D Cornish - The Lamplighter

The Saloon was wall to wall with pugnators and their hangers-on, coming, going and ordering about the staff with high-handed carelessness. Rossamund watched the gallimaufry of teratologists in wide-eyed wonder. Indiscriminate monster-killers written about in public print or gossiped about in civic rumor, a fabulous collection like the pages of a pamphlet come to life. Seeing his fascination, Europe began to name some of them.

"There are the Boanerges-the 'Sons of Thunder,' " she explained, watching three grim-looking fellows huddled together in grim conversation, periodically glancing suspiciously over their shoulders. "A competent band, each one a fellow astrapecrith, though none too bright."

"And that is the Knave of Diamonds," said Threnody, keen to show her worldliness. Rossamund looked and saw a large man pass below. He wore a "crown" of tall spiked reeds upon his head; upon his body a heavy-gaulded smock or lambrequin of dirty white with its single, large red diamond on the front; and upon his fierce face a large deep blue diamond spoor.

A solitary calendar from a different clave than Threnody's walked across the Saloon floor and took a booth across the other side. She was wearing a bossock of prus and sable checks and her face was striped like that of a grazing animal from far beyond the Marrow. She wore a dandicomb of long, elegant horns that her claustra was fortunately high enough to contain.

Threnody watched her closely. "She need not have come," the girl huffed with the strains of territorial jealousy. "The Right has these troubles in hand."

"Who is she?" Rossamund said so softly he barely spoke at all.

"She's a caladine," Europe answered.

"Entering our diet without a by-your-leave," the girl lighter added icily. "I doubt she has presented herself to Mother. Saphine is her name. She is from the Maids of Malady."

"Truly?" said Europe. "Your surgeon had perhaps best watch himself."

"Miss Europe?"

"I have the understanding that these Maids of Malady have allied themselves with the Soratche. Maybe they lend their help to the Soratche, and Saphine is coming to investigate that Swill fellow. Wheels inside wheels, and all that."

Rossamund hoped this was true. He stared at the caladine until she felt the scrutiny and turned to look at him. Flushing, the young lighter looked away quickly and found a teratologist he knew by sight. He had seen etchings of her in the more sensational pamphlets. Epitome Bile was her name, a woman written of as a myth: lupine and pitiless and astoundingly daring.Yet here she was, a woman as real as his own hand, all in glossy black soe, white-faced with staring, black-rimmed eyes and oddly cropped black hair.

Europe showed clear distaste. "Cruel and heartless," she warned. "Stay well clear of her."

Aye, Rossamund wondered, but has she ever sparked a child in the head?

Epitome Bile looked up, caught Europe's cold eye and returned it, giving a slow, taunting curtsy. A wicked smile flitted across the strange woman's mien. The two teratological women kept each other fixed with stares of mutual loathing, until Epitome Bile walked out of the common room, sly, malevolent amusement never leaving her face.

Rossamund felt a shiver of dismay. He hoped never to cross her path more closely.

Europe clucked her tongue quietly and looked elsewhere. "There you have the Three Brave Brothers," she said, pointing with her chin to a group of men below them (just returned perhaps from the course), turning her guests' attention to other things. "They actually number four, are not related to each other… and are not particularly brave, either." Rossamund, who had read of these Brave Brothers, was stunned to see walking before him their infamous scourge, Sourdoor, in his swathes of black lour-proofed velvet.

"And so my kind gather, looking for violence." Europe sighed. "Collecting together like crows about a corpse."

All the great folk, and the lesser known too, strutted the common room and the privatrium, eyeing one another, ego against ego, and generally getting in the way of the wayhouse's even routine.

"The Maid Constant." The fulgar indicated a wit with an arrow-spoor pointing up from each brow and brilliant-hued blue hair. "She too must needs wear a wig, as you do, my dear, but her hair was green last week and blue for this."

Threnody went beetroot blush and sat up. "No wig for me, madam," she said quickly, glowering nervously at Europe.

"Not yet, anyway," Rossamund put in, trying to be helpful.

She glared at him.

"By-the-by," said Europe, unconcerned.

The fulgar rattled off many more names, of so many teratologists that Rossamund could not keep track, and he simply listened to the smooth sound of her voice. His wonder became a little numbed, and he sat a little easier in the comfortable booth. The young lampsman felt the strains of the road ease out into the soft seating, and he became quickly acquainted with just how tired he was. Food was ordered-from the Best Cuts, of course, Rossamund trying "Starlings in Viand-Royal Sauce"-and an awkwardness persisted while they waited for it to arrive, wetting their thirst with the sourest rich-red wine Rossamund had ever been served. With the wine came a tankard of steaming Cathar's Treacle for Europe.

"It's testtelated in bulk in the kitchens, by a tandem of skolds of faultless reputation," she explained, "at a hefty charge, of course. You may want some yourself, my dear." She nodded gravely at Threnody.

"No thank you, Duchess," Threnody returned, still sitting stiff-backed, hands clasped on the table before her. "I have always been taught that one does best to make one's own plaudamentum."

The fulgar became suddenly expressionless.

"Indeed," she said, after a long, discomfiting moment, "one would prefer to have it made perpetually by the same trusted hands at a day's two ends, but what one wants and what one gets are rarely the same.The one I once had confidence in is… no longer available-and another unwilling." She peered at Rossamund.

Threnody looked sharply at the Branden Rose, then narrowly, almost enviously, at Rossamund.

He tapped purposefully at the tabletop, not meeting either gaze. He had vowed to serve the lamplighters and the Emperor, yet as the troubles of the lamplighters increased, so did the appeal of being the Branden Rose's factotum. If only she was more careful about which bogles to kill.

Providentially, mains arrived and all talk ceased for a time as, in the rust glow of red-, orange- and yellow-glassed lanterns, they ate in hungry silence.

Music swelled from the oval stage below them: sweet chamber-sounds of fiddle, violoncello and sourdine, and adding mellifluously to it a soaring female voice. Rossamund felt he had heard this singing somewhere before and, looking down to the stage, saw a quartet of scratch-bobbed, liveried musicians and, in a halo of light, Hero, the chanteuse of Clunes. Dressed in a smoke-green chiffon dress with broad, gathered skirts, black rumples at the elbows, her hair piled and rolled and festooned with flowers of similar color to the chiffon, she was the very same songstress he had watched in raptures at the Harefoot Dig. Yet here she was now, projecting sonorous verse all about the great room, arms reaching out imploringly. Rossamund forgot his food and listened, heedless of time's passing, arm on balustrade, cheek resting on arm, his eyes just a little doelike.

Threnody affected to be unimpressed. "It is adequate, I suppose," she said in the applause between songs, "if you like those Lentine styles."

Rossamund decided he liked the Lentine style very well and could not understand Threnody's remark.

Her own meal finished, Europe lounged on the comfortable bench and picked at a sludgy, creamy-colored delicacy known simply as cheesecake, soaked in syrup of peach-blossoms. With it came sillabub-a curdled concoction of milk and vinegar. She let Rossamund try a little, and he came away from the taste smacking his lips in disgust. She did not, however, offer any to Threnody, who had become more and more sullen and sour-faced as the night deepened and did not show any care.