Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  “Please, Laudibus!” interjected the Master-of-Clerks. There was genuine alarm in his voice, yet that predatory look never left his eye. “I am most positive this fine young peeress would not dream of soiling her clave’s honor by obfuscating truths or uttering falsehoods in a properly convened Imperial Inquest. Our good Lady Vey has indeed taught her too well.” He smiled winningly at the august. “Is this not correct, Madam August?”

  The Lady Vey looked at him proudly, her own chin in the air. She cleared her throat ever so softly—a subtle, female threat.

  “My exulted madam,” Pile said with wounded dignity, bowing most humbly, “I merely seek the truth, and if my zeal for it has offended your person I apologize.”

  Imperial Secretary Sicus raised a hand. “Falseman Pile, I thank you,” the vaunted clerk declared regally. “You have sought your trail as far as it might take you, but I warn you now to let it go. We cannot have these gracious ladies harried so.”

  Rossamünd heard Threnody give a scornful sniff.

  “Most Honorable Secretary!” The leer faced him and clasped his hands piously. “One might be tempted to disregard any of these on their own as either minor offenses or just an idiosyncrasy, sir.Yet when so many irregularities find themselves embodied in one soul, my intuitions and insights as a falseman start to tell a darker story.” Laudibus Pile pointed to Rossamünd. “There he sits, Master Secretary, with his face so po, but is it possible this solemn young toad hides a wicked treachery? Is it possible that this apparent servant of the Emperor is in league with the nickers, that he survived because of this league, and not through some act of individual prowess? That is why he wears a nullodor all the time—to mark himself out to his nickerly friends! He killed them only for a show, and this is why he refused a mark! I say to you, Master Secretary, surely this one is a wicked sedorner! Surely it is he who, with his monster friends, orchestrated the attack on Wormstool! Surely that is why he survived!”

  Rossamünd gritted his teeth against a sudden fury within. So this was their game—to accuse him a sedorner and shuffle him off to the gallows. He almost sprang to his feet.

  “So I must ask you, most honored Master Secretary,” the leer said, bowing low and long, “that I forthwith be allowed to examine Lampsman 3rd Class Bookchild, so getting to the root of this tragedy.”

  Imperial Secretary Sicus stood, hand still lifted in placation. “This is a most serious charge. It is most persuasively put, and I thank you, Mister Pile; yet I believe I shall continue the inquiry from here.”

  The leer bowed, his mien unreadable.

  The Master-of-Clerks did not look best pleased, and surreptitiously gave an unhappy look to the leer.

  Secretary Sicus turned his powerful attention to Rossamünd. “What is your answer to this charge, Lampsman 3rd Class? You have been accused a sedorner, lad. What say you?”

  Before the young lighter could open his mouth, Grotius Swill, calm and calculating, stood, a hand raised. “If I may interject on proceedings, good sirs!” the surgeon inquired politely. “I have been listening now to these most troubling details, and I declare to you esteemed officers of the table that a possibility yet more disturbing has revealed itself to my thoughts. I ask your indulgence to pursue my own inquiries.” He bowed low to the collected personages seated at the long table.

  The Master-of-Clerks nodded, all pomp and smugness, covering his surprise at the interruption. “Indeed, dear surgeon, you are our eminent physical man here. Let us take a brief recess for breaths to catch and minds to clear.”

  The room was emptied but for Rossamünd. Even Europe went, leaving him to worry alone on what terrible revelations might follow. Pile had already claimed he was a sedorner—a claim, in truth, he could not deny. What other crimes was Swill to lay upon him?

  30

  QUO GRATIA

  libermane potive used to prevent the cruor of a monster from clotting too quickly as it is stored in a bruicle. Useful as this is, it also affects the quality of the blood, thinning it and making the cruorpunxis it is used for pale, less distinct. Therefore libermane is used only when teratologists believe they are more than a couple of days’ journey from a punctographist. Another function of libermane is its application on swords, knives and other blades of war, to make a wound flow more than it ought, though by the Accord of Menschen this practice is deemed unacceptable in modern conflict.

  HONORIUS Ludius Grotius Swill peered about at the many personages who had reconvened in the clerk-master’s file. “It may be that when I first declare the notion that has occurred to me,” he began, “you shall think it a mad genius-leap, so I ask you, gracious Officers of the Board, to please bear with me. The full play of my thoughts will clarify if I am given the time.” He cleared his throat histrionically, giving Rossamünd an odd look from the corner of his eye. “Officers of the Board, paritous inquisitor, peers, ladies, gentlemen, I have listened this whole morning to the witness of these two young Imperial servants—listened long and keen—and what I have heard troubles me greatly. However, one question vexes me over all others. What truly does all this evidence point to, and how is it such a runty ...lad might do such feats as he has done?” He pondered a moment, a fine act to focus people’s attention upon him. “In view of an answer, if I may I would like to address the whole room with this question: how many of you have heard of Ingébiargë? Perhaps you know her as Biargë the Beautiful?”

  The Master-of-Clerks and Scrupulus Sicus, the Imperial Secretary, nodded.

  The Lady Vey made a face as if to say, What does it matter if I have or have not?

  No one else indicated either way.

  Rossamünd knew of Ingébiargë. Craumpalin had told him of her more than once. She was meant to be a cannibalistic woman living in the remotest coasts of the Hagenlands who, by forgotten habilistics, had kept herself alive many thousands of years and made prey of any who passed too near. Such an unnatural length of life had apparently twisted her: she was gray-skinned, with red and yellow eyes more terrible than any leer’s.

  “Some of you might dismiss this Ingébiargë as a fiction, but any vinegaroon who has sailed east beyond the Mare Periculum through the Beggar Sea, or harbored in the road-stead off the Stander Lates near Dereland’s western shores, will tell you she is a very real and very factual danger. If we could ask a mariner of one thousand years gone of her, he too would give the same ghastly report.”

  The normally indulgent Master-of-Clerks, most likely aware of Secretary Sicus sitting immediately to his right, started to show impatience at this bizarre divagation.

  The surgeon lifted his hands appeasingly. “Now please, sirs, attend to me, I do have a point. Ingébiargë, the great abomination, the shame of the Hagenards, known as an ever-living monstrous everyman—or woman.” He corrected himself with a peculiar look to the calendars and Europe. “Yet she is not the only one. The obscurest corners of history will reveal the occurrence of other such abominations, though most, when discovered, were destroyed before they could become the terrible canker Ingébiargë is to southern shipping to this day. For this Biargë is not some clever skold, as some might reckon, but rather a manikin—a monster in the shape and form of a person, and as such more assuredly an abomination.”

  Fransitart had become a wan gray.

  Craumpalin had a haunted glimmer in his eye.

  “Pray, Surgeon Swill, you must bring us to your point of view, sir—the morning runs long,” purred the Master-of-Clerks, a hint of chill in his voice, though he never let slip his patient façade.

  “Most certainly, Marshal-Subrogat.” The surgeon bowed a third time to the Officers of the Board and went on as if he had not been interrupted. “But how can such a wicked abomination happen? I see the question clear on your corporate faces: how can a monster be found in the form of an everyman? As you are all well familiar, we know so little of the where and the why of the monsters, of how they perpetuate themselves.What we do know is that most teratologica survive so long they can be considered—as
the short generations of men reckon it—to live forever.Yet the monsters do replace their numbers.We know some repeat themselves, budding like so many trees, dropping bits of themselves to grow into replicas of the original. This can be most commonly observed in the kraulschwimmen of the mares or the vicious brodchin of the wildest lands such as the Ichormeer or Loquor.”

  Here Swill paused, took a breath.

  An awful, sick sensation was blossoming in Rossamünd’s gut.

  Everyone expectant, the surgeon poured himself some wine from a sideboard, drank it all and continued.

  “But what we have never seen is the creation work of the ancient gravid slimes, those places said to have been the nurseries of the earliest monsters, the eurinines—the first monster-lords—and used by them in turn to bring forth the lesser types of the theroid races.” As he went on, a quaver of fervent enthusiasm entered the surgeon’s voice. “Some of you might even know the history that was before history, the rumors of the beginnings; that these eurinines were granted by the clockwork of the universe to be able to put forth their threwd and make the muds fertile. Heated by the sun, worked on by the threwd, the very ground was made womblike and would pop to bring forth from the foul cesspits of the cosmos many of the worst and most notorious of the monsters that still stalk this groaning world today.”

  Rossamünd did have some small understanding of the things said, but he had never heard the most ancient of histories put so directly. If he had not been in such a great anxiety, he would have eagerly listened to Swill wax learned like this for hours.

  Wiping his mouth, Grotius Swill took up the cause once again. “Now these gravid muds continued to be used by the monster-lords, even through the rise and fall of ages, whereby they take the remains of some fallen nicker and bury them in the slimy womb-earth. After a time this spews forth some vital regeneration of those parts, another full-fledged monster to terrorize the homes of men.” He looked about shrewdly.

  Not one person moved. Swill had intrigued them all.

  “But here is the rub, you see. The movements of the races of men and tribes of theroid, all those risings and fallings, have left many threwdishly fecund places untended by their monster-lords, deserted but still oozing with foul potential. Yet unattended and unchecked by a eurinine’s will, these most threwdish of places we seldom if ever dare to navigate can still produce life, making strange beasties of whatever creatures might fetch up and die there. This abominable process we learned few call abinition, and this, lords, ladies, gentlemen”—Swill raised a salient finger into the air—“this is how Ingébiargë was made: a woman, some woman, nobody knows who, three thousand years ago perhaps, dies in one of these gravid places and falls, her remains swallowed by the hungry ooze. Sometime later out comes—what?” The surgeon shrugged and stared at his audience expectantly.

  SURGEON

  GROTIUS SWILL

  Expressions were blank, except Fransitart and Craumpalin: both were gray-faced, as ill-looking as Rossamünd felt. Despairing, Rossamünd looked to Europe. The fulgar was not paying him any mind, her astute, raptorial gaze fixed on the surgeon.

  “Is it human? Is it monster? This thing sprung from the muds. We do not know for certain,” Swill pressed on, unaware of this calculating regard. “What we do know is that what is ‘born’—for the need of a better term—is reformed from the debris of human matter, birthed from the threwd, a wicked repeat of some lost and departed person. This we call a manikin, and whatever it might be, this reconstituted creature is certainly not human. I commend to you that if it is not human, then rationally it must be monster, and even if it is not, a manikin is not something we want walking free among us.” He paused and looked about the room with evident academic pleasure. “In the case we have before us today, things, I fear, go much deeper than simple sedonition. Rather, events must have proceeded upon similar particulars as I have just related. In some blightedly threwdish dell in the hinterlands of Hergoatenbosch, some poor lost fellow dies and falls. His remains are sucked up by the mud and slowly, by action of heat and threwd, maybe over centuries, they are remade, an abominable simulacrum birthed from the loam; another manikin. And what becomes of it? This manikin is somehow found and taken to a wastrel-house in the city to be raised as an everyman.Yet it is, in fact, not one of us at all.”

  There was a baffled pause, people’s faces intent or dumbly wondering.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen, we all know the name Rossamünd—a sweet and apt name for some lovely, cherished girl . . . and, as it happens, the unfortunate and completely inapt name of this young lighter here”—Swill looked about keenly—“but who of you has heard of a rossamünderling?”

  Vacant faces met him.

  “None of you?” The surgeon’s satisfaction was evident. “I am not surprised; such a word has never appeared on any of the usual taxonomists’ lists. I, with all my reading, had not encountered such a word—until recently, that is, a happy accident of my persistent study. How does that interest us? Just so: Ingébiargë is a rossamünderling. All manikins are. You see, after much esoteric study I discovered in the most obscure of texts a most fascinating word: rossamünderling. It means ‘little rose-mouth’ or, more vulgarly, ‘little pink lips.’ More astonishingly yet, this word is a name the monsters of the east have for manikins. Rossamünderling—an ünterman in the appearance of an everyman. Rossamünd.” The man now pivoted on his heel, spitting in his passion, and pointed ferociously at Rossamünd. “For that is my point! That you—YOU, young Rossamünd whatever-you-are—you are that mud-born abomination! You are a manikin! You are a rossamünderling! A thrice-blighted wretchling in human guise!”

  There was a great shout of disbelief, of horror, from almost every throat in the room. Threnody jerked away from him, staring at him in dismay.

  Rossamünd could barely breathe. He did not know whether to laugh or cry or shout down the surgeon’s foolishness. Mastering himself, he stood and looked to his old masters, and something in their eyes struck him more than any preposterous accusation of some strutting massacar. For their faces declared more eloquently than explanations that the words of Grotius Swill, secret maker of gudgeons and clandestine traitor to the Empire, might possibly be true.

  Europe’s gaze was narrow and inscrutable as she peered at Rossamünd.

  What does she think?

  Laudibus Pile sneered, stroking his chin in wicked satisfaction.

  The Master-of-Clerks actually managed to look stunned, and the Imperial Secretary with him.

  “Yet if you need proofs of my logic, I simply quote this fine young peeress,” Swill pursued, “the daughter of the august of our very own faithfully serving calendars.”

  The Lady Vey sat erect, her face hard and supercilious with hidden distaste, not giving a hint whose side she was for. She turned this brittle gaze to her daughter, and Threnody dropped her head, either unwilling or unable to look at Rossamünd.

  “This fine girl speaks of his great destroying strength,” Swill continued, “a bizarre aberration that immediately piqued my curiosity.Then she explains of his habit of always hiding his smell behind a nullodor. Why would one perpetually wear a nullodor, I asked myself, when one spends one’s life safe in the world of men? And the answer came: unless you were trying to hide that you were not a man at all!” The surgeon said this last with a very pointed look at Rossamünd. “And of course you did not want to be marked with the blood of your own kind,” he cried, “for not only would the idea be repugnant, you know that on your flesh a dolatramentis cannot show, for one monster’s blood will surely not make a mark on another!”

  The young lighter’s thoughts reeled, and he blinked in dismay at the surgeon’s accusations.

  “More so,” Swill pursued, “if what the august’s daughter says is true, then this one’s masters have conspired with it to hide its nature—a foul and deplorable act of outramour as has ever been documented!”

  Fransitart and Craumpalin looked hard at the surgeon and refused to be cowed.r />
  The Master-of-Clerks stared squarely at Rossamünd, a conquering glimmer in the depths of the man’s studied gaze. “What do you have to say for this, Lampsman 3rd Class?”

  Rossamünd felt the blood leave his face and sweat prickle on his brow and neck. He could not let these puzzle-headed fallacies pass unchallenged. But what could he say to such outlandish poppycockery?

  “Tell me, surgeon,” Sicus asked firmly, “how by the remotest here and vere do you propose to substantiate such a bizarre accusation? This young lighter as a sedorner is a charge I am prepared to hear out, but a monster who looks like a person! This is a very long line you plumb, sir. How do you intend to substantiate this obscure conjecturing?”

  Swill balked, momentarily stumped, but rallied, a solution clearly blossoming in his thoughts. “If you would but indulge me just a little further, we could but take a little of this—this one’s blood; someone could be marked, and in a fortnight or so the proof would be there. Only a monster’s blood will make a mark on a person if pricked into the skin.”

  Threnody gasped.

  Sicus and Whympre and his staff were thunderstruck, and the Lady Vey too.

  “I’ll not let ye cut ’im!” Fransitart cried, half standing but held back by Craumpalin.

  Europe still did not move or comment, and the black-eyed wit kept his heavy-lidded scrutiny ever fixed on her.

  To the universal surprise of the room, it was Rossamünd who spoke in Swill’s support. “Take my blood,” he said firmly, not quite believing what was coming out of his own mouth.Yet he was resolute. “How else can I show that this . . . that Mister Swill is wrong?”

  “How else indeed? Bravely said, young fellow!” Swill enthused. “And to make it a truly impartial test, it would be best for one member each of the interested parties to be marked. In that way none can accuse the other of fabricating a result.”