some kind of prisoner from them wars Clementine and Sebastian are always in. He was sent here a year ago as a slave of the Emperor, I suppose, but he wants to change his nativity and become a paper nationalist of the Empire, strange fellow-'
'Cain't speak more than 'alf a sentence of Brandenard neither,' interjected Posides. 'And we're meant to watch over 'im and make sure 'e don't scarper off. Though where 'e's going to go out 'ere I don't know!'
'At least he's fat,' argued Lightbody. 'Never trust a gutstarver who bain't fat-I've been told, 'cause a thin one don't respect food enough to treat it right.'
'What we actually lack is greens,' Aubergene chattily added between chews.
'Just so,' said a trim-looking man, the cothouse's dispensurist, one Mister Tynche, giving Rossamund a welcoming smile, 'and all we lack at times are some consistent, decent antiscorbutics. If it was not for the sovereign lime from Hurdling Migh and the nutrified wine sent ready mixed from Quinault and the Sulk, it'd be all black gums and lethargy here.'
'Which is why that wriggler Squarmis can ask so much for his goods and time,' Aubergene enlarged. 'Sir!' he suddenly called across the trestle to the house-major. 'Sir! Did ye hear of the nasty lurker we almost met this dousing?'
'Aye, 'Gene, I surely did,' House-Major Grystle replied. 'It was a good thing it wandered away like it did, else I might be less five-no, seven! — brave lighters. You can spare the horses, but don't spare the lighters!' he cried, and all the mess joined him, chuckling heartily, someone else calling huskily, 'A confusion on the nickers!'
As one the Stoolers raised their mugs of three-water grog, took a swig and slammed their tankards back on the trestle, making a hearty wooden clatter. Rossamund went through the motions and hoped no one noticed his lack of enthusiasm.
Threnody said little for the whole meal, sitting straight and taut, her eyes never leaving her food, and anyone who attempted to speak with her soon gave up in the face of her monosyllabic reluctance.
'What do we call you, girly?' one friendly young fellow of the day-watch tried. 'Lamp-lass 3rd Class?' He chuckled in a cheerful way, as did those about him.
Threnody looked at the man sidelong, her fork hovering before her mouth. 'Probably anything but girly might be a good start,' she said quietly.
'Watch out, Theudas!' Sergeant Mulch guffawed. 'She's got the tongue of a whip, has our new lady lighter!' which everyone thought a great joke.
The young fellow called Theudas, red-faced, went back to his eating, while Threnody looked rather pleased with herself.
After the morning meal, dishes were collected and washed by the men of the day-watch themselves. Rossamund tried thanking Sequecious the Sebastian cook for a brilliant meal, to which the man, in a thick accent simply repeated, 'Tank yee! Tank yee!' with that unceasing grin.
Dishes done, Rossamund and Threnody were directed back to their bunks, joining the lantern-watch for their prescribed rest. Threnody's screens were brought and erected with much better grace than at Tumblesloe Cot. They were put about the farthest bed from the others and, once up, the girl-lighter disappeared behind them, not to be seen again till much later.
Rossamund organized himself, sorting satchels and bags. He pulled out a bag of boschenbread and offered a piece to Aubergene, who was sitting on his own cot, already in a long nightshirt.
'Why, thankee, Ros-ah-Rossamund, isn't it?' he said to Rossamund's offer.
'Aye,' the young lighter replied, 'Rossamund-Rossamund Bookchild of Boschenberg.'
'Ahh, hence the bread and your baldric, aye?' Aubergene made a little salute with his tasty morsel, pointing at Rossamund's black and brown baldric, now hanging from an iron bedpost. 'So why did they billet you here, truthfully? Everyone is here because of something…'
Because the Master-of-Clerks is a conniving, wicked blackguard! went across Rossamund's thoughts, but he said, 'I'm not sure, it's just where they sent us.' Taking Europe's warning, he was not about to leap into some long-winded, barely believable story of events real and suspected. 'What about you?' he quickly added.
'Me? Oh, I've got a dead-frank aim, and-uh-I calfed after the wrong girl' was all he said, leaving Rossamund with more questions. Yet before he could ask them Aubergene himself quickly added, with a slightly gormless smile, 'Well, welcome to the Stool.'
Rossamund grinned in return.
The cots proved just as uncomfortable as Winstermill's-some things in military service always stayed the same, it seemed.Windows were shuttered, blocking the diffuse, surprisingly bright light coming through the fog without. He peeked through a shutter. The fume was slowly dissolving, clearing the eastern view. The young lighter stared at the hazy horizon and could not quite believe that maybe only a day's lentum-ride farther began one of the most feared places in all the Half-Continent, maybe even the world. 'Have you seen the Ichormeer, Aubergene?'
'Aye,' the lampsman replied soberly. 'It's all foul bottomless bogs and stinking pools the color of your heart's blood; half-dead thickets of red-leafed thornbushes and floating islands of red weed. Every path you take is treacherous and the rot of it all stays in the back of your throat long after you've escaped the place. I don't know how they managed to build the Wormway across it, must have cost a whole trunk of lives.' Aubergene shook his head. 'What the more, it's where the nickers are said to be born or somesuch-however that happens. You don't want to be going there, Rossamund. I surely never want to return.'
Rossamund listened with rapt attention. Despite-or perhaps because of-the lampsman's lurid description, he was more keen to see the infamous place. Lying down to sleep, he found his imagination ran for the longest time with thoughts of a corrupted, bloodred swampland where loathsome things slithered and groveled in the noisome muds. They were woken after middens by the arrival of costerman Squarmis, surprisingly delivering their heavy luggage intact and unmolested. Ox trunks properly stowed at the feet of their cots,Threnody's extra packages crammed underneath, the two new lighters were set to task. It was with profound and sinking horror that Rossamund discovered the very first duty set aside for them: feed and muck the dogs.
Oh no!
'Ye've done this before, aye?' said Lamplighter-Sergeant Mulch. 'And if ye haven't, well… I suggest ye learn quickly. It's an easy job and a good way to start, so hop to it now.' There was a familiarly gruff manner in this lamplighter-sergeant, very much like the one they had left behind at Winstermill and perhaps all the sergeants the Half-Continent over.
'Dogs don't like me so much, Lamplighter-Sergeant,' Rossamund tried forlornly.
'They'll get used to ye,' the man insisted, 'especially if ye hold them out a little bit o' food.'
'We will do splendidly, Sergeant,' Threnody said flatly, and taking Rossamund under his arm, pulled him with her down to the kennels.
But they did not do splendidly.
As at Wellnigh House, so it was here. No matter how tasty a morsel Rossamund held out to them, the dogs went wild. Threnody's solution of sending him down to close off and muck out the other end of the cage failed miserably; the dogs bayed and yammered and made such a ruckus at him that all of Wormstool came running with cries of 'Nicker on the doorstep!'
They soon realized what was what. There was no nicker anywhere, not even after a full quarto of the Stoolers searched the perimeters of the cothouse with Crescens Hugh the lurksman at their lead.
'I dun't know, mates, it's all cry and no nickers,' Hugh declared when the searchers returned and the front door was secured once more. Everyone professed themselves mystified and the incident was dismissed.
Lamplighter-Sergeant Mulch just shook his head when all was done and declared, 'The dogs truly don't like ye, do they, lad?'
24
