shall set you to rights. Meanwhile, this lovely boy'-she smiled briefly at Rossamund-'and these hefty fellows bear you to your waiting Baron.'With that, she and Threedice departed, going with all haste out by the tunnel through which they had first forced their way in.
Smattered with gore, the handful of remaining lesquins promptly fashioned a litter of two poleaxes and the proofing cursorily stripped from fallen door wards. Upon this they-and Rossamund with them-lifted his mistress as gently as haste would allow. Europe gave a terrible cry, an animal sound born as much of frustration and the anger of fear as it was of pain. In shock, Rossamund clamped his teeth upon a sob.
The lesquins went to put her down again, but she insisted they go on.
Elecrobus Slitt at the lead and bearing the terrible therimoir, they took the Branden Rose from that hidden den, retracing the original path through the dark of the hall of posts, the secreted chute and the blasted posticum.
Looking often to the rudimentary bandaging about Europe's side-slowly reddening despite the strupleskin- Rossamund refused to heed the threatening crushing hopelessness that hovered in the darkness about the edge of his soul. Head ringing with a terror far greater than any felt in the midst of battle or facing a foe, he repeated, I saved her before, I can save her again under his breath until the words lost all meaning.
They progressed at times with necessary yet frustrating deliberation, lest they bump or twist Europe and harm her further, finally descending the stairs of the file of Messrs. Gabritas amp; Thring to shuffle out onto the peaceful street, gray in the primal gleam of dawn. Baron Finance was indeed there, standing anxiously by a large and proper carriage.
'Ahh, duchess-daughter!' he exclaimed in undisguised consternation as he beheld the Duchess-in-waiting on her makeshift cradle. 'If only you had included me in your machinations, dear hope of our state, I would have sent Mister Slitt with you. He might have kept you from such a disorder as I find you in now!'
Lifting her head, Europe made a show of strength she did not truly have. 'But, Baron, y-you were my yardstick,' she said. 'If I was able to keep my… my plan from you, then… then there was s-scant chance Maupin could… could discover it.'
'All plans be dashed and secrets revealed!' Finance cried, taking her hand. 'I have failed you, and your mother too!'
'Dear Baron…' Europe's voice was profoundly tender. 'Y-you did not fail, s-sir, I b-bested you… that is all…'
The anguish on the Chief Emissary's face was more than Rossamund could bear to behold, and he looked to his own feet.
As hasty arrangement was made for Mister Slitt to remain with the lesquins and ensure that Europe's task of annihilation was complete, the fulgar was lifted with profound tenderness into the cabin and laid endwise across the soft seats.
Fighting to master himself among all these valiant men, Rossamund climbed in after, heedful not to rock the fit too much.
With scarce enough room for him in the cabin, Finance mounted up beside the driver of the park drag and shouted the fellow on. 'Quick, man!' Rossamund heard his command clear and urgent. 'To Bankers Lane, Risen Mole! Fast as you can and spare our lady your jolts.'
A shrill keening high in the southern sky above dark roof-ridges and thorny chimneys drew their attention to a bright, upward-hurtling flare of pallid green.
The Duchess-in-waiting strained to see the sailing light through the cab window. 'Ahh,' she sighed, her head dropping heavily back down. 'B-bravo… Lady Saphine of the Maids of Malady w-wins her fight in the coven cellar… Maupin and his allies are done in; y-you are safe, little man… for now.'
Aye, Rossamund cried within, but at what cost! 'I–I…' was all his mouth for a moment could say. 'I have not kept you safe!'
Europe smiled feebly, cupping his cheek and chin in her soft hand-the very hand that had arced him so long ago in the Brindleshaws, the very hand that had spent itself to vie and defeat his foes, now so clammy and cold. 'A life of adventure, a life of violence… A t-teratologist is not… not m-meant to be safe…'
'B-but you are!' he returned in an overpowering swell of grief and confusion, and insisted she swallow another dose of emunic reborate followed by a second vial of lordia.
'M… my organs are souring within me, Rossamund,' Europe murmured, head lolling to the steady rock of the Baron's carriage, face afflicted with a gray pallor.
Rossamund wanted to shriek his pain, to scream at the blighted world and its blighted senselessness. He clutched her hand to his chest.
Perched on the sill of the door, Darter Brown began to chitter loudly, a tiny avian wail.
'I am the cause of all this…,' Rossamund breathed.
'This was m-my choosing, little man…,' Europe retorted with a cough, 'the m-moment I cried QGU.'
Perhaps this was so, but what next? His staunch loyalty to his mistress was not as virtuous as it might appear. Surely it could only bring more strife. Rossamund's thoughts revolved with premonitions of an unceasing and ever-escalating series of trials ahead.
At Oberon's house-a tidy three-story dwelling in the fine middling suburb of Risen Mole-Europe was taken with careful haste to the lone bed of the transmogrifer's private ground-floor infirmary. Here, treacle brewed but moments before by Threedice-arrived ahead of them and already testing some subtler draughts-was given to her.
'She is cut,' Rossamund said in report. 'by a blighted spathidril sword. I have used all my strupleskin, but she still bleeds!'
'The wound must be abluered-cleansed-before siccustrumns will take,' the examining transmogrifer replied, peering intently at the hurt beneath Europe's lacerated proofing. 'Thus is the dread efficacy of such a blade.' Taking a stylus and slip of paper, he wrote out the script for a substance he named munditi corpum, penning it without reference to any compleat or other book. 'To clear the wound and make a siccustrumn stick,' he elaborated as he returned to scrutinize the cut. 'Even so, I shall have to stitch you, madam,' he continued with clear distaste, 'to be certain to stop any sanguinary flow.'
Europe's expression soured. 'Ugh…,' she muttered, perplexingly flippant as her faculties failed. 'A s- scar…'
In waxing urgency, Oberon shooed all comers but for one maid from the room that he might examine the Branden Rose with the necessary quiet and privacy.
His dread for his mistress in some small part quieted by the examining transmogrifer's steady and confident manner, Rossamund let himself be shown across the vestibule to a small but well-stocked saumery. Here he found Threedice hard at brewing, despite his wounded arm.With little room for the labor of two over the single stove, Rossamund collected the parts the script for munditi corpum required from their various, clearly marked receptacles and set to testing in the hearth, already lit against the morning's chill. Bearing the final, nacrescent gray draught to his mistress, the young factotum was refused entry even as the potive was taken from his grasp. Impatient, Rossamund returned and, despite the other factotum's obvious reluctance at sharing the task, assisted Threedice in his making of what the older factotum brewed what he named occludile of lazarin.
Two more times he delivered necessary scripts from Threedice's testing, and each time he was disallowed entry. Thwarted, Rossamund paced in the vestibule before the infirmary, refusing the little triangles of buttered bread and warmed saloop served so politely by Oberon's prim steward. He was certain that Cinnamon could fix his mistress' hurts with ease and not need Rossamund to be absent in the process.
Nearby, the Lady Madigan, her face now washed of its battle-grime, sat upon a chair brought especially by servants. Her pose was straight and alert despite a whole night spent fighting, yet her eyes were closed as if she slept and the piece of buttered bread in her delicate grasp remained uneaten. Beside her stood Finance, rocking restlessly on his heels, his expression tight, his eyes rarely leaving the infirmary door and then only to look hard- almost reproachfully-at Rossamund. For a beat the Chief Emissary appeared on the point of saying something to him, yet, perhaps to check himself, took a bite of his bread-and-butter slice instead.
Patently sensing the man's scarce-restrained agitation, Madigan stirred. 'She pays a terrible price for her
