Lamplighter Read Online Free PDF Page B

flasket marked with a Γρ to signify gromwell. Threnody took it, looked at it with a splenic expression, and then quaffed it in one brash gulp.
    “That is all” was all she said as thanks, and with that said ignored him completely.
    Rossamünd was not impressed. She could not have been more than a year or two his senior.
    “I reckon she’s taken a liking to ye, Master Come-lately,” Assimus chuckled archly.
    Rossamünd turned his attention to nothing in particular and fixed it there. This kind of jesting was, he had learned over the last two months, part of the lamplighter way.
    “Not that you really want to get tangled with a calendar, boyo,”Assimus continued quietly, unexpectedly willing to share his manifold experiences. “They’re always getting in our road on the road, if ye get me, always interfering with their lofty machinations. Still,” he said, patting the young prentice on the back, “since they’ve taken such a shine on ye, it seems it’s fallen to thee to be their minder. Handsomely done, lad, a noble thing you’ve set to, sparing us the burden. Handsomely done!”
    “But I thought it was the duty of all lamplighters to do the noble thing,” Rossamünd returned seriously.
    Assimus looked awkward in turn, then collected himself. “What do ye know of noble things, lantern-stick?” the lighter said churlishly. “What dangers have ye had to test yer thew? See what I’ve seen and then see if ye’re so quick to judgment. Just keep to yer watching, and yer ignorant twitterings to yeself!”
    Feeling chastened and foolish, Rossamünd did as he was told.
    The cloudless night grew colder. The women whispered to each other in a foreign tongue, yet said little to their three guardians.The calendar pistoleer attended to the hurts of her half-chewed and mercifully unconscious sister while Threnody brooded and Dolours sat suffering her fever. Heavy pistolas hanging ready at her hips, Charllette picked slowly through the fallen nickers, frequently looking out into the darkling woods wanly lit by a rising moon. As she went from corpse to corpse, the pistoleer would crouch for a time, poking at the beast, then rise and move to the next, slyly stowing things in her stout satchel each time. Puzzled, Rossamünd watched her from the corner of his gaze, trying not to look open and curious. At one of the dead monsters he saw her stopper an odd-shaped vial, one he recognized—a bruicle it was called—used by physicians and surgeons to hold humours and by teratologists to hold . . . monster blood !
    He was curious to see the manner by which it was done—his peregrinat, the waterproof almanac given him by Fransitart—was only vague on the subject. The epitome of failed nonchalance, the young prentice sauntered over to a beast and stared at it, looking for signs of Charllette’s gruesome work. The horn-ed nicker’s eyes were wide and staring, as vacantly black and blank and empty of energy as they had been wild, coal-fire orange when it lived. Rossamünd looked into them sadly. Such an impressive, stalwart creature, yet he could still sense its malign nature: definitely foe, never friend. And oh, the stink of it! Like a piggery, the jakes and an unmucked manger in one.
    “These are ugly, festering articles.” The hushed voice of Lampsman Assimus marveling to his right startled Rossamünd. “Look’ee here!” The lampsman poked at the heavy body with his fodicar. “This is one we hit—see the holes. Every bullet has its billet. I see those saucy coneys have taken their fill already, but we have claim on this ’un’s ichor too. Draw some, Putt—we can get Drawk to punct us when we’re off watch tomorrow.”
    Puttinger shook his head grimly as he drew forth a wicked-looking utensil.
    A sprither, Rossamünd realized. It was a tube of steel bent into an S-shape with a needle point on one end and a short, flexible straw made of gut protruding from the other.
    “They’ll claim the kill, no doubting,”