"And so my kind gather, looking for violence." Europe sighed. "Collecting together like crows about a corpse."
All the great folk, and the lesser known too, strutted the common room and the privatrium, eyeing one another, ego against ego, and generally getting in the way of the wayhouse's even routine.
"The Maid Constant." The fulgar indicated a wit with an arrow-spoor pointing up from each brow and brilliant-hued blue hair. "She too must needs wear a wig, as you do, my dear, but her hair was green last week and blue for this."
Threnody went beetroot blush and sat up. "No wig for me, madam," she said quickly, glowering nervously at Europe.
"Not yet, anyway," Rossamund put in, trying to be helpful.
She glared at him.
"By-the-by," said Europe, unconcerned.
The fulgar rattled off many more names, of so many teratologists that Rossamund could not keep track, and he simply listened to the smooth sound of her voice. His wonder became a little numbed, and he sat a little easier in the comfortable booth. The young lampsman felt the strains of the road ease out into the soft seating, and he became quickly acquainted with just how tired he was. Food was ordered-from the Best Cuts, of course, Rossamund trying "Starlings in Viand-Royal Sauce"-and an awkwardness persisted while they waited for it to arrive, wetting their thirst with the sourest rich-red wine Rossamund had ever been served. With the wine came a tankard of steaming Cathar's Treacle for Europe.
"It's testtelated in bulk in the kitchens, by a tandem of skolds of faultless reputation," she explained, "at a hefty charge, of course. You may want some yourself, my dear." She nodded gravely at Threnody.
"No thank you, Duchess," Threnody returned, still sitting stiff-backed, hands clasped on the table before her. "I have always been taught that one does best to make one's own plaudamentum."
The fulgar became suddenly expressionless.
"Indeed," she said, after a long, discomfiting moment, "one would prefer to have it made perpetually by the same trusted hands at a day's two ends, but what one wants and what one gets are rarely the same.The one I once had confidence in is… no longer available-and another unwilling." She peered at Rossamund.
Threnody looked sharply at the Branden Rose, then narrowly, almost enviously, at Rossamund.
He tapped purposefully at the tabletop, not meeting either gaze. He had vowed to serve the lamplighters and the Emperor, yet as the troubles of the lamplighters increased, so did the appeal of being the Branden Rose's factotum. If only she was more careful about which bogles to kill.
Providentially, mains arrived and all talk ceased for a time as, in the rust glow of red-, orange- and yellow-glassed lanterns, they ate in hungry silence.
Music swelled from the oval stage below them: sweet chamber-sounds of fiddle, violoncello and sourdine, and adding mellifluously to it a soaring female voice. Rossamund felt he had heard this singing somewhere before and, looking down to the stage, saw a quartet of scratch-bobbed, liveried musicians and, in a halo of light, Hero, the chanteuse of Clunes. Dressed in a smoke-green chiffon dress with broad, gathered skirts, black rumples at the elbows, her hair piled and rolled and festooned with flowers of similar color to the chiffon, she was the very same songstress he had watched in raptures at the Harefoot Dig. Yet here she was now, projecting sonorous verse all about the great room, arms reaching out imploringly. Rossamund forgot his food and listened, heedless of time's passing, arm on balustrade, cheek resting on arm, his eyes just a little doelike.
Threnody affected to be unimpressed. "It is adequate, I suppose," she said in the applause between songs, "if you like those Lentine styles."
Rossamund decided he liked the Lentine style very well and could not understand Threnody's remark.
Her own meal finished, Europe lounged on the comfortable bench and picked at a sludgy, creamy-colored delicacy known simply as cheesecake, soaked in syrup of peach-blossoms. With it came sillabub-a curdled concoction of milk and vinegar. She let Rossamund try a little, and he came away from the taste smacking his lips in disgust. She did not, however, offer any to Threnody, who had become more and more sullen and sour-faced as the night deepened and did not show any care.
Washing out the vile aftertaste with the bitter small wine, Rossamund asked solemnly, "Miss Europe, what do you know of Wormstool?"
"It is remote and dangerous and no place for new-weaned lamplighting lads and lasses." Europe scowled. "What can your masters be thinking, sending you out there?"
"Oh, I was not sent," Threnody said piously. "I asked to go. Those with greater capacities have to wait on those who do not. It's how I have been taught and…" She looked at her fellow traveler. "Rossamund will need the help-as you yourself probably well know."
"Oh?" Europe turned a piercing gaze on the girl. "And who will look out for you, my dear?"
"Rossamund," the girl returned simply. "We lighters stick together, just like calendars."
The fulgar laughed unexpectedly. "Aren't you an adorable little upstart?" she purred.
Chin lifting then dropping, Threnody clearly did not know whether to be offended or pleased. She looked out into the Saloon at nothing in particular.
"Now tell me, young Rossamund," Europe demanded, "what were you fighting that cost you yet another hat?"
"It was a rever-man, miss," the young lighter said simply.
Europe went wide-eyed. There was a pause, incredulity hovering at its fringes. "Truly?" she said eventually. "How did you manage to get tangled up with one of those? More to the point, how did you survive it?"
"I found it deep in the cellars of Winstermill the very next night after you left."
"Ah!You're playing a leg-pull on me, little man." The fulgar started to smile knowingly. "Your old home is far too tough to crack for some rotten-headed thing like a rever-man. That old Marshal of yours must be sadly slipping if he let one of those wretches in."
Rossamund's gall twisted at this. "I don't think he is slipping, Miss Europe, but still, sure as I sit here, it was a gudgeon I wrastled right down in the bottom of the fortress." He went on to tell the whole tale, elaborating especially on the moment when he jammed the loomblaze into the rever-man's gnashing maw. That moment was powerfully satisfying to recall. "It was somewhere in that fight I lost my hat," he concluded.
"Aren't you the one for getting yourself into fixes not of your own making?" Europe's knowing gaze had not slipped for the length of his tale. "You are still the strangest, bravest little man.Throwing a gudgeon about and blasting it to char is beyond even some of my ilk.You're not as helpless as you seem." She looked at Threnody.
"Maybe." Rossamund tried not to look too pleased. "It was gangling and poorly made, with too-long arms and hairy, piggy ears, just like those"-he pointed to a sizzling porker's head that was being carried past at that very moment by a struggling maid-"and no great feat to best."
"The Lamplighter-Marshal said it was a mighty deed," Threnody stated proudly in a strange change of tack.
"I should think he would," the fulgar said, taking a sip of wine. "You did him a great service, Rossamund."
"Yet it still did not stop the man receiving a sis edisserum from the Considine," the young lampsman said sadly.
"Truly?" Europe murmured. "You don't hear of that happening every diem. Your Marshal must certainly have gone awry then."
Rossamund did not hear her. His thoughts had pounced on his own words, hairy, piggy ears. The gudgeon had large, furry, leaf-shaped ears, pig's ears, like those on the meal just gone by; pig's ears very much like those on the swine's head he had carried up to Swill…