'Try not to kill him, dear,' came Maupin's cool voice. 'His living bones will fetch good price; I might yet salvage something from this shambles.'
This will not be! With a vigor called from the very depths of his milt, Rossamund forced out a cry. Hoarse at first, it rose to a bellow that sounded like the roar of some wounded ettin in his own ears, banishing for a glimpse the worst of the writhing frission. He planted his feet and refused his abduction, gripping the hands that gripped him, tearing them free of his hair, feeling follicles go with them. Instantly he was an agony of sparks.
At a clap of pistol shot the arcing abruptly ceased.
Rossamund was released.
With another roar, the young factotum twisted his whole frame, and with another roar joined by the tiny ferocity of Darter Brown threw the dexter bodily in a blur of black gauze and satin into a near post, the vile woman colliding with such force that wood cracked as she sagged lifelessly.
Liberated, stumbling, Rossamund was instantly dealt a mouthful of some foul repellent, burning down his wind-pipe before he could react and shut breath away. Lurching backward, he grasped at the air, retching powerfully as his vision swayed. There came a strangely loud slap! right in his face. Rossamund felt something clout him powerfully in the throat through his stock and collars, and could make out Maupin pointing a smoking pistol directly at him. I'm shot! flashed through Rossamund's mind like panic. Grasping his neck, the young factotum swooned and sat with an inelegant flop on the cold stone. Convulsing, he struggled for breath-even a single gasp of cleansing air. His sight narrowed to a pivoting, pulsating slot, and in it loomed Maupin, the venomous therimoir now in his grasp, its tip hovering mere inches from Rossamund's face.
'If you will not come easily living, I will have you dead!' Maupin seethed, all scruples for the sake of salvage clearly abandoned.
In a rush of deep, desperate fortitude, Rossamund sucked in a rattling gasp of wind. Forcing himself to move, he scrambled away from the proprietor and his dread weapon, trying to put a balcony post between him and a ghastly end.
'You truly are a monster…,' Maupin breathed with all the passion of a damning accusation as he rounded the pillar in pursuit.
Glowering in utter fury, Europe emerged from the thinning fight, gripping her abdomen, the tingle of growing power already about her as her disheveled hair stood on end. Snarling, she bore down on the chancery proprietor.
'No, you filthy blaggard,' she spat, 'we are the monsters…'
Lurching away, Maupin tried to hack her with the therimoir but tripped on a wounded lesquin's legs, his wig tumbling from his crown to reveal his clothbound head.
Catching the once-relentless fellow by his coattails, Europe hauled Maupin to her. Seizing his head in both hands, she cried out-somewhere between triumph and despair-and poured all the power she possessed into the wretched man. Eyes forced wide by the currents arcing through him, unable to voice his agony, Pater Maupin, owner of the Broken Doll and patron of the roust, suddenly blackened, and with a look of exquisite dismay burst into a flurry of ashen atoms and flying empty clothes.
28
Occludile of lazarin one of the rare scripts employed by transmogrifers immediately upon inserting memetic organs into a person to make them a lahzar. Its rarity is in part attributable to the illicit and very difficult-to-obtain parts in its constitution, and also the limits of its use. As any transmogrifer worth his or her fee will tell you, it also can serve as an aid for fortifying the memes (foreign organs) already within a lahzar's body. IN the ringing hollow that followed Maupin's final end, silence and stillness ruled.
Rossamund's senses swam, and he collapsed at last against a post.
Have we won?
On the edge of his awareness, he was aware of movement about him, of forms deliberate and slow in the after-math of battle. Nearby he could make out a slender figure stumbling toward him. It took a moment to realize it was Europe, sooty with the ashes of her blasted enemy, her face frightfully pale, her eyes fixed on Rossamund. The fulgar's expression was hard, as if expecting to discover the worst. She faltered for a few steps more, and then Europe sagged to her knees. She tried to stand, but dropped fully to the flagstones, to lie with her unraveled fringe across her face.
Despite the acute pounding within his skull and the acrid burning in his throat, Rossamund sucked a great gulp of wind to clear the miasma in his lungs and sat up. Grinding his teeth against the agony in his neck, he went on hands and knees to her side, fumbling bandages from his stoup as he came. He could easily see the dark wet slash in the right panels of her proofing. 'You are cut, M-miss Europe…,' he said rapidly, fumbling in his stoup for the pot of sealing paste. Using bindings torn from Europe's own petticoats, he tried to stanch the laceration in her side, smearing strupleskin among all the red, wrapping the rudimentary bindings as fast as he could.Yet, for all this, the wound refused to be stanched.
His mistress laid a shaking hand on his arm. 'S-save some for your own,' she hushed, fingers vaguely gesturing to his neck where it hurt so powerfully.
'It is nothing!' Rossamund insisted, impatient while his mistress lay so damaged.
'It is a hole right through the… the side of y-your throttle, little m-man,' the fulgar insisted. 'Y-you ought to be dead.'
Rossamund felt at his neck and, in a thrill of fright, found on the left side a long and terrible gash where the ball had scored his flesh. 'I feel well enough…' Quickly, he bound the wound up with his stock, as much to hide it as to stanch it.
Stepping from the gloom beneath the balcony of the quadrangle the slender figure of Elecrobus Slitt approached, smoking pistols in hand and death in his eyes. 'You set us a fine chase to find you, m'lady…,' he said quietly, concern clear in his otherwise flat voice. 'You have a fine victory here for me to report to my Baron Finance…'
'Yes, yes, man.' Europe's voice sounded far away. 'We may sing the… the glory of my success to y-your master later…'
'You may tell him sooner, fairest duchess-daughter,' the percusor returned. 'My master awaits you in his drag down on the street you first came in by. I suggest we be quick to go to him.You look sore and in need of a physic's help.'
Rossamund's thoughts hurtled madly upon how he could make treacle in this blighted place. 'There ought to be a kitchen here!' he commanded desperately, looking up into the balconies rising on every side like the sides of a grave to a pallid rectangle of early morning gray. 'A pot! A fire! I can make plaudamentum! Vauquelin too!'
'Ahh… I think it will take more than vauquelin, little man.'
Fumbling levenseep to her mouth, Rossamund would not give in. 'I saved you in the Brindleshaws. I can again.' Sobbing, staggering to his feet, he took the fulgar under her arms and began to haul her just as he had on the sandy forest road so long ago.
From the dim fume of firelock smoke and settling potive fume, Madigan emerged, bloodied and disheveled, her man, Threedice, limping close behind and clutching his arm as if it were broken.
'I have o-overreached myself…,' Europe declared to her approaching friend.
'Nonsense, dear one,' Madigan asserted softly, grim concern darkening the tender light in her eyes as she crouched to clutch her fellow fulgar's hand. 'That wretched blade has poisoned my organs… M-my natural humours take their revenge…' Europe's smile was alarmingly wan.
'Indeed, sister,' Madigan agreed. 'We shall make a dash ahead of you to the house of your man, Oberon; he
