D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Through this was the infirmary.

Rossamund stepped up and gave a reluctant tap. An epimelain answered almost instantly, her broad brown skirts and oversized apron filling the entire doorway.The woman's expression exquisitely stated, Yes?What do you want? I have no time for this! without the use of a single word.

Hat in hand, Rossamund bowed. "This wounded lady needs a physic's mending, miss."

The epimelain looked over him to the stricken calendar, to the porters, then to Threnody and back to Rossamund. She gave a soft, high "humph," turned and sashayed away. This was enough permission for the porters, who immediately went in, shoving Rossamund aside.Threnody followed them without a thank-you. Within was a long hall, well-made beds down either side, pillows arranged identically against the wall with prim regimental exactitude, bed ends forming a squeezy aisle along which the epimelain's skirts brushed and rustled noisily as she hurried between. A few beds were occupied, various ailing souls coughing or sighing in their discomfort, and another woman dressed similarly attended the bedside of one of the ill.

Behind a lectury desk was the person they sought: Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill, the carver of lamplighters, their surgeon. He was short and thin and sported a meticulous mustache and a fixed frown. Dressed immaculately, he sat with a flam-toothed saw in one hand and a hone gripped in the other, sharpening the blade to and fro, careless of the patients about him.

"Your pardon, surgeon."

With a small start, Surgeon Swill stood and faced the woman. He looked at the group a little confusedly. "Come, come," he said, finally fixing his attention on Rossamund, "let me look you over."

"Ahh… not me, sir." Rossamund gestured nervously to the stretcher-borne Pandome. "Her."

Surgeon Swill looked to the calendar. "Very good. Leave her here."

The porters laid the bier on the closest empty bed and retreated promptly without so much as a good-bye, leaving Rossamund and Threnody with Swill.

Threnody stepped up, chin high. "I'll have you know, sir, that I have been under the steady knife of the finest transmogrifer in or outside the Empire. Before I submit her to your ill-learned investigations, quacksalver, I would have you understand this: my mother is the Lady Vey, and should you mishandle my sister, your days of lawful practice shall end."

Rossamund looked at the floor. This was surely not the way to go on if she was seeking to become a prentice-lighter.

The surgeon looked at her coldly. "Moving about the odd organ is enough for some to claim great talent, but there are subtler things one can do with a knife. My ill learning will be learning enough to set your sister to rights." He took up a weird-looking monocle, its protruding end a completely opaque black smoothness, and squinted it into his left eye. It was an even stranger instrument than Rossamund had seen Doctor Verhooverhoven wearing at the Harefoot Dig when treating Europe so ill from spasming. It was some kind of obscure biologue, he was sure, designed to make a surgeon's or physician's work more effective.

Threnody stood close and watched suspiciously as Swill bent over the bed and scrutinized the injured, unconscious Pandome, peering pedantically through the monocle at every cut, gouge and contusion. The epimelain hovered, waiting to serve any command. Swill worked in silence but for a periodic "mm-hm" and the scratching of stylus on paper as he made notes of what he discovered.

Fascinated, Rossamund shuffled forward to get a clearer sight of what the surgeon saw.

Swill straightened and pinned him with a wintry eye. "Stand back, prentice! It is not necessary for you to see so closely. Indeed, all of you-please give me space to work."

Threnody bridled. "Tell me, surgeon, can you mend her?" she asked sternly. "Or should we wait for Doctor Crispus?"

Swill straightened and, after a pause where he clearly calculated his answer, said sourly, "I might serve under him, young madam, yet I can tell you I have observed and performed things Doctor Crispus would not credit as possible. What the good doctor has spent a lifetime acquiring, I learned in months. So, to you, dear, I say 'yes' to your first inquiry, and 'no' to your second. This has become intolerable! If you want the best for your sister-in-arms, then I must be allowed to labor in quietude. Do me the service of leaving!"

Spreading his thin arms, Swill went to usher them out of the surgery. To Rossamund's dismay, Threnody was clearly reluctant to depart and made to stand her ground. Swill balked at her stubborn immobility, and only after a foolish, pointless standoff did she allow herself to be guided out to the less gruesome side of the door. It closed with a deliberate thump.

"Do you know much of this Grotius Swill fellow, lamp boy?" Threnody demanded.

"He seems competent enough, miss. I think he is supposed to be under Doctor Crispus' charge," Rossamund offered helpfully, ignoring the girl's imperious tone. "I must confess I've never been ill enough to need either his or the doctor's work."

Threnody looked less than satisfied. "He did not seem to be under anyone's charge to me. He'd better do right: I made no idle threat in there."

Rossamund was not in the smallest way impressed. "I ought to return you to your Lady Dolours," he said simply.

At the Lamplighter-Marshal's duty room the smiling registry clerk Inkwill greeted them.

"You'd best go in, m'lady."

Threnody entered into the mystery of the duty room, leaving Rossamund without a word of thanks or farewell.

"You might want to idle here, Prentice Bookchild," suggested Inkwill kindly. "I think that young lass will be needing more guidance shortly." This was an unwelcome hint, or so Rossamund thought, that he and his fellows might have to put up with this pompous peerlet for a good sight longer.

As he waited an unwelcome pressure built in his bladder, but Rossamund dared not leave. Instead he paced the Forward Hall uncomfortably back and forth, pressure growing, until the door opened with a bang. Sergeant Grindrod emerged from the duty room looking grave. He nodded brusquely, said nothing and moved on. Soon after,Threnody stalked out, followed by Dolours and the Lamplighter-Marshal himself. "What say you, young fellow? We're going to have a lady in our midst!"

The Lamplighter-Marshal had clearly come to his decision. Threnody was to be the first girl prentice at Winstermill.

The morning did not improve after its irregular beginning. Rossamund took Threnody to the Room of Records, where she gave all her particulars and was paid the Emperor's Billion; the master proofener, where she received her two quabards-one full dress and one for continual day wear; the library, for her books on matter and drills and regulations; the armory, for her fusil and fodicar; and every other necessary place. Throughout, she showed nothing but arrogance and high-handed rudeness. She near drove the normally good-natured Inkwill to distraction with each painfully extracted detail for the register. She wrangled with the proofener's yeomen over the constitution of regulation dress. She insulted the librarian over a matter book, insisting it was arrant drivel, that the books she had learned from back at Herbroulesse were far superior. She quibbled with the wool-slippered master armorer over the one-sequin pledge required to secure her firelock and fodicar. And throughout she ignored Rossamund in the manner of someone used to the attendance of servants.