annihilation. Centuries had gone and still these realms had refused to be subdued.
'Ye'd think our most Serene Highness might reckon it more important to fight the nickers nigh on his doorstep,' that other voice put in.
'Aye, and ye'd think it wouldn't be much use conquerin' some other folks for loving the nickers when your own home is overrun with 'em!' the corporal concluded. 'Don't he know how tough we've got it?'
With a corporate grumble of agreement people retired for the night.
'Listen to them mew about how hard it has been! What do they know?' Threnody growled as the crowd thinned. 'My sisters have been stretched to exhaustion for years defending the people. These grot-headed lightermen don't know to recognize an ally when they've got one!'
Close by a sparrow flitted through the dark from one withered conifer to the next, disappearing into the foliage to twitter from its covert. With a last sharp tweet, it burst out and dashed away, followed by its mate, going southeast up across the roofs of the Low Gutter to disappear over the wall.
'Those things are uncommonly active of a nighttime,' Threnody remarked. 'Maybe they're watchers for the Duke of Sparrows…'
Rossamund started. How does she know of the Duke of Sparrows? He turned to stare where the bird had flown to hide his surprise. Were they truly being watched? 'How can you know that?' he asked.
'I have heard Dolours say an urchin-lord dwells in the Sparrow Downs,' the girl said smugly, clearly pleased to get a reaction out of him. 'The Duke of Sparrows, who she says watches over things and keeps other bogles at bay.'
'What would the Duke of Sparrows have to watch in here?' Rossamund marveled aloud, his sense of the lay of things shifting profoundly.
'Who can know?' Threnody replied dismissively. 'We can't even be certain such a creature exists. Oh, never- you-mind, lamp boy. Dolours is often quietly telling me things like that: enough to make some people cry Sedorner!' She finished with an untoward shout.
Rossamund looked about in fright.
'But I'm not one of those mindless folk,' Threnody concluded, 'whatever Mother might insist.'
'Is that why Dolours did not kill the Trought?' Rossamund said in the smallest whisper.
With a start, Threnody stared at him. 'What do you mean, lamp boy?' she demanded.
'I–I would have reckoned she could slay it with one thought, but she just seemed to drive it away-'
'How would you know what the Lady Dolours can and can't do?' Threnody stood tall and arrogant.
'Well-I-'
'Bookchild! Vey!' demanded Benedict from the step of the Sally. 'Inside at the double! Get to confinations afore the lamplighter-sergeant sees you!'
I hope the Duke of Sparrows does exist, thought Rossamund as he obeyed the under-sergeant. The notion of a benevolent monster-lord out there seeking to help humans and not harm them was almost too good to be possible.
13
Caladines also aleteins, solitarines or just solitaires; calendars who travel long and far from their clave spreading the work of good-doing and protection for the undermonied. The most fanatical of their sisters, caladines are typically the most colorfully mottled and strangely clothed of the calendars, wearing elaborate dandicombs of horns or hevenhulls (inordinately high thrice-highs) or henins and so on. They too will mark themselves with outlandish spoors often imitating the patterns of the more unusual creatures that their wide-faring ways may have brought onto their path.
By the new week all manner of teratologists began to fetch up at Winstermill, braving the unfriendly traveling weather for the prospect of reward-an Imperial declaration always held the promise of sous at the end. There were skolds and scourges, fulgars and wits, pistoleers and gangs of filibusters and other pugnators. Some appeared alone, others brought their factotums, and a few swaggerers were served by a whole staff of cogs-clerks and secretaries and other fiddlers of details.There came too the learned folk: habilists and natural philosophers, with their pensive expressions and chests of books. Even peltrymen-trappers and fur traders-answered the call. Bloodless and severe, they arrived from all the wooded nooks, lured from their own perilous labors by the lucrative promises. Every one of these opportunists and sell-swords would come there by foot, by post-lentum, by hired caboose, by private carriage, and stay for a moment and no more than a night, just long enough to gain a precious Writ of the Course. This Imperial document was a guarantee of payment that gave the bearer the right to claim head-money for the slaughter of bogles.
With all these came the usual motley crowd of hucilluctors, fabulists, cantebanks and clowns, pollcarries, brocanders selling their secondhand proofing, even wandering punctographists. Peregrinating, posturing upstarts were coming and going and milling about the manse, some foolishly camping near the foot of the fortress on the drier parts of the Harrowmath. More a nuisance than a novelty, they soon found themselves firmly encouraged to shuffle on to other places.
Yet it was among the teratologists, of course, that Rossamund discovered the most unusual folk of all. Once in a while there arrived a person dressed in the likeness of an animal or bird, or monster even; and wherever these animal-costumed folk went and whatever they did, they went and did in dance. He recognized something of their prancings in the two calendars who had fought in the Briarywood. At limes, between fodicar drill and evolutions, a pair of these slowly spinning, skipping teratologists danced through the gates on foot, costumed as cruel blackbirds.
'What are they, Threnody?' Rossamund stared at these, fascinated.
She looked at him as if he were the dumbest boy on watch. 'Sagaars, of course!' she answered contemptuously.
Rossamund stayed dumb.
Threnody narrowed her eyes and wagged her head. 'With all those pamphlets you read one would think you'd be sharper, lamp boy,' she continued with a huff. 'Sagaars live to be dancing all the day long-some even try it in their sleep-and while they dance they kill the nickers with venomous theromoirs. Several serve my mother and the Right.'
'Like Pannette and Pandome?'
Threnody hesitated, closing her eyes. 'Yes,' she whispered, 'like Pannette and Pandome.'
As these pugnators pranced proud and upset much of the manse's rhythm, the little varying schedule of prentice life remained. So it went, day come and day go, till Rossamund was sure the whole of the east must be squeezed full with the monster-wrecking bravoes. As opportunity allowed, he would carefully and keenly review the arrivals, hoping-daring not to admit he hoped-to spy a flash of a deep scarlet frock coat with flaring hems. He could not rightly say why he was so keen to see Europe: he had known her only for the short side of a week, and she was the epitome of deeds he found very hard to reconcile. Regardless, he missed her.Yet with such frequency of arrivings and leavings, such a plenitude of lahzars, Europe, the Branden Rose, was never among them. By the middle of the week something finally did break the prentices' routine. The morning was clear and achingly cold; the cerulean sky flat, brilliant, puffed all over with clean white fists of cloud rushed northwest by a whipping wind that was bringing fouler weather with it. The prentices were out and swinging their fodicars about in a tidy and orderly manner, postilion horn-calls an irregular, intermittent music. Teratologists and their attendant gaggles had been steadily coming and going all day. Some would take a turn on the borders of the Grand Mead as they waited for connecting posts or the resolving of kinks of paperwork.
It was limes, and the prentices were formed up and formally sucking on their bitter lemon rinds and sipping
