course (verb) to hunt, particularly to hunt monsters; (noun) the hunt itself, usually referred to as a coursing party, or in such phrases as "to go on a course." A course is, obviously, a dangerous affair. One undertaken lightly will always result in the doom of some, if not all, of those involved. A prospective courser is always advised to take at least one skold and one leer-or, if they are unavailable, a quarto of lurksmen, even a navigator or wayfarer, and a hefty weight of potives and skold-shot. Not to be confused with "corse," meaning a dead body, a corpse. THOUGH Rossamund was wanting to ask Sebastipole of the coursing of the Trought, the leer soon left him and Numps, saying that he was well overdue for an interview with the Lamplighter-Marshal.
Numps, wide-eyed, watched the leer leave and then bent to his labors once more, humming as he cleaned. Rossamund did not know how to talk to Numps. He was afraid to frighten the nervous glimner again and so he moved slowly, looking for work to do. He found a rag, sat on an empty chest on the other side of the bright great-lamp and silently began to polish lantern-windows.
Wrapped in the canvas sacks for warmth, Numps did not complain. He did not even acknowledge Rossamund. Instead he took every pane the prentice cleaned and polished each one again just as fastidiously as if it had never been worked, adding it to the stack of other lustrous panes. Frustrating as this was, Rossamund did not grumble but kept at the task. Every so often he would lean down and check Numps' feet, to make certain no blood showed through the bandages, or chide the glimner carefully if, from habit, he should try to use his foot to grip or hold. They kept at this for an hour or more till he accidentally grasped at the same dirty pane the glimner grasped from the top of the diminishing stack.
"Oh" was all Numps said, letting the pane go and humbly placing his hand in his lap.
"Sorry, Mister Numps… and I'm sorry about before. For scaring you and making you drop the glass and cut your feet."
Numps must have rarely received an apology, for with each contrite word that Rossamund uttered, the glimner interjected with a blink and an odd, hesitant "Oh."
"That's just silly poor Numps forgetting his-self. All a-flipperty-gibberty since Mister 'Pole found me swimming in red." He hung his head. "I've never been as I was." He sat like this for several minutes, Rossamund not daring to move or interrupt. "Time to make seltzer!" Numps suddenly straightened, ready to get to his feet.
"No! Mister Numps!" Rossamund lurched to his feet, forgetting his caution in his concern for the man's wounded sole. For an instant he feared he might have spooked the man again, but Numps just looked at him, puzzled, holding himself between sitting and standing. "You must have a care to stay off your bad foot. Hop on your good foot like Mister Sebastipole said, till Doctor Crispus has declared you whole."
Offering himself as a small crutch, the prentice helped Numps out of his seat and guided the limping glimner over to where he pointed: a collection of barrels and chests gathered in a corner between the wooden wall of the store and one of the tool-cluttered shelves.
"They say I'm struck with horrors," the glimner said, pressing down heavily on Rossamund with each hop, "and I know I'm not the old Numps, just poor Numps now; but I still remember how to mix the seltzer-they still come to me to make it 'cause no one makes it as well. I might be rummaged all about up here," he said, patting himself on the side of his head, "them pale runny monsters saw to that, but that don't mean I have forgotten."
Numps prized off the lid of one barrel, releasing a distinct tang into the stuffy lantern store, and Rossamund immediately recognized the sealike odor of sweet brine-the beginning of seltzer water. Humming tunefully, the glimner began to take all manner of chemicals from chests and boxes close to hand.With precise care he dripped, scooped, tapped and tipped each part into the barrel of brine. At each addition he stirred with slow, fine movements; first one turn of the clock then the other for set counts that he spoke under his breath. "Once clockingwise, fours contrawise…"
Rossamund knew the basic constitution of seltzer water: spirit-of-cadmia, bluesalts, chordic vinegar and wine-dilute penthil-salts. He had been shown this by Seltzterman Humbert, and at first Numps followed the recipe properly but then he put in only half the chordic vinegar, left out the penthil altogether and began to add other things-unusuallooking things. Of what Rossamund saw, he recognized a dash of ethulate and pinches of soursugar, plus a fine sandy powder that smelled like the vinegar sea and sludge that looked ever so much like the muckings of a gastrine.
"What are these for, Mister Numps?" the prentice inquired of the extra parts. "I have seen seltzer made-Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert has shown us, but he never added these."
"Oh… ah… Mister Humble-burt is good at the simple seltzer, but this is our own seltzer. Better seltzer for Numps' friends. Numps and his clever old friend, we figured this, figured it out before poor Numps' poor clever old friend went swimming in his red too. No one else knows how to do it right and his clever old friend is gone now but Numps still remembers; makes the bloom bloom it does, good for Numps' friends."
"What friends, Mister Numps?" Rossamund was finding it hard to follow the thread of wandering talk. "Do you look after all the bloom?"
The glimner became silent at this, and would say no more on the subject of bloom or seltzer or friends new or old. Rather he kept pointedly at his mixing until he had made three kegs full of seltzer-smelling far more rich and full than seltzer usually did.
As the day waned someone came a-calling. At first they simply heard her. "Numps! Numps!" was the demand. "Hullo there, my darling muddle-head! Help me git this glass through yer door!"
"Oh, oh, oh," fretted Numps, up to his bicep in seltzer. "The barrow woman is here. The barrow woman."
"I'll go.You stay here."
Rossamund answered the shout in the glimner's stead, stepping down the avenue of shelves to discover a woman wrestling a heavy load through Door 143. She wore a buff-leather apron over her maid's clothes and was towing a barrow stacked high with panes and lantern-windows. When this laboring lady saw a well-presented prentice-lighter she pulled up short and smiled. "Oh, hello, my lovely."
"Hello," Rossamund replied. "May I take that?" He had gripped the barrow by the handles before she could reply.
"What a precious little mite you are!" she exclaimed. "Doing my job for me? And grateful I am too." She leaned toward him and whispered conspiratorially, "That seltzerman is a bit too gone in the intellectuals for my liking. I don't much enjoy having to come down here. Folks avoid him, you know."
"No need then for you to see him today, mother labor," Rossamund replied peevishly.
The woman gave Rossamund a sharp, appraising look. "Ye must have done summat right bad to be sent here, lad." She peered closely, seeking the fatal flaw. "Ye've got to take him in hand, pet, if ye're going to get anything done with him," she said. "He's naught but a limpling-head," she finished loudly, for Numps to hear.
Rossamund felt a surge of anger. He almost forgot his manners as she bid good day, scowling after the woman as she left.
With her departure Rossamund and Numps set to stacking then polishing these new deliveries and kept at this for what remained of the day. Neither spoke, and there came no other noise but the chink of picking up and putting down till mains was rung and Rossamund realized he had missed middens, entirely forgotten.With a bow he went to hurry off. "Good evening to you, Mister Numps," he said as he left. "I hope your foot heals right quick. Don't walk on it nor use it for any work, please. Wait for Doctor Crispus to see you."
Numps blinked at him, nodded-with a small, cryptic smile lighting his face-and said, "Will you come back tomorrow and check poor Numps' poor foot?"
"I will, Mister Numps."
Rossamund returned to the manse, wishing he had met this fascinating fellow well before today. The other prentice-lighters were not due back from Silvernook till after mains-part of the vigil-day privilege. Rossamund took himself to the mess hall to eat alone. There he found Threnody back from interviews with her mother and by the fire, sitting on a tandem chair reading a book-a novel no less, that most frivolous of frivolous things. Two small pots, one of delicious muttony-greasy and one with gray pease, bubbled over the fire for any who had stayed. On the table there was also some hard-tack and apples still untouched from middens, and piping Domesday pudding. As he was serving mutton into a shallow square pannikin, Threnody walked wearily over and did the same. She sat before Rossamund, full of mystery and reticence.
Rossamund broached the hush. "I thought you'd eat with your mother."
"So did she." Threnody smiled sourly, then added, "I told her I was a lighter now and was duty bound to mess with my fellows-in-arms."
"She came a fair way to see you. Did she not insist?"
Bent over her food, the girl looked at him sharply through her brows. "She ranted and railed, as always."
"What did she say?" Rossamund knew he had asked too much as soon as he said the words.
Threnody stared at him owlishly. "Insufficient to detain me… clearly."
Muteness descended and stretched out into a heavy awkwardness. The cooking fire crackled in the hearth. Merry fife music, distant, rhythmic stomping and timely claps drifted through the mess-hall door. This was the ruckus of soused lampsmen and pediteers cozy in their own mess-room making happy on their vigil-day rest.
Rossamund sighed. Threnody was hard work. "And Pandome-is she healing?"
Threnody bowed her head.
Have I said too much again? Rossamund wondered.
"She… recovers," the girl replied eventually. "She will return with Mother though both physic and surgeon agree that she is unlikely to fight again." For a breath she looked truly, openly sad. "Do you think I'm to blame, Rossamund Bookchild?"
Rossamund hesitated. "Blame?"
"For Pandome's hurts!" Threnody stared hard at him. "For-for Idesloe's death…"
He was unsure of how to soothe her sorrow.
"I returned from Sinster's sanguinariums little more than eight months ago," she continued, her whispered words spilling, wide eyes imploring. "I have only been allowed to begin using my new 'skills' in the last month.Yet, I am a wit: what else could I do? I had no pistols. We were attacked. I did my part, defended my clave, did duty to them firstmost! The others were all too battered by the crash. I had to act! If I had been made a fulgar I would have done better, and better yet as a pistoleer-you saw how frank my shots were against that umbergog thing. It was not some self-centered display of valor. Was it? Did I set us all to risk like Mother insists I must have?"
This was more than Rossamund wanted to answer.
"Practice makes it, miss," he tried, feeling very inadequate. "It's as my dormitory master used to say: learn it as rote and it'll work freely like hearth-softened butter, if you get my meaning."
Impatience flickered across Threnody's face. "I'm not sure that I do." Her earnest openness vanished like the snap of a closing lid.
"Well-I was-" Rossamund started and did not know where to go-trying not to be rude, he concluded to himself.
Threnody arched an eyebrow.
"Will you be returning to your mother this evening?" Rossamund quickly changed tack.
"No, she has said all she wanted to say-and more besides," Threnody answered sourly. "We are done. Fortunately she will leave again tomorrow and take Dolours and dear Pandome back to Herbroulesse."
With a thump the prentices, soused and swaggering from their vigil-day excursion, bundled into the mess hall.
The strange, strained conversation ceased.
"Hoy there, you sobersides! You should have seen it!" Punthill Plod effused.
"Seen what?" Threnody returned icily.
"Aye, Rosey, you missed a real bust-up," bragged Arabis, completely ignoring Threnody. "A carriage was attacked by some nickers-horses dead, lentermen dead, passengers dead."
"Just like we saw on lantern-watch," Plod continued.
"I heard them say in town that it was done by some nasty grinning blightlings," Crofton Wheede added.
Rossamund's milt went cold. Grinnlings?
"That company of lesquins we saw camped just a mile farther down was not much use to them poor folks, was it?" said a prentice named Foistin Gall.
Rossamund's ears pricked up at the mention of lesquins, those gaudily dressed sell-swords-the best, most arrogant fighters, who gathered into legions and sold themselves to fight in the petty wars of the states.
"What are they doing there?" Threnody frowned.
"People are saying because we can't stop the baskets on the Wormway that the Gainway is under threat!" said Onion Mole in awe.
"Not as under threat as that sweet li'l dolly-mop at the Drained Mouse, not from the looks you were giving her, Moley," guffawed Tworp stupidly, and several boys brayed in drunken delight.
Threnody gave them all a single dirty look and left.
Mind spinning with memories of Licurius collapsing under a press of grinning bogles, Rossamund was not long in following. The routine of the next day began as it always did, with the ritual wake-up cry, hurried dressing and stomping out to line up for morning forming on the Cypress Walk by the side of the manse. There Grindrod confirmed the attack on the carriage between the fortress and Silvernook, everyone slaughtered. He quickly moved on to properly inform the prentices that the coursing party had returned the previous day while the boys were living it large in Silvernook. The coursers' homecoming had been somber. They were less five dogs, including the leader Druker, and Griffstutzig was badly hurt. An ambuscadier was dead, the badly wounded Josclin borne back on a litter. These were bitter blows indeed after Bellicos' death. Even mortally hurt, the harried umbergog had proved a terrible adversary, trapped in a hollow on the western flanks of the Tumblesloe Heap far to the north. It was slain at last by the chemistry of Josclin and a final, fatal shot from Sebastipole's deadly long-rifle. The severed head of the vanquished monster had been dragged all the way back by the mules.
The prentices did not know how to react to this: was it good news? Was it bad?
Grindrod also advertised that that very night in the Hall of Pageants there would be the puncting-the marking with the monster's blood-of those who had had a hand in slaying the Herdebog Trought. Collected from the dead umbergog at the time of its slaying, the cruor was in the care of Nullifus Drawk. He was apparently eager and ready to mark the monster's killers. Rossamund did not want to go. He had lost his fascination for cruorpunxis. Their gaining was surrounded by too much sorrow and confusion. He well understood why his old dormitory master was ashamed of the tattoo he wore.
After breakfast the prentices were set to more marching. Rain set in, a gray shimmering swathe, and dripping-drenched they formed up along the side of the gravel drive to mark the Lady Vey's otherwise unfeted departure. "Present arms!" came the order. Next to Rossamund, Threnody obeyed, staring fixedly ahead, chin high, a sardonic half smile barely hidden. For her part, as the dyphr clattered by, the august ignored her daughter and the twin-file of prentices with her, her neck held stiff and chin raised.
As mother, as daughter, Rossamund observed. For 2nd morning instructions the prentices went to the lectury for lantern workings with Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert. Rossamund liked the subject: he actually understood and admired the mechanism of a seltzer lamp and the constitution of seltzer water itself. This study was a relief from marching and evolutions and targets. In fact, and despite himself, he welcomed the safety of routine. The last week had been as event-filled as ever he wanted. Too much adventure left him craving easy predictability. With a contented lift in his regular-step Rossamund entered the lectury carrying stylus, books and lark-lamp-a small replica of a great-lamp given to all the prentices. Rossamund was intrigued by the curious way its covers folded open upon many hinges, fascinated with the down-scaled workings revealed within, which were just like those that operated the real lights of the road. He paid close attention to all that was taught, but most of the other prentices could not have given two geese about the what or how or why of a great-lamp's internal parts. Humbert noticed neither. He simply droned on.
Rossamund had quickly learned that lampsmen naturally, though unfairly, regarded seltzermen as failed lighters who only ever ventured out into the wilds with the sun, and then only when need demanded. They were appreciated, certainly-repairing the great-lamps was necessary work-but not respected. Consequently, it was with mixed gratitude that Rossamund received Mister Humbert's uncharacteristic praise when, in the face of his fellow prentices' ignorance, he speedily identified a limp, pale yellow frond the seltzerman held up as "glimbloom drying out and past saving, Mister Humbert."
"Correct!" the seltzerman returned. "How long can the glimbloom survive out of seltzer before it reaches this irrevocably parched state?"
"No more than a day, Mister Humbert."
"Well, Master Bookchild, you know what you're about with them parts." The seltzerman 1st class brightened. "It takes just this kind of nous to keep these plants working. We'll make a seltzerman out of you yet."
"Aye," Rossamund heard muttered behind him, "or maybe you'd make a good weed-keeper, Rosey?" There was the sound of soft laughter.
Rossamund did not look around.
However, Threnody did. "Better to be good for something than a good-for-nothing bustle-chaser," she hissed, unable to tell between good-natured jape or insult.
"Young lady!" Mister Humbert called long-sufferingly. "You might be the only lass at prenticing, but don't think you'll have special concession from me. Please turn around and refrain from disturbing the others." Skipping the sit-down meal at middens, Rossamund grabbed some slices of pong and hurried to Door 143 in the Low Gutter and his promised visit with Numps. The Gutter was busier on a normal day, and Rossamund had to negotiate the bustle of laborers and servants and soldiers. He entered the lantern store quietly and heard speaking: not one of the soft monologues of Numps, but the voice of a learned man.
Rossamund became very still and listened.
"… Poor old Numps wouldn't tolerate Mister Swill, eh?" the voice declared. It sounded like Doctor Crispus. He must have returned from his curative tour. "I must say I can barely compass the man myself: entirely too wily, all secrets and heavy-lidded looks and smelling of some highly questionable chemistry…"
Although he was aware that it would be proper to make his presence known to the speaker, a guilty fascination held Rossamund and he remained tense and quiet.
"… Coming with his uncertain credentials, when all the while a proper young physic might have been satisfactorily summoned from the fine physacteries of Brandenbrass or Quimperpund. A product of the clerical innovations of that Podious Whympre. Everything in triplicate and quadruplicate and quintuplicate now! One thousand times the paperwork for the most trifling things, and all requiring our Earl-Marshal's mark. How the poor fellow bears with the smother of chits and ledgers is beyond me: my own pile near wastes half my day!"
As Rossamund moved to the end of the aisle he found it was indeed Doctor Crispus, sitting on a stool and ministering to the dressings on the glimner's foot with intense concentration. He had examined Rossamund on the prentice's very first day as a lamplighter, and had had naught to do with him since. Numps was sitting meekly on a barrel waiting for the physician to finish. He looked up at Rossamund before the lad had made a sound and smiled in greeting. The physician himself had still not noticed Rossamund.
"Ah, Doctor Crispus?" the prentice tried, shuffling his feet to add emphasis.
With a start, the physician stood and quickly turned, catching at his satchel as it slid from his lap.
"I have come to help Mister Numps again," Rossamund added.
"Cuts and sutures, lad!" Crispus exclaimed with a flustered cough. "You gave me a smart surprise!" A towering, slender man-Doctor Crispus must have been the tallest fellow in the whole fortress and probably of all Sulk End and the Idlewild too-he was sartorially splendid in dark gray pinstriped silk, wearing his own snow-white hair slicked and jutting from the back of his head like a plume. He wore small spectacles the color of ale-bottles, and a sharp, intelligent glimmer in his eye boded ill for any puzzle-headed notions. "Ah, hmm…" The man composed himself. "Master Bookchild, is it not?"
"Aye, Doctor," the prentice answered with a respectful bow. "At your service, sir," he added.
"And so you have been, Master Bookchild," the physician said, clicking his heels and giving a cursory nod, "of service to me, and more so to this poor fellow here, as I understand it." He gave a single, paternal pat on Numps' shoulder.
Numps hung his head and smiled a sheepish smile.
Rossamund did not know what to say, so he simply said, "Aye, Doctor."
"See, Mister Doctor Crispus, see: Mister Rossamund has come back again and Numps has a new new old friend.They let him in, did you know? They never let my friends like him in before, did they? Maybe one day they'll let the sparrow-man in too?"
Crispus smiled ingratiatingly. "Yes, Numps, yes. I see."
Baffled but deeply gratified by this reception, Rossamund asked, "How is your foot today, Mister Numps?" The bandages seemed still tightly bound and in their right place.
"Oh, poor Numps' poor foot," Numps sighed. "It hurts, it itches. But Mister Doctor Crispus told me well stern this morn that I was to leave it be… so I leave it be." He wiggled his toes.
"And so you must." Distractedly the physician pulled a fob from his pocket. "Ah! Middens is already this ten minutes gone," he declared. "I must eat like any man jack."