Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  Crispus wagged his head in disapproval. “Fumbling butchering novice,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Even a first-year tyro would know callic is not for concussions. By your current alertness I can assume he did not succeed in his fuddle-brained prescription?”

  “No he did not, Doctor. I know enough of the chemistry to have not taken any even if he had.”

  “My apologies, Rossamünd. He certainly is not who I would have here,” Crispus complained. “But the young quackeen is only nominally under my authority; rather he answers to the Master-of-Clerks himself. Very unsatisfactory, and a clear nuisance when he comes a-quacking in my trim infirmary.” He clucked his tongue again. “A mere articled man strutting about as if he is a senior surgeon.”

  “He certainly reads some strange books for a surgeon,” said Rossamünd.

  “Does he, indeed?” Crispus blinked owlishly.

  “Aye, sir.” Rossamünd squinted at the ceiling in recollection. “Dark books, from what my old Master Craumpalin told me.”

  “Where did you see these, child?” the physician pressed.

  “In Swill’s apartment, way up in the manse’s attics. Mother Snooks sent me up the kitchen furtigrade, delivering a pig’s head to him.”

  “The kitchen furtigrade?” Crispus looked utterly amazed. “I did not know one existed, though Winstermill is old enough to have a thousand such obscure places. You certainly have had a tour of the slypes, haven’t you?”

  “And the attic apartment?”

  “Oh, that place is just his personal library, a place of private reflection. ‘Do not disturb’ and all that. I’ve never begrudged him this: a professional man must have his sanctuary for study—I have one of my own. In our profession there are some strange tomes—some better had we never read them, of course. And as for the pig’s head—well, a surgeon must practice his sutures, I suppose.”

  Rossamünd was unconvinced.

  Sebastipole entered the infirmary and, after asking of Rossamünd’s health, went on to request a personal word.

  WINSTERMILL

  The dressing of the wound complete, Crispus left them and attended to other patients.

  “Did you find anything in the tunnels, Mister Sebastipole?” Rossamünd asked eagerly but in a low voice.

  “There was no gudgeon corpse,” the leer answered.

  Rossamünd’s soul sank.

  “And all that was left of the stair was splinters and wood-dust,” Sebastipole went on.

  Rossamünd’s dismay deepened. His desperate struggle must have wrenched the ancient furtigrade too much.

  “I have heard of gudgeons so cunningly made they dissolve into a puddle after they expire,” Sebastipole expounded further. “Do not worry, Rossamünd, you are believed,” he added, seeing the young prentice’s dismay. “But I must tell you it was touch and go to even find your path; we found our way more by your instructions than your trail.Were you using a nullodor last night at all?”

  Rossamünd felt a caustic flush of guilt, as if he had been caught out. “You can smell a nullodor?” He had no reason to feel this, yet he did.

  “Actually, no: they do their job just as they should—all smells gone where applied. It is rather that absence of scent that is the telltale signifer. Think of it like reading a letter where a clumsy author has cut out his errors with a blade and as you read there are great holes in the sentences.You know something was there but you’d be hard-pressed to say what it was.” Sebastipole sniffed, then blew his nose. “Such a ruse will work against a brute beast but not against the pragmatical senses of a well-learned leer.” He looked at Rossamünd searchingly.

  “Oh,” the young prentice said in a small voice, “and there were no smells down there?”

  “Exactly so.” The leer’s expression was impenetrable. “The whole area was a great blank, with only the merest suggestion of many obliterated smells. If you pressed me I might say that more than one nullodor was employed, but it is too hard to prove so now.”

  “Oh . . . I am sorry, Mister Sebastipole,” Rossamünd murmured. “My . . . my old masters have me wearing a little each day . . . to keep me safe, they said, from sniffing noses.” He could not see the sense in hiding it now.

  “Indeed?” The leer looked astutely at him, held him with a silent, penetrating regard. “I detected a nullodor on you the night we went out lighting together.”

  Rossamünd ducked his head and blushed. “My old masters are very protective of me.”

  “And you are very obedient to them, it would appear.”

  Rossamünd nodded sheepishly.

  Sebastipole smiled. “Yet, Rossamünd, I did manage to detect the merest smell of your foe. It was exactly like the foreign, foul slot of Numption’s attackers.”

  “What does that mean, sir?”

  “I have not encountered enough gudgeons to know beyond doubt, but the similarity seems suspicious to me. It may well mean the creature that beset Numption and that which you slew last night—though separated by three years or more—have come from the same benighted test, made by the same black habilist. If that is so, the wretch has grown arrogant enough to try his constructions on us again!” The anger in Sebastipole’s eyes was made more terrible by their unnatural hue. “More galling still, we did not find how the homunculid found its way in. Others could come.”

  Rossamünd’s imagination fired with the abhorrent scene of the fortress overrun with rever-men.

  “Hmm.” The leer became ruminative. “I can say that it certainly did not come from the region of Numption’s bloom baths.”

  “I did not want to tell about them,” Rossamünd confessed forlornly.

  “I know you did not, Rossamünd.” The leer spoke up quickly. “You are an honest fellow and your honesty last night made proceedings easier. Fret not for dear Mister Numps: he is protected, and his ‘friends’ with him. I asked him to let us in and only took those with me who would treat him kindly.”

  Rossamünd felt a little relief at this.

  Sebastipole put an encouraging hand on the young prentice’s shoulder. “No more nighttime wanderings for you, my boy. Play the man, Rossamünd, be not afraid but be on your guard and carry your salumanticum with you always: strange and suspicious things turn in the manse now.” With this warning the leer left him, and Rossamünd went out of the infirmary and rejoined the slightly awed prentices stepping regular out on Evolution Green.

  At middens Rossamünd rushed down to the lantern store, the guilty conviction that he had failed Numps a heavy weight right in the pit of his gizzards.Yet what else could he have done? Oh! If only I hadn’t slept past douse-lanterns!

  His compunction was not eased either when Numps looked at him only very briefly with big, timid eyes and said nothing for a long time. “I heard it that you were set upon by a pale, runny man yesternight, Mister Rossamünd,” the glimner eventually muttered softly, not looking up from his working. “Just like old Numps was.”

  “Aye, Mister Numps, I was,” Rossamünd answered.

  “Oh dear, oh dear—I’m sorry, Mister Rossamünd, I’m sorry!You wanted my help and I showed you into trouble—poor, limpling-headed Numps!”

  This made Rossamünd feel more miserable than ever. “I—I could have turned back, I suppose. Besides, I beat the rever-man and got out.”

  Numps stopped polishing the lamp-pane gripped by the nimble toes of his left foot.

  “It is me who must say his sorries, Mister Numps, for telling them about the bloom baths,” Rossamünd blurted out. “I did not want to say . . . but I had to be honest—I . . . I . . .” Rossamünd’s words felt very thin and meaningless.

  For a while Numps sat, staring at his lap. Finally he looked up. “Fair is fair. One ‘sorry’ each. You had to fight the runny man because of Numps’ limpling head and then some people want to talk and talk about it and ask things, the same things over and over till you’re all done with it. I remember it, just the same on the day of all my red.”

  “Aye, I suppose.” Rossamünd
was not soothed by all this sorrying.

  The hollow sensation of friendship part-fractured persisted, and the two cleaned panes in reflective silence.

  “Mister Sebastipole reckons my gudgeon and the one you fought might come from the same maker,” Rossamünd finally tried. “He said they could not find where my rever-man got in, though. Do you have any notion, Mister Numps?”

  Numps shook his head. “No one can get from out there into here.” He smiled. “Even I know that. Only the sparrows of the Sparrowling make it here . . . oh, and you. But I reckon they let you in ’cause you look right, but it is still clever to cover the smell.” He tapped his handsome nose and his smile grew cryptic.

  With the chime from a bell, Rossamünd realized with a sault of fright in his chest that middens was ended. Having learned his lesson for lateness only too well, he scrambled his tangibles together, and with a quick bow and a short “good afternoon,” took hasty leave of the startled glimner.

  Though the discovery of a gudgeon within was disconcerting news, Rossamünd’s victory over it was powerfully encouraging, and the lighters particularly held him a mite-sized example of true lampsman valor. Among the greater share of the clerks, however, the rumor prevailed that he had made the whole tale up to cover his disobedience. From what Rossamünd had heard, the Master-of-Clerks was furious that no disciplinary action was to be taken for either Rossamünd’s lateness or his unauthorized presence in Whympre’s chambers.

  “I think that bump on yer brain-box serves ye a better reminder to do yer duty than any reprimand I can give ye,” the Lamplighter-Marshal had declared during a brief interview the next morning.

  Coursing for rever-men beneath the manse continued, Sebastipole finding alternative routes into the foundations other than Numps’ undercroft. The progress was slow and incomplete, the searchers hampered by the strange terrain and, as rumor would have it, by the Master-of-Clerks’ insistence that underneath was the sole property of the Emperor and not somewhere for lighters to be roaming about carelessly or without proper permissions or reports in triplicate.

  Meanwhile the prentices went on with their routines, and the awe of the other lads toward Rossamünd waned. Out on Evolution Green each day, Rossamünd noticed Laudibus Pile sometimes lurking, watching them at their marching and training where he had never lurked nor watched before. It was not constant, but enough to be annoying.

  “See, it’s him again,” he pointed out to Threnody as the prentices were between drills.

  “Perhaps he finds our movements appealing,” she offered lightly. “Though what interminable stepping-regular and fodicar movements have to do with lighting lamps I do not know. I’m glad there is only a month left of it.”

  Scowling at the leer, Rossamünd was glad too that the last month of prenticing was approaching. He would be able to serve on the road at last and do his part.

  On the last day of Pulvis, with only one month and four pageants-of-arms left till Billeting Day, Rossamünd was with Numps again at middens. Door 143 gave a rattling bang, and Sebastipole quickly appeared from the avenue of shelves and parts. He was disturbingly, uncharacteristically agitated, the blue of his eyes too pale, their red like new-spilled blood.

  Rossamünd stood, frowning with dismay. “Mister Sebastipole?”

  “Young Master Rossamünd. Good, I am spared the time to find you too.” The leer’s brow glistened with perspiration.

  Rossamünd had never seen Sebastipole so agitated—not even when he was facing the Trought. “Are . . . are you distressed, sir?”

  “Hello, Mister ’Pole.” Numps was clearly delighted to see the leer. “Come to see my friends again?”

  “Not today, Numption,” the leer answered, returning the glimner’s smile with one of his own, brotherly and warm despite his mysterious urgency. “I am glad you have Rossamünd for a friend now too, for today I will be leaving.”

  The prentice’s innards gave a lurch. Sebastipole leaving? Rossamünd did not care for such a notion: the manse felt safer with the leer somewhere at hand.

  Attention now fixed on a particularly grimy lantern-window, Numps nodded. “All right, Mister ’Pole, Numps will see you again soon, then.”

  “You’re going, Mister Sebastipole?” Rossamünd asked.

  “Indeed,” the leer returned, “I will most probably be gone for a goodly while.”

  The glimner finally looked up from his rubbing. “More days than Numps has fingers or toes?”

  “Yes, Numption, more even than that.” Sebastipole gave him a sad, affectionate look. “I do not know for how long I will be absent.”

  Numps’ joy collapsed. “But why?”

  The leer crouched down and looked up at the glimner.

  “The short of it is, my old friend, the Lamplighter-Marshal has been served a sis edisserum. Do you know what this is?”

  Though Sebastipole was talking to Numps, Rossamünd nodded. This Imperial summons had played infrequent but significant parts in the more exciting stories in his old pamphlets.

  Numps just blinked slowly, his look of distress mixing with increasing confusion.

  “It means that the Marshal must appear before the Emperor’s representatives posthaste,” Sebastipole explained, “and as his falseman—his telltale—I am to go with him.”

  “But why does the Marshal have to go?” Numps persisted.

  The leer hesitated. “Because . . . because the Emperor’s ministers have ordered him to meet with them all the way down in the Considine.”

  The Considine? Rossamünd was amazed: he had hoped to see the subcapital as a vinegaroon visiting as part of a ram’s crew, to tread slowly into harbor and admire its grand buildings and massive walls. “Why have they done that?” he piped, with questions of his own. “What has the Lamplighter-Marshal done?”

  Sebastipole looked at him squarely. “He has done nothing,” the leer said with contained anger. “But somehow they have already heard of the gudgeon in our bowels and he is required to explain both this and what they consider our failure to check the great many theroscades and depredations along the highroad.”

  “It’s not the Lamplighter-Marshal’s fault that bogles and nickers attack!” Rossamünd could not believe the folly of such a notion. “Nor that the rever-man was found in here! How can he explain something he couldn’t know? It was those butchers who brought the poor Trought down on us, not the Marshal!”

  “I suspect there is more behind this sis edisserum than a simple ‘please explain.’ Someone plots the Marshal’s embarrassment, perhaps, or his removal.”

  “Who would want such a terrible thing?” Rossamünd asked indignantly.

  “Maybe those who covet his popularity with the lamplighters and the people of the Idlewild, and his position as a peer,” answered the leer. “Those who will happily destroy any good just so they can have it their way, without any thought to wisdom or right.”

  How could anyone be black-hearted enough to wish ill on such a great man? Rossamünd reflected bitterly.

  “But why do you have to go?” Numps interjected, frowning with intense, puzzled concentration.

  “I go because the Marshal needs me.” Sebastipole became kinder. “I must see through all the lies and traps of cunning men for him. While I am gone you must be careful, do you follow me, Numption?” The leer bent his neck sideways to look Numps in the eye. “If you are scared, hide with your hidden friends.Yes?”

  The glimner nodded, his head dropping dejectedly. “Yes Mister ’Pole, if I’m scared I will hide, yes.”

  Standing, Sebastipole turned to Rossamünd. “Watch out for my friend, Rossamünd. Only you and Crispus show him any abiding kindness, and the doctor is a man daily beleaguered with too many tasks.” Sebastipole gripped Rossamünd firmly by his shoulder, startling him. “Will you do this?” the leer asked, uncommon anxiety clear in his queer-colored gaze.

  “Aye, Mister Sebastipole,” Rossamünd said seriously. “Aye, I most certainly will.”

  “Bravo! Good man! Now I mu
st go. We have been given little time to satisfy the summons.”

  “You come back again, Mister ’Pole,” Numps insisted.

  “You know I have to go away at times. But I always return, do I not?” He fixed Numps with a firm look. “Do I not?”

  Sniffing, Numps eventually, grudgingly, nodded.

  “And I will write to you as I have before,” the leer pressed, “and Doctor Crispus will still be here . . . and so will Rossamünd.”

  At that Numps looked at the prentice and gave a pathetic smile.

  Nodding, Rossamünd grinned awkwardly in return.

  Sebastipole sat with Numps for a little longer, then said, “And now, friend Numption, I must must go and you must trust me and Rossamünd as your friend.” Sebastipole stood.

  “Yes, Mister ’Pole,” Numps relented. “You are my for-always friend, and Rossamünd is my new old friend. I will see you back here soon again, yes?”

  “Yes, you shall—as soon as is possible. May well betide both of you,” he said with feeling. “We shall meet again—I will make certain of it! Until then I will write if able, though there will be much work to do, great labors perhaps, but I will still attempt a letter. Good-bye!” With that, he turned quickly with a flick of his coachman’s cloak and exited the lantern store.

  Numps began to sing and mutter.

  Rossamünd could feel—almost see—the glimner withdraw into himself, no longer heeding the prentice sitting by him. Rossamünd quietly returned to the manse and left the glimner to his introspections.

  18

  WRETCHEDNESS REVEALED

  Considine, the ~ one of the alternats or subcapitals situated at strategic places within the Haacobin Empire. Alternats were founded to allow the Empire to keep greater control over its subject states, most of which lie beyond inveterately threwdish land, well past easy reach. Large armies and navies are kept at each alternat, ready to venture forth and chastise any overweening state or peer or defend the lands against the monsters. In the Soutlands, the Considine is the larger, older and therefore senior of two alternats, the other being the Serenine, farther south.