D Cornish - Factotum

At a mere four hours, the passage from High Vesting to Brandenbrass was, as water-faring journeys go, rather brief. Though certainly not the busiest sea lane on the vinegar seas, it was nevertheless plied every day-and sometimes into the night too-by all manner of vessels. The most common of these were the packet rams, old naval frigates rescued from breaking and put into civil service, taking people and goods back and forth ceaselessly. Yet for Rossamund, who sat at the tossing prow of the small packet ram Widgeon plowing stoutly through the milky gray-green swell and holding tightly to his newest hat lest it be blown off his crown, the crossing could not be quick enough.

Since their departure from the Imperial Lamplighters' fortress of Winstermill and throughout the entire journey to High Vesting and aboard the Widgeon, the two retired vinegaroons, Fransitart and Craumpalin, had been tight-lipped and unyieldingly alert-as taut as Rossamund had ever known them. Only now, treading across the Grume and many miles distant from the deadly allegations of the Master-of-Clerks and his ambitious surgeon, Grotius Honorius Ludius Swill, did they seem to unbend a little.

Embarked early that morning on what was his very first proper seagoing voyage, Rossamund was aware that at some other time he might have thrilled to the rough passage of the Widgeon; that with each mile he might have savored the bitter sting of the spindrift sprayed by the clash of ram with wave, and his soul soared with the cries of the sooty terns, the mollyhawks and the whimbrel-gulls that teemed in the pale sky above.

Yet he did not.

Two days' journey from that ordeal, Rossamund found himself pinned between sweet relief and restless, anxious dismay. He was free, yes, saved once again by Europa of Naimes, fulgar teratologist and Duchess-in-waiting, but what was he? Though he had escaped the grip of his accusers, he could not escape their accusations turning endlessly in his head. At first indicting him for sedonition, the surgeon, Swill, had stood to claim on evidence that Rossamund was not just a simple sedorner-a monster-lover-but a monster in and of himself. A rossamunderling, or so Swill had called him-"little pink lips," a monster that looks like an everyman. His proofs? The startling effect Rossamund had upon dogs, his monster-slaying strength, even his own name. The man had gone as far as to take some of Rossamund's own blood to mark Fransitart with a proving cruorpunxis. It was then-with a puncting only just begun on the ex-dormitory master's arm-that Europe had intervened. Yet the worst of it was that his old masters, who had known him longest and best, had looked burdened during the inquest, and this was horribly suggestive that the surgeon's wild claims might very well be true.

Can they really have carried such a bizarre secret with them for so long? Why not tell me sooner? Could I really be such a preposterous thing? Rossamund tried not to think of his emerging strength, or of his clear affinity with monsters. He strove to ignore the feeling, but the thoughts persisted. Why else would Craumpalin have me splash myself with Exstinker every day?

What of the calendar, Threnody, the daughter of the Lady Vey and the first girl lighter? Irascible and inscrutable, she had nevertheless become a faithful friend, only to be tricked into betraying him by the shrewd phrasings of Laudibus Pile, the Master-of-Clerks' falseman, and the unavoidable evidence of Rossamund's own peculiarity. They had barely said goodbye before she was hurried off by her high-handed mother. Rossamund looked through masts and rigging toward the low, steadily retreating hills of High Vesting, imagining Threnody in the sequestury of Herbroulesse far beyond and quarreling even now with the Lady Vey.

He let out a long, melancholy sigh.

Of one role he was happy to be certain. He was factotum to Europe-heiress of Naimes, monster-slaying teratologist and once again his savior-now standing by the Widgeon's master at the helm as an honored guest. Rossamund glanced back to find her regarding him impassively, thin strands of her flyaway fringe dancing on the contrary winds blowing up from the south, one hand gripping a thick cable of mast rigging as the teak deck heaved. Clad in a thick cloak of deep red, she had wrapped her mouth and nose in an olive green vent, a silken cloth soaked in neutralizing potives against the sting and acrid stink of the sea. She regarded him briefly, her gaze determined, even hard, though to Rossamund there was something unusually pensive lurking in those hazel depths.

Little had thus far been said between the four of them upon the miscarried inquest at Winstermill and its remarkable conclusion. Though clearly grateful to the fulgar for her intervention, Fransitart and Craumpalin seemed unsure of her still, reluctant to speak until their harbor was sure. Now, aboard a ram-even one reduced for civic service-his two old foundlingery masters had quickly occupied themselves with shipboard tasks. Craumpalin was below, dispensing stomach-easing draughts for passengers suffering the queam-or seasickness; Fransitart was mere yards away by the mainmast, helping the first mate run up the bunting and colored burges that communicated with shore and other vessels and keeping a weather eye out for Rossamund under the watch of his new mistress.

A flight of oystercatchers caught the new factotum's attention, the heavy-billed birds calling to each other kleep, kleep on the wing, dashing across the path of the packet ram in patent haste.

There before the Widgeon was the wide bay of the Brandenmeer and the safer waters of the Branden Roads where long oblong cargoes trod, a great line of them disappearing to the south, waiting to be piloted into harbor, every vessel filled to its load line. Beyond, Rossamund could make out the low pale mass of Brandenbrass itself, the greatest naval and mercantile city of the Soutlands, indeed, of the world-if the boasts of its inhabitants were to be believed. Domes and square towers, peaked tenement roofs and many, many foundry stacks poked high above its already high sea walls. To left and right the coast was tamed by brick and stone, bound fast by generation upon generation of accumulating architecture, a spreading blockish scab grown for miles along the western shore of the Grume. As he watched, a great belching of distant steam rose from some southern district, the venting of some ceaseless foundry or shipyard.

Between the Widgeon and these safer waters lay the threatening line of the arx maria-five squat, near-impregnable sea forts Rossamund well knew from his lessons at the foundlingery: round towers of concrete and granite founded on the very bed of the sea, rising up from the water, each a mile apart from the next. The broad upper works were painted in giant checks of sable and leuc-black and white-and above each flew a great spandarion of the same, the flag of the Sovereign State of Brandenbrass. Pocked with many small slit windows and loopholes, the walls of the upper works sloped inward slightly, their crowns bristling with great-guns, lambasts and tormentums, chimneys, flag posts and weathercocks.

"Lo and lively, pipsqueak!" one salty jack returning from breakfast below barked to Rossamund as he hustled past, his bowlegged steps strangely soft and muffled by dainty black deck-slippers. "Ye better pull yer legs inboard! We'd rather ye not go baiting the hags by offering easy morsels!"