massacars or the rouse-masters.Try as we might, there have yet been other gudgeons marauding, though never again an assault on a lighter. Enough now! Let us tend again to the needs of Numps. I can hear him shuffling about. We have muttered overlong on his past and now should labor for his present, after which I must leave you to your duties as I attend to mine.'
Rossamund returned with the leer, back to the clutter of lamps and lanterns. There Numps, against instruction, had moved to sit again in his wicker chair and, patiently humming, was polishing another lantern- window.
11
Course (verb) to hunt, particularly to hunt monsters; (noun) the hunt itself, usually referred to as a coursing party, or in such phrases as 'to go on a course.' A course is, obviously, a dangerous affair. One undertaken lightly will always result in the doom of some, if not all, of those involved. A prospective courser is always advised to take at least one skold and one leer-or, if they are unavailable, a quarto of lurksmen, even a navigator or wayfarer, and a hefty weight of potives and skold-shot. Not to be confused with 'corse,' meaning a dead body, a corpse.
Though Rossamund was wanting to ask Sebastipole of the coursing of the Trought, the leer soon left him and Numps, saying that he was well overdue for an interview with the Lamplighter-Marshal.
Numps, wide-eyed, watched the leer leave and then bent to his labors once more, humming as he cleaned. Rossamund did not know how to talk to Numps. He was afraid to frighten the nervous glimner again and so he moved slowly, looking for work to do. He found a rag, sat on an empty chest on the other side of the bright great- lamp and silently began to polish lantern-windows.
Wrapped in the canvas sacks for warmth, Numps did not complain. He did not even acknowledge Rossamund. Instead he took every pane the prentice cleaned and polished each one again just as fastidiously as if it had never been worked, adding it to the stack of other lustrous panes. Frustrating as this was, Rossamund did not grumble but kept at the task. Every so often he would lean down and check Numps' feet, to make certain no blood showed through the bandages, or chide the glimner carefully if, from habit, he should try to use his foot to grip or hold. They kept at this for an hour or more till he accidentally grasped at the same dirty pane the glimner grasped from the top of the diminishing stack.
'Oh' was all Numps said, letting the pane go and humbly placing his hand in his lap.
'Sorry, Mister Numps… and I'm sorry about before. For scaring you and making you drop the glass and cut your feet.'
Numps must have rarely received an apology, for with each contrite word that Rossamund uttered, the glimner interjected with a blink and an odd, hesitant 'Oh.'
'That's just silly poor Numps forgetting his-self. All a-flipperty-gibberty since Mister 'Pole found me swimming in red.' He hung his head. 'I've never been as I was.' He sat like this for several minutes, Rossamund not daring to move or interrupt. 'Time to make seltzer!' Numps suddenly straightened, ready to get to his feet.
'No! Mister Numps!' Rossamund lurched to his feet, forgetting his caution in his concern for the man's wounded sole. For an instant he feared he might have spooked the man again, but Numps just looked at him, puzzled, holding himself between sitting and standing. 'You must have a care to stay off your bad foot. Hop on your good foot like Mister Sebastipole said, till Doctor Crispus has declared you whole.'
Offering himself as a small crutch, the prentice helped Numps out of his seat and guided the limping glimner over to where he pointed: a collection of barrels and chests gathered in a corner between the wooden wall of the store and one of the tool-cluttered shelves.
'They say I'm struck with horrors,' the glimner said, pressing down heavily on Rossamund with each hop, 'and I know I'm not the old Numps, just poor Numps now; but I still remember how to mix the seltzer-they still come to me to make it 'cause no one makes it as well. I might be rummaged all about up here,' he said, patting himself on the side of his head, 'them pale runny monsters saw to that, but that don't mean I have forgotten.'
Numps prized off the lid of one barrel, releasing a distinct tang into the stuffy lantern store, and Rossamund immediately recognized the sealike odor of sweet brine-the beginning of seltzer water. Humming tunefully, the glimner began to take all manner of chemicals from chests and boxes close to hand.With precise care he dripped, scooped, tapped and tipped each part into the barrel of brine. At each addition he stirred with slow, fine movements; first one turn of the clock then the other for set counts that he spoke under his breath. 'Once clockingwise, fours contrawise…'
Rossamund knew the basic constitution of seltzer water: spirit-of-cadmia, bluesalts, chordic vinegar and wine-dilute penthil-salts. He had been shown this by Seltzterman Humbert, and at first Numps followed the recipe properly but then he put in only half the chordic vinegar, left out the penthil altogether and began to add other things-unusuallooking things. Of what Rossamund saw, he recognized a dash of ethulate and pinches of soursugar, plus a fine sandy powder that smelled like the vinegar sea and sludge that looked ever so much like the muckings of a gastrine.
'What are these for, Mister Numps?' the prentice inquired of the extra parts. 'I have seen seltzer made- Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert has shown us, but he never added these.'
'Oh… ah… Mister Humble-burt is good at the simple seltzer, but this is our own seltzer. Better seltzer for Numps' friends. Numps and his clever old friend, we figured this, figured it out before poor Numps' poor clever old friend went swimming in his red too. No one else knows how to do it right and his clever old friend is gone now but Numps still remembers; makes the bloom bloom it does, good for Numps' friends.'
'What friends, Mister Numps?' Rossamund was finding it hard to follow the thread of wandering talk. 'Do you look after all the bloom?'
The glimner became silent at this, and would say no more on the subject of bloom or seltzer or friends new or old. Rather he kept pointedly at his mixing until he had made three kegs full of seltzer-smelling far more rich and full than seltzer usually did.
As the day waned someone came a-calling. At first they simply heard her. 'Numps! Numps!' was the demand. 'Hullo there, my darling muddle-head! Help me git this glass through yer door!'
'Oh, oh, oh,' fretted Numps, up to his bicep in seltzer. 'The barrow woman is here. The barrow woman.'
'I'll go.You stay here.'
Rossamund answered the shout in the glimner's stead, stepping down the avenue of shelves to discover a woman wrestling a heavy load through Door 143. She wore a buff-leather apron over her maid's clothes and was towing a barrow stacked high with panes and lantern-windows. When this laboring lady saw a well-presented prentice-lighter she pulled up short and smiled. 'Oh, hello, my lovely.'
'Hello,' Rossamund replied. 'May I take that?' He had gripped the barrow by the handles before she could reply.
'What a precious little mite you are!' she exclaimed. 'Doing my job for me? And grateful I am too.' She leaned toward him and whispered conspiratorially, 'That seltzerman is a bit too gone in the intellectuals for my liking. I don't much enjoy having to come down here. Folks avoid him, you know.'
'No need then for you to see him today, mother labor,' Rossamund replied peevishly.
The woman gave Rossamund a sharp, appraising look. 'Ye must have done summat right bad to be sent here, lad.' She peered closely, seeking the fatal flaw. 'Ye've got to take him in hand, pet, if ye're going to get anything done with him,' she said. 'He's naught but a limpling-head,' she finished loudly, for Numps to hear.
Rossamund felt a surge of anger. He almost forgot his manners as she bid good day, scowling after the woman as she left.
With her departure Rossamund and Numps set to stacking then polishing these new deliveries and kept at this for what remained of the day. Neither spoke, and there came no other noise but the chink of picking up and
