“Blight your eyes, boy!” the clerk-master almost shrieked, pale and breathing hard from the fright. “You were nigh on the end of me! Where have you come from? How did you get here? Where did you get that running gash upon your crown?”

“A rever-man below us, sir! A rever-man in the tunnels underneath!”

“A ‘rever-man’? What do you mean?” the clerk-master snapped, recovering his composure and sitting again on his seat at the long table that dominated the room.The man was without his gorgeous wig, looking slightly ridiculous, his head bound with cloth and showing tufts of cropped wiry hair.

Rossamünd could not believe the man did not know what a rever-man was. “A revenant, sir! A gudgeon!”

“Nonsense, child! Utter fiddle-faddle!” The Master-of-Clerks flicked his hand in angry dismissal.

Laudibus Pile appeared as if from nowhere. “What is the trouble, sir?” he purred with his oily voice, his disturbing eyes narrow and calculating as he saw Rossamünd standing where he should never have been.

Looking about in a daze, Rossamünd began to realize he was actually in the Master-of-Clerks’ private file. He had been here just once before. “Mister Pile!” he effused, unaware that he had just cut across his superior. “I fought a rever-man down in the tunnels of old Winstreslewe!”

“The boy has a wound to the head. He is delirious! He forgets himself! Send for Surgeon Swill,” Podious Whympre seemed to demand of the air itself.

Rossamünd felt at his head. His hat was gone, lost somewhere in the horrid under-dark. His hand came away bloody. “I am not delirious.” He frowned at the red. “I fought a gudgeon!” He could not understand the resistance, the lack of action.

“I do not know what you are jabbering about, child, but I would recommend you lower your volume and mend your manner,” the Master-of-Clerks ordered with a dangerous look. “You are in thick enough without adding insubordination to your troubles!”

Feeling equal parts perplexity and fright, Rossamünd obeyed.

All the while Pile had been shrewdly examining the young prentice. He now bent to murmur into the Master-of-Clerks’ ear.

Exposed, the prentice held the leer’s gaze regardless. He had no lies to hide.

“I see,” said Whympre at the leer’s secret words. “Well, young prentice, show us this—this rever-man.” He spoke the word as if it were a vulgar thing. “Take us to where you think you found such an unlikely creature.”

Rossamünd turned to go back down. He did not want to return to the benighted maze beneath but was eager to prove what he had been through. It was then he realized he did not know how to return to the scene of violence, so keen had he been on getting out. Some of his lefts had become rights in the end, and there was no telling precisely which and when. He hesitated.

Surgeon Swill arrived in the enormous room and all notions of going below were subordinated as, with an intently professional expression, he examined Rossamünd’s hurts. “This is a nasty blow,” he declared after a silent observation of the young prentice’s head. “The boy must surely be in a daze. How did you get the wound? Knock your cranium on a doorpost or the like, yes?”

“No, sir, the basket did this to me!” he said, watching nervously as the surgeon reached into a sinister-looking case.

“He persists with this daft notion of a monster in the cellars,” the Master-of-Clerks said with strange, affected sympathy. “Poor, foolish child.”

“Indeed. Clearly dazed,” Swill insisted, producing a bandage. “Such an injury can make one believe he sees all kinds of phantasms. Bed rest and a callic draught are the best for you, young lantern-stick. Let this be a lesson to you not to be dashing about after douse-lanterns!”

Callic draughts were for drowsing the mentally infirm—Rossamünd knew his potives too well. He did not want an addled, forgetful sleep. He wanted to tell the horrible news that the unthinkable had happened: that a monster had been found inside Winstermill. As he submitted to the bandage being wrapped about his crown, Rossamünd was keenly aware of the unsympathetic gazes upon him. “I have to tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!” he insisted.

“And so you shall,” said Whympre, “and illuminate him and me both as to your illegal surveyings and nocturnal invasions. I warn you though, child, your chatter about buried bogles will not wash with him either. The only event for which we have proof unavoidable is your trespass in my rooms.”

“Mister Sebastipole will confirm I tell the truth, sir,” Rossamünd said obstinately with an angry glance at Pile.

The falseman gave Rossamünd a cold, almost venomous look.

The Master-of-Clerks and the falseman and the surgeon exchanged the merest hint of a pointed glance.

Whympre declared firmly, “Well then, it’s off to the Marshal we go, prentice. He will not be pleased, for he is always busy with his papers. Batterstyx!” he called to the air. “Batterstyx! My perruque!” An aged private man appeared from some other door bearing the clerk-master’s lustrous black wig. Once it was fitted to the great man’s satisfaction, the Master-of-Clerks strode forth. “Come along!”

Rossamünd was marched through the perpendicular geometry of the manse. Accompanied by the three men, he was taken from the far back corner to somewhere near the front, where the Lamplighter-Marshal’s duty room was found. Pile knocked for them and they waited.

Presently this port sprang open and Inkwill emerged, looking overworked. “Master-of-Clerks,” the registry clerk said, managing a wry smile. “What troublesome punctilio troubles you now, sir?”

Whympre sniffed as if to indicate Inkwill was beneath his notice. “We have a disturbing breach of security to relay to the Marshal. Go tell this to him.”

Why not just tell him of the rever-man? Rossamünd thought angrily. He knew there were forms to follow, but in a circumstance such as this, surely they could be put aside?

“Aye, sir.” The registry clerk nodded, his eyes going a little wide at the bandage about Rossamünd’s head.

The door closed, there was a wait; it opened again and Inkwill reappeared to gesture the four through.The anteclave was empty of its usual crowd of the Marshal’s secretaries and assisting clerks, yet many piles of paper remained. Even to Rossamünd—for whom these countless documents had no relevance—such a mass of paper gave the room a feeling of nagging, insurmountable and never-ending labor. Inkwill guided him through the thin lane between desks.

“Stay here, prentice,” the Master-of-Clerks ordered.

Rossamünd obeyed, his head starting to throb uncomfortably, while Whympre, Swill and Pile went on into the Lamplighter-Marshal’s duty room.Very quickly Inkwill was back, dashing through the anteclave without a word.

More waiting, and the throb in Rossamünd’s pate grew into an ache.

Inkwill returned now with Sebastipole in tow, the leer giving Rossamünd one look and saying, “That is a fine bump you have got yourself, my boy. Follow me, if you will,” before going directly in to the Marshal.

In the shadow of Sebastipole, the young prentice inched his way into the very soul of Winstermill’s existence, hands habitually gripped before him at a now absent thrice-high. To Rossamünd’s left, the Master-of-Clerks had stationed himself on a richly cushioned tandem chair. Swill was on his right, poised stiffly on the edge of a hall chair, alert, waiting. On the clerk-master’s left stood Laudibus Pile, leaning against a false architrave, head down. But right before him, behind a desk piled with documents, sat the Lamplighter-Marshal, the eighth Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian. He appeared drawn, and sharply aware of the entire substance of his manifold burdens, and was staring keenly at Rossamünd. “Good evening, Prentice-Lighter Bookchild,” he said, his warm voice crackling slightly with weariness. The Marshal’s quick gaze, penetrating and wily, seemed to sum up Rossamünd, standing as stiff as an Old Gate Pensioner, in one acute look. He cleared his throat and gestured to the hall chair. “Please, take your ease.” Despite dark sags of sleeplessness, the man’s amiable, fatherly appearance remained. Indeed, with his sweeping white mustachios, a noble lift to his chin and a white-blond forelock curling almost boyishly upon his brow, the effect this close was magnified.

Sebastipole stood at the corner of the massive table while Inkwill showed Rossamünd to his seat, positioned squarely before the great man.

“I am told by the clerk-master,” the Marshal continued, “that ye believe yerself to have fought with a homunculid in the ancient tunnels below us. Is this so, prentice?”

“Aye, sir.” Rossamünd swallowed hard. He was about to let the whole tale burble out, when, with a cold stab in his innards, he realized he might betray Numps by telling of the undercroft. With a flicker of a look to the two leers, Rossamünd faltered and went silent.

With this, Laudibus Pile raised his face and, with a dark glance at Sebastipole, fixed Rossamünd with his own see-all stare. It was profoundly daunting to have a twin of falsemen’s eyes—red orb, blue iris—staring cannily from left and right. Rossamünd shifted on the hard seat in his discomfort.

“Are ye well, son? I hope that wound does not overly trouble ye,” the Lamplighter-Marshal said, nodding to the thick bandage about the prentice’s head.

“A little, sir.”

“I did my best to mend him, Lamplighter-Marshal,” Swill put in. “It is a nasty cut underneath all that cloth and I am sure, however it was sustained, it is enough to knock the sense out of the boy.”

“So ye said before, surgeon,” the Marshal said gravely. “Tell me, Rossamünd, do ye feel knocked about in yer intellectuals?”

“Somewhat, sir, but I was fully aware before and I am fully aware now.”

The Marshal smiled genially. “Good man.” He shuffled some papers before him. “The good clerk-master has told me his take on yer tale, prentice, and is skeptical. I would like to hear yer own recollection and we shall go on from that. Proceed, young fellow.”

Rossamünd cleared his throat, took a rattling, timorous breath, cleared his throat a second time and finally began. “I had missed douse-lanterns, sir, and found a way under the manse and it took me through all kinds of furtigrades and passages . . .” And so he told of the terrific events, passing very quickly over the how of his presence, avoiding any mention of the bloom baths or Numps, concentrating most on the battle with the prefabricated horror.

All present listened in unmoved silence until his short recounting was finished. Upon its completion the Lamplighter-Marshal nodded gravely and smoothed his mustachios with forefinger and thumb. “I am not a commander who likes to set one fellow’s telling against another’s, yet ye seem a rather slight lad to be the conqueror of so fearsome a thing as a rever-man. More than this is how such a beastie ever won into places no monster has ever made it to before. How-be-it, my boy, ye were the only one present and my telltale finds no fault with yer summation.”

Rossamünd had not been aware of any communication between the Marshal and the lamplighter’s agent, yet somehow Sebastipole had made what he observed clear to the Lamplighter-Marshal.The leer gave a barely perceptible nod to the prentice. “Indeed, sir, what he has told us has contained no lie.”

He believes me after all! Rossamünd could have done a little caper for joy, but kept still and somber.

Laudibus Pile darted a calculating, ill-willed squint at Sebastipole.

“As it is, this is a most difficult situation, prentice.” The Lamplighter-Marshal became very stern. “Ye have placed me in a bind, for on the one hand ye must be applauded—surely awarded—for yer courage and sheer pluck at prevailing in such a mismatched contest as ever a fellow was set to.”

Rossamünd’s heart leaped with hope.

“Yet,” the Lamplighter-Marshal went on firmly, “the circumstances surrounding yer feat of arms are drastically irregular, would ye not agree, lad? To be out beyond douse-lanterns though not of the lantern-watch or the night-watch is a grave breach. Entering restricted parts of the manse, another grave breach. Perhaps we should simply all be glad for the blighted thing’s destruction. But a rule for all is a rule for one, and a rule for one is a rule for all, do ye agree, Prentice Bookchild?”

The prentice swallowed hard. “Aye, sir.” Though he had never heard entering the underregions of Winstermill formally proscribed, this revelation did not surprise him—most things were out-of-bounds for a prentice.

The Master-of-Clerks stirred. “If I may interject here, most honored Marshal, with the observation that my own telltale does not find all particulars of the prentice’s retelling wholly satisfying.”

With a single, stiff nod, Laudibus Pile confirmed his master’s claim.

“When falsemen disagree, eh?” The Lamplighter-Marshal became even sterner, hard, almost angry—with whom, Rossamünd could not tell, and he swallowed again at the anxiousness parching his throat.

“In fact, sir,” the Master-of-Clerks pressed, “I might go so far as to state that one does not need to be a falseman to detect the irregularities in this . . . this one’s story. Perhaps your telltale does not see it so clearly? I am rather in the line that this little one is just grasping for glories to cover his defaulting.” He bent his attention on Rossamünd. “You have waxed eloquent upon your fight with the wretched creature, child, and the proof that you came to blows with something is clear; but I still do not follow how it is that you came to be in the passeyards at all or why it is that your journey took you to my very sanctum? You avoided the question before, but you shall not do so now.”

“The passeyards, sir?” Rossamünd asked.

“Yes.” The Master-of-Clerks flurried his fingers impatiently. “The interleves, the cuniculus, the slypes—the passages twixt walls and beneath halls, boy!”

“Oh.”

The Lamplighter-Marshal raised his right hand, a signal for silence, stopping the Master-of-Clerks cold. “Yer point is made, clerk-master. Prentice Bookchild, ye have a reputation for lateness, do ye not? As I understand it, ye have gained the moniker ‘Master Come-lately,’ aye?”

“Aye, sir.”

“But, as I have it, ye do not have a reputation for lying, son, do ye?”

“No, sir.”

“So tell us true: how is it ye found such well-hidden tunnels as those ye occupied tonight?”

Ashamed, Rossamünd dropped his head then darted a look to the Marshal, whose mild attentive expression showed no hint of his thoughts or opinion. “I was with the glimner, Mister Numps, down in the Low Gutter, and I forgot the time so—so I went by the drains so I could get into the manse after douse-lanterns.” He was determined not to implicate Numps in any manner, but with a falseman at both sides, it was an impossible ploy. Yet Rossamünd was desperate enough to attempt to dissemble. “I found them . . . through . . . through somewhere under the . . . the Low Gutter, sir—”

Laudibus Pile’s glittering gaze narrowed. “Liar!” the falseman hissed caustically.

“Ye will address an Emperor’s servant with respect, sir,” the marshal-lighter pronounced sharply, “be he above or below ye in station!”

“He does not lie, Pile!” Sebastipole added grimly.

“He dissimulates!” Laudibus snapped, with a black look to the Marshal then his counterpart.

“Indeed he might,” Sebastipole countered smoothly, “but he does not lie.”

“Enough, gentlemen!” The Marshal cut through, and there was silence. He returned his attention to Rossamünd. “Now, my man, whitewashing tends only to make one look guilty. Say it straight: we only want to find how this gudgeon-basket got into our so-long inviolate home, and so stop it happening again.Where did ye gain entry into the under parts?”

“Through the old bloom baths.” Rossamünd dropped his head, feeling the most wretched blackguard that ever weaseled another. “Under the Skillions, where they once tended the bloom.” He did not mind trouble for himself near half as much as implicating Numps.

The Marshal just nodded.

“What old bloom baths?” asked the Master-of-Clerks sharply, forgetting his place perhaps, interrupting the Marshal’s inquiries. “How, by the blight, did you find such a place on your own? A place, I might add,” he continued with the barest hint of a displeased look to the Marshal, “that I have only heard of tonight! You cannot expect us to believe you discovered such a place in solus!”

“In solus, sir?”

“By yourself,” he returned tartly. “Who showed you where they are?”

“I—” Rossamünd did not know how to answer.

“Speak it all!” Laudibus Pile spat.

“Silence!” barked the Lamplighter-Marshal. “Another gust from ye, sir, and ye will be exiting these rooms!”

An undaunted, cunning light flickered in the depths of Pile’s eyes, yet he yielded and seemed to retreat deeply within himself.

After an uncomfortable, ringing pause, the Master-of-Clerks fixed the prentice with his near-hungry stare. “You must tell us, prentice,” he said softly, “how then do you know of such a place?”

“It is common enough knowledge that there are ancient, seldom visited waterworks and cavities underneath our own pile, sir,” came Sebastipole’s unexpected interjection.

“I think, Master-of-Clerks,” was the Lamplighter-Marshal’s firm and timely addition, “that ye may leave this line of questioning now. The boy has been brought up short enough with the night’s ordeal ipse adversus—standing alone! What is more, it brings no clarity to the more troubling details.”

The Master-of-Clerks became a picture of pious obedience. “Certainly, sir,” he returned respectfully, smoothing the gorgeous hems of his frock coat. “I am just troubled that the existence of those old bloom baths is what has allowed the creature—if such exists—to find its way in. If that be so, then we will most certainly have to do away with the whole place,” the Master-of-Clerks declared officiously, “to be thorough.”

From across the Marshal’s desk Rossamünd could see the tension in Sebastipole, the lamplighter’s agent’s jaw tightening, loosening, tightening, loosening with rhythmic distraction.

“But the rever-man was shut up in some old room a long way from the bloom baths,” the young prentice dared.

“So you say, child.” The Master-of-Clerks smiled serenely at Rossamünd, a sweet face to cover sharp words. “Yet if a mere prentice can find his way so deep in forgotten places, then why not some mindless monster, and these unvetted baths may well be the cause.”

The Lamplighter-Marshal raised his hand, stopping Podious Whympre short. “There is no need and nothing gained from despoiling those old baths,” he said firmly. “They have been here for longer than we, and are buried deeply enough, and no harm will come from the quiet potterings of faithful, incapacitated lighters.”

“You already know of it, sir?” the Master-of-Clerks replied with a studied expression. “This—this continued unregistered, unrecorded activity? Why was I not informed . . . sir?”

“I do know of it, Clerk-Master Whympre,” the Marshal replied, “and I iterate again it is not the case of most concern. I could well ask ye how it is that there is a way down from yer own chambers into these buried levels.”

The Master-of-Clerks blanched. “It is a private store, sir. I had no idea it connected to regions more clandestine,” he explained quickly.

Other questions continued. Rossamünd felt unable to answer any of them to full satisfaction: did he have any inkling of where the gudgeon had come from?

No, sir, he did not. It had, by all evidence, been locked in the room rather than having arrived from somewhere. In the end he simply had to conclude that he truly had no idea of the how or the why or the where of the gudgeon’s advent.

Did he recognize where he found the gudgeon?

No, sir, he did not.

Would he be able to find the place again—or give instructions to another to do the same?

Rossamünd hesitated; he could only do his best, sir. He described his left-hand logic to solving the maze and as much of the actual lay of the passages and the rest as he could recall.

And all the while the Master-of-Clerks was looking at him with his peculiar, predatory gaze. Pile seemed to sulk, and said nothing.

“I will look into this, sir,” Sebastipole declared. “Josclin is still not well enough; Clement and I shall take Drawk and some other trusty men and seek out this buried room.” With that the lamplighter’s agent left.

“If you could excuse me, Lamplighter-Marshal.” Swill stood and bowed. “I must attend to pressing duties,” he said with a quick look to Sebastipole’s back.

“Certainly, surgeon,” the Marshal replied. “Ye are free to go—and ye may depart too, clerk-master. Yer prompt action is commendable.”

“And what of this young trespasser?” The Master-of Clerks peered down his nose at Rossamünd. “I hope you will be taking him in hand.Whatever other deeds might or might not surround him, you cannot deny that he has contravened two most inviolate rules, and it is grossly unsatisfactory that he has violated my own offices.”

“What I do with Prentice Bookchild is between him and me,” the Marshal returned firmly. “Good night, Podious!”

With a polite and contrite bow the Master-of-Clerks left, his telltale and the surgeon following.

Grindrod was admitted in their stead, hastily dressed and looking slightly frowzy.

“Ah, Lamplighter-Sergeant!” the Marshal cried. “Ye seem to have been missing one of yer charges, but here I am returning him to ye.”

“Aye, sir.” Grindrod stood straight and, appearing a little embarrassed, gave Rossamünd a quick yet thunderous glare. “Thank ye, sir.”

“Not at all,” the Marshal answered. “Ye make fine lampsmen, Sergeant-lighter. This young prentice has been doing the duties of a lamplighter even as his fellows sleep. Return him to his cot and set a strong guard over his cell row. Fell doings have been afoot. We shall discuss his deeds after.”

The lamplighter-sergeant looked stunned. “Aye, sir.” Thunder turned to puzzled satisfaction.

“Our thanks to ye, Prentice Bookchild,” the Lamplighter-Marshal said to Rossamünd. “Yer part here is done; ye played the man frank and true.Ye may turn in to yer cot at last. Be sure to report to Doctor Crispus tomorrow morning. Good night, prentice.”

With that the interview was ended.

Rossamünd left under the charge of Grindrod, feeling a traitor. While he was sent to sleep, he was aware of a growing bustle about as the soldiery of the manse were woken up to defend it from any other rever-men that might emerge from below.

“I don’t know whether to castigate or commend ye, young Lately!” the lamplighter-sergeant grumped as he led the prentice along the passages. “Just get yer blundering bones to yer cot and I’ll figure a fitting end for yer tomorrow.”

For another night Rossamünd readied himself in the cold dark and slept with his bed chest pulled across the door to his cell.