'A lamp's worth is proved by its color, lad.' The under-sergeant gave him a curious look. 'Mama Lieger has done good for us, so we do for her benefit as she has done for ours… and maybe-if she does hold conversationals with the local hobs-she might put in a good word for us with them. But just have yer intellectuals about ye, else she'll have ye believing that some monsters are not so bad after all.'
'Aye… ' Aubergene muttered, 'though some might agree with her on that one.'
Almost stumbling down the side of the highroad, Rossamund looked in surprise at the lampsman, a dawning of respect rising in his bosom.
'Stopper that talk, Lampsman!' Poesides barked. 'Her saying such things is one bend of a crook, but ye spratting on so is a whole other. I don't want to have to leave ye with the old gel when we get to her house.'
Aubergene ducked his head. 'Aye, Under-Sergeant,' he murmured.
Poesides fixed Rossamund with a commanding eye. 'We're all about quiet when walking off the road, so silence them questions for now.'
The youngest lighter obeyed and said naught as the under-sergeant traveled an unmarked path through the thick lanes and thickets of thistle and cold-stunted olive and tea trees. In single file the three followed after, walking as carefully they could without going too slow. The shaley soil clinked softly as their boots broke the damp, fog- dampened surface, to reveal the earth beneath still dry and dusty. This was indeed a parched place, yet life still flourished, making the most of what little moisture it gleaned from the damp southern airs.
Always searching left and right, all four kept eyes and ears sharp for signs of monsters. Tiny birds chased on either side of them, flitting rapidly through the thick twine of thorny, twiggy branches, rarely showing themselves but for a flash of bright sky blue or fiery, black-speckled red. Rossamund wanted to stop, to be still for a time and breathe in the woody smells and quietly observe the nervous flutterers, but on they marched, pausing only for a brief breather and a suck of small beer.
Two miles out from the Wormway the difficult country opened out a little and began to gently decline, a broad view of the Frugal vale before them, gray, thorny, patched with dark spinneys of squat, parched trees. Aubergene and Lightbody moved to walk on either side of Poesides. Keen to prove himself a worthy, savvy lighter Rossamund did the same, stepping straight into a spider's web strung between two man-high thistles and still glistening with dew in the advancing morning.
'Ack!' he spluttered and scrabbled at the stickiness on his face, terrified some little crawler might be about to sink fangs into his nose or crawl and nest in his hair.
'Hold your crook in front of your face,' Aubergene offered in a hush, clasping his long-rifle vertically in front of him in example. 'Catches the webs and keeps your dial safe of them.'
There was not a glimpse or hint of a single monster the whole way, yet the land still heeded them and knew they walked where men seldom did or should. Choughs scooted away with a flash of their white tail feathers at the lighters' advance through the cold land, looping low through the stunted swamp oaks, letting out their clear calls: a single note bright yet mournful, ringing across the flats. As the day-orb reached the height of its meridian Rossamund spied a high-house-a seigh-very much as its those eeker-houses he saw from the Gainway down to High Vesting. This one looked older, though-very much as if it belonged here, grown somehow rather than built by human action; a sagging pile hidden behind a patch of crooked, fragrant swamp oaks. Its too-tall chimneys looked near ready to topple; its roof was entirely submerged in yellow lichens; weedy straw grew from every crevice in the lower footings. In this place the threwd was different somehow, so gentle and insinuating that Rossamund hardly perceived it; the watchfulness was not so hostile-indeed, it was almost welcoming. Rossamund might have liked to stay here. He looked pensively up at the high-house.
There was no stair to the gray-weathered door nearly twenty feet above.
Poesides took Rossamund's fodicar from him. 'We really must get ye a right lengthened crook,' he muttered. Hefting it up, the under-sergeant deftly hooked a cloth-covered chain hanging well above their heads from the wall by the door. He gave it a series of deliberate tugs and waited.
Aubergene and Lightbody kept watch at their backs.
There was only a brief wait before the lofty door opened with a clunk and a small head peeped without.
'Ah-hah, das gut aufheitermen!' Rossamund seemed to hear, a soft woman's voice speaking incomprehensibly in what he could only presume-from his prenticing with Lampsman Puttinger-was Gott. 'Guten Tag, happy fellows!' the voice called a little louder in Brandenard.
'Mother Lieger!' Poesides gave a hoarse cry, trying to be heard without making noise. 'We have yer stores.'
'Gut, gut,' and the head disappeared.What had appeared like a small, moldering eave over the door shuddered and, with a click, began to drop smoothly to the ground, lowered on thick cord.
It was an elevator.They were rare in Boschenberg and, no matter how simple this device was, out in the wilds was the last place Rossamund expected to find one.
Each lighter was raised up on this small, worn platform. Poesides went first, and as the smallest Rossamund was sent up next, finding the elevator more stable than it first appeared. He had no notion how Mama Lieger might operate this device if ever she left the house, but this pondering did not occupy his mind long. At the top he found a tiny front room-the obverse-with loopholes in the back wall and another solid door too, which was currently open. The woman was not there, though domestic bustle was coming from some rearward room. Rossamund waited as the under-sergeant worked the mechanism that raised the platform. All present, Poesides led them through the second door to carefully deposit their burdens in a small closet at the end of a short, white hall.
'Ahh,' came that soft female voice, getting louder as the speaker appeared from a side door. 'I must be thanking you once again for keeping a poor old einsiedlerin's pantry full.'
Bearing a tray of opaque white glasses, Mama Lieger turned out to be a neat, rather dumpy old lady, silvery tresses arranged in a precise bun, neither too tight nor too relaxed. Her homely clothes of shawl, stomacher-dress and apron were sensibly simple as was the interior of her humble dwelling. Run-down as it was, the parlor into which the men were invited was clean and tidy, any drafty holes plugged with unused flour-bags neatly rolled and wedged into the gaps. Yet for all this orderly homeliness there remained in her puddingy features evidence of the sharp, hawklike face she would have once possessed and a disquieting keen and untamed twinkle in her penetrating gaze-something deeply aware and utterly irrepressible. Serving them the piping, sharply spiced saloop the old eeker-woman looked Rossamund over hat-brim to boot-toe. 'Who is this new one, then?' she smiled, her expression most definitely hawkish. 'Do they make lighters in half sizes now, yes? To take up less room in your festung-your fortress-yes?'
Poesides and the lampsmen gave a hearty chuckle.
'I-' Rossamund fumbled for a proper response.
As she passed a drink to him, the young lighter noticed the hint of a dark brown swirl sinuating out from under the eeker-woman's long sleeve, its style and color looking so very like a monster-blood tattoo. Rossamund nearly missed his grip on the cup of saloop.
Mama Lieger noticed him noticing her marks and peered at him closely. 'What a one you have brought me, Poesides.' The neat old lady's wild, black eyes gleamed disconcertingly. 'It is so very clear this one has seen his tale of ungerhaur; have you not, my little enkle, yes? Poor young fellow, I see the touch on him-I see he bears the burden of seeing like Mama Lieger sees, of thinking like she thinks, yes?'
Is she calling me a sedorner too? Rossamund looked nervously from her to his billet-mates: he did not relish being ostracized so early in his posting.
'Aye, aye, Mama.' The under-sergeant came to his rescue. 'Ye'd have everyone lost in the outramour if ye could,' he said tightly.
'That I would and the better for the world if you all were. Not to matter, you stay out here for a long time and the land will quietly speak to you-mutter mutter-the schrecken- the threwd-changing your mind: is that not right, my little enkle?' She peered at Rossamund once more.
'I-ah-' How can she talk such dangerous words so freely? He wondered at the mild expressions of his fellow lampsmen, sipping tentatively at their piquant saloop and trying not to show how unpleasant they found it. Why doesn't Poesides damn her as a vile traitor and have her hanged from the nearest tree? These fellows weren't mindless invidists-monsterhaters-not at all. Rossamund did not know what to think of them.
