It had almost sounded like a call.
Easing his foot flat and pressing his limulight against his belly to douse its glow, Rossamund harkened wide- eyed to every nuance and shift of air. There ahead, someone-or something-was breathing heavily… Frazzard's ready, the young factotum slid toward the sibilant clue, keeping a row of posts between him and where he imagined the wheezer to be.
'H-hello, young sir…,' a voice called feebly from the dark.
Rossamund near dropped his caste in shock.
Peering about a thick post, he spotted a man dangerously drawn and pale, spread-eagled on the gritty floor, head leaning against a wooden pillar. Rossamund took a moment to recognize the fellow in the diffuse, almost powdery glimmer of his moss-light.
'Mister Rakestraw!' he hissed, shuffling hastily to him.
'One and… and same.' Clutching a sthenicon to his chest, the sleuth smiled fitfully, his weird laggard's eyes rolling, focusing for a moment, rolling again. 'I am of the… of the thinking that y-your mistress would be unhappy you… you are here…'
'Is she well?'
'Aye, aye, last I saw of her… better'n me in the least.' Rakestraw looked down at his broken body. Bound inadequately in neckcloths and handkerchiefs, his hand and wrist were mangled, and his right thigh torn by jaws powerful enough to break flesh even beneath the good proofing of his longshanks. 'I… I told your mistress to leave me… No time to lose… I'll be right enough… been worse…,' he said with obvious braggadocio. 'Just getting my… my wind back…'
Rossamund frowned over the horrid and hastily tended wounds.
'H-how'd you find us…' Rakestraw roused a little. 'It took my best… sneaks and many dabs o' precious… precious anavoid to… to crack this place and-' He winced. 'And here you stroll in… like it's… it's a common shop.'
Dipping his head as if peering with necessary concentration at the man's wounds and making much of his investigations of his stoops, Rossamund let the question by without a word. Applying the flesh-brown strupleskin paste to any tear of skin or tissue, he bound the fellow's thigh tightly with bandages from his stoup.Twice he paused, thinking he heard portentous bumping in the murk of this hall of shadow.
'They got me with their foreign dogs…,' Rakestraw murmured, shaking his head in chagrin.
'I saw three of them.' The young factotum cocked his head to indicate the fallen beasts lying like a trail behind.
Rakestraw grimaced. 'Aye… I'd say they were left… left in here to prowl about these garners… unhindered… A permanent guard. I smelled them easy enough… great blighted tykehounds… Saw 'em too, pacing in the dark… c-coming for us. But the one that got me was a… surprise…' He tried to chuckle, to make light of the terrible. 'Striking from the side while our… our attention was taken by those in front of us, it was snapping and shaking at me before I… before I knew better.Your Lady Naimes did it in before it had too much of me, though not soon enough to prevent my dis… disqualification from… from the rest of the venture.' He smiled wanly.
As many cuts and gashes as he could find with the scanty limulight daubed and bound, Rossamund gave the man a dose of levenseep. He was gratified to see it promptly restore some of the flush of vigor to Rakestraw's cheeks and a glimmer of clarity to his gaze.
'Give the siccustrumn time to firm, Mister Rakestraw,' Rossamund warned, 'and then you may hobble as best you can anywhere you like-though I reckon right out the way you came in will be the best path for you.'
'Th-that'll be enough for me, lad-I shall win out on my own handsomely now.' The sleuth gritted his teeth, forcing himself to sit straighter. 'Our ladyship planned this expedition down to the dot,' he wheezed. 'Even as we sit here, you and I, having our nice little chat, she has an armed party at the beck of that antlered Maids of Malady lass raiding a meeting of necromancers gathered unawares in their coven's cellar down south, while not too far from here Lady Madigan and that surly Threedice chap are leading a company of lesquin troubards to make strike at Maupin's seaside chancery.'
Shaking his head to himself, Rossamund marveled at the full scale of Europe's plan. 'Where is she now?' he asked, standing and resettling his stoups.
Rakestraw gestured ambiguously to the left of Rossamund's original path. 'I sent her down that way, with a dozen stout lesquin sell-swords and my remaining two scarfes to sniff out the proper path. As I warned her ladyship, have a care, young fellow… I might give you this to guide your way by'-he patted the sthenicon, still grasped at his bosom-'but it would only confuse your unperspicuous senses…'
'I reckon a trail of the fallen will lead me near as well, Mister Rakestraw,' Rossamund replied.
Darter Brown ruffled himself and made a peculiar burring noise as if to be included in the tally of guides.
The sleuth snorted a weak laugh. 'Well they might… There's always a path for the patient eye. But they have sunk pits in here to catch ignorant intruders and… as fortunate as you have been to come so far without tumbling in one, you had better step careful…'
Giving Rakestraw a parting draught of lordia for humours dangerously unbalanced by blood's free flow, Rossamund thanked him and pressed onward into this dark forest of beams. Alert now to the threat of pitfalls, he crept among the seemingly ceaseless rows of posts, the greening light of poorly maintained bright-limns haphazardly piercing the murk, the faintest eddy in the lifeless air drawing him on.
Hopping before him, Darter Brown tested the boards for abrupt voids. Suddenly the little sparrow disappeared, only to flutter into view with a surly cheep! from the cavity of a pitfall.
Circumspectly, Rossamund toed the boards to left and right, feeling his way about the trap and pressing on, Darter resuming his reconnaissance in front. Several times they found their path steered by high stacks of blocking crates and hemmed by pits. Growing quickly tired of the obstacles, Rossamund drew on his strength and simply heaved the crates opposing him until in a great clattering crash they toppled and the way was cleared.
Ahead the gloomy light was becoming a little more general, its source more than the infrequent and ill-kept limns, until Rossamund found himself standing at the edge of the forest of pillars before a most astonishing sight. Like a glade in a wood, a great oblong space had been made through every level of this vast storehouse, the vacancy rising above him for four whole floors to open out to the wide night-gray sky. At the far end of this clearing stood the facade of a grand terrace house, not some small abscondary but a full-blown peltisade ascending for all four stories.
Here at last was the hidden home of Pater Maupin.
Greened by artfully clipped shrubs growing from large hogshead casques, the 'yard' of wooden boards before this indoor house was laid with many dead. Most of the slain were sturdy roughs in mixed proofing, but among them lay a single gaudily harnessed lesquin. Lorica and metal helm savagely dented and flesh pierced with a score of wounds, the fellow had sold his own life dearly. Bruised by inaccurate potive work, the yard's walls and boards were smeared in bursts of deep spraying green or gaunt mauve, their surfaces scored and pitted with the scorching of many arcs.
Europe's work…
From somewhere came a sullen booming.
Fixing his vent over nose and mouth against the faint and lingering fug of vapors and returning the sparrow mask over his face as further protection to hide it, Rossamund approached the entrance of the peltisade, a thick ironbound door more like the port to a vault than a dwelling, forced open now and hanging by one bent hinge.
To wing at last, Darter Brown shot into the house.
Quick to follow, the young factotum progressed into a broad and well-furnished hall, the once-dank setting entirely refurbished: carpets and cornice-work and all, complete with plinths bearing alabaster busts and wall-hung daubs of august yet forgotten figures.
Circling for a moment below the low warehouse beams dark with wax, Darter Brown alighted upon a broken side table, flicking his wings agitatedly as he waited.
Shoes clicking on polished boards, Rossamund stepped into this comfortably furnished and bizarrely urbane field of battle illuminated by a row of colorful glass carbuncles hung from the coffers between the ceiling beams. A score of bodies were flung to all points about spontaneous barricades built of tandems and bookshelves, overturned and thrown down vainly to halt the relentless fulgar and her supporters. Loopholes in the yellow-plastered walls stood open between the paintings, each a gaping black oblong scorched about its framed mouth, one seeping unctuous smoke that smelled distinctly of recently ruptured asper. The splintered punctures of musket and pistol
