D Cornish - The Lamplighter

The sun was one quarter along its meridian when they met a convoy of large covered drays trundling the opposite way in a long line, every one under the guard of a skold or scourge. Drawn by great trains of flanchardt-covered oxen, each bore hundredweights of finest-grade charcoal from Gathercoal, likely intended for Winstermill, High Vesting and the settlements of the southwest. It took the long end of fifteen minutes to pass the last dray.

They ate middens with stores granted from Makepeace Stile's pantry (a rind of hard, smelly Nine-cheese from Tuscanin; apples; strips of dried, river-caught fish) and Threnody went back to reading.Taking pointed notice of the book, Rossamund read the small white letters printed on its burgundy cover-The High and Illustrious Ladies of the Magna Scuthes.

"What is that book about?" he asked absently.

The girl made as if to continue reading but, after a pause, she marked her place, closed her book, laid it primly on her lap, cleared her throat and looked up. "It is about the adventures of city women and their flash swells."

"Flash swells?"

She looked owlishly at him for a moment. "The rich young men who live such fun and easy lives in the cities."

"Oh, you mean dandidawdlers." Rossamund thought of the frilly, fussy fellows he had observed making a nuisance on the streets of Boschenberg. "Is it interesting?"

"I think so, yes, though Mother doesn't like books such as these."

"Why not?"

"She says they're full of vile gossip and innuendo and she says they grossly exaggerate the successes of the protagonists without making enough of the consequences of their foolishness."

"You sound like you've had this said to you often." Rossamund gave a mild grin.

"I could recite to you all of Mother's words better than the In Columba Alat," she returned wryly.

"The In Columna what-tat?"

"In Columba Alat," Threnody explained, with uncharacteristic patience. " 'The Wings of the Dove'-it's our cantus, the rule we-I mean the Right-lives by."

"How does it go?"

"I don't know." Threnody grinned. "I've forgotten it."

"But I thought you just said you knew it well," Rossamund returned a little dumbly.

Threnody sighed long-sufferingly. "I do." She picked up the duodecimo and opened it again. "I was just making a jest," she said, and went back to reading.

"Oh." Rossamund frowned. "Sorry."

Soon after, the horses were watered at the cothouse of Sparrowstall. Blackened spikes ran in rows along every ridge-cap and gable, set there to prevent weary birds or overadventurous nickers from taking roost.

A little over two hours further and they arrived at Hinkerseigh, much larger than Makepeace, with thicker walls and higher, more numerous bastions all filled with well-tended great-guns. It was a growing town-nearly a city, its people squeezed for room; some of the less well-heeled had been forced to build beyond the safety of the town's stony curtain.The Mirthlstream flowed right into the place under the wall to drive many waterwheels of industry within as it passed through. As it was a client-city belonging to the Imperial state of Maubergonne, Hinkerseigh's taciturn gatemen were dressed in harness of orot and gules-orange and deep red.They scrutinized Rossamund and Threnody's documents cursorily and waved the lentum through.

The carriage crawled down the narrow main street, moving little faster in the midst of the cram of traffic than a town-and-country gent out on a lazy Domesday ramble. At a coach-host, the Draint Fyfer, the lentermen stopped to change teams. The broad, covered yard was thronged with public coaches and private carriages; horns hooting, sergeant-yardsmen bawling, under-yardsmen obeying, porters and box-boys and mercers scurrying. Exiting the lentum first,Threnody dashed off into the rain with little more than an "I'll be back!" and was gone before Rossamund could call after or follow.With a shrug he took a midday meal and waited alone.

The warm commons of the coach-host was as impossibly crowded as the yard without, a-press with merchants' wives and farmstead ladies, nannies and their bantling charges screeching for attention; slightly damp higglers and shysters en route to more spendthrifty places; and off-duty pediteers; all waiting for a break in the weather. It was only twenty minutes or so before Rossamund was called for by the hollering splasher boy to board the po'lent, yet it took Threnody more than an hour to return. She appeared suddenly by the carriage door, grinning broadly and quickly handing an oblong oilskin-covered something to the splasher boy.

"We'll still be in a tight bit o' hurry to make it to the next cot in time!" the driver said, louring down at her from his high seat as she climbed aboard. "So I recommend ye hang on ter something." He proved good to his promise, for no sooner had Threnody settled into her nest of furs than the lentum surged to motion.

"What were you doing?" Rossamund shouted above the noise of transit. "We've been waiting for a while…"

Threnody looked at him unrepentantly. "I always like to try a little shopping when I can."

Rain began falling so hard its rattling drum on the carriage roof made conversation impossible. Threnody raised the sash on her side to keep its splashings out, yet Rossamund left his down to see what passed and tolerated the wet. As Hinkerseigh disappeared in the fog of the deluge, the highroad narrowed.The lenterman whipped up the new horse-team's rate and kept the poor beasts at a dangerous, transom-shattering speed for several miles, slowing only occasionally to rest them. The post-lentum dashed right past Howlbolt, not even slowing for courtesy, noisily scattering a coven of ravens that had settled before the cothouse.

The valley became deeper, the Mirthlbrook drawing close by the Wormway again, broader now, its banks choked with willow, swamp oak and hawthorn, its waters rushing over and through sharp rocks and keeping pace with the lentum. The stream's opposite bank was steep, almost clifflike, tangled with dark young woods.

"That's the Owlgrave," Threnody shouted above the roar of the rain and road. "It's said that monsters like to go there to die when they are mortal-hurt or sick of the world."

Rossamund stared at the choked rise imagining he could see some languishing nicker up among the rocks and trees. He had always thought monsters lived on and on till someone slew them, and the idea of them pining away was odd, disturbing. So that is where they end, he pondered, but where do they begin? His reading had informed him of many theories. Some scholars said monsters grew on trees, others that they grew "buds" on themselves, which dropped to the ground and grew into other monsters. The worst way was congress between everyman and unterman, which was said to spawn some wicked half-human abomination, the ultimate excess of outramour. Implicit in the accusation of sedorner was the suspicion of such a union. Most habilists said such a thing was impossible, but common folks still believed it, and that was enough.

Out the other side of the lentum Rossamund saw the flicker of a lighted lamp, then another. Regardless of pelting rain and threatening lands, the lantern-watch of Bitterbolt, the next cothouse, had faithfully wound out the lamps.

The Wormway went down and over a large stone-arch bridge with lit lanterns upon either abutment that passed over the broad stream of the Bittermere. Before this bridge was a foreboding collection of buildings, each four or five stories of dressed stone, baked bricks, mortar and lead shingles. It was a mighty rectangular accretion, its roofs thorny with high chimneys.There was no encircling wall; the lowest floors were absent of any openings-not even a single door, and the few second-story windows were heavily barred. Even the undersides of the sills of higher windows and the gutters were garlanded with thorny wire. The footings of the entire pile were assiduously smeared with a slippery-looking black substance, a repellent no doubt. This was a place that never intended a monster to ever gain a foothold. The winds and the rain had blown themselves out. In the stillness, the comfort of sweet wood-smoke and the savory promise of that evening's prandial preparations wafted down to them from the place.