D Cornish - The Lamplighter

Assembling with the rest along the tree-lined pathway of the Cypress Walk on the southern side of the manse, Rossamund mouthed an earnest "thank you" to Threnody. To this she responded with the slightest suggestion of a curtsy, then snapped on a serious face as Grindrod stalked past to check the prentices' dressing. With a cry the sergeant-lighter took his twenty-two charges out to form upon the Grand Mead, to take their place at the rear of the pageant. Before them a crowd of much of Winstermill's inhabitants were also gathering in fine martial order, rugged against the cold.

Marching and standing with the companies of pediteers, peoneers, artillerists and thaumateers there were very few lampsmen-not even a platoon, seltzermen included. Most able-bodied lighters had been sent east, needed out on the road proper to replace the steady-and increasing-losses from the various cothouses.Yet that small, aged group stood in their place bearing their fodicars proudly, resplendent in the rouge and or and leuc-red and gold and white-of the Haacobin Empire, and glossy black thrice-highs. Only Assimus and Puttinger looked a little worse for wear, their evolutions poorly handled.

Formed on the soldiers' left was a veritable army of bureaucratical staff: clerks, under-clerks, registers, bookers, secretaries, amanuenses, file boys. Each pageant made Rossamund more aware of the diminishing ranks of lighters and the swelling number of clerks.

Rooks cawed from the pines by the Officers' Green, spry sparrows and noisy miner birds hopped and flitted about the battlements, watching on shrewdly. The thin flags borne by color-parties at the front of each collection whipped and cracked in sympathy with the winds that rushed spasmodically across the Mead, joining the great ponderous snapping of the enormous Imperial Spandarion billowing above the gatehouse.

At his very first pageant, Rossamund had trembled at the sheer number of folk gathered, at the steady pounding din of feet marching on the quartz gravel and at the stentorian hooting arrogance of flugelhorn, fife and snare.Yet now he was inured to the martial spectacle. It surprised him how quickly he could reconcile such astounding wonders and think them a workaday commonplace.

All the soldiers and their commanding officers were now gathered on the Grand Mead, decked in their finest.

"Stand fast!" came the cry from Sergeant-Master Tacpharnias.

With a rattling shuffle, the lighters, soldiers and staff came to attention as the seniormost officers strutted peacock-proud up on to a temporary podium-erected every Domesday for just this purpose-and stood before the assiduously ordered soldiery. It was the task of the highest ranked to take turns addressing the parade, and first always was the Lamplighter-Marshal. Although he was a peer of some high degree, in his soldierly simplicity the Marshal was unlike many of those standing with him.They were stiff and starched, their rich, finicky, bragging uniforms boasting of more in themselves than they really possessed.

His volume modulating with the breezes, his words punctuated by the calling of the birds, the Lamplighter-Marshal spoke loudly and confidently about the details of the routines of Winstermill, on subjects almost everyone had heard before. He reminded them of duties botched and the need for vigilance, for care, for the particular regard of one another. The pageant listened dutifully, for most loved their dear Marshal and knew these things needed to be said. However, their attention became genuine when the marshal-lighter turned to the disconcerting excesses of bogle and nicker.

"These theroscades have now become an ever-increasing problem," he said gravely. "Almost each day reports come to me and I am applied to for aid.Yesterday I learned that the whole 2nd Lantern-Watch of Ashenstall was slain without quarter, not six nights gone, and also lamps pushed over on the Patrishalt stretch. Today already I have been informed of the taking of a family in the broad of day by the walls of Makepeace."There was a chorused murmur of angry dismay among the lighters and pediteers, while the clerks remained quiet. "Aye, and no doubt ye are all informed of the assault witnessed five nights ago by our own barely breeched prentices." The murmur grew to a growl, a rumble of solidarity and resentment. "And yesterday morning were yourselves witness-as was I-to the end of one of our doughty veterans on the claws of a blighted beast!"

The growl turned voluble.

"How dare the baskets try such things!"

"We'll have our own back at 'em, just you wait!"

"My brothers!" The Marshal's steady voice stilled them. "From loftiest officer to lowliest lighters' boy, we must stand together-and we will. We have fought the long fight for eons beyond the telling of books. Humankind stands and will stand the longer if we stand together. Even now a faithful band seeks the very beast who slew our brother, as we, undaunted, continue to keep the way clear and safe. Lighters! We are the bulwark between our fellow men and the raging monstrous malice: we are the brave band who shall always light the way! Of discipline and limb!" he cried with a burst of steaming breath, jaw jutting proudly and a deadly gleam a-flashing in his eye.

"Of discipline and limb!" cried the many hundred throats before him, Rossamund's own among them.

Smiling with paternal grimness, the Lamplighter-Marshal took his place at the head of the line of most senior officers as the Sergeant-Major-of-Pediteers stepped forward with a rousing monologue of his own. After him came the bureaucrats, their ornamental wigs drooping curls almost halfway down their backs: the Quartermaster, the Compter-of-Stores, the rotund works-general, each complaining about some unheeded quibble of clerical detail or neglected civil nicety. Last of all was the Master-of-Clerks. With saccharine gentility and that never-shifting ingratiating smile, he droned about some new bit of paperwork required, some new process to record the change of watches. At times he would say things that Rossamund did not understand but had the vast plethora of clerks chuckling knowingly. As the bee's buzz went, the clerk-master was the darling of the bureaucrats of Winstermill. They looked up to him-so Rossamund had learned-not just as their most senior officer, but as a genius of perpetual administrative reinvention. His only joys were the minutiae of governance and refining of systems that already worked.Tending to the clerical quibbles of fortress and highroad Rossamund had heard Assimus and Bellicos (when he had lived) griping to each other-Podious Whympre was getting a better grasp upon the running of the manse than the overworked Lamplighter-Marshal.

Near the Master-of-Clerks-as always-was Laudibus Pile, lurking at the back of the podium, looking out over the pageant with narrowed, quizzing eye. For a beat Rossamund was sure the falseman had fixed him with his lie-seeing eyes. The prentice was held in this distant interrogation till Pile seemed to see what he sought and, satisfied, looked for another to play this game upon.

Piebald gray clouds stretched over them from horizon to horizon like a roof on the day. Beneath these drifted smaller, knobbled cumulus blown up by southern winds, increasing the impression of a vaporous ceiling. Cold clouds these were, but not rainy ones. With the winds came the faintest scent of the Grume, the great bay to the south. Breathing deeply of this sweet-yet-acrid hint, Rossamund could have sworn he heard carried with it the faintest wailing of whimbrels-the elegant, scavenging gulls of the southern coasts. The great, hopeless longing to serve at sea sat like cold gruel in his bosom.

Snap! went the flags in the winds.

With a cry from the gate-watch that cut through the Master-of-Clerks' chidings, the bronze gates were swung open and a glossy red and brown coach rushed through with all the self-importance of a post-lentum. It was a dyphr, a small carriage pulled by two horses, its sides raised and roof lowered.