Lamplighter (38 page)

Rossamünd had reading matter of his own. Before the lentum-and-four had departed, he had ventured to the Packet File to deliver his letter for Sebastipole and had been given another missive in return. He still clutched it in his hand, forgotten in the haste of his embarkation. With him in the cabin he had also brought his restocked salumanticum, his old traveling satchel with its knife-in-sheath attached holding his peregrinat, and a parcel of wayfood. On the seat next to him was his precious valise crammed with smalls and other necessaries for five days’ travel. Anything over that and he would just have to make do. The rest of what he owned—most of it issued by the lamplighters when he first joined—had been stowed in an ox trunk and fixed to the roof of the lentum along with Threnody’s sizable collection of luggage, their fodicars and fusils.

In his pocket his buff-leather wallet was bulging full with traveling papers, reissued after the ruin his old ones had become on his way to Winstermill. There was also a work docket already bearing its first remarks: the period of his service as a prentice and the tasks undertaken, by which was a “CS” for “Completed to Satisfaction”; under “Conduct” was the comment “Late for prenticing period” and two small “i’s” for his impositions—pots-and-pans with the now-vanished Mother Snooks. It was all signed off by the Master-of-Clerks himself, now the Marshal-Subrogat.

With these papers was a fair wad of folding notes and coin—his three months’ wages as a prentice and a large portion of the money Europe had given to him in High Vesting. As for a hat, there had been no time to replace it, and so here he was venturing out with little more than the bandage about his head.

The east wind whistled low on the Harrowmath, the usual odor of the long grass rank with the rot of sodden vegetation. Mixing with the flat nonodor of his newly applied Exstinker, it became an unpleasant half stink in Rossamünd’s nostrils. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and sighed his melancholy. An untimely departure, an uncertain way ahead, and Numps left in the rough care of the lighters, yet Rossamünd was glad to be out of Winstermill and on the road once more. He even entertained the hope he might see Europe on the way through.

He looked down at the letter and opened it, his hands slightly trembling.

It was dated the nineteenth of Pulvis, Solemnday—almost a week ago.

Rossamünd could not believe what was written. He read again. “. . . the night of the 5th of this month . . .” That was the very night the horn-ed nickers had attacked Threnody and her sisters in their carriage.Yet it was not until his third time through, slowly and painfully, that the full impact of his old dormitory master’s terrible news struck home. He turned his face away from Threnody, hiding in the collar of his pallmain, and wept as he had not wept in the longest time, letting all the bleakness sob out. He wept for the dear dead children, for Master Pinsum, and even for Madam Opera, who may not have been the kindest, but was by no means the worst; for the grief caused to his beloved carers; for fury at Gosling’s malice. The fury passed but the grief remained, and Rossamünd lost himself in sad, wordless reveries, only vaguely heedful of the progress of the carriage as it followed the Pettiwiggin along the Harrowmath.

They were passing through the Briarywood when he roused at last with thoughts of Fransitart’s arrival—and dear Craumpalin coming too.
I must write to let them know I will not be at Winstermill.

“What’s wrong with you, lamp boy?” Threnody said, her voice raised only a little over the dull rumble of the lentum.“Why do you cry?” She looked at Fransitart’s letter. “Who is the correspondence from?”

Rossamünd became suddenly very aware of the girl: aware of her proximity; of his unwanted tears. He wiped at them quickly, sniffing impatiently. “My old dormitory master back in Boschenberg . . . ,” he answered reluctantly. “He . . . he sends sad news.”

“Sad news?” Threnody folded the duodecimo in her lap.

“My old home was burned down by an old foe,” Rossamünd managed. “Madam Opera died in the fire. She was the owner . . . and a . . . a mother, I suppose—in a strange way. She named me—marked it in the book . . . ”

“You’re a better soul than me, Rossamünd.”

“How?”

“You weep over the death of some wastrel proprietress, yet I can only wish my very own mother might perish in a fire.”

With a frown, Rossamünd returned to the window and broodily observed the passing scene. He knew she was just trying to be kind. It did not help that she was not very good at it.

The post-lentum clopped between the twin keeps of Wellnigh House without hesitation, under the Omphalon, and on through to the Roughmarch. With a feeling very much like going through the Axles of Boschenberg, Rossamünd realized with equal parts dread and expectancy that he had never been farther east than this point, that he was hurtling into what were, for him, unknown lands.

A great-lamp at every bend, the Roughmarch Road twisted serpentlike through a valley clotted with thorny plants of many kinds—sloe, briar, boxthorn and blackberry, its spiny runners thickly stickling the verge. As with the wild grasses of the Harrowmath, fatigue parties were regularly sent out from Wellnigh House and Tumblesloe Cot to pull and prune these plants, to resist the threwd and deny monsters a hide from which to ambush.Yet either side of the way was only partially hacked and cleared, and Rossamünd could still feel the haunting watchfulness here, strong but strangely restrained. He stared at the high bald hills, dark and silent, and pulled up the door sash to keep the threat outside, glad he did not have to work the lamps on this stretch.

If Threnody noticed the threwd, she did not show it. Indeed, she started to hum as she read her book and paid Rossamünd and the rest of the world little heed.

They drove down out of the hills where a creek bubbled alongside the Wormway, spilling over lichen-covered rocks, beneath twisted roots of writhen, leafless trees and south under the road to make a bog at the foot of a short cliff. In as much time as it took to walk to Wellnigh House from Winstermill, they were passing the walls of Tumblesloe Cot, not pausing there either. The cothouse was built away from the highroad, right up against the cliffs that marched upon the eastern flanks of the hills. Nothing could be seen of it but the stonework curtain wall and the tops of a handful of high chimneys. They were in foreign lands now—the great divide between the Idlewild and the rest of the Empire had been crossed.

“Welcome to the Placidine,” said Threnody. “Dovecote Bolt is next, at the junction with another road; if you left the highroad and took this other pathway north it would lead you to my old home, Herbroulesse.”

Rossamünd looked at his peregrinat maps and saw the path she was talking of and her home too, both important enough to be mentioned. He did not want to be, but he was actually impressed.While it had stood, Madam Opera’s marine society had never featured on any map he knew. “What will your mother think of what you’re doing,” he asked, “going off to dangerous cothouses?”

“She would lecture at me and I would disagree and we would start screaming and I would be sent away somewhere with Dolours till Mother could bear to see me again.”

“But what about the Emperor’s Billion?” Rossamünd pressed.

“What about it?” Threnody snapped. “My mother has a larger mandate than that! Our clave’s Imperial Prerogative takes precedence over simple tokens.”

“Imperial Prerogative?”

She gave him the by-now-familiar
are-you-really-that-stupid?
look and said after a sigh, “It allows us to do and be without the states troubling us. It is granted by the Emperor himself, and not
every
clave has one.” She finished with a proud sniff.

Before them the Conduit Vermis descended into a broad, shallow valley of scruffy pastures hemmed to the north by a spur of bald hills and to the south by the rolling, pastured fells of the Sparrow Downs. It was an unremarkable land. Rossamünd stared at the distant downs, wondering if an urchin-lord truly was there watching and sending out its little sparrow-agents from its leafy courts.

As the day grew longer, traffic began to pass going the other way. There were other post-lentums with returning dispatches; barouques and landaulets, perhaps taking the well-to-do to High Vesting or Brandenbrass; dyphrs dashing on errands; crofters commuting in curricles between land and town.They also began to overtake slow-moving higglers with their trays of fripperies, stooklings with their enormous bundles of sticks, laborers with their barrows, vendors with their donkey carts; and always, whether in their direction or against, the ox drays and mule crates of the merchants.

Another lamppost flicked past.

It was going to be a long stretch to Wormstool.

“Ah,” Threnody exclaimed, of a sudden, stirring Rossamünd from his sorrows, “I am sharp-set—it must be time for middens.”

The prentice craned a look out the window at the gun-metal sky. The sun hid behind the even cover of clouds. He could not tell what hour it was—surely well past midday, yet his stomach told the time more truly with a noisy poppling gurgle.

Threnody gave out a peculiar laughing bark. “Your gizzards think so too, it appears!” She extracted a ditty bag from among her cushions and wraps, and shared her pong with dried-and-salted pork and a handful of millet, all washed down with a brown bottle of small beer.

Sick of the little varying diet of the Emperor’s Service, Rossamünd took some food and ate perfunctorily. Dull grief would not let him eat. However, once started, he found his appetite returned and he supped heartily enough.

At the meal’s end, Threnody took out a vial of sticky red Friscan’s wead.

Rossamünd stared fixedly out of the window as she drank, not wanting to invite some petulant overreaction.

With shadows growing long as the bulk of Tumblesloe Heap brought an early sunset, and their rumps sore from too much sitting, they passed the lantern-watch of Dovecote Bolt wending west, fodicars on shoulder, winding out the lonely lamps. The lampsmen hailed the lenterman, but paid no heed to the passengers.