“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.

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.