Traveling certificates and nativity patents approved by the officious gatemen, they passed through Makepeace to continue. Rossamünd saw little of the town through the obscuring downpour, only narrow buildings with glowing, narrow windows, water spouting from the edge of every horizontal surface on to even narrower streets. A soot-grubby child no more than ten scurried from eave to eave past the slow-going lentum—a char-boy, perhaps from Gathercoal, come to serve an errand in this cleaner town. Wondering what hard labors were this small lad’s lot, Rossamünd caught his eye and they traded mournful glances.

Out the other side of Makepeace the road broadened and they discovered the lamps ahead had been left to shine on in the storm-dark morning. This was most certainly not good traveling weather, and the lenterman kept the pace slow for fear of skidding off the road.

The scene continued cozily pastoral: fortified farmsteads glimpsed at the end of private, tree-lined drives nestled among thickets of domesticated trees and were surrounded with fastidiously tended fields and drystone walls.

Every six lamps or so were low concrete-and-stone strongworks, squat boxes with loopholes and steps that went into the earth down to three-quarter-buried iron-bound doors. Rossamünd had never seen the like, and no one at Winstermill had ever talked of such things.

The sun was one quarter along its meridian when they met a convoy of large covered drays trundling the opposite way in a long line, every one under the guard of a skold or scourge. Drawn by great trains of flanchardt-covered oxen, each bore hundredweights of finest-grade charcoal from Gathercoal, likely intended for Winstermill, High Vesting and the settlements of the southwest. It took the long end of fifteen minutes to pass the last dray.

They ate middens with stores granted from Makepeace Stile’s pantry (a rind of hard, smelly Nine-cheese from Tuscanin ; apples; strips of dried, river-caught fish) and Threnody went back to reading.Taking pointed notice of the book, Rossamünd read the small white letters printed on its burgundy cover—The High and Illustrious Ladies of the Magna Scuthës.

“What is that book about?” he asked absently.

The girl made as if to continue reading but, after a pause, she marked her place, closed her book, laid it primly on her lap, cleared her throat and looked up. “It is about the adventures of city women and their flash swells.”

“Flash swells?”

She looked owlishly at him for a moment. “The rich young men who live such fun and easy lives in the cities.”

“Oh, you mean dandidawdlers.” Rossamünd thought of the frilly, fussy fellows he had observed making a nuisance on the streets of Boschenberg. “Is it interesting?”

“I think so, yes, though Mother doesn’t like books such as these.”

“Why not?”

“She says they’re full of vile gossip and innuendo and she says they grossly exaggerate the successes of the protagonists without making enough of the consequences of their foolishness.”

“You sound like you’ve had this said to you often.” Rossamünd gave a mild grin.

“I could recite to you all of Mother’s words better than the In Columba Alat,” she returned wryly.

“The In Columna what-tat?”

“In Columba Alat,” Threnody explained, with uncharacteristic patience. “ ‘The Wings of the Dove’—it’s our cantus, the rule we—I mean the Right—lives by.”

“How does it go?”

“I don’t know.” Threnody grinned. “I’ve forgotten it.”

“But I thought you just said you knew it well,” Rossamünd returned a little dumbly.

Threnody sighed long-sufferingly. “I do.” She picked up the duodecimo and opened it again. “I was just making a jest,” she said, and went back to reading.

“Oh.” Rossamünd frowned. “Sorry.”

Soon after, the horses were watered at the cothouse of Sparrowstall. Blackened spikes ran in rows along every ridge-cap and gable, set there to prevent weary birds or overadventurous nickers from taking roost.

A little over two hours further and they arrived at Hinkerseigh, much larger than Makepeace, with thicker walls and higher, more numerous bastions all filled with well-tended great-guns. It was a growing town—nearly a city, its people squeezed for room; some of the less well-heeled had been forced to build beyond the safety of the town’s stony curtain.The Mirthlstream flowed right into the place under the wall to drive many waterwheels of industry within as it passed through. As it was a client-city belonging to the Imperial state of Maubergonne, Hinkerseigh’s taciturn gatemen were dressed in harness of orot and gules—orange and deep red.They scrutinized Rossamünd and Threnody’s documents cursorily and waved the lentum through.

The carriage crawled down the narrow main street, moving little faster in the midst of the cram of traffic than a town-and-country gent out on a lazy Domesday ramble. At a coach-host, the Draint Fyfer, the lentermen stopped to change teams. The broad, covered yard was thronged with public coaches and private carriages; horns hooting, sergeant-yardsmen bawling, under-yardsmen obeying, porters and box-boys and mercers scurrying. Exiting the lentum first,Threnody dashed off into the rain with little more than an “I’ll be back!” and was gone before Rossamünd could call after or follow.With a shrug he took a midday meal and waited alone.

The warm commons of the coach-host was as impossibly crowded as the yard without, a-press with merchants’ wives and farmstead ladies, nannies and their bantling charges screeching for attention; slightly damp higglers and shysters en route to more spendthrifty places; and off-duty pediteers; all waiting for a break in the weather. It was only twenty minutes or so before Rossamünd was called for by the hollering splasher boy to board the po’lent, yet it took Threnody more than an hour to return. She appeared suddenly by the carriage door, grinning broadly and quickly handing an oblong oilskin-covered something to the splasher boy.

“We’ll still be in a tight bit o’ hurry to make it to the next cot in time!” the driver said, louring down at her from his high seat as she climbed aboard. “So I recommend ye hang on ter something.” He proved good to his promise, for no sooner had Threnody settled into her nest of furs than the lentum surged to motion.

“What were you doing?” Rossamünd shouted above the noise of transit. “We’ve been waiting for a while . . .”

Threnody looked at him unrepentantly. “I always like to try a little shopping when I can.”

Rain began falling so hard its rattling drum on the carriage roof made conversation impossible. Threnody raised the sash on her side to keep its splashings out, yet Rossamünd left his down to see what passed and tolerated the wet. As Hinkerseigh disappeared in the fog of the deluge, the highroad narrowed.The lenterman whipped up the new horse-team’s rate and kept the poor beasts at a dangerous, transom-shattering speed for several miles, slowing only occasionally to rest them. The post-lentum dashed right past Howlbolt, not even slowing for courtesy, noisily scattering a coven of ravens that had settled before the cothouse.

The valley became deeper, the Mirthlbrook drawing close by the Wormway again, broader now, its banks choked with willow, swamp oak and hawthorn, its waters rushing over and through sharp rocks and keeping pace with the lentum. The stream’s opposite bank was steep, almost clifflike, tangled with dark young woods.

“That’s the Owlgrave,” Threnody shouted above the roar of the rain and road. “It’s said that monsters like to go there to die when they are mortal-hurt or sick of the world.”

Rossamünd stared at the choked rise imagining he could see some languishing nicker up among the rocks and trees. He had always thought monsters lived on and on till someone slew them, and the idea of them pining away was odd, disturbing. So that is where they end, he pondered, but where do they begin? His reading had informed him of many theories. Some scholars said monsters grew on trees, others that they grew “buds” on themselves, which dropped to the ground and grew into other monsters. The worst way was congress between everyman and ünterman, which was said to spawn some wicked half-human abomination, the ultimate excess of outramour. Implicit in the accusation of sedorner was the suspicion of such a union. Most habilists said such a thing was impossible, but common folks still believed it, and that was enough.

Out the other side of the lentum Rossamünd saw the flicker of a lighted lamp, then another. Regardless of pelting rain and threatening lands, the lantern-watch of Bitterbolt, the next cothouse, had faithfully wound out the lamps.

The Wormway went down and over a large stone-arch bridge with lit lanterns upon either abutment that passed over the broad stream of the Bittermere. Before this bridge was a foreboding collection of buildings, each four or five stories of dressed stone, baked bricks, mortar and lead shingles. It was a mighty rectangular accretion, its roofs thorny with high chimneys.There was no encircling wall; the lowest floors were absent of any openings—not even a single door, and the few second-story windows were heavily barred. Even the undersides of the sills of higher windows and the gutters were garlanded with thorny wire. The footings of the entire pile were assiduously smeared with a slippery-looking black substance, a repellent no doubt. This was a place that never intended a monster to ever gain a foothold. The winds and the rain had blown themselves out. In the stillness, the comfort of sweet wood-smoke and the savory promise of that evening’s prandial preparations wafted down to them from the place.

“The wayhouse of the Brisking Cat, good folks,” the side-armsman called helpfully from his perch.

Upon the other side of the highroad was a low brick building with no sidelights or transoms or even a casement. Its strong doors were half buried into the chalky ground and a siding-lane with sturdy walls upon either side branched off and went down to them. At the top of the lane stood a filigree lantern-post. Fixed to this was a badly stained signboard upon which was painted a lion, its claws reaching.

The lentum descended the lane and went through ironwood gates opened for it at the end. Through the gates and within the low building was a great stablery for horse and carriage, much of it tunneling back into the hillock itself. The reek of hay and hoof-trodden pats made the air foul.

Grinning ear to ear, the splasher boy opened the door for them with a touch to the brim of his tall stovepipe hat. “We’ve done all right to get you here afore the daisy hay was done,” he said excitedly.

“Excuse me?” Threnody scowled. “The what was done?”

The splasher boy looked at her as if she were Jack Simple. “The daisy hay . . .” He grinned at Rossamünd as if he knew, but Rossamünd had not heard the term either. “It’s the right time of day for travel! Only lighters and fools go out after sundown—oh . . .” The splasher boy went bright red as he realized who he was talking to and quickly found other things to do.

“I see,” said Threnody.

As Rossamünd and Threnody alighted, another person was arriving on foot, let in by the small sally port fixed in the heavy ironwood gate.The last gasp of a gust blew through the door, bringing with it a sweetly salty and familiar scent.

“Did you get your hob-gnasher, Madam Rose?” one of the gaters asked.

“That I did, Master File,” the newly arrived wayfarer declared briskly, and lifted a large leather satchel bulging with something lumpy and vaguely head-shaped. “And a might of trouble it gave me too.”

It was Europe!

The Branden Rose was wearing her usual deep red fighting garb, and was muffled against the cold with the spangled-fur pollern. Three heavy-harnessed gaters attending bowed in quiet deference.

Threnody made to follow a porter and continue on through to the wayhouse, but stopped when she realized Rossamünd was just lingering and staring.

Eventually Europe turned, with narrowed eyes that went wide—just for a moment—then knowing. She swaggered over, an eyebrow cocked. “Well hello again, little man,” the fulgar said softly as she approached. “Have they finally let you out of Winstermill?”

“Hello, Miss Europe,” Rossamünd greeted cheerfully. “We’re on our way to our new billet.” Smiling at her, he saw that the fulgar’s eyes were badly bloodshot, an almost complete and ghastly red.

“Where is that?” Europe smiled tightly in return.

“Wormstool—what’s happened to your eyes, miss? They’re all red like a falseman’s.”

The woman’s brow furrowed. “It comes from a long day arcing. And what have you done to your head, little man? All bandage and no hat!”

“I lost it in a fight.”

The fulgar raised an amused eyebrow. “In a fight, was it? I cannot leave you for a moment. Well, at least you did not lose my gift,” she said, looking at his fine scarf. She turned a cool gaze to Threnody. “I see you have brought the august’s daughter with you.”

“I . . .” was yet forming in Rossamünd’s mouth when Threnody interjected.

“You’re the Branden Rose, aren’t you?” she asked, with a look of profound, barely contained excitement. Rossamünd had never seen her look quite so enthusiastic—it was odd.

“My name precedes me, I see,” said Europe, a subtle smirk fluttering at the corner of lip and eye.

“And you really do know him?” Threnody glanced at Rossamünd.

“Aye—” he began.

“Indeed!” Europe replied civilly. “We are old wayfaring chums, are we not, little man? We have been on many an adventure already.”

“I am Lady Threnody of Herbroulesse,” the girl lighter began, barely waiting for an answer, “daughter of the Lady Vey, August of the Right of the Pacific Dove,” finishing with affected gravity as she tried not to betray her eagerness.

A hint of disdain fluttered across Europe’s face. “I heard rumor that the Marchioness Vey had issue by some clandestine means, and here breathes the proof. Might I say you are dressed peculiarly for a calendar?”

Threnody looked down at her gorgeous, if slightly travel-ruffled clothes. “Oh, I’m not a calendar anymore. I’m a full lamplighter now.”

Europe’s smile was patient, polite. “Good for you, my dear. So I now know something of you and you already know something of me and we are all met. How lovely.” Europe did not look as if she thought it lovely at all, but rather boring. “Come! Time for easy chairs and warm meals.”

They were let through a heavy door by a broad-set gater with thick mustachios wearing a black-felt liripipium, its long peak almost trailing in the straw-rubbish. As Europe and her two guests approached, he opened the way and took them along an arched, brick-lined tunnel that must have been burrowed right under the Wormway. At the other side their guide hammered upon another door, crying, “Ad aspertum! The Branden Rose and two companions,” to those beyond. They were admitted through a block-room and climbed slate steps to a broad wood-paneled vestibule of the wayhouse proper.

Footmen in plush asked for their names, took baggage and stowed weapons in an armory-stand to be retrieved on call. This was a very fine establishment indeed. Europe handed over the satchel. “Put it in the cold room for me: I will be requiring it tomorrow to claim my prize.”

A horse-faced woman clad in a style of dress that Rossamünd had never seen before, made of heavy velvet with broad hanging sleeves and a pretty white palisade cap, rustled over to greet them. She paid studied respect to Europe and politely introduced herself to the two young lamplighters as the enrica d’ama. “ ’Allo, young travelers,” she said in a sweet voice and a delicate southern accent, “I am Madam Oubliette, the proud owner of this fine ’ouse. If you are seeking any service you must call on me or my man Parleferte.” She indicated a gaunt, harassed-looking steward. “Any time of sunup or moon-down. Now please, ’ave your ease in the Saloon.”

A footman announced them over the moderate hubbub of other conversation. “Her Grace, the Branden Rose, Europa of Fontrevault, Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes; the Lady Threnody of Herbroulesse and a guest!” was the ringing cry, to which few of their fellow patrons paid any attention.

“Yes, yes,” Europe huffed. “Get on and show us our place, man!”

“How do you feel, guest, on being just a guest?” Threnody gibed Rossamünd quietly. “Shall I call you guest from now onward?”

Rossamünd did not acknowledge her.

Before him was a great hexagonal space with balconies, boxes and claustral-booths rising on every side for three whole floors—the privatrium, each reached by a confusion of stairs and walks.The radiating beams of the lofty ceiling were carved with forms of intertwined cats in various attitudes of hunt or play. Every beam met in the middle and from this zenith hung a collection of great-lamps gathered together like some bizarre chandelier. Beneath this, in the middle of the space surrounded by the privatrium, was a raised oval stage hemmed in by a semicircular tapery-counter at one end where drinks were being pulled or poured. About the tapery were tables and chairs and people sitting at them in a variety of attitudes: animated, upright, slouched, slumped, even leaning dangerously. Rossamünd was so amazed by it all he stumbled on his own feet more than once before the three were settled in a second-story claustra—a somewhat private stall of leather high-backed benches around a square table.

“The Brisking Cat,” Europe declared grandly as they sat. “Wayhouse, knavery and my current abode.”

The Saloon was wall to wall with pugnators and their hangers-on, coming, going and ordering about the staff with high-handed carelessness. Rossamünd watched the gallimaufry of teratologists in wide-eyed wonder. Indiscriminate monster-killers written about in public print or gossiped about in civic rumor, a fabulous collection like the pages of a pamphlet come to life. Seeing his fascination, Europe began to name some of them.

“There are the Boanergës—the ‘Sons of Thunder,’ ” she explained, watching three grim-looking fellows huddled together in grim conversation, periodically glancing suspiciously over their shoulders. “A competent band, each one a fellow astrapecrith, though none too bright.”

“And that is the Knave of Diamonds,” said Threnody, keen to show her worldliness. Rossamünd looked and saw a large man pass below. He wore a “crown” of tall spiked reeds upon his head; upon his body a heavy-gaulded smock or lambrequin of dirty white with its single, large red diamond on the front; and upon his fierce face a large deep blue diamond spoor.

A solitary calendar from a different clave than Threnody’s walked across the Saloon floor and took a booth across the other side. She was wearing a bossock of prüs and sable checks and her face was striped like that of a grazing animal from far beyond the Marrow. She wore a dandicomb of long, elegant horns that her claustra was fortunately high enough to contain.

Threnody watched her closely. “She need not have come,” the girl huffed with the strains of territorial jealousy. “The Right has these troubles in hand.”

“Who is she?” Rossamünd said so softly he barely spoke at all.

“She’s a caladine,” Europe answered.

“Entering our diet without a by-your-leave,” the girl lighter added icily. “I doubt she has presented herself to Mother. Saphine is her name. She is from the Maids of Malady.”

“Truly?” said Europe. “Your surgeon had perhaps best watch himself.”

“Miss Europe?”

“I have the understanding that these Maids of Malady have allied themselves with the Soratchë. Maybe they lend their help to the Soratchë, and Saphine is coming to investigate that Swill fellow. Wheels inside wheels, and all that.”

Rossamünd hoped this was true. He stared at the caladine until she felt the scrutiny and turned to look at him. Flushing, the young lighter looked away quickly and found a teratologist he knew by sight. He had seen etchings of her in the more sensational pamphlets. Epitomë Bile was her name, a woman written of as a myth: lupine and pitiless and astoundingly daring.Yet here she was, a woman as real as his own hand, all in glossy black soe, white-faced with staring, black-rimmed eyes and oddly cropped black hair.

Europe showed clear distaste. “Cruel and heartless,” she warned. “Stay well clear of her.”

Aye, Rossamünd wondered, but has she ever sparked a child in the head?

Epitomë Bile looked up, caught Europe’s cold eye and returned it, giving a slow, taunting curtsy. A wicked smile flitted across the strange woman’s mien. The two teratological women kept each other fixed with stares of mutual loathing, until Epitomë Bile walked out of the common room, sly, malevolent amusement never leaving her face.

Rossamünd felt a shiver of dismay. He hoped never to cross her path more closely.

Europe clucked her tongue quietly and looked elsewhere. “There you have the Three Brave Brothers,” she said, pointing with her chin to a group of men below them (just returned perhaps from the course), turning her guests’ attention to other things. “They actually number four, are not related to each other . . . and are not particularly brave, either.” Rossamünd, who had read of these Brave Brothers, was stunned to see walking before him their infamous scourge, Sourdoor, in his swathes of black lour—proofed velvet.

“And so my kind gather, looking for violence.” Europe sighed. “Collecting together like crows about a corpse.”

All the great folk, and the lesser known too, strutted the common room and the privatrium, eyeing one another, ego against ego, and generally getting in the way of the wayhouse’s even routine.

“The Maid Constant.” The fulgar indicated a wit with an arrow-spoor pointing up from each brow and brilliant-hued blue hair. “She too must needs wear a wig, as you do, my dear, but her hair was green last week and blue for this.”

Threnody went beetroot blush and sat up. “No wig for me, madam,” she said quickly, glowering nervously at Europe.

“Not yet, anyway,” Rossamünd put in, trying to be helpful.

She glared at him.

“By-the-by,” said Europe, unconcerned.

The fulgar rattled off many more names, of so many teratologists that Rossamünd could not keep track, and he simply listened to the smooth sound of her voice. His wonder became a little numbed, and he sat a little easier in the comfortable booth. The young lampsman felt the strains of the road ease out into the soft seating, and he became quickly acquainted with just how tired he was. Food was ordered—from the Best Cuts, of course, Rossamünd trying “Starlings in Viand-Royal Sauce”—and an awkwardness persisted while they waited for it to arrive, wetting their thirst with the sourest rich-red wine Rossamünd had ever been served. With the wine came a tankard of steaming Cathar’s Treacle for Europe.

“It’s testtelated in bulk in the kitchens, by a tandem of skolds of faultless reputation,” she explained, “at a hefty charge, of course. You may want some yourself, my dear.” She nodded gravely at Threnody.

“No thank you, Duchess,” Threnody returned, still sitting stiff-backed, hands clasped on the table before her. “I have always been taught that one does best to make one’s own plaudamentum.”

The fulgar became suddenly expressionless.

“Indeed,” she said, after a long, discomfiting moment, “one would prefer to have it made perpetually by the same trusted hands at a day’s two ends, but what one wants and what one gets are rarely the same.The one I once had confidence in is . . . no longer available—and another unwilling.” She peered at Rossamünd.

Threnody looked sharply at the Branden Rose, then narrowly, almost enviously, at Rossamünd.

He tapped purposefully at the tabletop, not meeting either gaze. He had vowed to serve the lamplighters and the Emperor, yet as the troubles of the lamplighters increased, so did the appeal of being the Branden Rose’s factotum. If only she was more careful about which bogles to kill.

Providentially, mains arrived and all talk ceased for a time as, in the rust glow of red-, orange- and yellow-glassed lanterns, they ate in hungry silence.

Music swelled from the oval stage below them: sweet chamber-sounds of fiddle, violoncello and sourdine, and adding mellifluously to it a soaring female voice. Rossamünd felt he had heard this singing somewhere before and, looking down to the stage, saw a quartet of scratch-bobbed, liveried musicians and, in a halo of light, Hero, the chanteuse of Clunes. Dressed in a smoke-green chiffon dress with broad, gathered skirts, black rumples at the elbows, her hair piled and rolled and festooned with flowers of similar color to the chiffon, she was the very same songstress he had watched in raptures at the Harefoot Dig. Yet here she was now, projecting sonorous verse all about the great room, arms reaching out imploringly. Rossamünd forgot his food and listened, heedless of time’s passing, arm on balustrade, cheek resting on arm, his eyes just a little doelike.

Threnody affected to be unimpressed. “It is adequate, I suppose,” she said in the applause between songs, “if you like those Lentine styles.”

Rossamünd decided he liked the Lentine style very well and could not understand Threnody’s remark.

Her own meal finished, Europe lounged on the comfortable bench and picked at a sludgy, creamy-colored delicacy known simply as cheesecake, soaked in syrup of peach-blossoms. With it came sillabub—a curdled concoction of milk and vinegar. She let Rossamünd try a little, and he came away from the taste smacking his lips in disgust. She did not, however, offer any to Threnody, who had become more and more sullen and sour-faced as the night deepened and did not show any care.

Washing out the vile aftertaste with the bitter small wine, Rossamünd asked solemnly, “Miss Europe, what do you know of Wormstool?”

“It is remote and dangerous and no place for new-weaned lamplighting lads and lasses.” Europe scowled. “What can your masters be thinking, sending you out there?”

“Oh, I was not sent,” Threnody said piously. “I asked to go. Those with greater capacities have to wait on those who do not. It’s how I have been taught and . . .” She looked at her fellow traveler. “Rossamünd will need the help—as you yourself probably well know.”

“Oh?” Europe turned a piercing gaze on the girl. “And who will look out for you, my dear?”

“Rossamünd,” the girl returned simply. “We lighters stick together, just like calendars.”

The fulgar laughed unexpectedly. “Aren’t you an adorable little upstart?” she purred.

Chin lifting then dropping, Threnody clearly did not know whether to be offended or pleased. She looked out into the Saloon at nothing in particular.

“Now tell me, young Rossamünd,” Europe demanded, “what were you fighting that cost you yet another hat?”

“It was a rever-man, miss,” the young lighter said simply.

Europe went wide-eyed. There was a pause, incredulity hovering at its fringes. “Truly?” she said eventually. “How did you manage to get tangled up with one of those? More to the point, how did you survive it?”

“I found it deep in the cellars of Winstermill the very next night after you left.”

“Ah!You’re playing a leg-pull on me, little man.” The fulgar started to smile knowingly. “Your old home is far too tough to crack for some rotten-headed thing like a rever-man. That old Marshal of yours must be sadly slipping if he let one of those wretches in.”

Rossamünd’s gall twisted at this. “I don’t think he is slipping, Miss Europe, but still, sure as I sit here, it was a gudgeon I wrastled right down in the bottom of the fortress.” He went on to tell the whole tale, elaborating especially on the moment when he jammed the loomblaze into the rever-man’s gnashing maw. That moment was powerfully satisfying to recall. “It was somewhere in that fight I lost my hat,” he concluded.

“Aren’t you the one for getting yourself into fixes not of your own making?” Europe’s knowing gaze had not slipped for the length of his tale. “You are still the strangest, bravest little man.Throwing a gudgeon about and blasting it to char is beyond even some of my ilk.You’re not as helpless as you seem.” She looked at Threnody.

“Maybe.” Rossamünd tried not to look too pleased. “It was gangling and poorly made, with too-long arms and hairy, piggy ears, just like those”—he pointed to a sizzling porker’s head that was being carried past at that very moment by a struggling maid—“and no great feat to best.”

“The Lamplighter-Marshal said it was a mighty deed,” Threnody stated proudly in a strange change of tack.

“I should think he would,” the fulgar said, taking a sip of wine. “You did him a great service, Rossamünd.”

“Yet it still did not stop the man receiving a sis edisserum from the Considine,” the young lampsman said sadly.

“Truly?” Europe murmured. “You don’t hear of that happening every diem. Your Marshal must certainly have gone awry then.”

Rossamünd did not hear her. His thoughts had pounced on his own words, hairy, piggy ears. The gudgeon had large, furry, leaf-shaped ears, pig’s ears, like those on the meal just gone by; pig’s ears very much like those on the swine’s head he had carried up to Swill . . .

And Europe had told of the dark hints that surrounded the surgeon; and it held that if Swill knew of the kitchen furtigrade when Doctor Crispus did not, he might be well aware of other secret ways, even down to the moldering cellars. Why, truly, would he need his deliveries of body parts if not to make a rever-man? . . . And there was the flayed skin.

The horrid, impossible idea rolled about his mind’s view, an image of the surgeon clandestinely making gudgeons in his attic apartment: wobbling, raving creatures cobbled together from kitchen offcuts and dug-up corpse bits, then held and hidden in the fortress’s depths. The young lighter could little fathom how such a capital evil as monstermaking—or “fabercadavery,” as the peregrinat called it—could go on undiscovered within Winstermill’s precincts. How was it possible that amid such a crowd of zealous invidists monsters were actually made?

With low and stuttering urgency, Rossamünd explained his deductions as best he could. He talked mostly to Europe, who listened without interruption, her arms folded and her brow deeply creased with a scowl.

“The rever-man had pig’s ears,” he repeated excitedly. “I carried a pig’s head up to Swill from the kitchens. That’s why he reads from those banned books—they are full of all manner of ash-dabblings.”

“Well, one hardly needs to be an auto-savant to have spotted Swill as a nefarious cad!” Threnody argued.

A great roar of applause erupted about all levels of the Saloon: Hero had come to the end of her recital and was now bowing deeply to her adoring audience with great, cheek-busting smiles. Threnody looked down at it all and curled her lip. “Yes, well, I suppose she was passable,” she sneered as she clapped politely.

Rossamünd barely heard her or the cheers. Swill is a massacar! Sebastipole said he had not found how the rever-man could have got in: the fortress really was impregnable. It would not have to be if the abomination was already being kept inside Winstermill—indeed if it had been made there in the deep parts. Was it mere coincidence that Rossamünd had found his way out only through the Master-of-Clerks’ rooms? Swill was most certainly his man, brought in especially. It all fitted too horribly.

“My, what a hive of troubles you have kicked,” the fulgar said. “The Soratchë were right to suspect him, it seems, though one thinks they might have pressed their suspicions a little further.”

Threnody made a face as if to say she did not think much of the Soratchë.

“But why do such a terrible thing?” Rossamünd could not fathom it.

“Why else, little man, but for the oldest reason of all?” The fulgar paused. “Money, of course. There is much to be made from the making and trafficking of rever-men and other made-monsters—as you have seen firsthandedly, with that filthy fellow Poundinginches or whatever his name might have been.”

Rossamünd nodded. What precious relief it had been when Europe had rescued him from that vile rivermaster and sent him to the harbor-bottom with one arc to his beefy chest.

“All manner of people manage to require the service of the dark trades,” the fulgar continued. “I have already caught the whispers of at least two rousing-pits within reach of here, and they are genuinely lucrative for those at the right end of the wagers. These must be supplied, and it seems Swill is the man to do so.”

The young lighter shivered at the implication of her words.

“If you know of such horrid places, why do you not do something about them?” Threnody interjected. “Or tell someone who will?”

Europe’s expression became owlish. “Because, my dear, if I have heard rumors, then others certainly will have too.The excisemen and obstaculars and your once-sisters are better fitted to the chore.”

“But rousing-pits have monsters in them,” Threnody continued querulously. “Surely that should move you!”

Europe fixed her with that dangerously glassy stare.

“Child, I am not some mindless invidist. I rid the world of teratologica for money’s hand, not sport.”

Threnody locked eyes with her.

Rossamünd ducked his head at the fizzing tension between these two lahzarines. He wanted to intervene, yet did not dare tangle with the friction between them, as inscrutable as the movements of the planets. In the end the standoff proved unbearable and he spoke. “What of the Master-of-Clerks?” he tried. “Swill is his man. Doctor Crispus said it so.”

“Every mad habilist needs a patron.” Europe sounded almost flippant, though her grim expression told otherwise.

“Why did you not speak of this before, lamp boy?” Threnody growled.

“Because I did not think of it till now, Threnody,” Rossamünd sighed.

“I must write of all this to Mother!”

“For the little she might do,” said Europe, “with the clerk-master sitting in control behind those unapproachable walls and little proof to go on but one small bookchild lampsman’s conjectures.”

“She is a great woman,” Threnody bridled, “and will do more than some to rid the Empire of a traitor.”

“But what if I’m wrong?”

“If you are wrong then rumors are exploded, suspicions disabused and everyone goes on to other troubles,” Europe said bluntly. “Yet for now we have the suggestion of serious, dastardly things, little man,” she said. “Gudgeons loose in Winstermill, marshal-peers summoned to the subcapital and prentices sent too far east: something is truly, deeply amiss in your reach of the world. Keep your eyes wide, Rossamünd. You are in a dangerous tangle if all this turns out true. It may be that your assignment to Wormstool is not a simple lapse in wisdom.” She reached over to put a hand on his shoulder. “You should have become my factotum after all,” she said wryly.

Rossamünd could not help but agree. He could not now think of anywhere safer than by Europe’s side. He noticed Threnody was looking at him with an envious scowl.

Europe summoned a footman and made provision for their bunking. There was no room elsewhere in the wayhouse. “You can join me in my quarters if you wish, Rossamünd. There is a bed for one other there,” the fulgar explained. “Or you may join your friend in the dog-dens.”

The “dog-dens” were the billet-boxes, tight cupboards—barely comfortable but inexpensive accommodation that all wayhouses possessed. Rossamünd felt such a strange and unwelcome tearing of loyalties he did not know how to act. In the end he chose to stay with Threnody, figuring that she had joined him voluntarily and stuck by him, and so he should do the same and sleep in the squash of the billet-boxes. The girl lighter was clearly gratified by his decision, looking as if she had just won some great moral victory.

With an enigmatic sniff, Europe paid the reckoning and bid them good sleeping. “I must retire. A girl needs her sleep to keep her beauty.” At that she left, reemerging surprisingly on the farther side of the Saloon to speak quietly with the horn-wearing caladine.

Seeing this, Threnody demanded, “Why does she talk to her?”

“Probably to let her know of our suspicions about Swill.” Rossamünd’s hopes lifted. Distracted by Threnody, he did not see Europe leave, but when he looked again she had disappeared to some other part of the wayhouse to do whatever occult things that fulgars did in the night hours.

With her departure Threnody leaned across the claustra. “Well, she is a disappointment—” she said, “dull and ordinary and not at all heroic. And I thought I wanted to be like her.”

Utterly baffled and not wanting a fight, Rossamünd ignored her and stared out at the emptying Saloon.

“You don’t really want to be her factotum, do you?” Threnody persisted, a hint of that envious look returning. “Being with her is like sucking on a lime dusted in bothersalts.”

No, Threnody, that’s what it’s like being with you! The bitter thought rose unbidden, but Rossamünd said, “I’ve made oaths to serve the Emperor, Threnody. I’ve accepted his Billion. I’m not free to be anyone’s factotum—Miss Europe’s, yours or even Atopian Dido’s, were she still alive!”

Apparently satisfied, Threnody too took her leave and went off to find a place to make her plaudamentum.

Rossamünd was left to be shown to his billet-box alone.