Factotum ft-3

by D M Cornish

  Beyond, a confused swelling melee began to once again fill the quadrangle: fistdukes in their bizarre pot helmets and yet more green-clad door wards striving against the fury of a company of staunch lesquins, their gloriously harnessed captain-the very fellow who had visited Cloche Arde-at their lead. A leap of hope in his innards, Rossamund barely glimpsed Lady Madigan, Marchess of the Pike, in the fray. Her face a bloody mask, the lahzar was locked elbow in elbow with Threedice, her factotum, the two pivoting on each other in splendid unison amid their enemies, Madigan's arcs flashing, Threedice's own pistols popping.

  Tall among Maupin's foul defenders was a woman in a wide lustrous black dress, the pastiness of her bald head framed exquisitely against her gauzy fanlike collar of black, the flesh about the left eye dark with great diamond and arrow spoor-a dexter's marking.

  Anaesthesia Myrrh!

  All this Rossamund saw in a twinkling even as he defended himself, dodging and thwarting the swordist's blows, one block leaving a spent pistola hacked clean in two. Darter Brown swooped down to pester and curse in the swordist's face, checking the relentless fellow for the merest beat. That was all Rossamund needed. Throwing the intact pistol at the swordist, with a bark of fury he launched himself at the startled man. Calling all the strength he could muster, he drove his fist into the vermilion swordist's middle, amazed at the heave and turmoil of sinews beneath his knuckles. With a wheeze of wind and crack of bone the wretched foe was lifted clear off his feet, tumbling back several feet to collapse.

  ANAESTHESIA MYRRH

  Rossamund did not wait for more but, attention fixed upon his mistress, took up the hefty blade of his fallen opponent as easily as if it were but a butter knife, and with it sought to win to her through the stouche. Even as he did, he saw Europe, pressed on all sides, artfully dodge yet another thrust of the swordist's white blade, only to be struck from behind by a cudgel-wielding door ward. A viper-quick contortion of her body and the Branden Rose ended the fellow with a flash of levin. In that very instant, the soft-hat swordist sprang to the fulgar's left, and, dancing somehow under her guard, swung about behind the Branden Rose to cut at her. In complete horror Rossamund witnessed the white spathidril incise through the fulgar's superior proofing and bite deeply into her side. Crying out-and Rossamund with her-Europe recoiled from the aggrieving hit, instantly swinging her stage to whip the swordist viciously about the head once, twice, thrice, until the weapon bent and broke. Snarling, the Branden Rose gripped the fellow, stunned and bleeding about the throat, stiffening the swordist dead with her sparks. Letting the lifeless man drop, she swooned herself, tottered…

  Heedless of anything but Europe, Rossamund shoved some obstructing figure aside-friend or foe he did not know or care. He could see Pater Maupin realize his chance and pounce with two door wards, intent on finishing Europe where she faltered.

  Her stage now two useless ungainly parts connected by unraveling copper wire, the fulgar flung it at Maupin, rapping him smartly on the cheek.

  "Am I a dog, oh thorn-ed Rose, that you come at me with sticks!" Europe's adversary spat, making light of the stunning hit as he blundered in reverse.

  Winning through the mayhem, Rossamund stood over the lifeless therimoir adept and spied the malignant blade lying discarded upon the flags. Ignoring the offensive taint of its touch, he seized the ancient monster-destroying weapon in his other hand and, Darter Brown chattering passionately just above him, threw himself at his mistress' foes. Cutting down one door ward with shocking ease, he drove Maupin back with great sweeps of heavy sword and poisonous white blade, flourishing them like a mad thing. Here now he could himself end the proprietor cowering before him and bring this terrible night to a close.

  In the very moment of a final upswing, a crushing frission smote Rossamund, a driving agony that bore searingly into the very crux of his soul. Dropping the swords, the young factotum was forced to his knees.Yet as quickly as the tempest arrived, it cleared, replaced by a strangely effervescent sensation in his brain and belly that set his eyelids flickering. Blessed with this buzzing clarity he first saw, then felt, the Branden Rose's grip on his wrist.

  She is vacillating me too! he realized.

  Half prone, Europe pushed herself up where she lay by her other hand, a grimly ephemeral smile dancing like a small triumph upon her worryingly pale lips. Yet her attention was not on Rossamund. Rather it was in Maupin's direction, fixed with murderous intent upon Anaesthesia Myrrh standing protectively in all her silken swar t-clad glory before the proprietor of the Broken Doll. Her hand lifted to her sallow temple, she regarded Europe with narrow scorn, a contemptuous smirk visible through the gossamer vent the dexter wore over nose and mouth.

  Pressing hard upon Rossamund to stand, the fulgar remained clasped with the dexter in their invisible wrestle.

  Suddenly the lesquin captain stepped into the gap, flourishing a heavy war hammer in his steel-armored grip. A snort and a flick of her hand, and the black-hearted dexter struck the lesquin with a peculiar glaucous flash, the same combined witting-arcs Rossamund had seen her use at the rousing-pit long weeks ago. Stoutly the captain stood his ground, ducking as if walking into a headwind, seeking to swat the woman down. A second time the dexter struck and the sell-sword staggered.

  Still acting as a crutch for his mistress, Rossamund reached into his rightmost pocket to find a thennelever of glister. Grasping the flute, he tossed a measured dose of mild repellent at the dexter, the glister scattering in an effervescent crackle about her. In a beat, Rossamund shook the thennelever and strewed yet more of it, a veritable fog of tiny detonations that balked their foe despite her vent.

  In the brief reprieve the lesquin captain came at the dexter anew, but, twisting away from the glister-fume, Anaesthesia struck the fellow a third time with her disembodied arcs and sent him toppling lifelessly away.

  Barely on her feet, the Branden Rose let Rossamund go and lunged, leaping at the dexter through the glister. Leading now with her left, the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes began pounding upon Anaesthesia, sending out arcs at every clout, yet the dexter, unharmed, seemed to catch each hit and return it with arcing knocks of her own. Blow after crackling, coruscating blow they pummeled at each other, boxing and blocking punches with deft pivots of arm and torso, catching hits with a flash and throwing them off again, neither able to do real harm to the other.

  Abruptly, shockingly, Europe shouted in pain.

  Anaesthesia had found the fulgar's worst wound and was striking at her opponent's flank again and again.

  Rossamund pounced to his mistress' defense, Darter Brown with him.

  "Rossamund!" Europe cried, her voice thin. "No!"

  The dexter flung her arm at him, and he was instantly smitten with the bizarre and fiendish amalgam of witting and arcing. He was hurled away, thrown clear across the quadrangle yard, the thennelever he yet held flying from his grasp as he skated along his rump to collide with a shock into a heavy supporting post in the gloom well under the floor above. The world convulsing, Rossamund shook his head and squeezed his eyes to try to bring clarity.

  Emerging from behind the protection of his deadly dexter spurn, Maupin approached as quickly as his injured gait would allow.

  Rossamund tried to rise on legs rebelliously unstable.

  "Hello, little bird," the proprietor of the Broken Doll purred. "You are a very small little bird to have a place in this fight."

  Limbs needling painfully, the young factotum labored to his feet only to be instantly witted; a stifling trammeling frission drove the young factotum back to his knees.WHERE IS EUROPE? his galloping thoughts screamed, they alone free of the dexter's wicked work. He was suddenly aware of the dark form of Anaesthesia looming over him, bleeding and bruised.

  She snatched Rossamund by his hair and tore his sparrow mask and vent away.

  "Our prize has come to us, it seems!" Maupin declared, his voice exhausted yet triumphant. " 'Tis a brave little mouse who dares trespass into the mouser's den…"
>
  Tormented, the young factotum writhed and swatted at the dexter spasmodically as she scratched and clutched to keep a hold on him. A wicked jolt zapped through him, driving down into his very core. His vision narrowed to a dazed circular slot filled with oddly writhing checkers.

  "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

  A LIFE OF ADVENTURE, A LIFE OF VIOLENCE

  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 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.