any pile he could see: no Numps. Destroying his bloom is one thing, but surely he is too unimportant to be hurt or carried off? Rossamund's mind cogged. No one could be bothered, even if they did remember him. He thought of the undercroft and the old bloom baths. Surely not there? It's been boarded up and blocked… This was the only alternative he knew.
Careful not to attract attention with any untoward huff or hustle, the prentice slipped through the mazelike interstices between the work buildings, trying to find the path Numps had taken him that one wet day.Twice he thought he had got himself irrevocably lost, yet, though seen only once, the particular features of the twisting route were quickly familiar again and Rossamund was soon dashing down the tunnel-like alley. He skidded into the discarded square and its gurgling drains, startling a sparrow that had been bobbing by the sunken grate.The entrance to the undercroft had indeed been sealed with boards, but these had been pulled away and collected in a tidy stack by the grate. Next to this stack sat an equally orderly collection of the bolts used to pin the boards in place, partly piled on top of a soiled official ordinance bill stringently demanding everyone to go away in painfully formal terms. Kneeling in the wet, the prentice leaned over the grate and tried to reach under as he had observed Numps do, to feel about for some kind of catch or spring or other lever.
'Mister Numps!' he called, hoarse and wary, down the hole while he searched. 'Mister Numps!' Nothing even vaguely catch or latchlike presented itself to his questing fingers.
'Oh hallo, Mister Rossamund.' The soft voice of the glimner echoed strangely from below, giving Rossamund a fright. 'I reckoned you were a guardsman fellow come to take my bloom again.'
'Mister Numps!' With rushing relief, Rossamund thought he could just spot the pale oval of Numps' upturned face in the dark of the subterranean stair. 'Are you safe? Are you hurt again?'
'Oh dear… I don't want to be found by the Master-Clerker…,' the glimner quavered. 'I didn't want to be found without Mister 'Pole here.'
Rossamund smiled sadly. How he wished he could provide the glimner a greater sense of safety. Instead he had things to tell that he knew would be hard for the poor man.
'I have to go too, Mister Numps,' he began. 'They're sending me away…'
'Oh… oh dear…' Numps sighed, sounding bewildered. He must have climbed higher in his distress, for his pallid face became closer. 'Numps' friends all going… '
'The Master-of-Clerks called Billeting Day today,' Rossamund confirmed, 'and I am leaving to my cothouse- and there's nothing I can do about it.'
'Tell Mister 'Pole-he won't let you be sent away. Even poor old limpling-head Numps knows it's too soon for prentices to go a-working. Write Mister 'Pole, he won't let you go-I have his address, see…' Numps rummaged about in pockets.
'I will… I will write him a letter,' said Rossamund. 'Maybe he can help us, even from the Considine. Things are so bad with his and the Marshal's leaving. You should stay hiding if you can, Mister Numps-the fortress is downside up. Will you be able to eat and all?'
'Ah, Mister Rossamund.' Numps tapped his brow. 'There are many things Numps knows that people don't think he knows. There is food a-plenty if you go to the right places.' The glimner was oddly calm. 'Besides, Cinnamon's friends are watching over Numps-a-hiding so you can reckon me as safe.'
Rossamund thought of the sparrow he had startled, pecking at the grate, and smiled. He did not know what help these little agents of the Duke of Sparrows might be-if that was indeed what they were.What did that kind of attention mean? He wanted to believe that goodly urchin-lords existed, that Numps was well looked out for, but the old common suspicions persisted.
A distant rataplan of the drums meant that mains was at an end and confinations about to begin.
'I must go, Mister Numps. We will both write to Mister Sebastipole, yes?'
'Yes.'
'And you'll stay safe and secret, yes?'
'Yes.'
Rossamund wanted to hug the glimner, but shyness and the grate prevented him. Instead he just stared into Numps' melancholy eyes, and the man stared back.
'Good-bye!' The prentice reluctantly turned to leave.
'Good-bye, Mister Rossamund,' he heard the glimner call behind him. 'Numps won't forget his new old friend-don't you forget him…'
'Never, Mister Numps!'
Heavy with fear for the glimner's fate, Rossamund ran back to the manse. For the rest of confinations he packed, stowed all he had ever possessed and prepared himself for leaving at first light. In the last few moments before douse-lanterns he lay on his cot and with his stylus hastily scratched out a letter on a blank page torn from the back of the peregrinat.
To Mister Sebastipole
Lamplighter's Agent amp; Falseman to the Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill
Epistra Scuthae
The Considine
The Patricine
2nd Heimio HIR 1601
Dear Mister Sebastipole,
I have no certainty this will make its way to you, but I try anyway.
I write to you, Mister Sebastipole, on the last night of my prenticing in Winstermill, for since you left with the Marshal, the Master-of-Clerks has taken all in hand and declared Billeting Day early. Tomorrow I travel to the cothouse of Wormstool. But it is not this that troubles me. It is rather Mister Numps that I am worried for.The Master-of-Clerks (he calls himself the Marshal-Subrogat now) destroyed Mister Numps' bloom (the stuff he was growing down in the deserted undercroft) the very day you departed, and Mister Numps (as I am sure you can well imagine) was sorely troubled. I managed to save a little part of it, but the baths are shattered and most of the bloom is dead. I fear for Mister Numps, that he isn't safe with only the good Doctor Crispus to watch out for him.Would there be any way you can help him, or even get him away from the manse?
He thought of adding:
The last I saw of him he still hid where his bloom was once grown.
… but realized the letter might be intercepted and read by unfriendly eyes and so he left it out. Instead he quickly completed the letter.
I hope you and the Lamplighter-Marshal fare well, and that all unjust things are righted soon. Rossamund Bookchild, Lampsman 3rd Class HIHF Winstermill Conduit Vermis Sulk End
20
Idlewild, the — officially known as the Placidia Solitus, a gathering of client-cities (colonies) along the Imperial Highroad of the Conduit Vermis. Each town, village or fortress is sponsored by a different state of the Empire-Brandenbrass, Hergoatenbosch, Quimperpund, Maubergonne,Termagaunt, even Catalain. Established in the late 15th century HIR, it is the latest great project of what is grandly termed cicuration-taming by farming; purgation-taming by force; and bossesation-taming by landscaping, originally proposed by Clementine itself. The Inner Idlewild or Placidine, from Tumblesloe Cot to the Wight, was declared 'regio scutis'-a fenceland-over a decade ago. This heralded a brilliant success of the great labor of pushing back the monsters and the threwd. The marches from the Wight to Haltmire-otherwise known as the Paucitine (also the Frugelle)-are still considered ditchland.
In the clear, bright and oppressively cold morning Rossamund watched Winstermill recede as the post-lentum
