by D M Cornish
Rossamünd said he had not.
The farther Carp took them from Cloche Arde, the busier the streets became, and tighter too, long direct roads dissecting the city into small sections run through with alleys and lanes. Turning right off the Harrow Road as it bent west, mucky smokestacks, thin and very tall, began to show above the high rooftops blotched with lichen, leaking strange smokes into the morning smog.
“Ahh, old Brandentown,” the starchy fellow waxed encyclopedically, “historied beauty of the Grume—of the whole Sundergird no less!—whose long-gone metropolitans sought to transact business with the Tutin invader rather than resist him, thus preserving much of the autonomy we still enjoy today. Such a superb mercantile tradition is the shrewd and potent praxis—the great egalitarian system—upon which even one as small and ignoble as I can rise to heights unattainable by any other man in other lands. Employ your money wisely here, Rossamünd Bookchild, and you will surely find yourself elevated to a patron of the peers themselves . . .”
With a flick of reins, Mister Carp took the dyphr quickly about a crossway, a circuit where the road they were on met several other streets at oddly obtuse angles. A fat memorial pillar was raised at its center; flower sellers gathered at its base, and every corner was crowded with many-storied shop fronts. Bustling through, they clattered straight down a street signed simply The Dove and Rossamünd suddenly found that they were running right by a stone-and-iron wall that enclosed a rather wild-looking park. From the elevation of his bobbing seat Rossamünd could see a broad common beyond, its darkling trees shaggy with yellowing lichens and pallid trailing mosses, its grasses left to grow thick and wild. It seemed still and empty yet strangely pensive too, affording no glimpse of a street or buildings on the other side, just dim, brooding shadows. Any strolling folk kept to the farther side of the road.
“We call it the Moldwood Park,” Carp explained. “Good for kindling, bird’s nests, a million rabbit holes and not much else. It is said that its middle is a proper woodland—all that is left of the forest that grew natively here before our Burgundian ancestors arrived—not that I would know this for myself, having never ventured in.”
“It’s threwdish!” Rossamünd exclaimed reflexively. It was a subtle, suppressed feeling of watchfulness, a warning caution constrained on every side by human habitation. In the heart of an everyman’s city: how can this be?
The man-of-business gave him a quick, curious look. “It is an uneasy place, I grant you. People are daunted by antique stories of terrible consequences for those who have tried to clear it, though I am told thorough surveys have turned up nothing unpleasant. The place is a cleveland, protected by an ancient permanare per proscripta—a legal ban—and so it has been left, as you see, generally ignored by all but the very needy, the very cold or the very hungry.”
“The hungry? Hungry for what?”
“Why, the rabbits, sir! Rabbits—scrawny, barely eat-able rabbits—burrowed in walls, hiding in parks and forgotten nooks, but most of all in the Moldwood here.There is a reason, Master Bookchild, that such a beast is the sigil on our stately flag, for the city is veritably plagued with ’em—and their droppings, into the bargain! So much so that rats have a hard time establishing themselves. A good thing, mayhap, for our indigent and hungry masses—bunny daube is ate most nights of the week in downtrod districts. The city is famous for the dish.” Carp took a pinch of spice aura from a tiny silver vinaigrette as ward against the stink of this down-at-heel neighborhood, then offered some to his passenger.
Rossamünd declined—such flash manners were not for him. Feeling eyes upon him, he peered up at the sagging tenements on the opposite side, their stained sills hung with washing. A nursing mother in over-laundered gray stared down at him sullenly from a high window.
“People live willingly next to it?” he marveled.
“Those who cannot afford the higher rents elsewhere, yes.”
“Are they not bothered by the . . . by being so close?”
Carp made a puzzled frown. “I should think none has ever asked them—they should be thankful for a roof at all. It is as some say, young fellow: the starveling has no fancy . . .”
At the dyphr’s hectic rate they were soon past this peculiar park, going through the high arch of a bastion—the Cripplegate—its heavy iron-studded doors open wide to the ceaseless human flow. Gate wardens leaned on muskets and watched all with complacent scorn, their fine spit-and-polish making many of the amblers look squalid. Passing along a congested thoroughfare of narrow-fronted countinghouses, Carp worked with frowning application to avoid the dolly-mops in bright versions of maid’s clobber and low-grade clerical gents laughing and chatting and careless of horse or carriage. Finally the relentless momentum thrust them onto a vast rectangular circuit rushing with impatient traffic. Magnificently tall buildings rose even higher on every side, casting their long shadows in the thin morning light. Imposing like a bench of magistrates, most were fronted with soaring colonnades topped with rain-streaked friezes of stone that depicted portentous moments of great matter.
“The Spokes,” the man-of-business explained as they launched into the mayhem of traffic that swarmed here. “That august building upon our right,” he continued, pointing to a great square structure of dirty gray stone topped with a green-copper roof bright lit by the rising sun, “is where we need to be today.The Letter and Coursing House, postal office and knavery in one.”
Post-lentums, town coaches, takeny-carriages and jaunty dyphrs barely avoided each other as drivers dodged balking horses, slow-moving planquin-chairs or white-suited scopps. These tireless children dashed to and from every cardinal with their precious messages, leaping headlong from the walkways without ever a look for rushing carriages. Several times Carp was forced to pull up sharply, his horses snorting in dismay. From the sumptuously furnished window of a park drag next to them, one gigantically corpulent fellow impatiently hollered, jowls wobbling, spittle flying as he blindly harangued the delays and glared at Rossamünd as if he were the cause of not just the current impediments but of all the world’s ills too.
Standing bravely at strategic places among the anxious commotion were grim-looking fellows dressed in long coats of black and doing their utmost to make order of the chaos. Duffers, Mister Carp called them, the strict constabulary of Brandenbrass. Their waists wrapped about with checks of sable and leuc and wearing black mitres like a haubardier’s, they raised and dropped lamps as signal; when one lifted a clear light, humanity flowed left but ceased to go right; when a blue light was high, the reverse occurred.
Gripping the sideboard, Rossamünd did all he could to hang on, his knuckles white, as the dyphr hastily circumvented a wide pond right in the center of the grand circuit. A great many ibis waded in its reedy soup and used a weather-grimed statue of old bronze and stone—some neglected commemoration of ancient victories—in its middle as a perch. A faint wakefulness seemed to hover over the water, though no one else appeared to heed it.
“That brackish bog has a proper name,” Carp cried over the racket—Rossamünd wishing the man would keep his eyes better fixed upon their progress—“but none of we goodly locals calls it by anything else but the Leak.”
Rossamünd saw a line of shackled folks, their heads and hands jammed in flat wooden casques and ranked in full and shaming view upon a stone stage at the edge of the pond. Passing people hissed and waved white kerchiefs at them.
“What did they do?” he asked, twisting in his seat to see, yet too far to read the bill of fault nailed to each casque.
“Oh,” the man-of-business answered complacently, “you’ll find them to be loan defaulters, pinch-dough bakers, fraudulent mendicants, suspected grabcleats, hat-snatchers and thimble-rig sharpers; contrarified malcontents and cheap-souled tricksters all—folk not worth your anxious looks.”
Slowing easy among the clutter of other carriages waiting beneath the beetling loom of the Letter and Coursing House, Mister Carp deposited his dyphr to the care of
the bridle-minders, scruffy fellows disguised by fine coats. Round-eyed, mind spinning at all this novelty, Rossamünd followed the man-of-business closely as they joined the pedestrian throng. Pushing through a line of water caddies, shooing aside pleading crossing-sweeps and nosegay sellers, Carp negotiated his young charge about a rather noisome pile of various excretions of dung—including a great many rabbit pellets—but was brought up short by a quarto of serious gents. Robustly harnessed and bearing pistols and cudgels, they were moving through the crowd as a single mass, making a way for a singularly enormous fellow shambling with them, the very one who had bawled at him from the pack drag. Between the cleats of a tentlike soutaine, Rossamünd spied a wheeled frame extending down from the overlarge man’s waist—a lard-barrow—the device straining to hold up the pendulous massing of the man’s satin-wrapped flesh. Here was one of the infamous elephantines of the Grumid states, the wealthiest, most powerful magnates who boasted their great affluence and influence by the equal extremity of their girth.
Mister Carp blessed the bloated fellow with a solemn bow.
Tiny porcine eyes coldly calculating, the sweating elephantine sneered at the man-of-business, said nothing, and the humorless assembly moved on.
“That was His Most Elephantine Pendulous Ib,” Carp breathed with disturbing admiration, shepherding Rossamünd before him to climb the broad steps of the coursing house. Between massive trunk-thick columns were two doors, the right-hand admitting and releasing a steady rush of scopps and postmen in their distinctive Imperial mottle hauling great bags of letters.
“Right for post! Left for knaves!” the man-of-business said, pausing only briefly at the left-hand portal to wait gallantly for an ebony-skinned skold in white conice, fitch and cloak with startling white spoor-stripes down either side of her dark face. A scion of lands well to the north, far away N’go or somesuch, this skolding woman nodded gratefully to Carp and dazzled Rossamünd with her brilliant smile as she led a long line of servants from the knavery.
The interior of the Letter and Coursing House was a wide space divided down its middle by a massive wooden structure that reached up to the carbuncles of small, ever-glowing gretchen-globes hanging from a lofty dome punctured with a constellation of portholes. At the very back of the hall was a pair of huge arched windows, their central panes orbs of fiery scarlet encircled with rays glazed alternately deep transparent brown or translucent white. An arcade of pillars ran left along the wall, each post painted from base to capital with murals of teratologically violent scenes. Gazing up to the balconies, Rossamünd saw bureaucratical folk leaning on the balustrades taking their ease and looking down smugly over the variety of adventuring sorts gathered beneath them.
A whole collection of teratologists and attached staff were milling in the echoing expanse, even more fabulous than the sell-swords who had paraded through Winstermill. Here were wits, fulgars, skolds, pistoleers, sagaars, ledgermains, leers and startling combinations of the same in one soul. Most sat easy in the arcade beneath the balconies, waiting for their servants to sort the finer points. Less gaudy, threadbare pugnators waited in line themselves, queuing with the ordinary factoti and agents before the lattice-windows of the knaving-clerks. It was an entire room of monster-slayers.
What was Europe thinking to send me here? Swallowing hard, Rossamünd was heartily glad he had fresh splashings of Exstinker wrapped about his middle.
“Longest line shrinks quickest,” Carp proclaimed, and went straight to the end of a lengthier queue. “Though not that line,” he continued quietly, indicating the largest collection of people farther on, most carrying some fashion of stained or heavy-looking bag. “They are waiting to claim their prizes.”
Well reckoning what grisly trophies these contained, Rossamünd did not dwell on them long.
Carp peered askance at the motley teratologists lined before him. “Goose-a-score incompetents,” came his snide mutter. “A knave cannot be much chop if he has to represent himself to an underwriter.” He breathed a know-it-all sigh. “It is easy enough to buckle on proofing, sling an arm at your side and pretend to yourself and others that you are thew, but only a scant few are what you would call true teratologists.”
Bothered as he was by the man-of-business’ superior tones, Rossamünd had to agree it would have been entirely unseemly for Europe to stand there like some common agent, meekly waiting her turn. Even he, in his weathered blue frock coat, looked finer than many of the dowdy bravoes ahead of him. With so many teratologists about, he could well imagine why some might struggle to make enough to even keep themselves “in biscuits”—as Master Fransitart might say. Staring at this collection of gaudily dressed destroyers, he suddenly felt acutely anxious for monster-kind. How could they survive such a horde, incompetent or not?
“What is laughable,” Carp continued, low-voiced, “is that there are many places in the Empire that would be fortunate indeed to see even one such inferior sort in half-a-dozen months, let alone a pugnator of proper capability. Such as these might make themselves a vizer’s hoard from work in lonely habitations if they dared to forsake city comforts.”
Rossamünd thought of Wormstool sacked and Bleak Lynche in terror of the monsters marauding out in the Frugelle, isolated folks at the mercy of carnivorous nickers.Yet these honest folk were there to take the land for themselves by force, subtle or overt.
“Still,” Carp rattled on in his dry, supercilious tone, “there is always work here if they wish to spurn themselves to the magnates and lords.”
A slight, hungry-looking skold in front frowned vaguely over her shoulder, her eyes sunken and haunted. Mister Carp smiled a self-satisfied smile at her. As she was called forward, a leer—obvious with a sthenicon strapped to his face—walked near, clad in a haubardine of woodland hues. The fellow seemed to pause as he passed. Rossamünd instinctively shied, pushing before Mister Carp, seeking to hide behind the man-of-business.
“My word! Steady on, young fellow,” Carp exclaimed.
Yet in a hall filled with all manner of residual monstrous smells the leer did not pay him especial heed and moved on.
“Well-a-day, child, how might I aid you?” came a bored voice through the lattice in front of them.
Mister Carp gave a cough and cocked a brow toward the speaker.
“Oh.” Rossamünd stepped forward hastily, peering at the barely discernible figure—a knaving underwriter. He held up Europe’s vaingloria and announced steadily, “I am the factotum of Europa, Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes, the Branden Rose.”
“Are you now?” was the amused response. “You are certainly of lesser proportions to her usual man. Is he poorly?”
“Aye, I am, and no, he is not poorly. He died in the Brindleshaws not six months ago.”
“This is all true and correct,” Carp confirmed, leaning into the view of the lattice.
There was a moment’s silence. “Oh” was the eventual response. “Well-a-day, Pragmathës Carp . . . I—I take it her ladyship will be expecting advertisements of work to be sent to her as is usual?”
“Aye,” Rossamünd replied, and then repeated the formula Europe had given him. “The Branden Rose wishes it to be known that she is at her usual seat and awaiting coursing work, either writ or singular.”
“If you but pay the clerking fee, sir,” the clerk stated with breathy efficiency, “two sous to register your mistress’ intent and ten sequins for the clerk-at-foot to bring the advertisements to you.We shall fill an intent for you and send all writs and singulars to your mistress as soon as we might.” There was a pause accompanied by the sound of pages turning behind the screen. “Cross your hands over your soul,” the clerk eventually added.
With a quick blink, Rossamünd obediently put one hand over the other, right where his ribs met his stomach, feeling the folds of the nullodoured bandage hidden beneath.
“Now answer me this if you would, sir,” the underwriter declared with a slightly more officious tone. “Do you, upon your solemn, continuing
and mortal affirmation, declare that you are the true and foremost representative of Europa of Naimes, astrapecrith and teratologist; that you accept all culpability should the aforesaid prove to be false whether by intent or ignorance; and that you accept that I, Dandillus Pym, Coursing Underwriter, inquisit this by general and representative authority in the name of His Most Serene Highness, the Emperor Haacobin, and of His Rightful Plenipotentiary, the Duke of the Sovereign State of Brandenbrass, and his Cabinet: how say you?”
“Ah—aye,” Rossamünd answered, understanding the intent of the question, if not the actual words. With that said, and monies paid from his own purse so as not to break the newly writ twenty-sou bill, he was back out on the steps of the grand knavery above the clatter and bustle, feeling not a little relieved that his first clerical duty as factotum was completed.
By the light of the westering sun, Rossamünd returned via takeny-coach to Brandenbrass’ substantial suburbs, restored at last to the starkly glorious bosom of Cloche Arde after a long day in town.
Many hours earlier he had been deposited by Carp at the Dogget & Block alehouse, where, over a lunch of griddled scringings and tots of ol’ touchy, Craumpalin had insisted he knew a better supplier of parts than Perseverance Finest.
“So artful is he,” the old dispenser had waxed, “I fathom even this confectioner of whom thy mistress is so fond gets their finer properties from him.”
This vaunted fellow proved to be a humble script-grinder by the name of Pauper Chïves, found on Sink Street right by the pungent chalky waters of Middle Harbor.Yet the sheer size, excellence and completeness of his proporium—his salt-store—filled floor to ceiling with drawer upon drawer of parts and complete scripts—bore out Craumpalin’s high estimation, and the saumiere’s keen understanding and wise affability only elevated him in Rossamünd’s own esteem.
Now, finally returning home and in an acme of satisfaction, the young factotum clutched the most prized of his myriad purchases. First was a thick compleat—a listbook of scripts—its crisp wasp-paper pages bound in sturdy black ox-buff and tied shut with a ribbon of deep green velvet.
