The Foundling's Tale, Part Three: Factotum

by D M Cornish

  Rossamünd held her bleared yet clearly searching gaze. The realm of everymen had nothing but danger to offer; the world of monsters could surely be no worse.

  Without words, Europe knew his mind. “I r-release you from my service, little m-man . . . ,” she said, so softly he barely heard her. “I release y-your masters, too—you may tell them for me.”

  Rossamünd blinked in amazement. Has the end come so quickly? “I . . . I will,” he said.

  She closed her eyes. “You sh-should go . . . now . . . I w-will not stand long-drawn and m-maudlin goodbyes . . .”

  A goodbye—most likely long-drawn and maudlin—was on his lips, yet, regardless of his mistress’—his former mistress’—distaste for it, he could not bring himself to say it. “I will visit with you when I can,” he said instead, more in hope than certainty.

  The Branden Rose chuckled grimly, then coughed over again with the strain of her mirth. “Th-that, I think, w-would not be wise.”

  “Aye . . .” Caught between a sob and a wry smile, Rossamünd ducked his head.

  “I-I have your portrait—that will be . . . enough.”

  He looked up. She had found Pluto’s portrait after all.

  “Dear, per . . . perplexing Rossamünd . . .” Europe touched him gently on the cheek and fixed him with a look of finally unveiled affection. “Wh-who will you make s-such fine treacle for now . . .”

  Careful of her wounds, he threw his arms about the mighty fulgar’s neck and buried his face in her fine brown hair. “Thank you!” he began, but his whole frame was rocked as tears burst their dams at last, tears of gratitude, tears of regret, tears of farewell.

  The fulgar held him firmly in her slight arms. “T-tish tosh . . . ,” she whispered by his ear, her voice strangely thick.

  The carriage slowed and Rossamünd—factotum no longer, nor foundling, nor lamplighter—leaned to look out at the dawn spreading out like the proof of a promise behind the ponderous buildings of Brandenbrass. Looking down the way from which they had come, he was sure he could see a small mob of rabbits scurrying in shadows and keeping pace behind. Giving voice to an urgent tweet! Darter Brown sprang from the carriage to fly back toward these chasing beasts. As the carriage went carefully about a right-angle bend, he opened the door of the moving fit. “Not all monsters are monsters,” Rossamünd said in parting, surprised at his own resolve.

  Europe beheld him keenly, as one wishing to fix a face in their memory. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  Rossamünd held her gaze for what was surely the last time, his eyes stinging as he tried to express through these agents alone all that he felt and admired and . . . dare he own, loved in this most terrible of women.

  “And be sure to find yourself another hat, little man,” she added, the edge of her mouth twitching with mirth, nodding to Rossamünd’s crown, hatless and naked yet again.

  “I shall,” Rossamünd returned, and with that, leaped from the drag and landed squarely on his feet, startling red-coated limn-men dousing a line of red-posted curb lamps in the lessening gloom of the fresh day.

  29

  LAST WORDS

  To: Mistress Verline

  Versierdholte

  Halt-by-Wall

  Boschenberg City

  Hergoatenbosch

  Newwich 1st Jude-was-Narcis, HIR 1601

  Dearest, most precious Verline,

  So much has happened since my last, too-short letter.Yet, all that I have to tell you now that matters is that my service as the factotum to Europe, Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes, has come to an end. Miss Europe has done all to keep me safe, but even she cannot defeat the whole world, and now she is gone to Sinster where I cannot go, and it is too dangerous for me to stay in Brandenbrass—or in any city at all. Frans and Pin are set on returning to you to take up their foundlingery mastering again, yet, as much as they urged me otherwise, I will not be coming with them.

  I do not wish to startle you, but I am about to write something of such strangeness I would not blame you for disbelieving every word. It is the reason for the danger and for the hurts that drive Miss Europe to take her journey to the surgeons and has all to do with what troubled our dear cryptical Master Frans before he left you. For, when Master Frans first got to Madam Opera’s, he did not find just a babbie on the doorstep—like the story usually goes—but a sparrow bogle with the babbie in his arms. It was this bogle who gave Master Frans the babbie, saying that it was not normally born but had come from the living mud far out in threwdish places.With his usual wisdom, Master Frans took the baby at once and gave it to Madam Opera.That babbie was me.

  I am a rossamünderling, Miss Verline, a manikin, just like Biargë the Beautiful, who you might know from Master Frans’ or Master Pin’s sea stories. I am sorry if this is hard to read; it is not at all my intention to worry you or burden you with things too big to fathom or bear. It has been said to me that I am as much a man as a monster, neither more one nor less the other. I do not know what to reckon; I am just me. I have always been me. Not all monsters are monsters, just like Master Frans always rightly said.

  Hard as this is to write and harder yet to act on, it is time for me to leave. Where I go I will not say, but I have tried the path of an everyman and now I go to find my proper place. I am sorry to write this, dearest Verline. Please do not take it too hard, nor fret, for those I go to have proved true friends.

  Farewell.

  Forever your

  P.S. It would be best to destroy this letter as soon as you have done reading it.

  If I can, I will write you again.

  I love you.

  In the cool gloom of a late spring evening—while the heiress of Naimes, bound by fast-sailing sloop for Sinster, rounded the stony headlands of Needle Greening—a boy, a sparrow and a wizened little bogle left Brandenbrass. By hidden unfrequented paths and the covering shadows of night, these three traveled about the northern shores of the Grume to cross the mouths of the Marrow, finally passing on to the Sparrow Downs and out of the accounts of men.

  FINIS TRIOLIBRIS

  [END BOOK THREE]

  EXPLICARIUM BEING A GLOSSARY OF TERMS & EXPLANATIONS INCLUDING APPENDICES

  NOTES ON THE EXPLICARIUM

  A word set in italics indicates that you will find an explanation of that word also in the Explicarium; the only exceptions to this are the names of rams and other vessels, and the titles of books, where it is simply a convention to put these names in italics.

  “See (entry in) Book One” or “Book Two” refers the reader to the Explicarium in Foundling, The Foundling’s Tale Book One or Lamplighter, The Foundling’s Tale Book Two, by D.M. Cornish.

  PRONUNCIATION

  ä is said as the “ar” sound in “ask” or “car”

  æ is said as the “ay” sound in “hay” or “eight”

  ë is said as the “ee” sound in “scream” or “beep”

  é is said as the “eh” sound in “shed” or “everyone”

  ö is said as the “er” sound in “learn” or “burn”

  ü is said as the “oo” sound in “wood” or “should”

  ~ine at the end of pronouns is said as the “een” sound in “bean” or

  “seen”; the exception to this is “Clementine,” which is said as the “eyn” sound in “fine” or “mine.”

  Words ending in e, such as “Verline” or “Florescende”: the e is not sounded.

  SOURCES

  In researching this document the scholars are indebted to many sources. Of them all the following proved the most consistently sourced:

  The Pseudopædia

  Master Matthius’ Wandering Almanac: A Wordialogue of Matter, Generalisms & Habilistics

  The Incomplete Book of Bogles

  Weltchronic

  The Book of Skolds

  & extracts from the Vadè Chemica

  A

  abacus a place where mathematicians are trained, living what we would call a monastic life as they learn the nu
merical systems by which the cosmos are knit together. Abaci produce all the Empire’s calculators, indexers and bench- and counting clerks, indeed any person devoted to what might essentially be called the “worship” of numbers and their manipulation. The masters of abaci hold themselves the true inheritors of the ancient geometry of the Phlegms and sneer at the modern learnings of the rival athenaeums. See mathematician(s) in Book Two.

  abscondary small hidden dwelling where one might live unseen and safe. Typically this will be in the form of a secret room found between walls or cellar bolt-hole in some abandoned building.

  Alabaster Brow, the ~ hostelry in Luthian Glee named in honor of the famously beautiful wife of a previous duke of Fayelillian.

  Alcoves, the ~ collective noun for some of the “slummier” harborside suburbs, not only in Brandenbrass but in many cities in the Soutlands, so named for the dangerous nooks and blind alleys that are always found in such districts. The common term for what we would call a slum is a “nudge.”

  aletry artist’s studio.

  all-a’glory all or nothing.

  allegories marks or cult signs made with rue in conspicuous placee by fictlers to show which false-god they revere and as a ward against monsters, the great foes of the false-gods. By extension, vinegars often take up such marks in the belief they will keep the all-too-common sea-nickers off.

  alosudnë ancient and original name of the sea-lords who, later, through their treacherous desire for power over the land and the air too, became the false-gods. It is the name given to them still by their adherents.

  amphigorers writers of nonsense and spreaders of gossip making their living through writing articles of dubious veracity for pamphlets, taking their part calling out their nonsense in a panto or as a glossicute in a glossary. Such is the taste in the greater cities for constant diversion that amphigorers are rarely without work.

  Anaesthesia Myrrh see Myrrh, Anaesthesia.

  anavoid rare and expensive script, a paste that to a normal nose is odorless yet possesses a hidden scent only a sthenicon- or olfactologue-wearing leer or lurksman can detect. Drying clear and without stain, it allows a box-wearer, when it is dabbed upon a target, to follow the distinctive odor anywhere without the target knowing that he or she is marked. Each anavoid will have such a distinct smell known only to its applier that even other leers and lurksmen will generally be unable to detect its presence.

  aplombery sometimes referred to as mulierbriums (“women-makers”); what we might consider “finishing schools” for young well-to-do or aspiring women. The original aplomberies closely instructed their charges upon the five graces—along with other goodly and socially correct conduct—and over time have included varying degrees of instruction in such things as rimitry (simple mathematics), generalisms (geography and current affairs), matter (history) and the like, with the five original necessary graces.Those few hosted by a calendar clave at a calanserie or sequestury concentrate less on the graces and more on practical learnings of mind and also body, and here a girl might learn a whole lot more than might be thought ladylike, especially how to fight.

  Arborlustra, the ~ great series of tree-grown halls in the main palace of the Low Brassard. The first trees were once original woodland simply built about as a show of accord between the first masters of Brandenbrass and the Lapinduce (the Concordis Cuniculum, it was called, not that any of the current inner sanctum of the city’s masters care to recall it). Many of those great plants have since died, as has the memory of the old accord between men and monster-lord, the Rabbit-duke now never acknowledged and the dead trees replaced with more even rows of sycamore and turpentine—the light and dark hue of their trunks standing for the mottle of the Branden princes (now dukes). In one rarely visited corner of the Arborlustra a section of virgin wood remains, ancient trees living on through the centuries and tended with great care and gentleness by their keepers.

  arbustra mundi Tutin phrase literally meaning “spring world” and what we would call a spring cleaning.

  archduke or sometimes grand duke; the highest rank one can ascend to without provoking the ire of the other duchies of the Soutland states and declaring yourself king or queen.

  Archduke of Brandenbrass see Brandenbrass, Archduke of ~.

  archivist properly the name for someone in charge of a set of texts in a library, but also given to someone well versed in the contents of old and/or near-forgotten books.

  arming cap small close-fitting cap, usually of proof-steel covered with gaulded cloth, and typically worn under more elaborate headwear that may not provide much protection.

  armoniam unusual instrument made of glass discs—properly called phlanospheres—laid in sequence upon a central axis within a wooden box. The entire axis—and the glass discs with it—is turned using a treadle beneath the main box, and sound is achieved by gently touching the required glass disc for the required note. Simple armoniams have a single octave; the best—about the size of a small harpsichord—possess three full octaves. Its sound is hollow, bright and warbling, considered by some as eerie and modern and musical, but by others as unbearably shrill.

  arx maria Tutin word meaning quite simply “sea fort”; heavy fortifications—castles really—set in the roads or at the mouth of harbors to guard against foes, nickerly and human. In Brandenbrass five major fortifications lie in a squashed semicircle about its harbors. Playing a significant part in several desperate seaward defenses of the great city, each has been given a suitably grand name: the northernmost Cauda Caputum (“head of the tail”), then Fidelis Fidës (“constant ally”), Saxum Cor (“stone heart”), Scorpis Aculeum (“scorpion sting”) and finally Ocula Austerima (“southernmost eyes”).

  asper also known as malfais and not to be confused with the venificant aspis containing a lot of wormwood and ladapütch, it is the strongest sort of repellent employed by no-scourges. Partly an urticant and a fulminant of expanding oily black bubbles, it can give your typical nicker such a smarting, searing pain that the creature will leave you be for a goodly long time, and concentrated exposure has been known to scald a man dead. As such it must be handled with the utmost care.

  aspis powerful contact toxin; when unable to procure a spathidril, swordists will almost always coat their weapons in aspis to gain some small measure of the deadly effect of those other ancient and terrible therimoir blades. See Book Two.

  assvogel southern species of vulture.

  athenaeum learning houses of the metricians, where they are first trained and then may continue to have as their home, venturing out to measure and record the world and bringing their observations back to the place of their first training. Not as closed as the abacus of the mathematicians, these will take in any soul who seeks to serve there, though they are strict upon the genuinely lazy. A soul is more likely to be able to take a foundation—a basic higher-level education—at an athy than an abacus. See also concometrist in Book One.

  athy short for athenaeum.

  austerating farting; wind that comes from the “south”—that is, the lower end of a person, the word coming from Auster, the wild southern wind that blows up over the Gurgis Main from Heilgoland. The other three cardinal winds are Auila = north, Eurus = east an, Favonis = west.Their names are actually taken from lords of the long-gone naeroë, though there are now no everymen who know this.

  autumn more properly “autumnland”; the domains and seats of power of the monster-lords, urchins, wretchins and petchinins.

  B

  bastler ironclad gastrine fishing vessel with high wooden gunwales to protect the piscators aboard—deep-water fishermen and hunters of sea-nickers who wear proofing at sea and are expert shots with the large number of lambasts that line a bastler’s deck.

  Battle of Maundersea see Maundersea, Battle of ~.

  baum fur from smaller carnivores like stoats or martens or gales (small, meat-eating, mouse-like creatures) of good quality, though each critter provides only scant pickings.

  belch pot also
known as a kluge pot—for no known reason remembered in history; in the Gottskylds, where it is reputed to have been devised, it is known variously as a kaputtenkessel (“breaking kettle”) or furzentopf (“farting pot”). Infamous devices used by bandits, rough wild folk and some armies too, belch pots are makeshift artillery made of great clay pots or iron cauldrons filled with black powder and jagged, thorny flotsam, half-sunk in the soil and set off by a burning fuse. Any soul caught directly in its burst is sure to be flayed to splinders. Used to shape and channel the direction of a charge of fulminant, they are typically destroyed in the blast and are a favorite of irregular fighters all through the Sundergird, the clay version being particularly inexpensive and simple to fashion.

  benign mesmerists old wits serving in a kind of semi-retirement using their powerful skills reduced by ailing faculties to still somehow pay their way. Most wits will consider it fortunate that because of the violence of their lives and the precarious nature of the foreign organs inside them they are unlikely to see such decrepit days. “Mesmerist” is from the old Attic word “mesmera,” meaning “to addle or stupefy, to soothe into false comfort.”

  “bent like a Hamlin bow” contorted or crooked of frame, usually in reference to pains in the limbs or back.The term comes from the mighty bows used by the mercenary thoxothetes of Cloudeslee and their more mighty neighbors, Hamlin.