"He is indeed, m"lady, a genuine jewel in our already glittering staff." The Chief Emissary dipped his head gratefully. "And it is about his usefulness to you that I come once again. The Archduke was none too pleased after his interview with you yesterday ..."
"That makes us twin," Europe murmured astringently.
"Yesternight was but the first bout with Pater Maupin, Secretary Sicus and his surgeon pet-an unhallowed alliance if ever there was one. They grow bold with the Lord of Brandenbra.s.s" support.Your absence may not be enough this time, d.u.c.h.ess-daughter."
"Yet I go nonetheless, dear baron." Europe remained unfazed.
Finance regarded his mistress long, a pa.s.sion of esteem gleaming from his eyes. "Have a care, fine lady," he said, "and an eye for followers . . ." and with the nod of a bow leaped from the landaulet and disappeared into the press of people and carriages.
"And you, sir," Europe murmured once he was gone.
Craumpalin revolved in his seat and with a polite cough asked, "Are all thy commerces in this city so . . . botherous, m"lady?"
The fulgar peered at him thoughtfully. "I find my time in Brandenbra.s.s either sappingly dull or intrusively troublesome. If it were not so conveniently placed to my common work, I doubt I would ever come here at all. However, I find it best to leave boredom and trouble to themselves."
"A storm avoided is a wrecking saved," Fransitart concurred.
"Aye," Craumpalin said into his beard, "but a difficulty shirked is adversity delayed."
"Are you always so dreary, Master Salt?" Europe retorted.
The old dispenser"s shoulders lifted briefly. " "Tis usually Frans" part," he said with a grin.
Smiling, Rossamund could see his onetime dormitory master hunch and mutter unintelligibly, flicking Rufous and Candle to quicken their step.
At last, after inspection by a platoon of black-and-white-mottled gate wards, the landaulet pa.s.sed into the left of a twin of tunnels that ran beneath an immense bastion, the last port in the outermost curtain of Brandenbra.s.s. The Two Sisters-or so Europe called it. Above the ma.s.sive fortress with its steep roof of iron and spiny watchtowers flew enormous spandarions-one half leuc, the other sable-cracking proudly like thunder in the rising winds from flagpoles as thick as ram masts.
Out again, Rossamund saw a brazen statue set proudly on the projecting keystone of the arch and standing guard above the entrance of the tunnel. As tall as three tall men, dressed in flowing robes, lower legs metal-armored, the figure clutched a mighty sword to her bosom; this was the southern sister, green-streaked with rainwashed corrosion. The likeness of a windswept veil was fashioned with great cunning as if blowing across her face, yet her fixed expression of wild defiance was unmistakeable.With a shiver, Rossamund realized this was the image of one of those very ouranin sisters upon which the Lapinduce spoke, ancient rossamunderling defenders of Brandenbra.s.s. Twisting in his seat, he stared at the effigy like some long-gone kin and smiled grimly at how quickly this majestic protector would be torn down should the citizens of this city discover her true monstrous nature.
Beyond the twin gates the city yet lingered, the last of the high-houses and dormitories clinging like children to the outward hem of Brandenbra.s.s" pristine wall. Then, all too quickly, it gave way to a more bucolic scene. One moment they were in a Brandenard street, the next running by wicket-fenced fields where stupidly dignified goats with great, flopping ears and fat, overlong noses stared at them solemnly. A wide fertile plain spread out before them-the Milchfold, lively with cows and goats and laborers. Reached by long tree-lined lanes that crossed and recrossed the whole plain, the homes of dairy herds and landholders stood like martial towers. A handful of miles to the west the land rose to a blunt escarpment, becoming the feet of dark crouching hills, the Brandenfells.
The red lamps and paved stone of the Hardwick gave over to the lightless, packed clay of the Athy Road, going northwest by lush flat fields of peas, cow pastures, goat-breaks and barren saltpeter farms where moilers masked in vented scarves tilled in the brimstone stink.
In a blur, Darter Brown joined them, fluttering up to land on Rossamund"s knuckle as it rested on the sash.
"Good morning, my shadow," the young factotum murmured genially to his feathered friend.
It twittered at him urgently, as if trying to communicate something more complex, but Rossamund could not decipher its meaning.
"My, my! He doth speak with the animals!" Europe declared. "Perhaps you could call in a bird each for us, little man; then we could start a menagerie, charge a subscription for people to come and see, and cease this violent life for good."
Rossamund knew the fulgar was jesting, but he blushed anyway.
The fulgar c.o.c.ked her head to scrutinize the sparrow with a raised brow. "I cannot say that when I first submitted myself to the hands of Sinster"s sectifers I antic.i.p.ated taking on the services of a bird to hunt the monster-and a rather scrawny one at that."
To this the watchful sparrow gave an irritable tweet!
"And saucy too," the fulgar continued with an amused sniff. "My, what a collective I have gathered about me. I doubt any other teratologist could boast such peculiar staff."
The ground rose gradually to the bluffs reaching around from the northeast, bending gradually southwest to disappear from sight behind themselves. Farther south Rossamund could see mounts of black tumbling east to the coast: the Siltmounds, great dunes of swarthy sand hemming the city"s southern walls. At a crossing of minor drives with the main way stood several lofty poles, thick like trees, buried deep in the compacted soil and topped with overlarge cartwheels. Daws, magpies and crows hovered, squabbling over several of these mucky and blackened platforms, yet leaving one to the mastery of a single bald-headed a.s.svogel. Startled, Darter Brown took wing and vanished among the stalks of wide hilly pastures.
A dread chill flushed from Rossamund"s innards to his crown.
Catharine wheels ...These were the infamous mechanisms of torture and execution for murderers, traitors and . . . sedorners. Thick-growing briars were twined and pinned about the lower portions of the mast to prevent rescue. From one roses were blooming, declaring to all the world-so tradition held-that the judged soul rotting on high was a sedorner through and through.
Pulling his sight free, Rossamund refused to gaze any closer as they pa.s.sed beneath this grisly stand.
"Pay no mind to these wicked coldbeams, Rossamund," Fransitart called doggedly over his shoulder.
There, bizarrely, standing under them, was a reddleman with his many dyes in a square handcart, smock and skin stained by his products. As they rattled by, Rossamund could hear the fellow singing, as happy as you like, cawing along with the carrion birds: Hey, ho, what"s the time?
Hang my smallclothes on the line.
If they tear,
I don"t care,
I"ll just dye another pair.
His head down, the young factotum watched Europe fixedly from the corner of his vision. The fulgar stared ahead, glancing occasionally at the foul devices, undaunted. Catching her factotum"s unease, she laid her hand lightly on Rossamund"s clenched fist until they were past, her simple-seeming yet uncommon kindness touching him so profoundly it banished his alarm.
The sun was shining as the landaulet climbed, yet mile upon mile away south a dark churning horizon sparked elegant lightning straight to the ground-kinked electrical charges miles long, arcing against the black. An arrowed formation of silent ibis winged high above, driven over the hills by the freshening winds that brought delayed levin grumbles.
"The pipistrelle turns dirty," Fransitart said of the distant thunder, Rossamund recognizing the vinegaroon name for the light winds of the Grume. "The spring glooms have come. Ye"ll be needin" a bolt-hole to keep yer pretty pate dry, m"lady, afore the day is out."
"For you such turns of weather might be dirty, Master Vinegar," Europe replied, "but a levining sky is a happy roof for a thermistor."
Climbing beside a rocky winding stream made rapid by the slope, the Athy Road took them steadily higher into the drab hills of the Brandenfells. Even from this distant vantage, Brandenbra.s.s looked enormous, her many rings of fortification clear, her long pale harbor with its countless berths and piers squashed with vessels, a poisonous haze hanging low over the seaside milling districts.The lofty towers of the countinghouses and the great many fortified gates thrust high above the great spreading ma.s.s. Highest and st.u.r.diest of all in its midst stood the Brandendirk, seat of the ducal line, and a little north in the city"s very center brooded the dark smudge of the Moldwood, unguessed, untroubled and unchallenged; two powers opposed, with Brandentown pinched between.
Ahead, myrtles and bent pines sprouted in ones and twos like thinning hair on the near-bald crowns of the Brandenfells, thickening into woods down in the convoluted valleys twisting steeply back through many spurs and folds.
While the four travelers supped on prunes, cold beef clumsy smeared with soft Pondsley cheese and claret, the sky grew louring dark and heavy with water.
With a suppressed rumble, rain arrived, large dollops that had an uncomfortable knack of landing on exposed skin: the back of the neck, the wrist at the cuff . . . Sorry for his old masters left out in the wet, Rossamund extended the bonnet-like canopy as Craumpalin struggled on his oiled pallmain.
Some miles ahead, upon the summit of a distant spur, Rossamund spied a single orange glimmer, lit perhaps against the growing gloom, the only evidence of a dwelling.
"Wood Hole," Europe explained. "Pleasant enough for a hill town, though it is not our goal. There is a wayhouse in a dell about a mile from here.We shall shelter there."
The road veered behind the lee side of the hills, descending to loop about the folds of land, the mossy stones of its foundation reaching down to the bubbling creek only a few yards below. A tenuous threwd dwelt here, as if the stream brought the watchfulness from more haunted heights. But for the dripping trickle of rain-wash and runnel, and the uneven viscous clops of hoofs, the world was reverentially silent. Trees grew densely along the verge: dark olive, age-twisted pine and pale laurel. Between their trunks Rossamund thought he could see a light ahead, the corona of cool clean seltzer light, a welcome pilot in the sodden obscurity. The shadows slowly parted to reveal a great-lamp on the right of the way, lifted on a black post above a solid gate in a high stone wall. Nestled in a cleft beyond this gate was a house half excavated into the hillside beside a br.i.m.m.i.n.g, chattering weir.
There was no sign, just this single signal flare.
"Welcome to the Guiding Star," said Europe. "We shall abide here for now."
With no small relief they entered the foreyard and got out of the rain.
The foul weather had blown itself out overnight and now, in the still cool, a l.u.s.trous blond sky joyfully declared the new day. Cooing encouragements to the horses and sipping one of Craumpalin"s restorative draughts from a biggin, Fransitart guided the landaulet away from the wayhouse. No one spoke as they wended through woodland din, the gray bosky half-light whispering with the lingering riddles of the long night.
Bending around several tight spurs, the valley road climbed the gra.s.sy flank of a low hill, bringing them to a new and welcome prospect. Soft-lit by the porcelain radiance of heaven"s dome, wide downs of ripening pastures folded away before them, fresh with soaking dew, scattered with trees, tall garners and low farmsteads and oddly regular woodlands as far as vision could grasp.
From an ancient myrtle on the crown of the next hillock, a magpie gave throat to its happy quavering music full of primeval wisdom, and morning"s joy. Inwardly, Rossamund soared with the birdsong.
"The Page," Europe proclaimed, interrupting his flight. "Here, Rossamund, is parish land, a pleasant change from the ditches where you last served." She pointed with open hand to the vista.
To Rossamund the scene seemed tilted to the left, descending to the far-off basin, a dark line at the edge of sight where the entire southern sky was brooding again upon another squall. To the north, the hill they stood upon reached for miles to join with its sisters, rising yet farther to meet a distant hedge of grimmer higher mounts.
"Take us on, Master Vinegar, if you please."
Moilers and faradays were out early in the fields, scything and wrenching at weeds that grew thick at this part of the season and threatened to overwhelm whole crops.
"They could come and clear the verges while they"re about it," Fransitart grumbled, veering the landaulet into the sprays of mustard weed and fennel thick on the brink of the road as he attempted to find a path through a herd of dairy cows.
The beasts" hay ward-a fellow in the meager proofing of a long smock-gave the four travelers a bold "halloo!" and a cheerful wink from beneath the wide brim of his catillium as he lazily goaded his charges with a spearlike mandricard.
"Halloo to ye too, ye mischievous gra.s.s-combing kinekisser," the ex-dormitory master muttered under his breath as Craumpalin adopted a cheerier face.
The day-orb rose and spring"s early bees hummed about them inquisitively before winging away to pollinate the feral plants. b.u.t.terflies, bright azure or patched orange and black, tumbled their crazy courses. Droning wasps and emperorflies hovered, hunted, joined by curious predatory bugs unusual in bright colors. Somewhere near, just beyond sight, a cow bellowed.
"Cowherds and honeybees; what an enchanting place," Europe uttered sardonically.
"Aye, this is a pleasant way to serve," Fransitart offered with gruff cheer. "Sittin" high aboard a wheel-ed barque upon a sea o" weeds is a fine way to see out yer days."
"Very poetical, Master Vinegar," said the fulgar, affecting just the right pitch between interest and indifference.
The ex-dormitory master half turned to catch Rossamund"s eye. "Can"t say I"ve e"er wanted to perish mopin" in some damp hut complainin" of the rheum."
"No, indeed," Europe returned with a smile. "That is not an end I intend for myself either, chair-bound and sciatical. "To die in harness" is the phrase, I believe."
"Aye, madam, that"s th" one." Fransitart nodded philosophically. "To perish with yer hand to the plow, to bow out still swinging-"
"To push on to th" end ...," Craumpalin added glibly.
"We are of one accord then, sirs," Europe declared with a flourish of a graceful hand. "A life of adventure for us it is, until the very end."
The two ex-vinegaroons chuckled together.
Rossamund joined them with a sad smile of his own.
With increasing frequency they found baited animals hung, dead, on fence posts: foxes, hares, possums, mink-left to be taken by peltrymen or soapers. Though the land was long cicurated and barely threwdish, Rossamund expected to spy some small bogle murdered and stiff, strung up on some fence-post hook.
Though a well-used, well-founded thoroughfare bending through the domed pasturelands, the Athy Road was not broad and straight like the Wormway that ran east from Winstermill. Several times was Fransitart forced to slow and pull aside or stop for oncoming traffic: local folk commuting carefree between towns; post-lentums or hired canty-coaches carelessly hustling to the great city; lumber wagons from the plantations or ore-carters from the local coal mine, driven by hardy wagoners and under the escort of saturnine harnessguarde in the employ of some mining cartel. With these obstacles and the usual privacy stops taken at conveniently luxuriant bushes, when sundown came they were still short of Spelter Innings, a proper wash and a cozy bunk.
"The town is really only a skip over those hills," Europe advised, pointing away northwest. "Yet the twist of the road makes it much farther. Let us stop at the nearest nook; this part of the map is easy for sleep."
Muttering of a softer seat for his aging tailbones, Fransitart willingly complied, urging the horses to pick up their trot.
In the cool, clear l.u.s.ter of a just-set sun, they halted in a deep crease on the right-hand side of the road, a bay in the downs that sheltered a stand of young, self-sown white oaks. To the soft chorus of spa.r.s.e crickets they settled themselves for food and sleep.
"Ahh, lad, look at thee test like a wise old rhubezhal," Craumpalin observed proudly as Rossamund made treacle.
The young factotum stood a little taller as he brewed, nearly forgetting the foul sensation as he poured the Sugar of Nnun. "Give me elbow-way, Master Pin. I don"t want to topple this nasty stuff on you!"
It was a cold camp-no fire at least. However, the laborium made for an excellent pot, and once Rossamund was done with his brewing, Craumpalin a.s.sumed the role of cook and soon had a savory medley sizzling out its friendly aromas.
"This is a decidedly pleasant shift from my usual encampments," Europe announced. "Hearty food and plaudamentum fit for the dinner table. If I could have, gentlemen, I would have employed all three of you years ago."
Despite the general reputation this land had for being friendly and peaceful, the night was divided into three watches-Europe neither offering nor expected to take part and Rossamund taking the middle watch. Curled on the landaulet seat and well asleep under ample blankets, he reluctantly woke at Craumpalin"s firm shaking and softly rasping voice.
"Rouse out, me hearty, all is well! Tumble up and shake thyself. Time to watch the midnight world!" The dispenser pointed to the proverbial green star rising with a bulging moon in the eastern firmament. "When Maudlin"s at her height, be waking ol" Frans for last lookout; don"t let his limping or his groaning drive thee to too much sympathy."
Rubbing eyes and yawning wide, Rossamund climbed as easy as he could from the carriage. With a yawn, he hooked his baldric with its attached stoup over his shoulder, adjusted the digitals at his waist and made ready for all surprises.
The night was p.r.i.c.kling cold, the air sharp with the tang of frost and damp gra.s.ses as his breath made steam in Phoebe"s rising gleam. Cheeks stinging, Rossamund wrapped a blanket of silken wool about him and listened, blinking, holding his breath to better hear any furtive hints. In this cleft the air was still, rare puffs setting the knuckled branches of the oaks to an arid rattling. Up on high in the spangled firmament where Geths.e.m.e.ne sparkled brightest, flat fragments of clouds raced, thin luminous veils that left the world of men and monster untroubled in their chase.
Rossamund drew deeply of the frosted night.
Somewhere away to the left a b.o.o.book gave voice to a husky, cautious hu-hoo, speaking twice then lapsing to quiet.
His bladder griping for his attention, the young factotum awoke more fully. "Give me a moment, Master Pin," he said as the old dispenser was settling himself for sleep. "I need the jakes."
Grumbling to himself, the old dispenser kept hold of the musketoon and consented to watch the sleepers a little longer.
With a quick look about, the young factotum sought the privacy of a flowering hawthorn up on the brow of the left-hand hill.This was deceptively steep, and he was well awake and near bursting as he reached the blossoming tree. Finding relief just in the nick, Rossamund was gifted with an enchanting, almost endless panorama of the vales and swards beyond, a silver-lit sea of flattened downs bounded only on the east by the low and distant umbra of the Brandenfells. Most obvious in this midnight charm were the twinkling lights of a settlement in a shallow combe west-by-northwest, not much more than two miles away.
Spelter Innings.
Rearranging himself and about to descend, Rossamund caught movement in the field across the way. Before him the earth dipped abruptly to a plant-choked runnel, the other bank rising to a larger, almost perfectly round hillock. In Phoebe"s stark light, bright enough to obliterate the sight of many stars, the young factotum could see this hillock was sprouted all over with slender square-sided markers of stone tapering to pyramid points or blank orbs. Crownstones! A whole ma.s.s of them! This was a boneyard, perhaps the very one identified in the first singular for the corpse-eating Swarty Hobnag-the one already filled by some other teratologist.