12

PUNCTINGS AND POSTERS
graille(s) tools of a punctographist. A
marker needs four particular utensils to make a cruorpunxis upon
the skin: the guillion—also called an acuse or zechnennadel—the
needle dipped in cruor and then pricked into the skin; the orbis—in
full, orbis malleus, a disc-headed mallet with which the guillion
is tapped to puncture the skin and leave a mark; the sprither—the
device used to extract the blood from a monster in the first place;
the bruicle—the container in which cruor is kept till needed and
into which the guillion is dipped every twenty taps or so to
refresh the blood. Other tools necessary to a punctographist are a
notebook and stylus to take a likeness of the fallen monster’s face
(either by description or by the presence of a corpse—or the head
at least). From this the design of the mark is then figured,
usually in consultation with the “markee.”
THAT night after mains the prentices
gleefully attended the evenstalls puncting, happy to have something
to celebrate.Waiting for the officers and other senior ranks to
enter before them, the lantern-sticks formed up along the low fence
that hedged the Dead Patch, where the corpses of the first common
lighters and pediteers had been buried into the very foundations,
feetfirst to conserve room. There they waited dutifully as the
higher ranked—dazzling in the polish of their uniforms—entered the
hall.The Dead Patch always made Rossamünd fretful; he associated
graveyards with the dark trades and, after his experience in the
hold of the Hogshead, with rever-men too. It was just as
well the Dead Patch was properly lit, for this helped a little with
the prickling terrors that crept under his scalp and down his neck.
He shivered at thoughts of boat-holds and foul things snatching
from the dark.
“Be still!” Threnody complained alongside
him.
“Be still yourself,” Rossamünd spat back, under
breath, with a rapid glance in Grindrod’s direction. Despite
himself, Rossamünd was growing weary of Threnody’s fractious
manners. On his other side he felt Wrangle shift minutely and dart
a worried, warning look at them both.
Threnody stared hard at him from the corner of her
eye. “What’s your trouble, lamp boy? Missing your old nursery
maid?”
“Shh!” Onion Mole hissed over his shoulder.
“Shh yourself, dolt,” she hissed in turn.
There was never any talking when the prentices were
in line, but if Rossamünd did not say something she might go on and
on at him. “Clamp it,Threnody, or we’ll all get pots-and-pans! For
you prenticing might be just to get away from your mother, but for
me it’s my life.”
Threnody went pale and did not say another
word.
Rossamünd was grateful when he and his fellows were
finally ordered inside, making their solemn way over the
ledger-stones of long past heroes that paved the path to the Hall
of Pageants.
Within was a small oblong amphitheater. On three
sides tiered stalls of seats rose about a rectangular floor.
Displayed grandly at the farther end of the amphitheater were the
mighty antlers of the Herdebog Trought, each one lustrous black and
as long as two tall men lying end-on-end. The monstrous trophy had
been stood upright in a makeshift frame, the violent curves of both
antlers spreading out over the stalls from one side of the hall to
the other. Removed from the Trought’s corpse with sectitheres, the
horns had required a whole platoon of peoneers to bring them into
the hall. Rossamünd had faced the Trought upon the road and seen
its great size firsthand, but the dimensions of its antlers
astounded him.The rancid musk of the monster was in them, tainting
the air thickly, and he could see the damage from Threnody’s or
Sebastipole’s shooting: an obvious pale gouge in the glossy black
velvet. The strong smell brought up unwelcome confusions. He
wondered sadly how long the creature had walked the world before
the ambitions of men had interrupted its ancient existence.
Before the antlers were two chairs and a small desk
arrayed with odd-looking tools.
The Hall of Pageants was filled to standing room,
everyone decked in their best and cleanest. The greater ranks sat
in the lowest, most padded and plush pews. At the very back on the
highest, farthest, least comfortable benches, the prentices took
their place. Troubardiers stood along the wall partly silhouetted
against the long, thin windows that showed the last blood-orange
glow of sunset against a turbid cloud bank rolling north in a
close, blue sky.
“Stand fast!” came the cry, and the room stood to
attention, hats off indoors and respectfully in hand. The
Lamplighter-Marshal and the Master-of-Clerks and all those of
eminence filed from some hidden ingress and took their easy seats
in the frontmost rows. They sat and the rest of the room followed.
The baritone buzz of quiet eagerness resumed till two men stepped
on to the floor and strode conspicuously to the chairs.
Quiet reigned again.
Bemused, Rossamünd knew the first man to be
Nullifus Drawk, skold and punctographist.The other was
Sebastipole.
Both men bowed to the Lamplighter-Marshal and the
senior officers.
Rossamünd could not imagine the leer and
lamplighter’s agent as the stripe of person who would actually want
a monster-blood tattoo. It shocked him to see Sebastipole standing
before his comrades calmly rolling up his shirt’s white sleeve,
waiting to be marked. Rossamünd thought he glimpsed at least one
other cruorpunxis showing from under the rolled cloth.
As Sebastipole sat, Nullifus Drawk addressed the
room, crying, “Officers, lighters, foot soldiers, clerks! It has
been decided that Josclin and Sebastipole do share the distinction
of slaying the mighty Herdebog Trought, that the falseman’s aim did
play its part as much as the scourge’s potives.Yet as our brother
Josclin is lying broken but well mending in the infirmary, it will
be, as you can see, our goodly agent Sebastipole who will gain his
prize tonight.”
Nullifus Drawk took up a guillion needle and a
small disc-headed orbis. Dipping the point of the guillion into a
beaker of the Trought’s cruor, he referred to a small notebook that
lay open on the table and found his place on Sebastipole’s bare
arm. There he began to gently yet rapidly strike the broad, blunt
end of the needle, tap tap tap. The hall was profoundly
silent as each observer savored the marking of yet another victory
over the monstrous foe.
Fixated yet appalled, Rossamünd was convinced that
Sebastipole was not enjoying this spectacle. He was certain that,
as when he put on his sthenicon, the leer found the puncting
distasteful. Yet truly, disappointingly, Rossamünd knew it could
not be so. “Like chasing after Phoebë,” Verline would have
said—wishing after impossible things: a leer’s job was to
seek, to find and, inevitably, to join in the killing of monsters.
Could he be what Rossamünd considered a good man and still do this?
Could a man be wrong for doing what he thought was right?
Threnody showed sympathy neither for the monster
nor the men. By his other side his six watch-mates gingered their
bandages beneath their coats, impatient for the punxis to be healed
and tattoos ready to show away.
Tap tap tap. Drawk hammered lightly with his
guillion, dipping frequently into the cruor dabbing at the stippled
place on Sebastipole’s arm with thick pledgets. The leer sat stiff
and still, never flinching. For a week or two the mark would be
invisible other than a suppurating scab, which would finally slough
off and reveal the craftily formed image. And so they all watched
till the honor was done, then gave a rousing cheer.

NULLIFUS DRAWK
Stepping regular at the rear of the file, Rossamünd
was grateful to leave the closeness of the Hall of Pageants, which
was almost toxic with the exhalations of a crowd and the heavy musk
of monster. Breathing deeply of the clean frosty night, he resolved
never to see another puncting as long as his days had span.
Dismissed, Rossamünd hurried with the other
prentices past the Dead Patch, some of them distracted by a
collection of lighters, pediteers and laborers gathering around a
tree by the lamp at the top of the Postern Stair.
Threnody pulled at his arm, their earlier conflict
clearly forgotten. “Come,” she said as she dragged him toward the
inquisitive group.
Rossamünd resisted. “It’ll be douse-lamps any
minute. We have to go to our cells.”
“By the dove’s wings! Something interesting in this
regulation-strangled den of boredom and you want to go
night-nights?” She yanked at his sleeve and pulled him over to the
tree. This trunk was a common place for public messages to be
fixed, and against the tatters of older bills, rotten and moldy and
mostly illegible, a large new bill had been posted. Taking the risk
of being late, Rossamünd squeezed between the lampsmen and
pediteers and their muttered complaints and stood with Threnody
before the proclamation. It read:

“Elsegood brought this’un up from the Nook,” said
Assimus to his colleague and the world in general. “Bills just like
this here one are all about the Sulk End and the Idlewild, he says,
even down in Winstermill and maybe over the Gizzard in Brandenbrass
and Fayelillian and even down in Doggenbrass.”
“Aye,” coughed an old corporal-of-musketeers,
“inviting all manner of violent, adventurous foringers to the
manse—to our home.” The man looked the type to consider
anyone not from Winstermill a “foringer.”
“There’s another one of these just been handed
about the officers’ mess,” growled a haubardier. “We can
handle the baskets. Don’t need no outside hesistance, thanks all
the same. The Marshal’ll keep it all in hand.”
“So ye say, Turbidius,” countered the corporal,
“but ye have to give that it’s been a cram-full of theroscades
unchecked these last couple o’ years, particularly this year, and
most particularly this winter.The Marshal ain’t kept that all in
hand—it be his name on the bill, bain’t it? He’s the one admitting
to needing help.”
Assimus ground his teeth. “And if ye was
buried under a mountain of paper and chits such as our
Lamplighter-Marshal be these few years, then I beg to suggest ye
might be needing some help too!”
Rossamünd was, more than anything, boggled at the
idea of the manse full of teratologists in all their weird gaudery.
As people moved on to their business, a notion dawned on him.
Maybe Europe will be coming? Reading the bill closely, he
did not doubt that her “thew” would be sturdy enough, though he
wondered if her “repute” might be fine enough. She would have been
finished in Sinster by now, surely. The thought of her returning
into his life made Rossamünd feel strange. He was apprehensive yet
oddly hopeful.
“I don’t know why the Emperor don’t send us some
more lighters from them kinder highroads like what’s down in the
Patricine—like the Conduit Axium or the Bridle,” continued the
corporal.
“Aye, or reinforce us with a battalion o’
musketeers or such,” some other voice put in. “He’s got more’n
enough to spare with all his armies up in the Seat and down in the
Alternats.”
“Aye, well, the Emperor’s too busy using them same
musketeers to fight with our hereward neighbors and has none to
spare us in our troubles.”
Rossamünd had some notion of the wars being fought
to the west of the Empire with the princes of Sebastian and the
landgraves of Stanislaus and Wencleslaus. This was an age-old
struggle with the sedorner-kings that lived just beyond the grasp
of the Haacobin Dynasty, accused of traffic with the monsters and
worthy of annihilation. Centuries had gone and still these realms
had refused to be subdued.
“Ye’d think our most Serene Highness might reckon
it more important to fight the nickers nigh on his doorstep,” that
other voice put in.
“Aye, and ye’d think it wouldn’t be much use
conquerin’ some other folks for loving the nickers when your own
home is overrun with ’em!” the corporal concluded. “Don’t he know
how tough we’ve got it?”
With a corporate grumble of agreement people
retired for the night.
“Listen to them mew about how hard it has been!
What do they know?” Threnody growled as the crowd thinned. “My
sisters have been stretched to exhaustion for years defending the
people. These grot-headed lightermen don’t know to recognize an
ally when they’ve got one!”
Close by a sparrow flitted through the dark from
one withered conifer to the next, disappearing into the foliage to
twitter from its covert. With a last sharp tweet, it burst out and
dashed away, followed by its mate, going southeast up across the
roofs of the Low Gutter to disappear over the wall.
“Those things are uncommonly active of a
nighttime,” Threnody remarked. “Maybe they’re watchers for the Duke
of Sparrows . . .”
Rossamünd started. How does she know of the Duke
of Sparrows? He turned to stare where the bird had flown to
hide his surprise. Were they truly being watched? “How can you know
that?” he asked.
“I have heard Dolours say an urchin-lord dwells in
the Sparrow Downs,” the girl said smugly, clearly pleased to get a
reaction out of him. “The Duke of Sparrows, who she says watches
over things and keeps other bogles at bay.”
“What would the Duke of Sparrows have to watch in
here?” Rossamünd marveled aloud, his sense of the lay of things
shifting profoundly.
“Who can know?” Threnody replied dismissively. “We
can’t even be certain such a creature exists. Oh, never-you-mind,
lamp boy. Dolours is often quietly telling me things like that:
enough to make some people cry Sedorner!” She finished with
an untoward shout.
Rossamünd looked about in fright.
“But I’m not one of those mindless folk,” Threnody
concluded, “whatever Mother might insist.”
“Is that why Dolours did not kill the Trought?”
Rossamünd said in the smallest whisper.
With a start, Threnody stared at him. “What do you
mean, lamp boy?” she demanded.
“I—I would have reckoned she could slay it with one
thought, but she just seemed to drive it away—”
“How would you know what the Lady Dolours
can and can’t do?” Threnody stood tall and arrogant.
“Well—I—”
“Bookchild! Vey!” demanded Benedict from the step
of the Sally. “Inside at the double! Get to confinations afore the
lamplighter-sergeant sees you!”
I hope the Duke of Sparrows does
exist, thought Rossamünd as he obeyed the under-sergeant.
The notion of a benevolent monster-lord out there seeking to help
humans and not harm them was almost too good to be possible.