"Vaoriate, miss?"
The horn of a post-lentum sounded, dulled by wall and window.
"Spasm," she said distractedly.
There was a hasty knock at the door. It opened and a porter put his head inside. "The post's ready, m'lady. Do ye need yer bags lumbered out?"
Europe nodded and handed him a chit so he might retrieve her luggage from a stowage closet below.
"Listen, Rossamund, I am leaving on the last post today. I would sooner have you with me than not-your flair for a good treacle is hard to forgo.Yet as you say, you have taken the Emperor's Billion and a solemn oath on the day of joining. Imperial Service is not something that can be put on then off again like some ill-tailored jackcoat. If you proved faithless in this, then what trust could a girl put in you?" she said slowly, with deliberate calm. She stared at the floor, lips pressed thin. "However, I wonder if you young prentices should not first be schooled in the rotten core of the Empire you serve before being offered a shiny Emperor's Billion."
"A rotten core, Miss Europe?"
"Ask your Marshal, little man-he is more recently schooled in Imperial machinations than I. Such things I escaped a long time ago." She paced out of the room without a rearward glance.
Down in the foreparts of the coach yard, the Branden Rose mounted the lentum ready to depart for the Idlewild and the mysteries of the east. Standing on the highest step, she stared darkly for a time at the spandarion rumpling in the fitful wind that moved above the battlements, and at the house-watch that moved along them.
Below, waiting, Rossamund watched her silently.
"I go to do my usual labors-find a nicker, kill a nicker," said Europe finally by way of farewell. "I may be wintering at the Brisking Cat on the highroad at the Sourspan Bridge. If you wish to write me, send to there and I shall get it either way."
"I will," the prentice answered. There was a pause. He wanted to say that he sometimes regretted not taking up her repeated offer of work, yet could not think how. Moreover, after his refusals such sentiments seemed a little late and a little foolish. Either way, he could never willingly accept a living made through a perpetual, thoughtless slaughter of bogles.
Europe peered at him knowingly.
"Do not be troubled, little man," she said finally. "The last word is yet to be said on your service: just because you begin along one way does not mean it will be your end. Go back inside, Rossamund. I will wait for thee, if thou wouldst come with me. Go back to your lampsmen chums," she said as she entered the carriage. "And stay well clear of that Swill fellow." The lentum door was shut with an impatient bang by the splasher boy.
"Good-bye, Miss Europe," Rossamund called to her.
With a brash hoot of its horn the post-lentum was whipped on and took the Branden Rose-still without a factotum-out of Winstermill. As suddenly as she had arrived, so she left.
Watching her depart, Rossamund was caught in a collision of many emotions, but above them all he felt as if he had been left behind.
14
The Skillions the southeastern corner of the Low Gutter in the fortress of Winstermill. It gains its somewhat derogatory name from the many small, wood-built single-story sheds, warehouses and work-stalls found there. These are a recent addition to this part of the Gutter, it previously being the site of a stately old building designated for multiple uses, including the growing of bloom and the making and storing of lanterns. This reputedly burned down in mysterious circumstances two generations ago, outside of any current occupant's memory.
Though the menagerie of teratologists had begun to move into the Idlewild, disturbing reports continued to arrive at Winstermill. One told of the cothouse of Dovecote Bolt east of the Tumblesloe Heap that had lost three lamp-watchmen to an unseen unterman. Another told of a small band of nickers having the audacity to attack Cripplebolt near the farthest end of the Wormway, destroying lamps in the process. For three days-the report said-they maintained a kind of siege before relief arrived from the fortress of Haltmire.
The weather grew foul, either storming or foggy. Roads became nigh impassable. With the continued monstrous threat to the Wormway, the regular merchants from the south became reluctant to deliver. Only paying triple or quadruple the fair price for the essentials seemed to make them willing to come up from Silvernook and High Vesting. Informed by the Master-of-Clerks that the coffers could ill afford such prices, the Lamplighter-Marshal was forced to introduce restrictions to the diet and habits of the manse. Starting with the prentices, the fortress had been on short commons for the whole week. Rumors abounded of the clerks getting better fare than the lighters, of certain well-to-do officers using private resources to purchase delicacies for themselves but not share them about.
Worse yet, the lighters discovered during a wet and dismal pageant-of-arms that their customary vigil-trip was canceled.The prentices were in foul spirits by the time they were dismissed to loiter about the manse with little to occupy themselves. "Who does the Marshal think he is, making us miss our stingos!" some of them grumbled. Small arguments broke out between boys harboring worthless grudges. Other prentices bickered over their high-stakes card games of lesquin and punt-royale, and cell row and mess hall became unbearable. Rossamund sat on an easy chair in the corner of the mess hall, regretting he had not gone with Europe. He had been reading and rereading the same line in an already well-read pamphlet while beside him a semantic spat between Smellgrove and a stocky prentice by the name of Hapfauf revolved endlessly. To Rossamund's surprise Threnody sought him out and suggested they take a walk outside despite the inclement weather. He took only a little convincing to go. He rugged his neck with the scarf that Europe had given him and followed, Arabis giving him a sly wink as he exited.
Out into the biting squall they bravely ventured, clutching their regular-issue oiled pallmains tightly about, heads bowed against the sleet, ducking involuntarily at the mighty cracks of thunder that snapped above the Harrowmath. Having never owned a hat till he had left the foundlingery, Rossamund found them an absolute boon for keeping rain off the face. He could endure the foulest weather if his dial was not being splashed and pelted with water.
"Who was that woman yesterday?" Threnody had found a small garden lean-to by the vegetable patch and they were at least now out of the rain. "Was it truly the Branden Rose? It certainly looked like it was. How do you know her?"
"Aye, it was. She and I met on my way here." It seemed a too-simple explanation. He wriggled uneasily, trying to get comfortable atop a rather smelly sack that was digging into his buttocks and dampening the seat of his longshanks.
"But how did someone like you meet someone like her?"
"Well," he said slowly, aware of how foolish he might sound, "the truth is that she found me hiding in a boxthorn on the side of the Vestiweg."
"What in the Sundergird were you doing there? Hardly anyone travels that way-at least not anyone in their right minds. It's just a supply road for the Spindle."
He told Threnody the story of his journey, beginning with the day Sebastipole had come to select him.As he told it he was struck by the extraordinary nature of that adventure-had he really done all those things and survived those dangers?
She leaned in close as he told his story, never interrupting, and when he had finished, she stretched and let out a sigh. "Who'd have thought it, lamp boy? A stick like you fighting pirate captains and, what did you call them? Grinnlings? And all the while that amazing woman is feeding you whortleberries and letting you make her treacle?" Threnody's face was alight with a deep, previously hidden enthusiasm. "I always have to make my own treacle. Mother has drummed into me that you should always make your own-that way you know what is in it and that it will work. But, oh! Tell me, what does a whortleberry taste like?"