Read The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 for Free Online

the Wurm’s thought left the airs above Mincing Lane. He could not see all clearly, his will was frustrated, but he knew his opponents were at home below.
    “Machinations, plots and devisements. . . .”
    Nearby was another coney in its huddle, in the area of Pineapple Court, he thought, but the Wurm was doubly frustrated there—his thought could find no purchase, slipping and slitching around the flanks of an opacity he could not define.
    “Nothing eludes me forever . . .”
    He retrieved his winged thought into himself and turned from the window.
    “The hunt is on,” said the Wurm. “Here shall I gather my lieutenants. Except not the traitorous one, the one whose crimson coat I shall sear onto his body for all time when I find him. And find him I will.”
    The Wurm stretched his long, long arms and smiled with his razor-thin, deep-red lips. Even though his powers were greatly diminished in this world, encased in human flesh as he was, and needed to be, for entrance, his powers were nonetheless very great still. He relished the sense of cold empty force that flowed through his arms and out, like a bright ramifying darkness, into the space about him.
    “A plan they have, the most preposterous and ridiculous project ever conceived—as worthy a piece of hubristic nonsense as I have seen since their forefathers sought to raise the city and its tower on the plains of Shinar. Hoo, hoom!”
    He rubbed his long fingers together.
    “The game is afoot. I shall call all my tribes of sullied santrels, pious imps, and minor mulcibers. Shamble forth noctambules and quasi-gorgons! Now is the time, tick tock tick tock.”
    His breath whistled and slurred. His teeth clacked.
    “Come serpent-bearded Byatis and my wild-eyed Moriarty! To me, all you changelings, double-walkers, crafty men and conjure-wives.”
    Wurm shifted with precise and deliberate grace from one foot to the other, hunching his shoulders and thrusting his head forward and back in time to the clock.
    “Tick tock, tick tock. I call the shoggoths and bear-ghasts, the gallows mannekin and
les dames blanches
. Arise Old Gammer Gurton and Saint Nycticorax, your time is at hand.”
    Wurm tapped his sharp nose with his fingers, licked his fingers with his rubaceous tongue.
    “Hoo-HOOM! The game is afoot my lovelies!”



Interlude: Disjecta Membra
    SUMMERWIRE & SON
    HABERDASHERS AND PASSAMENTIERS TO THE GENTRY,
    BOND STREET, LONDON
    * BILL OF CHARGE , RENDERED WITH RESPECT THIS
    second day after St. Adelsina
    TO THE ESTEEMED
    Mr. Barnabas McDoon, merchant
OF
Mincing Lane
    PAYABLE WITHIN THIRTY DAYS OF RECEIPT,
    FOR THE FOLLOWING ITEMS delivered to Mr. McDoon
    One man’s waistcoat, tailored, in fine lightweight Highland wool, with sherbasse silk facing, said in pale blue with a yellow floral pattern.
    Idem, with a nankin silk facing, said in scarlet with a pale yellow brindille twig pattern.
    Idem, with a calicosh pattern.
    Idem, fawn brown in the style called acabellado.
    One gentlewoman’s head-scarf, watered silk, indigo, with white and black cross-hatching and mascles.

Upon St. Vanne’s Recognition Day
    Dear Lizzie:
    Thank you for your letter of the 12 th instant, which I have read multiple times. How much I long to see you and tell you what I can of all that has transpired over the past years. How much, dear Lizzie, I wish to hear all about your glorious new state,
id est
, your marriage (!) to this Mr. Darcy and your removal from Longbourne to his seat at Pemberley. I have heard much from your aunt and uncle, our old friends the Gardiners here in the City, but yearn to hear more and from your own lips.
    Speaking of the Gardiners, they recommend that I speak with you also about a commercial project that involves them and the house of McDoon, and that they (or, as I should say, we) feel might be advantageous to you and your husband as well. I know that it is not normally considered an appropriate, let alone a decorous, thing for those of our sex to discuss, at