D Cornish - The Lamplighter

"Every mad habilist needs a patron." Europe sounded almost flippant, though her grim expression told otherwise.

"Why did you not speak of this before, lamp boy?" Threnody growled.

"Because I did not think of it till now, Threnody," Rossamund sighed.

"I must write of all this to Mother!"

"For the little she might do," said Europe, "with the clerk-master sitting in control behind those unapproachable walls and little proof to go on but one small bookchild lampsman's conjectures."

"She is a great woman," Threnody bridled, "and will do more than some to rid the Empire of a traitor."

"But what if I'm wrong?"

"If you are wrong then rumors are exploded, suspicions disabused and everyone goes on to other troubles," Europe said bluntly. "Yet for now we have the suggestion of serious, dastardly things, little man," she said. "Gudgeons loose in Winstermill, marshal-peers summoned to the subcapital and prentices sent too far east: something is truly, deeply amiss in your reach of the world. Keep your eyes wide, Rossamund. You are in a dangerous tangle if all this turns out true. It may be that your assignment to Wormstool is not a simple lapse in wisdom." She reached over to put a hand on his shoulder. "You should have become my factotum after all," she said wryly.

Rossamund could not help but agree. He could not now think of anywhere safer than by Europe's side. He noticed Threnody was looking at him with an envious scowl.

Europe summoned a footman and made provision for their bunking. There was no room elsewhere in the wayhouse. "You can join me in my quarters if you wish, Rossamund. There is a bed for one other there," the fulgar explained. "Or you may join your friend in the dog-dens."

The "dog-dens" were the billet-boxes, tight cupboards-barely comfortable but inexpensive accommodation that all wayhouses possessed. Rossamund felt such a strange and unwelcome tearing of loyalties he did not know how to act. In the end he chose to stay with Threnody, figuring that she had joined him voluntarily and stuck by him, and so he should do the same and sleep in the squash of the billet-boxes. The girl lighter was clearly gratified by his decision, looking as if she had just won some great moral victory.

With an enigmatic sniff, Europe paid the reckoning and bid them good sleeping. "I must retire. A girl needs her sleep to keep her beauty." At that she left, reemerging surprisingly on the farther side of the Saloon to speak quietly with the horn-wearing caladine.

Seeing this, Threnody demanded, "Why does she talk to her?"

"Probably to let her know of our suspicions about Swill." Rossamund's hopes lifted. Distracted by Threnody, he did not see Europe leave, but when he looked again she had disappeared to some other part of the wayhouse to do whatever occult things that fulgars did in the night hours.

With her departure Threnody leaned across the claustra. "Well, she is a disappointment-" she said, "dull and ordinary and not at all heroic. And I thought I wanted to be like her."

Utterly baffled and not wanting a fight, Rossamund ignored her and stared out at the emptying Saloon.

"You don't really want to be her factotum, do you?" Threnody persisted, a hint of that envious look returning. "Being with her is like sucking on a lime dusted in bothersalts."

No, Threnody, that's what it's like being with you! The bitter thought rose unbidden, but Rossamund said, "I've made oaths to serve the Emperor, Threnody. I've accepted his Billion. I'm not free to be anyone's factotum-Miss Europe's, yours or even Atopian Dido's, were she still alive!"

Apparently satisfied, Threnody too took her leave and went off to find a place to make her plaudamentum.

Rossamund was left to be shown to his billet-box alone.

The new day and Europe, teeth still blackened from her morning dose of plaudamentum, met the two frowsty young lighters as they were arranging themselves in the stabulary to leave with the first post.

"How was your night in the dog-dens?" she asked a little tartly.

"Like sleeping inside a sideboard drawer." Rossamund yawned. "I do not fathom how older folk can manage a single blink."

Europe simply nodded. That was the sum of her sympathy. "I will be answering a plea for aid from some sorely put and well-heeled people from Bleak Lynche," she explained to the sleep-deprived pair. "They need help with a gudgeon, wouldn't you know. It would appear we are going on a concomitant path, little man." Europe looked at Rossamund pointedly. "So you shall wait for me as I complete my dealings with the knavery-underwriter and we shall travel together."

Rossamund agreed readily.

Threnody did not even acknowledge that the fulgar had spoken, speaking only when Europe had left them. "So we are to do everything she says, are we?"

"Hmm" was all Rossamund replied as he stretched, arms in the air, to rid himself of the kinks and knots gained through his insalubrious night's sleep.Their arrival at Wormstool was not expected; the delay of an hour or two would change nothing.

They waited in the knavery. There, as Threnody penned a letter to her mother, Rossamund wrote two of his own, one to Sebastipole and the other to Doctor Crispus. He told them in guarded terms of his suspicions regarding Swill and the rever-man beneath Winstermill. It was worth running the risk of prying eyes if someone who might be able to do something were to know.

During the delay Threnody decided to liberally apply some flowery-sweet perfume, splashing enough to challenge the salty-sweetness of bosmath, Europe's signature scent.Where she had procured the essence from Rossamund did not know, but the funk of it filled the knavery waiting room.

The morning was well advanced by the time Europe's negotiations with the knavery-underwriter were completed. With the proof of the head she carried in the sack, her prize was paid and her forearm etched by the punctographist on hand, with another small cruciform of monster blood. One less monster to trouble the lives of man. Consequently the three left with the third post of the day.

"It's a post-and-six," Threnody declared optimistically. "We should make good time."

Leaving the missives with the knavery-clerks, to whom they paid 4g a letter to have them properly sealed, they ventured out under a flat gray sky to the cheerful, unseasonal warbling of a magpie. The carriage was badly sprung and very noisy, rendering conversation below a constant shout impossible. For Rossamund this was a small mercy, filling the frosty, aromatic silence between fulgar and wit with welcome clamor.

Across the Sourspan and over the Bittermere the lentum-and-six jerked and shuddered uncomfortably. No longer following a watercourse, the Wormway traversed hill and dale, the apex of most rises giving Rossamund a grand view of the land about.The green upon the downs was grayer, the trees sprouting from them sparse and gnarled, growing in the shadows of enormous granite boulders lichen-blotched and anciently weathered. Indeed, the entire quality of the land declined markedly only a few leagues east of the Bittermere. There was a rumor of loneliness here, Rossamund growing more certain of it the farther the lentum carried them-an absence of people, yet an absence of monsters too. In the struggle to possess it, the land had become useless to both.

They passed Bitterbolt and watered horses at the sturdy sprawling fortalice of Mirthalt. There the lighters wore dogged expressions and barely reacted to the premature advent of the young lighters.