Summoning refreshments, the Branden Rose took off her pollern and sat on a long tandem chair, stretching out like a man, her back slouching, long legs crossed over at the ankles.
"So how is the life of a lamplighter turning for you?" she inquired complacently. "Still as adventurous as that pawky postman made it out to be?"
Perching himself on the edge of the settee adjacent to the reclining fulgar, Rossamund put his hat beside him as his eyes roamed the room. "It has been mostly come and go and march and stop, Miss Europe, and very little time for reading or thinking. But in the last couple of weeks there have been two theroscades. I have also met a glimner called Mister Numps and delivered a pig's head to our surgeon for the Snooks."
Europe fixed him with her sharp hazel gaze. "Tell me of these monsters attacking."
Refreshments arrived in the hands of a bobbing porter and Europe ordered food for the two of them. As they waited Rossamund recounted the two theroscades, starting with the horn-ed nickers assaulting the carriage and the deeds of the calendars. "That is when Threnody joined us."
"The girl lampsman who was so fascinated earlier?" Europe asked, oh so casually. "She is a wit?"
"Aye, and she's the daughter of the calendars' august."
"My. How very impressive. The Lady Vey's progeny is a wit, a calendar and a lamplighter?"
Rossamund ignored the sarcasm. "You know of her mother?"
"We have had occasion to meet, yes." The fulgar raised her hand as if to say that was all she would tell.
Heeding this, Rossamund pressed on with an account of the flight from the Herdebog Trought and Bellicos' death, still so large in his memory. His telling was briefer, more subdued.
Europe sat a little straighter. "It is a… difficult thing to lose one you know to the wickedness of some unworthy nickery basket," she said softly. "Do you wish you had become my factotum after all?"
"I've wished a lot of things since being here, Miss Europe," Rossamund demurred, "but I am signed to serve as a lamplighter now and have been given the Emperor's Billion and all."
"So you choose to be stuck on one stretch of road for the rest of your days? What a waste."
The two of them looked at each other for a long moment until Rossamund dropped his gaze. "I don't want a life of violence," he said.
"You're living one now!" the fulgar retorted. "I tell you, child, this life is nothing but violence-even if you do not seek it, others will bring it to you." She leaned forward and fixed him with a terrible eye. "Do not make the mistake, Rossamund, of living easy behind the feats of others and all the while thinking yourself better for not joining the slaughter."
Cheeks burning from her rebuke, Rossamund shrank back, confronted with how little he knew of this pugnacious woman.
"How can we not be violent when violence breeds in the very mud and makes monsters of us all?" Europe persisted. "Stay here and you will be fighting just as you have been, always fighting: if not with nickers then with men.What did you think a life of adventure was?" She smiled condescendingly. "It is a life of violence. Come with me, and at least your foe will be clear."
"Not all monsters are our enemies," Rossamund insisted doggedly.
Europe regarded him with an unfathomable expression. "Truly?" she said eventually. "You might want to shift yourself to Cloudeslee if you insist on spouting talk like that. Sedorners get short shrift in the Emperor's countries."
"But what about that poor Misbegotten Schrewd? He was just simple, not wicked, yet you killed him all the same. And you wanted to slay Freckle when he had helped me. I could never join you in that!"
Europe sat back, her gaze dangerously glassy, a threat in her tone. "Next you'll be telling me those triply undone blightlings were right for killing my dear Licurius."
"No!" he said quickly, eyes wide with horror. "I would never say that!"
There was a strained silence.
Europe sipped at a glass of deep red toscanelle and looked away. "You are a small and ignorant urbanite; once you have lived and watched and been forced to such things as I have you will not be so simple-headed."
Rossamund could not collect his thoughts sufficiently to answer. He was right but so was she, though he wished she was not. Mercifully they were interrupted by the arrival of meals.
For a time they ate and did not speak.
"Little man," Europe finally offered between bites, "tell me of this pig's head and that Snooks fellow, the surgeon."
"Oh, the Snooks is not the surgeon, that's Grotius Swill-"
Europe stopped eating. "Did you just say Swill? Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill?"
"Aye." The young prentice stopped his chewing too.
"Hmm. I have heard of the man," the fulgar said gravely. "He has an evil reputation in Later Sinster.What has he done to you?"
"Naught! I only took up the guts and head of a pig to him," Rossamund explained, and told of the attic surgery and the books and the flayed skin. "What is his reputation?"
"I heard that the fellow was caught dabbling in the darker habilisms and had traffic with folks all but the most scurrilous butchers avoid. Rumor is a poor transmitter of truth, but it was said that the Soratche were becoming increasingly curious about his exertions."
Rossamund frowned at this revelation. "The who, miss?"
"The Soratche: they are a loose confederacy of those do-good calendar-kind keen on foiling massacars."
"Is Swill a massacar, then?" Rossamund gasped. "We should tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!"
Europe raised a calming hand. "There was much conjecture in Later Sinster, but nothing proved. I am sure your kindly old Earl has things well in view. In such a tight place as this fortress, genuinely nefarious deeds would be hard to hide."
Aye, but what if the fortress is not as tight as it should be? Rossamund wondered. Even he could tell the manse was creeping to disarray in the failing grip of the overworked marshal-lighter, a punctilious clerk-master and men so stretched that there were none left to plug the breaches. Rossamund shifted his thoughts. "Miss Europe?"
"Yes, little man?" the fulgar replied absently, taking out and chewing on a little rock salt.
"What was it like going to Sinster?" he asked. "What did you do there?"
Europe cocked her head and looked to him, a wry, energetic twinkle in her eye. "The journey was brief," she said. "I left High Vesting the same day as you; took a fast packet down to Flint-where the doughty crew discouraged a curious sea-nicker with their fine gunnery and well-aimed lambasts. Then a barge up the Ichabod and I was under the transmogrifer's catlin not more than two weeks after I first met you."
"You saw a sea-nicker, miss?" Rossamund's imagination ran with the image of a ram firing its broadside at some enormous, marauding, eel-like thing with spines and needle teeth. He had never seen a sea-nicker or a kraulschwimmen, nor any such creature-not for real-just poorly executed etchings in his pamphlets.
"I actually saw very little of it but for a great amount of splashing and some distant screaming," the fulgar answered. "I was directed to the seating deck soon after it appeared. It was a close-run thing for a time, but the fast packet was truly that and we outran the beast in the end. A good thing, for I do not think I would have been much help had the thing won its way aboard us. Even if I had been at my best, the puddles and splashes on deck would have taken my arcs to places they were not intended."
"Did the surgeon mend you?" Rossamund pressed.
"Yes, he did." Europe straightened, rubbing her arm as if it ached. "I feel greatly improved. He told me to keep to my treacle and it will be less likely for my organs to vaoriate in future as they did that night in the Brindleshaws." Bitterness returned briefly to her countenance.