D Cornish - Factotum

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.

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.