Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  Moreover, Threnody’s advent posed a disruption to the symmetry of the manse’s fine lists, and any one of the three quartos might be lumbered with her.With the suspension of the nightly prentice-watch, the question as to which Threnody would join remained unanswered.

  6

  THE LANTERN-WATCH

  skold-shot leaden balls fired from either musket or pistol, and treated with various concoctions of powerful venificants known as gringollsis, particularly devised for the destruction of monsters. These potives are corrosive, damaging the barrels of the firelocks from which they are fired and eating gradually, yet steadily, away at the metal of the ball itself. Left long enough, a skold-shot ball will dissolve completely away. Very effective against most nickers and bogles, some of the best gringollsis actually poison a monster to the degree that it becomes vulnerable to more mundane weapons.

  As winter deepened, the weather had steadily soured. Great squalling showers would blow up from the Grume, or heavy thunderheads roll in over the Sparrow Downs. On the second morning since the carriage attack and Threnody’s arrival, the prentices stepped-regular for Morning Forming out on Evolution Square. The night’s driving rain had blown away to the northeast, leaving murky puddles and a low solemn sky, and Grindrod stepped over a small mire as he stood before them.

  “The Lamplighter-Marshal and I have revised our conclusions,” he called to the two ranks, obediently still. “Knowing yer way on the highroad is too important to yer survival as full-fledged lighters. I told him that ye should never fear to tread the highroad just because of a single theroscade. Such is the lighter’s life, gentlemen,” he declared. “No good will come of keeping ye from it. Therefore, from tonight, the prentice-watch shall resume.”

  The murmur that inevitably buzzed among the prentices over breakfast was mostly of excitement, though there was a groan or three of anxious concern. Some of the boys were quietly happy to be kept off the road with monsters threatening. Rossamünd’s six watch-mates showed off the bandages about their arms that covered the small droplet-shaped cruorpunxis they had received the night before. Their marking had been done in evenstalls without much ceremony by Nullifus Drawk, one of the manse’s skolds and its only puctographist. Now even Wheede was boldly pronouncing to the more timorous, “Ye don’t have to worry, chums, if a hob comes a-calling—we’ll see him off for ye!”

  For the remainder of the day, under the earnest eye of Benedict, the prentices practiced the handling of a fodicar as tool and as weapon: trail arms, port arms, order arms, shoulder arms, present arms, reverse arms, quarter arms, over and over. Once a fodicar had made no more sense in Rossamünd’s hands than had a harundo stock at Madam Opera’s. Effectual instruction and plenty of time to practice had seen him improve a little, though today this did not prevent him from fumbling badly once and nearly letting his lantern-crook fall to the ground.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, at the end of yet more fodicar drill, the prentices formed up on the square for Lale—the time when that night’s lantern-watch got ready to go out to lighting. Their backs to the Low Gutter, they waited anxiously as maids brought out saloop and fruit for sustenance. Waiting for his food, Rossamünd noticed Dolours standing under a tree over on the Officers’ Green, wrapped thickly in furs and observing them all closely. He looked to Threnody to see if she saw her clave-fellow too but the girl was making a distinct show of not noticing the bane. Peering from Dolours to Threnody and back, Arabis and his cronies muttered dark things to each other about the unsuitability of women for the lighting service.

  As a post-lentum arrived with its usual hullabaloo, Rossamünd fidgeted and drank his saloop in nervous gulps. Lantern-watch was resuming on the very night his quarter was rostered to serve. Grindrod stood before them. One by one each lad was called forward and, after a pause,Threnody too. She was to be bundled in with him, the other latecomer, to the dismay of his own quarto and the open relief of the other two, lifting their quarto’s number to eight. Rossamünd gave her a quick look as they lined up before the others, but she kept her eyes front, ignoring him.

  While Benedict continued drills with the fourteen left behind, Grindrod marched Q Hesiod Gaeta to the gates, forming them up in the designated place on the southern edge of the Grand Mead. Lampsmen Assimus, Bellicos and Puttinger were waiting there to take them out for the night’s lighting. Bellicos thrust a box into Rossamünd’s hands, saying simply, “Hold this!”

  Taking it, Rossamünd immediately felt a deep unquiet. Looking within he found it contained many musket balls that shimmered a telltale blue-black rather than the usual dull lead-gray. Skold-shot! These were bullets treated with pestilent and mordant scripts—poisons and distinct acids made to do monsters far greater harm than an ordinary ball ever could.

  “Before going out tonight,” the lampsman said sourly, “each of ye is to load yer fusil with one of these.”With great respect, he took a pair of privers and, from the box Rossamünd still gripped reluctantly, plucked out a single ball. He held it up for the prentices to see. “Salt lead we call it, or skold-shot if you prefer. I want ye to take one from the box Master Lately here holds just as I have with these here privers, and load it into yer firelocks. Let’s us give any nasty hobnicker a good cause to pause.”

  The prentices obeyed, all but Rossamünd; he carried no fusil, for he had the salumanticum. He stood and obediently offered the box for the other lads. Each took a turn and a ball. Even the lampsmen and Grindrod took rounds, filling their own bullet bags from it. When the loading was done, Rossamünd was grateful to pass the foul-smelling box back to Bellicos.

  Grindrod seized Threnody with his steely stare. “I am here to tell ye plain hard: if there’s a peep of witting out of ye—even a wee fishing flutter—you’ll be out of the lighters with no coming back!”

  The girl lighter frowned truculently in return, but the lamplighter-sergeant appeared not to notice. He paced before the quarto when they had returned their firelocks to their shoulders. “It has been decided that a leer should be sent with us to improve the security of ye precious lambs. Not that we needed fancy-eyed gogglers to watch out for us when we were lantern-sticks.”

  Assimus, Bellicos and Puttinger snickered.

  Rossamünd struggled to imagine the lamplighter-sergeant as a fumbling, square-gating lantern-stick.

  “Ah!” Grindrod looked toward the manse. “Here struts the fellow now.”

  Leaving off a conversation with Dolours, a tall dark fellow stepped toward them. He bore a finely made long-rifle, wore a tall thrice-high upon his head and a dark coachman’s cloak that hid all other attire and accoutrements, including his boots.

  Mister Sebastipole! Here at last was the lamplighter’s agent who had hired Rossamünd back at Madam Opera’s. He looked straight at Rossamünd—with those disquieting red and blue eyes that signified his status as a falseman—as he stopped before the prentices, but if Sebastipole recognized him it did not show.

  “Well, Lamplighter’s Agent Sebastipole”—there was a coolness in the manner of Grindrod’s address—“are ye ready to coddle we lowly lighters?”

  SEBASTIPOLE

  “If you and your lampsmen are ready to depart, Grindrod,” Sebastipole replied evenly, “I am ready to coddle.” The leer turned and bowed to the boys. “Good evening, prentices.”

  “Good evening, sir,” they all responded, as was their duty.

  “Let us light the way.” Sebastipole led the prentice-watch down the stonework of the Approach. With a sharp toss of his head the leer drank something from a small black bottle. Whether this was some special concoction to enhance senses or prevent the sthenicon’s organs from growing up his nose, Rossamünd could not know. Drawing in several solid sniffs, the leer took out his sthenicon from its wooden case under his cloak. Rossamünd was certain he saw a hint of disgust as the leer strapped the ordinary-looking box to his face.

  Rossamünd breathed in the frigid airs. The whole Harrowmath stretched about him, a slightly undulating moor of rippli
ng, swaying reeds, weeds and grass. It stretched far south to the low hazy fells of the Sparrow Downs, and reached long into the north where paler greens gave over to the great straw-gray expanse of Sulk End. This unbroken pastoral flatness continued all the way around to the west where, on clearer days, great, distant windmills could be seen, sails lazily turning. Rossamünd had observed these very mills from the Vestiweg after his escape from the Hogshead . To the east, the stark, diminishing line of the Wormway ran out from under Rossamünd’s feet. On it went with the merest curve, right through the dark of the Briarywood and out the other side, on to the ancient, bald hills of the Tumblesloe Heap. There it disappeared into the mystery of the shadowy cleft of the Roughmarch.Though he had never ventured so far, Rossamünd knew that over the Tumblesloes the Idlewild began. Normally he might admire the vista, but this evening it held only threat.

  With a heavy sigh, he dutifully followed his comrades.

  Down the Approach they went, down on to the Pettiwiggin, dark with the chill gloom of Winstermill’s late afternoon shadow. The line of twenty-four lanterns they had to wind began here, at the bottom of the stonework ramp. Lantern East Winst 1 West Well 24 was the very first lamp on the Wormway, and as such was treated to special honors, writhen with a confusion of curls and finials of skillfully wrought iron. It even bore two gretchen-globes at either side of the main lamp-bell. They were small examples of the phosphorescent pearls formed inside the bellies of kraulschwimmen, spat out for brave divers to collect from murky seabeds. It was an ostentatious show of Imperial wealth that such precious items should be used to light this remote place. It was an equal show of the lamplighters’ vigilance that the local banditry had never tried to steal them. Assimus and Bellicos wound out the bloom, for no prentice was ever allowed to touch this most prized of lights.

  Watching with his fellows, Rossamünd wondered at the strangely lumpy spheres of the gretchen-globes with their soft, innate radiance, disbelieving that such beauty could come from the foul innards of some monstrous sea-beast. He looked to Threnody to see if she too was amazed by these pearlescent lights, but she stood stock-still, arms folded against the cold and all the world too. On the other side of her, Punthill Plod was nonchalantly inching closer, his rapt and imperfectly hidden admiration showing he did not share his messmates’ ill opinion of her. He was trying so very hard not to look hopelessly, gormlessly smitten, and doing such a poor job of it, even Rossamünd could see his intent.

  “Things of rare purity, are they not?” came a strange, almost squashed voice behind them.

  Rossamünd looked to find Sebastipole there, his face hidden behind its sthenicon, its flat wooden front looking blankly at the gretchen-globes. The young prentice wondered how the lights might appear through the bizarre device.

  “Aye,” he agreed, unsure if the leer remembered him. He spoke low to avoid Grindrod’s attention.

  As Assimus and Bellicos did their work, the lamplighter-sergeant was loudly describing the winding to the prentices, a quick revision he performed at the beginning of every watch.

  “I have it on good authority,” Sebastipole continued quietly, “that there are whole navies who use even more marvelous liaphobes than these as sea lights on the backs of their rams.”

  “Aft-lanterns, sir.” Rossamünd could not help giving the correct term. It was as reflexive as a blink.

  “Aft-lanterns?”

  “Aye, Mister Sebastipole, aft-lanterns are fixed to the frame through the taffrail at the stern of a vessel.”

  Threnody snorted dismissively. “Know-it-all,” she muttered. “You sound like an edition of Lot’s Books.”

  “You remember me, I see.” The leer looked pointedly at Rossamünd, passing over Threnody’s aside. “Glad to see you made it to us after all. Bravo. I should know better than to misname the parts of a ram in the company of a marine-society lad.” Even through the strange sonics of the sthenicon, the leer’s humble pleasure at Rossamünd’s recognition was obvious.

  “Altogether too much lip-flapping happening,” Grindrod barked, addressing Rossamünd and Threnody and conveniently ignoring that Sebastipole outranked him. “Are ye wanting more impositions, lippy-lucies?”

  “No, Lamplighter-Sergeant!”

  “Then attend to the winding, lantern-sticks, or ye’ll attend a week’s worth of the foulest duties my cunning can devise! Have ye got me?”

  “Aye, Lamplighter-Sergeant!”

  Grindrod gave Sebastipole a quick and frosty look.

  The leer made no comment.

  The lantern now glowing, the prentice-watch moved on, each watchman—man and boy—keeping a full fodicar’s length behind the next: the correct drill-book formation. The official wisdom had it that such spacing gave each lighter room to swing his lantern-crook, and the nicker a harder time attacking more than one lighter at once. This practice went against the natural urge to bunch together for protection, and Grindrod was continually correcting their gaps as the boys instinctively drew close to each other. “Step back there,Wheede!Ye want to march behind the fellow, not take him home to yer mammy! If ye were any closer, Plod, I’d have to separate ye and Pillow with a chisel!”

  It was proving to be a drizzled, windy night. The Harrowmath sounded alive with the hiss and rush of southerly gusts through its grasses, accompanied by the tuneful buzzing of a rabble of frogs sending their sweet night music into the gloaming. And with this, along the gap of road between each lamp, the gritty, crunching unison footfalls of the regular-stepping prentice-watch added its own even rhythm.

  Rossamünd felt safer with Sebastipole at the work tonight. The leer swayed his sthenicon left and right, left and right, as they moved away from the manse—a thorough, never ceasing reconnaissance.

  At Lantern East Winst 8 West Well 17, Rossamünd was required to wind out the bloom, his shortened fodicar just barely reaching the ratchet.Twice he tried getting the crank-hook into the ratchet housing way above him in the crown of the lamp. Twice he failed, the hook end uselessly hitting the outer bracket of the housing and failing to slot home. Rossamünd had been issued this shorter lantern-crook in the belief that he could not handle one of full size, yet it had proved inadequate for the task. Winding out the bloom was one of the hardest skills to learn and a tool that barely reached the ratchet did not make it any easier.

  The other prentices shuffled in the cold and groaned their impatience.

  “Thank ye for the wait, Rosey!”

  “Master Come-any-later-and-we’ll-be-here-till-Chill-ends!”

  Even the lampsmen shuffled their feet as they watched and grumbled testily.

  “What ails ye, Master Lately?” fumed Sergeant Grindrod. “If ye cannot get the crook in the hole, then what business have ye being a lighter? Ye boys’ll be the end o’ me afore I can make ye fit for lighting!”

  Rossamünd could not help but agree. As he was about to fumble a third time, Threnody stepped up. Her expression dared Grindrod to argue. She took the fodicar in a firm hand and guided it true.The hook end connected into the ratchet with that pleasant, snug, metal-on-metal sensation that told it was properly engaged.

  “Ah . . . Thank you, miss,” Rossamünd breathed. Shamefaced, he lifted the lantern-crook up for three ticks of the gears and let it fall under its own weight; lift and let fall—up two three, down two three it went, to work the gears that wound out the bloom.

  The other prentices were stunned to muteness by Threnody’s actions.

  Threnody said nothing and stepped away, keeping apart from the other lighters.

  “Well, by front door or back, one still gets into the house.” Grindrod was clearly amused. “Wind it out faster, lantern-stick, there’s only a set count of hours in a night!”

  With much puffing and aching arms, Rossamünd did his duty, the lamp rewarding his effort with a gradually increasing gleam, and the prentice-watch moved on. Behind them the brooding safety of Winstermill, with its thousand lamps and window-lights, diminished with every vialimn lit.

 
; At East Winst 15 West Well 10, Rossamünd fared better with the winding, and at her own lights Threnody displayed her natural facility, working the ratchet with ease.

  The glow of Lantern East Winst 17 West Well 8 on the approach to the Briarywood was discovered, once it was wound out, to have become a purulent yellow-green. The seltzer water had been gradually deteriorating.

  Time to change the seltzer, just like a bright-limn.

  A clothbound record was produced from Bellicos’ satchel and the lantern’s state recorded for Wellnigh House’s seltzermen to attend to the next day.The wind gathered pace as this was done, buffeting out from icy storehouses down in the southeast, making ears noisy with its passing and quieting frog song. On the walk again, Rossamünd twisted and craned his neck to relieve his hearing from the gusting airs, desperate to catch suspicious, dangerous sounds. Sebastipole kept at his ceaseless vigilance.

  Too soon they reached the Briary, its tops creaking in the wind but at its roots deathly still. The pyre of nicker corpses was a soggy charred mass that, even after three days, hissed and steamed with incomplete combustion. Wet woody smells sat heavy in the atmosphere. It was as if the threwd had worsened, not diminished; that the killing of the horn-ed monsters in the wood had only stirred that place, not quelled it. Even the hardheaded, stonehearted Grindrod felt the horrors tonight. The lampsmen hurried the prentices through, insisting upon winding the great-lanterns here themselves to save time and their nerves. At each winding Rossamünd truly expected Sebastipole to cry out that a nicker was nigh upon them—yet he did not.