Free Lamplighter by D. M. Cornish Page A

superior. She quibbled with the wool-slippered master armorer over the one-sequin pledge required to secure her firelock and fodicar. And throughout she ignored Rossamünd in the manner of someone used to the attendance of servants.
    He had led her from place to place without complaint and with an ever-sinking feeling and the sharp jabbing of an overfull bladder. Joyful relief had come only when he finally showed Threnody to her own newly appointed cell where her luggage waited for her. While she changed to a lighter’s harness, Rossamünd made a quick dash for the jakes and returned in time for her to emerge with a wrinkled nose.
    “Ugh! The stench of too many boys, too close together,” she said.
    Rossamünd stayed mum. He had spent his life with too many boys, and it had made him insensible to any such odor. “Come along,” he said instead, and guided her up to the dim, high-ceilinged mess hall in the rear quarters of the manse, where a roll of drums declared middens was about to be served. There the other prentices arrived as a mass and, as they lined up, stared in open wonder at this newly presented lantern-stick before them.
    Threnody went forth now in a rich, elegant variation of the gear of a lamplighter: silken platoon-coat, quabard, long-shanks, galliskins and a black tricorn sitting prettily upon her midnight tresses—all of the finest tailoring, as sumptuous as that of any of the Master-of-Clerks’ flunkies. The other prentices, by comparison, looked like drab weeds.
    Threnody ignored them all as she had ignored Rossamünd. In their turn the boys kept unashamedly at their gawping, some turning puzzled looks on her fortunate companion.
    Rossamünd felt anything but fortunate as he received their middens meals, served by two short, fat cooks from the pots hanging in the gigantic fireplace at the farther end of the room. Steaming with faintly appetizing smells, the larger pot was, as always, full of skilly, a savory gruel of leftover meat; the smaller with vummert, a mash of sprouts and peas.
    Threnody scowled at the food, at the cooks, at the boys and at the hall as she sat at one of a pair of long tables that filled the mess.
    “Are . . . are you all right, miss?” Rossamünd asked cautiously, painfully aware that she had just occupied the usual seat of a less-than-friendly lad known as Noorderbreech.
    “Yes.” Threnody’s voice cracked a little. “No . . . What care is it of yours—”
    “Look here, miss, I . . . ,” complained Noorderbreech, leaving his place in the line of unserved boys. “Look here, normally I sit there.”
    Threnody did not move, did not even give a hint she had even heard.
    “And—and that would be my apple,” Noorderbreech insisted.
    A look came into Threnody’s eye that Rossamünd recognized—a haughty, dangerous look. She glanced at the fruit mentioned, which sat on the table before her. It appeared to be the same as all the other apples placed evenly along the benches for the prentices to take away with them when the main meal was done. Threnody picked it up with a study of feminine grace. “ This apple, do you mean?” she said, and bit into it deliberately, daring Noorderbreech to retaliate.
    The lad puffed himself up as threateningly as he might.
    Uncowed, Threnody crunched away as happily as if she were on a vigil-day hamper. Every boy—and the kitchen hands too—held their breath.
    “Give me my apple, girly,” Noorderbreech growled, “and go take yer place at the far end. This is where we sit.”
    “This apple?” She took another bite. “You mean this apple, don’t you? . . . Have it then!” The apple flew the full length of the bench in a well-aimed arc. It landed with a crack and a hiss right in the midst of the hottest coals of the fire.
    Everyone became very, very still. Some even stopped chewing.
    Rossamünd wanted to shrink in on himself.
    “I’ll sit where I like and eat what I please, you loose-jawed bumpkin,” she hissed with such vehemence