As the coach continued on, the cold clear day became overcast in a thin sort of way, making the afternoon sun a dull off-yellow and turning the veil-like clouds gun-metal gray. The land was becoming wilder here, less well tended and fertile. There was something eerie about its arid breadth. Threwd brooded here, and while the day's orb was setting, it was a great relief to see the final destination come into view. There, still a few miles distant around a long bend, window-lights twinkling, sat Winstermill Manse.
The name of Winstermill was-so Rossamund's almanac read-a corruption of a more ancient title, Winstreslewe, given to a ruined fortress upon the high foundations of which the manse now stood. It was built right by a long line of low, yet steep-sided hills and at the beginning of a great gorge which cut through this same range. The manse looked like a country house, yet so much larger, squatter, mightier and much more solid. It had a great many more roofs of heavy lead shingles rising higher and higher as they receded from the front of the structure like a complex range of ever taller hillocks. From the midst of these, lofty chimneys even taller than those of the Harefoot Dig pointed heavenward in baffling profusion like blunt spines. There were several round, crenellated strong points projecting out from a roof's myriad slopes, the barrels of great-guns showing from some of them.
The manse's outer walls were angled inward to help deflect the blow of a cannon shot; its lower windows narrow slits barely wide enough to admit light. The great gate was made of thick, weather-greened bronze. Lamps blazed above this threatening portal and an enormous flag, the spandarion of the Empire, a golden owl over a field of red and white, barely showing in the dark, curled and whipped above it all. This was a place made to stand against all threats, and Rossamund admired its grim defenses.
Most significantly of all, for one about to become a lamplighter, was the long line of brightly flaring lanterns that marched away from Winstermill, threading eastward like a great, glittering necklace, disappearing into the distant dark of the gorge. It was such as these, raised high on tall posts of black iron, that he was surely expected to tend.
The coach turned off the main way, which disappeared into a tunnel made through the very foundations of the manse, and rattled up a steep drive to Winstermill's bronze gates. These were already opening, and the coach was admitted without having to halt. Within the curtain of the manse's outer fortifications, Rossamund had expected to find a bustle of diligent folk marching about on serious business. Instead it was empty of any bustle, or even hustle, and no serious business seemed to be going on anywhere nearby.
A single yardsman came out to them, touching his hat as greeting. "Winstermill!" a coachman cried. "Change ve-hickles if ye wish to travel further!"
Rossamund alighted and looked about the well-lit yard. It was wide and flat and bare but for one stunted, leafless tree growing by a farther wall. His valise was quickly retrieved for him, and the coach clattered away, together with the yardsman, retreating somewhere beyond the side of the structure. Rossamund presumed the horses would be stabled, and the drivers rested for the return leg the following day.
The boy was left all alone now, and stood before these august headquarters uncertain of what to do next. As he waited, he wrestled out the bundle of dispatches, ready to hand them to whoever should ask for them. Still no one sallied forth to greet him. In the end, if only to avoid the bitter cold, he walked to the most important-looking set of doors and, finding them unbarred, pushed his way within.
Inside was a large, blank room, square and empty. There was another door at the farther end and Rossamund walked over to this and went through. Now he found himself at one end of a long wide hall with walls painted green like a lime in season and a single narrow rug patterned in carnelian and black running the whole length of the stone floor. A person in uniform stood about halfway down. Rossamund strode along this lime hallway and offered up the dispatches promptly to this uniformed person-a tough-looking fellow with oddly cut hair.
As he did, Rossamund addressed the man just as he had been trained to do, for serving upon a ram. "Rossamund Bookchild, sir, recently arrived and ready to serve aboard-uh-to serve… you… here."
The rough-looking fellow looked at him, and then at the wad of paper the foundling held, without curiosity. "Not for me, son. Hand it to one of those pushers-of-pencils inside there," he said, with gruff authority, pointing to a pair of flimsy-looking, finely carved doors at the end of the lime hall.
"Oh…" said Rossamund.
His initial flush of courage now spent, the foundling entered those ornamented doors nervously. Beyond was an enormous, square space with a ceiling high above, and the clatter of the opening door rang and echoed within. Along the distant farther wall was a massive wooden structure of drawers, cabinets and rolling stepladders-what he would learn later was the immense and complex document catalog, in which all the correspondence and paperwork of the lamplighters eventually found its final burial place. To the foundling's left, and to his right, facing out from either wall, were two dark wood desks. A studious-looking man worked behind each, the one on the left looking up at him briefly as he entered, and the one on the right keeping his head down and his hand scribbling.
Between the two desks was a great blank area of cold slate, and Rossamund, with each footstep clip-clopping too loudly, moved to stand right in the middle of this barren space. He looked to his right, then to his left. Both clerks continued their close attention to their work and offered nothing to the new arrival. With no idea of which way to go, Rossamund repeated a little rhyme in his head to solve this puzzle, thinking either left or right with each subsequent word. The rhyme itself was a short list of faraway, semi-mythical and notoriously threwdish places, and it always fired Rossamund's imagination: Ichor, Liquor, Loquor, Fiel My decision now reveal.
He finished on his right. Right it is! He went clip-clop, clip-clop and stood before that desk. Holding out the letters, he repeated himself, "Rossamund Bookchild, sir, recently arrived and ready to serve as a lamplighter."
This clerk looked up with a scowl upon his sharp, bespectacled face. He continued to write, even though his attention was no longer on the task.
"Not me, child!" he snarled. "Him!" He put his nose back to his scribbling.
He could only have meant the other clerk, way across on the opposite side.
Right it isn't, then. Rossamund held back a sigh.
He turned on his heel and clip-clopped-clip-clopped to the left-hand desk and its equally diligent clerk. He spoke his introduction for a third time, and this clerk stopped writing, put down his pencil and stood.
"Welcome, Rossamund Bookchild. My name is Inkwill. I am the registry clerk. You have been expected." He took the dispatch bundle from the foundling and they shook hands. "It's a good thing you have arrived now. After today we were going to give up on you. If you had got here tomorrow, we would have turned you away, I'm afraid. In the nick of time, as they say."
As Inkwill the registry clerk sorted through the dispatches, he held up a tightly folded oblong of fine linen paper.
"This is yours, I reckon," he said, waving the article at Rossamund.
Puzzled, Rossamund took it slowly. It was a letter made out to him in the script of someone he knew well and loved dearly: Verline. He had been carrying it the whole length of his travel from High Vesting, and could have read and reread it at his leisure aboard the coach. He was desperate to open it, but had to wait.