damaged effects back to Wellnigh House. It was agreed better to return to the cothouse rather than go on to Winstermill; better to get indoors as soon as possible while the night still lingered, and with it the threat of more monsters. The proper treatment of wounds would have to wait until the morrow.
'Amble ye by the dray, Master Come-lately,' Grindrod commanded. 'Keep yerself available to tend their hurts.'
So Rossamund walked, as did Assimus and Puttinger and the haubardiers, staying by the ox dray, ready if a script was needed. On the farther side of the woodland Rossamund saw the crumpled bodies of the park-drag driver and his side-armsman. They had been mauled then tossed from the stampeding vehicle to land dead on the side of the highroad. Wrapped in canvas tarpaulins, they were laid on the dray alongside the remains of the two calendars.
The round hills of the Tumblesloe Heap loomed black against the starlit gray.The lanterns became more frequent: at last the cothouse was near. What swelling relief it was to finally spy the beacon flares and window- lights of the small twin keeps of Wellnigh House at the base of the hills. A pair of squat towers stood on either side of the Pettiwiggin, each fenced by a thick drystone wall. These were connected by a hanging gallery known as the Omphalon, a bridge with walls of solid wood and a steep-sloping roof that spanned the road. In this raised gallery were the lighters' quarters, and the sight of lanterns winking from its narrow windows set Rossamund's thoughts to bed and sleep.
At last they entered the walled lane between the two keeps. Here they passed ornate warding censers, great brass domes that squatted in heavy three-legged stands on either side of the road. Within these domes, day and night, nicker repellents were burned, their poison fumes seeping through holes bored in the dull metal. On Rossamund's very first night at Wellnigh House he had sucked a lungful of their foul fetor and for an instant thought his end had come, but the wind had mercifully blown another way and he recovered. From that day he learned to stay upwind of the censers or hold his breath and shut his eyes till he had passed.
What relief it was to pass through the thick oak gates in the broad wall of the northern fastness and stand safe within the cothouse's tiny foreyard.The unhappy deeds that had ruined the night were already common talk there, yet still the calendars received a barely civil reception. The long-faced Major-of-House was waiting for them in the yard and insisted on a brief conference with Grindrod while Rossamund was made to remain in the cold. The lamplighter-sergeant looked mightily unimpressed with what he was hearing. Dolours approached them as they remonstrated under the light of a yard-lamp and the discussion came to an abrupt and obviously unsatisfactory end. The house-major raised a refusing hand, loudly declaring, 'That is all, madam! I had my reasons.Take the matter up with our Marshal in Winstermill if you want further hearing.' He dismissed Grindrod and called for Rossamund with an authoritative wave.
The young prentice hurried over dutifully while, with stony face, Dolours turned wearily on her heel and returned to her sisters-in-arms.
'I'm told these blighted women have taken a liking to you, boy,' the house-major said quickly, not stopping for the inconvenience of an answer, 'so you can be their liaison. Meddlesome wenches-you may not find them so agreeable once you've spent time in their company. Take them now to the store on the farther side of the Omphalon. They may rest their troublesome heads there.'
Rossamund groaned inwardly. He led the women through the windowless watch room on the ground floor of the north tower, pointing the way down narrow passages of dark wood and through the cramped rooms of a structure built for efficient military function rather than genteel comfort. Up the tight stairway to the gallery he took them, and over, along the access way of the raised gallery and by the night sounds of the already sleeping prentices, to their room beyond in the southern keep. He became aware that a hushed, earnest talk between Threnody and the bane Dolours-begun in the front watch room-had now become a repressed yet passionate struggle. As he stood at the top of the southern stairs to point the way down, he heard Threnody exclaim through clenched teeth with petulant words too low and hissing to distinguish.
Arriving at their hastily arranged quarters, the calendars testily reviewed the inadequate lodging. Crates and goods had been rearranged and foldable cots squeezed between, all still dusty and crawling with earwigs.
Embarrassed, Rossamund bid them fair night with a stiff bow.
Despite their weariness, Dolours and the pistoleer returned the compliment, the bane saying, 'Grace and manners. We are obliged to you, young lighter.You have been a great service to us.'
Threnody just frowned and, with a huff of spleen, lay on her ill-made cot.
His thoughts all for bed, Rossamund went to his own lodgings, shuffling among the sleeping prentices, and threw himself down clothes, boots and all.
3
Cothouse(s) type of fortalice; the small, often houselike, fortresses built along highroads to provide billet and protection to lamplighters and their auxiliaries. Cothouses are usually built no more than ten to twelve miles apart, so that the lamplighters will not be left lighting lamps and exposed in the unfriendly night for too long. Their size goes from a simple high-house with slit windows well off the ground, through the standard structure of a main house with small attendant buildings all surrounded by a wall, to the fortified bastion-houses like Haltmire on the Conduit Vermis or Tungoom on the Conduit Felix.
Rossamund woke, having slept very little, to the drum roll of 'Stand While You Can,' a merry martial tune rattled out every morning at five-o'-the-clock to rouse the lantern-watch.
Stand while you can, lads,
Stand while you can:
For the Glory of Ol' Barny,
Stand while you can.
He gave a gentle groan. The common-quarter night at Wellnigh had been full of snores and night shouts and a paucity of proper rest. He should have been used to this: it was how he had spent all his sleeps at Madam Opera's. Two months' prenticing at Winstermill, however, with a cell of his own, had given him something he had never truly known, privacy. Cold and small though his cell might have been, with a cot lumpy like tepid slogg- porridge, he had come to prize its seclusion.
Rousing himself, Rossamund rubbed grit-itchy eyes and sat, his head still swimming with nightmares of gnashing shadows and carriages attacked. Fouracres, the ambling Imperial postman he had met on his journey to Winstermill, had told him a lamplighter's life was dangerous, and now the prentice well understood why.
A life of adventure. A life of violence.
Bright-limns were turned and their cool light slowly revealed the long, low quarters. Waking and rising, the other prentice-lighters hubbubbed with restrained excitement, retelling last night's theroscade.
'What about that young calendar!' Hanging by his arms from one of the low, steeply angled rafters, Punthill Plod gave a saucy whoop that set the sleepier ones complaining. Mornings always were his better part of the day.
'Aye! She was a bit of a fine dig,' Tremendus Tworp leered, 'though she couldn't wit for a goose.'
'Did ye hear old Grind-yer-bones last night?' Plod enthused. 'We might get marked.Ye heard him: said prentices ain't been puncted in a precious long time!'
'I'm not getting one,' Rossamund declared, with more gladness than he meant to show.
'Why not, Rosey?' Plod stopped his rafter swinging.
'Lampsman Puttinger said I did not have a hand in killing anything.'
'Oh' was all Plod said.
'Ye don't sound too troubled, Rosey. Don't ye want one?' Tworp added. 'Perhaps there should 'ave been more
