D Cornish - Factotum

"H-how fares your neck?" she asked, her tone mild.

Humours thumping down his neck, across his scalp, in his ears, he finally looked.

There she was, propped on the makeshift comfort of cushions, her face gray-ghastly, even-yet somehow queenly despite it all in this carriage taking them to Sinster; Sinster of hope, Sinster of dangers multiplied until all Rossamund could foresee was that he would be nabbed the very instant he touched foot to its docks.

He touched the thick bandage about his throat hiding the gash made by the bullet's path. "It… I staunched it with a sicustrumn from Mister Oberon's saumery… between treacles," he said, then added quickly, "No one saw it."

His mistress nodded slowly, eyes glittering with that same part-born envy she had beheld him with at Orchard Harriet. "W-would that I might be so… robust…," she returned.

Rossamund half grinned; he thought her very robust already. Thrice now he had seen her smashed and each time recover from the brink.The silence broken, he went to open his mouth and speak his mind at last, but balked at the very moment of revelation. It must be this way, he schooled himself, and took a breath. "Miss Europe," he began, a great tightening in his chest, "I… I would sail with you across the Gurgis Main and back… but… but I cannot go with you to Sinster…"

The Branden Rose beheld him with serious and ponderous understanding. "Nor," she added carefully, "c-can I keep you safe here while I am there…"

Rossamund 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."

Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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 Rossamund…" 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 Rossamund-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," Rossamund 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."

Rossamund 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 Rossamund's crown, hatless and naked yet again.

"I shall," Rossamund 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.

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 rossamunderling, Miss Verline, a manikin, just like Biarge 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.