D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"The hearts of the crowd are found in their bellies," Threnody muttered after they were marched back to the Cypress Walk and dismissed by their unusually subdued officers.

"Perhaps the change of command might be a turn for the good," a prentice pondered a little too loudly.

"Cleave yer tongue to yer teeth, Gall!" Grindrod bawled, sending the loose-lipped prentice white with fright. "Ye're as shatterbrained as yer nuncle the lictor! Pots-and-pans for ye tonight and the rest of the long week! The marshal-lighter is as fine a man and officer as anyone could ever hope to share a generation with! And if a single one of ye goes down to Silvernook today, ye'll have my mark as a baseborn runion fink not worthy of a lighter's fodicar!"

All the lantern-sticks were astounded at his outburst. None said another peep about the Marshal's departure-good or bad-for fear of another flaring of temper. Not one prentice took the day in Silvernook either, and if any were disappointed by this, he dared not show it.

Brooding, Rossamund sat on his cot in his cell.Threnody, having invited herself in, was perched on his bed chest, her back against the wall.

"Is it just me," said Threnody, "or have the Lamplighter-Marshal's troubles turned out rather nicely for our new — Marshal-Subrogat?"

"I suppose they have," Rossamund agreed guardedly. "It cannot be helped that the clerk-master is next in rank." Mister Sebastipole does have a notion that someone might be seeking the Marshal's ruin. "How long would it take a message to get from here to the Considine and back?" he asked.

"You would need a fortnight," Threnody said huffily. "Why?"

Rossamund scratched at his bandage. "What has my head turning is Mister Sebastipole saying yesterday that someone in the subcapital must have already heard about the rever-man and was calling for an explanation. Barely a week has passed-"

"You already knew the Marshal was leaving on a sis edisserum and you did not say?"

"It was not my information to tell!" Rossamund returned indignantly.

"Oh truly? Very convenient." Threnody rolled her eyes. "Will you always be this dim?"

"I cannot say," Rossamund countered, an angry rush in his belly. "Will you always be this rude!" His mouth spoke before his kinder thoughts could marshal themselves to intervene.

Threnody gaped.

"Oi, Rosey!" called Arabis down the steps of the cell row. "I saw your old middens-chum blubbering on the Mead."

Rossamund leaped off his cot and put his head out of the cell door. "You saw what?"

"Aye, what's-his-name-the Numps or somewhat like it." The older prentice shrugged. "The daffy cove looked mighty put out by something."

Numps! Blubbering on the Mead?

Leaving Threnody flabbergasted in his cell, Rossamund was up the steps, down the passage and out on to the Cypress Walk in a twinkling. Before he was clear of the Walk, he could hear a distant, agonized wailing coming from the Grand Mead, and very quickly he recognized it as coming from the throat of Numps. There were rapid steps behind: Threnody was following.

Clear of the manse, he saw-at the farther end of the Grand Mead on the edge of the gravel drive-Numps, hampered between two hefty troubardiers of the Master-of-Clerks' own foot-guards. The glimner was writhing and pulling against their restraint. Rossamund had never seen him so wild and so awfully animated.

Then he saw why.

Upon the gaunt beams of the Scaffold, the great dead tree that stood at the northern end of the manse, great tendrils of still verdant bloom were hanging upon the gaunt branches to dry and slowly die. As Rossamund well knew, glimbloom will not live long out of water, becoming parched and yellow, its tiny leaves finally rotting to slime. Between the ladders and the many, many barrows holding the bloom stood the Master-of-Clerks directing an industrious band of peoneers with remonstrative gusto. Beside him a man Rossamund recognized as the portly works-general stood, shamefaced, determinedly avoiding the sight of the grief-racked glimner while Witherscrawl wrote Phoebe-knows-what in a portable ledger.

The old dead tree was already draped with such a vast amount of bloom that it looked to have wondrously returned to life; and the stuff was so vigorous-green and thick it could have come from only one place: Numps' secluded undercroft.

A shout of anguish escaped Rossamund before he even knew to stop it. He ran the length of the gravel drive, heedless of any shouts or reprimands, groaning, "… This is all my fault, this is all my fault…"

Doctor Crispus ran into the narrow scope of Rossamund's panicked vision, striding fast on his long, stiltlike legs, crying something to the troubardiers that Rossamund could not understand in his rush.With a great waving of hands and arms, the physician remonstrated with the foot-guards-who did not relax their detention of Numps-before turning away sharply to confront the Master-of-Clerks.

As Rossamund got closer he could see that one of the men had a pincer grip on Numps' arm while the other corralled him with the shaft of his poleax.Though the two foot-guards were much heavier men than the glimner, they were hard-pressed to keep him in hand.The prentice pulled up smartly before the struggling three, skidding on the quartz pebbles of the drive, cut to his heart at the expression of utter desolation wrenching Numps'already distorted, tear-washed face. Bent with agony, the glimner howled, "My friend! My friend! They're killing my friend!" pushing and pulling at the grip of the foot-guards.

"Let him go! What are you doing?" Rossamund hollered.

"Clap up your squealing, little sprat!" one of the soldiers spat. "Get back to your quarters!" For added effect the man shied at Rossamund with a steel-shod boot, roughly shoving him away.

Rossamund yelped as the force of the push sat him on the gravel. All he wanted to do was set Numps free. A burst of Frazzard's powder in the foot-guards' vile puds would have served perfectly, but the prentice was without his salumanticum.

Amid the horrible yawling, he heard a shout of anger behind him.

"Poke at him like that again, you bamboozle-winded dung sop, and you'll spend the rest of Chill confusing your head for your tail!" It was Threnody, arriving to intervene. She planted herself before the lofty foot-guard, hand raised to temple in a wit's telltale attitude.

The man looked down at her, his expression thunderous. "Shove it up your wheeze-end, little harridan!"

His fellow foot-guard glanced at Threnody hesitantly; however, Rossamund was sure he could see nervous perspiration twinkling on the fellow's brow.

"All this fuss and trouble is hardly worthy of you, my people," the Master-of-Clerks declaimed, interrupting the contest of wills as he strode imperiously toward them. "The bloom must be left to die.They are well likely to be responsible for that wicked gudgeon finding its way in and causing our generous, unfortunate Marshal such embarrassment!"

Rossamund knew this was a bald, pettifogging lie: monsters did not care two figs for bloom. "That's not tr-"

The Master-of-Clerks raised his hand. "Silence! Stop your rabble-rousing and get back to your duties! I will not tolerate such affronts.What a foolish weight of grief wasted over a few dripping weeds. Foot-guards, stuff a rag in its nose and return this one to its place of labor-"

"Your sturdy roughs have done their worst, man!" Doctor Crispus said with cold deliberation, glowering at one of the fellows as if he should know better. "As the manse's physician, I declare this poor fellow has taken a great strain of soul today and now needs a gentler hand. By the rights granted me through the Accord of Menschen over the health of pensioned military persons, I demand he be released to my care and relieved of any more manhandling."