13
AN UNANSWERED QUESTION
caladines also aleteins, solitarines or
just solitaires; calendars who travel long and far from their clave
spreading the work of good-doing and protection for the
undermonied. The most fanatical of their sisters, caladines are
typically the most colorfully mottled and strangely clothed of the
calendars, wearing elaborate dandicombs of horns or hevenhulls
(inordinately high thrice-highs) or henins and so on. They too will
mark themselves with outlandish spoors often imitating the patterns
of the more unusual creatures that their wide-faring ways may have
brought onto their path.
BY the new week all manner of teratologists
began to fetch up at Winstermill, braving the unfriendly traveling
weather for the prospect of reward—an Imperial declaration
always held the promise of sous at the end. There were
skolds and scourges, fulgars and wits, pistoleers and gangs of
filibusters and other pugnators. Some appeared alone, others
brought their factotums, and a few swaggerers were served by a
whole staff of cogs—clerks and secretaries and other fiddlers of
details.There came too the learned folk: habilists and natural
philosophers, with their pensive expressions and chests of books.
Even peltrymen—trappers and fur traders—answered the call.
Bloodless and severe, they arrived from all the wooded nooks, lured
from their own perilous labors by the lucrative promises. Every one
of these opportunists and sell-swords would come there by foot, by
post-lentum, by hired caboose, by private carriage, and stay for a
moment and no more than a night, just long enough to gain a
precious Writ of the Course. This Imperial document was a guarantee
of payment that gave the bearer the right to claim head-money for
the slaughter of bogles.
With all these came the usual motley crowd of
hucilluctors, fabulists, cantebanks and clowns, pollcarries,
brocanders selling their secondhand proofing, even wandering
punctographists. Peregrinating, posturing upstarts were coming and
going and milling about the manse, some foolishly camping near the
foot of the fortress on the drier parts of the Harrowmath. More a
nuisance than a novelty, they soon found themselves firmly
encouraged to shuffle on to other places.
Yet it was among the teratologists, of course, that
Rossamünd discovered the most unusual folk of all. Once in a while
there arrived a person dressed in the likeness of an animal or
bird, or monster even; and wherever these animal-costumed folk went
and whatever they did, they went and did in dance. He recognized
something of their prancings in the two calendars who had fought in
the Briarywood. At limes, between fodicar drill and evolutions, a
pair of these slowly spinning, skipping teratologists danced
through the gates on foot, costumed as cruel blackbirds.
“What are they, Threnody?” Rossamünd stared at
these, fascinated.
She looked at him as if he were the dumbest boy on
watch. “Sagaars, of course!” she answered contemptuously.
Rossamünd stayed dumb.
Threnody narrowed her eyes and wagged her head.
“With all those pamphlets you read one would think you’d be
sharper, lamp boy,” she continued with a huff. “Sagaars live to be
dancing all the day long—some even try it in their sleep—and while
they dance they kill the nickers with venomous theromoirs. Several
serve my mother and the Right.”
“Like Pannette and Pandomë?”
Threnody hesitated, closing her eyes. “Yes,” she
whispered, “like Pannette and Pandomë.”
As these pugnators pranced proud and upset much of
the manse’s rhythm, the little varying schedule of prentice life
remained. So it went, day come and day go, till Rossamünd was sure
the whole of the east must be squeezed full with the
monster-wrecking bravoes. As opportunity allowed, he would
carefully and keenly review the arrivals, hoping—daring not to
admit he hoped—to spy a flash of a deep scarlet frock coat with
flaring hems. He could not rightly say why he was so keen to see
Europe: he had known her only for the short side of a week, and she
was the epitome of deeds he found very hard to reconcile.
Regardless, he missed her.Yet with such frequency of arrivings and
leavings, such a plenitude of lahzars, Europe, the Branden Rose,
was never among them.
By the middle of the week something finally did
break the prentices’ routine. The morning was clear and achingly
cold; the cerulean sky flat, brilliant, puffed all over with clean
white fists of cloud rushed northwest by a whipping wind that was
bringing fouler weather with it. The prentices were out and
swinging their fodicars about in a tidy and orderly manner,
postilion horn-calls an irregular, intermittent music.
Teratologists and their attendant gaggles had been steadily coming
and going all day. Some would take a turn on the borders of the
Grand Mead as they waited for connecting posts or the resolving of
kinks of paperwork.
It was limes, and the prentices were formed up and
formally sucking on their bitter lemon rinds and sipping tinctured
small beer while Grindrod watched to make sure they swallowed it
all. This would normally be the time that a quarto would be
returning from lighting, had the prentice-watches not been
suspended. Rossamünd was considering paying a call on Numps at
middens when Benedict marched on to the ground.
The under-sergeant muttered for a moment with
Grindrod, then summoned Rossamünd out of file, to the surprise of
all the lantern-sticks. Benedict wore an odd expression—somewhere
between bemusement and admiration—as he took the young prentice
aside. “You have an eminent visitor, prentice-lighter, and have
been granted the time to spend with them,” he said officiously,
adding in a friendly undertone, “and might I say you keep some odd
and powerful company, lad.”
“Who—” Yet before Rossamünd could finish asking he
smelled a welcome, well-known perfume drift past. Heart pounding,
he spun about. There, in all her healthy bloom, was Europe, the
Branden Rose, the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes, the one who had
saved him from a foul end, the one he himself had rescued.
“Well hello, little man,” she said in her silken
voice, smiling, amused, maybe even happy to see him. “Still
fumbling your way through, I see.”
“Hello, Miss Europe.” He could barely manage a
hoarse wheeze. It was such a strange sensation to see her familiar
face in these now familiar precincts. Her hair was pinned up but
without the usual crow’s-claw hair-tine; her deep scarlet frock
coat was of another style, made from some kind of short-cropped
hide—like the head of a new-barbered lighter—its glossy reds
shifting and mottled. Over this she wore a short black pollern-coat
with broad collars and sleeves of creamy-hued fur that was faintly
spangled at its cuffs with darker spots. Her black boots were
trimmed with fur, which made a fuzzy hem at the top of each boot
and protruded between the buckles up the sides. This was Europe
rugged against the cold.
Rossamünd did not know what to do with himself:
some of him wanted to throw his arms about her in sheer delight.
The significant part—that part which governs in the end what we
really do rather than what we wish we might—was afraid. So he just
stood and stared. “You’ve come,” he managed.
EUROPE
The fulgar raised an amused eyebrow. “So it would
appear. I have come to knave myself to these kind lamplighters and
the citizens of the Placidia Solitus, in so desperate straits they
send their pleading bills all the way south to Sinster.” Her face
was straight but her voice amused. “What’s a kind-winded girl to do
when such plaintive notes are sung?” She was in finer fettle than
of their last parting, rosy-cheeked with a shrewd twinkle in her
eye. The surgeons of Sinster must have done their infamous work
well. “Tell me, little man . . .” Europe leaned forward a little.
“Why did you not write me? Did you not miss me?”
“I thought you would be too busy to read any letter
of mine, Miss Europe,” Rossamünd answered.
“Why, I do believe he blushes!” Europe laughed.
“That young lady certainly watches us keenly,” she said, shifting
subjects. “She knows you?”
Rossamünd looked and saw Threnody standing alone on
Evolution Green, the other prentices gone now, dismissed for
readings. Her arms folded and her face shadowed under the brim of
her thrice-high, she was clearly paying Europe and Rossamünd
pointed attention.
“Aye, Miss Europe, that’s Threnody. She’s a
prentice like me.” Rossamünd attempted a small wave.
Threnody flushed, turned on her heel and marched
away without a rearward look.
“A girl as a lighter—how intriguing. I think she
might have set her heart on you, little man.”
Rossamünd blushed deeper shades. “Hardly, miss!
She’s never happy with anything I say and spends most of her time
either ignoring me or huffing and puffing and rolling her eyes.
Besides which, she’s older—”
Europe gave a loud peal of honest mirth. “My,
my!”
At the start of the Cypress Walk, Threnody turned
to the happy, incongruous sound, and Rossamünd was sure she
glowered.
Touching the corners of her eyes, the fulgar asked
with a smile still in her voice, “And how did she find her way here
to vex you so?”
“She was a calendar before, but she has come here
to get away from her mother.”
Europe gave a wry smile. “I know how she feels,”
the fulgar murmured. “Mothers are best fled . . . Now come along,
little man, I have been granted the rest of the day with you by
your kindly Marshal. Let us get out of this cold.” She handed him a
small, beautifully wrapped parcel. “It is just as well I brought
this trifle for you.Your neck is bluer than a wren’s.”
Within the gaudy, fashionably spotted package was a
magenta-red scarf made with fine twine.
“It’s tinctured sabine,” the fulgar explained
airily. “You can only get it from this one little fellow on the
high-walks in Flint. It looks good on you—matches prettily with the
harness.”
Rossamünd was happily dumbfounded. Europe wanted to
spend the day with him and she had given him a present. When
they had last parted company she had not said a word in final
farewell, nor even waved good-bye. Yet here she was seeking his
company. He felt rather odd following the fulgar with a present
under his arm. Heads turned as she led him down along the drive and
through the coach yard: lentermen, postilions and yardsmen gazed,
distracted, habitually disapproving of her trade but heartily
admiring her face and grace.
“I have sent the landaulet back to Brandenbrass.”
She chatted easily, oblivious to the stir she was causing. “It was
too much trouble to find both horse and driver at once. It
will be a relief not to have to fuss about stabling and repairs and
thrown shoes. Let another worry about that . . .”
She led him up a steep flight of stairs to the
guest billets. Like a small wayhouse, it lacked a common room but
had private rooms in its stead, and secluded dinner rooms as well
as a lounge for guests to receive guests of their own. This last
was Europe’s destination, a small, warm apartment with comfortable
chairs along each wall, thin windows looking out to the business of
coach yard and Mead below. A well-fueled fire crackled in the
friendliest of ways in the corner.
Summoning refreshments, the Branden Rose took off
her pollern and sat on a long tandem chair, stretching out like a
man, her back slouching, long legs crossed over at the
ankles.
“So how is the life of a lamplighter turning
for you?” she inquired complacently. “Still as adventurous as that
pawky postman made it out to be?”
Perching himself on the edge of the settee adjacent
to the reclining fulgar, Rossamünd put his hat beside him as his
eyes roamed the room. “It has been mostly come and go and march and
stop, Miss Europe, and very little time for reading or thinking.
But in the last couple of weeks there have been two theroscades. I
have also met a glimner called Mister Numps and delivered a pig’s
head to our surgeon for the Snooks.”
Europe fixed him with her sharp hazel gaze. “Tell
me of these monsters attacking.”
Refreshments arrived in the hands of a bobbing
porter and Europe ordered food for the two of them. As they waited
Rossamünd recounted the two theroscades, starting with the horn-ed
nickers assaulting the carriage and the deeds of the calendars.
“That is when Threnody joined us.”
“The girl lampsman who was so fascinated earlier?”
Europe asked, oh so casually. “She is a wit?”
“Aye, and she’s the daughter of the calendars’
august.”
“My. How very impressive. The Lady Vey’s progeny is
a wit, a calendar and a lamplighter?”
Rossamünd ignored the sarcasm. “You know of her
mother?”
“We have had occasion to meet, yes.” The fulgar
raised her hand as if to say that was all she would tell.
Heeding this, Rossamünd pressed on with an account
of the flight from the Herdebog Trought and Bellicos’ death, still
so large in his memory. His telling was briefer, more
subdued.
Europe sat a little straighter. “It is a . . .
difficult thing to lose one you know to the wickedness of some
unworthy nickery basket,” she said softly. “Do you wish you had
become my factotum after all?”
“I’ve wished a lot of things since being here, Miss
Europe,” Rossamünd demurred, “but I am signed to serve as a
lamplighter now and have been given the Emperor’s Billion and
all.”
“So you choose to be stuck on one stretch of road
for the rest of your days? What a waste.”
The two of them looked at each other for a long
moment until Rossamünd dropped his gaze. “I don’t want a life of
violence,” he said.
“You’re living one now!” the fulgar retorted. “I
tell you, child, this life is nothing but violence—even if you do
not seek it, others will bring it to you.” She leaned forward and
fixed him with a terrible eye. “Do not make the mistake, Rossamünd,
of living easy behind the feats of others and all the while
thinking yourself better for not joining the slaughter.”
Cheeks burning from her rebuke, Rossamünd shrank
back, confronted with how little he knew of this pugnacious
woman.
“How can we not be violent when violence breeds in
the very mud and makes monsters of us all?” Europe persisted. “Stay
here and you will be fighting just as you have been, always
fighting: if not with nickers then with men.What did you think a
life of adventure was?” She smiled condescendingly. “It is a
life of violence. Come with me, and at least your foe will be
clear.”
“Not all monsters are our enemies,”
Rossamünd insisted doggedly.
Europe regarded him with an unfathomable
expression. “Truly?” she said eventually. “You might want to shift
yourself to Cloudeslee if you insist on spouting talk like that.
Sedorners get short shrift in the Emperor’s countries.”
“But what about that poor Misbegotten Schrewd? He
was just simple, not wicked, yet you killed him all the same. And
you wanted to slay Freckle when he had helped me. I could never
join you in that!”
Europe sat back, her gaze dangerously glassy, a
threat in her tone. “Next you’ll be telling me those triply undone
blightlings were right for killing my dear Licurius.”
“No!” he said quickly, eyes wide with horror. “I
would never say that!”
There was a strained silence.
Europe sipped at a glass of deep red toscanelle and
looked away. “You are a small and ignorant urbanite; once you have
lived and watched and been forced to such things as I have you will
not be so simple-headed.”
Rossamünd could not collect his thoughts
sufficiently to answer. He was right but so was she, though he
wished she was not. Mercifully they were interrupted by the arrival
of meals.
For a time they ate and did not speak.
“Little man,” Europe finally offered between bites,
“tell me of this pig’s head and that Snooks fellow, the
surgeon.”
“Oh, the Snooks is not the surgeon, that’s Grotius
Swill—”
Europe stopped eating. “Did you just say Swill?
Honorius Ludius Grotius Swill?”
“Aye.” The young prentice stopped his chewing
too.
“Hmm. I have heard of the man,” the fulgar said
gravely. “He has an evil reputation in Later Sinster.What has he
done to you?”
“Naught! I only took up the guts and head of a pig
to him,” Rossamünd explained, and told of the attic surgery and the
books and the flayed skin. “What is his reputation?”
“I heard that the fellow was caught dabbling in the
darker habilisms and had traffic with folks all but the most
scurrilous butchers avoid. Rumor is a poor transmitter of truth,
but it was said that the Soratchë were becoming increasingly
curious about his exertions.”
Rossamünd frowned at this revelation. “The who,
miss?”
“The Soratchë: they are a loose confederacy of
those do-good calendar-kind keen on foiling massacars.”
“Is Swill a massacar, then?” Rossamünd gasped. “We
should tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!”
Europe raised a calming hand. “There was much
conjecture in Later Sinster, but nothing proved. I am sure your
kindly old Earl has things well in view. In such a tight place as
this fortress, genuinely nefarious deeds would be hard to
hide.”
Aye, but what if the fortress is not as tight as
it should be? Rossamünd wondered. Even he could tell the manse
was creeping to disarray in the failing grip of the overworked
marshal-lighter, a punctilious clerk-master and men so stretched
that there were none left to plug the breaches. Rossamünd shifted
his thoughts. “Miss Europe?”
“Yes, little man?” the fulgar replied absently,
taking out and chewing on a little rock salt.
“What was it like going to Sinster?” he asked.
“What did you do there?”
Europe cocked her head and looked to him, a wry,
energetic twinkle in her eye. “The journey was brief,” she said. “I
left High Vesting the same day as you; took a fast packet down to
Flint—where the doughty crew discouraged a curious sea-nicker with
their fine gunnery and well-aimed lambasts. Then a barge up the
Ichabod and I was under the transmogrifer’s catlin not more than
two weeks after I first met you.”
“You saw a sea-nicker, miss?” Rossamünd’s
imagination ran with the image of a ram firing its broadside at
some enormous, marauding, eel-like thing with spines and needle
teeth. He had never seen a sea-nicker or a kraulschwimmen, nor any
such creature—not for real—just poorly executed etchings in his
pamphlets.
“I actually saw very little of it but for a great
amount of splashing and some distant screaming,” the fulgar
answered. “I was directed to the seating deck soon after it
appeared. It was a close-run thing for a time, but the fast packet
was truly that and we outran the beast in the end. A good thing,
for I do not think I would have been much help had the thing won
its way aboard us. Even if I had been at my best, the puddles and
splashes on deck would have taken my arcs to places they were not
intended.”
“Did the surgeon mend you?” Rossamünd
pressed.
“Yes, he did.” Europe straightened, rubbing her arm
as if it ached. “I feel greatly improved. He told me to keep to my
treacle and it will be less likely for my organs to vaoriate in
future as they did that night in the Brindleshaws.” Bitterness
returned briefly to her countenance.
“Vaoriate, miss?”
The horn of a post-lentum sounded, dulled by wall
and window.
“Spasm,” she said distractedly.
There was a hasty knock at the door. It opened and
a porter put his head inside. “The post’s ready, m’lady. Do ye need
yer bags lumbered out?”
Europe nodded and handed him a chit so he might
retrieve her luggage from a stowage closet below.
“Listen, Rossamünd, I am leaving on the last post
today. I would sooner have you with me than not—your flair for a
good treacle is hard to forgo.Yet as you say, you have taken the
Emperor’s Billion and a solemn oath on the day of joining. Imperial
Service is not something that can be put on then off again like
some ill-tailored jackcoat. If you proved faithless in this, then
what trust could a girl put in you?” she said slowly, with
deliberate calm. She stared at the floor, lips pressed thin.
“However, I wonder if you young prentices should not first be
schooled in the rotten core of the Empire you serve before being
offered a shiny Emperor’s Billion.”
“A rotten core, Miss Europe?”
“Ask your Marshal, little man—he is more recently
schooled in Imperial machinations than I. Such things I escaped a
long time ago.” She paced out of the room without a rearward
glance.
Down in the foreparts of the coach yard, the
Branden Rose mounted the lentum ready to depart for the Idlewild
and the mysteries of the east. Standing on the highest step, she
stared darkly for a time at the spandarion rumpling in the fitful
wind that moved above the battlements, and at the house-watch that
moved along them.
Below, waiting, Rossamünd watched her
silently.
“I go to do my usual labors—find a nicker, kill a
nicker,” said Europe finally by way of farewell. “I may be
wintering at the Brisking Cat on the highroad at the Sourspan
Bridge. If you wish to write me, send to there and I shall get it
either way.”
“I will,” the prentice answered. There was a pause.
He wanted to say that he sometimes regretted not taking up her
repeated offer of work, yet could not think how. Moreover, after
his refusals such sentiments seemed a little late and a little
foolish. Either way, he could never willingly accept a living made
through a perpetual, thoughtless slaughter of bogles.
Europe peered at him knowingly.
“Do not be troubled, little man,” she said finally.
“The last word is yet to be said on your service: just because you
begin along one way does not mean it will be your end. Go back
inside, Rossamünd. I will wait for thee, if thou wouldst come with
me. Go back to your lampsmen chums,” she said as she entered the
carriage. “And stay well clear of that Swill fellow.” The lentum
door was shut with an impatient bang by the splasher boy.
“Good-bye, Miss Europe,” Rossamünd called to
her.
With a brash hoot of its horn the post-lentum was
whipped on and took the Branden Rose—still without a factotum—out
of Winstermill. As suddenly as she had arrived, so she left.
Watching her depart, Rossamünd was caught in a
collision of many emotions, but above them all he felt as if he had
been left behind.