'What were you doing with that blighted bugaboo today?' Threnody whispered in a passion. 'You had your salt-bag-you could have fought it. Instead I find you talking to it?'
'I–I was…' Rossamund had been caught and there was nothing to do but admit it.
'Tell me, what in the Sundergird were you doing with it?' Threnody pressed. 'Swapping potive recipes? Bogles are for slaying or driving away, not chitter-chatter! I did not get it, and now the little blightling will be off to murder someone's chickens-or worse!'
'Not every bogle is a ravening gnasher, Threnody, deserving nothing but a hasty death-and certainly not Freckle! He helped me-'
'That's the talk of a sedorner, Rossamund! Watch your words,' Threnody seethed under her breath, looking to Sequecious obliviously chopping at something in the kitchen proper. 'I cannot believe you actually know the wretched thing's name.'
'I'm not a sedorner just because I can see that not all monsters are bad,' Rossamund countered quietly but hotly. 'Else you could accuse me a murderer just for saying that not all folks are good!'
'Ugh, lamp boy!' The girl rolled her eyes. 'You sound more like Dolours every time we talk!You should have been an eeker, not a lamplighter.You're most fortunate the cook did not spy what was what, or someone else on sentries for that matter. If you meet the thing again, get rid of it!'
'I will not!'
Threnody looked at him with slit-eyed scorn. 'To be hung on a Catherine wheel is a bad way to end,' she warned.
'How is it a good end to murder a friend?'
'You just don't understand, do you, lamp boy? Well at least you can trust me to keep this between you, me and the rising moon.'
Rossamund did not answer. He was happy he did not understand and if understanding meant slaughtering every bogle in sight, he never wanted to either.
They worked on in angry silence. Between the guilt over the accidental tryst with Freckle and the regret for his falling-out with Threnody, Rossamund kept to himself that night. Instead of joining his fellows in the gap between the Limpers' arrival and douse-lanterns for games of checkers and lesquin and tots of grog, he sat on his cot and wrote a letter to Fransitart. Dating it the fifth of Herse, he described his safe arrival, gave his new address and sent his deepest affections to all who had them. It was a brief message. He did not mention the incident with the friendly glamgorn, though it sat heavily in his thoughts: such things should never be committed to paper. Rossamund had never mentioned Freckle in any of his previous communications home. Asking the house-major if he might use his wafer, Rossamund sealed the missive in a second blot of paper.
The next morning he went to Aubergene, intending to ask him to pass his letter on to the Post-Master of Bleakhall at the end of the next night's lighting-leg. The lampsmen had just returned from dousing, and were down in the cellars washing. Aubergene stood by a well bucket with hat on yet shirt off, showing bare back and shoulders crawling with scars and cruorpunxis: gruesome faces that glared and sneered from shoulder, back or chest, mute witness of a lamplighter's violent life.
Rossamund almost slipped the last few steps in shock.
Of course he had seen cruorpunxis before, but not so many on one person. This fellow seemed too young to possess such evidence of experience and slaughter. What great and terrible things had Aubergene done to earn such markings? How many of those snarling faces had actually deserved to end so ignobly as pictures to adorn a man's trunk?
Shaking, the young lighter turned and hurried back up and away. I thought Aubergene was only against the worst monsters-how many of the worst ones can there be? He would ask someone some other time for the letter to be delivered. Later that week an unexpected thing occurred. A letter came for Rossamund.
Rossamund Bookchild Lampsman 3rd Class Wormstool Cothouse The Pendant Wig The Idlewild 16th Heimio HIR 1601
Rossamund,
I thank you for your communications of the 2nd of Heimio and the 6th of the same. I shall start with congratulations on your promotion. Its gaining might be early but it is still well deserved: you shall make a fine lighter.
The matter of Numption and his bloom baths was so disturbing I nearly took the fast advice-boat in harbor back to the manse. Whatever I can do from here I will and shall.
As you have no doubt deduced from the address line, the Marshal and I remain in the subcapital. The whole process of interviews and reviews goes interminably slow. One day we might get a brief meeting to simply make a time for another brief meeting that might occur another week later. After all the rush and bluster of the first summons, the bureaucrats here are in no great hurry to give us a hearing.
All of this is made more troublesome by the unsettling buzz that the Marshal might actually be relieved of his post, and the longer we are delayed our proper review, the more likely this wretched injustice becomes.There is certainly something most insalubrious and cunning in the coincidence of events. What you have written to me in your second communique is unfortunately of no small surprise, but with so many good folk all so unfortuitously removed from the manse there is currently little that can be immediately done. What is more we need harder proofs than we currently have.
I wish I could write you happier things, but now is not that season. Nevertheless it is wise to remember that the most important battle to win is the last.
Of Discipline and Limb,
Lamplighter's Agent
Falseman to the Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian, Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill
Epistra Scuthae The Considine The Patricine
Do not write to me upon these matters any further-some seals have been tampered; information is going where it should not.
Once he had read it, Rossamund simply looked at the missive numbly. He wished too that Sebastipole could have written happier things. Eventually numbness turned into an anxious, angry gripping up under his ribs as he realized just how helpless he was to aid the Lamplighter-Marshal or Sebastipole or even Numps. So much good in Rossamund's small sphere was being brought to dust by the skillful machinations of a self-serving few. He showed the letter to Threnody, who snorted cynically when she was done reading it.
'The Marshal and the Agent flummoxed too: what are we to do now?' she said, apparently more interested in cleaning and admiring her pristine pistolas. 'The honorable suffer and the crafty prevail.'
Rossamund thought to show it to the house-major, yet what would it matter to him really, besides which he was sure Sebastipole would rather his private messages were not shown about. So Rossamund continued to heed Europe's warning and keep his thoughts to himself.Yet no matter how many nights he lay half sleeping, fretting over a solution, it never came. All he could see before him were limitless days of duty at Wormstool-small, remote, irrelevant.
Surely something good will come from all this wretchedness? One crisp, clear and early evening where the air itself felt as if it could snap with the chill, Rossamund was at sentry on the roof with Under-Sergeant Poesides and Lampsman 2nd Class Theudas.
The Fighting Top was a spectacular perch when no fog was about to hide the scene, a whole-compass view of the Frugelle, flat as flat could possibly be in any direction he cared to look. There were no hills, few very shallow valleys-mere depressions in the earth, and endless withered shrubs and drought-blasted trees. Indeed, from up on the roof, the only notable feature-apart from a tiny wood of swamp oaks to the northeast-was the Wormway itself. The Pendant Wig went west on the left hand, and kinked to east-northeast on the right: the final length of road before all habitation ceased completely and only wide, empty wilds were left. On the horizon, drawn as a deep reddish-purple line, was the western border of the fabled Ichormeer, the Gluepot, the Blood-Marsh, a brooding mark on the edge of vision. He could almost feel threwd radiate from it, reaching even here, like the heat of a bonfire.
Yet tonight, sitting quietly, Rossamund observed the lantern-watch at the lighting instead, already four lamps down the way. How he loved the beauty of the gradual increase in the light of a newly wound great-lamp, the colors shifting from grassy-green through straw-yellow and, if the water was new, to wine-vinegar clear.
As he watched, a fifth lantern began to glow green.
