Rossamünd wondered briefly how the besotted Plod would feel about her change of destination. She was surely the most gorgeously accoutred lamplighter along the whole of the Wormway in her scarlet and gold harness and mass of midnight ringlets. Under one arm she clutched a day-bag, while a linen package and a mysterious round box sat on the seat beside. One hand was kept warm in a fuzzy white snuftkin, the other clutched a duodecimo novel, which she was reading with pointed concentration. Despite her infuriating twists of manners and mood, Rossamünd was at first glad she had come along. But beyond the initial word she had been ignoring him, for reasons he could not quite comprehend, spoiling the sweetness of her original gallant gesture.

Rossamünd had reading matter of his own. Before the lentum-and-four had departed, he had ventured to the Packet File to deliver his letter for Sebastipole and had been given another missive in return. He still clutched it in his hand, forgotten in the haste of his embarkation. With him in the cabin he had also brought his restocked salumanticum, his old traveling satchel with its knife-in-sheath attached holding his peregrinat, and a parcel of wayfood. On the seat next to him was his precious valise crammed with smalls and other necessaries for five days’ travel. Anything over that and he would just have to make do. The rest of what he owned—most of it issued by the lamplighters when he first joined—had been stowed in an ox trunk and fixed to the roof of the lentum along with Threnody’s sizable collection of luggage, their fodicars and fusils.

In his pocket his buff-leather wallet was bulging full with traveling papers, reissued after the ruin his old ones had become on his way to Winstermill. There was also a work docket already bearing its first remarks: the period of his service as a prentice and the tasks undertaken, by which was a “CS” for “Completed to Satisfaction”; under “Conduct” was the comment “Late for prenticing period” and two small “i’s” for his impositions—pots-and-pans with the now-vanished Mother Snooks. It was all signed off by the Master-of-Clerks himself, now the Marshal-Subrogat.

With these papers was a fair wad of folding notes and coin—his three months’ wages as a prentice and a large portion of the money Europe had given to him in High Vesting. As for a hat, there had been no time to replace it, and so here he was venturing out with little more than the bandage about his head.

The east wind whistled low on the Harrowmath, the usual odor of the long grass rank with the rot of sodden vegetation. Mixing with the flat nonodor of his newly applied Exstinker, it became an unpleasant half stink in Rossamünd’s nostrils. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and sighed his melancholy. An untimely departure, an uncertain way ahead, and Numps left in the rough care of the lighters, yet Rossamünd was glad to be out of Winstermill and on the road once more. He even entertained the hope he might see Europe on the way through.

He looked down at the letter and opened it, his hands slightly trembling.

It was dated the nineteenth of Pulvis, Solemnday—almost a week ago.

Rossamünd could not believe what was written. He read again. “. . . the night of the 5th of this month . . .” That was the very night the horn-ed nickers had attacked Threnody and her sisters in their carriage.Yet it was not until his third time through, slowly and painfully, that the full impact of his old dormitory master’s terrible news struck home. He turned his face away from Threnody, hiding in the collar of his pallmain, and wept as he had not wept in the longest time, letting all the bleakness sob out. He wept for the dear dead children, for Master Pinsum, and even for Madam Opera, who may not have been the kindest, but was by no means the worst; for the grief caused to his beloved carers; for fury at Gosling’s malice. The fury passed but the grief remained, and Rossamünd lost himself in sad, wordless reveries, only vaguely heedful of the progress of the carriage as it followed the Pettiwiggin along the Harrowmath.

They were passing through the Briarywood when he roused at last with thoughts of Fransitart’s arrival—and dear Craumpalin coming too. I must write to let them know I will not be at Winstermill.

“What’s wrong with you, lamp boy?” Threnody said, her voice raised only a little over the dull rumble of the lentum.“Why do you cry?” She looked at Fransitart’s letter. “Who is the correspondence from?”

Rossamünd became suddenly very aware of the girl: aware of her proximity; of his unwanted tears. He wiped at them quickly, sniffing impatiently. “My old dormitory master back in Boschenberg . . . ,” he answered reluctantly. “He . . . he sends sad news.”

“Sad news?” Threnody folded the duodecimo in her lap.

“My old home was burned down by an old foe,” Rossamünd managed. “Madam Opera died in the fire. She was the owner . . . and a . . . a mother, I suppose—in a strange way. She named me—marked it in the book . . . ”

“You’re a better soul than me, Rossamünd.”

“How?”

“You weep over the death of some wastrel proprietress, yet I can only wish my very own mother might perish in a fire.”

With a frown, Rossamünd returned to the window and broodily observed the passing scene. He knew she was just trying to be kind. It did not help that she was not very good at it.

The post-lentum clopped between the twin keeps of Wellnigh House without hesitation, under the Omphalon, and on through to the Roughmarch. With a feeling very much like going through the Axles of Boschenberg, Rossamünd realized with equal parts dread and expectancy that he had never been farther east than this point, that he was hurtling into what were, for him, unknown lands.

A great-lamp at every bend, the Roughmarch Road twisted serpentlike through a valley clotted with thorny plants of many kinds—sloe, briar, boxthorn and blackberry, its spiny runners thickly stickling the verge. As with the wild grasses of the Harrowmath, fatigue parties were regularly sent out from Wellnigh House and Tumblesloe Cot to pull and prune these plants, to resist the threwd and deny monsters a hide from which to ambush.Yet either side of the way was only partially hacked and cleared, and Rossamünd could still feel the haunting watchfulness here, strong but strangely restrained. He stared at the high bald hills, dark and silent, and pulled up the door sash to keep the threat outside, glad he did not have to work the lamps on this stretch.

If Threnody noticed the threwd, she did not show it. Indeed, she started to hum as she read her book and paid Rossamünd and the rest of the world little heed.

They drove down out of the hills where a creek bubbled alongside the Wormway, spilling over lichen-covered rocks, beneath twisted roots of writhen, leafless trees and south under the road to make a bog at the foot of a short cliff. In as much time as it took to walk to Wellnigh House from Winstermill, they were passing the walls of Tumblesloe Cot, not pausing there either. The cothouse was built away from the highroad, right up against the cliffs that marched upon the eastern flanks of the hills. Nothing could be seen of it but the stonework curtain wall and the tops of a handful of high chimneys. They were in foreign lands now—the great divide between the Idlewild and the rest of the Empire had been crossed.

“Welcome to the Placidine,” said Threnody. “Dovecote Bolt is next, at the junction with another road; if you left the highroad and took this other pathway north it would lead you to my old home, Herbroulesse.”

Rossamünd looked at his peregrinat maps and saw the path she was talking of and her home too, both important enough to be mentioned. He did not want to be, but he was actually impressed.While it had stood, Madam Opera’s marine society had never featured on any map he knew. “What will your mother think of what you’re doing,” he asked, “going off to dangerous cothouses?”

“She would lecture at me and I would disagree and we would start screaming and I would be sent away somewhere with Dolours till Mother could bear to see me again.”

“But what about the Emperor’s Billion?” Rossamünd pressed.

“What about it?” Threnody snapped. “My mother has a larger mandate than that! Our clave’s Imperial Prerogative takes precedence over simple tokens.”

“Imperial Prerogative?”

She gave him the by-now-familiar are-you-really-that-stupid? look and said after a sigh, “It allows us to do and be without the states troubling us. It is granted by the Emperor himself, and not every clave has one.” She finished with a proud sniff.

Before them the Conduit Vermis descended into a broad, shallow valley of scruffy pastures hemmed to the north by a spur of bald hills and to the south by the rolling, pastured fells of the Sparrow Downs. It was an unremarkable land. Rossamünd stared at the distant downs, wondering if an urchin-lord truly was there watching and sending out its little sparrow-agents from its leafy courts.

As the day grew longer, traffic began to pass going the other way. There were other post-lentums with returning dispatches; barouques and landaulets, perhaps taking the well-to-do to High Vesting or Brandenbrass; dyphrs dashing on errands; crofters commuting in curricles between land and town.They also began to overtake slow-moving higglers with their trays of fripperies, stooklings with their enormous bundles of sticks, laborers with their barrows, vendors with their donkey carts; and always, whether in their direction or against, the ox drays and mule crates of the merchants.

Another lamppost flicked past.

It was going to be a long stretch to Wormstool.

“Ah,” Threnody exclaimed, of a sudden, stirring Rossamünd from his sorrows, “I am sharp-set—it must be time for middens.”

The prentice craned a look out the window at the gun-metal sky. The sun hid behind the even cover of clouds. He could not tell what hour it was—surely well past midday, yet his stomach told the time more truly with a noisy poppling gurgle.

Threnody gave out a peculiar laughing bark. “Your gizzards think so too, it appears!” She extracted a ditty bag from among her cushions and wraps, and shared her pong with dried-and-salted pork and a handful of millet, all washed down with a brown bottle of small beer.

Sick of the little varying diet of the Emperor’s Service, Rossamünd took some food and ate perfunctorily. Dull grief would not let him eat. However, once started, he found his appetite returned and he supped heartily enough.

At the meal’s end, Threnody took out a vial of sticky red Friscan’s wead.

Rossamünd stared fixedly out of the window as she drank, not wanting to invite some petulant overreaction.

With shadows growing long as the bulk of Tumblesloe Heap brought an early sunset, and their rumps sore from too much sitting, they passed the lantern-watch of Dovecote Bolt wending west, fodicars on shoulder, winding out the lonely lamps. The lampsmen hailed the lenterman, but paid no heed to the passengers.

Gloaming finally gave up to darkness as they followed the glittering chain of new-lit lamps and arrived at the cothouse itself. Dovecote Bolt was a high-house: whitewashed walls upon exposed stone foundations, with a fortified stairway to the only door at the very top of the structure, a high wall extending behind it and a crowd of glowing lanterns at its front. It was built close by a sludgy ford over the beginnings of a little stream known as the Mirthlbrook. Just before the ford the post-lentum turned, went through a heavy gate and halted in the modest coach yard at the rear of the cothouse.

The splasher boy opened the door, unfolded the step and said with a parched croak, “First stop. And an overnight stay till tomorrow’s post.”

As luggage was retrieved, lampsmen appeared from within bearing bright-limns to light their way and dour expressions to greet them. The seven-strong garrison of this modest cothouse seemed very tight, veterans with a long record of service together. However, they had little cheer for new-promoted lampsmen, looking especially hard at Threnody as she mounted the stair and entered the guardroom. It occupied the entirety of that floor, and with benches and trestles, doubled as a common room for meals. The two young lamplighters were directed to the cramped office of Dovecote Bolt’s house-major, found in an attic-space loft of the steep roof.

Introducing himself as Major-of-House Wombwell, he spoke to them in a stiff yet welcoming manner.

“Good evening to you, young . . . er—prentices!” he said, eyeing Threnody with a confounded expression. His eyes became wider as he saw the small spoor upon her face. “Why have you come to us from our glorious manse? Wellnigh is the usual range of your watch, is it not?”

“Ah,” said Rossamünd, “we are on the way to our billet, sir.”

“To your billet?” The house-major bridled. “Preposterous! Billeting Day is not for another month.”

“It has been called early by our dear new Marshal-Subrogat,” Threnody explained with affected amusement.

“Marshal-Subrogat?” the man quizzed her.

“Aye, sir,” Rossamünd answered, getting a word in before Threnody for fear of some rash statement from her. “The Master-of-Clerks has filled the place of the Lamplighter-Marshal.”

“So it is true, then: the Lamplighter-Marshal is called away and that old fox Podious is top of the heap. They even let lasses serve as lighters now, I see—troublesome times are here . . .”

The house-major asked them some further questions on minor details of Winstermill’s running and then they were dismissed.Threnody, much to the bemusement of the lighters, was granted access to the kitchens to make her plaudamentum.

“Blighted Cathar’s baskets as lighters—by my knotted bowels, who’d reckon it?” Rossamünd could hear the house-major mutter as they left him.

“Would you need help with your treacle, Threnody?” Rossamünd offered as they were shown down to their cots by the cot-warden: a surly, scabby-faced lighter—one of the permanent house-watch, too old now to walk the highroad.

The girl paused, contriving to look bemused, amazed and annoyed all at once. “No thank you, I will boil my own,” she huffed, and left him to find the kitchen.

When she returned, they were served mains by the same surly cot-warden now acting as kitchen hand. Incongruously the meal of boiled beef, onions and rice from the tiny kitchen tasted better than anything made by Winstermill’s vast cookery.

Left well alone on their cots by the lampsmen,Threnody read as Rossamünd contended with a bout of the blackest sorrow.

When the lamp-watch arrived from Sallowstall, their thumping and calling reverberating through the boards above, Threnody made trouble by asking for a privacy screen. Churlishly, the old cot-warden and two of the lighters answered her demand, setting a dusty old screen for her with much ungracious puffing and banging and stomping. Finished, the cot-warden left them, muttering grumpily, “Anything else yer highness wants doing . . .” Behind the screen, by golden lantern-light, Threnody did those mysterious things girls did before going abed. When she was done, she pushed the screen away and got into her rough cot. She was in a voluminous white nightdress, her hair gathered and hidden beneath a sacklike, ribbon-tied crinickle. Rossamünd had never seen her in this way. She had been careful never to show herself after douse-lanterns back at Winstermill. The nightclothes and hat made her look curiously vulnerable. He prepared for sleep more publicly, his wounded head throbbing as it had not done for some days.

Sleep was hard-won that night. Rossamünd wrestled with his troubles as he lay in the cold listening to Threnody’s easy breathing.

The day’s journey took them past dousing lampsmen returning to Sallowstall and on to that place itself, the quality of the road improving from hard-packed clay and soil to flagstones. With a blare of the horn, the post-lentum stopped at Sallowstall, a well-tended cot-rent with broad grounds and thick walls.

The mail was passed over and horses changed. Over the ford, scattering half-tame ducks, and out of the thicket of trees, the lentum resumed the journey.

As the afternoon wore on, the pastures on either side of the Wormway became neater, their boundaries clearer, their furrows straighter, less weedy. Much of the land was a dark, fertile brown. This was a very different land from the grayer soils of the crofts Rossamünd had known about Boschenberg. Nearing Cothallow they saw peoneers levering at the road with iron-crows while a grim-looking guard of haubardiers stood watch.

“Thrice-blighted baskets have taken to tearing up the highroad,” Rossamünd heard someone call to their driver as the post-lentum cautiously passed along. Flagstones had been torn up and thrown aside, and a great-lamp bent over like a wind-broken sapling, its glass smashed, the precious bloom torn into shreds and yellowing.

Nestled in a wooded valley, Cothallow was long and low, its thick granite façade perforated with solid arches from the midst of which slit windows stared, closely barred and ready to be employed as loopholes.Their stay was not much more than a shouted “Hallo!,” an exchange of mail and a hurried change of horses. The lenterman was clearly keen, with the advance of day, to be at the next destination.

A sparrow alighted suddenly on the lowered door sash and, ruffling its wings, inspected first Threnody then Rossamünd with keen deliberation. Threnody peered at the impertinent little bird over the top of her duodecimo. It trilled at Rossamünd once and loudly, and then shot off with a hum of speedy wings as the post-lentum jerked forward to resume its travels.

“I’ve never known such birds to be so persistent,” Threnody exclaimed. “He looks just the same as that one watching while we talked in the greens-garden by the manse.”

Rossamünd leaned forward. “Perhaps the Duke of Sparrows is watching us?” he whispered.

“I can’t think why he would watch after us particularly,” the girl answered with a frown.

“Maybe he’s making sure you don’t go witting the wrong bogle,” Rossamünd muttered with a weak grin, feeling anything but funny.

“Is there such a thing?” Threnody said seriously, looking at him sharply.

Rossamünd very much wanted to say “yes” but held his tongue.

The crowns of the hills about were thick with trees, but their flanks were broad with deep green pastures, thin breaks of lithely myrtles. Here cattle lowed and chewed and drank from the runnels that wore creases down the hillsides. Crows cawed to each other across the valley.

Their day’s-end destination was the community of Makepeace, built amid sparse, elegant, evergreen myrtles, right on the banks of the Mirthlbrook. It was the first significant settlement upon the Conduit Vermis, a village sequestered behind a massive, foreboding wall. Rossamünd could see the top bristling with sharp iron studs and shards of broken crockery, which seemed to make a lie of the Makepeace’s friendly name. Crowds of chimneys stretched well above the beetling fortifications, each one drizzling steamy smoke into the still, damp air, showing a promise of a warm hearth and even warmer food. Rossamünd imagined every home filled with humble families—father, mother, son, daughter—living quietly useful lives.

Upon either side of the gate were two doughty bastion-towers, both showing the muzzle of a great-gun through enlarged loopholes. Situated immediately by the northern tower, the cothouse of Makepeace Stile merged its foundations with those of the wall. A high fastness much like Dovecote Bolt yet greatly enlarged—maybe five or six stories—the Stile was near as tall as the chimney stacks of Makepeace and must have dominated the view of the west from within the village.

The post-lentum eased into a siding between the cothouse and the highroad, its arrival coincident with the departure of the lamp-watch.

Alighting from the carriage, Rossamünd heard a cry sound from down the gloomy road. “The hedgeman comes! Be a-ready to make your orders, the hedgeman comes!” It was uttered by a portly figure pulling his test-barrow and strolling toward the town from the same direction the lentum had just come, as if there was no threat from monsters.

A hedgeman! Rossamünd’s attention pricked. These were wandering folk, part skold, dispensurist and ossatomist who cured chills and set bones (for a fee) where other habilists would not venture. He had not noticed them passing the fellow earlier, though they must have.

“The hedgeman is here! Come a-make your orders, the hedgeman is here!” came the cry again, and this time Rossamünd recognized the crier.

Mister Critchitichiello! Mister Critchitichiello, who made his living hawking his skills to all and any along the Wormway. When he had first arrived at Winstermill, Rossamünd found it much easier to ask the kindly hedgeman to make Craumpalin’s Exstinker than go to Messrs. Volitus or Obbolute, the manse’s own script-grinders. Now, with the current batch near its end, and more required to last him at his new billeting, Rossamünd hurried over to the man through traffic and the rain.

In the manse the hedgeman was a popular fellow. Rossamünd had to wait his turn while the small crowd of brother-lighters ordered eagerly. Mostly they came for love-pomades made to secure the affections of Jane Public and the other dolly-mops—the maids and professional girls living in the towns about—or find a cure for the various aches and grumbles your average lampsman seemed always to possess. Out here, however, two days east of Winstermill, Rossamünd was the only customer.

“Well ’ello there, young a-fellow.” Critchitichiello greeted Rossamünd in his strange Sevillian accent, grinning at him from beneath the wide brim of his round hat. “I a-remember you from the fortress.Yes? Back then you wore a hat and not a bandage.”

The prentice nodded cheerily.

“Hallo, Mister Critchitichiello. Triple the quantity of my Exstinker, please. I have the list for it if you need to remember its parts.”

Critchitichiello smiled. “No—no, I remember. Old Critchitichiello never forgets such clever mixings.” He tapped his pock-scarred brow knowingly. “I’ll have it ready for you in a puff, Rossamündo. You see! I even remember your name though we meet but once.”

Rossamünd followed the hedgeman as he set his test-barrow down under the eave of a small stall built against the eastern wall. A remarkable little black-iron chimney poked out and up from the back, puffing clean little puffs of smoke. Critchitichiello unlatched and unfolded his barrow, the lid swinging up to provide a roof from the rain.

Master Craumpalin would want to see this! Rossamünd thought sadly of the charcoal ruin that Master Craumpalin’s own marvelous test had become. He gripped the list of parts made by the dispensurist’s own hand as if it were a precious jewel. He had read the recipe many times and knew it well: mabrigond, wine-of-Sellry, nihillis, dust-of-carum, benthamyn. As he observed the testing—as making a script is called—Rossamünd habitually ran through the steps in his mind. Start with five parts—no! Fifteen parts wine-of-Sellry in a porcelain beaker over gentle heat.

A familiar savory smell wafted, like fine vegetable soup, as the liquid began to simmer.

Pumping at an ingenious little foot bellows connected to the test-barrow, the hedgeman looked up from his work, and with a frown of friendly concern said, “You know, Rossamündo, I have a-made many nullodors along these many roads, but with this a-one here I cannot figure how it might a-do its job.” Critchitichiello shrugged, thick-gloved hands raised palms-to-the-sky.

Rossamünd blinked. The hedgeman was such a kindly fellow he did not want to gainsay him.Yet he knew Master Craumpalin would never give him something that was crank. To question his old dispensurist’s scripts was unthinkable.

“It has done what I suppose it was meant to do,” he offered guardedly. “I have no complaint.” Add the benthamyn.

“And good that is!” Critchitichiello kept smiling. “Yet I tell you. Up till a-now its parts are all just as they ought—a simple base for a nullodor, but put a-this in”—and in went the tiny benthamyn pellets, six parts, just in time—“and suddenly it’s like a-no nullodor I’ve ever heard made. It might foil some noses, but not a nicker’s sniffing.”

Rossamünd nodded patiently. He had no answer for the hedgeman. Instead he watched in silence as the mabrigond and dust-of-carum were added in right and timely proportion.

“Don’t a-mind me, Rossamündo, my fine a-fellow,” the hedgeman said perceptively. “Just a curious old noddy am I . . . I’m-a sure this no-stinker answers for what you are a-wanting it for.”

Rossamünd certainly hoped it was so.

Critchitichiello poured the deep blue liquid into a fine new bottle and Rossamünd reached for his wallet.

Taking payment, the hedgeman looked beyond him with twinkling eye. “That sweet lass has been a-watching you for a little while,” he said mildly. “Is she your sweetheart?”

Sweetheart? Rossamünd looked around and saw Threnody standing beneath a lantern already lit against the dim afternoon. She was leaning against it and looking his way very, very intently. “Oh, that—er . . . She isn’t my sweetheart, Mister Critchitichiello,” he said emphatically.

“Ah.Too a-bad for thee.Though . . . ,” Critchitichiello said with a flourish of a bow, a conspiratorial whisper and a glance at Threnody, “. . . if you’s a-needing an amorpoti—a lover’s brew—just remember your a-friend, Critchitichiello.”

With a blush and a garbled farewell Rossamünd quit the awkward scene.

Threnody pulled a cryptic face as he approached. “What have you had that ledgermain making?”

“Mister Critchitichiello is no ledgermain,” Rossamünd came back, still tetchy. “He’s the genuine article, a true dispenser.”

“Ledgermains. Imperial fumomath. However you like it, lamp boy,” she insisted. “That does not answer my question, does it? What did the man make you?”

“It’s a . . . a nullodor. For my salumanticum.”

Threnody stroked at her lips. “A nullodor! A waste of good parts. What do you need a nullodor for?”

What has everyone got against them? First Critchitichiello, now Threnody. Rossamünd did not care to quibble. Craumpalin had given it to him and told him to wear it, and that was good enough.

In silence they entered Makepeace Stile together.

As douse-lanterns approached and while Threnody polished her teeth with expensive dentifrices, Rossamünd decided it was time to write his own letter back to Fransitart.