D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"I have heard it that wits can't do much to them either." This was Arabis, listening at the far end of the bench.

Threnody lifted her chin and pretended she had not heard him.

"Tell us, Rosey," asked Pillow, "how did you do the thing in?"

"I burned the basket's head out with loomblaze!" Rossamund said, with more passion than he intended. "It went smashing down through the stair into the pits deep underneath."

There was an approving mutter of amazement.The looks of awe turned Rossamund's way were simultaneously intoxicating and hard to bear. He ducked his head to hide his confused delight, but one incredulous snort from Threnody and his small, uncommon joy was obliterated in an instant.

After breakfast Grindrod did not say any more about Rossamund's yesternight excursions. However, he did seem to address Rossamund with a touch more dignity as he sent him to Doctor Crispus for further examination. "Ye may take yer time, Prentice Bookchild: well-earned wounds need proper treating." "Cuts and sutures, my boy, you certainly have a bump and a gash upon your scalp to show for some kind of scuffle," the physician declared as he cleaned the nasty contusion on Rossamund's hairline and rebandaged it.

"Swill tried to recommend callic for me last night," Rossamund said pointedly.

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, Rossamund. 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 Rossamund.

"Does he, indeed?" Crispus blinked owlishly.

"Aye, sir." Rossamund 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."

Rossamund was unconvinced.

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

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

"Did you find anything in the tunnels, Mister Sebastipole?" Rossamund asked eagerly but in a low voice.

"There was no gudgeon corpse," the leer answered.

Rossamund's soul sank.

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

Rossamund'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, Rossamund, 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?"

Rossamund 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 Rossamund 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," Rossamund 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."

Rossamund ducked his head and blushed. "My old masters are very protective of me."

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

Rossamund nodded sheepishly.

Sebastipole smiled. "Yet, Rossamund, 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."

Rossamund'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," Rossamund confessed forlornly.

"I know you did not, Rossamund." 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."

Rossamund 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, Rossamund, 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 Rossamund went out of the infirmary and rejoined the slightly awed prentices stepping regular out on Evolution Green. At middens Rossamund 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!