"If you wish your daughter free from slander, madam," Pile seethed, his facade failing, "then you should have schooled her better in honesty!"
"Please, Laudibus!" interjected the Master-of-Clerks. There was genuine alarm in his voice, yet that predatory look never left his eye. "I am most positive this fine young peeress would not dream of soiling her clave's honor by obfuscating truths or uttering falsehoods in a properly convened Imperial Inquest. Our good Lady Vey has indeed taught her too well." He smiled winningly at the august. "Is this not correct, Madam August?"
The Lady Vey looked at him proudly, her own chin in the air. She cleared her throat ever so softly-a subtle, female threat.
"My exulted madam," Pile said with wounded dignity, bowing most humbly, "I merely seek the truth, and if my zeal for it has offended your person I apologize."
Imperial Secretary Sicus raised a hand. "Falseman Pile, I thank you," the vaunted clerk declared regally. "You have sought your trail as far as it might take you, but I warn you now to let it go. We cannot have these gracious ladies harried so."
Rossamund heard Threnody give a scornful sniff.
"Most Honorable Secretary!" The leer faced him and clasped his hands piously. "One might be tempted to disregard any of these on their own as either minor offenses or just an idiosyncrasy, sir.Yet when so many irregularities find themselves embodied in one soul, my intuitions and insights as a falseman start to tell a darker story." Laudibus Pile pointed to Rossamund. "There he sits, Master Secretary, with his face so po, but is it possible this solemn young toad hides a wicked treachery? Is it possible that this apparent servant of the Emperor is in league with the nickers, that he survived because of this league, and not through some act of individual prowess? That is why he wears a nullodor all the time-to mark himself out to his nickerly friends! He killed them only for a show, and this is why he refused a mark! I say to you, Master Secretary, surely this one is a wicked sedorner! Surely it is he who, with his monster friends, orchestrated the attack on Wormstool! Surely that is why he survived!"
Rossamund gritted his teeth against a sudden fury within. So this was their game-to accuse him a sedorner and shuffle him off to the gallows. He almost sprang to his feet.
"So I must ask you, most honored Master Secretary," the leer said, bowing low and long, "that I forthwith be allowed to examine Lampsman 3rd Class Bookchild, so getting to the root of this tragedy."
Imperial Secretary Sicus stood, hand still lifted in placation. "This is a most serious charge. It is most persuasively put, and I thank you, Mister Pile; yet I believe I shall continue the inquiry from here."
The leer bowed, his mien unreadable.
The Master-of-Clerks did not look best pleased, and surreptitiously gave an unhappy look to the leer.
Secretary Sicus turned his powerful attention to Rossamund. "What is your answer to this charge, Lampsman 3rd Class? You have been accused a sedorner, lad. What say you?"
Before the young lighter could open his mouth, Grotius Swill, calm and calculating, stood, a hand raised. "If I may interject on proceedings, good sirs!" the surgeon inquired politely. "I have been listening now to these most troubling details, and I declare to you esteemed officers of the table that a possibility yet more disturbing has revealed itself to my thoughts. I ask your indulgence to pursue my own inquiries." He bowed low to the collected personages seated at the long table.
The Master-of-Clerks nodded, all pomp and smugness, covering his surprise at the interruption. "Indeed, dear surgeon, you are our eminent physical man here. Let us take a brief recess for breaths to catch and minds to clear."
The room was emptied but for Rossamund. Even Europe went, leaving him to worry alone on what terrible revelations might follow. Pile had already claimed he was a sedorner-a claim, in truth, he could not deny. What other crimes was Swill to lay upon him?
30
Libermane potive used to prevent the cruor of a monster from clotting too quickly as it is stored in a bruicle. Useful as this is, it also affects the quality of the blood, thinning it and making the cruorpunxis it is used for pale, less distinct. Therefore libermane is used only when teratologists believe they are more than a couple of days' journey from a punctographist. Another function of libermane is its application on swords, knives and other blades of war, to make a wound flow more than it ought, though by the Accord of Menschen this practice is deemed unacceptable in modern conflict
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Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill peered about at the many personages who had reconvened in the clerk-master's file. "It may be that when I first declare the notion that has occurred to me," he began, "you shall think it a mad genius-leap, so I ask you, gracious Officers of the Board, to please bear with me. The full play of my thoughts will clarify if I am given the time." He cleared his throat histrionically, giving Rossamund an odd look from the corner of his eye. "Officers of the Board, paritous inquisitor, peers, ladies, gentlemen, I have listened this whole morning to the witness of these two young Imperial servants-listened long and keen-and what I have heard troubles me greatly. However, one question vexes me over all others. What truly does all this evidence point to, and how is it such a runty…lad might do such feats as he has done?" He pondered a moment, a fine act to focus people's attention upon him. "In view of an answer, if I may I would like to address the whole room with this question: how many of you have heard of Ingebiarge? Perhaps you know her as Biarge the Beautiful?"
The Master-of-Clerks and Scrupulus Sicus, the Imperial Secretary, nodded.
The Lady Vey made a face as if to say, What does it matter if I have or have not?
No one else indicated either way.
Rossamund knew of Ingebiarge. Craumpalin had told him of her more than once. She was meant to be a cannibalistic woman living in the remotest coasts of the Hagenlands who, by forgotten habilistics, had kept herself alive many thousands of years and made prey of any who passed too near. Such an unnatural length of life had apparently twisted her: she was gray-skinned, with red and yellow eyes more terrible than any leer's.
"Some of you might dismiss this Ingebiarge as a fiction, but any vinegaroon who has sailed east beyond the Mare Periculum through the Beggar Sea, or harbored in the road-stead off the Stander Lates near Dereland's western shores, will tell you she is a very real and very factual danger. If we could ask a mariner of one thousand years gone of her, he too would give the same ghastly report."
The normally indulgent Master-of-Clerks, most likely aware of Secretary Sicus sitting immediately to his right, started to show impatience at this bizarre divagation.
The surgeon lifted his hands appeasingly. "Now please, sirs, attend to me, I do have a point. Ingebiarge, the great abomination, the shame of the Hagenards, known as an ever-living monstrous everyman-or woman." He corrected himself with a peculiar look to the calendars and Europe. "Yet she is not the only one. The obscurest corners of history will reveal the occurrence of other such abominations, though most, when discovered, were destroyed before they could become the terrible canker Ingebiarge is to southern shipping to this day. For this Biarge is not some clever skold, as some might reckon, but rather a manikin-a monster in the shape and form of a person, and as such more assuredly an abomination."
Fransitart had become a wan gray.
Craumpalin had a haunted glimmer in his eye.
"Pray, Surgeon Swill, you must bring us to your point of view, sir-the morning runs long," purred the Master-of-Clerks, a hint of chill in his voice, though he never let slip his patient facade.