Rossamund stood, frowning with dismay. 'Mister Sebastipole?'
'Young Master Rossamund. Good, I am spared the time to find you too.' The leer's brow glistened with perspiration.
Rossamund had never seen Sebastipole so agitated-not even when he was facing the Trought. 'Are… are you distressed, sir?'
'Hello, Mister 'Pole.' Numps was clearly delighted to see the leer. 'Come to see my friends again?'
'Not today, Numption,' the leer answered, returning the glimner's smile with one of his own, brotherly and warm despite his mysterious urgency. 'I am glad you have Rossamund for a friend now too, for today I will be leaving.'
The prentice's innards gave a lurch. Sebastipole leaving? Rossamund did not care for such a notion: the manse felt safer with the leer somewhere at hand.
Attention now fixed on a particularly grimy lantern-window, Numps nodded. 'All right, Mister 'Pole, Numps will see you again soon, then.'
'You're going, Mister Sebastipole?' Rossamund asked.
'Indeed,' the leer returned, 'I will most probably be gone for a goodly while.'
The glimner finally looked up from his rubbing. 'More days than Numps has fingers or toes?'
'Yes, Numption, more even than that.' Sebastipole gave him a sad, affectionate look. 'I do not know for how long I will be absent.'
Numps' joy collapsed. 'But why?'
The leer crouched down and looked up at the glimner.
'The short of it is, my old friend, the Lamplighter-Marshal has been served a sis edisserum. Do you know what this is?'
Though Sebastipole was talking to Numps, Rossamund nodded. This Imperial summons had played infrequent but significant parts in the more exciting stories in his old pamphlets.
Numps just blinked slowly, his look of distress mixing with increasing confusion.
'It means that the Marshal must appear before the Emperor's representatives posthaste,' Sebastipole explained, 'and as his falseman-his telltale-I am to go with him.'
'But why does the Marshal have to go?' Numps persisted.
The leer hesitated. 'Because… because the Emperor's ministers have ordered him to meet with them all the way down in the Considine.'
The Considine? Rossamund was amazed: he had hoped to see the subcapital as a vinegaroon visiting as part of a ram's crew, to tread slowly into harbor and admire its grand buildings and massive walls. 'Why have they done that?' he piped, with questions of his own. 'What has the Lamplighter-Marshal done?'
Sebastipole looked at him squarely. 'He has done nothing,' the leer said with contained anger. 'But somehow they have already heard of the gudgeon in our bowels and he is required to explain both this and what they consider our failure to check the great many theroscades and depredations along the highroad.'
'It's not the Lamplighter-Marshal's fault that bogles and nickers attack!' Rossamund could not believe the folly of such a notion. 'Nor that the rever-man was found in here! How can he explain something he couldn't know? It was those butchers who brought the poor Trought down on us, not the Marshal!'
'I suspect there is more behind this sis edisserum than a simple 'please explain.' Someone plots the Marshal's embarrassment, perhaps, or his removal.'
'Who would want such a terrible thing?' Rossamund asked indignantly.
'Maybe those who covet his popularity with the lamplighters and the people of the Idlewild, and his position as a peer,' answered the leer. 'Those who will happily destroy any good just so they can have it their way, without any thought to wisdom or right.'
How could anyone be black-hearted enough to wish ill on such a great man? Rossamund reflected bitterly.
'But why do you have to go?' Numps interjected, frowning with intense, puzzled concentration.
'I go because the Marshal needs me.' Sebastipole became kinder. 'I must see through all the lies and traps of cunning men for him. While I am gone you must be careful, do you follow me, Numption?' The leer bent his neck sideways to look Numps in the eye. 'If you are scared, hide with your hidden friends.Yes?'
The glimner nodded, his head dropping dejectedly. 'Yes Mister 'Pole, if I'm scared I will hide, yes.'
Standing, Sebastipole turned to Rossamund. 'Watch out for my friend, Rossamund. Only you and Crispus show him any abiding kindness, and the doctor is a man daily beleaguered with too many tasks.' Sebastipole gripped Rossamund firmly by his shoulder, startling him. 'Will you do this?' the leer asked, uncommon anxiety clear in his queer-colored gaze.
'Aye, Mister Sebastipole,' Rossamund said seriously. 'Aye, I most certainly will.'
'Bravo! Good man! Now I must go. We have been given little time to satisfy the summons.'
'You come back again, Mister 'Pole,' Numps insisted.
'You know I have to go away at times. But I always return, do I not?' He fixed Numps with a firm look. 'Do I not?'
Sniffing, Numps eventually, grudgingly, nodded.
'And I will write to you as I have before,' the leer pressed, 'and Doctor Crispus will still be here… and so will Rossamund.'
At that Numps looked at the prentice and gave a pathetic smile.
Nodding, Rossamund grinned awkwardly in return.
Sebastipole sat with Numps for a little longer, then said, 'And now, friend Numption, I must must go and you must trust me and Rossamund as your friend.' Sebastipole stood.
'Yes, Mister 'Pole,' Numps relented. 'You are my for-always friend, and Rossamund is my new old friend. I will see you back here soon again, yes?'
'Yes, you shall-as soon as is possible. May well betide both of you,' he said with feeling. 'We shall meet again-I will make certain of it! Until then I will write if able, though there will be much work to do, great labors perhaps, but I will still attempt a letter. Good-bye!' With that, he turned quickly with a flick of his coachman's cloak and exited the lantern store.
Numps began to sing and mutter.
Rossamund could feel-almost see-the glimner withdraw into himself, no longer heeding the prentice sitting by him. Rossamund quietly returned to the manse and left the glimner to his introspections.
18
Considine, the — one of the alternats or subcapitals situated at strategic places within the Haacobin Empire. Alternats were founded to allow the Empire to keep greater control over its subject states, most of which lie beyond inveterately threwdish land, well past easy reach. Large armies and navies are kept at each alternat, ready to venture forth and chastise any overweening state or peer or defend the lands against the monsters. In the Soutlands, the Considine is the larger, older and therefore senior of two alternats, the other being the Serenine, farther south.
The prentices were not even properly awake when the Lamplighter-Marshal, Sebastipole, the Marshal's adjutant, accompanying secretaries and a small quarto of lifeguards left in three lentums that next morning. Preparing for parade with a heavy heart, Rossamund marched out with his subdued fellows to find the entire pageant-of-arms in similar mood.The sudden departure of their beloved Marshal to duties in the Idlewild was not so uncommon, yet word had got about that it was a sis edisserum that had taken him away-and this was shocking.
