by D M Cornish
Threnody arched an eyebrow.
“Will you be returning to your mother this evening?” Rossamünd quickly changed tack.
“No, she has said all she wanted to say—and more besides,” Threnody answered sourly. “We are done. Fortunately she will leave again tomorrow and take Dolours and dear Pandomë back to Herbroulesse.”
With a thump the prentices, soused and swaggering from their vigil-day excursion, bundled into the mess hall.
The strange, strained conversation ceased.
“Hoy there, you sobersides! You should have seen it!” Punthill Plod effused.
“Seen what?” Threnody returned icily.
“Aye, Rosey, you missed a real bust-up,” bragged Arabis, completely ignoring Threnody. “A carriage was attacked by some nickers—horses dead, lentermen dead, passengers dead.”
“Just like we saw on lantern-watch,” Plod continued.
“I heard them say in town that it was done by some nasty grinning blightlings,” Crofton Wheede added.
Rossamünd’s milt went cold. Grinnlings?
“That company of lesquins we saw camped just a mile farther down was not much use to them poor folks, was it?” said a prentice named Foistin Gall.
Rossamünd’s ears pricked up at the mention of lesquins, those gaudily dressed sell-swords—the best, most arrogant fighters, who gathered into legions and sold themselves to fight in the petty wars of the states.
“What are they doing there?” Threnody frowned.
“People are saying because we can’t stop the baskets on the Wormway that the Gainway is under threat!” said Onion Mole in awe.
“Not as under threat as that sweet li’l dolly-mop at the Drained Mouse, not from the looks you were giving her, Moley,” guffawed Twörp stupidly, and several boys brayed in drunken delight.
Threnody gave them all a single dirty look and left.
Mind spinning with memories of Licurius collapsing under a press of grinning bogles, Rossamünd was not long in following.
The routine of the next day began as it always did, with the ritual wake-up cry, hurried dressing and stomping out to line up for morning forming on the Cypress Walk by the side of the manse. There Grindrod confirmed the attack on the carriage between the fortress and Silvernook, everyone slaughtered. He quickly moved on to properly inform the prentices that the coursing party had returned the previous day while the boys were living it large in Silvernook. The coursers’ homecoming had been somber. They were less five dogs, including the leader Drüker, and Griffstutzig was badly hurt. An ambuscadier was dead, the badly wounded Josclin borne back on a litter. These were bitter blows indeed after Bellicos’ death. Even mortally hurt, the harried umbergog had proved a terrible adversary, trapped in a hollow on the western flanks of the Tumblesloe Heap far to the north. It was slain at last by the chemistry of Josclin and a final, fatal shot from Sebastipole’s deadly long-rifle. The severed head of the vanquished monster had been dragged all the way back by the mules.
The prentices did not know how to react to this: was it good news? Was it bad?
Grindrod also advertised that that very night in the Hall of Pageants there would be the puncting—the marking with the monster’s blood—of those who had had a hand in slaying the Herdebog Trought. Collected from the dead umbergog at the time of its slaying, the cruor was in the care of Nullifus Drawk. He was apparently eager and ready to mark the monster’s killers. Rossamünd did not want to go. He had lost his fascination for cruorpunxis. Their gaining was surrounded by too much sorrow and confusion. He well understood why his old dormitory master was ashamed of the tattoo he wore.
After breakfast the prentices were set to more marching. Rain set in, a gray shimmering swathe, and dripping-drenched they formed up along the side of the gravel drive to mark the Lady Vey’s otherwise unfeted departure. “Present arms!” came the order. Next to Rossamünd, Threnody obeyed, staring fixedly ahead, chin high, a sardonic half smile barely hidden. For her part, as the dyphr clattered by, the august ignored her daughter and the twin-file of prentices with her, her neck held stiff and chin raised.
As mother, as daughter, Rossamünd observed.
For 2nd morning instructions the prentices went to the lectury for lantern workings with Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert. Rossamünd liked the subject: he actually understood and admired the mechanism of a seltzer lamp and the constitution of seltzer water itself. This study was a relief from marching and evolutions and targets. In fact, and despite himself, he welcomed the safety of routine. The last week had been as event-filled as ever he wanted. Too much adventure left him craving easy predictability. With a contented lift in his regular-step Rossamünd entered the lectury carrying stylus, books and lark-lamp—a small replica of a great-lamp given to all the prentices. Rossamünd was intrigued by the curious way its covers folded open upon many hinges, fascinated with the down-scaled workings revealed within, which were just like those that operated the real lights of the road. He paid close attention to all that was taught, but most of the other prentices could not have given two geese about the what or how or why of a great-lamp’s internal parts. Humbert noticed neither. He simply droned on.
Rossamünd had quickly learned that lampsmen naturally, though unfairly, regarded seltzermen as failed lighters who only ever ventured out into the wilds with the sun, and then only when need demanded. They were appreciated, certainly—repairing the great-lamps was necessary work—but not respected. Consequently, it was with mixed gratitude that Rossamünd received Mister Humbert’s uncharacteristic praise when, in the face of his fellow prentices’ ignorance, he speedily identified a limp, pale yellow frond the seltzerman held up as “glimbloom drying out and past saving, Mister Humbert.”
“Correct!” the seltzerman returned. “How long can the glimbloom survive out of seltzer before it reaches this irrevocably parched state?”
“No more than a day, Mister Humbert.”
“Well, Master Bookchild, you know what you’re about with them parts.” The seltzerman 1st class brightened. “It takes just this kind of nous to keep these plants working. We’ll make a seltzerman out of you yet.”
“Aye,” Rossamünd heard muttered behind him, “or maybe you’d make a good weed-keeper, Rosey?” There was the sound of soft laughter.
Rossamünd did not look around.
However, Threnody did. “Better to be good for something than a good-for-nothing bustle-chaser,” she hissed, unable to tell between good-natured jape or insult.
“Young lady!” Mister Humbert called long-sufferingly. “You might be the only lass at prenticing, but don’t think you’ll have special concession from me. Please turn around and refrain from disturbing the others.”
Skipping the sit-down meal at middens, Rossamünd grabbed some slices of pong and hurried to Door 143 in the Low Gutter and his promised visit with Numps. The Gutter was busier on a normal day, and Rossamünd had to negotiate the bustle of laborers and servants and soldiers. He entered the lantern store quietly and heard speaking: not one of the soft monologues of Numps, but the voice of a learned man.
Rossamünd became very still and listened.
“. . . Poor old Numps wouldn’t tolerate Mister Swill, eh?” the voice declared. It sounded like Doctor Crispus. He must have returned from his curative tour. “I must say I can barely compass the man myself: entirely too wily, all secrets and heavy-lidded looks and smelling of some highly questionable chemistry . . .”
Although he was aware that it would be proper to make his presence known to the speaker, a guilty fascination held Rossamünd and he remained tense and quiet.
“. . . Coming with his uncertain credentials, when all the while a proper young physic might have been satisfactorily summoned from the fine physacteries of Brandenbrass or Quimperpund. A product of the clerical innovations of that Podious Whympre. Everything in triplicate and quadruplicate and quintuplicate now! One thousand times the paperwork for the most trifling things, and all requiring our Earl-Marshal’s mark. How the poor fellow
bears with the smother of chits and ledgers is beyond me: my own pile near wastes half my day!”
As Rossamünd moved to the end of the aisle he found it was indeed Doctor Crispus, sitting on a stool and ministering to the dressings on the glimner’s foot with intense concentration. He had examined Rossamünd on the prentice’s very first day as a lamplighter, and had had naught to do with him since. Numps was sitting meekly on a barrel waiting for the physician to finish. He looked up at Rossamünd before the lad had made a sound and smiled in greeting. The physician himself had still not noticed Rossamünd.
“Ah, Doctor Crispus?” the prentice tried, shuffling his feet to add emphasis.
With a start, the physician stood and quickly turned, catching at his satchel as it slid from his lap.
“I have come to help Mister Numps again,” Rossamünd added.
“Cuts and sutures, lad!” Crispus exclaimed with a flustered cough. “You gave me a smart surprise!” A towering, slender man—Doctor Crispus must have been the tallest fellow in the whole fortress and probably of all Sulk End and the Idlewild too—he was sartorially splendid in dark gray pinstriped silk, wearing his own snow-white hair slicked and jutting from the back of his head like a plume. He wore small spectacles the color of ale-bottles, and a sharp, intelligent glimmer in his eye boded ill for any puzzle-headed notions. “Ah, hmm . . .” The man composed himself. “Master Bookchild, is it not?”
“Aye, Doctor,” the prentice answered with a respectful bow. “At your service, sir,” he added.
“And so you have been, Master Bookchild,” the physician said, clicking his heels and giving a cursory nod, “of service to me, and more so to this poor fellow here, as I understand it.” He gave a single, paternal pat on Numps’ shoulder.
Numps hung his head and smiled a sheepish smile.
Rossamünd did not know what to say, so he simply said, “Aye, Doctor.”
“See, Mister Doctor Crispus, see: Mister Rossamünd has come back again and Numps has a new new old friend.They let him in, did you know? They never let my friends like him in before, did they? Maybe one day they’ll let the sparrow-man in too?”
Crispus smiled ingratiatingly. “Yes, Numps, yes. I see.”
Baffled but deeply gratified by this reception, Rossamünd asked, “How is your foot today, Mister Numps?” The bandages seemed still tightly bound and in their right place.
“Oh, poor Numps’ poor foot,” Numps sighed. “It hurts, it itches. But Mister Doctor Crispus told me well stern this morn that I was to leave it be . . . so I leave it be.” He wiggled his toes.
“And so you must.” Distractedly the physician pulled a fob from his pocket. “Ah! Middens is already this ten minutes gone,” he declared. “I must eat like any man jack.”
DOCTOR CRISPUS
“Doctor Crispus?” Rossamünd dared.
“Yes, Master Bookchild, quickly now: middens is not the meal to be missed. Breakfast maybe, mains surely—but never middens.” Crispus took off his glasses and dabbed at them with the hem of his sleek frock coat.
“Was Mister Numps right not to want to go to Swill?” Rossamünd inquired.
The physician nearly blushed. “Oh . . . Heard my complaints, did you?” He paused thoughtfully for several breaths. “Please disregard an unguarded moment. Those were just professional frustrations requiring a little letting. It’s a small understanding between Numps and I—whenever we meet: I run away at the mouth, he listens. That being so,” Doctor Crispus carefully continued, “I would rather you came to me with your ills, or the dispensurist or even Obbolute if I’m incommunicado; or just go sick until I return, than put yourself into the hands of that hacksaw.” With a cough Crispus looked Rossamünd square in the eye. “I would thank you not to say any more of that which you have overheard.”
Rossamünd ducked his head, going shy from the confidence this eminent adult was putting in him. “Not a word, Doctor.” He nodded gravely.
“How-be-it, eating is overdue.” Doctor Crispus pointed at Numps’ legs. “I have applied new bandages but that is all: your use of the siccustrumn was exactly right. The lacerations are deep but the potive has been well applied and is doing the healing work far better than any I could now. You have been given charge over a salumanticum for good reason, prentice-lighter.”
Rossamünd bowed again, unable to hide his grin of delight.
“Enough now, food awaits.” Doctor Crispus gathered up his satchel and stray instruments. “After that it’s back to that stout fellow, Josclin—may his skies seldom cloud.”
“Is he mending, Doctor?” Rossamünd ventured.
“If you are a wagering man, Master Bookchild,” Crispus said as he began his exit, “I would put my haquins and carlins on Mister Josclin’s full recovery! Good diem to you and good diem to you, Mister Numps. I shall return in a few days to ensure your clever foot—as you call it—is still mending. I have seen you return from the very doors of death, my man.Your foot will not unduly trouble you.”
With that the physician hustled out of the lantern store.
Numps immediately began cleaning panes. “Mister Doctor Crispus and Mister ’Pole doesn’t know all what happened.” The glimner did not look up, but spoke into his own lap.
There was a long pause.
“Doesn’t know what?” the prentice pressed as gently as he could.
“He didn’t tell it like things happened . . .” The glimner went on. “I didn’t go a-crawling back to the lamppost . . .”
Realizing what Numps was talking about, Rossamünd leaned a little closer.
“I remember . . . Even now when I sleep I remember. Poor Numps was dead in his puddle of red, no crawling about for him. It was the little sparrow-man that helped me.”
Rossamünd’s attention prickled. “The little sparrow-man, Mister Numps?” he asked very very quietly. This was the type of talk that could get you branded “sedorner.”
“Yes, yes.” Numps smiled, looking up at last. “They might have got my arm to gnaw on, but they didn’t get all of poor Numps. It was the little sparrow-man that fought the pale, runny men—”
“I heard you were hurt by rever-men!”
“Oh aye, aye! Pale, runny men ripping us all to stuff and bits and that little sparrow-man came and tore them limb from limb and saved me—my first new old friend. He plugged all the pains with weeds and stopped the red from its flow-flow-flowing . . . Fed me dirty roots. That made me feel safe.”
“That little sparrow-man?” Rossamünd repeated.
“Aye, this big”—still gripping a pane, Numps adumbrated a creature of short stature with his hand—“and with a large head like a sparrow’s, a-blink-blink-blink.”
A hunch tickled at the back of Rossamünd’s mind. Could it be the same creature? “I think I have seen him myself,” he said.
Numps became all attention, and he too bent forward in his seat.
“Not a long time ago I spied him,” Rossamünd continued, “on the side of the Gainway going down to High Vesting, a nuglung with a sparrow’s head all dark about the eyes and white on his chest, blinking at me from a bush.”
A little taken aback, Numps blinked quickly. “Yes yes, Cinnamon—he helped me! I reckon he’s got more names than I’ve got space in my limpling head to count, he’s been about for so, so long . . . Long-living monsters with long lists of names.”
Cinnamon, Rossamünd marveled. “How do you know this, Mister Numps?” he whispered.
“Hmm, well, because he told me,” Numps answered simply. “Cinnamon is poor Numps’ friend too, see, ’cause it was him that beat the runny men.”
Rossamünd felt something between awe and a habitual, thoughtless horror. “You are friends with a nuglung?” he breathed, reflexively looking over his shoulder for unwelcome listeners.
Numps grinned. “Ah-huh. Cinnamon said he was come from the sparrow-king who lives down in the south hills. He keeps an eye out for old Numps, sends his little helpers to watch.”
“The sparrow-king?” R
ossamünd scratched his face in bewilderment. His thoughts reeled at the thought of a monster-lord living near.
“Yes yes,” Numps enthused. “The Duke of Sparrows, the sparrow-duke; he has lots of names too.
The Sparrowling
Is an urchin-king
Who rules from courts of trees.
He guards us here
From the Ichormeer
And keeps folks in their ease.”
“Have you seen the Duke of Sparrows, Mister Numps?”
Numps shook his head. “But I would like to, though.”
“So would I,” Rossamünd admitted.
“But you can see him anytime, Mister Rossamünd!” The glimner pulled a perplexed face. “All the old friends would be your friends, wouldn’t they?”
The young prentice hesitated. “All the old friends? What do you mean, Mister Numps?”
“Yes, yes! My poor limpling head—the nuggle-lungs and glammergorns and the other old friends.”
“I—I have one old friend such as this,” Rossamünd dared. “His name is Freckle. He is a glamgorn who helped me when we were trapped in a boat with a rever-man. We set Freckle free.”
Numps listened to this short telling with growing intensity. At its conclusion he grinned rapturously and did a little sit-down dance, chiming,
“Yes yes, you set him free,
trapped in gaol is no place to be.
. . . you are a good friend indeed for Numps to have who sets his fellows loose from traps. Good for Freckle too.”
“I don’t like to tell anyone about him,” Rossamünd warned. “You should not say either, Mister Numps, about Freckle or Cinnamon. Most people don’t like those who are kind to nickers.”
Numps’ enthusiasm vanished. “I remember that folks hate the nuggle-lungs.” He nodded glumly. “And the hobble-possums and all the gnashers, friend or bad. I remember that them that talk with them nor think them friends are hated too. Don’t be a-worrying and a-fretting, I won’t say naught ’bout Cinnamon nor Freckle, and I’ll not say naught ’bout you neither.”
