Called basements or stone-harbors, these cramped fort-lets were just big enough to fit a quarto of lighters and their accoutrements, preserved foods and a firkin or two of stale water. Every other lampsman had a key to their stout doors and the lantern-watch could seek refuge in them for well over a week: more than long enough, it was thought, for the monsters to lose interest and move on, or for a rescue to liberate the trapped.

To give them time to better accommodate to a lampsman’s life the house-major decided to put Threnody and Rossamünd under the charge of Splinteazle, Seltzerman 2nd Class. They would accompany him on many tasks, replacing bloom, refitting lantern-lights, cleaning panes—a task that always made Rossamünd glum as he brooded on the plight of poor Numps. Whenever they went out a run-down flat cart went with them, its sagging planks laden with the necessary stocks of tools and parts.This cart was kept in a solid stone outbuilding attached to the back of the cothouse and was drawn by a he-donkey with incredibly large ears, which earned the poor creature the name Cuniculus—or “Rabbit.” This stolid beast was kept in the cellar and brought carefully down the cothouse steps whenever he was needed. Rossamünd greatly enjoyed the work, but Threnody did not and would stand by restlessly while they labored.

One cold, misty morning Splinteazle and his two aides set out to restock the basement found at the bottom of the lamp at East Bleak 36 West Stool 10. Haggard and blotched from a life spent at sea, his skull wrapped in a tight black kerchief—vinegaroon fashion—under his cocked thricehigh—Splinteazle whistled to the rising sun. Today he was in particularly good spirits, for today was Dirgetide, the last day of winter, which, apart from a great slap-up meal for mains, meant a season of fewer theroscades.

The delicate mist softened the arid land with its opalescent sheen, filling dells and hollows and runnel-beds with cloudy film. Gray birds with black hoods dipped and rose from perch to perch among the stunted swamp oaks, calling on the wing, giving their maudlin, churring songs to the hazy morning.

“Ahh,” muttered Splinteazle, staring at them, “the sthtorm-birdsth are out: it’ll be rain today, and our butts’th filled again with fresh water.” Missing his two front teeth, the seltzerman had a naval burr that was marred with a lisp.

For all the condensation, it was still a thirsty walk.Wearing his new hat and pallmain and wrapped in Europe’s warm scarf, Rossamünd had come laden with fodicar, his knife in its scabbard attached to his baldric, salumanticum and his own satchel holding a day’s ration. He took a drink from a water skin.

“Here’sth a mite o’ wisthdom for ye,” Splinteazle said, stooping to the roadside. “I’ve stheen yee both take a sthecond and even a third gulp of ye water. At that rate ye’ll have drunk it out and be wanting. A better way isth to avastht yer drinking and pick a pebble like I’ve got here and plop it into yer mouth to sthuck.” He did as he explained, putting a small, pale stone between his thin lips. “Keepsth yer mouth watering and thirstht at bay.”

Obeying, Rossamünd was amazed to find the advice was sound. On the verge as they walked, he noticed scattered many smooth pebbles, and wondered if they were made this way in the mouths of so many vanished generations of thirsty lighters working interminably up and down the road. With faint repulsion, he thought of how many maws the very rock he sucked on might have previously inhabited, and mastered the urge to spit it out.

They crossed the path of Squarmis plodding east on some cryptic errand. The costerman paid the young lighters no mind but engaged in insults with the seltzerman as they passed.

“Slubberdymouth!” Squarmis drawled in abusive greeting.

“Fartgullet!” Splinteazle returned without hesitation.

Only Rabbit was pleased to see the costerman, or rather the fellow’s mean old she-ass, who nipped at Rossamünd walking by. Braying and bellowing, the seltzerman’s donkey tried to turn and follow the retreating object of its passion. Splinteazle fought to keep the brute beast’s head pointed in the correct direction and stop Rabbit running off after his sweetheart.

“Lamplassth!” the seltzerman grunted as he wrestled his donkey. “Help me hold the Rabbit. Nothing will turn him now, daft basthket! Bookchild! Go down to that sthwamp oak yonder and get me a branch. It’sth the only thing to move him.”

Rossamünd spotted the appropriate tree not more than a dozen yards north off the highroad. With a dash he descended the side of the road and ran a lane through the thistles to the small swamp oak. He grasped a branch and tore it off with ease and saw yellow eyes watching from a gorse patch not more than five yards away. Pebble or not, Rossamünd’s mouth went dry.

“Freckle?” he called softly. The little fellow had survived. What is more, he was still watching out for him.

“Hurry there, lad!” came Splinteazle’s urgent call.

The eyes disappeared with a rustle, and feeling both disappointment and elation, the young lighter hustled back to the road.

The seltzerman had spoken true: Rabbit adored the taste of swamp-oak needles more than even the she-mule. With Rossamünd going ahead using the branch as a lure, the creature was induced to walk on.

“Poor old Rabbit,” Splinteazle chuckled tenderly, once the donkey was walking freely again. “He’sth hopelessthly sthmitten on Assthanina—that’sth that filthy Sthquarmis fellow’sth lady mule, don’t ye know—Rabbit goesth braying after her every time we’re in town. Poor deluded fool of a donkey don’t realizthe that Assthanina is not in the amorousth way.”

For Rossamünd’s part he wanted to keep looking out to the north into the scrub and try to spy Freckle.Yet he feared giving the persistent glamgorn away and forced his eyes to stay to his front.

When they arrived at the basement, the seltzerman took out a large cast-brass key and descended to unlock the heavy, narrow entrance to the stone-harbor. The lock and hinges whinged rustily and proved of little use. The inside of the basement was stuffy, cavelike and typically cramped. Though he could stand tall, Rossamünd saw that Splinteazle was forced to move about in a ducking hunch. The young lighter examined the view from the tight slit of a loophole. The mist was coming in thicker, and he could not see more than a small arc of the road and flatland to the north.

They slowly unloaded the flat cart, which creaked in a kind of inanimate gratitude for the relief of the burden on its aged timbers and axles.

“Ye’re sthtrong and quick for a wee lighter, lad, and that’sth the truth. Young Master Haroldus’th indeed!” To Threnody’s sluggish unwillingness the seltzerman warned, “Take up the sthlack, young hearty, and clap on sthome sthpeed; that’sth no way to stherve yer Emperor!”

“I might wear your colors, sir,” she hissed, snatching some small box, “but I do not serve your besotted, bedizzled Emperor.”

“Besthotted, eh? Bedizzthled?” he said as she turned. “Isth that what they taught thee in thy sthequethtury? What doesth ye think taking the Emperor’sth Billion meansth?”

The stores were kept under a trapdoor in a rough-cut pit in the back corner of the outwork. For each new puncheon or cask or crate they carried in, an old one had to be removed and taken up and put on the cart. Even with Threnody reluctant to do the task, restocking was completed quickly and the three were soon strolling home. Along the return, a shrill cry, brief and birdlike, pierced the gauzy stillness four times, tangible alarm in its echoes.

The three workers became very still.

Rossamünd stared about, trying to see everywhere at once.

“It’sth a water hen,” Splinteazle stated in ominous whisper. “They only cry when the worstht of blight’sth basthketsth are about. Sthomething wicked-foul musth surely be out there. We mustht hurry!”

Not much farther on, they found that East Bleak 41 West Stool 5 had been smashed: bent over like nothing more than a broken grass-blade, the lamp’s still dizzing seltzer already soaking into the hard surface of the road.

The smell of monsters—the telltale stink of pungent musk and almost animal filth found them, floating on the quickening breeze.

“Hi,” Splinteazle exclaimed in the barest of whispers, “catch a nosthe full o’ that reek! They’re sthurely sthome of the wortht bugerboosth ye’re ever likely to hide from.”

The next lamp they discovered missing altogether, ripped footing and all from the verge.

“Desthtroying me lovely lampsth!” cried Splinteazle. “Killin’ me bloom!”

Rossamünd became aware of a threwdishly unpleasant, impelling sensation buzzing behind his eyes. It grew with each step, spreading to the base of his head, to the core of his innards; an external, ambient yet powerful compulsion to act, to do something or else suffer displeasure. From who? Is Mama Lieger doing this?What am I supposed to do? Rossamünd had no notion, but the dread of this sensation waxed terribly. Oddly, Threnody and Splinteazle did not appear to heed it.

And the closer they drew to Wormstool the stronger the bestial smell became.

Though the cothouse was a mile away and part hidden by the mists, Rossamünd could make out swamp harriers gliding the clearer air above in hungry expectation.The mad baying of the dogs came faintly. Even from this distance they could make out something large, perhaps an ettin pounding against the cothouse. Rossamünd instinctively checked his salumanticum. There was nothing in it that would affect something so enormous.

“The cothousth is attacked!” Splinteazle wailed and set off down the road at a run, pulling the contrary Rabbit with him, the young lamplighters following his lead. A lantern-span closer, they saw more than just an ettin attacking their home. On the road before the tower and in the scrub about its foundations a crowd of monsters prowled, an entire menagerie of them, numbering a score or more of myriad kinds and sizes. They seemed to work in concert, hooting and hissing and yowling up at the besieged lighters within, drawing and dodging shots fired from loophole and roof. This was a theroscade of a kind that Rossamünd had only read. The three rushed on in thoughtless, unspoken agreement, marching into this overwhelming danger regardless.

The powerful ettin, much heftier than the Misbegotten Schrewd, flourished a lantern in its massive hands and with it smashed at the door of Wormstool. An old cart looking very much like Squarmis’ old bone-shaker was lashed to its head with rope and harness leather, providing some protection from musket fire above, the thills thrust out over its back like horns and the wheels looking like weird ears. Pops of smoke were puffing from the slits of every floor of the tower, and from the crenellations of the Fighting Top as well. Much of the fire was concentrated on the ettin, the beast swatting at the balls as a man might at flies. Many of the shots must have been true and deadly, for Rossamünd and his companions were not much farther up the road when the giant nicker tottered, righted itself and threw the lamp at the walls. The post hit the cothouse with a clarion ring, ricocheted and spun off madly to crash on to the road. Stumbling, the ettin staggered away north into the flatlands, clutching at its bloodied head and shoulders. With a dull crunch of splintering wood, the ettin ripped the cart away and hurled this heedlessly too as it fled.

“Look at that belugig run! Come now, fellowsth!” Splinteazle cried to Rossamünd and Threnody. “We mustht join the fight!”

Once more Rossamünd felt the malignantly compelling threwd; felt it throb and saw the remaining monsters at the cothouse’s feet respond obediently. Smaller nickers and larger bogles began to scamper up the stairs: things with hunched bodies and long legs, bounding a dozen steps in one leap; gaunt, stilt-legged bugaboos that took each step with the mincing grace of a dancer; bloated bogle-beasties that lumbered after.

“The door is breached!” wailed the seltzerman, abandoning Rabbit to run to the aid of the assaulted tower.

Mind a whirl of useless garble, Rossamünd followed and Threnody with him, checking the priming of her two doglock pistols. The young lighter could scarce believe that he was willingly throwing himself into the fray. He reached into his salumanticum for a caste of loomblaze.

The tower of Wormstool was close now, no more than a hundred yards away, the clamor of the desperate struggle within audible even down on the road. Not more than a hundred yards from the cothouse near the base of the first lantern, Rossamünd cried, “HI! HI! OVER HERE!” carried away by his desire to help. A pack of monsters still at the foot of the steps and circling about Wormstool’s foundations turned to Rossamünd’s shout. With hoots and howls, they swarmed at the three, loping and leaping down the road with appalling speed.

Splinteazle was ahead of the two younger lighters, brandishing his fodicar in one hand and a salinumbus in the other. The monsters closed and he fired, sending one flailing, spurting to the road-dust. At the shot Rossamünd threw his vial of loomblaze high and wide, wanting to avoid the seltzerman, and it erupted over the heads of two stragglers, their shrieks clear in the general din. Threnody fired too, pistolas thrust forward in classic pistoleer pose, but the power of the doglocks must have thrown off her aim, and they had little effect on the beasts. The seltzerman swung his lantern-crook with all his might, hitting the foremost bogle hard but doing little harm. Was Splinteazle that old and infirm? He struck it again with all his force, and Rossamünd watched with a numb kind of horror as once more the blow hardly troubled the gnasher. Cackling and barely hurt, the beast tackled Splinteazle to the ground and, finding all the weak parts of his proofing, rapidly clawed the hollering seltzerman to shreds before Rossamünd knew to act. With a shriek of her own, Threnody flung her fine pistols down and scathed powerfully, stunning Rossamünd but driving the bogles back amazed. Yet it was too late for the old seltzerman.

Numbness turned to terror and Rossamünd hesitated. The will-filled threwd resisted him, undermined his resolve. If the seltzerman could perish so easily, what hope had he?

Undismayed, the gaggle of nickers pounced again, some outflanking them as the rest rushed headlong.The monsters were on them, the stink of the beasts surrounding the two young lighters. Threnody sent forth her frission, which this time left Rossamünd untouched but gave the pack of gnashers a smart jolt. They howled at her in rage. But she could not keep such a barrier up for long, and too soon something sleek and full of claws leaped at her. Shouting wordlessly, Rossamünd leaped to meet the beast. Dancing aside from its swiping talons, he brought the butt-end of his fodicar down with as much strength as he could muster. To his utter astonishment the monster’s back buckled and bent the wrong way under the blow and it fell, naked surprise on its bestial face. But he did not have time to wonder over its end, for Threnody’s fishing faltered and the other nickers sprang, sneering hungrily and more intent on the girl-wit. In the frightening, gnashing whirl of a fight where he was one of the players and life and death stood on his own deeds, Rossamünd did not fuss about where his feet were, what his hands were doing. He just hit. One with a great lump of warts and lard that pronked on two legs like a rabbit’s tried to leap about and get behind them. Threnody scathed again, a little weaker. Rossamünd stabbed at Rabbit-legs as it jumped. The pike-end of the fodicar went straight through its belly, the astounded beast expiring in midspring, collapsing on the road and skidding away. The Hundred Rules that had baffled Rossamünd so continually at Madam Opera’s were suddenly making sense. The young lighter swung his lantern-crook again with ease, giving another bloated monster second thoughts as he caught its lunge with crank-hook and pike-end then shoved the bogle clear away. It glared at him with an odd expression.

At his back Threnody’s sometimes clumsy, sometimes competent striving continued. For all her inexperience, she was actually gaining him space and protecting them both from being overwhelmed.

The monsters pulled away, dismayed at the ferocity of such tasty little morsels, rethinking their foe. Rossamünd and Threnody stood back to back and watched in turn. Of the eight or so bogles that had sought their lives, perhaps half had perished: one shot by Splinteazle, two struck down by Rossamünd, one or possibly two hurt by the loomblaze and another drooling and broken and sitting harmlessly by the highroad, a victim of Threnody’s successful witting.

“Do you feel it?” she gasped.

“Feel what?”

“The threwd!” Threnody opened her eyes. “Working entirely on the destruction of this place. It snatches at me every time I wit!”

Rossamünd nodded. “Aye, I feel it.”

Indeed, the malign feeling waxed strongly even as they spoke, and the monsters prowled closer.

BOOOOM! An almighty crash reverberated about the Frugelle, startling flocks of complaining birds to wing. Down the road smoke began to issue from Wormstool, belching from a fourth-story loophole. A tongue of flame licked out and up the outside wall. A lighter stumbled out of the high door of the cothouse and started down the steps. A large nicker with great, snapping jaws emerged and pounced on the retreating lampsman, crushing him down onto the stairway, jumping on him over and over till his screams ceased and red flowed.

Threnody stared in dumb shock.

Taking shrewd advantage of the distraction, the four remaining monsters rushed the two young lighters. Shrieking fiendishly, they charged in, then skittered away again when Threnody rallied and finally strove. They were testing her. She began to growl in frustration as time and again they fooled her into scathing pointlessly, wearing her down. Rossamünd threw another charge of loomblaze at the largest bogle, the one with peglike teeth in its spadelike jaw, but missed. The fiery chemistry burst bright but uselessly in a thicket of bushes beyond the road, and the dry branches eagerly took to flame.

Observing the commotion, the slayer of the lighter on the steps descended and pranced up the conduit, joining its fellows on the road. The largest of them, this new beast strutted on its thin legs and slavered through its long snout at the two young lighters. It regarded them beadily then called across to them in a weird, slobbering voice, “What are you, pink lipsss?”

“I hate it when they talk!” Threnody seethed.

“What are you, pink lipsss!” it slobbered again. “Why do you ssside with themmm?”

“I think it’s talking to you, lamp boy,” Threnody muttered. “Maybe it’s been chatting with your Freckle friend.”

Rossamünd swallowed hard but did not answer. Pink lips? This was the meaning of Rossamünd’s name—rose-mouth, pink lips. How did it know his name? Perhaps it had indeed been talking to Freckle? He looked to the tatters of Splinteazle’s corpse beyond the monsters. His resolve hardened. He held out his fodicar, presenting arms as at a parade, inviting a challenge.

With a vicious snarl the slobbering nicker lunged at them, the other monsters rushing with it, whooping and yammering. Threnody witted, laboring to keep her frission under control. For a moment she checked the charge, Rossamünd standing with fodicar and loomblaze ready, by her side. The monsters writhed and backed away. Suddenly the girl gasped, and without warning her frission faltered. The beasts were at them again, the slobberer foremost, and Rossamünd sprang too. He hurled the potive with wicked aim, missing the slobberer and hitting a stocky bogle running just behind it. The wretched thing’s head was splashed and engulfed with the cruel false-fire and it fell screeching. As he met the slobberer, fodicar swinging, so Threnody’s frission returned and the small gnashers reeled. He swatted at the slobberer with the same thoughtless, clearheaded fluidity, hitting it smartingly on its shoulder. The thing shrieked and flailed its arms, swatting Rossamünd in the chest and throwing him back-first to the road. Threnody’s witting caught him and his vision dimmed, threatened blackness; but this was no time for stopping, for lying tamely down just because of a hurt. With a yelping kind of growl, Rossamünd shook himself and rolled on to his side, his vision clearing. What had seemed to him like a dangerous pause had been just an instant. The slobberer bore down on him. Rossamünd whipped his lantern-crook around, smacking the nicker’s ankles. Its long legs were tripped out from under it and the thing toppled, a puff of dust erupting from its fall. On his feet in a beat, Rossamünd took his advantage and struck the fallen monster wildly, not caring where, just hitting, hitting, as Threnody’s frission lashed out again.

It was too much now—the bogles had had enough. They were quitting the fight, running back up the Wormway and off into the wilderness. Not satisfied, Threnody trod determinedly toward the cothouse, striving at the monsters inside. Still flailing in fury at the slobberer as it struggled to rise, Rossamünd was vaguely aware that lumpy bogles were fleeing the tower: one even leaped from the roof, landing with a mighty crash in some bushes and, yipping girlishly, disappeared into the scrub. With their escape, the malice of the threwd flared strong for a moment then subsided, leaving only confused watchfulness.

Rossamünd kept hitting, and only when he had smote the utter ruin of the stomping, slobbering nicker did he cease. He stared down at the shattered, mangled creature at his feet: somehow it still lived, glaring up at him, still defiant, still baleful, still hungry.Yet now Rossamünd could not hate the fiendly thing, no matter what it had done to the doughty, friendly lighters of Wormstool. Now he just felt tired and sorry: sorry for the death of his comrades; sorry for the harm he had done the monster before him, to all the monsters; sorry that he had become the murderer, the hypocrite.

“I am sorry to have slain thee,” he whispered, little knowing from where the words came. “But we were at odds and I could not let you hurt my friends.”

The creature’s eyes glazed, a sadness—an ancient longing—seeming to dwell in them for a moment, and it ceased.

Gory fodicar still in hand, Rossamünd dropped to his knees and wept.

“Surely you don’t weep over the monsters!” he heard Threnody croak as she picked up her doglocks, still lying where she had discarded them. She sat exhausted on the road and thirstily downed a milky blue liquid.

Rossamünd doubled over, keening agony in his very depths. He felt a subtle touch on his lantern-crook. Looking up, he saw that same familiar sparrow perched on the bunting-hook. It gave a single firm chirp as if it were chiding him, and whirred away.

“Oh, go away!” Threnody shied the empty alembant bottle at the departing bird. “A fat lot of good you did for us just now! Go back to your master and tell him the happy news!”

“Threnody!” Rossamünd cried as the flask missed well wide and disappeared into the thistles below.

In her sudden fury the girl turned on him, and for a moment he thought she might throw something at him too. But she did not.

Rossamünd stood, leaning on his fodicar as if it were a geriatric’s cane.

Though smoke was billowing from the upper stories and carrion crows were already perching upon the chimney pots, Rossamünd and Threnody still walked to it and climbed to the front door, stepping with heavy grief over the body on the steps. It was Theudas. In the watch room the doors to the cellars had been torn from hinges and cast aside.The collapsible stair, now nothing more than a wreckage of timbers, had worked perfectly; yet this had not been enough to stop the murderous nickers from gaining the higher floors. It was, however, more than adequate in preventing the two survivors from getting above.They called out, screamed and screeched till they were hoarse, hoping to hear the answering plaints of a survivor from the upper levels. But no such answers came, only the hiss and crack of fire unchecked.

Together the two hastily scrounged whatever they could from the litter—food parcels and water skins found in the cellars and with them a flammagon. Among the ruination they discovered the inert white mass of Sequecious, bloodied and cold, collapsed across an equally fat, bilious-looking bogle with great bloodred fangs. It too was dead, the boltarde that slew it still clutched by Sequecious, the aspis-smeared blade thrust full through its ribs, scorch marks showing that it had received the blast of a firelock. Man and monster had died together.Whelpmoon lay faceup by his squat lectern, his glasses missing, his dead eyes staring. By the kennels the dogs had managed to destroy a brace of scaly, big-nosed bogles, perishing themselves as they did.

Men and dogs and monsters, everything was dead. Rossamünd could only imagine the gore and carnage on the floors above. Too much . . . too much . . . His extremities began tingling, and just as his anguish became overwhelming it was quickly obscured by a weird, empty flatness.

A terrible smashing report thundered from the floors above and shook the fortalice.

“We must go,” Threnody insisted, standing at the top of the cellar steps.

Back down on the road, the two survivors tried to bring Rabbit with them, but the loyal, stupid beast would not leave his friend and master. Flat cart still hitched, it had slowly followed them and now stood forlornly by Splinteazle’s remains and would not move. Not even a sprig of swamp oak could induce it to come away.The two young lighters would have had to drag it every single step to get the beast to Bleak Lynche, and they might have done but were desperate to be gone. So they unhitched the cart and left the faithful donkey standing at the base of the tower, ears down, head down, nosing the seltzerman’s cooling corpse.

“What a waste,” Threnody spat, venting her angry grief as they fled. “It’s idiotic. Even out here, with hardly anyone to benefit, they still go on risking lives to light the lamps each evening and douse them each dawning. No one in the cities cares—not even in the towns around about are people mindful or grateful.Whoever uses this part of road? The Bleaksmen stay put. That place is nothing more than a cothouse with a fistful of desperadoes setting up shop about it—what’s the point? Imperial waste!” She gagged back a sob.

“But if they did not make a stand here everyone west would suffer!” Rossamünd’s contradiction was reflexive, yet in truth he actually agreed with her.

“Do you really think the flimsy string they call the Wormway, with its few tottering towers so close to the Gluepot and the tired quartos that habit them, is a match for the gathered might of the monsters? Look how easy it was for a small band of brodchin to annihilate one cothouse. It’s the work of my sisters that keeps your precious western folk safe!”

Rossamünd had no answer for this—he just wanted to get to somewhere secure. He found himself hoping Mama Lieger might shuffle from the scrub and lend them aid. How can she have let this happen? Did she cause all this?Was the threwd of the land itself the culprit? Is that what I felt?

An almighty shattering boom roared behind them, scaring them so much they both let out a yelp.They looked back to see the shingle roof of the cothouse collapsing inward with a seething eruption of smoke, sparks jetting from the shell of the tower. Rossamünd spied a hasty little shadow scuttling after them.

Walking on, Rossamünd ached to speak with the glamgorn, to ask question after question, but most of all—why? Why were they attacked? Why did the glamgorn not help? Why was he still following him? However, with Threnody by Rossamünd’s side, Freckle would never come near. Strangely, irrationally, the young prentice felt safer with Freckle at their backs.

The day grew darker still and, as poor dead Splinteazle had predicted, it began to rain. Monsterlike shapes seemed to lurk and lunge in the gloom, phantasms made by the rapid fall of water. At least I have my hat, Rossamünd thought bitterly.

A far-off cry—a shriek and a gabber—came from somewhere out on the flatland. It was an inhuman call, a monster’s voice. Rossamünd cringed at the noise and almost tripped, expecting any moment to be waylaid again. Though they were exhausted, desperation and blank terror set the two lighters running, a weary stumbling lurch, each helping the other if ever one flagged.

When the glimmer of the lights of Bleak Lynche hove in sight, Rossamünd eagerly took up the flammagon and shot its spluttering pink fire into the air. The flare drew a high, lazy arc, the falling damps carrying it northward. It winked out as it fell on the downside of its curve. They had little hope of it attracting attention, yet it did: a ten-strong foray of the Bleakhall day-watch.

The band of lighters that found them could little believe what they were told: a whole cothouse slaughtered? Surely not! Several lampsmen gave shouts of lament. Scrutineers were sent to Wormstool, the sneakiest of the band, while Rossamünd and Threnody were hustled back to Bleakhall. There the astounded Fortunatus the house-major conducted a hasty inquiry. He kept asking the same questions: “What happened? Where are the other lampsmen? How is it just you two survived?”

Rossamünd did not know how to answer except with the truth.

Fortunatus could not accept their shocking tale until the piquet of scrutineers returned, dragging Rabbit, braying mournfully, with them. These doughty fellows confirmed the blackest truth: a whole cothouse slaughtered; friends torn and all dead, the ransacked fortlet open to the elements. They brought with them body parts and several bruicles of cruor as proof, and offered one of these to the two survivors. “So ye might mark yeselfs proudly!” they said.

Rossamünd refused. The handing out of awards at such a time seemed so wrong to him—ill-timed and disrespectful. It did not occur to him that his feats would warrant a marking, maybe even four according to the grisly count that revolved ceaselessly in his mind.

“Not want a mark?” was the general, incredulous reaction. “That ain’t natural!” But they did not press him.

Threnody, however, gladly received the blood, and this was a great satisfaction to the other lighters. “My first cruorpunxis,” she murmured, scrutinizing the bruicle closely. Either way, all agreed that Grindrod must have improved greatly in his teaching of prentices to raise such doughty young lighters.