D Cornish - Foundling

Rossamund was speechless. He glared and spluttered. He failed to defend the honor of his dormitory master, or Verline or anyone else.

Gosling swaggered off, sneering and making noises like a baby. "Oo, I'd better stop. Madam Rosy is going to make me eat my nasty little words. Oo…" Just before he disappeared through the warped wooden door, he hurled Rossamund's reader at him. Rossamund ducked, but it still managed to glance his left cheek.

That's the last time! Rossamund vowed to himself. Days gathered into weeks. Rossamund despaired utterly of ever receiving an offer of employment. Then, with the end of the hiring season three weeks gone, and the cold month of Lirium well under way, an official-looking stranger arrived at the foundlingery. He was shown about the institute by Madam Opera. News of the arrival and the tour flashed around the foundlingery more quickly than the burst of a skold's potive. While sitting alert in Master Pinsum's matters, letters and generalities class, Rossamund spotted the stranger watching proceedings from the door, giving the distinct air of seeing all and missing nothing.

When gaps in his duties allowed, Rossamund continued to watch the stranger furtively, silently nursing his urgent, yearning hopes for a new life of adventure and advancement. He observed Gosling doing the same from a different vantage. Perhaps here was someone with an offer of employment for one of them? Perhaps for both? Perhaps, on this very ordinary midautumn afternoon, one of their lives was about to change forever…

But after the seventh bell of the afternoon watch, it was Rossamund who was summoned to Madam Opera's rather large, riotously cluttered boudoir-cum-office.

Gosling would not be pleased.

Down many well-trod flights of creaking, wobbling wood or frigid, slippery slate stairs Rossamund went, through the all-too-familiar narrows of the foundlingery's halls and passages, all the way down to the emerald-painted door of Madam Opera's downstairs apartments. Children were normally summoned to the madam's sacred apartments only when in the worst kind of trouble.

Rossamund's head spun. Am I in trouble after all? Was it just chance that this stranger happened to be there? He stood in the musty parlor before the green door, where all comers were to wait until summoned.

Tap, tap went his boyish knuckles on this hard wooden portal. He was let in immediately by the manservant Carp. Within, the madam sat like some august queen, almost obscured by the piles of loose papers, ledgers and registers that rose in clumsy stacks upon either side of her solid blackwood desk. Her chestnut hair had been knotted high into a hive of snaking coils. She had clearly gone to some lengths with her appearance. The stranger was there, standing silently by the desk. He wore a dark coachman's cloak that hid all other attire, even his boots, and he held in his hands an excessively tall tricorner hat of fine black felt known as a thrice-high. There was something wrong with his eyes. Not wanting to be caught staring, Rossamund flicked his attention between Madam Opera and the stranger's distracting orbs.

"You sent for me, Madam Opera?" Rossamund croaked in a small voice, bowing uncertainly.

The madam beamed at him. This was unnerving. She rarely beamed. "I did, my dear boy. Come closer, come closer." A hand waved at him, the handkerchief it clasped fluttering like a small white flag and filling the small office with the scent of patchouli water. "Today is a very important one for you, young master Rossamund." Madam Opera glanced almost coyly at the man alongside her, as though they shared a special secret.

Rossamund felt his heart beat faster.

"Mister Sebastipole here has come as an agent all the way from High Vesting, and has declared that he would very much like to meet you." Madam Opera stood, an action which made the stranger straighten automatically. "Mister Sebastipole, I would like you to meet young master Rossamund. Young master Rossamund, Mister Sebastipole." She curtsied as she offered these greetings, her arms stretching out to encompass her two guests.

The stranger nodded, the corner of his mouth twisting slightly. "Rossamund. What a-ah-fine name for, I am told, a fine lad."

Adults were often remarking on his name, and it was by these reactions that instinctively Rossamund would gauge a person's trustworthiness. Had he not been unsettled by the stranger's eyes he might have thought this Mister Sebastipole was subtly mocking him. Rossamund dared one quick, determined stare. A thrill spread through his entire body: the man's eyes were completely the wrong color! What should have been white was bloodred, and his irises were the palest, most piercing blue. This man in front of him was a leer! "Mister… S-S-Sebastipole." Rossamund bowed awkwardly. For a moment he could hardly think: everything he knew about these men was now tumbling through his brain in much the same confused way as the Hundred Rules of Harundo. Leers were trackers, trackers of men, and even more so of monsters. They drenched their eyes with forbidden chemicals to enable them to see into things, through things, to spy on hidden things, to tell even if a person was lying.

Rossamund gulped. Unable to help himself, he looked surreptitiously for the man's sthenicon. He was fascinated by them, and longed to try one on. It was a rare thing to meet a leer in the city, and Rossamund had certainly never encountered one before. What could a leer want with me?

This fellow had come from High Vesting, Madam Opera had said. High Vesting was one of Boschenberg's colonies and the harbor of her naval fleet. Perhaps this terrible-eyed stranger worked for the navy. Rossamund tried to quell the rising excitement that threatened to overwhelm him. Oh, to become a vinegaroon-that was his heart's desire!

Madam Opera continued gravely. "Now, Rossamund, Mister Sebastipole is here to offer you a chance for employment-an opportunity I understand you very much desire. I want you to take his proposal seriously and consider well what a fine offer this is. Please go on, sir." She waved her hand ingratiatingly.

Mister Sebastipole cleared his throat and narrowed those intense eyes. "Well, young master Rossamund; I have come to represent my masters in Winstermill and High Vesting, who in their turn represent their masters, who represent their master-that is, the Emperor himself."

Rossamund was impressed. Somehow, he could tell that Mister Sebastipole had meant him to be.

"I am told you are quick of eye, good with letters and know a little of the chemistry," the leer continued. "Would you agree this is so?"

Rossamund hesitated. This did not quite sound like the navy. "I… I suppose I would, sir."

Mister Sebastipole continued. "Very good. You see, our Imperial charge-handed even from the great Imperial Capital of Clementine itself-is the care, the maintenance and clear passage of one of our Most Imperial Master's Highroads: the Conduit Vermis, which follows its course from Winstermill through the Ichormeer-that some call the Gluepot-and on eastward to far-famed Worms."

Rossamund blinked. This definitely was not the navy.

"I have come to offer you the employment of a lifetime-that is, to work the lamps with us and tread the paths of this great highway to keep it safe for all happy travelers. In short, we would like you to become a lamplighter. I am pleased to say that this good lady, Madam Opera"-he half turned his body and gave the slightest bow toward the woman-"agrees you would be excellent for the job."