Rossamund obeyed, his head starting to throb uncomfortably, while Whympre, Swill and Pile went on into the Lamplighter-Marshal's duty room.Very quickly Inkwill was back, dashing through the anteclave without a word.
More waiting, and the throb in Rossamund's pate grew into an ache.
Inkwill returned now with Sebastipole in tow, the leer giving Rossamund one look and saying, 'That is a fine bump you have got yourself, my boy. Follow me, if you will,' before going directly in to the Marshal.
In the shadow of Sebastipole, the young prentice inched his way into the very soul of Winstermill's existence, hands habitually gripped before him at a now absent thrice-high. To Rossamund's left, the Master-of-Clerks had stationed himself on a richly cushioned tandem chair. Swill was on his right, poised stiffly on the edge of a hall chair, alert, waiting. On the clerk-master's left stood Laudibus Pile, leaning against a false architrave, head down. But right before him, behind a desk piled with documents, sat the Lamplighter-Marshal, the eighth Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian. He appeared drawn, and sharply aware of the entire substance of his manifold burdens, and was staring keenly at Rossamund. 'Good evening, Prentice-Lighter Bookchild,' he said, his warm voice crackling slightly with weariness. The Marshal's quick gaze, penetrating and wily, seemed to sum up Rossamund, standing as stiff as an Old Gate Pensioner, in one acute look. He cleared his throat and gestured to the hall chair. 'Please, take your ease.' Despite dark sags of sleeplessness, the man's amiable, fatherly appearance remained. Indeed, with his sweeping white mustachios, a noble lift to his chin and a white-blond forelock curling almost boyishly upon his brow, the effect this close was magnified.
Sebastipole stood at the corner of the massive table while Inkwill showed Rossamund to his seat, positioned squarely before the great man.
'I am told by the clerk-master,' the Marshal continued, 'that ye believe yerself to have fought with a homunculid in the ancient tunnels below us. Is this so, prentice?'
'Aye, sir.' Rossamund swallowed hard. He was about to let the whole tale burble out, when, with a cold stab in his innards, he realized he might betray Numps by telling of the undercroft. With a flicker of a look to the two leers, Rossamund faltered and went silent.
With this, Laudibus Pile raised his face and, with a dark glance at Sebastipole, fixed Rossamund with his own see-all stare. It was profoundly daunting to have a twin of falsemen's eyes-red orb, blue iris-staring cannily from left and right. Rossamund shifted on the hard seat in his discomfort.
'Are ye well, son? I hope that wound does not overly trouble ye,' the Lamplighter-Marshal said, nodding to the thick bandage about the prentice's head.
'A little, sir.'
'I did my best to mend him, Lamplighter-Marshal,' Swill put in. 'It is a nasty cut underneath all that cloth and I am sure, however it was sustained, it is enough to knock the sense out of the boy.'
'So ye said before, surgeon,' the Marshal said gravely. 'Tell me, Rossamund, do ye feel knocked about in yer intellectuals?'
'Somewhat, sir, but I was fully aware before and I am fully aware now.'
The Marshal smiled genially. 'Good man.' He shuffled some papers before him. 'The good clerk-master has told me his take on yer tale, prentice, and is skeptical. I would like to hear yer own recollection and we shall go on from that. Proceed, young fellow.'
Rossamund cleared his throat, took a rattling, timorous breath, cleared his throat a second time and finally began. 'I had missed douse-lanterns, sir, and found a way under the manse and it took me through all kinds of furtigrades and passages…' And so he told of the terrific events, passing very quickly over the how of his presence, avoiding any mention of the bloom baths or Numps, concentrating most on the battle with the prefabricated horror.
All present listened in unmoved silence until his short recounting was finished. Upon its completion the Lamplighter-Marshal nodded gravely and smoothed his mustachios with forefinger and thumb. 'I am not a commander who likes to set one fellow's telling against another's, yet ye seem a rather slight lad to be the conqueror of so fearsome a thing as a rever-man. More than this is how such a beastie ever won into places no monster has ever made it to before. How-be-it, my boy, ye were the only one present and my telltale finds no fault with yer summation.'
Rossamund had not been aware of any communication between the Marshal and the lamplighter's agent, yet somehow Sebastipole had made what he observed clear to the Lamplighter-Marshal.The leer gave a barely perceptible nod to the prentice. 'Indeed, sir, what he has told us has contained no lie.'
He believes me after all! Rossamund could have done a little caper for joy, but kept still and somber.
Laudibus Pile darted a calculating, ill-willed squint at Sebastipole.
'As it is, this is a most difficult situation, prentice.' The Lamplighter-Marshal became very stern. 'Ye have placed me in a bind, for on the one hand ye must be applauded-surely awarded-for yer courage and sheer pluck at prevailing in such a mismatched contest as ever a fellow was set to.'
Rossamund's heart leaped with hope.
'Yet,' the Lamplighter-Marshal went on firmly, 'the circumstances surrounding yer feat of arms are drastically irregular, would ye not agree, lad? To be out beyond douse-lanterns though not of the lantern-watch or the night- watch is a grave breach. Entering restricted parts of the manse, another grave breach. Perhaps we should simply all be glad for the blighted thing's destruction. But a rule for all is a rule for one, and a rule for one is a rule for all, do ye agree, Prentice Bookchild?'
The prentice swallowed hard. 'Aye, sir.' Though he had never heard entering the underregions of Winstermill formally proscribed, this revelation did not surprise him-most things were out-of-bounds for a prentice.
The Master-of-Clerks stirred. 'If I may interject here, most honored Marshal, with the observation that my own telltale does not find all particulars of the prentice's retelling wholly satisfying.'
With a single, stiff nod, Laudibus Pile confirmed his master's claim.
'When falsemen disagree, eh?' The Lamplighter-Marshal became even sterner, hard, almost angry-with whom, Rossamund could not tell, and he swallowed again at the anxiousness parching his throat.
'In fact, sir,' the Master-of-Clerks pressed, 'I might go so far as to state that one does not need to be a falseman to detect the irregularities in this… this one's story. Perhaps your telltale does not see it so clearly? I am rather in the line that this little one is just grasping for glories to cover his defaulting.' He bent his attention on Rossamund. 'You have waxed eloquent upon your fight with the wretched creature, child, and the proof that you came to blows with something is clear; but I still do not follow how it is that you came to be in the passeyards at all or why it is that your journey took you to my very sanctum? You avoided the question before, but you shall not do so now.'
'The passeyards, sir?' Rossamund asked.
'Yes.' The Master-of-Clerks flurried his fingers impatiently. 'The interleves, the cuniculus, the slypes-the passages twixt walls and beneath halls, boy!'
'Oh.'
The Lamplighter-Marshal raised his right hand, a signal for silence, stopping the Master-of-Clerks cold. 'Yer point is made, clerk-master. Prentice Bookchild, ye have a reputation for lateness, do ye not? As I understand it, ye have gained the moniker 'Master Come-lately,' aye?'
'Aye, sir.'
'But, as I have it, ye do not have a reputation for lying, son, do ye?'
'No, sir.'
'So tell us true: how is it ye found such well-hidden tunnels as those ye occupied tonight?'
Ashamed, Rossamund dropped his head then darted a look to the Marshal, whose mild attentive expression showed no hint of his thoughts or opinion. 'I was with the glimner, Mister Numps, down in the Low Gutter, and I forgot the time so-so I went by the drains so I could get into the manse after douse-lanterns.' He was determined not to implicate Numps in any manner, but with a falseman at both sides, it was an impossible ploy. Yet Rossamund was desperate enough to attempt to dissemble. 'I found them… through… through somewhere under the… the Low Gutter, sir-'
Laudibus Pile's glittering gaze narrowed. 'Liar!' the falseman hissed caustically.
'Ye will address an Emperor's servant with respect, sir,' the marshal-lighter pronounced sharply, 'be he above
