smirking flitterwills sit themselves before Madam Lux and submit to the benign mesmerist's outre expertise. Clearly skeptical as they watched the old wit close her eyes and touch lightly at her left temple with shaking hand, the three young women were soon exclaiming and drawing attention to themselves at the imagined sensations stirring in their thoughts.

'I hear trumpets!' one girl declared in frank wonderment, looking up as if the room were full of heralding cornets and flugels.

Whatever misery Madam Lux might have brought to monster-kind in her prime, reduced by time and infirmity to such trickery-however skillfully achieved-seemed an ignoble end for a once-mighty neuroticrith.

'If I might say, sir…,' Baron Finance interposed on Rossamund's thoughts, his tone lowered discreetly. 'Whatever predicaments your irregularities might have brought her'-and me, his eyes said-'the home of our duchess-daughter is a most cheery place since your replacement of the previous fellow'-Rossamund knowing full well he spoke of Licurius-'and, quite confoundingly, she is of much better countenance too. At my report, our benevolent mistress, the Duchess herself-ever concerned after her daughter, however much the scion of the house of Naimes persists in a life of her own-desires me to welcome you as an appendant to the Court of Naimes.'

'Uh…' Rossamund bowed to this lofty acknowledgment. 'Tell her graciousness thank you, sir,' he said, straightening, and, with a sick thrill of dismay, discovered Scrupulus Sicus, Imperial Secretary, emerging from the endless flow of people leaving coats and making first meetings in the hiatus.

What is he doing here! Europe cannot have invited him?

Complete with olive wreath and voluminous wrappings of white robes, Sicus had come as a gilded glaucologue of the Empire's first formation.Yet, far from the authoritative hauteur of the inquiry at Winstermill, the Imperial Secretary looked patently nervous to find Rossamund in the press. Bending humbly at the middle, he held out his invitation like a patent of nativity demanded by gate wardens and inquired after the 'rightful and most gracious lady of the house.' His flattery was a long way from the strident terms he used at the lamplighters' once- great fortress.

Flagitious shrew was one such strident term that rose in Rossamund's mind. He beheld the man stoutly, seeing full well that this fellow knew exactly who he was and in what circumstances they had last met.

The Imperial Secretary squirmed for just a moment and then, with several clearings of his thickly wrapped throat, said, 'Well, young master, at the Duchess-Heir's most gracious invitation I can only offer her my unqualified support against such a scoundrel as Honorius Swill. He fooled us all, I would say'-the fellow's face paled slightly-'with his apparently learn-ed convictions.The authority of the well-read, ha ha…'

Rossamund did not smile.

'Your benevolent mistress, however,' the man pressed on awkwardly, glancing to Finance only a few feet away, 'has showed her abounding and much-praised quality in seeing through him in the first. I can only regret any… misunderstanding that may have arisen betwixt your mistress and the Emperor through myself over this affair, and can only assert in the most earnest terms that the Lady of Naimes has once more-indeed, never lost-the Emperor's full and complete confidence. This elaborates most fully on the matter.' He held up a red-wrapped buff wallet. 'I am sure the Duchess-Heir will find it most satisfactory.' Upon discovering Europe had yet to display herself, the Imperial Secretary showed open relief and gave the red-buff wallet to Rossamund.

The young factotum smiled inwardly at the irony as he took the Imperial parcel. Would the Emperor be so quick with this confidence if he knew the nature of the soul to whom his agent was speaking? 'I shall give her your apology, sir.' He bowed, alert to this Imperial bureaucrat's clear discomfort at the emphasis of this word. 'I am sure she will give it the proper merit.'

'Ah, most excellent, young fellow,' Sicus returned, brows creasing slightly as he tried to fathom whether his interlocutor was being genuine or pointed. 'I-uh-thank you.'

'May you have a good night, sir,' Rossamund returned, trying to achieve the same unequivocal poise of his mistress.

'Ah, yes…' Bending a final unfinished bow and giving a last uncomfortable look to Finance, the Imperial Secretary left them.

'Swill's allies forsake him utterly now he is dead,' said the Chief Emissary in low voice, his expression grim indeed as he watched Sicus retreat into the ceaseless motion of fancied guests to find more comfortable company.

'Secretary Sicus seemed a mite happy to not properly meet with Miss Europe,' Rossamund observed, savoring this rare moment of vindication.

The Baron Sainte could not help a grin. 'That, Mister Bookchild,' he said happily, observing Madam Lux convince a dashing young fellow swatting and ducking at empty air that he was bothered by a host of buzzing flies, 'is the nearest a person might come to an endorsed and proper sorry in this Empire of ours.' A little past eight-of- the-clock the Archduke himself-and his large retinue with him-arrived, gracing Europe's soiree costumed in a long black tourette upon his crown and dressed in an antiquated harness hung with many bright-black stoups. Rossamund instantly recognized him as Harold, champion of the Battle of the Gates, perceiving the Archduke's intent to style himself in the same heroic line as a staunch defender of the people against all foes. Of his retinue