Lamplighter (44 page)

“At this instant it would be what you say against what they would say,” Europe countered calmly.

“But we have Sebastipole! No one doubts a falseman!”

The fulgar took a deep breath. “And I am sure they would have a falseman of their own. Use one falseman to cancel the other out—typical Imperial politics.”

“Who can stop them, then?” Rossamünd despaired, an image of Laudibus Pile’s sneering face looming in his imagination.

“Well, it certainly won’t be
you,
little man, will it—sent out here at their very behest?”

“No.” Rossamünd hung his head.

“And with Whympre the current lord of Winstermill,” Europe continued, pressing the point, “I cannot see how they will be stopped in a hurry.”

“You could, Miss Europe.”

Europe laughed a strange, sardonic laugh. “Oh, little man!” she sighed. “Rescuing empires from their own corruption is not my game. You’ll just have to trust that all wicked things bring themselves to an end in the end.”

“But who says what is wicked?” Rossamünd blurted.

“Enough now,” the fulgar said with sudden impatience. “You wax too philosophical for weary travelers.”

The young lighter ducked his head in apology.

“Do not speak of these things to another, do you understand me?” Europe said sharply. “They will not believe you, and word of any loose talk or unguarded accusation might find its way to the wrong ears.”

“Aye, Miss Europe.” The young lighter retreated to his comfortable bed. He slept eventually. His last sight through the door ajar was the motionless fulgar lost in her unfathomable recollections before the dying embers in the hearth.

 

The new-morning world was sunk in fog. The lenterman was cautious and they left Compostor at a measured crawl. Threnody’s wind had improved little since yesternight and she dozed and stared out the opposite window and said naught.

There was little to see from the window but fathomless gray until the lentum slowly crested a hill and drew clear of the obscuring shroud. Rossamünd was graced with a view that until now he never knew possible: all about was a puffy lake of cloud, glowing a russet golden-white in the climbing light, lapping at the contours of spur and gully as an ocean touches the sandy shore. Other hilltops poked through and made dark islands in this stark fog sea. On one pinnacle about a mile distant, Rossamünd thought for a moment he spied movement. He looked closer and saw a large, longlimbed something gamboling in the clear, cold dawn looking for all the world to be hooting at the glaring day-orb. It must have been very tall indeed to be visible from so far, but as he went to call his fellow travelers’ attention to it, the carriage descended into the murk and the unsettling sight was obliterated.

“Such things are common here,” Europe said in answer to his hurried, hollered description. “This remains true ditchland, whatever maps might say. Here monsters have free rein and are stopped only by walls and vigilance—and me,” she finished, a twinkle in her eye.

The brume persisted for much of the first half of the day, lifting only slightly to hang above as a somber, drizzling blanket. In the haze loomed the Wight, raised where two trunk-roads met with the highway.The fortress-city had grown rich on tolls extracted from grain trains coming down from Sulk and luxury trading caravans going north. Negotiating its streets, Rossamünd saw that the military very much intruded on the public: watchtowers in municipal squares, barracks fronting a common park with its soldiers monopolizing the green for their evolutions. Nevertheless, women in tentlike dresses promenaded with parasols and met with men in finest silks. Together these would take their spiced and scented infusions in public places of high fashion and then be carried home in gilt, leather-covered mule-litters.

Insisting on a change of carriage as well as team, Europe took them to a tiny corner shop known as a small-market or kettle. It was a cluttered affair, full of such a disparity of goods that it took Rossamünd some time to even orient himself before being able to decide on purchases.With much of his money—almost a full year’s worth—still encumbering his wallet, Rossamünd first bought a fine black thrice-high with satin-trimmed edges. It squatted rebelliously on his bandage, refusing to sit right, and became so annoying he removed the dressing so that the hat might fit as it should.

“I don’t know the nature of the wound you had,” declared Threnody, peering at his scalp, “but there is no evidence of it now.”

Rossamünd also purchased a quarter of a rind of his old favorite—fortified sack cheese; a small jar of preserved apricots; dried fruits; half a cured pork sausage; and boschenbread. This last was just like from home: golden-dark and doughy, with a scrumptious hint of ginger.Verline had made boschenbread every Bookday, enough for every foundling. He carried two pounds of the stuff away in a big brown bag and shared it liberally with a quietly amused Europe, with Threnody—who declared she did not like it and left her piece barely nibbled—and even the bemused lentermen.

A new lentum took them out of Wightfastseigh. The replacement carriage was a public coach rather than the post, better sprung, with windows covered in iron grille work, and carrying an extra backstepper, a quartertopman who held a salinumbus and rode alongside the splasher boy. It was a vehicle intended for travel in threatened places. It was also quieter on the road.

On this side of the fortress-city they began to pass wayfaring metal-mending tinkers, script-selling pollcarries and brocanders shopping their secondhand proofing; those who dared the dangerous way in hope that isolation might make people willing to buy their inferior goods. The life expectancy of such as these would not have been long and only desperation could surely drive someone to such work; Rossamünd had a sudden glimpse of his privileges, when measured against the lot of these ragged gyrovagues.

As Ashenstall drew near, its window-lights and lanterns glowing merrily against the dour evenfall, the post-lentum eased its pace, its driver clearly intending on making that cothouse their night-stop.

“I have no desire to spend a night in the insalubrious squish of one of your cot-rents,” Europe declared testily. She pulled down the grille and rattled her purse ostentatiously at the lenterman, shouting, “Drive on! Take us to the Prideful Poll. It will be well worth the anxiety if you persevere!”

There was a hasty discussion between the carriage-men and a quick conclusion.

The lentum pressed on, going faster now.

Rossamünd could hear the horses’ frequent whickering, even over the clangor of the carriage’s hasty progress. They well knew the unfriendliness of the dark and—shabraqued or not—the tasty treat they presented to night-prowling nickers.

The sun was an hour set and the waning moon well up on its course when Europe pointed through the grille of the window at a square, keeplike structure with a rounded roof built into the cutting on the northern side of the highroad right opposite a great-lamp. Its own gate lanterns made a well-lit spot upon the road before the thick encircling wall. Suspended between them was a circular sign with the silhouette of a proud-looking head and large white letters beneath that read
Prideful Poll
.

Another wayhouse.

They drew into the slender coach yard and a warm welcome as strong gates closed out the nighttime fears.

 

The next morning, though their rimples were decidedly fatter after Europe’s financial incentives, the public-coach lentermen were unwilling to take her and her two young passengers down on to the Frugelle. The nighttime dash to the Prideful Poll was one thing, but a trot along that threatened place was “quite another tan of leather!” as the side-armsman put it. “No amount of counters will get us to shift down on to that there dour place.”

Not at all inclined to argue, Europe dismissed them, declaring, “No matter, we shall take the next post east.”

Post-lentermen were more game than public coachers.

As they waited, the woman and the girl sipped the Prideful Poll’s best claret, while Rossamünd stared from an east-facing window at the bleak view. Below was a gray arid plain strewn with countless tufts of dark vegetation. His Imperial Highness’ Highroad, the Conduit Vermis, ran out like an anchor cable down on the flat, going steadily east, curving slightly south as it did. This stretch before him showed on the maps as the Pendant Wig. More than a league away Rossamünd could see a tiny structure by the road—a cothouse: Patrishalt.The thrum of loneliness was a constant pang here—subtle threwd exquisitely balanced between threat and welcome. He could feel it through the glass, fluttering within him uncomfortably.

They did not wait long. The day’s first post pulled into the cramped coach yard with a trumpet blast, bearing no passengers and keen to take some on board. Out in the yard the monotonous wind wailed its melancholy up from the eastern lowlands, bringing a faint stink of rot on its breath. With a quick inspection that all their luggage was intact, Rossamünd entered the coach and they were away. Speed was a traveler’s best defense out here.

The Wormway wound down the flanks of the hills, following a shallow cleft eroded by a seasonal brook.The post-lentum gathered momentum as it descended the face of the hills. It crossed the Lornstone, an old brick bridge that spanned a gully thick with sighing swamp oaks and stunted pines. On seven great arches the Wormway crossed the bridge and continued along on a stone dike that reached out for a mile into the Frugelle. The great flat was a continuous low thatch of thorny, stramineous stubble.Trees collected in dell or hollow, writhen, dwarfish things, their gray trunks rough and fissured. The unsettled threwd nagged persistently, not foe but certainly not friend.

The travelers’ breath steamed inside the lentum cabin. Threnody shivered, glared at the glimpse of frosty sky showing through the grille of the lentum windows and wrapped her furs closer about.

Europe proved unperturbed by it all, rugged in a long, thickly furred huque, hair down in a long plait; she watched everything through her pink quartz-lensed spectacles with regal equanimity. Nothing reached her, and for this Rossamünd was deeply grateful. For no matter how the lugubrious threwd pressed in or the chill gripped, the young lighter felt that all things might be compassed with the Branden Rose at the lead.

“My, this is a dreary land,” she said, looking around at her two companions. “Yes?”

Rossamünd nodded.

From her den of furs Threnody raised an eyebrow and barely shrugged.

“And dreary company too . . .” Europe arched her spoored brow.

Along his side of the road Rossamünd discovered the low, half-buried strongworks he had first spied between Makepeace and Hinkerseigh. This time they were positioned at every third lamp, looking very much like sunken fortifications.
But to what purpose?
Rossamünd wondered.

Built on the connection with the northeast running Louth-Hurry Road, Patrishalt was much like every other cothouse they had passed. With nothing to recommend it as a rest-stop, the lentum delivered a small amount of mail and carried on.

The country varied little, and by the time they achieved Cripplebolt two hours later, all three passengers were dozing. When the lentum was back on its way east with a fresh, new-shabraqued team, Rossamünd tucked into the provender bought at Wightfastseigh. Threnody grimaced from over her duodecimo with open disgust as he chewed on the pork sausage in one bite and took a spoon of preserved apricots, plopping about in their earthen jar, in another.

Hiss-CRACK!
A musket shot just above shattered the delight of his light repast. It was followed by a short series of thumps joining the din of travel, a pause and then
Hiss-CRACK!

“What is happening?” cried Rossamünd, ducking at the smack of the second discharge. A puff of gun-smoke burst above, on his side of the lentum, to be whipped away by wind of the vehicle’s passage.

“I think you’ll find they are warning off a passing nicker,” Europe said calmly.

Threnody clambered over to the same side and joined him in a search of the passing land without, frustrated that her view was blocked by the window-grille. “I cannot see what they shoot at,” she complained, leaning over Rossamünd. “They’d better hit it, the cheeky bugaboo!” she hissed.

“For the nicker’s sake let’s hope they do.” Europe peered briefly through the window-grille. “It would be a kinder death to have a musket ball in your meat than come to hand strokes with me.”

There were no further shots and no beast assailed them. The lentum made good time on this flat straight road, and in the paleness of the eastern quarter of the evening sky they spied the rectangular towers of a settlement a-sparkle with lights easily seen from the straightness of the plain.The township of Bleak Lynche.

As the lentum drew closer, Rossamünd could see that every structure was three or four or five stories tall, raised close together and with no gate nor surrounding wall to protect them.
How is that possible!
It was only as they entered the town and crept between these towers that he realized none of the buildings had ground-level doors opening out to the dangerous world. The higher stories were accessed from the ground only via retractable iron ladders, and an arrangement of covered walks—the lynches—stretched the short gaps between structures, their weight carried on sturdy arches.

The hard-packed dirt of the Wormway went right through the middle of the town, leading them to a small wayhouse called the Fend & Fodicar, its sign a fodicar and a spittende crossed. Upon the other hand was a large oblong fort of four levels and, like every other building here, a flattened gable roof of red tiles. This was Bleakhall, the lamplighters’ bastion and the only structure to be surrounded by a wall, which protected a coach yard and steep stairs to a third-story door. With the yell of its horn the post-lentum was let through gates as thick and tall as the bronze portals of Winstermill and rattled slowly into the tight area within, brightly lit by slow-burning flares lifted up on lampposts. A quarto of heavy-harnessed haubardiers met the carriage and humbly did the tasks of yardsmen: helping the lentermen take the horse-team in hand, organizing the setting down of the luggage. The postilion opened the doors of the lentum and lowered the folding-step, handing the women out of the cabin. The haubardiers were puzzled by a calendar in lighter’s vestments and they were downright astounded by the dangerous graces of the fulgarine peeress. Europe played the part with practiced ease, feigning ignorance at their awe with a studied grandness. Threnody met them with her typical superciliously lifted chin. Rossamünd just helped to carry the bags.