"Yes, well…" The historian blanched a trifle. "Truth has few friends, madam, but those who love her do so dearly and will pay with everything to keep her at liberty."
A large space made of two long rooms, Gentleman Plume's file was cramped with the clutter of a curious mind. At various corners were globes and ambit rings, stuffed animals under bell jars, a skull in the middle of a large drum table surrounded by rolls of charts-one held open by a vase containing a single enormous turnsole. There were plush elbow chairs, a turkoman for reading, and shelf upon shelf of more books than Rossamund knew had been made. Any spare glimpses of the paneled wall were padded with rich red cloth, hung with ephemerides or daubed with loose yet exquisite paintings of animals of the common sorts, the style of the artist familiar to Rossamund.
Flanked by a massive chest of map drawers on one side and a tall bench with an equally tall stool on the other, Gentleman Plume's enormous desk dominated the second room. Behind it, draping the wall above a crackling hearth, was a large painted web of reds and golds, umbers and whites. Covering the chimney breast, it showed circles within squares within circles written over with the names of the eight winds, the old Phlegmish months, the skold's formula AOWM, and the obsolete appellations for the three original continents. A cunctus orbis, Mister Plume complacently called it-an ancient chart of the known world at the time of the Phlegms.
Painted and stitched with staggering precision, it had, as Rossamund could see, the great city Phlegmis marked with a red star in its midst, the center of the world.
By the open southern window a glossy pied daw sat upon a wooden perch above a pan of grit, ogling the arrivals with shrewd yellow eyes. Giving a feisty twitter, Darter Brown shot up to Rossamund's crown to stare and ruffle his feathers, little claws prickling at the young factotum's scalp.
"That is a fine wee bird on your skull, young sir," Plume suddenly said to him, nodding to Darter Brown. "Is it properly… trained?" he asked frankly. "Guano about the house and down one's back is not a good show, I would think."
Rossamund blinked. He had never given the notion any thought. "I do not know, sir. He came to me out of the wilds just as he is."
"It is a rare thing for a fellow to have such a spontaneously loyal creature," Plume observed shrewdly. "You are fortunate to be held in this regard… He may share a perch with Pig if he wishes"-Plume indicated the daw-"should he need."
Pig, the pied daw, blinked at hearing its name.
"Uh… Aye, sir…"
"Mister Plume, you are vaunted as a man of many parts," Europe interjected after further brief pleasantries, taking a high-backed seat before the man's spreading desk. "Do you recognize this?" She produced the four-barred mask of the Featherhead chieftain, its fastening ribbons trailing from it. "Its owner was among our attackers." She gave a brief account of the ambush, shifting a little painfully in her seat as she made mention of blows delivered and received.
"Mmm, mighty deeds done at our very door." Plume chuckled gravely, tilting his head knowledgeably, turning the mask over and over. "Still, a good neighbor is better than a distant relative, and any soul in sore need sorely needs a neighbor! You are healing, m'lady?"
"As well as pith allows," she replied with an impatient twirl of her fingers. "What of the mask, sir?"
The genial fellow blinked tolerantly at her. "This, good lady, is the dial of a Grammaticar of a sept of the Seven Seven cult." He paused as if the gravity of his statement was obvious. "The Seven Seven are of the worst false-god adorants; worshippers of Sucathes, ruthless and bloodthirsty and all that… Fond of entering into a fight drunk on sanguinary draughts…"
Little wonder then they were so heedless! Rossamund's thoughts must have shown on his face, for Plume beamed at him gratefully, glad to have affected at least one of his listeners.
"They are bad company to have at your tail, I am afraid, m'dear," Plume continued, "and here you have gone and done in one of their most senior members." He paused. "It ought be hoped you have annihilated this local sept, else they will come, hunt and find you…"
"I am not agitated by some local fictlers, sir," Europe replied, unmoved.
"Ah, yes, of course…Your confidence does you credit, madam; you are an ornament to your profession!" The historian cleared his throat. "As for the wildmen you describe, they are most likely to be the Widden-or so they call themselves, after their forebears. They are eastern Piltdowners, still embittered a thousand years on at the conquests of the Burgundians, of the Tutelarchs, of their western and southern Pilt brethren, using long history as an excuse for all kinds of brigandry…"
"I hope we have not brought undue threat to your house, Mister Plume," Rossamund said in increasing concern.
The historian smiled. "Master Cannelle will have brought you unobserved and unfollowed. If it comes to it, we have seen such as them off before."
"You fought bandits from this house, sir?" Rossamund gaped.
Gentleman Plume gave him a knowing wink. "I believe Mister Gutter, our resident playwright and sometime composer, is attempting to work a variety of the salient event into his second operetta."
Europe smiled patiently. "And the heavy warriors in the horn-ed casques?"
"Tungid viskiekduzar," the historian said without hesitation. "From Dzik on the southernmost edges of Heilgolund!" He sniffed and shook his head. "The Widden! The Seven Seven! Fistdukes!" He let the import of this list linger, a grim and learned grimace twitching on his lips.
"And that reddleman," Rossamund inserted.
"Reddleman?" Plume's eyes sparkled bemusedly.
"Yes," Europe answered with a heavy sigh. "An agent of my foes, I would expect, disguised as a madder dye-seller."
"While we went by carriage," the young factotum expanded, "he was on foot pushing a cart, yet he kept watch on us the whole way from Brandenbrass to the ambush."
"Ahh, likely a brinksman," Plume said knowingly, adding at Rossamund's obvious bafflement, "a person who uses sanguinary draughts to an extreme so they might do such feats as chase a horse and carriage all across a parish and back." He returned his sagacious attention to the Duchess-in-waiting. "You have certainly locked horns with someone possessing substantial grasp, Lady Rose!"
"Indeed, sir," the fulgar returned.
Plume drew in a noisy breath. "Still, in it all, it is a most fortunate thing to have the friendship of so blithely and potent a fellow as Cannelle."
Europe crooked her spoored brow and regarded Plume with narrow calculation.
The historian gave a gentle cough. "Dare I ask how you of all the people in the world, gracious Lady Rose, came to gain it? Or," he said hastily before Europe-her eyes flashing dangerously-could catch a breath to answer, "if I may say, it comes as only small surprise, if the peculiar rumors of you that have made it even to us are to be countenanced…"
Europe bridled. "The set of my heart is mine alone to know, sir." She looked long at Plume. "It is clear you yourself are not to be troubled by such rumors."
"Indeed not, ma'am," the gentleman replied with a long, affirming nod. "And, if I might, m'lady, neither, it appears, are you…"
A bitter smile fluttered on Europe's lips. "Events of recent months have allowed me to consider anew the possible finer distinctions of monster-kind…"
"Ahh, yes." The historian nodded musingly. "The teratological complot-teratologists who seek to serve man and monster both."
The fulgar's gaze narrowed. "It would be a… mistake, sir, to state my position so blankly."
"Oh…" Gentleman Plume quickly schooled his mien to something a little less knowing. Repose quickly returning, the fellow leaned back in this chair. "How-be-it, if Master Cannelle associates with you so readily, then so shall we… Please continue as our most honored guests in this our modest haven of learning and enlightenment for as long as you have need." In the bright cool of a clear afternoon, Amonias Silence and Spedillo returned from a morning excursion in their small sturdy carriage to the scene of the ambuscade, there to retrieve what they might of the four adventurers' chattels.