D Cornish - The Lamplighter

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 Rossamund," the glimner eventually muttered softly, not looking up from his working. "Just like old Numps was."

"Aye, Mister Numps, I was," Rossamund answered.

"Oh dear, oh dear-I'm sorry, Mister Rossamund, I'm sorry!You wanted my help and I showed you into trouble-poor, limpling-headed Numps!"

This made Rossamund 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," Rossamund blurted out. "I did not want to say… but I had to be honest-I… I…" Rossamund'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." Rossamund 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," Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund'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 Rossamund had heard, the Master-of-Clerks was furious that no disciplinary action was to be taken for either Rossamund'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 Rossamund waned. Out on Evolution Green each day, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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.

Rossamund stood, frowning with dismay. "Mister Sebastipole?"

"Young Master Rossamund. Good, I am spared the time to find you too." The leer's brow glistened with perspiration.

Rossamund 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 Rossamund for a friend now too, for today I will be leaving."

The prentice's innards gave a lurch. Sebastipole leaving? Rossamund 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?" Rossamund 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, Rossamund 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? Rossamund 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!" Rossamund 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."