knavery offices where a person can go to hire a teratologist or three or as many as are needed. Such establishments gain their name from the term "knave," that is, any person who sells services to any paying client, as opposed to a spurn, who serves a retaining lord or master. When entering a region for the first time, a teratologist may register at the local knavery to make it known that he or she is about and going on the roll offering services. In doing this monster-hunters are agreeing not to shop their skills through other neighboring knaveries or their own advertisement, thus denying the knavery its commission. The knaving-clerk will take a request from a customer and offer a selection of monster-hunters to solve the dilemma. Once the teratologist has been selected, he or she is approached with an Offer of Work, which may be accepted or rejected.Work is more steady for teratologists who use the knaving system, though they usually make less money for service rendered. THE next day, thick with rain, was an early start again. Leaving his letter with the Post-Master at Makepeace Stile, Rossamund followed Threnody as she dashed to the post-lentum waiting in the foreyard of the cothouse. Back and shoulders becoming rapidly sopped, the young lighter did his best to shield his bandaged crown with his satchel.
Traveling certificates and nativity patents approved by the officious gatemen, they passed through Makepeace to continue. Rossamund saw little of the town through the obscuring downpour, only narrow buildings with glowing, narrow windows, water spouting from the edge of every horizontal surface on to even narrower streets. A soot-grubby child no more than ten scurried from eave to eave past the slow-going lentum-a char-boy, perhaps from Gathercoal, come to serve an errand in this cleaner town. Wondering what hard labors were this small lad's lot, Rossamund caught his eye and they traded mournful glances.
Out the other side of Makepeace the road broadened and they discovered the lamps ahead had been left to shine on in the storm-dark morning. This was most certainly not good traveling weather, and the lenterman kept the pace slow for fear of skidding off the road.
The scene continued cozily pastoral: fortified farmsteads glimpsed at the end of private, tree-lined drives nestled among thickets of domesticated trees and were surrounded with fastidiously tended fields and drystone walls.
Every six lamps or so were low concrete-and-stone strongworks, squat boxes with loopholes and steps that went into the earth down to three-quarter-buried iron-bound doors. Rossamund had never seen the like, and no one at Winstermill had ever talked of such things.
The sun was one quarter along its meridian when they met a convoy of large covered drays trundling the opposite way in a long line, every one under the guard of a skold or scourge. Drawn by great trains of flanchardt-covered oxen, each bore hundredweights of finest-grade charcoal from Gathercoal, likely intended for Winstermill, High Vesting and the settlements of the southwest. It took the long end of fifteen minutes to pass the last dray.
They ate middens with stores granted from Makepeace Stile's pantry (a rind of hard, smelly Nine-cheese from Tuscanin; apples; strips of dried, river-caught fish) and Threnody went back to reading.Taking pointed notice of the book, Rossamund read the small white letters printed on its burgundy cover-The High and Illustrious Ladies of the Magna Scuthes.
"What is that book about?" he asked absently.
The girl made as if to continue reading but, after a pause, she marked her place, closed her book, laid it primly on her lap, cleared her throat and looked up. "It is about the adventures of city women and their flash swells."
"Flash swells?"
She looked owlishly at him for a moment. "The rich young men who live such fun and easy lives in the cities."
"Oh, you mean dandidawdlers." Rossamund thought of the frilly, fussy fellows he had observed making a nuisance on the streets of Boschenberg. "Is it interesting?"
"I think so, yes, though Mother doesn't like books such as these."
"Why not?"
"She says they're full of vile gossip and innuendo and she says they grossly exaggerate the successes of the protagonists without making enough of the consequences of their foolishness."
"You sound like you've had this said to you often." Rossamund gave a mild grin.
"I could recite to you all of Mother's words better than the In Columba Alat," she returned wryly.
"The In Columna what-tat?"
"In Columba Alat," Threnody explained, with uncharacteristic patience. " 'The Wings of the Dove'-it's our cantus, the rule we-I mean the Right-lives by."
"How does it go?"
"I don't know." Threnody grinned. "I've forgotten it."
"But I thought you just said you knew it well," Rossamund returned a little dumbly.
Threnody sighed long-sufferingly. "I do." She picked up the duodecimo and opened it again. "I was just making a jest," she said, and went back to reading.
"Oh." Rossamund frowned. "Sorry."
Soon after, the horses were watered at the cothouse of Sparrowstall. Blackened spikes ran in rows along every ridge-cap and gable, set there to prevent weary birds or overadventurous nickers from taking roost.
A little over two hours further and they arrived at Hinkerseigh, much larger than Makepeace, with thicker walls and higher, more numerous bastions all filled with well-tended great-guns. It was a growing town-nearly a city, its people squeezed for room; some of the less well-heeled had been forced to build beyond the safety of the town's stony curtain.The Mirthlstream flowed right into the place under the wall to drive many waterwheels of industry within as it passed through. As it was a client-city belonging to the Imperial state of Maubergonne, Hinkerseigh's taciturn gatemen were dressed in harness of orot and gules-orange and deep red.They scrutinized Rossamund and Threnody's documents cursorily and waved the lentum through.
The carriage crawled down the narrow main street, moving little faster in the midst of the cram of traffic than a town-and-country gent out on a lazy Domesday ramble. At a coach-host, the Draint Fyfer, the lentermen stopped to change teams. The broad, covered yard was thronged with public coaches and private carriages; horns hooting, sergeant-yardsmen bawling, under-yardsmen obeying, porters and box-boys and mercers scurrying. Exiting the lentum first,Threnody dashed off into the rain with little more than an "I'll be back!" and was gone before Rossamund could call after or follow.With a shrug he took a midday meal and waited alone.
The warm commons of the coach-host was as impossibly crowded as the yard without, a-press with merchants' wives and farmstead ladies, nannies and their bantling charges screeching for attention; slightly damp higglers and shysters en route to more spendthrifty places; and off-duty pediteers; all waiting for a break in the weather. It was only twenty minutes or so before Rossamund was called for by the hollering splasher boy to board the po'lent, yet it took Threnody more than an hour to return. She appeared suddenly by the carriage door, grinning broadly and quickly handing an oblong oilskin-covered something to the splasher boy.
"We'll still be in a tight bit o' hurry to make it to the next cot in time!" the driver said, louring down at her from his high seat as she climbed aboard. "So I recommend ye hang on ter something." He proved good to his promise, for no sooner had Threnody settled into her nest of furs than the lentum surged to motion.
"What were you doing?" Rossamund shouted above the noise of transit. "We've been waiting for a while…"
Threnody looked at him unrepentantly. "I always like to try a little shopping when I can."
Rain began falling so hard its rattling drum on the carriage roof made conversation impossible. Threnody raised the sash on her side to keep its splashings out, yet Rossamund left his down to see what passed and tolerated the wet. As Hinkerseigh disappeared in the fog of the deluge, the highroad narrowed.The lenterman whipped up the new horse-team's rate and kept the poor beasts at a dangerous, transom-shattering speed for several miles, slowing only occasionally to rest them. The post-lentum dashed right past Howlbolt, not even slowing for courtesy, noisily scattering a coven of ravens that had settled before the cothouse.
The valley became deeper, the Mirthlbrook drawing close by the Wormway again, broader now, its banks choked with willow, swamp oak and hawthorn, its waters rushing over and through sharp rocks and keeping pace with the lentum. The stream's opposite bank was steep, almost clifflike, tangled with dark young woods.
"That's the Owlgrave," Threnody shouted above the roar of the rain and road. "It's said that monsters like to go there to die when they are mortal-hurt or sick of the world."