Drawing toward them, Rossamund perceived a whiff of arcing in the sterile atmosphere. He felt a thrill of fear as he spied through the gap into the room beyond, the body of a well-armored fellow lying face to the ceiling, body bent in the telltale rictus contortion of an arcing demise. Not far into the room another sturdy rough was stretched, his countenance frozen in surprise, a neat bullet hole in the unfortunate man's brow.
To wing again, Darter flitted over these new-made corpses and in through the lit doorway, his peremptory chirp ringing from within, calling Rossamund on.
Sole-eye, however, remained in the hall.
Rossamund gave the dogged, scrawny creature a brief parting beck. "Thank you," he said, stepping cautiously over the dead warden into the room.
Here in the wan illumination of a single light he found some manner of clerical file. Its walls, of a particularly sickly hue of green, were hung with certificates of charter and lists of fares and tolls, its space cluttered with chairs, desks and cabinets arranged about a shoddy imitation Dhaghi carpet. Thrown down on this rug was a man in dark and innocuously ordinary clothes, laid upon his side, his face shockingly marred by some recipe of mordant script, tumblerpicks splayed from his lifeless hands on the bare boards.
A lockscarfe! A professional break-and-enter man.
By the body stood a posticum-a secret door made to look part of the wall-released and exposed. Disguised as a bracket for a dependent bright-limn, its lock was freshly scarred, partly melted too by the very trap that surprised and ended the days of the scarfe, partly scorched by some small but powerful blast.
Beyond the forced posticum-into what was most likely the building next to Messrs. Gabritas amp; Thring-the young factotum found a strong room. Still secured, metal-barred cabinets along the walls held a selection of firelocks and other implements devised for harm. At the far end a desk of hard and heavy wood had been hastily thrown over and now squatted like a bastion, straight-back chairs tipped and scattered about it; Darter Brown perched upon its uppermost edge. From behind this barricade protruded a pair of black-booted legs.
Europe!
Yet hurrying up he quickly discovered that-too large and too blunt-toed-the boots belonged instead to a flourishingly harnessed pistoleer slain by implacable eclatics, his many pistolas useless in their many holsters. With the shootist was another pair of fallen sturdies, their final stand overcome.
The levin-scent of a fulgar's labors lingered in the close space.
Beyond the table another innocuous slab of wall was slid aside to reveal a doorway-Pater Maupin was nothing if not determined to hide this back door into his realm. Through this was a thin passage, a slype running into darkness. Here Darter Brown did not go on alone, but with a small tweet! took his place on his master's shoulder. Edging forward, Rossamund shone his limulight into the chute and, determined to find his mistress come what may, entered. Mercifully short, the slype deposited him in a space that appeared limitlessly dark in the weak glow of his effulgent moss, thick beams above hardly high enough for a man to walk fully straightened. Rossamund listened. Nothing shifted in this sepulchral hush but the rush of his own inward parts in his ears. Some several yards ahead he gradually perceived an insipid light, picking out a veritable forest of thick supporting posts all about him, as if the floor above was expected to bear immense weight.The bright stink of eclatics was stronger in here, sharp against the flat damp of dust and old sacks.
Darter twittered softly in unease.
Frazzard's held tense and ready, Rossamund crept deeper into the cavity, progressing obliquely through the posts toward the weak glow, passing down one of the passages made among the countless square posts. In the stagnant twilight, he tripped over something fleshy-soft. Stumbling, he swung the moss-light, ready to hurl chemistry. Yet there was no lunging attacker. Rather he discovered an inert lump tepid with ebbing life lying at his feet, some unguessable breed of dog, large and lean with a blunt black snout and great rounded ears, vile and frightful even in death. The smoking burn of arcing unmistakable in its flank, it stank repulsively of an almost monsterlike musk. The dog's breathless mouth was jellied with gore, as if it had savaged another before its demise. Progressing cautiously, yet desperate to find his mistress, Rossamund passed a feeble seltzer-light, accounting for two more of the blunt-snouted beasts in the paltry illumination, both slain by a fulgar's power.
A cough wheezed out of the dusty gloom, setting his heart leaping, freezing him in mid-creep.
It had almost sounded like a call.
Easing his foot flat and pressing his limulight against his belly to douse its glow, Rossamund harkened wide-eyed to every nuance and shift of air. There ahead, someone-or something-was breathing heavily… Frazzard's ready, the young factotum slid toward the sibilant clue, keeping a row of posts between him and where he imagined the wheezer to be.
"H-hello, young sir…," a voice called feebly from the dark.
Rossamund near dropped his caste in shock.
Peering about a thick post, he spotted a man dangerously drawn and pale, spread-eagled on the gritty floor, head leaning against a wooden pillar. Rossamund took a moment to recognize the fellow in the diffuse, almost powdery glimmer of his moss-light.
"Mister Rakestraw!" he hissed, shuffling hastily to him.
"One and… and same." Clutching a sthenicon to his chest, the sleuth smiled fitfully, his weird laggard's eyes rolling, focusing for a moment, rolling again. "I am of the… of the thinking that y-your mistress would be unhappy you… you are here…"
"Is she well?"
"Aye, aye, last I saw of her… better'n me in the least." Rakestraw looked down at his broken body. Bound inadequately in neckcloths and handkerchiefs, his hand and wrist were mangled, and his right thigh torn by jaws powerful enough to break flesh even beneath the good proofing of his longshanks. "I… I told your mistress to leave me… No time to lose… I'll be right enough… been worse…," he said with obvious braggadocio. "Just getting my… my wind back…"
Rossamund frowned over the horrid and hastily tended wounds.
"H-how'd you find us…" Rakestraw roused a little. "It took my best… sneaks and many dabs o' precious… precious anavoid to… to crack this place and-" He winced. "And here you stroll in… like it's… it's a common shop."
Dipping his head as if peering with necessary concentration at the man's wounds and making much of his investigations of his stoops, Rossamund let the question by without a word. Applying the flesh-brown strupleskin paste to any tear of skin or tissue, he bound the fellow's thigh tightly with bandages from his stoup.Twice he paused, thinking he heard portentous bumping in the murk of this hall of shadow.
"They got me with their foreign dogs…," Rakestraw murmured, shaking his head in chagrin.
"I saw three of them." The young factotum cocked his head to indicate the fallen beasts lying like a trail behind.
Rakestraw grimaced. "Aye… I'd say they were left… left in here to prowl about these garners… unhindered… A permanent guard. I smelled them easy enough… great blighted tykehounds… Saw 'em too, pacing in the dark… c-coming for us. But the one that got me was a… surprise…" He tried to chuckle, to make light of the terrible. "Striking from the side while our… our attention was taken by those in front of us, it was snapping and shaking at me before I… before I knew better.Your Lady Naimes did it in before it had too much of me, though not soon enough to prevent my dis… disqualification from… from the rest of the venture." He smiled wanly.
As many cuts and gashes as he could find with the scanty limulight daubed and bound, Rossamund gave the man a dose of levenseep. He was gratified to see it promptly restore some of the flush of vigor to Rakestraw's cheeks and a glimmer of clarity to his gaze.